Maplecroft by Cherie Priest

I’ll get you ready for bed.”
    Together we walked with excruciating slowness. If I’d urged her any faster I would’ve had to carry her, and that would’ve been embarrassing and painful for us both. Instead we moved at the steady pace that made my aching arms ache all the more, and the bruising at my ribs protested with every step, all the way to my sister’s room.
    I drew out the stool at her vanity and lowered her onto it, and I stretched, cringing at the crackle of joints popping, and the dull warmth of strained muscles.
    Emma stared quietly at herself in the mirror, and at me. She said, “We’re quite the pair, you and I. The invalid and the murderess.”
    I turned away from the mirror and went to the switch on the wall. I pressed it, and the room came alight with the glow of the wall lamp. Its pretty shade was made of frosted glass, so the light was diffused and softened. It was kind to us, or so I saw when I returned to the vanity seat and began to undo Emma’s hair.
    One by one, I pulled the hairpins gently free and laid them on the table. “The scholar and the warrior?” I tried. “Let’s say that instead. I like the sound of it better.”
    She laughed. I think it was genuine. It’s hard to tell, with eyes like hers—too wise to find many things funny. “Another set of lies, sister. Nicer ones.”
    “But you
are
a scholar. And tonight I’ve slain a dragon. Of sorts.”
    “True and misleading. I’m not Professor Jackson, and you’re no Saint George, nor an Amazon, either.”
    “Says
you
.”
    I tugged at the final hairpin, the veritable lynchpin of her coiffure’s architecture. It slipped free, and her hair came down in a jagged cascade, unfurling and unfolding in a marbled mixture of brown and silver down her back. I took a brush and began to smooth it. I told her, “No one ever needs to know.”
    And likely, no one ever would.
    Emma Borden, consumptive spinster . . . masquerading as Doctor E. A. Jackson—retired professor of biology and chemistry. The venerable mythical doctor had authored dozens of papers published in journals as far away as France, on everything from seaweed blooms and ocean temperatures to parasitic infections in crustaceans of the northeastern Atlantic.
    Who would even believe it, if we announced it? We could put an advertisement in the newspaper, and no one would consider it possible.
    She mused, “Someday, someone is bound to learn some secret or another. Yours, or maybe mine. Someone could come here, looking for me.”
    “Someone?” I knew her too well. She had someone in mind.
    “There’s a fellow upstate, at Miskatonic University.”
    “You’ve mentioned him. You think he might come here? Seeking you?” I moved on from her hair to her dress, which I unfastened one rounded glass button at a time, feeding them through the tiny loops that ran from the top of her neck to the small of her back.
    “There’s always the chance. I rather like him, and I suspect we’d enjoy one another’s company. Maybe he feels the same way.”
    Only a few more buttons to go. I fumbled with one of them, released it, and moved on to the next. I did not ask her anything. I only said, “If he comes, we’ll deal with it then. We can always claim that the good doctor died since last you wrote.”
    “I’ll say no such thing. I have two more articles pending for publication.”
    Wearily, I told her, “Well, the secret is yours, Emma dear. Do with it what you wish.”
    I helped her dress for bed. I fluffed her pillows and gave her the day’s mail—including two of her favorite periodicals. I kissed her on the forehead and wished her good night. I lit the candles on the bedside table and extinguished the lamps as I left.
    In the parlor, my father’s old clock gonged the hour. It was one o’clock, and therefore, morning. I was filthy and my dress was ruined. I traded it for a nightgown with slippers, and resolved to burn it, as I’d burned other dresses before it.
    I’d wait