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Chapters (206)
  1. Praise for Maplecroft
  2. Title page
  3. Copyright page
  4. Contents
  5. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
  6. THESE ARE THE THINGS AN EARTHQUAKE BRINGS
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  12. A DOCTOR, A LAWYER, A MERCHANT, A CHIEF
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  20. Phillip Zollicoffer, Professor of Biology, Miskatonic University
  21. Lizzie Andrew Borden
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  26. BE SURE YOUR SINS WILL FIND YOU OUT
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  29. I CROSS THE MAGPIE, THE MAGPIE CROSSES ME
  30. •   •   •
  31. Nance O’Neil
  32. THIS KNOT I KNIT, THIS KNOT I TIE
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  37. AND IF YOU HAVE A HORSE WITH ONE WHITE LEG . . .
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  43. THE WORST IS TO BE JUDGED WITHOUT HOPE
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  46. Lizzie Andrew Borden
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  53. BUT NETTLE SHANT HAVE NOTHING
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  55. CUT THEM ON FRIDAY, YOU CUT THEM FOR SORROW
  56. Phillip Zollicoffer, Professor of Biology, Miskatonic University
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  62. HAPPY IS THE CORPSE THAT THE RAIN SHINES ON
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  67. A DWELLING PLACE OF JACKALS, THE DESOLATION FOREVER
  68. Lizzie Andrew Borden
  69. •   •   •
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  71. Nance O’Neil
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  84. Emma L. Borden
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  88. Owen Seabury, M.D.
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  91. Lizzie Andrew Borden
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  93. RIGHT CHEEK, LEFT CHEEK—WHY DO YOU BURN?
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  101. Aaron B. Stewart, Fire Chief, Farthington, Mass.
  102. Emma L. Borden
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  104. Gerald Macintyre, Telegraph Clerk, Western Union
  105. Owen Seabury, M.D.
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  107. Physalia, Z. University I Was Not Now
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  109. DEPART, ALL ANIMALS WITHOUT BONES
  110. Emma L. Borden
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  115. Owen Seabury, M.D.
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  119. Lizzie Andrew Borden
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  130. Owen Seabury, M.D.
  131. Phillip Zollicoffer. Physalia Zollicoffris.
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  137. Christoff Dane, M.D., Ph.D., University of Rhode Island, Kingston
  138. •   •   •
  139. Emma L. Borden
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  144. Owen Seabury, M.D.
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  150. Emma L. Borden
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  153. FAMILY SLAIN IN MAYFIELD
  154. Owen Seabury, M.D.
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  165. Lizzie Andrew Borden
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  176. Emma L. Borden
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  186. Owen Seabury, M.D.
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  197. Lizzie Andrew Borden
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  205. Inspector Simon Wolf
  206. •   •   •

When she weakened enough to allow it, I let go of her arms and shoved at her chest, determined to force the last of the water free. She would breathe again. I would make her breathe again.

She cried and cried and cried, and the sobs became drier and drier.

I considered that I might’ve made a mistake. She was weakening, failing right there on the floor beneath my well-intentioned ministrations, though she’d been vigorous in the water. But no—in the water, that was not Nance. That was something else, whatever had overtaken her. And I meant to banish it. Cast it out, like Christ with the Legion, if I might dare to be so bold. And why shouldn’t I? Fortune favors the bold. Maybe Christ does, too.

Her head rolled to the side, and she panted like a nervous dog—that swift, shallow breathing through the mouth that’s one part plea and one part self-comfort. And still she breathed, even after I’d stopped pressing on her chest and belly. Even after I tried to take her face in my hands, but she closed her eyes and I let her go. Back and forth her head lolled. Back and forth, until I stopped it with a firm hand on her chin. I grabbed her with surprise and urgency, and I held her face immobile.

I’d seen something.

I wanted to see it again.

“What was that . . . ?” I asked quietly, holding her chin aside, stretching her neck. There: a small slit of skin, fluttering. As light as if it’d been cut with a razor, a tiny fillet of flesh that wrinkled when I touched it. I felt the two more horizontal flaps before I saw them. That made three altogether, with the start of a fourth, not quite as long. Not quite as defined.

All of them sucked shut against her throat, lying so flat that if I hadn’t known they were present, I would’ve never noticed them. I tried to touch them again, but felt almost nothing. The faint texture of paper cuts, or maybe the delicate, almost not-even-there-ness of a small fish’s fins.

Her lungs were working again, heaving and hauling air in and out of her chest. It was a ragged, damp sound and I hated it, even though I’d been fighting for it all this time. She was breathing, and she still was not herself—no more so than when she’d been below the surface, taking oxygen through what must have been gills.

I write the word again: gills.

Nance had grown gills, or been granted them, or acquired them as part of her affliction—I don’t know. But she had them, and I am not such a great liar that I could pretend otherwise.