Wild and wicked things, p.31
Wild and Wicked Things, page 31
I had become so entangled in Emmeline’s world I had had no chance to consider what I might have missed, what instinctual fears I had dismissed as silly. I had so little information about my father—and his death. Was it possible his magic was responsible? How would I know? I couldn’t ask Anderson. It felt a little like being trapped, questions on all sides and never any answers.
I tucked the photograph back between the pages.
I returned to my search, poring through the book until my eyes grew dry. It didn’t matter what Emmeline thought—Bea hadn’t imagined what she’d seen. I hadn’t. I recalled the shadows I’d glimpsed, last night on the lawn, this morning in the kitchen, and I shivered.
And it wasn’t just that.
The way Bea had passed out earlier—the timing of it—felt like unfinished business.
I finally gave up my search long after the sun had set. My little cottage felt empty. Every corner was dark and shadows seemed to loom whenever I turned my head. The fear of seeing him again, Arthur here in my own house, drove me to light as many lamps as I could.
But the light was little better. It only made the humming in my ears feel louder. It was like a panic, only fractured, foreboding creeping so gently it was hard to tell what was reality. I sat with my hands pressed firmly against the table, as though that might ground me. Felt the push and pull of my pulse. I focused on it, a cool, prickling sensation unfurling inside my skin. The sound of the surf outside was like a metronome.
I blinked. A flash of something cut across my vision. Like a drop of blood drifting through water. Blink. A dark room, ruby-red walls. A four-poster bed. Blink. Rotting fruit. Flies. Blink—
A skittering sound made me snap to attention. It had come from the back door. I held my breath, wondering if it would happen again.
It did.
I shoved my father’s book under the table, pulling the cloth down just as a quiet knock made my heart thump. I pictured the constable come to arrest me. One of Emmeline’s Council members, the man from the museum, sent to round us all up.
“Annie,” came Nathan’s voice. “Are you there?”
I hissed a sigh, opening the door to find him standing in the dark, hardly visible against the night.
“Have you got a minute for a new friend?”
I heaved another breath against my pounding heart and nodded.
Out on the beach the wind had whipped up and the sand bit into the skin of my ankles like a thousand tiny insects. Nathan strode ahead, away from Emmeline’s house and mine, along the stretch of narrow beach that led eventually to the house of another neighbour, another rich family with a private boat and hired staff. I had forgotten that there was a world out there, a whole island of people who looked up at the same stars as these, stared into the same roiling ocean waves.
“Nathan, can you wait?”
I fought to keep up with him as he strode through the dense sand. I stumbled. My leg complained as I landed hard on my knees. It didn’t hurt badly, but I couldn’t stop the tears of frustration that stung.
When Nathan turned, his face was a pale oval in the night, his mouth downturned, his warm eyes hooded. He handed me a handkerchief from his pocket, well-worn but clean and smelling of cinnamon.
“I’m sorry,” he said simply.
I dried my eyes, then brushed the sand off my knees. As I tucked the handkerchief into the pocket of the trousers, a small spike of pleasure flared in that one defiant, unfeminine act.
“It’s all right,” I said. “I didn’t mean to cry. Are you okay?”
Nathan scrubbed a hand over his face. “Do you ever just wish you could escape?”
Yes. That was why I’d ended up here in the first place—and look what had happened.
“I used to think that’s what I wanted. Now I know I could never leave,” he said. “Not while Emmeline is here.”
He bent to pick up a stone, turning it over in his fingers.
“She’s your sister,” I said simply. It was the same reason I returned to Bea over and over, although we had treated each other so badly. She was, blood or not, family.
“Em never told me she was in trouble.” His expression crumpled. “She’d rather Give herself away than lose herself by accident. And I was too wrapped up in this blind relief, you know, this gladness that we were all here, all together. I didn’t see it.”
Nathan switched his gaze to the dark ocean. A few spots of rain fell, but the clouds overhead were only small, the rest of the sky clear like black crystal. I didn’t know what to say. It was clear that Nathan felt he owed Emmeline a part of himself, his loyalty and his love.
