A Dark Inheritance

by Chris D'Lacey

  Glamour me? Wasn’t that what vampires did to their victims? I felt a vein twitching in the side of my neck. “It’s not just the dog; there’s something odd about the girl. I need Klimt’s help. How do I contact him?”

  “You don’t. Klimt comes to you, when he’s ready.”

  “Well, in case you hadn’t noticed, I’m holed up in my bedroom. He’s hardly going to pop by and help me write my essay on the Civil War, is he?”

  She glanced down at my bed, where my cell phone had beeped. “You have a text. Maybe it’s from her, the girl?”

  She reached for the door handle, but I beat her to it. “Tell me your story.”

  “This is not wise, Michael.”

  “How did you get involved with UNICORNE? How long have you worked for them?”

  Her gaze faltered for a moment, as if it would pain her to reveal the truth. “That is not your concern.”

  “Who are they, Chantelle? What do they do?”

  “You know what they do. They investigate mysteries. They use people like me to find the truth. Now step away from the door, or I will hurt you.”

  I stood aside and let her go, but not without throwing in one last question. “Did you know my father?”

  She paused and rocked back, taking time to fold her arms. “No,” she said quietly. And then she was gone.

  After a moment or two, I yanked up the phone and read the text. It wasn’t from Freya. It was from Ryan Garvey. A stupid picture of me hanging from a gallows, with the message Enjoy your suspension, loser. I threw the phone down.

  Not long afterward, it rang again.

  And rang and rang.

  Unknown caller.

  I hit the button.

  “Hello, Michael,” said a voice.

  Amadeus Klimt.

  I did that all-in-one twisting thing and sank onto the bed, with the phone to my ear. “I’m at home,” I said. I couldn’t think of anything else to tell him.

  “Yes,” he said in his strangely detached German accent. “Chantelle has been updating me.”

  And why didn’t that surprise me? Biting my tongue about all things French, I took a sharp breath and said, “I tried to talk to a girl called Freya. I thought she owned the dog, but she doesn’t. It all went wrong, but I’m sure she knows something. I’ve asked my sister to speak to her. I haven’t said anything about UNICORNE, I promise.”

  Silence. I imagined him peeling another orange or picking the seeds out of a pomegranate. I rolled onto my back and let my eyes scan the ceiling. Stuck to the plaster above my bed was a rocket ship, a moon, and a flurry of stars. Dad had put them up there before I was born. After his disappearance, I used to cry myself to sleep when the lights went out, watching the pieces fluoresce in the emptiness like tiny reminders of him. It occurred to me now that it had been a long time since I’d noticed them.

  Klimt said, “How do you plan to use your confinement?”

  “I don’t know,” I sighed. “Please don’t take me off the mission.”

  “Do you believe there is something interesting to discover, something worthy of a UNICORNE file?”

  “Yes. There’s definitely something weird about Freya. I saw this mark on her head that came up like a bruise but had disappeared the next time I looked at her.”

  “Can you be sure it was not a shadow? Light can be very deceptive, Michael.”

  Now he was making me doubt what I’d seen. Perhaps it was a dirt stain and she’d rubbed it off during the walk to the office? But dirt stains didn’t look red on the skin. And what was all that fuss about someone in her head?

  Klimt spoke again. “Let these thoughts about Freya rest for now. Instead, ask yourself this: What do you most need to know about the dog?”

  That wasn’t hard to answer; the question had kept me awake all night. “Who it really belongs to,” I muttered.

  “Correct,” he said. “Once you know that, you can widen the investigation.”

  “But I’m grounded. How —?”

  “Go to your window. What do you see?”

  Confused, I got up and parted the blinds. “Chantelle,” I whispered. She was on the scooter, holding the floral helmet in her hand.

  “She will take you to where you need to be,” Klimt said.

  While Mom and Josie were out of the way. A shiver of excitement thrust its way into my thumping heart.

  “Good-bye, Michael. No more help.”

  “Mr. Klimt, wait.”

  But the phone clicked off.

  And I was on my own.

