Chapter Twenty-Four
RebeccaThe trees are turning.
Outside the library windows, I can make out wet smears of gold and orange and red among the green. Alder like a blaze of sunshine, ash like dried blood. Yellow hornbeam and birch, deep orange beech, red rowan. And the yews with their scarlet berries and deathless needles and trunks like skinny fingers, knuckle bones and all.
If the last week of rain and fog hadn’t made it clear, autumn is here at Thornchapel. The land is bleeding with it. Burning with it.
I close my folio where I’ve been answering a few last minute emails before my car arrives to take me to London, and I stand and stretch. I rarely work in the library if Poe is working in there too—I prefer complete silence, and Poe is a symphony of sighs, tuts, and small talk—but
