The Garden of Promises and Lies
Page 30
“OK, love. Good luck,” she said, picking up her sticks and stepping out through the old door, calling Pie as she went.
Xanthe waited until she heard the back door shut and then opened the book, trying her best not to rush. She must get the words right, the place and the time. Liam’s life could depend on it.
“Show me,” she asked the book, but it was already ahead of her. As if sensing the urgency of what she needed to do the pages flipped over in a blur, an impossible number fluttering open until it chose the one she needed and stopped. The words that appeared on the worn paper were slightly different from those she had used before, for a moment making her wonder if they were the correct ones. Then she remembered that she was not traveling time-within-time, so they would be different. Nor was she using a found thing. She had never done this before, so she should not expect to see instructions she had used before. “OK,” she said aloud, as much to herself as to any listening Spinners. “I get it. I trust you.” The other thing that struck her as peculiar was that there were no whispers from disquiet souls, no cries or entreaties. It was as if these were triggered by the special objects she took into the blind house, not the traveling itself. “So much to learn,” she muttered, leaning closer to the page to make sure she could read the words accurately.
Let the door through the fabric of time swing wide,
May I travel back safe and swift.
Keep my course straight and true, my task to be done,
Lest wickedness pull me adrift.
As she finished the incantation she straightened up and stared into the flame.
“Take me to Liam!” she called out, his name barely out of her mouth when she was flung back, falling decade over decade, generation flashing past generation, years upon years, until she stopped in breathless silence. She had not properly experienced darkness this time, so that she arrived in Bradford, in the alleyway she had only minutes before left, neatly standing in the shadow of the yard wall. She kept very still, checking that she had not been seen. The alley was empty. No startled witnesses, and no Liam. She raced to the door in the wall but found it bolted from the inside. She rattled the handle, pulling on it desperately.
“Mistress Flyte!” she shouted. “Polly? Let me in!” She waited but there was no reply from the other side of the door, no footsteps suggesting someone hurrying to answer her calls. Leaving the alley, she ran into the street and around to the front of the tearoom. As she went she reminded herself she did not yet know how long had passed since she had left. She had not taken any notice of the time before traveling. The sun appeared to have sunk a little lower, the shadows lengthened somewhat, but it wasn’t much to go on. She flung open the front door, the tinkling bells announcing her arrival, as she charged through, drawing surprised looks from the ladies taking tea. Polly appeared with a tray of china.
“Miss Westlake! I thought you had left for London. Was there a problem with the stage?”
“What? No. I … My brother came back for something he left behind. We seem to have missed each other. Have you seen him?”
“No, miss.”
“Not at all?”
“No, miss. Not since you left.”
“How long ago was that?” Xanthe asked.
Polly frowned and looked up at the grandmother clock on the wall. “I should say an hour.”
“I need to speak with Miss Flyte. Is she upstairs?”
“Why, no, miss. My mistress has gone.”
“Gone? Gone where?”
“She didn’t say. Only told me that I was to shut the tearooms at five, and then not open again until she returned.”
“But, when will that be? How long will she be away for?”
“I’m sure I don’t know, miss. Miss Flyte didn’t think I needed telling, is all I can think. Not for me to ask. Is there anything I can help you with?” she asked, setting the tray down and wiping her hands on her apron.
Xanthe felt a cold dread take hold of her. It was as if she were in a nightmare. Liam was missing and Mistress Flyte had left suddenly and unexpectedly with no explanation. The two things had to be connected. Somehow. The thought that the old woman might interfere with their journey through time, putting Liam at such risk, tricking them so completely, filled her with rage. The one small comfort this theory gave her was that it meant Liam was most likely not lost in a timeless nothingness. For whatever reason, Mistress Flyte had taken him or sent him somewhere. And if he was somewhere, he could be found. And to find him, she would have to start from his time.
“Thank you, Polly, no. I must find my brother,” she said to the maid, backing toward the door. She was on the point of leaving when something else occurred to her. “One more thing, how long after we departed did Miss Flyte leave? Do you recall?”
“Why almost the same instant, miss. She came through the tea-room with nothing but a small valise, delivering her instructions to me as she went without so much as breaking her stride. Then she was out the door and gone.”
“Did you see which way she went? Did she hail a hansom cab, or walk across the bridge? Did she go around to the side of the building? Into the alley, perhaps?”
At this, Polly finally lost patience. She put her hands on her hips. “I’m sure I have more things to do than gawp after my mistress to see where she chooses to set her feet. Considering I’m left to do all and everything here there’s plenty to keep me minding my own business, miss. If you pardon my saying so.”
