by Sarah Noffke
“I know how to fix your problems,” she said. She didn’t know where those words had come from. It was the strangest sensation. She’d literally opened her mouth and words had rushed out—and they felt right.
Luther Peters lowered the gun and continued blinking at her, a deranged expression in his eyes that should have sent her running. Instead, she stood straighter.
“Come down to the first floor,” she continued. “I know how to save your family. I know how to save you.”
Again, Sophia didn’t know where those words came from. She had uttered them with her mouth, but she didn’t remember speaking them. It was the weirdest magic she’d ever witnessed, yet it felt like something she should trust.
“Downstairs?” Luther Peters questioned. “But that’s where—”
“Not anymore,” Sophia interrupted, not totally knowing what they were talking about.
“David isn’t down there?” he asked.
She found herself shaking her head.
“And Dora?” he asked again.
Again Sophia shook her head. “You can change all that. Just come downstairs.”
She was just about to turn and lead him to the stairs when the ghost who shouldn’t have been able to reached out and grabbed her wrist, holding Sophia with an intensity she knew she couldn’t break free of.
“I can’t change the past,” he said bitterly.
Sophia shook her head. “No, but you can mend the wounds. That’s what solutions do. That’s what I’ll do.”
He peered into her eyes with an intensity that tried to burn her from the inside out. His grip on her felt like fire. Sophia couldn’t pull away from it, but she also wasn’t afraid, even as he held her, pinning his gaze to hers.
Slowly, he released her, and pushing her with a strange cosmic force, ushered her forward. “Show me.”
Unsure what she’d do when she got this angry ghost downstairs, Sophia ambled forward and the murderous ghost followed her.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Sophia was grateful to find no dead bodies at the bottom of the stairs. Things had changed in the last few minutes. There also wasn’t any floodwater pouring into the house. To her relief, the boy wasn’t in the first room trying to saw off his arm.
She had no idea what the strange voice that had spoken through her wanted to show the ghost of Luther Peters, or how it would change everything. She was afraid she had nothing, and he’d just end up killing her when she came up empty-handed.
At the entrance to the study, Sophia stopped, stalling as she peered into the eyes of the ghost.
“Well?” Luther Peters asked, absolutely on edge.
“Well,” she said, looking over her shoulder at her father’s desk.
“I knew you were like all the rest!” Luther yelled and threw his hands in the air. The sawing, flooding water, and stomping overhead started to echo in Sophia’s head. She thought it would make her go deaf. Strangely, over the rush of noises, she heard a faint whisper, and she focused, concentrating intently.
My desk, Love Bug, the voice of her father said in her head. At the back of my book.
Sophia knew running could get her killed, but that was what she did. Sure enough, objects were thrown at her head right away. Vases. Lamps. Figurines. Sophia ducked as she ran, swerving to avoid the shards of glass and clay.
She yanked open the middle drawer to her father’s desk and felt around, finding papers and ink wells and other things but not a book. Meanwhile, objects continued to be hurled at her, and Sophia had to duck under the desk. She kept awkwardly feeling around in the drawer, trying to find the object she’d come for, which would be her salvation in this moment of desperation.
Sophia was just about to give up when the hard back of something hit her fingers. She changed the angle of her hand, nearly dislocating her arm as she yanked the book out of the top drawer.
Feeling a surge like she’d never had before, Sophia darted to her feet.
Luther Peters decided to throw everything he had at her. Knives, swords, China plates, fireplace pokers, muskets, and many other objects flew in Sophia’s direction, all meant to end her.
She held up her father’s book, nearly clenching her eyes shut as she held the small object up to shield herself.
The objects meant to be her demise all halted in midair, then spiraled in place. After a moment, they dropped to the ground, close to the feet of Luther Peters.
He glanced down, confused.
Sophia gave the same questioning expression to the book in her hands. Recognizing this was her opportunity, she withdrew the certificates from the back of the book, finding them just where her father said they’d be.
“Here,” she said, handing them to Luther Peters after walking over to him.
“What are these?” he asked, studying the pieces of paper.
“They are how you can save your family,” she explained.
He read the pages, which were apparently bonds worth a great deal. His eyes enlarged. “But the past is over and done.”
“And yet, there’s always time for salvation,” Sophia countered, again not knowing where the words came from. “You can always rewrite your ending. Just don’t do what you did. Take the bonds. Don’t harm your family. Take charge. Leave. Change what happened. Stop repeating it.”
The ghost seemed absolutely confused. The deranged expression crossed his gaze again, but just when Sophia thought she’d have to defend herself, he took the bonds and turned toward the door.
He looked over his shoulder and studied her. “If I leave with these, if I set my heart on a new path…”
She nodded. “Then you set them on one too. You free yourself from the choices you made by making new ones.”
The words felt right. They felt good. She couldn’t explain the bonds or how she knew they were in her father’s book, and that was the most telling part of any of this. It told her something much larger than her life was in play.
“Okay,” Luther Peters said, swallowing. “I’ll try.”
He ambled out of the study, seeming almost drunk, like the moment had filled him with total disorientation.
