Chapter Forty-Six
‘Did it work?’
Ashley met us at the door of Bell House, covered in soot and sweat and worry. I nodded as the four of us traipsed inside, a sorry band of victors.
‘Alexandra?’ Virginia rushed past us all to her daughter’s side. ‘What on Earth?’
The twins’ mother looked to have taken the worst of it, bruised and bloodied and still shellshocked.
Jackson was dazed, burn marks on his wrists from the rope they used to drag him away, sore-looking spots on his face where he’d torn the tape from his skin.
Lydia, on the other hand, looked like a goddess, a harnessed storm, leashed lightning. A new witch in thrall to the blessing.
‘How come you were there?’ she asked her mother as Ashley bundled us all into the parlour, directing everyone to soft spots on which to sit or lay, administering water, tea and whiskey. ‘Did they come to Charleston to find you?’
‘They didn’t have to. I came back to apologize to you.’
Words were still difficult for her, hands shaking as she sipped the warm tea laced with honey and valerian Ashley held to her lips. ‘I have behaved monstrously over the last few weeks.’
‘We’ve recently recalibrated the scale of monstrous behaviour,’ Jackson stated, sliding down onto the couch beside her. ‘You’re getting a pass. If only because you punched that Were right in the face.’
‘Mom!’ Lydia’s face lit up. ‘You punched a wolf?’
‘Well, she didn’t listen when I asked nicely,’ Alex replied. ‘I was parking the car around the corner and there she was, trying to shove my son into the back of some truck with his hands tied. I got a good swing in too, if there hadn’t been two more of them, she might not have been so lucky.’
‘Remind me never to cross you,’ Ashley commented as the Powells crowded around each other, three generations reconnected.
She turned to me, full of the deepest empathy, something I never expected to find in the woman who brought me to Savannah like a lamb to the slaughter four months ago.
‘Did it work?’ she asked me again. ‘Did they believe it?’
‘They did,’ I confirmed, sucking in my breath when she pulled me into the comfort of her arms. ‘So did he.’
Even though she wasn’t with us at the park, Ashley had the most important job of all.
I knew the only way Wyn would wake up tomorrow still part of his pack was to leave me behind.
I also knew he would never do that by choice.
Back at Bell House, hidden from the wolves, Ashley had been welcomed back into my craft room, Wyn’s blood-soaked shirt in hand, where she performed the ritual I had spent all afternoon perfecting.
At my signal, the dawning of the red moon, she poured out the herbal concoction I had wept over, regretted and prayed we wouldn’t need to use for every second of its existence.
Aconite to cause as much pain as possible, sage to cleanse his energy, chamomile, vervain and valerian to put him to sleep as quickly as I could and flecks from the black arfvedsonite crystal to make him forget my last words.
When he woke, confused and suggestible, he would believe anything his mother told him and he would never want to see me again.
But he would be alive and a member of the pack, not living a shadowy half-life as a lone wolf.
I’d made my decision before I walked out under the full moon, but after meeting Cole and Astrid, I was certain it was the right one.
‘What are you going to do about Astrid?’
Lydia’s question pulled me out of a spiral I was keen to avoid for as long as possible.
I unzipped one of my pockets and pulled out the handful of bloody moonstones.
They rattled in my hand, unnatural and desperate to be undone.
The witch whose life she’d ended to cast the spell couldn’t rest until I’d reversed the magic but she knew she wouldn’t have to wait much longer.
‘Leave her where she is.’
Jackson’s tone was pitch black. Something in him had changed and it cut a new wound into my heart to hear it. ‘You can’t let her out, Em. She’s a killer.’
‘But I’m not,’ I said. ‘Leaving her down there is a death sentence.’
‘You don’t need to worry about it.’ Lydia straightened as she spoke, looking off to the back of the house as though listening to something we couldn’t hear. ‘She’s gone.’
‘Gone as in dead?’ Ashley said altogether too hopefully.
‘Gone as in taken,’ I replied, tuning into the same frequency as Lydia.
Astrid was no longer in the tunnels. She was no longer in Savannah or the state of Georgia.
‘Can you tell where?’ I asked Lydia, but she shook her head. ‘I can’t see.’
‘Shrouded somehow,’ she replied. ‘She might be behind the cloaking spell, but she didn’t get herself out of the tunnels.’
‘It’s OK, she won’t come back, she knows she can’t win against us,’ I said with bravado, all four Powells accepting my statement with varying degrees of confidence.
They didn’t need to worry about this tonight, they’d been through enough.
We’d all been through enough. Alex draped her arms around her children, Virginia’s watchful eye overseeing as they all closed their eyes, ready to surrender to sleep.
‘Emily Bell, you need to rest,’ Ashley decreed. ‘Do I have to carry you upstairs?’
I shook my head, rising unsteadily to my feet and following her out the room. There was no fight left in me. The walls of the foyer had shifted while we were out, returning to the soft sage green of my arrival in Savannah. Not my colours.
‘I saw Catherine tonight,’ I said as Ashley and I slowly mounted the grand curved staircase. She stiffened as she walked but did not stop.
‘She’s back?’
‘No. Not yet.’
‘It’s possible?’
‘I think so.’
No one was more difficult to read than Ashley Bell. She sounded hopeful and afraid at the same time, an inscrutable contradiction, to me and I suspected, to herself. Who could know how to feel about this?
‘I miss her,’ she admitted after a long, thoughtful pause. ‘She did terrible things, to me and you and so many people, but still …’
I nodded, chewing on my response. ‘I miss her too. And I think I understand her a little better now I’ve done terrible things too.’
