CHAPTER 7
Iopened my eyes to the spring’s chattering falls and the burgeoning need to be sick. I splashed upright, retching. Kessian put an alarmed hand on my back, but I feared the magic would drown me in more visions and shied away.
It was just a vision. It wasn’t real. Yet I felt like I was seventeen again, freshly pulled from the spring by my mother, half drowned and painting the rocks in dark colors as I emptied my lungs onto them.
I didn’t know what to make of it. The haunted version of my grandfather’s house. Laurelie resurrected from the spring, only for Kessian to drown after.
Kessian said, “Are you all right? Can I get you anything?”
I tried to say no, but it came out in a coughing fit. “No, I’m fine, now.”
“I’m sorry. The visions aren’t usually that …”
“Horrific?”
“I was going to say deadly.”
“Don’t I feel special?” I made a rueful noise. “It figures that to get my sister back, I’d have to sacrifice the both of us. The strid never did play fair.”
No matter how Laurelie’s death hung over me, turning Kessian into a sacrificial lamb wouldn’t help, only give me something else to feel guilty for from beyond the grave.
I shivered at the memory of his retreating back in the woods, the wraith’s claws curling around his shoulders. That image would plague my nightmares unless I left as soon as possible.
Kessian looked both shaken and far away, gazing into the water.
I said, “That settles my debate with Fae. I have to go.”
“With no clothes on?” Kessian had moved toward the stairs leading out of the spring, blocking my path. My robe was on the bank within his reach, but he made no move to pass it to me.
“Are you going to stop me?” I didn’t see why he’d want to keep me around after what we’d seen.
“No … No, I won’t stop you, but I think I should at least clarify one thing first.”
“What’s that?”
“Those visions aren’t necessarily mutually inclusive. In order for one to be true, the rest don’t have to be.”
I was aware of how the spring’s magic normally worked. It showed visions of the future, but the future was malleable, ever changing, not set in stone. Like the river. To stand with one foot in the water was to feel time and history rush past while the rest of you stood still.
Some of its visions came true while others didn’t, but that had been before two dozen people went to their deaths in Shearwater. Kessian’s magic seemed slightly different. The spring usually showed one vision. Kessian’s had shown me three.
“You’re saying that I could save my sister without the both of us dying in her place?” I said.
“Essentially.”
“Would you risk that?”
“No, probably not. But I feel obliged to give you all the information. These visions have a way of coming true the harder you try to avoid them.”
“I bet you wish you’d said as much before dunking me in here.”
He chuckled, but while he didn’t necessarily seem flippant about the possibility of his own demise, he didn’t seem surprised, either.
“Has it shown you something like that before?”
“Ah, let’s just say it isn’t the first time I’ve had to stare my own mortality in the face.”
“And it doesn’t worry you?”
“You seem pretty determined to leave, so what do I have to worry about?”
That was true. I’d been present in the vision where the wraith drowned us. If I left Shearwater, it couldn’t happen. Not like that, at least.
Whatever the reason for Kessian’s attitude toward death, he didn’t volunteer more, and I would be a fool to stick around to sate my curiosity.
Now I had to break the news to Fae …
Kessian left me to change. I didn’t see him on my way out of the treatment room, and told myself it was for the best when I already had a litany of goodbyes ahead. I didn’t need one more.
At reception, Fae linked elbows with me, handed a fastidiously written note of tasks and reminders over to the teenager with red-rimmed eyes taking over the shift, and at once dragged me toward the doors.
“We’re running late for the reading of the will. Mum’s not going to be happy, but hopefully she’ll be pleased you’re staying longer.”
“About that—”
“Oh, my car keys. Where did I put them?”
“We can take Lunaris.”
“Found them!” They held up a comically large keyring with so many charms it was a wonder how it could be difficult to find. “Sorry, I’m a mess. I still haven’t sat down and processed Grandad. With wedding planning and work and helping Mum with the funeral, who has the time?”
My gut pinched with guilt. All things I hadn’t been around to lend a hand with, and wouldn’t be.
