The Dark Volume Read Online Free

once.”
    “Will not the Doctor or Chang expect to collect us? Will they not be confused when we are gone?”
    “They will not.”
    “Why? What are they doing? Where will we go?”
    “Excellent questions—you are yourself once more.”
    “What has happened to our enemies?”
    If Elöise replied Miss Temple did not hear it. Bette emptied another bowl over her head, and another after that, pouring slowly to wash out the suds. Miss Temple carefully stepped free of the tub as Bette dabbed at her dripping hair.
    “I suppose it is impossible that my hair be curled,” she said to Elöise.
    “The curls are quite natural to you, are they not?” Elöise carefully replied.
    “Of course they are,” snapped Miss Temple. “It does not mean they are not better when managed .”
    She raised her arms, the better for Bette to dry her, and nodded at Elöise's hands rather pointedly.
    “Where is my other boot?”

    GREEN-SHOD once more, Miss Temple stepped from the wooden house into a pallid light. The trees above were leafless and the path to their wagon—a simple affair drawn by one weathered nag—was still moist from the rains. She smelled the sea and even heard the distant waves somewhere behind the house, tracing the air like a restless rope of wind. Lina and Bette stood in the door, watching them go with, Miss Temple recognized with annoyance, expressions of relief. She turned to Elöise to remark on the fact but saw for the first time the line of men that waited on the far side of the wagon—raw, hard-faced fellows with knives at their belts and staves in their hands.
    “Are they coming with us?” she whispered to Elöise.
    “Ah, no,” Elöise replied with a tight smile. “They have come to make sure we go.”
    Miss Temple looked with more attention—perceiving women and children now peering out behind the line of men—and felt their gazes could not have been more cold had she and Elöise been diseased interlopers with the plague. She opened her mouth to speak, but stopped at the sight of a small girl with a haunted pale face, hands gripped by two grey matrons—no mother or father near her. Her view of the girl was blocked by one of the men with staves, who met Miss Temple's curiosity with a frown. The man sported a new pair of knee-high black leather riding boots, incongruous with his rough wool garments and fisherman's beard.
    Before she could point this out to Elöise, their driver—an aged man whose wrinkled face seemed crushed between an untamed beard and a close-pulled woolen cap—reached down with hard knobbed hands to lift Miss Temple aboard. A moment later Elöise stood beside her and a moment after that they groped for awkward seats on a pallet of straw as the driver snapped the reins without a word. The bitter nameless village and its silent people receded from view.
    Miss Temple frowned and hissed sharply to her companion, “I do not know what they think we have done—were they not paid?”
    Elöise glanced at the driver's back. Miss Temple huffed, quite out of patience. “What has happened , Elöise? I quite insist you say!”
    “I plan to, but you must know, these people—”
    “Yes, yes, the rising river in the forest, I have been told—”
    “Indeed—”
    “People were killed .”
    Elöise nodded, and spoke carefully. “The implication is a wolf. Or wolves, actually.”
    “Which is no reason to glower at me.” Miss Temple looked up at their driver. “How many wolves?” she asked waspishly.
    “It depends on how one reads the attacks.”
    “Well, how many attacks were there? Bette mentioned the Jorgenses. I saw her washing the bloody linen.”
    “Mr. and Mrs. Jorgens died two nights ago—or that is when they were found. Without the Doctor no one could specify when in fact they died. But before that a fisherman was found in his boat. And before that two grooms at the nearest stable.”
    Miss Temple snorted. “What sort of wolf goes in a boat ?”
    Elöise did not reply, as if, the