Chapter 3 #2
Seth hadn’t said or done anything to frighten her aside from coming out of nowhere.
The rest of this place and its people intimidated her.
So far, Seth felt like the only port open to her in a storm of uncertainty.
She needed to meet with him again. She needed answers to the questions multiplying in her mind with every passing moment she was here.
Petra changed into more practical clothes for a jaunt outside.
She put on a pair of jeans and her running shoes with a somewhat threadbare dark blue hoodie that was among her favorites.
If she was going to have a clandestine meeting in the garden, she might as well be comfortable.
She slipped out of her room and made her way downstairs through the servants’ passages Herr Müller had shown her.
The garden was quiet in the late afternoon light. She followed the winding path back to the oak tree and its hidden bench, half-expecting Seth not to be there, but he was waiting for her, sitting on the bench with a bemused grin on his handsome face.
“You saw the workshop,” he said as she approached. Not a question.
“I saw it.” Petra sat down beside him, keeping a small distance between them. “I don’t understand what I saw, but I saw it.”
“Tell me what you felt.”
Petra looked at him sharply. “Felt?”
“You have instincts,” Seth said quietly. “I can tell. The way you moved through the garden this morning, finding the one spot without cameras. The way you’re sitting right now, angled so you can see both approaches. You pay attention to things most people miss.”
He was right, and that should have been unsettling. Instead, it was oddly refreshing to be seen so clearly.
“It felt wrong,” she admitted. “Evil, almost, though I’m sure that sounds melodramatic.
The silver made me feel sick. The gold was better, but the sheer amount of it felt obscene.
And those rooms where the guests stay…” She shuddered.
“The way they’ve treated those antiques, like they’re nothing. It’s contemptuous. Cruel, somehow.”
Seth nodded slowly. “Your instincts are spot on. What you’re feeling is real, even if you don’t have the context to understand it yet.”
“So, give me the context.” Petra turned to face him fully. “You said you’d explain. I’ve seen the workshop. I’ve felt whatever wrongness is down there. Now tell me what’s really going on.”
He studied her for a long moment, and Petra got the impression he was making a decision that would change everything.
“All right,” Seth said finally. “But you should know that once I tell you this, you can’t unknow it. Your life will never be the same.”
“My life changed the moment Herr Kessler called to tell me about the inheritance,” Petra said. “I think it’s a bit late to worry about keeping things the same.”
Seth smiled slightly, but there was something sad in it. “Fair enough. Let me start with a question. Have you ever wondered why your mother knew things before they happened? Why you sometimes get feelings about people that turn out to be right?”
Petra’s breath caught. “How do you know about my mother?”
“I don’t, specifically. But I suspected. I know the signs. Your family has a touch of magic, Petra. Real magic. Not much. Probably just enough to manifest as intuition or premonition. But it’s there, in your bloodline.”
Magic. He’d said it so calmly, as if discussing the weather.
Petra should have laughed. She should have stood up and walked away from the obvious lunatic.
Instead, she thought about her mother’s text message.
The one that had arrived three hours before the accident, telling Petra exactly where to find the family’s important documents, in case of emergency.
Telling her to be strong. Telling her she loved her.
Her mother had known something bad was going to happen.
“Magic isn’t real,” Petra said, but her voice sounded uncertain even to her own ears.
“It is,” Seth said gently. “And so are the people who use it. Some for good. Some for very, very bad purposes.”
He paused, giving her time to process. Petra’s mind raced, trying to reconcile everything she’d been taught about the world with what he was suggesting.
“The people who were working in that workshop,” Seth continued. “They’re mages. Magic users. And they were using Abdul Kettering’s resources to create objects imbued with dark magic. Artifacts that can harm, control, or kill.”
The silver. The way it had made her feel sick. And all that gold, displayed with such contempt. The wrongness she’d sensed in every corner of that underground space.
“Why?” Petra asked. “Why would they do that?”
“Because they serve someone called Elspeth. She is also known as The Destroyer of Worlds. She’s been banished from this realm, but her followers are working to bring her back. They call their order the Venifucus, and your cousin Abdul was one of their patrons.”
Petra sat very still, absorbing his words. Part of her wanted to reject it all as fantasy, and therefore, impossible. But another part, the part that remembered her mother’s knowing and her grandmother’s warnings about bad people, recognized the truth in what Seth was saying.
“And now I’ve inherited all of this,” she said slowly. “The castle. The workshop. The connection to these Venifucus people.”
“Yes.” Seth’s expression was serious. “They’re going to come back, Petra. And when they do, they’ll expect you to either continue your cousin’s patronage or get out of their way.”
“And if I don’t?”
“Then you become a problem they need to solve.”
The words hung in the air between them, heavy with implications Petra didn’t want to examine too closely.
“You said you were here on behalf of people who had an interest in Kettering’s activities,” she said. “Who are you, really? And what do you want from me?”
Seth took a breath, and Petra could see him weighing his words carefully.
“My name is Seth,” he said. “And I’m not entirely human.”