  Once again we headed out toward the coast, going as far as Coxborough village before Chantelle turned us toward the sea and an isolated row of gray stone cottages. There were four in a terrace that had once been owned by local fishermen. Judging by the cars that were outside now, none of these people fished for a living.

  Chantelle stopped by the first cottage in the row. It was prettier than the rest and still had the old wooden shutters at the windows, plus a white picket fence to match. A sign near the front door named the house RESTFUL. Wallflowers were growing up all around it.

  “Are you going to sit there all morning, Michael?”

  The scooter’s engine was quietly humming.

  “You’re leaving me here?”

  “I will be back in one hour. If you’re not outside, waiting, you will walk home, okay? It would be wise to remember that your mother sometimes returns for her lunch.”

  And if I wasn’t at home studying …

  Je comprend.

  I got off the bike and unclipped my helmet, fixing it onto the back of the scooter. “Who lives here?”

  “The people who own the dog.”

  “How do you know?”

  “The police returned the dog to this address. It was not difficult to find this out.”

  This was a dig at my incompetence. The annoying thing was, she was right. I ought to have gotten this far by myself. All it would have taken was a call to the police with a general query about the dog’s welfare. Any decent agent could have worked that out.

  “What’s their name?”

  “Nolan. Dr. and Mrs. Nolan. One hour, Michael. Tick-tock. Au revoir.”

  By now, the early morning haze had lifted and it was a beautiful, bright spring morning. The backdrop to the house was a blue, but not entirely cloudless, sky. I could feel the sun warming the back of my neck as I unlatched the gate and stepped onto the path. Right away, I heard sounds of a dog. Not a barking dog but a whining one, the noise Trace had made when I caught her on the cliff.

  There was no bell, just a knocker in the shape of a fishing trawler. I rapped it gently. There were sounds of shooing and a door being closed.

  Then the front door opened. Before me stood a slim woman, a bit older than Mom and starkly pretty around the eyes. Her fine black hair was swept off her face, clipped at the back so it fanned out behind her neck and shoulders. Apart from a pair of fluffy white slippers that frothed up over the ankles of her jeans, she was dressed like a woman having coffee with a friend. Earrings like the first true icicles of Christmas, patterned silk scarf, frilly white top, leather-link belt. Moneyed. Classy.

  “Can I help you?” she said. She had a kind, well-educated voice.

  “I hope so,” I replied, trying not to look too casual, or nerdy. “My name’s Michael. I —”

  “Hang on. Aren’t you the boy who …? Yes, I recognize you from your picture in the paper.”

  Things could have gone either way at that point. I wasn’t sure how she was taking this, though she had no real reason to dislike me. So I said very quickly, “I just wanted to make sure Trace was all right.”

  She smiled appreciatively, looking me up and down as if she were casting a part in a movie. “Would you like to come in? Trace is right inside. You can renew your acquaintance with her, if you like?”

  I nodded. “Thanks. That would be cool.”

  I followed her into an open room. The whole interior had a kind of soft beige glow, interrupted only by a gray stone
fireplace and an upright piano along one wall. Unlike our house, the seats all seemed to have an acre of space around them, which was weird since the cottage looked small from the outside. It had been extended at the back into a sun-filled conservatory with sweeping views of the sea. A wide table occupied most of the conservatory. On the table was a newspaper, open at a crossword, next to what looked like a couple of science books. Beside the paper was a seagull-themed coffee cup, an ashtray with a cigarette still weeping smoke, and a bright pink laptop.

  “Have a seat.” Mrs. Nolan pointed to the conservatory chairs. I chose one next to a bookcase studded with books and family photos. On top of the unit was a sculpture of a dragon, a fire-spitting purple thing, encrusted with green and golden scales. “Don’t mind that,” she said. “We like dragons in this house — well, one of us does.” She stubbed out the cigarette and closed the laptop. “I’ll let Trace in. Be careful, she can be a bit frisky. Siberian huskies are something of a handful, but I suppose you know that now. We should have gotten something smaller, really, but Rafferty … Well, never mind. Would you like a glass of orange juice or something?”

  “Do you have any soda?”

