Wild and wicked things, p.25
Wild and Wicked Things, page 25
“I am glad that you’re standing up for yourself.” His lips narrowed to a thin line, his expression verging on disgusted. “My only advice, Miss Mason, would be caution. People like her… Look, perhaps you would be better off up near me, closer to your father’s place. If I were you, I’d think very carefully about whether you need to be here.”
He smiled again and the moment passed. He straightened and gave one last glance towards the greenhouse before lifting his hand in a farewell. “My secretary will arrange another meeting, if that suits. Perhaps next week?”
I nodded, but distantly. It felt like my feet had grown roots, delving deep into the dark soil. I could sense Bea and Arthur at my back, the magic we had woven, and I thought again of my father’s journal. The words I had read, the pages I had stuffed so carelessly under my mattress.
Anderson was gone.
She has a darkness in her.
“Annie?” It was Emmeline. Her hands were full, two cups and a croissant balanced on the rims where they joined. She passed one to me and placed the other on the lawn chair. “What’s wrong?”
Was Anderson right? Should I, after everything, still be wary of Emmeline? For the first time I wondered a thought so insidious I wasn’t sure where it had come from. What if this—all of this—was what Emmeline had intended all along? I recalled the way I had felt the night of the party. That balance of fear and hunger. How I had felt that I would do anything for her. And I had. I had killed for her.
Yet that was ridiculous. Why would Emmeline want to damn herself so entirely?
“Annie?” Emmeline pressed. “Who was he? Was he the man from the museum?”
I could see the tension running through her, in the slope of her shoulders, the cording of her neck. I sensed it in the silver tether that bound us together, alarm zinging back and forth.
“No. My father’s lawyer,” I admitted. “I missed my appointment with him this morning.”
Emmeline’s fear was so strong it might have been my own.
“He didn’t see anything,” I said quickly. “It’s fine. I lied and said I was annoyed about your parties and I was here to talk to you. I think he believed me.” Was it fine? Was Anderson merely a concerned friend of my father’s? I thought of the man at the museum too. They were both harmless. I didn’t know what was real anymore. “I—I think I convinced him.”
Emmeline’s jaw worked as she lit a cigarette, smoking it distractedly. I closed my eyes for a second, forcing down the fear.
“I didn’t mean to scare you. I know you can feel it too.” I sucked in a breath, pulling the fresh green air into my lungs. I needed to ask again. We couldn’t dance around this forever. “What is it?”
Emmeline’s gaze snapped to mine.
“What is what?”
“I don’t know what to call it. The… tether. This cord that’s between us. You can’t keep pretending it doesn’t exist. At first I thought I was imagining it, but I can feel you, your magic and your emotions. And I know you can feel me too. We’re connected.” I reached out with my mind, searching for the silver thread and finding it, humming with anticipation between us. I gave it an experimental nudge, just gently. Emmeline inhaled sharply.
“Don’t do that.”
“Why not?” I demanded. “What is it, Emmeline? Why is it there? I think I deserve to know.”
Emmeline smoked her cigarette in silence for a moment, her frown deepening. When she looked at me next it was with an intensity that stole my breath.
“I don’t know for certain,” she said, her voice low. “I’ve never known anybody who’s experienced it before. I read about it when I was younger. My aunt… She died before she could teach me more about magic. I remember reading about this thing called a vinculum. It’s like a natural chemistry between two people. Not romantic, just a sort of… magically aided connection. I didn’t say anything before because I was—scared.” Emmeline gave one of her sloping shrugs and lifted the cigarette to her lips again.
“Why?”
“You said yourself: We’re connected. You can feel my magic. My very unstable magic. How is that a good thing?” When I said nothing, only continued to stare, she continued. “I wasn’t sure before. I hoped it might be a fluke.”
“And now you’re sure?”
If it wasn’t about love or desire, what did that mean for me? For the feelings I had, the ones that couldn’t just be pushed off on the tether? I had felt it whenever we were close, the way I never had with Sam. I had felt it even when that silver thread was coiled up tight, shoved down into the recesses of myself. Just a glance from Emmeline and I wasn’t myself.