Sophia let him get all the way out of view before hurrying after him, compelled to know how this story ended.
To her relief, the floors weren’t flooding. The boy wasn’t sawing off his arm. The woman wasn’t at the bottom of the stairs.
The front door to the Peters’ residence was wide open. She couldn’t understand how Luther had crossed the space so fast. She ran for the front door, her father’s book clasped in her hands. She didn’t stop until she was to the front porch and saw what lay before her.
It wasn’t the wide-open sprawling yard of the great plantation that caught Sophia’s breath. That was beautiful since she remembered an hour before when it was flooded. It wasn’t the hills stretched out in all directions with fertile fields, which made her pause.
It was the man standing nobly in the center of the grassy lawn, a woman on one side of him and a young boy on the other, their ghost figures casting the strange blue light around them. They turned and looked at Sophia with grateful smiles.
“Thank you,” Luther Peters said, waving the bonds. “You didn’t save our lives, but you saved my soul.”
Sophia didn’t know what to say, so she just held her father’s book to her heart, knowing he had done it all.
She understood then that those in the grave could impact the living and vice versa.
Chapter Thirty
Returning to the Gullington filled Sophia with warmth even though the cold winds whipped through her when she entered the Barrier. Seeing Lunis mended her heart after the ordeal with the Peters family, and she felt a warmth that made it seem like she’d never be cold again.
She strode across the Expanse, her father’s book in her hand and a smile on her face as her dragon flew down from the Cave. Gracefully he landed, shaking like a dog after a bath.
“You survived,” he stated, pretending to be surprised.
“Or I’m a ghost,” she teased, reaching out and stroking his face as he affectionately leaned down and sniffed her.
“You smell like mossy water and nail polish,” Lunis observed.
She nodded. “That seems about right.”
“I’m certain you’re the only dragonrider to wear such a combination of scents.”
“I have to know, what is it you were going to warn me not to do when I was at the Peters’,” she said, holding up the book Lunis would have already known she’d successfully secured. “I must never what?”
He blinked at her, his blue eyes full of the ancient wisdom and confidence she loved. “In true Sophia fashion, you did exactly what you weren’t supposed to, but somehow it worked in your favor. A man would have gone in there and battled that ghost. You knew he could touch you, and using magic, you could have destroyed him, banishing him from this Earth.”
“But then his soul—”
Lunis nodded. “Would have been lost forever. You saved him. You rewrote the past.”
“I get that he was bad,” Sophia reasoned. “He broke when he lost all his wealth. He should have never done that, but I wanted him and his family to have a second chance. A way to do things right.”
“You’re not supposed to change the past of a ghost,” Lunis explained. “I was going to tell you that from the collective consciousness of the dragons. According to my ancestors, you must never try to save a ghost. They have to figure things out on their own or be condemned to repeat the past.”
Sophia shrank back and shook her head. “So we’re just supposed to allow others to suffer, even if there’s a way to save them?”
“Are you asking my ancestors or me?” Lunis questioned.
“Both,” she answered.
“I believe we have a social responsibility to help one another,” he explained. “I like that you offered Luther Peters an option, somewhat rewriting history. It stopped the cycle he was perpetually locked in and would have been for all of time, I believe. He thought he was doomed and kept reliving the reality he thought couldn’t be any other way.”
“But…” Sophia began, sensing there was a flip side to this coin.
“The dragons would say he was meant to be locked in that reality,” Lunis told her, tilting his head back and forth as he considered this idea. “They would have thought it was his punishment to be trapped in the doom he’d created.”
“But so were his wife and child,” Sophia argued.
Lunis nodded. “I agree, and that’s why I’m glad you didn’t hear my advice, and you did things your own way. Also, I believe in second chances. I believe in ridding this world of evil through forgiveness. You gave that to Luther, and now his property can be used once more. His haunting has stopped. All because you did what most wouldn’t have. Most would have gone by the book and got out of there, but Sophia never takes the easy way out. You truly want what’s best even when it puts you in peril.”
She shrugged and looked down at the book full of her father’s wisdom. “I think I just inherited this tendency from amazing people.”
Lunis’ head glided down, affectionately rubbing against Sophia’s. “I think you undervalue who you are at your core regardless of where you came from.”
“Maybe,” she offered, running her hands over the leather-bound book.
“It was him, Sophia,” Lunis said, a knowing in his eyes when she looked up at him. “I know it’s hard to understand and even harder to explain, but I believe your father found a way to communicate with you when you were in the Peters’ house.”
She let out a weighty breath. Of course, Lunis knew she’d been doubting that part of the experience. She wanted to believe her father had been there in some capacity, that he’d led her. Spoken through her. Saved her. Yet, it was like holding onto the person and how could she ever let him go if she believed he could help her from the grave?
“How…” she asked, a strange hope in her eyes.
He indicated the book in her hands. “Remnants of a soul attach themselves to many different objects. It wasn’t him, but also it was. The essence of him. Life is mysterious like that. You can’t rely on your father ever coming back, but you can count on his wisdom and guidance being forever a part of your life if you’re open to hearing it.”
