by Kelly Creagh
“I understand your concern,” I said, speaking yet again when she let that horrible silence drag on. “Circumstances being what they are, I can, of course, only expect you to assume the worst of me. But, despite what you must think . . . What I mean to say is that I meant all that I said before. In the parlor, and the conservatory. Regarding my . . . I wished only to preserve your life. I’ll thank you now not to twist my actions and accuse me of indecency when I merely—”
“Oh my God,” she said, the words escaping her lips in an awestruck whisper that silenced me immediately.
I shut my mouth, ceasing the tirade that now struck me as rambling. Reluctantly, I shifted my gaze to her once more.
“You’re embarrassed,” she said.
I stiffened and kept silent, all too aware that any denial on my part would only prove her right. Yet it did mortify me to think she would assume I had behaved ungentlemanly toward her. Or was I mistaking her concern for repulsion over the fact that I had touched her at all?
“I must know if you intend to continue to try to kill yourself,” I snapped. “Or has that particular itch been sufficiently scratched?”
Her scowl returned in an instant, deepening toward rage. “I wasn’t trying to kill myself!”
“You wished merely to go for a subzero dip?”
“I was trying to get away!” she yelled, tossing off the quilt and launching to her feet. “From you!”
Behind her, Envy and Spite burst into titters. One of them even snorted.
“And you two,” she said, wheeling on them. “Don’t either of you have anything better to do than hiss like a pair of snakes in a basket?”
To my surprise, Envy and Spite went silent, neither seeming to have anything to say. An absolute first.
“They won’t answer,” I said. “I’ve ordered them not to speak to you.”
“They have to do what you say?” she asked, veering on me once more. “The others. Why do they listen to you but not Valor?”
Because none of them wanted what Valor wanted.
“Do sit,” I said. “You very nearly succeeded in drowning yourself, and you’re bound to catch cold if you do not now rest.”
Her eyes burned into me. “I told you. I was only trying to get out of here.”
“By way of the lake.” My words dripped incredulity.
“That was how you brought me here, wasn’t it?”
Ah. Now it made sense. Relative sense.
“That was a dream,” I explained.
“I know it was a dream.”
“You could have died.”
“I. Know.”
Quiet claimed the air between us. And indeed, what could I say to that?
“You are that desperate to leave, then?” I asked, shocked that I had uttered this aloud.
She did not answer. And that was my answer.
I pivoted from her, retreating into the cover of darkness again. “You are saying you will try the lake again? Even if I tell you it is useless.”
“Erik—”
“Do not call me by that name.”
“Where are you going?”
Where was I going? Here I was about to walk away from her like a wounded dog. And there she was asking after me.
“You wish me to stay?” I growled, irritated with her. With myself.
“No,” she said, providing me with both the answer I had expected and an excuse for the escape I sorely longed for. I slid farther into the shadows.
“Wait—yes!” Taking a step after me, she thrust her hands blindly into the dark, as though she hoped to catch me. “Yes— stay.”
I stopped where I stood, a dog once again, obeying the command of its mistress.
“Just now,” she began anew, “you said that you meant the things you said before. In the conservatory. That means that you are still Erik.”
To this I said nothing. What good would it do to either affirm or deny? She may have guessed the truth, but she still did not understand.
“In the beginning,” she continued, “you were trying to get me out of the house. Weren’t you? Even before I ever spoke to you. That’s why you appeared to Charlie.”
Again, I answered, though this time in my mind, not I.
“Because . . . a part of you knew this would happen.” Her voice became softer even than before. “Or something like it. When you were Valor, you were trying to prevent it. You even tried to tell me the truth that night, when you almost . . . when we almost . . . But then something went wrong. That’s why you’re bleeding. Isn’t it?”
You are right, Stephanie. Something did happen. But how do I tell you that that something . . . was you? And the boy. He is what went wrong.
As far as the blood goes and from whence it came . . . who could say?
“Answer me,” she hissed. “Please.”
I vacillated on whether or not I should confirm her guesses as true, for it was all irrelevant now. But then, had she not once acquiesced to me when I had pleaded? Unlike that instance, though, when she had played for me, I could not give her what she longed to hear. I could, however, still grant her what she asked.
“You see me accurately for who I was,” I allowed. “Know, though, that I am that no longer.”
“So then what are you now?” she challenged after a pause. “Erik, why did you bring me here? What does kidnapping me accomplish? What does any of this accomplish?”
I scowled, disarmed yet again. And her question needled at me, boring through that place inside me that both did and did not know how to articulate an answer for this particular inquiry.
“Did you expect me to be happy here?” she pressed. “Do you expect me to ever be? Or are you doing this to punish me because of Lucas?”
“He is unworthy of you,” I snarled.
“You don’t get to decide that!”
“If I was in your world,” I said, “if I was of your world, and your time, you would not have chosen him.”
“There was no choice, Erik.”
And what was this? Her way of saying she had never even considered me? Now who was the liar.
