Chapter Fourteen
CHAPTER
Fourteen
THE ENTRYWAY OF the estate is a setting from every period film Cassandra’s ever watched: dark wood wainscoting, rich oil paintings depicting various severe ancestors, a burgundy carpet runner that climbs up a central staircase.
Ordinarily, this must be a bright, airy hall, but with vines blocking out most of the light, the room is tinted in a stifling green.
She yawns, fighting off a sudden weariness. Instead, she listens hard between the estate’s creaks and sighs for the telltale whisper of ink magic. Something thunders distantly below their feet; the vines, most likely, breaking through the foundations.
“Mr. Templeton,” Lowell calls out. “We’ve come from Sharpe’s.”
His voice echoes underneath the vaulted ceiling, but there’s no reply.
Cassandra yawns again. Lowell snaps his fingers in front of her face. Instantly, her drowsiness vanishes, replaced by indignant anger.
“What the hell?” she demands.
“We’re in the vicinity of the reading,” he says, as though she’s an idiot. “Weren’t you listening?”
“Not particularly.”
Lowell pinches the bridge of his nose. “I should have come alone. Christ, just—” He visibly composes himself. “Okay, as I said before, this is clearly a Briar Rose variant: roses, thorns, enchanted sleep, et cetera. So stay close to me, and don’t fall asleep—or you might not wake up.”
Cassandra hurries after him as he strides towards the staircase, taking the stairs two at a time. Without checking, he takes a left, under a grand archway, then right through a servants’ door.
“You’ve been here before,” she says.
“For a valuation of their collection, yes.”
A thought occurs to Cassandra. “I bet they were really nice to you,” she says. “They probably asked you to stay for dinner, maybe offered you a weekend in a holiday house somewhere. Gratis, of course, because you were doing such a service for them.”
Lowell’s mouth tightens.
“Then, once you’d eaten their expensive food and drunk their expensive wine, they would have mentioned the loss of the family heirloom. How terrible and tragic. How easy it would be for you to do this one favour for them.”
“I’m not a fool. I knew what they were doing,” he snaps.
Cassandra can guess the rest. Another visit to Sharpe’s under some pretence, a distraction, the theft.
But they’d gone about it too quickly, unused to biding their time when money failed to pay for results.
If they were smart, they would have scoped Lowell out before, maybe hired someone else to request another book—and they would have learnt immediately that he couldn’t be bribed.
Then the theft, orchestrated by another hired party, and ideally with a handful of other books, so the chapbook would be harder to trace back to the family. If she’d done it—
But she’s not supposed to be thinking like that anymore. With effort, she turns her mind back to the problem in front of her.
“And no, I didn’t stay for dinner,” Lowell adds.
On the upper floors, the reading is in full force. Green tendrils clamber across ornamental columns and family portraits, swallowing chaises longues and choking hallways. Every thorn feels deliberately sharper, as though it can sense their intentions.
Cassandra stifles a yawn, then another one. She gives herself a pinch, and then for good measure, Lowell. He yelps.
“We’re running out of time,” she says. “I can feel it. Can’t you?”
“Yes, I can feel it,” he says, rubbing his arm.
As they reach the top floor, Cassandra catches the whisper of the reading. She pauses, just a half second before Lowell stops in front of an ornate door made impassable with thorns. Ink stains the leaves, pooling over the floor. Lowell touches it to his lips, and spits it out almost instantly.
“There’s blood mixed in,” he says quietly.
Cassandra goes very still. Suddenly, she’s not here at all, but somewhere else entirely. A room, a crowd around her, tasting blood on her lips. A scream that isn’t hers. And then—
If they open that door, they’re only going to find death.
She wants to tell him not to open it, that they’re better off turning around now. But her mouth can’t seem to make the right shape for the words.
Instead, she watches as Lowell pulls out, of all things, a letter opener. He tests the tip of it with his thumb, and apparently satisfied, he slashes the nearest vine. Immediately, the vine gives way, scattering ink across the floor.
The language in Cassandra’s head shrieks, and she winces.
“It’s not real,” Lowell says, mistaking her grimace for concern. “You can’t hurt what was never corporeal to begin with. But,” he adds, pushing the door open, “it’s very much capable of hurting us. Mind yourself.”
Cassandra would argue with him, but she can’t keep the memory out of her head. Every line taut in her body, she follows him.
The first thing she sees is green, and then—the bodies.
Her breath sticks in her throat. Three of them, slumped in various poses.
