Chapter 16 Find the Hole
For three days, Daisy became the ridge. She hollowed herself out beneath the tangle of blown-down logs, damp pine needles plugging every gap. To anyone below, she was another snag in the brush, invisible unless you stepped on her, and then she’d bite. The mansion lay east across the shallow valley, its silhouette all sharp lines and bad dreams, haloed at dusk by the cold glow of ward-lamps. The wind brought every sound uphill: the clatter of patrols, the squeal of an unoiled gate, the bored curse of a man on night shift, pissing into the moat.
Daisy’s world shrank to the patch of loam beneath her chin and the dance of light on the estate’s outer wall. She kept a stick handy, using it to diagram the guard rotations in the dirt, erasing and redrawing each time the pattern shifted. The guards moved in loops, always paired, always predictable until, on the second night, they didn’t. A third man joined, his face hidden by a mirrored mask, the runes on his cuffs bleeding blue into the dark. He never spoke, just paced the perimeter at uneven intervals, sometimes pausing for a full minute to stare straight at the ridge.
She marked him as a variable, and her favorite kind: a wildcard who made everyone else sloppy.
Ravensworth’s wards were something else. Daisy could see them even with her untrained eyes, especially when night peeled away the last of the sun. The air above the wall shimmered, not like heat, but as if the stone sweated power. Every so often, a bird or a leaf would touch the shimmer and drop, twitching, to the ground. She watched a crow hit the boundary and melt, its feathers hissing away in a cloud of stink. Daisy took careful notes: the crows avoided the east side, favoring the dead trees near the abandoned greenhouse. Squirrels learned to leap over the blue-bright line, using the half-collapsed arbor as a launchpad. The rats, always braver, scuttled through the low brambles where the wards flickered at root level. Two made it. A third caught the edge of the field and vanished, gone without a sound.
Daisy memorized the weak points. She mapped them on her skin, tapping each with a finger before she slept.
The red-eyed rat found her on the second night, just after midnight. It materialized at the edge of her hollow, nose twitching, and waited. Daisy eyed it for a long moment. Then she dug a broken cracker from her satchel and laid it between them. The rat came closer, so close she could see the scabbed nick in its ear, the scars across its nose. It took the cracker in its front teeth, sat upright, and watched her eat her own half. No fear. Only calculation.
When she woke, it was gone. But the prints led downslope, past the old fencepost and straight for a patch of grass where the ward shimmer was barely visible. Daisy followed the trail with her eyes until sunrise, memorizing every bend.
Her camp was the lowest she’d ever lived. The boots never came off, and when her feet cramped, she used the back of her knife to massage blood into the toes. Her meals were scraps and memories: a curl of dried onion, a pinch of cheese raked from under her nail, a mouthful of water that tasted like frog. She pissed in the same place every time, the scent masking her from the local wildlife, the way she’d learned as a child. Her satchel made a pillow and also served as storage for the old journal and the single rag that still smelled faintly of her mother. She opened the journal every night, thumbed the pages, stared at the spiral drawn there. The birthmark on her wrist itched when she looked at it, and the itch grew every day.
The worst part was the waiting. In the city, there was always action, even if it meant running for your life. Out here, time dripped slower than sap. She killed hours tracing the lines of the wall with her eyes, counting the birds that risked the wards, inventing names for the guards: Greencap, Lamefoot, Scarface, the Mask. She watched for the red-eyed rat, and when it didn’t come, she wondered if it had finally died.
Sometimes she caught herself missing Delia, her blunt hands and the way she whistled through her teeth when nervous, her laugh like shattering glass. Daisy never let the feeling linger. Instead, she sharpened her knife, cleaned her traps, and rehearsed her route.
On the third night, the pattern changed. The Mask disappeared from the circuit for almost an hour. The guards grew restless, their routes loosening like rope. Daisy waited until the east wall was clear, then crawled from her burrow, dragging her satchel tight to her chest. The grass was slick and freezing, but she ignored it. She moved low, using the rat’s trail as her guide, toes finding every depression left by her predecessor.
At the dried creek bed, she paused. The ward shimmered here, but thinner, as if stretched too far. The air smelled like burnt copper. Daisy crouched, holding her breath, and watched as a line of ants navigated the invisible barrier; some passed, others crisped in place. She closed her eyes, counted to ten, then pressed her palm to the mark on her wrist.
The birthmark burned. Not a warning, more like a dare.
Daisy unspooled a length of copper wire, wrapped it around her hand, and bit down on the end. The wire tasted like old pennies. She took three steps back, then three forward, matching the gait of the Mask. Her heart hammered, and the world narrowed to the patch of air ahead.
She shoved her hand through the shimmer.
It was pain, but not like any she’d known. The ward dug hot needles under her skin, then seared every nerve at once, like being skinned and salted raw. Daisy went to scream, but her jaw locked. She forced her body forward, leading with the wrist, letting the copper take some of the surge, though it only slowed the agony. Her vision flashed white, then red, then nothing.
She collapsed on the far side of the ward, curled in the dirt, every muscle spasming. The pain roared in her bones, but she held onto the wire, twisted it tighter, bit her own lip until she tasted blood. She stayed there, silent and shaking, until the tremors faded and she could move her fingers again.
She lifted her hand. The skin was scorched, crisscrossed with angry red welts, but still hers. The spiral birthmark had darkened, swelling across her wrist like a fresh tattoo. Daisy stared at it, then at the ward, and spat.
She was inside.
The grass here was dead. The air reeked of ash, sweat, and old metals. Daisy rolled to her knees, retched once, then wiped her mouth and crawled into the shadow of a ruined garden shed. Her breath came in jagged gulps. She flexed her hand, then her arm, willing herself back into control.
She listened. Nothing but the drone of the wards and her own heart. No alarm, no shout, no sound of pursuit.
She waited five minutes, then forced herself upright. The pain was an old friend, now another thing to carry. She limped through the dry creek bed, hugging the inside of the wall, every sense tuned for the next threat.
But Daisy was a pest, and pests always found a way in.
She set her jaw, gripped her satchel, and vanished into the estate’s dead garden, eyes scanning for the next point of entry.
Behind her, the ward shimmered, knitting itself shut as if she’d never been there at all.