“I would have made you forget him,” I promised her. “I would have given you everything. I would have snatched you out of his grasp. I would have made you mine. I would have—”
“But you’re not any of those things,” she said, her words once more slicing through mine—rending me in two as well. For again, she was right. “By the way, you can’t make someone want to be with you. And I know you know that.”
I did. Powerfully so.
“That’s why I’m here, though, isn’t it?” she asked, her tone dry, brittle, and black as charcoal. “Because you do know it. You just don’t care anymore.”
Even in this mask, I could not hide from her.
“What is it going to take,” she asked, “for you to realize the truth? Erik, when are you going to let me go?”
Let her go? Could it be she still didn’t realize what she was to me?
“You wish me to release you.”
“I’m telling you that you have to,” she said.
Apparently, she had yet to learn that there was very little Wrath could be compelled to do. But if she wanted to make demands of me, I would of course oblige.
“Very well,” I said after a pause. “I shall release you on one condition and one only. Say that you are mine. Swear that you will stay in Moldavia. Better still, say that you will marry me.”
She went silent and still. The crackling of the fire filled the room, as did the ticking of the clock.
“What?” she said at last.
“My words were plain,” I replied. “They should not bear repeating.”
She shook her head, the fingertips of both bandaged hands rushing to cover her mouth.
“Erik,” she whispered, “you’re dead.” As
if this was something I could have forgotten.
“And yet I stand before you,” I said, anger searing the edges of my patience. “I speak. I walk.”
I feel.
“You know that’s—”
“The request is a simple one,” I cut her off. “The answer should be, too.”
She drew a breath. And, like a well-aimed arrow, her expected answer split the quiet—and pierced me through.
“Never.”
The clock ticked, and Spite whispered some triumphant utterance to Envy.
The truth was that I had known she would deny me. Truer than that, I had been counting on it. If the growing pain in my chest was any indication, however, there had apparently existed some part of me that had hoped in vain for some other reply. Any other.
“The masks by the window,” I said. “They have been instructed to watch over you. And prevent any similar scenario like the one today.”
“You can’t keep me here forever,” she said, strength returning to her voice. “Deep down, you know that, too.”
“The hour is late, and your exhaustion is plain,” I replied as I turned to go. “I should leave you to your repose. Perhaps, though, when next I see you, you will feel recovered enough to revisit the ballad you already know.”
“Erik.”
“It should please you to learn I have finished the score.”
“It doesn’t please me. Erik, none of this pleases me.”
“I have also composed lyrics. They should prove easy enough to memorize.”
“I’m not going to sing for you!” she shouted. “Not ever!”
Silence boomed through the space between us, a raw scream of nothingness.
“ ‘Not ever,’ ” I repeated after a long pause. “ ‘Never.’ So be it, Stephanie Armand. But then let your answers stand for us both.”
With that, I brushed past her, leaving her to the care of her solitude—and the watch of her new guard dogs.
SIXTY
Lucas
Over tea, grape sodas, ginger muffins, and, in Patrick’s case, nearly half a bag of fun-sized chocolate bars, Rastin had told us what he’d claimed to be, quote, “everything.”
The medium had then asked us not to speak and requested that we instead “meditate” and reconvene with him the following night to discuss next steps. To me, though, the plan seemed clear enough. But for once, Charlotte had been the one to make the final call: we would do what Rastin asked and wait to talk.
Rastin had left shortly after, assuring us he was fine to drive himself back to his hotel. Before he went, he gave me his cell number.
Now, as I lay in bed staring up at the slowly rotating arms of my ceiling fan, I imagined how the Lucas Cheney of one year ago might have reacted if he’d known that, come November, he’d have Rastin Shirazi’s personal cell phone number saved in his contacts.
Probably, Past Lucas would not be quite as agog about the number as he would be to learn of the events leading up to the connection.
Hours ago, SPOoKy had agreed to meet the next evening. Then, per Rastin’s instructions, later that night in the lobby of his hotel to devise a plan with the medium, who we were going to need—no way around that, either.
Mom had arrived home shortly after everyone had left, and I’d tried to act normal over Chinese takeout and all the “Where’ve you been all day?” interrogations.
Oh, you know, I’d answered in my mind, just went to Stephanie’s cursed mansion to rescue a famous guy from an invisible bloodthirsty mummy—the usual.
After dinner, Mom and Dad had streamed a movie while I’d retreated to my room.
Now it was almost one in the morning, and both darkness and silence had set up camp in the Cheney household.
Unable to resist any longer, I grabbed my cell phone from my nightstand, keyed in the passcode, and opened my pictures. Thumbing through, I arrived at a photo Patrick had snapped of me and Stephanie the night of the dance.
We leaned against my car, both of us smiling, my arm looped around her shoulders. There was something in Stephanie’s eyes, though, that I hadn’t noticed that night. A distance. A worry that dimmed the enthusiasm of her smile. How much else had I failed to pick up on? Until now, I hadn’t thought much.
Somewhere along the way, even in spite of everything, I’d gotten distracted.
Hard not to do around her.
And at the dance, it had felt so good just to hold her. Then there’d been that kiss. The one full of heat and desire and everything I had, up to that point, kept myself from saying out loud to her.