The first two are near the door, as though each had tripped on their way out, and simply decided not to get up.
George Templeton and his wife, Cassandra guesses.
Both far too pale, too still. Lowell kneels down next to them, checking their pulses.
“The vines are—I mean, the story is feeding on them,” he says, and she doesn’t miss the slight slur of his words, or the way he fights to keep his eyes open. “But they’re alive—just.”
Not death, not a repeat of that night. Just fairy-tale slumber. Cassandra exhales in a rush.
The young daughter of the Templetons is asleep on the bed, her hair fanning out around her head in golden tendrils.
Roses creep over the edge of her body, hardening to spiky thorns as they assume a protective barrier around her.
Her hands are rigid around a small, poorly bound chapbook, the pages yellowed with age and crinkled.
A breathy whisper escapes from her lips.
The reader, though in literal name only; it’s clear she’s no longer in control, if she ever was to begin with.
The story is a roar in Cassandra’s head, compulsion stronger than anything Roth could have attempted.
Lie down.
Feed us.
Sleep.
Cassandra glances at Lowell, but she can’t tell whether he can hear the magic woven through the narrative. Or whether the room is silent to him, just a rustle of leaves and the daughter’s whispering and that strange, compelling desire to sleep.
“I hate fairy tales,” Lowell mutters.
“You could read over it,” she suggests. “If we find another book—”
“I’m not risking that.” Lowell surveys the scene before him. “Anyway, there’s an easier solution.”
He pushes his way past the thicket of greenery to the bed.
Cassandra follows, trying to ignore the stabbing thorns.
The Templeton daughter is even more beautiful close up, her hair the colour of light, her cheeks flushed with a rosy glow.
The story, deeming it appropriate, has dressed her in the Victorian notion of a medieval gown.
A crown of white rosebuds slowly grows around her head.
For a moment, both Cassandra and Lowell simply look at her.
Lowell sighs. “Nothing else for it.”
Briskly, he leans down and kisses the daughter on the lips. In the same motion, his hands close over hers, gently tugging the chapbook away.
Cassandra barely sees more than the soft crown of his head, his body one dark line against the verdant background. For a second, the image freezes into a pre-Raphaelite vision of knight and princess, hero and heroine. Something in Cassandra’s chest twinges.
Then Lowell pulls upwards and tucks the chapbook into his jacket pocket. There’s a soft, sleepy groan from the daughter. Grimacing, he wipes his mouth with the back of his hand.
“It could have been a frog,” Cassandra reminds him, mostly serious.
Lowell looks at her darkly. “Please don’t.” Then he glances at the daughter. “She’s awake.”
All around them, thorny vines melt into a viscous black substance. Ink drips onto the floorboards, before melting away. Light floods into the room from unobstructed windows, brilliant and blinding.
The daughter yawns and stretches. “I—I was reading… and then…” Her eyes clear, and haughtiness creeps into her voice. “Who are you?”
“Get up,” Lowell says, hauling the older Templetons to their feet.
Though they both look pale and jittery, they’re strong enough to stand and cling to one another. Alive. It takes Cassandra a second to realise that the giddy, floating feeling overwhelming her is relief.
Alive.
“There were vines. Where… did they go?” the daughter says, looking at the pristine floor, no trace of ink remaining.
Without thinking, Cassandra replies, “The river.”
Already its melodic murmur is fading, power slinking away. Back to nothing more than an echo of possibility.
“There’s no river here—” the daughter complains.
“Never mind about that,” Lowell says. “Downstairs, now.”
Their journey back is a lot more straightforward, with no vines to bar their way and no enchanted sleep to succumb to.
The younger Templeton is already losing remnants of the spell: her hair is no longer a fairy-tale gold, but plain brown; her features regain their resemblance to her parents, distinctly less rosy; the elaborate medieval dress falls away to reveal a crop top and yoga pants.
Just an ordinary teenager. But how close she’d come to disaster.
As they reach the entrance, the reading’s damage becomes more obvious.
Cracks spider their way through the marble tile, and a chilly breeze scatters shredded curtains amongst broken glass.
George Templeton surveys the mess with an increasingly icy demeanour.
It doesn’t escape Cassandra’s notice that he seems to have regained enough energy to argue with Lowell.
“I hope you understand that we are choosing not to bring a damages claim, Mr. Sharpe,” he says sternly.
Something in Lowell’s posture changes, and Cassandra has the pleasure of witnessing Mr. Sharpe inflicted on someone else.