Chapter Fifteen
Maren
W hen I wake up, I’m curled on the couch, a blanket over me and Tuck a few feet away in an armchair, tapping at his laptop. It’s a good few moments before he notices me, but when he does, he brightens.
“Hey.” He smiles, the screen reflecting off his glasses. “Good morning.”
“Good morning,” I say on a yawn, stretching up to sit and blinking as I look around. “Where am I?”
“Home?” Tuck laughs. “You, er...came back in with LJ. We were hanging out until you fell asleep there around eleven. We didn’t want to wake you. You looked comfortable.”
I roll my neck back and forth. Not too bad, I guess, save the smarting on my knees from last night. My cheeks get hot as I make a mental note to heal those up as soon as I get a moment of privacy—not that anyone couldn’t guess what LJ and I were up to.
Tuck shuts his laptop. “I’m glad you’re up. What do you say to a date?”
I squint at him. “A date?”
“Well, sort of.” He licks his lips. “I, ah, was thinking about what you said last night. About Guy—well, about his mother, actually. How she was...weird. And, well, I couldn’t sleep last night, so I got up early to do some research, and...”
He spins the screen around so it’s facing me: a website. About, Our History, Visitors’ Guide...
“The Nottingham Historical Society?” I read out loud. “Um...”
“Oh, hang on.” Tuck peers around the screen, scrolls down a bit on the trackpad. “There you go.”
A banner reads Now on Display: A Social History of Nottingham’s Debutantes
Made possible by the bequest of Cecily Gisbourne
I frown, look up at Tuck for an explanation.
“It appears she left a lot of her personal effects to the historical society,” he says. “In her will. I found a press release about it. So now they’re doing this little...walk down memory lane thing, a mini-exhibition.” He shrugs. “Guess they don’t have a lot else to feature there. I figured...maybe we could check it out?” He lifts his eyebrows. “Could be nothing. Could be boring. But could be...”
“You would be the type to take a girl to a museum,” I tease him. Tuck blushes, scratches the back of his head.
“Ah, well, yeah, I guess—”
I cut him off.
“It’s a date.” I pause. “After some coffee.”
AFTER QUICKLY CONFIRMING there wasn’t anything else we were especially needed for that day—Rob and LJ wanted to map out a plan, and Will was doing an elaborate inventory of his various gadgets—Tuck and I head out through the woods. The roads are still trash, so the only car option is the sad beige Chrysler that Will and I left at the edge of the forest...but it is what it is. At least this time I get to be the one behind the wheel.
Tuck fills the drive into town with lots and lots of theorizing about the nature of the convergence in Sherwood and what it could mean relative to the Gisbourne bloodline.
“—astrological positions, or the relative magnetic fields, possibly even atmospheric pressure...all those different kinds of things can affect it,” he goes on as I signal to turn down the main street of Nottingham. “There’s a lot of weird timing that can affect whether or not the power manifests in any given person at any given time. So...”
“What?” I say, scanning around for a place to park. The Historical Society is a trim little brick building on a corner, with white shutters and a small placard out front. The only distinguishing feature between it and the other Jeffersonian buildings to the left and right. “You’re saying someone could, like, sort of game whether or not they have a shifter baby? Depending on...the zodiac or something?”
Tuck tips his head from side to side. “Not exactly. But also...something like that. I don’t really know exactly how much of it would even be perceptible. You’ve have to have done an insane amount of research—and that’s coming from me. Plus, of course, you’d have to—” He winces, shakes a little, makes a vague gesture. “You know. Line it up biologically, so to speak.”
“Sounds like a lot of work,” I say, cutting the wheel.
Tuck sighs, then goes wide-eyed as I parallel park us in two turns. Then grins, like he’s proud of me.
“Exactly,” he says. “Which is why a shifter being more at all is basically...a fluke. Chance. Almost all of the time. So with Guy...” He waves a hand in the air. “Who knows, honestly. But I figured anything belonging to his mom is probably worth checking out.”
“Probably,” I agree.
It’s a sunny day. Calm, quiet. We’re in the nice part of town—the part that looks all old-timey and tourist-friendly. Not that we really get many. The sign at the Historical Society reads: Dancing Through the Past: Socials and Society in Nottingham History.
“Oh boy,” I groan. “This is gonna be some dumb bullshit. I mean, no offense,” I say to Tuck.
“None taken,” he says. “Social history isn’t really my favorite. Especially when it’s being remembered by people who are still mostly around. Hard to be objective, you know? More nostalgia than history.” He grimaces. “But I guess they’re the ones donating to the Historical Society. So if they want to visit yesteryear...”
