Only Spell Deep

Prologue

“Do you know who I am, Miss Cole?” the man asks as he lowers himself into the blue vinyl armchair beside my hospital bed.

I shake my head, pressing my lips together so tightly I can feel the blood squeezing out of them. Everything in my skull rattles from the motion. I’ve been slowly adjusting to noise and light, but too much too fast can throw me off-balance.

“My name is Mr. James E. Lampitt. I’m the attorney for your grandfather’s estate and the executor of his will.” He levels his lake-water gaze on me, flat and brown, and my pulse begins to pound out a rhythm of terror against my wrists and temples.

Does he know?

“I imagine you know why I’m here.” His thin lips turn down at their pasty corners.

He’s here to accuse me.

I swallow, pushing my head back into the pillows, drawing the pilled thermal blanket up over my sweating palms. A flash of whiplash orange licks its way up the back of my eyes and I force it down, my stomach souring with the effort.

The fire that devoured my home and destroyed my family—killing my mother and grandfather and all seven of our live-in staff, everyone but me—still rages inside me, hot and hungry.

It likes to surge against the quiet moments, rounding out the contours of my dreams with bubbling black heat and eating away at the edges of my reality until they are blistered and raw. “No,” I manage.

“It’s my job to see to your grandfather’s affairs in the event of his demise,” he tells me. “And your mother’s.”

Relief slackens the muscles in my jaw, causing my fingers to relax their grip. He isn’t here to lay blame at my feet, even if I deserve it. “Oh.”

My mother. A golden ghost now. My eyes sting.

He sets an enormous metal case with a silver handle—could a briefcase be that size?—on his lap, as if to make a point. “As your grandfather and mother have both perished, you are now the only living descendant of Macallister Bates. Do you understand what that means?”

I shake my head again, slowly this time, so as not to stir the flames.

“It means you are the sole inheritor of your grandfather’s estate, Miss Cole.” His expression pinches in the middle, as if this fact causes him great pain.

“Solidago,” I whisper.

He frowns again. “Yes, or what’s left of the house. And much more besides.”

I squeeze my eyes shut and see the waving goldenrod roll past them. A place of tall trees and sea breezes and burnished, brackish beauty. And a place of secrets and horrors and death. I don’t want it.

“I don’t expect you to fully comprehend the scope of what you’re receiving at the tender age of sixteen, particularly under such troubling circumstances, but, suffice to say, your grandfather was an exceedingly wealthy man.

While other arrangements are being made for the oversight and continuation of his corporate operations, you will become the single beneficiary of all his personal holdings—real estate, stocks and shares, things you will grow to understand in time, because this means I work for you now, and I will see to your education in these matters.

” He drums his fingers across the top of his bulletproof case, which on second glance is absurdly large to hold mere papers.

It must contain something else. But what?

I stare at him. The idea of this man as my employee is illogical. We both know who holds all the information, and therefore all the power, in the room.

“Right now, you’re still a minor—a small complication your grandfather never accounted for, but one we will easily overcome thanks to the trust. As you come into possession of his assets, you won’t need the assistance of the state.

You will, in fact, be a ward of the trust. And I, your custodian.

” His fingers, uncharacteristically long, drum across the case again.

“I’m sorry?” My throat is dry despite the constant cups of water and ice chips the nurses bring me. The words sound like they’ve spilled from a gravel mixer.

“It simply means I’ll oversee the details of your …

care. But you will be in possession of the assets, I assure you.

I do not benefit from my position beyond the usual retainer, which your grandfather has already seen to.

So, if you are worried…” He suddenly looks remarkably uncomfortable, stiff and itchy, a red flush creeping its way up his slender neck.

“I mean, if you were wondering where you might go after this, or rather, who would look after you … well, I’m no babysitter, but we can get comfortable arrangements made somewhere safe, in the state of Oregon, of course, until the house is rebuilt. ”

“Rebuilt?” My eyes feel glossy, slick with fear. He can’t mean …

“Yes. Per your grandfather’s instructions, Solidago will be rebuilt according to its original specifications on the exact same site as before.

It’s likely to take more than a year for a house of that size and status, but you’ll have the finest craftsmen working for you.

And when it’s finished, everything will go back to normal.

Well, mostly normal,” he amends, as if the deaths of everyone I know are a mere inconvenience.

Solidago in perpetuity. It is unthinkable. I dig my hands into the mattress and force myself up, the air coming thin and fast in my lungs, tainted with smoke. I can’t keep the reptilian panic from crawling up my throat. “What?”

“Please, miss, relax. I will take care of everything.” He tries to reassure me even as his eyes bulge at my reaction. “Should I call a nurse?”

“No,” I grind out. I don’t want anyone else hearing this. I am alone in the world now, present company excluded, and it’s better that way.

“Okay”—but his eyes dart to the call button all the same.

“I mean no to the house,” I say, refusing to lie back down. “No to Solidago.”

“Miss Cole,” he begins.

“No!”

He jolts. “Please, lower your voice. Don’t panic. We can discuss this calmly.”

“I won’t ever go back there,” I growl.

He purses his lips. “There are conditions, Miss Cole, to the trust. Do you understand what that means?”

“I don’t care.”

He eyes me, speculative. I imagine he finds my outburst petulant, that he dislikes being saddled with the sad offspring of a once-powerful man, now an abiding nuisance in his life.

But he wasn’t there. He hasn’t seen what I have.