Xanthe nodded, muttering a thank-you as she went. She slipped around the side of the building, pausing only briefly to check no one had seen her, and then took hold of her locket and traveled swiftly home.
When she stepped out of the blind house she almost walked straight into Harley.
“Hey, lassie, have a care! Your mother called me with the news. I came straight over. What’s happened, hen? What the hell’s going on?” He held her arms gently, looking into her eyes with very real concern.
She dearly wanted to let him give her a friendly, reassuring hug. To let him tell her everything would be fine and not to worry, they would sort it out together. But she dared not, fearing she could all too easily give way to tears if she let anyone be too nice to her at that moment. She needed to stay strong, for Liam. She thought then about what she had seen on the lake when she had been boating with Liam and Evie. She had looked into the silent depths and seen not a fish, as she had told the others. She had seen Liam, reaching out to her but unable to be saved, being taken by the cold, suffocating water. Was that a warning of what had happened? Was Liam lost in a timeless purgatory she would never be able to retrieve him from? She remembered the time he had startled her outside the shop, creeping up on her unexpectedly. She had turned around and seen an unnatural shadow over his face. Seen him appear death-marked and in great danger. Why hadn’t she heeded those warnings? Why had she taken him back in time? She knew how dangerous it was. She shouldn’t have asked it of him. Forcing herself to focus, she took a breath and tried to explain to Flora and Harley what she had to do next.
“I need to go to Liam’s flat,” she said. “I need something of his that will sing to me. You’ve got a spare key?”
“Keep it behind the bar. Come away over. I’ll fetch it for you and take you up there.”
“I’m coming too,” Flora said from the steps to the house.
Xanthe was about to tell her there was no need but she recognized the look on her mother’s face. It was the look that said you are my daughter and I’m not going to let you do this alone.
Flora clipped Pie’s lead on and the little dog led the way, happy to have an unexpected outing. Xanthe plucked a duffle coat off a peg in the hall as they passed through it, shrugging it on over her costume, more against the cold of the fading March day than the strange glances she would garner. It was a little after five, so Flora turned the sign on the shop door to CLOSED and locked up as they left. The walk through Marlborough was an assault on her senses, with the rush-hour traffic chugging through the high s
treet, the market traders dismantling their stalls, last-minute shoppers bustling along the pavements, phones ringing, pedestrian crossings beeping—it all felt so loud and bright and brash after the relative quiet of the time she had just come from. Harley went through the main entrance of the pub to fetch the key and met them at the gate to Liam’s workshop and yard. Xanthe fidgeted impatiently as he unlocked the padlock on the gate and then the door to the flat. She trotted up the stairs, leaving Flora to follow more slowly, as Harley flicked on lights. Pie darted past her, hurtling around the kitchen. It pulled at Xanthe’s heart that the little whippet was also searching for Liam.
“He’s not here, pooch,” she said quietly, stroking her head and looking into her button-bright eyes. “He’ll come home soon, I promise.” She scanned the flat one room at a time, walking slowly, listening, picking things up and putting them down again. Feeling she was horribly intruding on Liam’s privacy, but knowing she had to find something with a strong connection to him.
Harley caught her up. He watched her for a while and then asked, “Nothing, hen?”
She shook her head, pausing to pick up a karting trophy on the windowsill. It had his name inscribed on it. “Nothing,” she replied, fighting mounting despair.
Flora sat at the kitchen table. “Perhaps that means he doesn’t need you. I mean, not urgently. Maybe he’s OK where … when he is. And he’ll send for you when he’s ready. When the time is right?”
“It doesn’t work like that, Mum,” she told her, not meaning to snap. “I—I need to find something that mattered to him. Really mattered. That’s what will sing.”
Harley raised his hands and then let them drop by his sides in a gesture of helplessness. “If you’d asked me, hen, I’d have said that was you.”
“I don’t think people can work in the same way,” she said, her heart tightening at the truth of what he had said.
Flora let Pie jump up onto her lap. “He wasn’t home much, really. If you think about it, he was either practicing with the band, playing a gig, out with you, or working on his blessed cars.”
Xanthe looked at her. “That’s it! How can I have been so dim?” She hurried through the flat and tore back down the stairs, calling back to Harley as she went. “The keys to the workshop, Harley? Can you bring them?”