Her forehead creased with consternation, green eyes rimmed with red and the hollows below them darker than I’d ever seen before.
‘This feels like a conversation we should have after a good night’s sleep,’ she said, pushing me gently towards my bedroom door. ‘Will you be all right on your own, or do you want a roommate?’
I wouldn’t. I wouldn’t ever be all right on my own ever again.
‘It will get better,’ Ashley promised when I didn’t answer. ‘In time. A long time, maybe, but it will hurt less in the end.’
In the end.
I forced one corner of my mouth into my best impression of a smile. I’d already told the most terrible lie of my life tonight, what was one more?
‘You’re right,’ I agreed, sending her across the hallway. ‘Go get some rest, we’ll talk in the morning.’
She closed the door but I stayed where I was, fingertips on my door handle, unable to go inside.
It was still a mess, still the scene of Wyn’s abduction, a brutal blend of love and hate, ruined for me now, maybe forever.
As soon as Ashey’s door was closed, I turned around and walked back past her room, past Catherine’s suite, and stopped at the bottom of the stairs to the third floor.
All of Bell House was beautiful but the ceiling above me might have been the most spectacular part of it all, and the feature I looked at the least. It was painted a deep dense midnight blue and the paint absorbed all the light like velvet.
Every constellation of the night sky had been painted in perfect detail, picked out in sparkling silver paint that shone like diamonds.
This was where my parents had lived, after they were married.
This was where I had spent the first nights of my life.
Slowly, as if trudging through molasses, I made my way up the stairs, pulled onwards and pushed back at the same time.
The light played differently up here, no lamps I could see, no chandeliers or sconces, just the sparkle of the stars, and when I reached the top step, a perfect circle of stained glass that let in all the glory of the full moon, warm and milky as it spilled onto the floor, illuminated my path.
It was easy now, to walk, to breathe, my footsteps following a route I’d taken a thousand times, although never on my own.
I’d been carried here, cradled. This was a place where I had been loved with such a passion, it hurt to think about.
The only door opened softly, no creaking or complaining.
Unusual for one that had been closed for so long, but I hadn’t felt so welcome, it was as though the room didn’t want to offend me.
All the furniture in the small sitting room was clean and dust-free, the windows shining brightly.
Passing through into the bedroom, I recognized everything.
A simple wooden bedframe, a cosy rocking chair, an antique crib.
My crib. Sinking into the chair, I reached out my hand, my fingertips finding the crib and giving it the lightest push.
It swung silently on its own momentum, back and forth, and I watched mesmerized.
Then I let go.
Giving up, giving in, it felt so good and so terrible, just as I’d hoped it would. Shoes kicked to the floor, knees curled up on the chair, I hugged them into my chest to make myself as small as possible, a tiny, tight little ball that no one could hear or harm.
The dead had fought, the earth consumed and tomorrow, my life would become Wyn’s truth.
Hundreds of miles away, I could still feel his pain.
Even unconscious, he was in agony. The tears that fell into the spell as I blended the herbs together were irretrievable and so we would have to share our sorrow, though he would never understand why.
I would never be able to sever the connection between us even if it remained a mystery to him.
Would he feel it, if I tugged on the thread?
Would it confuse him now or make him angry?
I couldn’t say. When he woke, he would believe my lies, but I knew the truth.
I would know it always. And slowly, oh so slowly, it would eat away at me, killing me bit by bit, day by day, knowing the only person I could ever truly love thought me a liar.
Those days would still come, whether I liked it or not. However long I hid up here, the sun would rise and fall, more moons would roll by and I would be needed. A broken-down doll of a girl, carrying the weight of the world on her shoulders.
‘Who will be there when I need them?’ I whispered to no one, breathing in the sweet floral scent of the room. Jasmine. My dad’s favourite because it reminded him of my mom.
I heard the doorbell ring downstairs and ignored it. My work was done for the night. If the clock on the wall kept the correct time, it was two minutes until midnight. No one came with good news at this time of night. Whoever it was could at least wait two minutes, save one problem until tomorrow.
It rang again and I heard doors opening, bedroom and parlour, Ashley and Virginia convening in the foyer, Virginia straightening her hair, Ashley rolling her eyes. Then the front door. Then a pause. The whole house held its breath.
‘Emily?’ I heard Ashley yell, more like a whisper all the way up here. ‘Emily, get down here! You have a visitor.’
As I rolled out of the chair, the clock struck midnight. I didn’t bother to straighten up, slouching out the room, barefoot and tear-stained, no longer caring how the world saw me. What did it matter?
Unless, whispered a little voice that somehow survived in the back of my mind, unless, unless, unless …
She will return.
I picked up my pace, skittering out of my parents’ sitting room and turning the corner to the stairs so quickly, I almost slipped.
They seemed to go on forever, third floor, second floor, the endless staircase eventually delivering me to the foyer where Virginia held herself awkwardly, backed up against the console table.
Ashley clung to the door, white and wild, not sure whether to keep it open or slam it shut.
On the doorstep was a woman. Tall, blonde, blue-eyed. Older than I’d seen her in photographs or visions, but standing right in front of me, very real and very alive.
‘Mom?’
Angelica Bell walked through the door and into Bell House. Our faces were a mirror of surprise, mine tainted with shock, hers tinged with delight.
She smelled like jasmine.
‘Oh, Emma,’ my mother sobbed as she pulled me close, holding me tight. ‘Look at you, you’re all grown up. My baby, just look at you.’
Upstairs, I heard the clock strike midnight.
It was a new day in Savannah.