Chapter 32
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
A fter navigating through the weird illusions and taking the long road through the woods, we pulled up in front of the weird green Victorian house.
I got out and rang the bell, half expecting it to sound either like a gong or a foghorn.
Instead, it was more of a clock’s chime.
A man destined to play basketball opened the door.
He must have been six-eight or six-nine.
Taller than Wald. His long, dour face was offset by bushy eyebrows and puffy lips.
He stepped back and allowed me to walk past him.
I still hated the smell of the place, wood and incense with the lingering animal musky thing, plus a whiff of old man’s cologne.
“Mason, Wald’s in the trunk, can you have him brought in please?” Britannia asked the door-greeter, pushing past me.
Victoria was already descending the stairs in a tight-skirted lilac suit that could have been made anywhere in the last fifty years. Classic. Her face was whiter than her pristine outfit.
“Victoria?” Britannia’s voice was brittle .
“Britannia, do you have the album?” Victoria asked, her shoulders locked tight as if a rod were holding her up.
Britannia flipped open the messenger bag and pulled out Agatha’s photo album.
Victoria had made it to the bottom of the stairs but didn’t approach Britannia.
Instead, she looked at me, her perfectly outlined eyes glistening.
“This way.” Victoria led us down a hallway with green paisley wallpaper to a part of the house I hadn’t seen.
She swung open the third door on the left and motioned me to go in first.
My eyes adjusted to the pitch black room.
It wasn’t black; it was mirrored on every surface.
The room had a mirrored table in the center.
The mirrors were in an ordered pattern of fragments.
Like a giant broken mirror fitted back together.
Victoria had returned to the threshold. I twirled, seeing the dim fractured reflections.
The images of me held stringy hair, dried blood, and a vomit-crusted dress hem.
“Why are they all broken?” I asked. God, I could use a shower.
“The album?” she said to Britannia, who was still out in the hall. Britannia held out the album but moved toward me. Victoria blocked her from entering the room with her body.
“Just the album, you can wait out here. I’ll call you when we’re done.”
“But she…” Britannia’s voice trailed off as Victoria closed the door in her face and switched on a light.
The smug satisfaction I got from that was wrong, but it gave me a warm, golden feeling. The one light was a blindingly bright downlight over the mirrored table. I shielded my eyes.
Victoria set the album down on the tabletop. She was almost as tall as me, but slim and fine boned with an elegance that seemed to radiate from her. She turned to me with a smile that was all business. “Do you have the artifact I sent to Agatha?”
I nodded and pressed my hand to my cleavage.
“Don’t touch it yet. Things have to be in order. Am I correct that your blood has been used on this album before?”
“Yes,” I replied, my voice far less stable than I expected. How she knew that was creeping me out. I was terrified to look at the mirrors.
“Then you still have a connection to it, good.”
I was feeling a little like I was answering a doctor’s questions. “What are you going to do with it?” I nodded at the album.
“I am going to do nothing. You are going to ask Agatha for assistance.”
My stomach churned. “Hell no. The last time I talked to Agatha she almost killed me. And the time I connected with the album, the smoke thing almost pulled me into it. I want nothing to do with that thing.” I started to walk to the door.
“If you wish for Wald’s restoration, then you will have to make a different choice.” Victoria’s sharpness resounded in my head as if her words were my thoughts.
“Restoration? What does that mean?” I asked, turning and brushing hair away from my face.
“Wald can be returned from his passing. Britannia healed his human form, so he can be reconnected to it, but it has to be done from the other side.”
“And why would they do that for me? I’m nothing to them. They’re your family.”
“Because you have something of theirs to trade.”
My hand moved over my breast where the marble was tucked into my bra. “You mean the marble? The marble is theirs?”
Victoria nodded. “The artifact belongs to another place and to the family. I sent it to Agatha so she might return it to the passings. But now it appears you will have to use it to bargain with.”
“But the ring is in the marble.”
“Ah, I expected it might be. Did Agatha repair it?”
“No.”
Victoria brushed invisible lint from her shoulder. “That is unfortunate.”
“Look, if I’m going to stay here, then tell me exactly how this works, and exactly what will happen when you open the book, or I open it, or whatever.” I was getting my answers upfront this time.