“You could sense it too, today,” Nathan said abruptly. “Couldn’t you?”
“The darkness—”
“Nate. Annie.”
We both spun. We had been so locked in our ocean-roaring world that we hadn’t heard Isobel approach. She held her dress off the sand with one hand and her wild hair blew around her head, whipped this way and that.
“What happened?” I blurted, terror right through my heart.
“You were right. It’s Bea. Hurry.”
Chapter One
Annie
The second we stepped into the old house I could feel it. On my tongue like poison, my vision clouding dark, a dreadful rattling in my bones. It felt like magic—and not the good kind.
Isobel led the way, taking the stairs at the back of the house two at a time, the worn servants’ carpet muffling our footsteps. The hallways were dark and they smelled faintly of the salt air, of incense. Of blood. Isobel and Nathan raced ahead and I followed on almost-silent feet that were bare and covered in sand.
When we reached Bea’s bedroom Isobel didn’t stop. She ploughed in through the open door and immediately began to peel off her cardigan. She threw it aside and rushed to the far side of the room, where Bea was slumped in an oversize armchair, Emmeline leant over her.
“I found them,” Isobel said in a rush.
“She’s not changed.” Emmeline glanced up at me, took in my bare feet and my windswept hair, and her eyes softened for a second before the look was replaced with one of stark panic. “She started to convulse again about half an hour ago,” she explained, “and then she stopped and I thought it was over. We couldn’t get her onto the bed. She…”
Bea’s arms were scored with red lines, thin and ragged and uneven. Five at a time. She’d done it to herself, as if she’d been trying to dig under her own skin.
“What…” I breathed.
“I don’t know,” Emmeline said. “I don’t know. One second she was fine and then she was—”
We all stopped as Bea let out a moan, low and gravelly in her throat. Emmeline leaned back down over her, shushing her with surprising gentleness.
“I need a cool cloth,” she said. “I didn’t want to leave her.”
Nathan didn’t need to be asked twice. Isobel clutched at a strand of beads that hung from her dress. I hadn’t noticed them before. They looked almost like a rosary, except made of jade-green stones that were freckled with mossy brown. She saw my gaze and stilled her fingers.
“I told you I could taste it,” I said. “I saw him. Is this the kind of thing energy can do?”
Emmeline’s lips thinned.
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t know. You never know. What good is having power if you don’t know how to use it? Move out of the way.”
I made to shove Emmeline to the side, the vinculum trembling as Emmeline reacted to my presence. She sidestepped me before I could touch her, and I stumbled towards Bea.
“It’s no good,” Emmeline warned. “It’s like—”
I reached for Bea, aiming for her wrist to check her pulse. I didn’t get within an inch before I met some kind of force, a barrier that felt like a barricade of darkness, hard and moist like the wall of a deep well. I recoiled immediately.
“—I’m being blocked,” Emmeline finished.
“What do we do?” I looked between Emmeline and Isobel. “We can’t keep her fever down like this.”
Bea moaned again, her head back, pale throat exposed. Nathan came bearing a bowl of cool water and a clean white cloth. He pushed it towards Emmeline, but she didn’t move to take it. Instead it was Isobel who gathered the material in both hands, dunked it into the bowl, and held it over Bea’s forehead, releasing a stream of water.
The water hissed as it touched her skin, faint steam rising.
“It’s Arthur,” I said.
The room was dark, darker than it should have been with three lamps glaring. Shadows pooled and danced. On the wall by the window I recognised a pattern of black mould, creeping around the edges. It hadn’t been there this morning.
“He’s still here. Energy or not—he’s haunting her. She looks the same as he did, all fuzzy. Like I’m looking through warped glass.”
Isobel blanched, pulling back. We all turned to Emmeline, who stood with her arms crossed, her eyes distant as she gazed at Bea.
“We’ve got to do something,” I pushed. “Do you have any ideas?”
“We don’t want to hurt her,” Isobel warned. “The baby.”