“Then we’ll show up and paw through their stuff?” I ask.
He laughs. “Apparently.”
Inside, the Historical Society is like a particularly prim grandmother’s house. The first floor opens on a staircase with a small table covered in doilies and a guest book, with signs directing us to two gallery rooms off the main hallway.
A docent—a woman with Coke-bottle glasses in a brown skirt suit, despite the fact that it’s late summer, warm, and this place has no air conditioning—nods at us a little too eagerly as we step in.
“Welcome, welcome! Can I help you find anything?”
I glance at the signs, which plainly indicate that there are only two galleries and exactly where they are.
“No,” I say politely. “I think we’re good.”
She clearly doesn’t get a lot of foot traffic, because she hovers for a moment, then nods, withdrawing. “All right, you two. Enjoy.”
“We will,” Tuck says, and gently steers me by the small of my back into the left gallery.
“Exhibit” is a strong word for what’s in here. A few glass cases with paper artifacts—programs, posters, tickets, books, diaries—and a few things hung on the walls with information and quotes.
The most attention-getting part is the mannequins in the corner. Dress forms clothed in a series of white gowns from various eras and styles. A hippie-esque ’70s number with a high lace collar. A ’50s-era boat neck with a nipped waist and a full skirt. One that must be late ’80s, judging by the polyester and deflated balloon sleeves. An unseen speaker plays a piped-in Virginia reel. Nice touch, I think.
“Wow,” I say. “Educational.”
I glance at Tuck. He chews his lip.
“This might be a dead end,” he concedes. But he steps forward anyway.
I skate a glance over some of the placards, talking all about the storied tradition of debutante balls and cotillions and all the various coming-of-age rituals that rich white people in Nottingham have done since time immemorial. Photos feature happy couples parading two by two—women in long white gloves, men (boys, really) in their finest suits—decade after decade. The only difference between any of them is the hairstyles and the hemlines; other than that, very little has changed.
And I suppose that’s the way they want it.
I feel a strange twinge in my stomach. If my parents hadn’t died—if my life had gone on as normal—that could’ve been me. It’s probably the kind of life Guy was envisioning when he was trying to trap me with him in various ways.
And I guess it was the life he lived. Certainly the one his mother lived.
“Maren,” Tuck says from the corner display case, jerking his head. “C’mere. Check this out.”
I cross the room, doing a little box step to the reel just for kicks, and look at what he’s showing me.
“It’s her stuff,” he says. “Cecily’s.”
I look down at the display case. Sure enough, it’s a whole bunch of paraphernalia that must’ve been hers. Dance programs. Actual dance cards. Menus. Even some trinkets—a powder compact, a lipstick tube—both engraved with her initials.
Tuck nods. “Look.” He points to a photo.
A serious-looking young man—looks like he’s nineteen going on forty-five—with dark hair and a sharp jaw that’s very familiar—Guy’s father, presumably—gently holding the hand of a white-gloved woman who I recognize immediately as Cecily. The same woman I met in the greenhouse, but with no gray in her hair, and a slightly smoother, rounder face.
Younger.
Tuck peers closer. “Says they were married a month later.”
“Cute.”
“And then welcomed their son...” He blinks. “Six months after that.”
I snort. “Let me guess—one of those ten-pound preemies?”
Tuck laughs. “I mean, good for her, I guess. Getting some action but still managing to save face? That’s a balancing act.”
“I wonder how she found the time,” I say, my eyes drifting to a small datebook with a pearlescent cover, its pages open to that same year, the social season, where, in neat fountain-pen Palmer-method handwriting, Cecily had written down various social obligations. Lessons. Garden parties. Dinner parties. Tea parties. Parties, parties, parties.
“No kidding,” Tuck says, following where I’m looking. “Damn, she tracked everything.”
He points to a calendar square:
Two eggs, poached.
One half grapefruit.
Small scoop cottage cheese.
“I guess that’s what things were like in the pre-smartphone days,” he says. “Had to write it all out.”
“Yeah.” But now that I’m looking closer, there’s all kinds of notes: on the calendar days, in the margins, crammed into the tiny NOTES section:
Salt, lavender (for bath)
Silver ring—must be left hand
Sunset: 7:33, 7:34, 7:36, 7:37 (raining), 7:38
Music at dinner. String instruments, NO vinyl/tapes
Pale blue chiffon: save for Weds. IF forsythia in bloom
Avoid: Coffee. Red meat. Side entrance to house (mushroom ring). Mirrors, iron.
