Chapter Twenty
The Heir and the Spare
“Christ almighty,” Felipe said from Oliver’s lap, his eyes wide as he looked around the crowded room.
“You can say that again,” Gwen replied as she stepped back and narrowly avoided tripping over a pot with what looked like a fig tree growing in it. “Watch where you step. They might bite for all we know.”
Every surface, apart from some of the floor, was covered in plants. Ivy, small trees, a flowering plant that looked suspiciously like nightshade, and plenty Oliver couldn’t identify hung from the rafters, grew up the walls, and trickled across the nearly hidden furniture. It looked as if the room had been left to rot, and the garden had taken over. As Oliver released Felipe and helped him up, he turned to find Willard already rising to meet them. He balanced on a narrow strip of vine barely larger than his foot and ducked through the open window with the grace of a cat. Any semblance of ease disappeared as Willard’s feet soundlessly landed on the wood floor and he turned to find them staring.
Flattening against the window, he swallowed hard. Fear or regret flashed across his features as he clutched his hands, but he seemed to catch himself and let them go with a wince. Unlike Lucien who moved through crowds as if always anticipating someone else’s demands or moods, Willard seemed self-conscious in a way that was horribly familiar. Oliver wished he knew what to say to smooth things over, but they barely knew each other. Anything he could think of would ring like a hollow platitude. Instead, he gave him a tight smile and a nod of encouragement. Willard stared at him for a long moment before averting his gaze and clearing his throat.
“Thank you all for coming. I know my letter was brusque, or I assume it was. Lucien and my sister would always say I am, but—” He made another pained, vague gesture before waving the thought away. Locking eyes with Oliver, he said, “That’s beside the point. The point is I needed to speak to you, and now, you’re here and— What is your name? I heard you were investigators with the Paranormal Society, but I missed your names when Lucien said them. I didn’t care at the time.”
“I’m Oliver Barlow. This is my partner, Inspector Felipe Galvan, and my best friend and coworker, Gwen Jones.”
“Will,” he replied simply, not meeting their gazes. “Now that, that’s settled. We need to get on with things. Everyone will be back from their respective activities in an hour and seventeen minutes.” He had gotten halfway across the cramped room when he stopped and turned to Oliver. “How old are you?”
“Thirty-seven.”
“Definitely Stephen’s then. Just as I suspected. Any children?”
“No,” Oliver replied with a shake of his head.
“Good, then, there’s no one except us. Lucien’s our weak point. I’ve begged him not to get married or procreate for years, but I can see his patience wearing thin. It’s only a matter of time before he conveniently forgets I ever asked him to wait.” As Oliver’s thumb drifted to the memento mori ring on his finger, Will’s eyes snagged on it. “A widower? ”
“Yes and no,” he said truthfully, feeling his partner and friend’s eyes on his back. Will frowned thoughtfully but said nothing as he waved the plants hanging from the rafters away. If now was the time to ask questions, Oliver had a few of his own. Taking a step toward him as he paced to the far side of the room, Oliver asked, “May I ask how you knew I was your cousin? If you shoved me into the Dysterwood, I would rather know now than later.”
Will’s pale green eyes widened as he shook his head. His gaze flickered between Felipe’s stern expression and Oliver’s as he took a step back toward the window on the far wall. With a sweep of his hand, the ivy piled beneath it parted to reveal a battered telescope on a tripod.
“No, I didn’t. I— I don’t leave the house. I can’t. Not that far. But after the dead started rising, after Ridder, I started watching the cemetery after dark. I thought I could raise the alarm if I saw anything. I looked out and saw you, Galvan, sitting with Miss Jones in the cemetery. Then, she left, and you stayed. I wanted to see what you were waiting for. That’s when I saw you come out of the Dysterwood.” Will averted his gaze and stuffed his hands into his sleeves. “Only Jarngrens can come out of the Dysterwood like that, so you must be a Jarngren, even if that isn’t your surname.”
Oliver stared at the younger man. It made sense. It almost made too much sense. While he wanted to trust him, he couldn’t. “And how did you know I was Stephen’s son?”
“Because I’m not stupid,” Will responded with a dry scoff. “Stephen’s wife was with child when he died, and she disappeared. There was a fifty-fifty chance that the child survived, no matter what my aunt says. You came out of the woods, and you came from out of town. Therefore, you’re Stephen’s missing child. My father never left town and neither did Uncle Edmund. Any bastards would be local. That’s why I wrote you that letter.”