Nathan shook his head. “Whatever it is, Annie’s right. We can’t do nothing.”
“A cleansing?” Isobel suggested.
“We’re getting low on supplies—”
“We can get more,” Emmeline snapped.
“If you two go get what we need, we can set up in here,” I said quickly.
Isobel didn’t so much as even look at me, but she and Nathan left the room together. As the door swung inwards I saw Nathan’s arm snake towards Isobel’s shoulder, hovering hesitantly before settling on the soft material of her dress.
“What do I have to do?” I turned to Emmeline.
Her gaze was tortured. “We can’t lose her,” she whispered.
“We won’t lose her. What do we need?”
“This is my fault. It reminds me so much of—her. She burned up. Burned…”
“Just tell me what I need to do—”
“Cilla said I was cursed…” Emmeline’s nostrils flared and her chest heaved.
“Emmeline, you have to calm down. You’re no good to anybody like this.”
I fought my own panic. Bea looked so unwell, her skin slick and pale and waxy. I reached for Emmeline, for comfort—for her or for me I wasn’t sure—but she reared back from me.
“Em—”
Somehow there was fresh blood on her lips, unnaturally dark, seeming to glitter. She must have bitten herself by accident. The air thrummed. She looked wild. The china on the sideboard began to rattle, a glass half-filled with water tumbling to the floor with a smash. The tiny jagged pieces rumbled together, ready to attack.
Without thinking I thrust myself at Emmeline, pulling her close as I searched for the tether, still buried deep. Good. I wrapped one arm around her, my free hand going to her lips. I used my sleeve to wipe the blood away.
Emmeline recoiled but I held on tight.
“It’s going to be all right,” I lied, breath coming fast. “Get it under control.”
I stared into her eyes, willing her to see me. Panic eclipsed her, but slowly, slowly, she stilled. Her tongue flicked over the invisible wound and she swallowed, throat bobbing hard.
“Okay?” I asked hoarsely.
She said nothing, only pulled me closer, a crushing embrace so surprising that it sucked the breath from my lungs.
Bea let out another ungodly moan, driving us apart again. Emmeline rushed towards the chair. Before I could blink she was propelled backwards, clear across the room. The bowl of water on the nightstand crashed to the floor. Emmeline landed in a crumpled heap against the wall, the vinculum blaring with her pain—real pain that was too much like my own.
I must have screamed. All I could see was Bea, her eyes rolling back and bloody froth at her mouth. Agony—she must be in agony. She was going to die.
Footsteps. Isobel and Nathan skidded back into the room, panic etched on their features. Isobel looked at Bea, then Emmeline.
“Quick.” Isobel thrust a bundle of fragrant dried sage at me.
Nathan held a pillar candle, the white wax scarred with runes and symbols.
“Annie.”
Isobel had begun to create a circle around the armchair, drawing a line of salt around all of us—except Emmeline, who was still unconscious. My heart lurched again at the sight of her, but she didn’t look like she was in any real danger, unlike Bea.
I grabbed the box of matches that Isobel had pointed at and lit the sage, letting its grey smoke cloud the room and my vision. Silently I bit down on the inside of my cheek, flooding my mouth with salty blood.
I could feel the call of magic, the vinculum writhing. I held it fast.
Isobel took the candle from Nathan and put it at a point in her circle of salt next to a fresh dish of water. She had scattered herbs at another point and some dried flowers.
I followed her to the final unadorned length of circle, jumping at the tug in my fingers and the responding tingle under my skin. I laid the sage, still smoking, along this stretch and turned to Isobel.
“Bless this circle,” she intoned, “so that we may be free and protected. Fill it with light and healing.”
Nathan repeated Isobel’s words, his face grey. Bea’s eyes were open, wide and filled with panic. I repeated the words.
“Bless this circle…”
“Cast out those who wish us harm.”
“Cast out those who wish us harm…”
Isobel’s voice was melodious, filled with intent. I focused, willing my blood to follow Isobel’s wish.