“I dunno,” I say. “It’s still...weird.”
“Yeah,” Tuck agrees, frowning. “Look, she was even tracking the lunar cycles, too.”
He points, and I squint at the datebook. There’s something about it. Something not exactly right that I can’t put my finger on.
Red dots in the corner of six days in a row. Then, two weeks later, black X’s in the corners of two.
Suddenly it clicks.
“Oh no,” I say. “No. She was—”
I blink, look around, just to make sure no one’s listening—and catch a glimpse of the docent just ducking out of sight from the doorway, where she was obviously eavesdropping.
“That’s embarrassing,” I mutter, looking back at the datebook.
“What?” Tuck looks at the book, then at me, clueless.
I swallow. “Well, she was...tracking her period,” I say, not sure how else to put it. “I mean, that’s obviously what those are.” I point to the dots. “And now it’s here. On display.”
“Oh.” Tuck bites back a smile. “That is kind of awkward.”
His eyes drift from the dots to the X’s.
My mind is whirring too.
“Hang on,” I say. I look back at the photo. The dates of the cotillion. The marriage. The birth of their son.
“What were you saying about astrological positions and magnetic fields and all that?”
“Huh?” Tuck says. “Oh. Just that probably the conditions for a shifter birth would have to be exactly precise. That’s why it’s not genetic, per se. It doesn’t happen to everyone from an area or bloodline. You’d have to really get obsessive to even—”
“That’s what she was doing,” I interrupt. “Cecily. All these crazy notes. She was...trying to have a shifter baby. Right? Am I nuts for thinking that?”
Tuck gapes. At the datebook, then at me.
“The kwisatz haderach,” he says excitedly. “It’s basically the same thing, right?”
“What?”
“From Dune ?” He shakes his head. “Um. Nothing. Never mind. You really think...”
“I...I do think,” I say. “I mean—it all makes sense, doesn’t it?” My mind reels. “It would explain why he was...so self-loathing as a shifter. Why he hated them. Or even, like...” I press a hand to my head. “Why he hated his mother . He finds out she was trying to, like, engineer him into existence with some weird-ass magic? He’d be mad.” I glance at the datebook, which now seems sinister despite sitting innocently behind glass. “I mean, she...she baby-trapped his dad with a supernatural child,” I finish. “I can’t imagine his dad was too thrilled. Or Guy, for that matter.”
Tuck considers. “That would explain why Guy didn’t...I don’t know. Fulfill the mission, or whatever, of our...kind. If she was trying to do it for just gaining power instead of fighting against misuse of power...that’s fundamentally at odds with what we do. Why we exist.” He shakes his head. “It’s a corruption of the whole point.”
A chill runs down my spine. I look at the smiling woman in the photo, trying to imagine what must have been going through her head.
“What possesses someone to do that?” Tuck murmurs, echoing my own thoughts. “Especially someone like her. I mean, talk about born with a silver spoon. What didn’t someone like Cecily Gisbourne have?”
Realization, clear and vibrant as a bell, rings in my head.
“Power,” I say. “Or, no, powers .” I close my eyes, thinking back to the one and only interaction I’d ever had with this woman. “She...she knew my mom. Knew about my mom, what she could do. And she was jealous. I mean, she didn’t say as much, but from the way she talked about her...”
I blow out a breath. “It sounds like my mom was kind of the belle of the ball. And Cecily resented her for it.”
“Then she finds out that your mom can heal people with the touch of her hand,” Tuck pieces out. “That’s...yeah. Insult to injury.” He gives his head a little shake. “I’ve got chills. This is six kinds of fucked up.”
“No kidding,” I say.
I bite my lip. Hard.
“You don’t think—” I blink, not wanting to speak the words. Not wanting to tempt fate. “You don’t think my mom did the same thing, do you? Like...tried to engineer me? Her own little magical baby?”
Tuck looks at me, searchingly, his eyes scanning my face.
“I really don’t know, Maren. You knew her better than I did—well, you knew her at all. Do you think that’s something she would do?”
I don’t answer. I just let my gaze drift around the room, unfocused—from photo to photo—until, like a magnet, it snaps into place.
On a face I recognize.
A face like mine.
Narrow. High cheekbones. The slight crooked tilt of the lips when we smile.
My mother.
She’s in the back of a group photo, dancing with someone whose face I can’t see—but who I recognize all the same.
My dad.
And she’s smiling. Smiling in a way you can’t fake. That looks just...real. Its own kind of magic.
The kind you can’t force.
“No,” I say at last. “I don’t think she would have.”