  “Yes,” she said brightly, and stepped into the kitchen. A second or two later, I heard her saying, “Go on. Be good.” And in came Trace, paws clattering on the wooden floor.

  On the cliff, in the mist and rain, I hadn’t been able to appreciate just how stunning a dog she was. Her thick, strong fur was a classic mix of black and white, with swabs of gray dabbed here and there. Her face and neck were purest white, topped by a deep ridge of black between her ears. A line of black drained out of the ridge, running from her forehead to the tip of her snout, dividing a pair of Nordic blue eyes. They in turn were lined by rims of black. It made me wonder if someone had invented mascara after studying the eyes of these amazing dogs.

  She padded up to me and tilted her head, holding her crescent-shaped tail quite still. She was confused and a little suspicious. I felt hollow in my stomach. Maybe it wasn’t such a great idea to be left alone with a large doggy wolf.

  “It’s okay,” I whispered.

  Her head tipped the other way.

  And just as in the car when the police had stopped us, I began to get a strange impression of her thoughts. This time it was more a jumbled rush, with snatches of the cliff and the coast road at night and a sudden glare of lights and …

  Just then, Trace began to howl, as if she’d heard a noise at a frequency only a dog could detect. At the same time, the bookcase creaked and a framed photograph fell over, making me jump. Mrs. Nolan was in the kitchen doorway, staring, pale-faced, at the shelves.

  She dropped my glass of soda on the floor.

  We both stared at the epicenter of the explosion, at the crown of splattered cola seeping under the baseboards. Then she got herself together and hurried for a cloth. By the time she’d come back, I was down on my knees, picking up fragments of sticky glass. I apologized, though I had done nothing wrong, and asked if she wanted me to leave. She said no, it was nothing, just a silly moment. But when I got up and righted the photograph, I could tell from the lost expression in her eyes that it was anything but a silly moment.

  “Who is she?” I asked. In the frame was a picture of Trace as a puppy, being hugged by a teenage girl.

  “My daughter, Rafferty,” Mrs. Nolan said. The words floated out of her mouth like a boat slowly detaching from its moorings.

  “She’s very pretty.”

  “Thank you,” she breathed. “She’d have liked hearing that. She was very self-conscious about her appearance.”

  I couldn’t think why. She had striking eyes, just like her mother. “She looks —” like you, I was going to say, but Mrs. Nolan cut me off in spectacular style.

  “She died, just over three years ago. An accident. Here on Berry Head.”

  I picked up the photo again. A beautiful girl and her happy dog, frozen in a wooden rectangle of time. Trace, who’d been sniffing at the cola spill, jumped onto a sofa in the living room and flopped down.

  “What happened?”

  “She was cycling home from the village one night when she fell off her bike. She’d been warned many times about riding too fast, in the dark, but she was young and …” Mrs. Nolan passed the wet cloth from one hand to the other. “Her head struck a rock and she was knocked unconscious. She bled, very badly. She lay in the road for some time, we think, before she was found by a passing motorist. He called an ambulance. They rushed her into Holton. She died shortly after being admitted.”

  “That’s terrible.”

  “Yes. Worse than terrible. You can’t imagine what it’s like to have someone you love so dearly plucked out of your life for no apparent reason.”

  That, of course, made me think about Dad. And my own grief must have been as wide as the sea, because Mrs. Nolan immediately said, “Oh, I’m sorry. That was a horrible, selfish thing to say. Please forgive me. Have you lost someone, too?”

  “My dad,” I said quietly. “He … went away and never came back.” I put the photograph back on the shelf.

  “Oh, not there.” She reached out a hand. “Next to the music award, if you would.”

  There were several silver cups along the shelf, all decorated with golfing badges. Nearest me was a smaller trophy — a music stand planted in a block of wood. On the stand, where the sheets of music would have been, was an inscription. I didn’t read it, but Mrs. Nolan said, “Rafferty was very musical.”

  I nodded and looked at the piano.

  “Do you play?”

  “No.”

  Mrs. Nolan hit a key. The note circled around the living room, making Trace prick her ears. “She was coming home from a piano lesson that night. No one’s ever played this instrument since. Liam says we ought to get rid of it, but I can’t, not yet.”