On one hand, everything Will said made sense. On the other hand, the thought of being spied on when he and Felipe reunited made him nauseous. If Will told anyone what he saw, he could get them in serious trouble. They might be blood, but they were nothing to each other. Without another word, Will darted past him, dropped to his knees behind his bed, and started prying up the boards. Oliver froze where he stood and looked over his shoulder at Felipe and Gwen for help. Gwen gave him a shrug before parting another curtain of vines to find a chair. Giving Oliver’s arm a squeeze, Felipe furrowed his dark brows and stepped closer. Across the tether, his emotions were steady, and that comforted him far more than words could. If Felipe wasn’t worried, neither was he. They inched closer slowly as if trying not to startle the other man and watched as Will pulled out papers and dusty books from a space beneath the boards.
“Mr. Jarngren, may I ask why you summoned us here?” Felipe asked. “I assume it wasn’t to have a family reunion.”
Will’s head shot up from the side of the bed. He looked over Felipe as if truly seeing him for the first time. Staring down at the tome in his hands for a long moment, he finally said in a thin voice, “Because I need your help to figure out what’s going on with the Dysterwood. All of this, the trees covering the road, the dead people coming back to life, the missing iron, I think it all has to do with your parents. They— they broke something in the Dysterwood around the time you were born. And if we don’t fix it, you and certainly I will be dead, and if we’re dead, I don’t think the rest of Aldorhaven will fare much better for long.”
A dizzying wave of panic flooded through Oliver’s brain and spread through his body in a cold sweat. “The family curse?”
Will released a mirthless laugh and dumped a pile of books and papers onto the bed. “You can call it that. Did your mother tell you anything about us?”
“I never met her. She had Lewis Allen take me back to Philadelphia to live with my grandmother the day she disappeared. No one told me anything about the Jarngrens or this place. I didn’t even know who my father was until yesterday.”
Will’s head snapped up. A shadow of hopelessness swept across his features, and his hand stilled over the map he had unfurled across the coverlet. “So you know nothing about us or you? ”
“I mean, I didn’t. I don’t. Mr. Allen told me what he knew, the things that my mother told him or that he overheard. I would like to help if I can, but I don’t know if I know any more than you do.”
“Of course I know more than you! I know more than all of them. I’ve been researching the family since I saw the writing on the wall.” The anger that had fleetingly burned so brightly faded as he set a handful of stones onto the corners of the map. “I hadn’t thought to talk to Lewis Allen. That does explain some things though.” Will sighed. “Let’s start from the beginning, and we’ll see if you can fill in any gaps. Do you know about the Lady and the bargain? About our ties to the Dysterwood?”
“I know we can go into it. Mr. Allen mentioned the Lady a few times, but I don’t know what that means.”
“We only have an hour and seven minutes, so this will be a very abridged version of the tale. It might help you to know how we got into this mess.” Will deflated and sank onto the bed beside the pile of cracked leather books and crumbling parchment. “It started with our ancestor Jan Jarngren. He left Sweden to make his fortune in the New World in 1640. From what I understand, he had been a minor noble, a man gifted in magic but not money, but he wanted to change that. When he came to New Sweden, he brought with him a god from the old world, the Lady, and replanted her in what would become Aldorhaven. He prayed to her and worshipped her, and eventually, she came to him. A god who has had no worship for a thousand years must be hungry for it because she made a pact with him. If he and his descendants worshipped her as their ancestors did, she would bring them safety and prosperity by providing iron and wood in exchange for adulation and sacrifices befitting her station. For two hundred and twenty years, the Jarngrens lived, died, worshipped, and prospered. That is, until your father died. That was when things started going wrong, but I don’t know why.”
Oliver’s mouth went dry. A god? His foolish ancestors had made a deal with a demon. God, demon, devil, otherworldly creature; it didn’t matter. Oliver resisted the urge to run his hand through his hair and tug at it in frustration. His ancestor had used his descendants as collateral for greed and conquest.
“How do you know Stephen’s death caused these problems?” Gwen asked with a raised brow as she batted dead leaves off her seat.
