I cussed him for not nailing the damned thing shut and plastering it over fifty years before my parents were born.

I raced to it and dropped to my knees and exhaled, hoping I could get at least my shoulders through.

My head fit, and part of one shoulder, but that was it.

I could see her legs. Serris was barefoot and wearing a nightgown, and I could hear her crying. Her toes hung over the narrow ledge, and I heard her fingernails scratching on the slate roof tiles at her back, and I knew that even if she didn’t jump in the next few minutes she’d probably lose her balance and fall.

She painted her toenails the same shade of red as Darla used.

“Say something,” hissed Gertriss.

“Miss,” I said. “Please come back inside.”

She was sobbing so hard I couldn’t make out her reply beyond “no”.

Mama, I thought, where are you when I need you?

The girl’s feet shifted and jerked, whether from nearly slipping or working up the courage for a jump I couldn’t tell.

“Tell her he ain’t worth it,” whispered Gertriss. “Tell her something, dammit!”

“Miss. Please. It’ll all seem better in the morning. I promise it will.”

Gertriss punched me in the back. I heard the girl on the ledge take in a long, deep breath.

“I don’t care to live,” she whispered. “Not anymore. Not now.”

“You mean that, don’t you?”

“Yes.” She spat the word. Her legs began to tremble. “I mean it.”

“We’re probably sixty feet off the ground,” I said, keeping my tone casual. “You’ve chosen a good spot. It’s high enough to kill you, all right. Trouble is, Miss, it won’t kill you all at once.”

Gertriss grabbed my right arm and yanked. “Mister Markhat,” she whispered. “What the hell are you doing?”

She said it loud enough that I figured Serris heard.

“I’m just explaining a few things about falls to Miss Eaves. I once saw a Troll fling a man named Other Albert off a cliff about this high. Other Albert landed on sand. But even that broke him up inside. Took Other Albert all night to die, hacking up blood the whole time, when he wasn’t screaming.” I kept my tone cheerful, as though I was retelling a favorite Yule story. “If Miss Eaves decides to die like this, fine, but I think she should have all the facts before she jumps, don’t you?”

Miss Eaves didn’t speak. I thought I could detect a lessening in the volume and intensity of the sobbing.

“Sixty feet. It’ll take a while to fall that far, Miss. Long enough to count to five or six. Long enough to feel death coming. Long enough to realize what you’ve done. Maybe long enough to change your mind. But that’s the thing about jumping off roofs. There’s no changing your mind, once you take that leap. You’ll fall, and you’ll hit, and you’ll die. Bleeding out your mouth and your nose and your ears. And screaming, of course. Just like Other Albert. ”

“He left me,” she said. “He left me.”

“I know he did. And I’m sorry for that, I really am. And maybe right now you honestly don’t want to live, and I’m sorry for that too. But, Miss, it’s one thing to wish you could make the pain go away. It’s another to fall sixty feet. I know. I’ve seen. Come back inside.”

Serris quit bawling. Her feet stopped shifting, her toes curled uselessly around the ledge, and at last she spoke to me, in a very faint whisper.

“I can’t get back,” she said. “I’ll never make it back.”

“You don’t have to move at all,” I said. “Just be still. Take a deep breath. We’re going to come get you. Don’t look down. You hear me? Be still.”

She didn’t answer.

I popped out of the hole and back into the attic.

“Rope.” And hurry, I added, silently. She’s not going to last.

Marlo appeared, lunging out of the trap-door, a coiled rope already in his hand. I could have hugged his grizzled ugly face.

“You are never going to fit through there,” said Gertriss.

I was ready with half a dozen useless arguments, but they died on my lips. She was right. Too many years of good beer and Pinford ham sandwiches had passed.

I handed her the rope. She took it, tied a competent sliding loop in the end of it, was kneeling at the opening when we all heard the howl.

It was a woman. A woman screaming. I was sure for a single awful second that Serris had fallen, or jumped. But the sound of it rose up and up and grew in volume until it rang like a Church bell through the attic.

It came from outside, from inside, from far away, from a lover’s place right by your ear. And it sounded loud and high when it should have died and it went on long after human lungs should have been emptied of air and it sounded louder than thunder, louder than any blast of magic, louder than Other Albert’s most desperate agonized cry.

Gertriss was pale. Pale and shaking and saying something urgent, though her words were lost. She put the free end of the rope in my hands and, when I just stood there gaping, she slapped me hard across my wounded face and she wrapped the rope around my waist.

I came out of it enough to take the rope and brace myself, and then Gertriss kicked off her shoes and darted through the open panel and out into the night.

The rope jerked and dragged and went taut. I had just enough time to grab it hard with both hands when Gertriss came flying back inside and I was yanked off my feet and we wound up in a tangle on the floor, being dragged by the rope, which suddenly bore a young artist’s worth of weight bolstered by a short fall’s determined momentum.

Hands fell on me, as Marlo and Lady Werewilk yanked and pulled and cussed.

The scream died, cut off as suddenly as it began.

My ears rang. Gertriss and Marlo and Lady Werewilk all spoke, but I could hear nothing, and from their expressions I could tell they were experiencing the same sudden deafness.

Still, we managed to all take hold of the rope and pull, which brought the limp Miss Eaves finally up to and then through the open roof access panel.

The rope was looped under her arms. We scratched her up a bit dragging her back inside, and she lost a lock of golden hair in the corner of the opening, but she was breathing. I let Gertriss and Lady Werewilk adjust her flimsy nightgown while Marlo and I averted our eyes and collapsed against the wall.

“And that there is what we call a banshee,” were the first words I was able to hear, spoken by Marlo.

If Lady Werewilk heard she pretended not to.

Serris began to stir.

“She all right?” I shouted.

Gertriss nodded, spoke words I still couldn’t quite hear.

I shouted. “That was damned brave of you.”

“Grave for who?”

“Never mind,” I yelled. I rose, forgot to duck, banged my head on the low ceiling.

“I’m going outside,” I said.

“You’re a damn fool,” opined Marlo, who then surprised me. “I’ll go too.”

Serris came to her senses and erupted into shrieks and cries. I still wasn’t catching every word, but I gathered she’d seen something out there, and I had a good idea what it was.

Gertriss held Serris close and began to rock her. Before I’d managed to turn away she went quiet.

“Don’t waste your time, Mr. Markhat,” said Gertriss. “It’s gone.”

“You’re sure?”

“I’m sure.” She murmured something to Serris. “We both saw it leave.”

The girl started shaking again.

“We can talk downstairs,” I said. “Lady Werewilk? Can you arrange for someone to stay with Serris tonight?”

“She won’t be left alone, I assure you,” said Lady Werewilk. She moved to stand by Serris and Gertriss, leaned down, and laid a hand awkwardly on Serris’ shoulder.

“There, there,” she said. I gathered Lady Werewilk’s stock of comforting truisms designed for hysterical teenage mothers-to-be was nearly as limited as my own. “Everything will be all right. There’s no reason you can’t be an artist and a mother.”

Which nearly resulted in a fresh round of renewed bawling, an event avoided only by fervent whispering from Gertriss and her insistence that we leave the attic at once.