  “Liam?” I said.

  “My husband,” she replied. “He’s not a sentimental man.” She smiled sadly and looked at the photograph. “I’ll get you another glass of soda.”

  When she came back in, I was sitting at the table, reading the spines of her books. They had weird titles like Synastry in the Aquarian Age and Parts of Fortune, Paths of Love.

  “Astrology,” she explained. “I draw up charts for people. You’re an Aries, aren’t you?”

  “Um, yes,” I answered. In fact, it was my birthday in a couple of weeks’ time. “How did you know?”

  “It’s those eyes. They’re full of gentle determination. A word of advice, Michael. Life should be a joy, not a string of challenges.”

  I smiled politely, trying to “read” her like my dad might have done. I thought I felt a kind of glow coming off her, as if she’d been dipped into a soothing orange flame. After a second, when I still hadn’t spoken, she raised an eyebrow to prompt a response. I smiled again and decided to press on. At the moment, my life was all about challenges; I still had a UNICORNE file to solve. “Mrs. Nolan, can I ask you a question?”

  “Call me Aileen, please.” She handed me the fresh glass of soda. I took a sip and put it down on the paper, careful to avoid the unfinished crossword.

  “The journalist who wrote about me catching Trace told me she belonged to someone else — a girl at my school. Why would she say that?”

  “If it’s the girl I’m thinking of,” Aileen said, finding a coaster to put under my glass, “a slightly scruffy type who likes to hug the coastline and stare at the sea …?”

  I nodded. That sounded like Freya.

  “… Trace has been seen with her several times. The reporters must have talked to someone who assumed they were connected. Odd, though. We’ve lived on this coast for nearly nine years and there aren’t that many houses close by. I thought everyone here knew Trace was ours.”

  She shrugged and went on, “That day you caught her isn’t the first time she’s been loose. A couple of months ago, Liam was walking her when Trace became agitated and took off toward one of the old World War Two defense shelters. T
he girl was inside. By the time Liam got there, Trace was jumping up, nuzzling her, doing what dogs do. The girl was a bit overwhelmed, he said, but didn’t seem to mind too much. She even told him she liked huskies, though she’d never been much of a dog lover generally — which showed in the way she petted her, Liam said.”

  “How do you mean?”

  Aileen pulled out a chair and sat down. “Most people ruffle a dog’s fur or scratch behind its ears. The girl ran her fingers over Trace’s head like a blind person feeling the shape of an object. Then she drew back quickly and asked Liam to leave. Liam didn’t like her attitude much; he doesn’t tolerate rudeness in children very well. But when he tried to pull Trace away, she dug in her claws and almost bit him. The girl ran from the shelter. That’s when the trouble really began. Trace broke free and chased after her. Liam caught up and put Trace on the leash, but he had to whip her to stop her howling.”

  “Whip her?” I hadn’t even met Liam Nolan and already I had a deep dislike of him.

  Aileen chewed her lip. “She hasn’t been the same dog since. I’ve had her checked, but the vet can find nothing wrong. We really don’t know what’s upsetting her.”

  I glanced at Trace, who was calm enough now. She had settled in with her snout between her paws. Her bright blue eyes were open, staring, as if she were pondering her next escape. “Have you spoken to Freya — that’s the girl’s name — to ask why Trace might have run to her?”

  Aileen turned to the window and peered for a while at the distant horizon. “A week later, the same thing happened. This time, the girl became very distressed. Liam did his best to calm her down, but she virtually accused him of stalking her. When we walk Trace now, we have to keep her on the leash. If we don’t, she bolts toward the village. Don’t ask me how she did it, but she found the girl’s house. She’s been there twice. The last time Liam went to retrieve her, he was forced into a confrontation with the girl’s father. It’s difficult to know what to do. I daren’t even let Trace loose in the garden. A ten-foot gate couldn’t keep her in. The morning you caught her, I’d let her out to do her business — and suddenly she was gone, just a blur in the rain. We’re tired of trying to work out what’s gotten into her. I probably shouldn’t say this, but we’re considering giving her to a dog shelter, somewhere well away from here.”