Or maybe I was more myself than I’d ever been.
I had thought Emmeline felt the same about me. The way she looked at me sometimes, the way the space between us seemed to hum, to crackle with energy—but how much of that was Emmeline’s magic? How much of our connection was because of this?
“I didn’t want to believe it,” she said. “It’s a terrible, dangerous thing, Annie. It’s powerful, yes, and I suppose it could be useful if we could control it—”
“Like when we were searching for Bea,” I suggested. “You helped me.”
“Yes.” Emmeline looked disgusted—with herself, or with me, I couldn’t tell. “I wasn’t thinking clearly. I shouldn’t have done that. I opened a door and I shouldn’t have.”
“It worked, though,” I argued. “It helped me to focus, to help you find her. Isn’t that a good thing?”
“No,” Emmeline snapped, eyes flashing. “No. It isn’t that simple. None of this is simple. Think of the other times, when you’ve been so close to me, when I’ve been so… out of control. I wish it had never happened.”
I thought of the obsession that grew like wildfire, that consumed every waking thought. How at first any physical proximity I had to Emmeline had felt like a gift, and a curse, like a knife so sharp you didn’t realise how badly you hurt. I thought of how I’d nearly lost every inch of myself to her presence.
It had never occurred to me that she might have struggled at first, that learning to hold the tether had been as much of a task for her as it was for me. I reached up and cupped my elbows.
“It’s treacherous,” she said. “Can you imagine how easy it would be to let it run wild? There’d be no stopping it if it got started. And my magic, the debt… I don’t know what it could do. And holding it down—is exhausting. I’m not sure how long we can keep doing this.”
“Why does it happen?” I demanded, ignoring the suggestion in Emmeline’s words, ignoring the exhaustion she spoke of, the ache in my bones that went beyond lack of sleep—restraining the tether had been draining us both. “Why us? Why now?”
“I don’t know,” she said again. “I thought it normally happened between two people with magical blood. I suppose it’s because of your father.” She finished her cigarette and stubbed the butt on the tree trunk where she leaned.
“Does this mean I’m… a witch? Like him?”
“Do you want it to mean that?” Emmeline raised an eyebrow and my stomach tumbled. Her gaze felt hot, searching every inch of me.
“I… I don’t know.” No, I almost said. Yes. The truth was somewhere in between.
“Magic doesn’t always run in the family,” she suggested. “Sometimes there’s a sensitivity; you might be in tune with magic without being able to cast. Or you might be able to conjure little things, practise small magic. Divination, for example. It doesn’t mean your blood is—like mine.”
“Will it last? How long will we feel like this?” I didn’t say what I was thinking, that somehow I hoped it would never stop, because that thought alone terrified me so much I couldn’t speak the words aloud.
“It seems proximity related, at least at the moment. From what I understand it’s not about people; it doesn’t matter how we feel about each other. It’s a part of you calling to a part of me. An echo. I suppose because of the last few days, the stress, because of us testing it, it’s become… stronger. The connection is like magnetism.”
“Like soul m—”
“Not like that,” Emmeline snapped, pushing away from the tree abruptly. I felt the alarm in my own body, just for a second, before it disappeared. And then… nothing. She had strangled the cord between us back into silence. “Never like that.”
She began to walk away.
“Em, wait. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean…”
I couldn’t finish the lie.
“As soon as this is over, you can go back to Whitby,” she said coldly. “It’ll be gone there. Distance should fix it. I didn’t want it to be like this, I never wanted you to feel like this.”
She stood in the shadow of the trees, her chest heaving as my own lungs tightened painfully. My own pain was phantom, dissipating quickly. And when it was gone I saw only a careful blankness on Emmeline’s face. Not disgust. Not anything.
My ears began to roar. I glanced around in confusion, shock making me slow. It was wrong. This was wrong. My vision began to blur; I blinked it back, the world swimming.
“Emmeline, I’m—”
I didn’t get the chance to finish, because a sudden, muted crash came from the greenhouse behind us, followed by Bea’s muffled scream.