Slowly, so slowly, Bea’s pain seemed to subside. Her eyes fluttered, her breathing growing steadier. Eventually we fell to incense-scented silence, the vicious tingling in my skin dulled to a gentle throb.
I glanced over to Em, who was still out cold. “Is she going to be all right?”
Isobel swept a doorway out of the ring of salt and headed to Emmeline. She laid a hand on the older witch’s forehead, and when Emmeline moaned and rolled onto her side, Isobel nodded.
My cheek throbbed where I’d bitten it, blood still on my tongue. It was like ocean salt, crisp and clean. Isobel frowned.
“Blood,” she said. “Annie, you mustn’t use it—”
“You used it on Emmeline after her Giving,” I retorted. “Emmeline uses it all the time.”
Isobel stared. “—until you know how to use it… I know it’s tempting but you don’t know enough about it.”
“Well, teach me,” I argued. “Please. I can’t just stand by and watch these things happen!” Tears formed in my eyes again, the anxiety and fear of the last days welling up. I’d rather be angry, lit by the incandescence that provided. “I don’t understand any of this! Why can I do it now and I couldn’t before? What is happening to me?”
Isobel’s face softened, but she didn’t comfort me. Instead she pursed her lips.
“Is this always what it’s like?” I begged.
“What?”
“Magic. Is it always so… bloody and awful?”
Nathan and Isobel exchanged a glance.
“You’re coming into yourself later than most…” Isobel hedged. “The island—”
“And Emmeline,” Nathan added. I wondered if he had sensed the vinculum, this tether—if he knew what it meant.
Isobel frowned. “And Emmeline, yes. All of this… it’s woken a magic in you that was lying deep for some time. Emmeline told me about your father. I suspect it was always in you but you lacked the will. Magic can do great good, but…”
Nathan shook his head. Isobel didn’t finish her sentence. The answer was clear. Was magic always so bloody and awful?
Yes.
“I need to get some things to make a tonic for Bea.” Isobel shook herself. “Nate, can you get Em to bed, dearest? She’ll have a royal headache tomorrow.”
Nathan reached down with surprising strength and lifted Emmeline to her feet. She was mostly conscious, but her eyes had a glazed look to them. She was getting weaker—her magic more out of control. How long would we be able to trust her power?
“Can you stay here with Bea?” Isobel asked.
When the room was empty of everybody but Bea and me, I knelt down beside her chair. I could smell that same bitterness on the air, but fainter. Less like death.
“Oh, Bea…” I murmured.
She opened her eyes. They were bright green and shiny like cut glass.
“Annie,” she whispered urgently. “Please help me.”
“It’s okay. We cleansed you.” I blinked. My eyes were so tired that Bea’s shape was strange in the chair. Almost hazy.
“No.” Bea let out a wail, small and pitiful and terrified. “Annie, he’s still trying to get inside me.”
Chapter Two
Annie
Bea?” I asked with a trembling voice. “What do you mean? Bea?”
She didn’t respond. She scrunched her eyes against me, a fresh wave of pain contorting her body as another pitiful sob broke my heart. Without thinking I grabbed hold of her wrist, and this time there was no force stopping me. She was hot to the touch, beyond feverish, and when I inhaled I could make out the telltale scent of rot. Of decay.
I glanced about, desperately casting my eyes around the room in search of anything useful. Bea grabbed for my hand, fingers grappling for mine.
“Bea, what’s happening?”
Bea roared the next word, so close to my ear I was momentarily stunned. “ARTHUR.”
Panic flooded me. I was torn between staying and running to find Isobel or Nathan or Emmeline, but if I left her… I couldn’t leave her.
Bea thrashed like a dying bird, back arching into the chair, her head bouncing against the wings. Her grip on me was solid, too strong. The bones in my hand ground against one another as I tried to pull away.
“No,” Bea moaned. “No, no, don’t let him in. Annie, please.”
Bea’s nails dug into my flesh, right where Emmeline had cut me, the wounds opening up eagerly.