“Because I have my grandfather’s journals, and I can see when the change happened. The man wrote down everything that happened in the family along with meticulous records of how much wood and iron came out of the Dysterwood. They were consistently getting more from the Lady each year until 1860.”
Oliver opened his mouth to speak when Gwen added, “And when you say sacrifices, you’re being literal, aren’t you?”
Will looked away and said nothing, his mouth tightening into a hard line. Oliver’s heart pounded in his ears as his lover’s hand brushed his in a quick embrace. Human sacrifices to an old god.
Gwen sucked her teeth. “So that’s why there’s only one mausoleum for such a big family.”
“Yes, they take the bodies into the woods and give them to the Lady after they die or right before… if they can time it right. Or sometimes they take them there and—”
“My mother reanimated my father,” Oliver blurted before his cousin could finish. He couldn’t let him finish. Will cocked his head owlishly and stared at him as if waiting for more. “She was a necromancer. She thought keeping him alive until I was born was the only way to protect me and her from your family. When you reanimate someone, you use up the rest of their magic or spirit, however you want to put it. They become inert after. If the Lady uses dead Jarngrens to sustain herself, then giving her a body that’s been reanimated would be like offering her an oyster and giving her an empty shell.”
Snatching up one of the books, Will flipped to a blank page and jotted that down with shaking hands. “That would explain the entry about the spirit bells.”
“Spirit bells?” Felipe asked, though Oliver knew he knew what they were.
“In my grandfather’s diary about a month or so before Stephen died, he mentions the spirit bells went off, but when they went to check on Stephen, he was fine. He had assumed it was a misfire. What I don’t understand is why this event caused so many problems. I mean, Stephen not being properly sacrificed should have been a hiccup until someone else died. That should have put things to right. It couldn’t have been the first time she didn’t get a dead Jarngren. There had to be something else. We have fifty-six minutes to figure out what.”
Without looking up from the papers laid across the bed, Will waved them closer. Oliver stood over Gwen and Felipe’s shoulders as they stared down at the map of the town. The drawing looked to be at least fifty years out of date. There were houses missing along with multiple buildings Oliver knew he had passed on Main Street, like the pharmacy, but what drew his eye was the spiral of ink that encircled most of the town, drawing incrementally closer to the center like the rings on a tree. Squinting, Oliver could make out minute notations of the year beside them. In pencil, the spiral continued into the road beside the Allen Inn with today’s date beside it. The woods had encroached around the road but never touched it until now.
“So the Dysterwood didn’t start getting closer to the town until 1860?” Felipe asked.
“As far as I know. All the land surveys before 1860 are nearly the same, give or take a few feet. I was helping my father look over them years ago when I noticed the town shrinking. I am the one who convinced him to order yearly surveys. I am the one who has been charting these things. I tried to warn my aunt and uncle that something was going on, that something like this was going to happen. I told them what they were doing wasn’t working. I brought evidence, and I pushed. And this,” he gestured to the cramped room, “was what it got me. Will’s overwrought. Will can’t be trusted. Don’t listen to Will; he has a nervous condition. Yes, Will has a nervous condition because no one will listen to him. I am the Cassandra of Aldorhaven, and my family thinks the best solution is to lock me up and drug me into silence. Even Lucien tells me to forget about all of this because it makes me so unhappy. How can I forget? I can’t un-know things are going wrong.” Cupping the sides of his face, Will jerked and curled in on himself. “And now, I know too much. I know too much . He’s the heir, and I’m only the spare, after all. At some point, they’ll—”
Will’s throat worked and his lip trembled, but the words died on his tongue. Oliver wanted to comfort him. He wanted to do something, but he didn’t know what wouldn’t make things worse. Gwen gave Oliver a pointed look and jerked her chin toward his cousin. Oliver took a cautious step forward only to be blocked by a fern hanging from the rafters. All around them the plants stirred, drawing toward Will like sunlight. Gently pushing the fern out of the way, Oliver knelt beside Will the way Felipe often did for him when he was overwhelmed. He couldn’t rescue him or fix things, but sometimes, all people needed was someone to listen and tell them they weren’t exaggerating or making things up.
“I— We believe you,” Oliver said softly, glancing toward Gwen and Felipe, “and I think Lewis Allen does too. You aren’t alone in this anymore. And you aren’t the ‘spare.’ There are three Jarngren boys left, and with me, Gwen, Felipe, and Lewis Allen on your side, I bet we could make the others listen.”