Chapter Ten
Annie
We raced for the building, tumbling over ourselves. I was dizzy, the roaring sound receding as we slammed the door open.
Inside the greenhouse the air was hot as hell, skin scorching and unnatural. Bea cowered on the other side of the scarred wooden table, her arms wrapped around her waist as Arthur loomed over her, about to lunge. The chair had crashed across Nathan’s crop of kitchen herbs, debris of dirt and broken pottery scattered.
Arthur turned. He seemed bigger. Stronger. His newly grey eyes were stormy and dark. The runes we had carved into his arms stretched and flexed as he lifted his hands, and I saw two jagged shards of the water glass we had given him in his grip.
“Arthur…” Emmeline growled, raising to her full height.
“Bea, what happened?” I yelled, glancing left and right until I spotted the blade we had used to cast the spell, shining on one of the benches.
“I tried to ask him to help us,” Bea cried. “I thought if he knew how important it was, that my life was in dan—”
Arthur’s mouth yawned open.
“Witch…”
Arthur threw himself at me with startling speed. One of the pieces of glass caught me, tearing a screaming line from my collarbone to my shoulder. I let out a strangled cry as the collision knocked my feet from under me and we tumbled together, the glass gone, Arthur’s hands at my throat.
“Annie!”
Stars burst in my vision. Black and gold. Then a spurt of something hot and rancid splattered across my face and neck. I rolled, coughing, fighting the nausea that surged in my stomach and scrambling backwards. Emmeline had hit him right in the head with a ceramic pot, but it hadn’t stopped him.
He headed for Bea, climbing over the table easily. His skull had all but caved in at the back, brackish liquid streaming in rivulets down his back, pooling in the cracks of the floor and spraying up the glass walls.
He’s bleeding, I thought. Except it isn’t blood.
Bea didn’t run. She shrank into herself, into the small pool of shadow beneath the table, both hands curled around herself protectively. Arthur came to a stop and sniffed, like a dog surveying a day-old carcass.
“You…”
Emmeline held me back with one hand, the pot still gripped in her other, ready to smash at his skull again.
Arthur’s nostrils flared. Bea’s whole body shook, and yet she didn’t move. Arthur danced back, the movement so fluid, so beyond life that it was verging on demonic.
“Don’t,” whispered Bea. “Help us, Art. Please. That’s all I’m asking. I want you to be yourself again.”
“It’s no use,” I said. “Bea, there’s nothing of him left—”
“No!” she cried angrily. “I won’t believe it. I can’t. It was working—we made a connection. Arthur…” She never took her eyes off him, black blood staining his flesh so that he resembled a hound from hell. Every instinct in me screamed to kill him. Whatever this creature was, it wasn’t Bea’s husband. How could we have believed this would save us?
“Arthur…” Bea’s lip trembled. “Please. I can’t lose you. I can’t die. We need to fix this. I’m pregnant.”
The words were like a spell. Emmeline and I froze. The world seemed to slow, blistering wind, surprise, panic—
Arthur lunged again.
The world tilted. I rushed to Bea as Emmeline did and we almost collided. Emmeline flung her ceramic flowerpot at Arthur, catching his shoulder blade with the sharp edge. He hardly flinched. He grappled with Bea’s legs; she kicked him, hard, more black blood spurting from his face.
Helplessness constricted my heart with every breath. I stood for a moment, immobilised by my uselessness as Emmeline hit him again and Bea screamed. I had never felt so powerless.
Then I tasted it, the salt and summer scent at the back of my throat. My body began to tremble—not with fear but with energy—and I remembered the knife.
I knew what I had to do.
The knife, a blade that I was sure was made of some kind of bone, sang, drawing me towards it like my father’s spell book had. Bea let out a plaintive yelp and Emmeline a muffled curse. I glanced over, caught Bea crawling away as Arthur roared again, dodging Emmeline’s increasingly sloppy blows as she fought him with her bare hands.
