16. A New Leaf
A NEW LEAF
Icrawl into bed feeling like a wrung out rag.
Today was a catastrophe. Kate won’t speak to us.
Twig is distraught about it. Harper is hurt and confused.
Naomi is still in shock. Jude is somewhere in Seattle.
And I’m filled with regret. Why did I throw that skeleton key into the well?
How hard would it be to retrieve it from the bottom?
My phone vibrates with a message from Jude.
Hey. You’ve been quiet. All good?
My stomach twists.
All good. Just a hard day.
Scrolling ellipses appear.
I quickly type some more before he can send me something that will only make my stomach twist tighter.
Thinking of you and your grandpa. Don’t worry about me here. XOXO.
I hit send and close my eyes. Lying to Jude doesn’t feel good, but interrupting his final days with his sick grandfather would feel worse.
As much as I’m dying to tell him about Lainey and Griffin, to talk through this latest and most alarming puzzle piece, I refuse to do it.
There’s nothing he can do about the situation, and there will be plenty of time to tell him when he returns.
I swap my phone for the journal on my nightstand.
Property of Simon Vandenberg, with my fingerprints all over the pages.
The early entries are thick with loneliness.
Simon didn’t have any friends.
Just his sister, and his tutors, and his books.
But then my mother showed up—a foster kid, new to town, spending her free time in the library reading The Great Gatsby. She had to have been just as lonely. Which is probably why they connected so deeply. Simon’s feelings are certainly intense.
I yawn and turn the page.
His love sounds like the wild things in my mother’s favorite picture book. Like he could eat her up, he loved her so.
At the moment, I can relate.
I miss Jude so much, my stomach aches.
You woke a great hunger. Now it will hunt.
Was Mistress Bramble directing those words at me, or were they part of her story?
We woke up Seraphina.
But Seraphina is gone.
The curse destroyed her, and in her destruction, the curse was destroyed.
My eyes grow heavy, but my mind continues to churn.
De Vrat and his Zwarte Muil.
A consuming spirit and his hounds.
Hunting.
Consuming.
I turn over, reach beneath my bedside lamp, and pull the string.
The room goes dark.
But my thoughts are wide awake.
Somewhere on the northwest coast, Jude Vandenberg visits his dying grandfather.
His mother’s dad. Why didn’t Jude live with him after his father died?
Why did he get stuck with Isabel? But then, maybe this grandfather didn’t want Jude, given the way his daughter met her end—right after giving birth to his grandson.
The curse in action. I dreamt of it before I knew about it.
Me, a descendant of Seraphina, destined to break the curse she cast.
I think of all the things that happened to bring that destiny into fruition.
Luke Vandenberg dying. His grandson inheriting the estate.
Rafe convincing Isabel to move across the sea.
Jude, dragged along. Me, already here. Because my mother disappeared and we needed a fresh start, so we moved to Foggy Hollow with no idea that she was here, too, once upon a time.
Was she really chased through the woods, pursued by a snarling beast, or was that simply the workings of my overactive imagination? I’d been thinking about her before the vision struck. Trying to say goodbye, to let her go.
It’s why I threw the key into the well.
Which unlocks the crypt beneath St. Fortuna’s.
With amulets and journals and the remains of Seraphina’s locket and Ezra’s Obsession, a centuries-old portrait that brought Jude and I together.
Now he’s far away, tending to a different grandfather.
I pull the covers tight to my chest, my stomach twisting with longing and love and a deep desire to see him. If I thought very hard about the sensation, it would almost feel like hunger.
Twigs snap. A chorus of snarls and yips tear through the trees. Giant paws pound the forest floor as I lead the way, sweeping through the woods, my hunger a gnawing, primal ache. Her auburn hair flashes as she sprints ahead, tearing through vines and branches.
A howl splits the night.
She looks over her shoulder, her face a mask of terror.
Then she trips and falls and I’m falling, too.
Falling through nothing.
Scrambling for something.
Falling.
Falling.
Into the dark.
Into the cold.
Landing hard on my back.
Someone coughs nearby.
Someone with auburn hair.
Her skin is pale. Her dirty face, streaked with tears.
My mother.
So beautiful.
So thin.
Black sinew binds her wrists and ankles, but even if it didn’t, I don’t think she would try to get away. She looks too weak to move. The sight of her so close fills my heart with love and sadness and anger and desperation. A helpless rage to get out.
Get out, get out, get out.
Get out with her.
Get out before it’s too late.
“I came back for her,” she says, her ravaged voice but a whisper. “I was going to apologize. I wanted to make things right.”
I want to howl at the injustice of it.
Burn the world for what it has done—to her, to us.
A tear tumbles down her cheek as she turns to look at me. “Oh, Simon.”
Sucking in a sharp breath, I jerk upright in bed.
My heart thuds against my sternum.
My pulse pounds in my ears.
And the rage—that helpless rage—continues to swirl.
It was a dream.
Just a dream.
But the residue remains.
My mother was a prisoner.
She was trapped and bound.
Alongside Simon Vandenberg.
He was imprisoned with her.
Something glows in the periphery of my vision.
I turn toward the window.
But the glowing thing is not the stars or the moon.
It’s a leaf.
A stalk has sprouted from the sour cream container, unlike any flora I have ever seen.
I throw off my covers and get out of bed.
With my breath caught in my throat, I ease onto the window seat. The tall, slender stalk is pitch black, wrapped in red, thorny vines as delicate as blood vessels. Halfway up, a skeletal leaf has sprouted, twinkling like starlight.
Very slowly, I reach out and touch it.
My mother’s voice echoes from the dream.
I came back for her.
I wanted to make things right.
Oh, Simon.
A shock of heat zaps my skin.
With a yelp, I jerk back and clasp my fingers.
When I look again at the plant, the skeletal leaf is no longer glowing.
It’s as dark as the night outside.