“Little good it would do,” Will whispered flatly. “They won’t do anything.”
“Then, we’ll do it ourselves. That’s why you invited us here.” Turning to the map beside Will, Oliver pointed to the blocked road. “It looks like the Dysterwood has been encroaching around the road into town for years.”
“It has. The growth point is right there. It grows clockwise and then counterclockwise around that spot. Until today.”
“Do you think the road is blocked because I entered the Dysterwood?”
Will nodded bleakly, not meeting Oliver’s gaze. “You’re the only new factor. Maybe, it wants to keep you here too, and this is the only way.”
“Do you think it could be because I took this from the Dysterwood?”
** *
Felipe watched Will’s reaction as Oliver unhooked the silver chain around his neck and dangled the gold signet ring in front of him. There was no hunger in his eyes or urgency in his fingers as he brought the ring closer to his face. When Oliver had first shown the ring to him under the storm-blackened sky, it had been nearly impossible to make out any details even with his night vision. At first, all he could tell was that the ring was gold and topped with a red-brown stone. The metal was old and soft, and the signet worn down with use, but when Felipe had inspected it beside a lamp, he could just make out a barred knight’s helmet with an arrow or javelin piercing through it and what looked like leaves and a six-pointed star on either side. It was so old and lopsided with use that it would have looked at home in a display case at the museum. As with so many objects imbued with magic, it looked terribly mundane and kind of ugly.
Will frowned at the ring and let it drop on its chain before digging through the pile of books at his elbow. Flipping one upside down, he shook it until a letter slipped from between the pages. He held the paper and the ring’s flattened face side-by-side and studied it for a long moment before letting the ring go.
Looking up at Oliver with a curious frown, he said, “You found this in the Dysterwood? Did the Lady give it to you?”
“No, I don’t think so. Then again, I don’t know what the Lady looks like.”
“If it was her, you would know. I’ve caught her watching me more than once when I went into the Dysterwood. She’s…” Will swallowed hard. “She’s not something you forget. I try not to go too deep into the woods to avoid attracting her attention.”
Felipe suppressed a shudder, but his feelings must have sluiced across the tether because Oliver’s eyes immediately leapt to his face. The whispers in the woods and the flash of white he had seen when they first arrived hadn’t been figments of his imagination or his sanity slipping. There truly was a sentient creature watching and waiting for them to make a mistake. The Lady had tried calling him into the Dysterwood. Had she been trying to use him to lure Oliver to her or had she simply been a predator testing their new prey?
“Then, no, it wasn’t the Lady, but it was a woman, I think. It was hard to tell. She was in a tree,” Oliver replied as he put the ring and chain back around his neck.
When Will motioned for him to go on, Oliver recounted his time in the Dysterwood and all he had seen there. Despite hearing the story for the third time, Felipe’s ribs still tightened with panic at the thought of Oliver being trapped where he couldn’t go. As he listened, Will’s hand flew across the page and caught every word in his haphazard scrawl. He only interrupted Oliver to remind him of how much time they had left and to ask him what he saw and the condition of the woods before going back to his notes. What kinds of insects did he see? Did the tree look healthy? Did he hear any birds? For the first time, Felipe wondered if those places could change. He had always assumed magic gave them an unnatural stability. Then again, the desecrated cathedral looked ravaged after centuries of visitors. All magic must eventually come to an end.
Will frowned thoughtfully as Oliver finished his tale. “A face or a person in a tree. I’ve never heard of this. It isn’t mentioned in any of the family folklore. It’s only ever been the Lady. And this tree person gave you the ring?”
Oliver nodded. “Do you think it’s important?”
“Very. That ring is a lost heirloom. It disappeared not long before Stephen died, but Grandfather never mentioned in his diary where it went. Just that it was gone and that he was very mad about it because not having it made things difficult. Whatever that meant.”
“Mr. Allen stole it for my parents.” Oliver said, his cheeks heating as if he had orchestrated the theft. “He said they needed it for their plan. ”
“And what was their plan?”
“I don’t know the specifics. To keep me safe and get me away from your family and Aldorhaven before the Dysterwood could trap me.”