I got in the car. Fae continued to ramble while starting the ignition and pulling out of the spa. “I did tell Grandad we ought to hire more permanent staff, since business hasn’t been too bad, but he never got around to it.”
“Yeah.”
“Now the spa’s probably passed to Marlowe, he might be more proactive.”
“Fae, about that—”
“And with you back, we wouldn’t even need to train you.”
“Fae, I can’t stay!”
I thought they’d be shocked, but they shouted, “Why not?” So I was the one shocked into silence. Fae’s manic rambling made more sense now. They’d been trying to deflect from having this conversation. Probably knew the second they got a look at my face coming out of Kessian’s treatment room.
I finally managed an eloquent explanation. “The visions were bad.”
“How bad?”
“Deadly bad. For me and for Kessian.”
Fae’s shoulders sagged. “Really?”
“Really.” Blunt as I normally was, even I did not see the point in telling them about Laurelie’s resurrection. It would just add salt to the wound. “It’s dangerous for me to stay. Shearwater doesn’t want me here.”
Fae’s lip wobbled. “Oh …”
The tremor in their voice made my own eyes sting. An ungracious part of me resented my sibling for pushing so hard, opening us up to hope. “I’m sorry. Really.”
“I have to pull over and cry now.”
“Oh no.”
The car crunched over the pavement, Fae put it in park, then they folded over the steering wheel and sobbed.
I was at a loss. We’d barely spoken in nine years, and I didn’t know what sort of comfort Fae preferred.
Should I sit silently with them? Should I search the glove box for tissues?
Should I offer to get out and buy some if there weren’t any?
Should I try and hug them? Should I try and summon tears, too, so they didn’t feel alone?
I had felt a little weepy a second ago, but now I just felt awkward.
People should come with instruction manuals, especially for socially isolated weirdos like me.
Fae spared me by talking through their tears.
“I thought, even if Grandpa’s gone … He was old, you know?
It was sudden, but not a total surprise.
Heart attacks happen to younger men than him.
And he was working so hard all the time.
So, so hard to find a way to make Shearwater safe for you.
So I thought if we lost him but got you back, he’d have liked that. That was something. You know?”
“Yeah,” I said.
“I hate it here. I mean, I love it because it’s the only home I’ve ever had and everybody I know lives here, but I hate it. It’s not the same. It never has been. Not since …”
“Yeah,” I said again, only this time with more feeling. “I know. I get it. Trust me, I get it.”
“I’m sorry. This is hardest on you, and I’m the one blubbering.”
“It’s hard on everyone,” I conceded. But yes, it is hardest on me. You all have each other. My familiar turns on the seat warmers when I need a hug.
I could offer one now. A hug. But it didn’t feel right when we both needed more comfort than we had to give.
I opened the glove box, and mercifully there were tissues. I offered Fae one and they mopped their face with it. Checking the rearview mirror, they made a wet noise of derision. “I look like I’ve been smoking weed with the new receptionist rather than training him.”
I didn’t know them well anymore, but they hadn’t changed that much. “Trust me, Fae. No one is ever going to wonder if you dabble in drugs.”
They laughed, and the combination of congestion and snot turned it into a snort, which made them laugh harder. I smiled, too. It was a relief, in a way, to have Fae’s feelings out in the open.
Even though Kessian couldn’t help me, it helped to know someone here would miss me.
It felt strange stepping into Grandad’s front foyer, when I’d just been there in the spring’s visions. Albeit, a nightmarish version.
Mum had decided it was the best place for the reading of the will.
All the furniture was arranged the same, and the grandfather clock still haunted the front hall—thankfully it wasn’t leaking or birthing shadow monsters—but it seemed every spare surface, shelf, and storage area overflowed with clocks. Hundreds of clocks.
Grandad had been a horologist. He liked making clocks. He liked fixing them even more. He liked knowing what made them tick and made them die. There’d always been a number of them scattered through the house, but now they were everywhere, and stranger still, many of them no longer worked.
