The Secrets of Darkling Manor

Twenty-three: Alina Starkov

Twenty-three: 

They didn't have a car. They walked to the train station and waited there until morning. Alina didn't say a word. Instead, she spent the whole time looking over her shoulder as if afraid that the witch would find them there.

"The witch stays in the pond," Aleksander said.

"What?" Alina said.

"The witch stays in the pond."

"Clearly not, Aleksander," she said sharply, "we just ran for our lives from our home because she doesn't!"

He sighed. "What I mean is, she won't leave Darkling Manor. She's tethered there."

"What's keeping her there?" Alina asked. "Haven't you ever asked yourself that?"

He shrugged. "Mostly I try to ignore the invisible touches and my things going missing."

"Is there anything else I should know?"

He hesitated. It was the middle of the night, and they were at the Keramzin train station waiting for morning so they could get a ride out of there. He would have taken the car, but cars tended not to work well if the witch was around. He remembered when he had tried to run with Luda, the car had simply stopped and stalled.

Much easier to escape on your own, two feet.

"Baghra's a ghost," he said, "she's...my mother, actually. When she died, for some odd reason, she never moved on. She haunts the place and I can't get rid of her. But if I refer to her as Mum, it hurts too much."

Alina swore. "A ghost? But I've seen her pick things up. She dresses modern."

"Does she?" he asked. "Or does she dress in fashions from twenty years ago?"

She frowned. She hadn't given much thought to Baghra's clothing. But she had witnessed her best friend die and been chased out of her house by the ghost of a witch. Was it so strange that her mother-in-law was a ghost too?

"Is that why I never see any of the other servants?" she asked. "Are they all---"

"Dead, yes," he said. "There's also something else you should know. Luda haunts the house too, and she wants you dead."