Chapter 21
ROTTEN BLOOD
Jude’s BMW idles in a fog that swirls and shifts like a dancing troupe of pale ghosts. October has arrived like a whole mood.
I open the passenger door and slide inside, unsure what to expect. Thankfully, the wounded young man from yesterday is gone. Jude looks at me over the top of his sunglasses with a heartbreaking grin. “I got you a belated birthday gift.”
He hands me a leather-bound journal with the initials I.V.
stamped in the lower right corner. Isaiah Vandenberg, original author of the family tree, son of the scorch mark, survivor of the train crash.
A man who was born into the Gilded Age and died just after the Roaring Twenties.
The journal itself is nothing novel. We’ve looked through many just like it.
What’s new is Jude’s excitement.
“Check out March third,” he says.
I thumb through the pages. Each entry is short and to the point. The year is 1927, which means Isaiah only had three more left to live before he would die in the same bank robbery that would leave his son, Enoch, with one eye.
I stop on the entry in question and begin to read out loud. “My second-born son, Daniel, is lost to me. Led astray by his wretched cousin, lured into vice and ruin. Can blood be evil? Lucian sought to tempt me in my grief …”
My voice trails off.
Lucian.
One of the disconnected names on Raphael’s side of the Vandenberg Family Tree. Followed by Reuben, Frank, and Thomas, names given to the police by Jude’s grandfather in the Vandenberg cold case.
I look at Jude.
He nods for me to keep reading.
“Lucian sought to tempt me in my grief. Now his son, Reuben, has ensnared mine. My wife weeps. Enoch rages. I am powerless.”
I look at Jude again. “Reuben.”
Jude reaches across the console to turn a few pages. “Read this one, here.”
The entry is marked April 5, 1927.
“Daniel has returned. I am certain something dreadful befell him in his time away. He speaks little and refuses to say what transpired. But he has severed ties with Reuben, and for that, I am grateful. I can only pray that in time, he will find his way back to himself.”
I turn back to the previous entry and blink at the page.
Can blood be evil?
The question makes my skin prickle.
“Remember those letters in Enoch’s trunk?” I say. “They were bound together with twine? I think they might have been from Daniel.”
Enoch’s younger brother, who was briefly led astray by Rueben.
We’re getting nowhere with the portrait.
Perhaps we can get somewhere with this, a clue in the cold case. A mystery that captivated my attention from the moment I moved to town.
Jude shifts into drive. “Let’s look at them after school.”
It’s raining outside. It’s been raining most of the day—a dreary drizzle that ran down the window panes at school, and now runs down the window panes on the estate’s third floor.
Last time I came here, I got horrendously sick afterward. I don’t actually believe it had anything to do with the dusty cloak I donned for the majority of my visit. Even so, I give the wardrobe a wide berth.
Jude and I remove the bundle of letters from Enoch’s trunk. Sure enough, the vast majority are from Daniel, Enoch’s younger brother. We divvy them up in search for more information about their wretched cousin, Rueben.
Jude settles into a regal, high-backed armchair.
He sits in the shadows with his ankle crossed over his knee, skimming one correspondence at a time.
Meanwhile, I set up camp near the window.
I sit on the floor in a child’s pose, propped up on my elbows as I read the letters I’ve spread across a rug beneath the dim, gray glow of a dreary afternoon.
Raindrops patter the roof.
“What are you doing this Friday?” I ask, shifting my weight as my attention moves to a different letter.
Jude lowers his stack.
“There’s a bonfire at the quarry. It’s an annual tradition. A sort of kickoff to October. You should come.”
“Why?”
“Because it’ll be fun. An opportunity to socialize with the local teens. A chance to make some new friends.”
He quirks his eyebrow.
“And I’ll be there.”
“Well, then. If you’ll be there.”
I can’t see his mouth, but I think he might be smiling.
With a flutter in my chest, I smile back.
Then I return to the letters, and come to a quick halt.
“I found something,” I say, sitting up on my knees, holding the correspondence between my hands. It was written from Daniel to Enoch on March 12, 1960.
“Enoch,” I read. “A man named Frank has come to Foggy Hollow, claiming to be Reuben’s son, the ruthless cousin we cut out of our lives decades ago. Now I find myself facing the same helpless grief our father must have felt.
“Frank is doing to my son what his father once did to me—leading him astray, poisoning his mind, with the same charm and the same wicked pull. The similarities are uncanny. So much so, I have begun to fear I’m losing my mind.
God help me, Enoch, I can’t help but wonder if Frank is a demon.
I have enclosed two photographs. You were always the rational one.
Look at them and tell me—what do you see?
Please write as soon as you can. Daniel. ”
I look at Jude.
He looks back at me.
Then together, we return to Enoch’s trunk in search of the photographs. In the midst of looking, we come upon a piece of parchment that escaped our notice last time.
A sketch of the locket.
Jude turns the paper over, as if he might find the artist’s signature on the back. But there is no signature. It’s just a piece of aged parchment with the exact same locket from Ezra’s Obsession drawn in graphite.
We keep digging until the trunk is empty.
There are no photographs to be found.
A demon.
I sit back on my heels. “What do you think Daniel saw in the photographs—devil horns?”
Jude shakes his head, every bit as stumped as myself.
I think about his grandfather’s tip to the police. We have stumbled upon two of the names—Rueben and Frank.
Both of them, corrupters.
Bad apples.
Rotten fruit.
Can blood be evil?
Suddenly, it’s very clear to me why Jude’s father warned him to stay away from that side of the family. I want to give Jude the same warning now.
I can still feel the nip of Rafe’s teeth against my ear. The sting of my palm after I slapped him. I keep the memory to myself, and say instead, “I think Rafe is seeing Lainey Sikes.”
“What?”
“Last night, Kate said Lainey broke up with Griffin, and apparently, she keeps bragging about dating a college boy who goes to Yale.”
Jude’s expression darkens.
“You really think he’d be interested in Lainey?”
“I have no idea what interests Rafe,” Jude says, picking up the sketch. “We should show this to Tulane. The locket could be a family heirloom. Maybe Denis has seen it before. Maybe he knows where it is.”