God. I missed her.
What was she doing right now? Was she okay? Was she thinking of me, too?
Guilt, heavy as a cinder block, returned to my chest. If she was thinking of me, then she had to be wondering what was taking me so long. Or had she assumed I’d given up on her?
Dropping my phone to the bed, I glared harder at the ceiling fan, my gaze shifting past the blades to the shadows they cast on the smooth white ceiling above. And as my focus switched from phone to fan—from Stephanie to those shadows—a shift took place inside of me.
From love to hate.
For Erik.
Rastin had told us he believed the creature had taken Stephanie because he’d fallen in love with her.
And that hadn’t even been the most difficult part to swallow. Then again, maybe it had been. For me.
Insane at is it seemed, I could see it happening. It had happened to me, after all. But exactly how . . . Well, there was the mystery.
Stephanie had told me about her recurring dreams of Erik but never mentioned what those dreams contained. Only that Erik had spent the majority of them trying to warn her about Zedok.
Turned out I’d been wrong in my assumption that Erik had been just a front for something much darker. But then, in a way, I’d also been right.
If only I’d delved a little deeper, plied Stephanie until she told me what, specifically, had gone on in those dreams. Then I might have suspected even more of the truth.
I hadn’t, though, and now Stephanie was with him. In his world. Trapped.
Regardless of what Rastin or anyone else said or believed—that wasn’t love.
Human or not, cursed or not, Erik was evil. And that meant he had to be stopped—for good.
Already, I’d made up my mind that I would be the one to do it. Based on everything Rastin had divulged about how to destroy the monster, there seemed no other way.
According to the medium, the lore about the Mothmen and the mummy unwrapping had been true. And while Erik had incurred the wrath of the mummy by disturbing and inadvertently reawakening him, he had also succeeded in extracting the power he’d sought. Power that had afforded him certain abilities, like the conjuring of apports—which was basically making something appear from nothing. He also possessed other dangerous psychic powers aside from the ability to infiltrate and manipulate the dreams of those who entered onto the property.
Fortunately, though, his powers both began and ended at the original property lines.
That tidbit of info had prompted Patrick to ask about Joe Boq, and Rastin had surprised us all once again by revealing that Erik had not been responsible for that particular death. Instead, Rastin believed a separate entity from a different investigation was to blame. That news brought little comfort. Because even though that meant we were all safe for the moment, it didn’t change the fact that all bets would be off once we stepped foot back in his world.
Rastin claimed that Erik’s lust for power had derived from his longing to mold and bend his life—and therefore his fate—into the shape he wanted.
The day Erik was born was the day his parents had set him on the track to becoming a physician. And before he’d died, he’d been faced with the decision of marrying one of two wealthy debutants—neither of whom he was in lo
ve with, or even liked.
From early childhood and on, though, he’d exhibited an almost otherworldly talent for music and a matching thirst for the mastery of it.
Each of us in SPOoKy had always heard of Erik Draper’s abilities with music. During his time, rumors had spread that he’d been visited by angels or that he’d signed a pact with the devil. Those were the only stories the Victorians could come up with to explain how he’d ended up with the voice and face of a god.
But in the end, Erik’s aspirations hadn’t mattered to his parents.
In their eyes, music and love were frivolities that their only son could ill afford to indulge in. Not at the cost of more worthy pursuits.
“So . . . this whole mummy thing was a fit of teenage rebellion?” Wes had asked Rastin.
“Erik was on a path from which he could not deviate,” Rastin replied. “The way he saw it, the path was one that would cost his very soul.”
“So, he wanted to be a musician,” Patrick observed.
“A composer,” Rastin replied.
“Aaannd . . . running away wouldn’t have solved that?” Charlotte asked.
“Who is to say?” said Rastin. “Why leave your family, your inheritance, and your legacy if you believe you have found the answer to fixing everything?”
Just as the legend stated, though, things hadn’t gone according to plan for Erik.
The Egyptian priest had indeed risen from the dead and, after killing Erik and his family, had taken Erik’s body into the alternate Moldavia, where he’d torn out his heart. It was this action that doomed Erik to walk as a corpse forever.
Though that particular piece hadn’t been new to us, everything Rastin shared from that point forward was.
Since the heart was indeed the seat of the soul, as the Ancient Egyptians believed, Erik’s became splintered. What was worse, each shard of his spirit became its own entity represented by a figure imbued with its own mind and characterized by its own mask. Twenty-four seven, he was literally surrounded—and tormented—by these pieces of his decimated soul. Yet Erik himself could only wear one mask at a time, which meant that he could also only be one facet of himself at a time. Something that made him all the more dangerous since Erik’s powers also allowed him to traverse, at will, the barriers between each version of Moldavia, all while remaining invisible to anyone who did not believe in him. Which was why only Charlie had seen him at first. Then, when Stephanie’s mind began to open to the idea, she had seen him under that sheet. As a result, I had contacted Rastin. Which, in turn, had prompted Rastin to visit Moldavia by “remote means” to confront Erik directly.
