CHAPTER 9
They were in the sunken rose garden. The sky, moonless. The smell of the river all around. Though the bushes were hunched and slimy as she remembered, this was not the black, rotting stench of the flood. Emma inhaled. It was the green, warm scent of the living river.
Jasper was facing her, still as a panther. His eyes bored into her. Sparks trailed her cheeks, her neck. Over the curve of her collarbone. Lower.
And then the first bud burst. Its insides startling pink.
The rosebushes were blooming. The night air was thick with honey and musk, and still the buds split.
Emma saw them straining against the black sludge of rotted stems. Heads swelling until the stems were bent and pleading.
Then a snap. The first flower fallen, broken by its own weight.
One by one, the roses burst and swelled and dropped, a carpet of pink and red.
Jasper knelt among the falling blooms and held one out to her. Red, deepening to purple at its heart. His eyes never leaving hers, he raised it to his mouth. A droplet of nectar clung to one thick, curving petal, there where his tongue just reached to brush it. Sweetness ran through Emma’s core.
Slowly, Jasper parted his lips until the cavern of his throat showed, hot and dark. He bit into the blossom like a man starved. Emma cried out. She felt his touch as though the petals his teeth grazed were the smooth insides of her own thighs. He bit again, and again. Honey filled her mouth.
His hands pushed her, and she fell, soft, onto the thick bed of rose heads.
Flowers rained around her as Jasper fitted his mouth to hers.
His kiss, his kiss that scraped her skin against the hard gold bristles of his cheeks.
Thorns forced themselves from his tongue, piercing hers.
Emma tasted the salt heat of her blood, rising to meet him.
Falling roses brushed her face. Somewhere, a whispering began.
But she ignored anything that was not this moment, this movement.
Her legs clamped around Jasper. The nectar sang in her blood, a music that soared.
Petals flooded over her eyes, her mouth.
Emma gasped. A tide of roses flowed into her throat.
She choked on their flesh, clawed for a surface that would not come.
The whispers hissed all around her, sinuous and insistent and louder than ever, and her lungs burned, and—
—and Emma woke, a fold of the duvet over her mouth. She tore it from her face, heaving in grateful breaths. The room was still and silver. Outside her tower, rain beat against the window. In the dark of the night, it almost sounded like whispers.
Slowly, her breathing quieted. Four in the morning, her phone told her. Then she saw the message. It had come while she slept.
midnight tomorrow night. meet at the library
the door will be open. trust me you’ll want to be there. J
Emma fell back onto her pillow. Her last thought, before sleep claimed her, was of her tongue. She ran it around her mouth. She tasted blood.
The next night found Emma pushing through the bushes outside the Library. A ticking pulse pounded in her ears. Jasper had said to come at midnight, and so here she was. But it could so easily be a horrible joke, leaving her alone outside a locked door in the dead of night.
But the great doors opened easily under her palm. She padded through the deserted reception, as moonlight shifted over the marble floor. Jasper wasn’t there. No one was.
And then she heard it. Whispers hummed, somewhere deep inside the Library. Her pulse beat harder. Come, they hissed, come to us. Until blood cloaks each step, until bones crumble. Come, little mortal. Come. Emma closed her eyes.
When she opened them again, she was deep among the dark alleys of bookcases. She looked around, confused. The prim little night-light of reception had disappeared. Corridors yawned around her like the mouths of caves.
She took a shuddering breath. She was not lost. There was no reason to panic.
She had come this way because she had been following something.
A sound. Emma wrestled with her memory. It was almost as though someone had been talking to her, although she couldn’t think who, or what they might have been saying.
“Child.” The voice behind her was so sudden, her knees threatened to buckle.
He was there again. The Librarian. Hair standing around his head like a dandelion clock, breathing labored. Emma took a step back.
“You should not be here.” His voice was grave. “Those who wander after dark come to no good.”
“I’m sorry, my friends said to find them—”
“You are with those others?”
So there were others. Relief spread cool fingers through Emma’s chest. Jasper’s text had not been a trick. There was something happening, and he wanted her here. With him.
A knotted hand hovered above her arm. Emma realized the Librarian was trying to guide her down the corridor to her left. “Come. Let us return you to the safe path.”
An odd phrase. Surely all paths were safe. It was only an empty library. The most danger she was in, logically, was from a paper cut. Still, Emma glanced at the darkness over her shoulder. It seemed to have grown thicker, swallowing the nearest bookcases.
Abandoning logic for the moment, Emma broke into a run to catch up with the Librarian. With his steady wheezing beside her, Emma’s pulse settled. She kept within arm’s reach of him, all through the shadowed corridors and galleries.
At last, the Librarian stopped at the foot of a staircase. “You will be safe now. I leave you here. But do not stray again, child.”
Emma felt a tug at her heart as he shuffled into the shadows.
The darkness had not seemed so vast with him there.
She listened as the creaking breaths faded into silence, wishing she did not feel so desperately alone.
There was no sign of anyone else. Not Jasper, not those “others.” She was not even sure she knew the way out.
Slim hands closed around her shoulders. “There you are.”
Emma muffled a shriek. Julia spun her around. “Goodness, you’re as jumpy as I was.”
Jasper appeared behind Julia with a suddenness that made Emma flinch. He was holding the torch of his phone under his chin. The uplighting gave him a ghastly appearance.
“Stop it,” hissed Julia. “Behave.”
Jasper grinned. “The party’s this way. Where’ve you been?”
“I got lost, I think.” The last hour had begun to feel like a dream.
It seemed strange now, how little she’d thought to ask the Librarian.