Enough of them did work, though, and the chorus of ticking was the psychological equivalent of an ice pick lobotomy.
The collections gave the place an archival smell, woodsy and old, when in my memories the house always smelled like Sunday roasts and Christmas dinner, because those were the times we visited.
Had those traditions held in my absence?
Given how comfortably everyone descended upon the furniture, I assumed so.
Mum claimed the wing-backed chair, Fae curled up on the love seat, Uncle Marlowe and Aunt Lettie spread out on the sofa, leaving just enough room for Amelia to squeeze in between them.
The only empty spot was the squashy armchair Grandad favored, still sunken with the impression of him, as if his ghost still weighed it down.
Nobody sat in it, and I didn’t feel comfortable doing so. I didn’t like the way everything here reminded me of the things I’d missed out on. The house had grown out of whatever meager impression I’d left in it, so I no longer fit anywhere.
I took a seat on the throw rug in front of the fireplace.
“Pull up a dining chair,” said Mum.
“It’s fine.” I just wanted this over with as soon as possible.
Mum sighed. “Should we light a candle?”
“That’s a nice idea,” Fae said, getting up to search out matches.
“It will take the rest of my lifetime to find anything in this old house, dear, and I have tea with Fern this afternoon,” Aunt Lettie said. “Shouldn’t we get a wriggle on?”
“There’s a candle just there on the mantle, Mum,” Amelia said.
“And the matches?” Lettie gestured to all the old, dusty clocks, many of them made of wood. “Let’s not burn the place down.”
“It was just a thought,” Mum said, stern except for the wobble in her chin. “To honor him and show he was loved.”
“Oh, Jean, you know I meant nothing bad by it,” Lettie said.
“Mum, seriously,” Amelia chided. She’d risen with difficulty from the quicksand of the middle crack in the sofa, pulling her cigarette lighter from her pocket. “This’ll only take a second.”
Lettie huffed. Amelia lit the candle on the mantle, and Mum said, “Thank you, darling.”
She took a thick envelope from her handbag and laid it across her knees.
With neat precision, she slit it open with a nail file, unfolded the papers, and laid them flat in her lap.
She did not immediately read out loud, eyes scanning ahead and lips moving to the words.
Lettie’s knee jiggled impatiently. Marlowe put his hand on it to still her.
“To my daughter, Jean Ashborne, my son Marlowe Ashborne, and my three grandchildren, Taliesin, Fae, and Amelia, I leave each the sum of one thousand pounds.”
Lettie whispered, “Well, that isn’t very much.”
“Mum. Shut up,” Amelia said.
Lettie looked deeply offended, but Marlowe squeezed her knee, and she subsided. Though Lettie’s sentiment was rude, it was curious that Grandad, after the spring’s surge of magic, hadn’t amassed any savings.
My mum took a deep breath and continued.
“To Amelia, I leave my Volkswagen Golf four.”
Amelia said a quietly triumphant “yes” under her breath.
“To Fae, I leave all my kitchen supplies and Grandma’s cookbook.”
Fae’s eyes welled up again.
“To Taliesin, I leave …” Mum paused. “My entire archive of clocks. May he make sense of them as I never could.”
I’d never had the most expressive of faces, but perhaps even I looked shocked.
Everyone stared at me, as if hoping I could illuminate what he meant.
I didn’t have the faintest clue. Though I didn’t want to look ungracious, I couldn’t think of anything I’d want less than a collection of aggressively ticking clocks.
I only listened with half an ear as Mum continued listing the possessions and whom they’d been left to. A tension had begun to mount in the room, awaiting the declaration of who’d been left the most, perhaps the only, valuable possessions Grandad had.
This house and the spa.
Mum flipped to the final page of the will, reading aloud.
“Finally, I leave the property of 37 Culpepper Avenue to—” My mother’s expression spasmed, her voice breaking, though I couldn’t name the emotion until she’d finished.
“To my grandson, Taliesin, so that he’ll always have a home in Shearwater. ”