He’d understand if he had. “Miss Cole. You are the beneficiary, but you cannot receive any distributions unless and until you accommodate your grandfather’s conditions. ”

I close my eyes and whimper. This can’t be happening.

“There are three,” he tells me. “You must keep your maiden name—Cole—even in the event of marriage,” he says.

“It was important to your grandfather that your grandmother live on in name if not in body. As you know, he resisted giving her his name when they wed to maintain as much of her … original character as possible. And likewise even resisted giving his own child, your mother, his name.”

I shake my head and press my fists into my ears.

My grandfather’s gesture might seem progressive to someone like Mr. Lampitt, but he doesn’t know the obsession behind it.

How he wanted to bottle my grandmother like liniment, preserve her like a specimen in a jar.

How even the conception of his own child—my mother—sent him into a howling rage, watching her body change day by day, knowing he was sharing her, splitting her into slices in his mind like a pie chart.

Later, he would recant his fury and be glad a shining testament to her lived on, a new focus for his affliction.

But I can’t explain these things to the attorney.

“You must conserve Solidago as a legal residence, regardless of any other properties you acquire or occupy,” he continues. “Once it’s reconstructed, of course. And maintain it as closely to its primary state as possible.”

“Please stop,” I whimper.

“And finally … this.” He pops the latches on the case he’s been balancing across his knees.

Lifting the lid, he bids me glance inside.

There, against a lining of black velvet, rests my grandmother’s portrait, the one that once hung over the fireplace in her bedroom, full of grace and malice.

Impossibly, it is untouched by the fire, the canvas tight and snug, the pigments bright and fine, the image cold and unblemished.

He closes the lid again and looks at me. “You must, Miss Cole, take possession of your grandmother’s likeness and hold it for the remainder of your days, willing it to another—preferably a biological descendant—before your own demise.”

I choke out a sound, part groan and part sob. “I can’t.”

“I will have it delivered wherever we decide is best for you to reside until reconstruction is complete,” he says, ignoring me. “Then, we will bring both you and the portrait back home to live at Solidago.”

“No.” This time, I sound strong, resolute.

He sighs. “They are heirlooms, Miss Cole. The house, the painting … Even if you don’t appreciate them now, you will in time. As relics of your family if nothing else. It is a small price to pay for everything you will be acquiring.”

What does he know of the price I’ve paid, will pay now forever? What does he know of family heirlooms, things passed down from one generation to the next, like whispers in the dark? “I won’t,” I clarify.

“Won’t what?” he snaps, a little tense.

“I won’t bear that name or that place or that portrait.” I claw my nails into the mattress beneath me, feeling the scratchy sheets strain against them. My knuckles scream.

Carefully, he latches the case. “Then you will have no money, no people, and no place to live. You will be an orphan, Miss Cole—a ward of the state. You will enter the foster system where you will be shipped from one dysfunctional house to another, suffering one abuse after another, if you are lucky enough to be fostered at all. And when you turn eighteen, you will be unceremoniously dumped on the street with nowhere to go and no way to get there.”

I glare at him.

He holds up his hands. “In one hand I am holding everything you could ever dream of. In the other, your worst nightmare. You choose, Miss Cole. I’d say the choice is easy.”

Unfortunately, he has it crossed. The hand he thinks is full of dreams is a one-way ticket to hell. The hand he imagines to be a nightmare is my path to freedom. “What happens if I don’t accept?”

He looks at me as if I’ve spoken in a dead language.

“If you refuse to abide by your grandfather’s terms, then your holdings will remain just that—holdings.

They will sit and they will grow, but you won’t have access to them until you take up Mr. Bates’s rules.

The same will go for your children, should you have any. ”

“So, it’s still mine?” I ask.

“Technically but not practically. It will exist in legal limbo.”

I take a breath, try to steady myself.

He looks tired suddenly, his face falling.

“Look, Miss Cole, I know you don’t know me from Adam.

But believe me when I tell you, you want to accept.

You do not want to be alone in the world, subject to the state government and all its defunct systems. Things can’t end well for you that way.

In fact, they can go very, very badly. I know you’ve endured a trauma, and this is a lot to absorb.

But I’m begging you—don’t make things harder for yourself than they already are.

The money is a comfort, trust me. It cannot bring your family back, but it can keep you off the streets, keep you safe and fed.

And later, when you’re ready, it can do so much more—education, travel, whatever you desire.

A life most people can’t even fathom. Don’t throw it all away. ”

I turn from him. “Please leave.”

When he hovers on the edge of his seat, refusing to budge, I jab at the call button to ask for a nurse. “Go. Before I have them throw you out.”

He sighs. “I’ll give you some time to think it over, but I will return. It’s for your own good, Judeth.”

“No, it’s not,” I tell him. Taking my grandfather’s money, abiding by his terms, would be worse than death. Not just for me, for everyone. “If you come back, I’ll tell you no again and again and again. I won’t do what he’s asking. Not if you offered me the whole world.”

“Things will begin to move very quickly from here,” he says quietly, placing a hand on my ankle as he stands.

“I can’t stop them, not without what we discussed.

But I will be watching you, Judeth. I have to.

And when you change your mind—which you will—please reach out.

” He lays a plain business card on my hospital tray.

At the door, he turns. “Your grandfather was a titan, a good man. I’m very sorry for your loss.”

My eyes burn into his. “My grandfather was a monster.”