What had he been doing here so late? Library staff might have to work at night, she supposed.
Archiving, perhaps, or sorting new acquisitions.
But he was surely too old, too frail for that?
And why had that receptionist denied he worked there at all?
Then Jasper ran a hand down her arm, and the thrill of his touch banished her questions. Letting the Librarian fade from her mind, she twined her hand into his.
“How on earth did you get the front doors open?”
“That’s down to Rich.”
A sturdy figure met them at the staircase, twirling a key ring around his finger. “No problem in the end,” Richard said in a plummy whisper. “Said I wanted to stay late to catalogue some new boxes of Cromwell correspondence.”
“The Library’s Military History Society was founded by Rich’s great-uncle.” Jasper trained the phone light in his friend’s eyes. Richard squinted and batted him away. “So Rich gets prime position as student curator. They’re very… trusting with the keys.”
“That’s because I’m responsible,” Richard said, offering his arm to Emma. Jasper passed him the light instead.
“Lead on, then, prick.”
The room Richard led them to was awash with candles and brimming cups on every surface. Light flickered off embossed spines. Emma recognized most of the people from the last party, lounging against the bookcases, swapping gossip and sips of wine.
Her heart sped. She leaned to whisper in Julia’s ear. “Is this ‘the Society’? The one Imogen—”
Julia’s voice was barely above a breath. “Don’t let anyone hear you say that. Jasper bringing you here is a test. The boys are watching you tonight. No, don’t look around.”
Watching her? A slow chill crept down Emma’s back.
“They’ll want to see you’re not a gossip. Try you out.”
“And then?”
“Then? It’s Jasper’s decision; he’s the one that wants you along. But he clearly likes you. And once you’re in on the secret, you’re in.”
“But not in the Society.”
Julia gave a tiny shake of the head. “Men only, I’m afraid.
But as guests, we’re invited to the events.
The secret ones. They’re the most fun. Come.
” She swept Emma across the room with the air of a mother duck.
“Guy, I think you remember Emma? My fantastic fellow for natural sciences. I’m sure you’ll love getting to know her.
” And with a wink, she slipped into the crowd.
Guy Cavendish, of the Windsor Cavendish clan, took a slow sip of his wine. “Friend of Julia’s, eh? Let me place you. Bedales? Cheltenham Ladies’? Milly Fotherington was a Roedean girl, mentioned an Emma Talbot-Weston there—that you?”
Dizzied under the assault of names, Emma pieced together that Guy was asking about schools. More precisely, the most exclusive and expensive boarding schools in England.
Guy rattled on. “Not a boarder? One of the London day school lot, then. Bloody St. Paul’s, of course. The Univ’s swarming with you Paulinas…”
Trying to convince Guy that she had not gone to boarding school, or any fee-paying school at all, would clearly be like trying to turn around a steamroller with a breadstick. Instead, Emma drew herself up in her best imitation of Julia’s poise and redirected the conversation.
“This wine. Such an interesting choice. I wonder what it is.”
That was one thing she remembered about the academic donor dinners she’d been dragged to with her mother.
The richer the donor, the more they yearned to tell you about wine.
As a plant scientist’s daughter, Emma had often been presumed to have more interest than she did in cultivars or chalk soils. It served her well now.
Guy’s face lit up. “Yah, yah. Really has the perfume of a Chateau Margaux, doesn’t it? That gorgeous balance. But it’s actually from a little vineyard at the arse end of the Médoc. Thinking of buying it up, taking this lot out there. You should come. Spend much time in France?”
He wasn’t talking about buying the wine, Emma realized. He was talking about buying the whole vineyard. With as much nonchalance as though they’d been discussing gravy, or Irish dancing.
“Oh, do let her be, Guy.” Venetia Kent stood at Emma’s shoulder. “The new girl’s bored with you already.”
Before Emma could protest, Venetia was pushing her across the room.
“Delivered her for you, gentlemen. Now, where’s my fee?”
One of the two boys waiting by the window tossed Venetia a bag of powder. Atticus Tremaine and Rory Clarke made languid introductions while Venetia tapped a line of white onto the nearest reading desk and made it disappear up her tiny, perfect nose.
“Always with the good stuff, Tremaine.” Venetia stood and traced a finger along one of Atticus’ famous cheekbones.
Emma did not miss the way he flinched. Nor the way that Rory, the supposed future prime minister, hopped out of Venetia’s path as she left.
Venetia might look like a china shepherdess, but she wielded fear like a scalpel.
Even among this perfect constellation of pedigree, privilege, and private banking.
And before Emma turned back to Atticus and Rory, she wondered what that might be like. If she were the one with the power to make people jump out of her way.
But instead, she followed Julia’s lead: smiling, gracious.
She let Atticus and Rory put her through her paces.
Then Philip Cranbottom, and Eddie Spencer with his girlfriend Arabella Lennox.
After that, she lost track of the names.
Always, as she moved around the room, she felt Jasper’s eyes: two points of heat, tracing her back.
But he kept his distance, chatting with Richard. Part of the test, perhaps.
The candles were burning low when Jasper finally slid an arm around her waist. He was looking at something over her shoulder. Emma twisted. Nine boys were dotted around the room. One by one, they nodded.
Jasper raised his glass to Emma’s, his eyes glinting in the candlelight. He never dropped her gaze, not as the crystal touched, not as she took the first sip.
The wine spread across Emma’s tongue, rich as a blackbird’s wing. Perfumed, just as Guy had said. The taste of people who did not buy by the bottle but by the vineyard.
Emma tilted her glass and drained it to the last drop.