Chapter 37
THE GEMSTONES
Dry leaves skitter across the shingles as I climb out of Twig’s bedroom window.
The roof outside is flat and large enough to sit comfortably.
I shake out the flannel blanket I brought from inside and sit down cross-legged with a small stack of books and a thermos of cider while Twig moves to the telescope mounted on its tripod.
“It’s supposed to be somewhere near Cygnus,” he mutters. Last night he couldn’t find the comet. Tonight, he’s determined.
Across the street, a motion-activated skeleton cackles in the fog, its red eyes glowing as Mr. Takahashi rolls his garbage bin to the curb. Above, the sky is clear—a spray of stars and a thin sliver of moon.
Inside, I’m a mess.
The parade is tomorrow.
Dress rehearsals for the ball were tonight. I was supposed to spend the evening in Jude’s presence. Some of it, in his arms. Instead, I spent it at the fairgrounds, finishing up floats I no longer care about, doing what I’ve done for the past two days. Working through the evidence in my mind.
I hate that it makes sense.
I hate that Jude is shutting me out.
I throw my head back. “I wish I never would have lifted the false bottom of that stupid drawer.”
Out loud, the comment is very random. In my head, it followed a logical train of thought. Thankfully, Twig has known me long enough by now to keep up.
He adjusts his telescope with practiced care. “If death is involved, isn’t it better to know?”
“I’m not going to die.”
“You’ve become a skeptic?”
A growl rumbles in my chest. Because no, I’m not a skeptic. Unlike Jude, my belief system hasn’t taken a jarring about-face. “I just wish he would talk to me.”
“Can you really blame him, though? The guy believes loving you will—”
“He doesn’t love me.”
Twig casts a doubtful look over his shoulder. “I mean, I’ve never exactly conducted a field study on love, but I’d say he was at least in the preliminary stages.”
A flush blooms in my cheeks. I think about the way he looked at me on the ballroom floor at our last rehearsal. Then later, at the fairgrounds. An innocent touch here. A playful swipe of paint there. The thinnest sliver of space between our arms on the car ride home.
Maybe I was in the preliminary stages, too.
I set the thermos of hot cider beside me and settle the small stack of books in my lap—on the bottom, the no-longer-locked tome, and on top, my journal of dreams. The glow from Twig’s bedroom spills softly through the open window behind me, illuminating each entry as I thumb through the pages.
So far, I’ve dreamt of Molly, Florence, Rose, and Jude’s mother. All four, victims of the curse. And two centuries before I was born, Ezra Vandenberg painted me, looking exactly how I look today.
“Why me?” I say. Not in a powerless, frustrated way, either. My question isn’t rhetorical. I want to know the answer. “He painted me, Twig.” Not Molly or Florence or Rose or my mother. “Then he wrote those strange words on a scrap of journal in Maggie’s office, referencing a revelation.”
Balm or blight.
Beacon or burden
A blessing sent to end his suffering, or a promise that it shall endure.
Surely, his suffering was the curse. Which didn’t die with him, but continued on.
“You think you’re the balm,” Twig says.
“Is that really such a crazy thing to think? I mean, what if this is my purpose? What if this is the whole reason I’m here?”
“To end the curse?”
“Why not?”
“I don’t know, Selah. Something tells me Jude isn’t going to risk your life to find out.”
And just like that, my optimistic bubble pops.
At the end of the day, it doesn’t matter what I believe.
Jude won’t change his mind unless he believes it, too.
I picture the manic collage spread across his wall, the tormented look on his face when he answered his bedroom door.
Maybe if it weren’t for his nightmares—ones in which I die and he’s responsible—he wouldn’t be so quick to assume the worst. Maybe, if he’d just take one of my phone calls, or talk to me at school, I could get him to see the bright side of things.
I set the journal aside and run my hand over the tome’s cover, embossed with the same symbol Ezra painted on the locket and drew on the sketch of Molly.
It was found on Lydia Mabel, postmortem.
Jude wanted the autopsy report for Violet Underwagon.
No doubt to see if she had the mark, too.
If we could get autopsy reports for Helena Pisel, Mary Donovan, Rose Vandenberg …
would they have similar marks? Could Jude get the autopsy report for his mother?
Is this symbol a mark of the curse?
And what does this old English story about two angels named Seraphina and Dante have to do with it?
I rub my eyes.
Sleep has been nearly impossible.
For the past two nights, I’ve lain awake with a scrambled mind and a heart in tatters. I want to be in the Vandenberg ballroom, dancing with Jude while Miss Applewhite demands eye contact, eye contact, eye contact! Instead, I’m here, feeling as hollowed-out as that skeleton across the street.
As if on cue, it starts to cackle again.
I lift my gaze to the stars, searching for Cygnus, a cross-like constellation in the western sky. Somewhere out there, Dante’s comet hurtles through space. A fiery snowball? Or an angel unhinged by love?
Twig keeps searching.
I sip my cider and open the fable, trying to distract myself with the illustrations. They mimic stained glass. The colors are rich and saturated, the outlines bold—Seraphina with long raven hair and radiant wings spread across two pages. The handwritten text tells of her three special gifts.
The first: power over darkness and shadow.
I run my fingers across the page. The pad of my thumb brushes over a symbol I haven’t noticed before. Embedded in the stained glass design is the outline of a candle with a white body and a black triangular flame.
Just like the onyx.
I turn the page to the angel’s second gift: the power to see what is hidden.
This time, I study every panel of glass, carefully searching. Then I find it—an eye with a white circular iris.
Just like the pearl.
I turn another page, to the angel’s third and final gift: the power over human hearts. She can stop them. Break them. Seduce them. Start them. And apparently, make them pound, because mine is doing just that as I scan the illustration.
And there it is, over her left wing.
A red heart.
With an outline of the diamond inside.
“Whoa,” Twig says. “Selah, come see this.”
He must have found it.
The comet.
But I can’t look away from the book, because I’ve found something, too.
“Selah?”
I look up.
He’s no longer peering through the viewfinder of his telescope. He’s staring at me.
I scramble to my knees and thrust the book at him. When he doesn’t take it, I point at the black flame. “The onyx.”
I point at the white iris. “The pearl.”
I point at the diamond inside the heart. “And the ruby.”
“The gemstones,” he whispers.
We stare at one another for a disbelieving moment.
“Twig … is this what Rafe’s after? Do you think—are there actual powers tied to these gemstones?”
My mind reels.
Rafe thought he had them. But then he caught Isabel wearing the ruby and threw a bonafide temper tantrum. The question is, why did he hide them in the well? If he thought he already had the gemstones, what was he waiting for?
I stare at the book with the symbol of the curse on the cover. And inside, the origin story of Dante’s comet, which returns every two-hundred-sixty-eight years.
Ezra Vandenberg witnessed it the last time.
Then he painted me, a girl who wouldn’t exist until that same comet returned again.
The puzzle pieces swirl.
Closer and closer.
They have to be related.