“I have no idea, my dear. This is not my field of expertise.”
“Hang on, you have no idea? Fuck no. I’m not opening that book. I could fucking die, and I wouldn’t get the ‘passing’ deal. I’d be the dead kind of dead.”
“Not if you wear the ring, darling. They can’t break your connection with the present world or touch your form if you’re wearing the ring.”
“But the ring is broken.”
“It can’t turn back time, but it can be worn. Even broken things can hold magic.” She glanced behind me at a section of mirror pieces. “Mason, bring Wald in.”
I whipped around to see where Victoria was looking and got a full reflection. The vomit-crusted sundress was in tatters, and the wild frizzled mess of my hair was straight out of a horror movie where the heroine keeps running from the killer.
The wall opened, and Mason wheeled Wald in on a gurney. First off, I wondered why they had a gurney, and second, why the wall had a concealed door. Where did it lead to? There were far too many secrets in this house and in this family. When all was said and done, I’d be well rid of them.
I choked back a sob I hadn’t realized I’d made out loud. Victoria turned to me, her perfect pink lips curled up on the side. I looked for other pieces of Wald in her features but not finding them. But of course, she wasn’t really his mother.
“It’s all right, dear. He’s dead. He can’t hurt you.”
I glanced at Wald’s prone form and then looked up at Mason. Victoria wasn’t talking about Wald.
M ason left Wald in the middle of the room and then returned to the wall, disappearing through the door.
My brain tried to catch up to the dead-man-walking label.
Was he really a zombie? He didn’t look like a zombie, but I didn’t fricking know what a zombie looked like.
I’d never met one in real life. Maybe he was something entirely different.
“Good luck,” Victoria said, opening the main door.
“Wait, no. You can’t leave me here.” I raced toward her, crushing the urge to grab at her suit jacket so she couldn’t walk away.
She stopped on the threshold. “If we want Wald back, there will have to be sacrifices.”
I didn’t like the sound of that one bit, but I did want him back. How much was bouncing around my head like a ping-pong ball.
The door clicked shut behind her, leaving me staring at my broken reflection. I’m not a huge fan of looking at myself in the mirror, but the other options were Wald’s dead cold body and the goddamned family album.
I sucked in a breath for courage and got a whiff of leather.
Choking back tears, I went to Wald and knelt beside him.
There was no breath. No heat. My fingers wavered an inch from the smoothness of his chest. What was I doing?
He was dead. They could call it whatever they wanted to, but this man, or creature, or monster, or whatever he was, was dead.
His cool waxy skin was fur-soft under my fingers as I brushed his cheek. I’d partially hoped my touch, or my warmth, or something would wake him up. Maybe I should kiss him like in the movies.
His eyebrows slanted toward his temples, and his forehead was wide and smooth.
His face tapered to a square chin, the long wide nose ended in a thin upper and a lush lower lip.
Velvet. My fingers hovered over them, my throat tight and dry.
He was handsome even in death. But the thing that made him Wald was gone.
His spirit or soul or life force wasn’t here anymore; there was only this body.
This dead empty body. I jerked my hand back, and tears flowed down my cheeks.
Collapsing on his chest, I sobbed over him, the scent of his skin now dusty. Everything we’d been through dropped on me. I swam in the memories of pain and kisses, fighting to get to the surface.
When I couldn’t cry any more, I sat up and wiped my face with the back of my hand and used the inside of the destroyed skirt to blow my nose.
If there had been anything to change into, I would have.
Wald was dead, and no one cared how I looked.
I choked back another sob. No one cared about me.
There was just me. Meeting Wald had changed me.
I felt things: trust, protection, desire—love.
My tears had beaded on his skin, and my cheeks fired with rage. The bastard had tried to save me. Multiple times. He’d trusted me. He believed in me. I’d killed him, and I had to try something, anything .
With the resolve of someone out of their mind with grief, I strode over to the table and opened the book. Smoke poured out of it with a screech.
Nine hells. The fucking ring. I needed the ring.
My hand closed around the marble about the same time Frank whipped around the room looking for me. I ducked as he swooped, with my heart pounding in my ears.