The knife cut my skin. A thread of red blood blossomed along my finger and I jolted the knife backwards in shock, the blood already running down my hand. Yet the peeling of flesh made the salt scent bloom stronger on my tongue. It wasn’t pure and fresh, not like real ocean air; it was tainted with a hint of rot, like an overripe plum, sticky and dusty.
It tasted like danger.
Like hope.
“Annie!” Emmeline’s cry startled me back and I spun, finger cradled, intent in my mind and a single word on my tongue:
“STOP!”
The blood on my hands was hot. The ocean smell was everywhere. In my nose, my mouth, inside my body and my blood. And Arthur—he stumbled. One knee collided with the floor. It wasn’t much but it was enough. Emmeline flung herself at him with renewed vigour, this time with one of the shards of glass Arthur had dropped. Her blow struck true.
A final spurt of brackish blood slashed the wall as Arthur fell, his hands at his neck as he gurgled, more sludge-like blood welling in his mouth. He was choking on it, on the life we had given him and taken away again.
My face was wet with tears. Anger and sadness and a bone-wrenching disgust fought inside me as Bea wailed. Arthur’s body twitched once—twice. Emmeline and I both stood very still, watchful, until he stopped moving.
“Annie…” Emmeline said.
Bea sobbed harder, her face coated in her husband’s blood, her skin underneath the colour of sour milk. She cradled her stomach with one hand, the other braced on the floor as she fought to calm herself.
“I… I think I did that,” I whispered.
Chapter Eleven
Annie
Emmeline’s expression was curiously closed as I fought the panic and the fear and the longing in my chest, my gaze jumping between her and Bea. Bea refused to look at me. Or at her husband. Her eyes stayed rooted firmly to the lawn chair, where everything had gone so wrong.
No, I thought. It has been wrong for much longer.
The air was still hollow, as if we had carved a piece from it. As if some darkness hovered overhead, waiting. I stared down at Arthur’s body, my eyes searching for details of the haze I’d seen earlier, of the quiet childlike Arthur we’d raised. All I saw was death, the same as before, only—not. This was a restless kind of death.
“The blood,” I muttered. “Arthur’s blood. Is that even blood?”
“No. It won’t work,” Emmeline replied flatly. “We can’t pay the debt.”
The fresh, red blood at my finger pulsed vibrantly. Emmeline was right. The blood had to be fresh and it had to be willing—and Arthur’s was neither.
“How…?” I asked, glancing between the knife in my bloody hands and Arthur’s dead-again form on the floor. I recalled the way he had stumbled. That rush of ocean-air magic. “Was that me?”
“I certainly didn’t do it.” Emmeline made to fold her arms, then seemed to notice the blood that coated them and thought twice.
“How?” Bea blurted.
“Intent,” Emmeline said simply. “Desire. That’s the root of all worship, of all magic. And—I guess it is in your blood after all.”
I nodded. It didn’t explain why I had never been able to do it before, whether my ability to do what I had done had anything to do with Emmeline’s blood magic, her debt, my father’s book, the vinculum, or—and I pushed this thought away—how I felt about her. How badly I had wanted to protect us all.
“You… I can’t believe you did that,” Bea said.
“Well, I can’t believe you didn’t tell me you were pregnant, so I think we’re even—”
Before Bea could retort the words I could see her chewing waspishly, there was a creak and a curse behind us, followed by a female voice.
“I knew you were in trouble, but Jesus.”
We spun guiltily. Isobel stood in the doorway, a cup steaming in her hands. Her face was thunder—anger, disappointment. Beneath it all a curdled kind of horror.
“Is…”
“Hell’s bells, Em…” Isobel slammed her cup down, sloshing dark coffee carelessly as she crossed to the bloody pool around Arthur’s head.
It felt tight with her here, claustrophobic and jagged. I saw the room as she must see it, the streaks and spatters of black blood and Arthur’s head cracked like a rotten piece of fruit. It looked like a murder site.
It was a murder site.
Emmeline didn’t try to explain and Bea didn’t speak at all. Isobel’s judgement was sharp, and although I hadn’t known her long, it cut deep. She helped people. She wanted to heal. And this… It was the opposite of healing.
