The Last Writer Adriane Leigh (story reading TXT) 📖

the tears flow, devastating pants wracking my body until I began to hyperventilate. No one was here to soothe me, Nate would never come, Yara was gone forever, and apparently so was my mother.

Usher had stolen everything from me. My only choice was to steal it back.

I stood to my full height, avoiding the hardened set of my jaw in the murky reflection that peered back at me.

My eyes cast around the room in search of something to ground me in my old life, the only thing remaining the two tiny stuffed black birds, Nate’s and mine. Ours. Forever. I held their soft feathers to my cheek, sniffing softly before kissing each of their little feathered bodies softly and tucking them tenderly into the pocket of my dress.

With resolve in my steps, I left my bedroom for the powder room on the third floor. I entered the dusty space; this time the reflection in the mirror was clearer, but not by much. The lightbulb was dim from the layer of cobwebs that dressed it. It would be a struggle to bleach all of my long dark hair to the scalp without missing anything.

I uncapped the bottle of peroxide bleach, then mixed it with the bowl of cream rinse that sat beside it. I didn’t know what sort of chemical reactions might take place, I only hoped that Mother knew what she was doing.

I stopped myself, refusing to consider her my mother any longer as I divorced myself from all that was Zara and went to work piling the bleached concoction onto my hair as the scent seared my nostrils.

By the time I’d returned to my room, an hour or more later, my scalp stung and my eyebrows had thinned to a near-white. I looked ridiculous with white-blonde hair and olive skin, but makeup would remedy that.

I pulled the two tiny stuffed black birds out of my dress pocket as I closed my bedroom door. My good luck tokens, the only two souls on Earth that’d witnessed what Nate and I’d shared a lifetime ago.

As soon as I’d brought them home from the garden that night a few weeks ago, I’d laid them in a tiny matchbox and had a funeral. And then I set to work using the medical section of the library at Usher to figure out how I could preserve them forevermore. Now that I knew the note Nate had left was false, these tiny, winged creatures were all I had left to remember.

Now I see what purpose they’d served.

If the world found out what had happened to Yara, the movie, the book—all would disappear, and Mother would be arrested for neglect, or worse.

I set the tiny, twin birds down on my nightstand and paused in front of the mirror.

A stranger with empty eyes stared back.

“Yarrow, my love?” A breathy voice that wasn’t my own tumbled over my lips.

I tucked my newly frail, bleached hair tightly behind my ears, adding a tiny bow at one side. I swallowed, tipping my head from one side to the next as I realized with the weight I’d lost, I looked more like my sister than ever before.

I sucked in a breath and tipped my chin down, catching my own dark gaze in the mirror.

“Hello, I’m Yara Thornberry and I’m your worst nightmare.”

THIRTEEN

Ryn

I gripped the first doorknob on the second floor and jiggled, praying that this would be the door I would find Thax behind. So far, all were locked and none fit my skeleton key. I gave up trying after the third door, and my frustration was worn thin enough that I began calling out, softly at first, and then with more desperation and pitch as I grew more and more convinced something bad was happening to Thax.

Why hadn’t I checked on him yesterday? Or insisted we stay on the same floor or in nearby rooms in the event of a late-night emergency.

My heart thundered, my headache long forgotten as I charged down the first flight of stairs to the ground floor. Usher was utterly silent. If Thax was here, he would hear me, he would call out. I crushed my eyes closed, remembering the last time I’d seen his smile. I pushed into the parlor, eyes scanning the dusty bird cages, some with tiny taxidermied fowl still perched inside like they’d been frozen in time.

Their beaded glass eyes were wide as they watched the world go by from inside their cages.

WHEN DOES A CAGED BIRD SING?

The words pounded through my head like a bad death metal song. The scent of dust and decay filled my nostrils and I swayed, planting my palm on the faded peacock wallpaper. The sick shade of grime that veiled the bird’s brilliant tail feathers was enough to turn my stomach. I groaned, about to collapse into a chair, when I saw Yara’s now familiar, tightly slanted handwriting on a note declaring itself Usher House & Gardens letterhead.

I plucked it from the side table and skimmed it quickly.

Returned to the city for pressing matters. Looking forward to the creativity this new solitude will inspire.

Yara

I read the letter again, wondering just how alone I really was. I never thought much about my aloneness before, but Thax and even Yara’s presence had served to inspire me in untold ways.

I returned the note, more determined than before to get Thax and get out of this place. It might take sealing brick walls, but he was right, he’d always been right. I was in over my head on this and I should have fought back with him when we’d come to, groggy and disoriented at Usher.

I pushed through the front doors and took the cracked stone steps two at a time. As soon as my shoes hit the damp grass the growls and barks of two large dogs lit the yard. I cringed as they ran toward me, only stopping short when I yelled loudly and held out both hands.

The twin wolfhounds halted instantly, then whined