Chapter IV #2
While her brother explored the new space, Vic hesitated, then chased after her strange new acquaintance.
“Max, wait!” She jogged to catch up with him.
He turned with his eyebrows raised. “Yes, Victoria?”
She drew up beside him and paused. “What does the Order do, exactly?”
“Did Nathaniel not explain this when he visited?” Max asked.
“He didn’t explain anything to me,” Vic said.
“The Order maintains the balance between the world of the living and the realm of the dead. The Veil keeps the two worlds separate, but it’s like a complex membrane.
Sometimes things that don’t belong in our world manage to cross.
That’s why the Order was formed, to strengthen the Veil when it weakens. ”
Vic fought to keep up. “What happens if the Veil breaks down?”
Max paused with a finger on his chin. “I suppose without a boundary the worlds would blur together. The dead would walk among the living, killing freely. It would be cataclysmic.” He said it casually, like an academic prospect—an interesting idea worthy of discussion over dinner and drinks, rather than a horrifying potential future best avoided at any cost.
“And my mother, she was a part of this?” Vic asked.
Max’s brow wrinkled as he watched her. “Meredith Wood became a member the same year I did. Her death was a terrible tragedy.”
“What happened to her?” Vic said.
“Stay, Victoria,” he said. “And find out for yourself.”
With that, Max nodded good night and left Vic alone in the hallway.
Her mind swam as she approached the apartment.
When they’d left for the castle two days ago, Vic’s best hope was that this was some kind of joke.
That they’d wander the Northeast for a few days before Henry realized he’d been duped, that magic was, of course, made up, and that they could return to life as it was before.
But as Vic had watched the castle blossom from the darkness, she realized her worst fear lay in front of her.
Henry would enroll, he’d train, and he’d become different from her, as different as her mother had always been.
Vic would be cast out, without her brother and alone in the world.
And her mother. A curiosity Vic had long repressed flared to life. What had Meredith done to end up here? And why had she left it behind?
Had this place killed her, or was something—someone—else to blame?
The apartment door opened into a decent-sized living space, with a sitting area before a stone fireplace on one side and a kitchenette and breakfast room on the other.
The table was set with two dishes under domed silver covers.
Steam billowed when Vic lifted one to reveal a plate laden with chicken breast, asparagus, and a baked potato, as well as a glass of wine and cutlery.
Vic grunted and replaced the cover, uncomfortable with the prospect of mystery food appearing hot and ready in front of her.
Henry, on the other hand, threw himself into the opposite seat with a mumbled “I’m starving.” Vic stopped him with a hand on his arm, not sure if the food was safe to eat. He leveled a flat stare at her. “They would not bring me all the way here to poison me.”
He was probably right. More likely, if the Order was planning something nefarious, they would wait until they’d extracted whatever they wanted from him.
Vic removed her hand and perched on the seat beside him. She watched her brother dig in through narrowed eyes.
Henry groaned as he bit into his chicken. “You have to try this, it’s delicious,” he said around a mouthful.
“How did you turn out so trusting? I practically raised you.”
“Exactly,” Henry agreed, waving his fork for emphasis. “So I saw firsthand it never did you a lick of good to be so suspicious of everybody all the time.”
“Criticize me all you want, but we’re alive, aren’t we?”
Henry laughed to himself as he ate. Vic picked at her food before taking a cautious bite of the chicken.
“It’s good,” Henry said. “Admit it.”
“It needs garlic,” Vic said, and he rolled his eyes.
After she finished eating, Vic cleared her dishes and looked around the apartment.
On the other side of the main room sat a heavy armchair and a love seat in front of the hearth.
A low fire burned behind the grate. Most of the walls were papered a deep red, although one displayed bare stone.
It was cozy and more than a little medieval.
Again, Vic marveled at the relative youngness of the castle.
Creating a scene like this was intentional.
Someone had meant to conjure images of feudal castles, of lords and ladies and ill-fated peasants and the academia of old, although expanded by a few sizes and accompanied by the modern comforts of electricity and forced-air heating.
Vic wondered why they’d gone to the trouble.
At the back of the apartment she found two bedrooms, each with its own en suite. That was an upgrade—back home, she and Henry shared a bathroom.
Vic jolted when she saw her suitcase on a luggage rack in the second bedroom.
How had they gotten into the car? How had they beaten her and Henry to the room?
But Vic shook the questions from her mind. She knew witches lived in the castle. She knew they used magic to do things she didn’t understand yet. She had to stop being surprised by the simple stuff and focus on what mattered.
A wooden four-poster bed occupied the center of the room, matching a similarly opulent chest of drawers. Thick carpets lay one over another atop the stone floor. An upholstered chair and a table sat before a window concealed behind heavy drapes—red, like the rest of the room.
Vic caught sight of herself in a gilded mirror hanging in the hallway and released an audible groan.
“You good?” Henry called from the kitchen.
“No. I’m mad at you for not telling me I look like a tumbleweed,” she called.
Henry’s head popped over the back of his chair as he twisted to look at her. “I like your hair,” he decided after a quick appraisal. “You look like Medusa.”
“That is not the compliment you think it is.”
Vic returned to the mirror and patted down the errant curls. Her reflection looked different in a golden frame. She looked almost stately, frowning into such an expensive thing.
Inspecting the row of books on the mantel, Vic found they were for show rather than substance. Hardback copies of boring books—the kind people bought in box sets with no intention of breaking their spines. She wanted books on the Order, or on magic more generally, but no such luck.
“What did you say to that Elder earlier?” Henry asked from behind her.
“I asked about Mom.”
“What did he say?”
Vic hesitated, then said, “Nothing interesting.”
“Are you really thinking about staying?” When she only shrugged, he came to stand behind the couch. “You’re worried you won’t be able to get your old job back?”
After her disappearance in the middle of a shift last week, the restaurant owner had yelled at her. Vic had yelled back. It hadn’t ended well.
“To be honest, I hadn’t thought about that at all,” Vic said. She wasn’t sure she wanted to go back. It had been years since she’d grown tired of the routine monotony of restaurant life. Nathaniel’s questioning last week hadn’t helped.
“You could do something else,” Henry suggested.
“Have any ideas?”
“You could get a job at the dojo?”
Vic liked fighting, probably more than she liked anything else. It was her escape, her obsession. She wasn’t sure if she wanted to turn that into a job.
Vic shrugged again and twisted to face her brother. “How are you feeling about this place?” she asked.
“Excited?” he said with a cautious smile. “I remember everything Mom said about me being special, me having purpose. For a long time I kind of wrote it off, but now I feel like it might be true.”
“She said you were destined for great things,” Vic said.
“This has to be what she meant, right?”
“Right,” Vic agreed absentmindedly.
“We’ll see tomorrow, won’t we?” Henry asked, a sigh in his voice.
Vic nodded as he left for the bedroom, and she stared into the flames as they danced.
She wondered what that felt like, to feel destined, to feel like she was in the right place.