“Clever people. Stephen tried and failed to get away, but whatever they did with you worked until you were pushed in. And you said your mother sent you away without her…” Will froze, his eyes going distant a second before he frantically flipped through the books at his side. Snatching up a slim volume with a tattered cover, he turned to a dogeared page and read aloud, “ And to seal his covenant with the Lady, Jan Jarngren produced a signet ring. Let it be known that anyone carrying the ring can seek her counsel and safety . Grandfather never found it. Everyone searched the burned house because they thought Stephen had stolen it, but they never found it. Your mother must have taken it, and if she never came back to get you—”
“Then, she must have gone into the Dysterwood.”
Gwen laid a hand on Oliver’s shoulder. “Ol, I hate to say this, but I think your mom is a tree.”
***
His mother was a tree. His mother was a tree . Oliver sat on the edge of Will’s bed with his head between his knees and his heart in his throat. Gwen and Felipe stood on either side of him, and even though Felipe ran his hand soothingly across his back, Oliver knew they were having a whole silent conversation over his head. At least Will had done the polite thing and pretended he wasn’t having a nervous breakdown because normal people didn’t have their parents turn into trees. The worst thing was, in a perverse way, it made sense. Will suspected something had changed around the time Stephen died, and that change had been his mother trifling with a demon. Whatever had happened, she must have been taken by the Lady. Then, the Lady had bided her time until the woods grew close enough to the graves that she could use his mother’s necromancy to reanimate the dead. To what end, he didn’t know. As Oliver slowly sat up, Felipe’s fingers and gaze lingered on him in question. Oliver wanted nothing more than to crumple against Felipe, but that would have to wait.
“I don’t think my mother is doing this of her own volition. My nana said she rarely used her necromancy.”
“Except on your father, apparently,” Will said without looking up from the journal in his lap. “Twenty-seven minutes left, by the way.”
“Reanimating the person you love temporarily is far different than waking people up to have them terrorize a town. She wasn’t the kind to do that. She wasn’t—” Was she? Oliver had never met her. He didn’t know her. He had hoped she thought about the ethics behind her powers as he did. Perhaps, she considered them even more than he did. After all, she kept up her end of the bargain with his father and ended things, unlike him. Oliver swallowed hard. “Being trapped in a tree makes me think she isn’t doing this of her free will.”
“No, though I was thinking about the logistics of that while you were hyperventilating,” Will replied flatly.
“I was thinking about that too. Ol, you said she seemed to be awake at least for the time when you spoke to the tree and got the ring.” When Oliver nodded, Gwen paced toward the window and back thoughtfully. “With magic, I know the lines can be blurry, but that means your mother might still be alive.”
Hope and horror warred in Oliver’s breast. If she was alive, his mother had been trapped in a tree for thirty-seven years. He didn’t know how much she could feel or if it hurt to be in that state. While time might have moved oddly in the Dysterwood, living in a magical purgatory was not something Oliver wanted to think too hard about. At the same time, she was alive . The parent he had never met, had never thought he needed or wanted, might still be alive, and she had recognized him somehow that day in the Dysterwood. Tears scalded Oliver’s eyes, but he blinked them away. He didn’t know what to say. He didn’t know how to feel. But they had to do something to help her and stop the reanimations.
Felipe’s arm settled across his shoulders with a squeeze as he quickly said, “So Oliver’s father being reanimated and then not being a useful sacrifice to the Lady stopped the cycle for a time. Then, his mother entered the Dysterwood with the ring and did what? Broke it beyond repair?”
“Maybe.” Will fingered the edge of the book thoughtfully. “The Lady stopped speaking to my grandfather, and she never speaks to my aunt, much to her chagrin. My grandfather assumed it had to do with the missing ring. What if it does but not in the way they thought? What if Joanna changed the rules? The person with the ring can get an audience with the Lady. If the sacrifices stopped working at their full potential, it stands to reason Joanna is the cause. Much like you, Oliver, she was the only new variable.”
Mother, what did you do? Oliver silently asked, holding the fleeting image of her face in his mind.
“Whatever she did, it probably had something to do with you,” Will added as if sensing Oliver’s thoughts. “If we’re going to fix this, we need to figure out what she did in order to not make the same mistake. We have the ring now. That means, we can ask the Lady for a new covenant.”
“Do we really want to make a deal with a devil?” Felipe asked.
Will released a mirthless laugh. “No, but I don’t know what other choice we have. I don’t think I can just tell the Lady to go away. Gods don’t take kindly to that sort of thing.”
