Chapters (206)
- Praise for Maplecroft
- Title page
- Copyright page
- Contents
- ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
- THESE ARE THE THINGS AN EARTHQUAKE BRINGS
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- A DOCTOR, A LAWYER, A MERCHANT, A CHIEF
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- Phillip Zollicoffer, Professor of Biology, Miskatonic University
- Lizzie Andrew Borden
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- BE SURE YOUR SINS WILL FIND YOU OUT
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- I CROSS THE MAGPIE, THE MAGPIE CROSSES ME
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- Nance O’Neil
- THIS KNOT I KNIT, THIS KNOT I TIE
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- AND IF YOU HAVE A HORSE WITH ONE WHITE LEG . . .
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- THE WORST IS TO BE JUDGED WITHOUT HOPE
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- Lizzie Andrew Borden
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- BUT NETTLE SHANT HAVE NOTHING
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- CUT THEM ON FRIDAY, YOU CUT THEM FOR SORROW
- Phillip Zollicoffer, Professor of Biology, Miskatonic University
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- HAPPY IS THE CORPSE THAT THE RAIN SHINES ON
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- A DWELLING PLACE OF JACKALS, THE DESOLATION FOREVER
- Lizzie Andrew Borden
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- Nance O’Neil
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- Emma L. Borden
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- Owen Seabury, M.D.
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- Lizzie Andrew Borden
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- RIGHT CHEEK, LEFT CHEEK—WHY DO YOU BURN?
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- Aaron B. Stewart, Fire Chief, Farthington, Mass.
- Emma L. Borden
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- Gerald Macintyre, Telegraph Clerk, Western Union
- Owen Seabury, M.D.
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- Physalia, Z. University I Was Not Now
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- DEPART, ALL ANIMALS WITHOUT BONES
- Emma L. Borden
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- Owen Seabury, M.D.
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- Lizzie Andrew Borden
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- Owen Seabury, M.D.
- Phillip Zollicoffer. Physalia Zollicoffris.
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- Christoff Dane, M.D., Ph.D., University of Rhode Island, Kingston
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- Emma L. Borden
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- Owen Seabury, M.D.
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- Emma L. Borden
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- FAMILY SLAIN IN MAYFIELD
- Owen Seabury, M.D.
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- Lizzie Andrew Borden
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- Emma L. Borden
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- Owen Seabury, M.D.
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- Lizzie Andrew Borden
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- Inspector Simon Wolf
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And I hated it because she was looming over me, and I could not shake the feeling that it was deliberate. She was intimidating me, using her size against me. Using her height to tell me, without any words, that she could wrestle me into submission if she felt the need, and she was feeling all kinds of needs right now.
I didn’t know if she could best me in a fight or not. I’m smaller, yes, but more compact. And in the previous two years, I’d learned a great deal about violence, and my capacity for it. “Nance,” I whispered, and she was hovering so close that my breath tickled her eyelashes. “You’re beginning to worry me.”
“Worry you?” She cocked her head.
I swallowed, and leaned back away from her as far as the counter would allow. “I think you’re trying to frighten me, and I don’t like it.”
My direct accusation broke the spell, or cracked it sufficiently that she withdrew, a look of honest horror on her face. She blinked quickly, repeatedly, like someone awakening from an engrossing dream. “Frighten you? Lizbeth . . . whatever are you going on about? I’m doing no such thing.”
I released a breath I hadn’t noticed I was holding, and when I did so, my corset stays stretched against the fabric of my dress. Apparently it was a big breath. Apparently I’d held it hard.
“I’m sorry,” I said, apologizing almost by reflex. “I didn’t mean to imply . . . it’s only that you’ve been so insistent, and I don’t understand. You were so strange the other day, when I found you here and the tea was cold . . .”
It was easy to ramble and sound as if I fretted in earnest, when I stuck so close to the truth.
“It was only cold tea,” she promised, but she kept her distance still. “Nothing more. I was distracted.”
“I called your name, and you didn’t hear me. Over and over I called it . . . and you were standing there, beside that stupid door,” I spit out, directing my sorrow and anger at the cellar and its contents. It was either that or I must point it toward myself.
“It’s only a door,” she breathed, abashed and innocent once more. “And you won’t let me past it, so I wonder, that’s all. I want to see what you don’t want to show me. I want you to trust me.”
“It’s nothing to do with trust,” I assured her, though as I spoke the words I knew they were wrong. It did come down to trust, didn’t it? I couldn’t trust her to visit without snooping for keys, trying to circumvent me.
“Then why?” she pleaded, leaning against the counter and half sitting upon it.
“Can’t I have a single secret? Just one?”
“But why do you need one?”