The Ghost Bride's Last Contract

A Hand That Will Not Close

Elias's left hand hung at an angle Mae could not bear to examine.

He held it against his chest with the other hand. The bell strained against its strap again. A dust-white c***k appeared above the displaced bolt.

"Get them downstairs," he said.

Iris took Alice toward the door. Nessa followed, then stopped when Orla called her name. For a moment Mae thought she would stay and give the ghost any confession she wanted.

Alice looked back from the stairs.

"Mum. Come with me. Don't make me watch you do that again."

Nessa went.

Orla stood in the doorway after they passed. She had got the truth into the room. It had not looked the way she had imagined. Her sister had admitted cruelty and cowardice; her niece had not fallen at her feet. Elias was still breathing. There was more she could demand.

Mae stepped between her and the stairs.

"You can follow them when this is over. You can be angry for another twenty-five years. I won't ask either of them to comfort you. But he's coming down with me."

"You can't order a dead woman to be decent."

"I know."

Mae picked up the shears. The ladder lay on its side. The lifting strap crossed the mouth of the bell, too high for her to reach. Elias looked up, tracing the frame with his eyes despite the sweat on his face.

"Maintenance shelf," he said. "Behind you."

She had mistaken it for a ledge. Narrow iron rungs ran from it to the crossbeam. A restorer had put them there years before for the person who would eventually have to replace the bell bearings.

Mae climbed. The metal was cold under her palms. Halfway up, she looked down and saw Elias sit against the wall, his bad arm supported in his coat. If she fell, he would try to catch her. She knew it without either of them making a promise. She made herself keep climbing.

Orla moved to the bell. She laid both hands on the bronze.

"Don't," Elias said.

The ghost looked at him. "You would have liked her. Everyone did. Nessa was easier. She never wanted anything until she could have it without asking."

"I don't like her," he said. "I don't know her. She still doesn't owe you a lie."

Mae reached the crossbeam. Through the bell's upper opening she could see where the old rope had been wound around the clapper stem. From this angle, she could cut the binding without standing under it.

She lowered the shears.

The bell moved. Orla had pulled it toward her. Mae's wrist hit iron, and one blade snapped at its rivet. The broken half fell inside the bell with a sharp, bright note.

Mae swore. She had repaired those shears twice. They were her mother's only working pair.

"Knife," Elias said. He slid his tool roll across the floor with his foot.

It stopped beyond her reach. She could climb down, fetch it, and try again. The bolt in the wall shifted another fraction. The bell was preparing to fall. The weakened beam would not wait for the transfer's twelve hours to run out.

Mae looked at the broken blade in her hand. Sharp steel remained, but there was no handle on that end. She wrapped it in the hem of her coat and reached into the opening.

Orla seized the rope.

The blade passed through the ghost's fingers. It caught the cord beneath them. Mae sawed, awkwardly, feeling each fiber resist. Blood soaked through her coat where the steel slipped, but the cut in her palm was shallow. She kept her grip.

Orla did not help her. She did not step back. When the cord finally parted, the ghost was still trying to hold it together.

Below them, Elias's shoulder dropped. The mark around his wrist stopped tightening.

Mae cut the cord into smaller lengths until no loop remained. The clapper hung motionless. The ring struck the floor beside Elias's boot.

He closed his eyes and let out a breath.

Orla looked toward the stairs. For the first time since the veil was cut, she seemed unsure what to do with her voice.

"I won't forgive her," she said.

Mae climbed down. "Then don't."

The ghost vanished without thanking either of them. Whether she had followed her sister or gone somewhere the lamp could not reach, Mae could not tell. The contract had released her. Release had not improved her.

At the hospital, a surgeon took Elias into a room with bright walls and shut the door. Mae sat outside with a bandage around her palm. She had told the staff what had happened to his wrist. The injury no longer needed magic to remain an injury.

Iris brought her tea. They waited until it was cold.

"Nessa's taken Alice to her sister-in-law," Iris said. "Alice won't go back to the house tonight."

"Will she forgive her?"

"You ask very large questions when you're tired."

Mae leaned her head against the wall. She had wanted this work to give the dead a voice. Today she had heard one use it to hurt a man who had offered help. Tomorrow another would come. The thought made her want to hide the lamp and tell everyone she had moved away.

When Elias returned, his arm was in a splint. He had instructions for another appointment and a look on his face she did not know yet.

"They can't tell how much movement I'll get back."

Mae stared at the hand with which he had made a broken pew safe before she arrived.

He tried to fold the appointment slip and could not do it neatly. She kept her own hands in her lap. At last he folded it against his knee, crookedly, and put it in his pocket. Only then did he look at her. The effort had left him more tired than the walk from the treatment room.

"I'm sorry."

"I know."

He let her sit beside him. After a while she asked whether he still wanted her to stay at the workshop.

"Yes. Upstairs. I want to be alone downstairs tonight."

She nodded. The kiss in the kitchen did not give her a right to the rest of his pain.

They returned after dark. On the workshop door hung a notice from Wren, Vane and Black claiming the chapel and its furnishings were required for a private inspection. Iris took a photograph and said she would deal with the municipal access question in the morning. Mae barely looked at it.

Inside, Elias tried to take off his coat with one hand. He turned away before she could offer help. She went upstairs, heard him curse once, and stayed where he had asked her to stay.

Lenora waited beside the little bed.

"He'll hate you," she said.

"He might."

"Your mother couldn't bear that part either. Being needed and hated at once."

Mae set the broken shears on the table. "Tell me what she signed. All of it."

Lenora looked down at the bright fragments.

"She wanted to save you from a fever. Wren wanted the settlement renewed. They used the same page."

Downstairs, something small fell from Elias's bench. Mae heard him searching for it in the dark.

She did not go down. She pulled out a chair for the dead woman and waited for the rest of her mother's story.