Sophia smiled up at her dragon. “I’ll always be open to it.”
Chapter Thirty-One
Flipping through the pages of Theodore Beaufont’s book was like having a conversation with the man himself. All her life, Sophia’s siblings had worked their father’s phrases into lessons, sharing tidbits of the wisdom he’d offered to them. Those quotes had stuck with Sophia, but not like reading the actual handwritten words of the man himself.
She felt like she was sitting across from him at the dining table as her eyes ran over one of the quotes scribbled across the side of a page: “It’s healthy to have a devil’s advocate.”
Sophia looked up, her eyes on the windows running the length of the dining hall. She didn’t often take afternoon tea since she was usually out of the Castle during that time and never really had the opportunity for such things. After her last adventure, she really needed the break. And she was waiting on information from Mae Ling on where she’d find the monster guarding Papa Creola’s token. That gave her the perfect opportunity to flip through her father’s book, memorizing the pages before she gifted it to Liv and Clark.
She could only imagine how much they’d value the book, having a much more distinctive memory of Theodore Beaufont.
Sophia flipped a page, amazed by how she could see the way her father worked, based on his notes. He’d written horizontally all over the pages, filling up each line. Then it was wrapped around the sides vertically, crammed into the margins. His penmanship was always clear, as were his ideas, giving her something to think about.
She read one such phrase that gave her pause, “The way we do things is almost more important than the things we do.”
“You look like you’re time-traveling,” Mahkah said, striding into the dining hall, his hair windswept and his clothes covered in mud.
Sophia glanced up, surprised to find another rider taking tea. “Oh, how astute of you. I guess I am.” She closed the book. “I found a diary kept by my father. It has many of his words of wisdom in it and makes me feel like he’s here.”
Mahkah took the seat opposite Sophia as Ainsley entered, carrying a tray of sandwiches, chocolate-filled croissants, and scones.
“Looks like you have company after all,” the housekeeper said, setting the tiered tray down beside the pair. She snapped her fingers and a teacup and saucer appeared in front of Mahkah. “Who wants brandy in their tea today?”
Mahkah offered her a polite smile. “I’m good, but thanks.”
“S. Beaufont?” Ainsley asked with an expectant expression.
Sophia smiled too. “I’m also fine.”
Ainsley sighed. “You all are a bunch of goodie-goods. I should have gone to work for that brood of vampires when they inquired about my services.”
She hustled back to the kitchen before Sophia could inquire into these vampires. They were supposed to be extinct. One coven popped up recently, but Liv took them out. There was always a concern vampirism would surface again, seeking to take over the world, but hopefully not with the House of Fourteen properly policing magic once more.
“So this book…” Mahkah indicated the leather-bound volume. “Do you want to share any of your father’s words of wisdom?”
Sophia smiled, absolutely wanting to share. She flipped it open randomly and found a passage that spoke to her. “Here, he talks about how magic is an endless artform.”
Mahkah poured himself some tea and smiled appreciatively. “Yes, I could agree with that. You can spend a whole life studying it, a lifetime as long as a dragonriders, and still not even completely understand it. Your father was obviously a wise man.”
“He is…well, he was…or wherever he is, I guess still is in some regards,” Sophi
a offered. For the first time in her life, she didn't feel like people were really gone when they died. Somehow, they could hold onto parts of this Earth, offering their wisdom or love or guidance when they wanted. Or they could haunt, spreading evil. There were options, Sophia had learned.
“He’s gone,” Mahkah stated, seeming to understand. “I’m sorry. I just thought since you are so young, your parents would still be on this Earth.”
Sophia took a sip of her tea. “You’d think, but most of the Beaufonts have perished fighting for justice. I think we are bound to that mission, and in a way, it's cursed us, nearly erasing our name.”
“I think anyone who upholds justice will face dangers, but that’s a legacy that ensures you live longer in the hearts of those you saved,” Mahkah thoughtfully offered.
“I want to believe that’s true, but it’s hard knowing so many who I’ve loved have been lost,” Sophia said, finding herself surprised to be sharing this with Mahkah. He was such a stoic type. Quiet and reserved, but when he spoke, it got Sophia’s attention. She inherently liked the man who was the current expert on dragon riding and care. He never said much, but when he did, it was strangely profound.
Glancing down at the book, Sophia smiled. She’d found another of her father’s lines that spoke to her.
“What is it?” Mahkah asked, seeing the interest on her face.
“I think I like this one,” she said, reading from the text. “’The best way to face fears is to prepare for them.’”
Mahkah nodded. “It’s the opposite of the head-in-the-sand approach.”
Sophia was about to reply when her phone rang in her pocket. Surprised anyone was calling her, she withdrew it and was equally surprised by who the call was from.
“Mae Ling?” Sophia asked, holding the phone to her ear.
“Yes, dear,” her fairy godmother said on the other end of the line.
“Have you determined where the—” Sophia’s eyes flicked to Mahkah, who wasn’t hiding his curiosity as he eavesdropped. Deciding she didn’t mind, Sophia cleared her throat. “Where the monster is guarding the thing?”