He puffed after her, sorting through the jangle of keys as he went, locating the right one as Xanthe all but hopped from one foot to the other waiting for him. With a rattle, they rolled up the broad shutters that closed off the front entrance to the workshop. Everything was neatly put away, cars he was planning to work on parked up at the back. More recent acquisitions and more costly models near the front under dust sheets or tarpaulins. Xanthe hurried from one vehicle to the next, lifting a corner of the covers until she found what she was looking for.
“Here it is!” she cried, throwing back the canvas to reveal Liam’s favorite red sports car.
“Aye,” Harley agreed. “That’s his pride and joy all right.”
She stood still, placing her hands on the shiny bonnet of the car, waiting, listening, hoping. Pie, with no sense of the importance of the moment, came bounding down the stairs and proceeded to snuffle around the workshop in search of biscuit crumbs. Flora caught them up, moving cautiously across the concrete floor, avoiding patches of oil.
“Anything?” she asked gently.
Fighting back tears, Xanthe shook her head.
Harley was incredulous. “You’re sure? Not even from this?”
“Nothing,” she told them. “Just … nothing.”
The three of them stood in silence, letting the significance of that nothing sink in. It was Xanthe who broke the tension of that silence by voicing what all were thinking.
“Nothing is singing to me. For whatever reason, nothing is drawing me to him. It doesn’t matter. I’ve traveled without a found thing before. I’ve just done it, for goodness’ sake.”
“You have,” Harley agreed, “but you knew when you wanted to go to.”
“And where,” Flora pointed out.
“Aye,” said Harley, “we don’t have any idea when or where Liam has ended up.”
“No,” said Xanthe calmly, determination taking the place of panic now, a kernel of strength giving her the focus and courage she needed, “we don’t. But I’m learning new things all the time. The way to find him, the answers to where and when he is, they will be in the book. It’s up to me to find them.”
Harley tilted his head. “It seems to me, hen, there’s a heap of time to go looking in, and an awful lot of places.”
“Places can be traveled to, and times can be traveled through,” she said, looking from one to the other, needing them to understand, to believe in her. “I am a Spinner. It’s what I do. It’s what I am. Liam has been taken somewhere, because of me. It’s up to me to get him back. I will work out where he is, I will find the way to spin through time to reach him. Whatever it takes, I will bring him home.”
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
As always, heartfelt thanks go to my editor, Pete Wolverton. His patience, attention to detail, and enthusiasm for my stories sustain me through the long, slow business of getting the book written. And this one was longer and slower than some, due to a veritable ark of circumstances and events. More than this, his continued belief in me and support of my work is something I value hugely and will never take for granted.
I’d like to say a big thank-you to the team at St. Martin’s Press. This book has come into being through strange times, indeed, and I appreciate everyone’s fleetness of foot and determination in getting everything done well and in good time.
Once again, I am particularly grateful to the art department team for the beautiful cover. I am always thankful that they listen to my various demands, accommodate them where they can, but hold out for what they know to be the best version of what the book requires.
ALSO BY PAULA BRACKSTON
Secrets of the Chocolate House
The Little Shop of Found Things
The Return of the Witch
The Silver Witch
Lamp Black, Wolf Grey
The Midnight Witch
The Winter Witch
The Witch’s Daughter
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
PAULA BRACKSTON is the New York Times bestselling author of The Witch’s Daughter and The Little Shop of Found Things, among others. Paula lives with her family in the historical border city of Hereford in the beautiful Wye Valley. When not at her desk in her writing room, she enjoys long walks with the dog in a sublime landscape filled with the imprints of past lives and ancient times. You can sign up for email updates here.
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CONTENTS
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Dedication
Epigraph
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Acknowledgments
Also by Paula Brackston
About the Author
Copyright
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
&nbs
p; First published in the United States by St. Martin’s Press, an imprint of St. Martin’s Publishing Group
THE GARDEN OF PROMISES AND LIES. Copyright © 2020 by Paula Brackston. All rights reserved. For information, address St. Martin’s Publishing Group, 120 Broadway, New York, NY 10271.
www.stmartins.com
Cover design by Michael Storrings
Cover photographs: girl © Stephanie Pearl / Arcangel; smoke © Romolo Tavani / Shutterstock.com
The Library of Congress has cataloged the print edition as follows:
Names: Brackston, Paula, author.
Title: The garden of promises and lies / Paula Brackston.
Description: First edition. | New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2020. | Series: Found things; 3 |
Identifiers: LCCN 2020028412 | ISBN 9781250072450 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781466884120 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Paranormal romance stories. | GSAFD: Fantasy fiction.
Classification: LCC PR6102.R325 G37 2020 | DDC 823/.92—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020028412
eISBN 9781466884120
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First Edition: 2020