“Do— do you want to take the ring? In case you figure it out.”
Oliver could feel Felipe and Gwen’s eyes boring into his back. Maybe it was foolish to trust Will Jarngren, but he didn’t know what else to do. He didn’t know what his mother did. He didn’t know his family’s history the way Will did. By the time he caught up, the trees might take it upon themselves to cross the river, and everyone would be trapped and heading toward starvation because he refused to delegate. For a long moment, Will merely stared at him as if puzzling out whether the offer was meant to be a trap. Finally, he shook his head.
“No. Keep it with you. If we figure out what we need to say to put this to rights, we’ll go in together and make the bargain. It’ll be safer that way. Besides, if that ring is in the house, then there’s a chance Aunt Daphne might find it, and I don’t have a death wish.”
“Would she hurt you?” Oliver asked slowly.
Staring blankly at him, Will nodded. “Yes, for many reasons, but especially if she thought I had found the ring years ago and had kept it from her.”
“Speaking of Daphne Stills,” Felipe said, pulling the notepad from his pocket and flipping to the last page, “Lucien said you were there when Sheriff Ridder tried to kill her.”
Will straightened like a bow pulled taut. “I was.”
“Oliver is a medical examiner, and when we took a look at his corpse the other day, we were curious how you knew Ridder was already dead when he tried to attack your aunt.”
“His skin looked wrong, and he smelled. I’ve— I’ve seen plenty of dead people. Some fresher than others.”
“But not Lucien?”
“No, never Lucien.”
“Can you think of any reason Sheriff Ridder would want to kill your aunt?”
Will stared out the open window for so long that Oliver thought he wouldn’t answer. Shutting his eyes, Will tucked his legs closer as the plants stretched toward him once more. “At my sister’s funeral, I— I had a breakdown in front of the whole town. It was the last time I was allowed out of the house. I didn’t say anything, but Horace finally grew suspicious of us. There’s been too much death to ignore.” Without a word, Will got up and went to the telescope. In three swift movements, he adjusted its position and put his eye to the lens. “They’ll be leaving at any moment. You all need to go.”
When none of them moved, Will raised his gaze to Oliver’s, and in his green eyes, he could see a wealth of pain left unspoken. “Now, pleas e . I’ll— I’ll help you down.”
This time Felipe went first when the vines reached up to grab them. As Will levitated Gwen to the ground, Oliver watched his cousin. A haunted look hollowed his cheeks and drained what little color he had left. Reaching into his pocket, Oliver fished out a hunk of cheese wrapped tightly in wax paper and left it on the bed between the maps and books of family history. It wasn’t much, but he hoped he had at least gained that much trust. When Will called him to the window, Oliver hesitated.
“How will we get word to you if we need to see you?”
“I don’t suggest you try. My aunt and uncle read anything that comes for me.”
“Then, we will give it to the vines, or Gwen will levitate it to your window. I promise we’ll figure this out.”
A shadow passed across his features. “If you say so, and if I think of anything, I’ll find a way to get it to you.”
As Oliver drew closer, Will’s eyes ran over his face and form as if trying to commit him to memory. Oliver didn’t like that look. He had seen that look on Felipe’s face far too many times back in January when he thought he only had a week left to live: a squaring of the shoulders combined with a lingering wistfulness or longing. Without thinking, Oliver stepped forward and pulled his cousin into an embrace. Will stiffened beneath his hands, but instead of pulling away, he let out a loud breath.
“Have you thought about what you might do after we fix the Dysterwood?” Oliver asked as he pulled away and stepped toward the window. “There are people at the Paranormal Society who would greatly appreciate your gifts. You could start over. We would help you, Will.”
“As nice as that sounds, I don’t think I’m the kind of person who gets to start over. I’ve been doomed by the narrative since birth, born under bad stars to a bad family and all that.” A dry laugh escaped his lips as the vines wrapped around Oliver’s waist and lifted him through the window. “Sometimes it’s better to know you don’t deserve a hero’s end. That way you can’t miss what you never deserved. ”
Oliver wanted to say something, but the vines tightened around him and carried him away before he could. As Oliver’s feet touched the moss-slick pavers, the last thing he saw as Felipe beckoned to him from the shadows was Will silhouetted in the high tower all alone.