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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
  7. •   •   •
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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
  57. •   •   •
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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. •   •   •
  70. •   •   •
  71. Nance O’Neil
  72. •   •   •
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  84. Emma L. Borden
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  88. Owen Seabury, M.D.
  89. •   •   •
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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
  103. •   •   •
  104. Gerald Macintyre, Telegraph Clerk, Western Union
  105. Owen Seabury, M.D.
  106. •   •   •
  107. Physalia, Z. University I Was Not Now
  108. •   •   •
  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.
  132. •   •   •
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  137. Christoff Dane, M.D., Ph.D., University of Rhode Island, Kingston
  138. •   •   •
  139. Emma L. Borden
  140. •   •   •
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  144. Owen Seabury, M.D.
  145. •   •   •
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  150. Emma L. Borden
  151. •   •   •
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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
  198. •   •   •
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  205. Inspector Simon Wolf
  206. •   •   •

I didn’t hear the footsteps anymore, because Zollicoffer had stopped walking. He was paused at the edge, not quite venturing onto the stairs. His feet and the tip of his cane. I could see nothing more. The light upstairs was brighter, and it illuminated him from behind; from my vantage point he was nothing but a pair of shoes and a walking stick, planted against the seam between my house and my cellar.

I did not move, not even to wipe my nose. I was bleeding again, and I could taste it all the more strongly—leaking down into my mouth as I gasped for air.

I’d overexerted myself, stretched myself so far beyond my ordinary limits that I thought I might be dying. I might not even live to see Zollicoffer come down the stairs. If he ever came down the stairs.

His disinclination to do so was driving me insane.

I wanted to scream at him—to tell him to come on down and do his worst, for heaven’s sake! Or go away, if he’d rather. Go away, and wreak his preternatural destruction on some other town, some other house, some other woman. But I did not have the breath, and my lungs would not have let me speak above a whisper. (It would have been a wet whisper, and the words would’ve come out covered in blood.)

Zollicoffer, whether he was man or monster, ran the tip of his cane along the slim bit of wood into which the closed cellar door should sit. And he began to speak.

“What a funny superstition.” The words poured down the stairs like boiled tar. “All these nails, beaten into place. An old ward. Something about the fey, or goblins, or whatever else you’d prefer to prohibit from your home.”

I’d forgotten entirely. Lizzie and her nails, in the middle of the night. Every doorway, every windowsill.

“It is an old rule. I do not know how much truth it holds, or why. But I will confess, I can . . . feel them. The sharp spikes of iron, driven through the wood . . . I can feel them through my shoes. It is unpleasant, but by no means insurmountable. For me,” the man-shaped thing added quickly. “Though the smaller things that walk with me . . . they’ve elected to remain outside.”

One by one, the ideas lined up neatly in my head. The nails, the rust. The tetanus.

There was a pattern after all. Seabury was right, in some fashion or another. And so was Lizzie.

I wondered where he was. I wondered if he’d caught up to my sister, or if he’d been captured by the smaller things Zollicoffer spoke of . . . torn apart by the needle-mouthed monsters that stalked Maplecroft in the wee hours, when we’d rather sleep than wage war.

Then I wondered about my sister.