Strangely, though, I’m not frightened. I don’t understand it, but there’s something about the air around me that feels . . . comforting somehow. So do I return to the path I was on before, or do I follow the one the nudge suggested?
“I’m trusting you,” I whisper, setting off in the new direction.
I creep forward, slowly now, picking my way across the rocky soil and bracing myself at every moment for another nudge.
It never comes, though, and soon enough I’m out of the woods and onto the lawn. And a few minutes later, I find a gnarled tree in front of me. I recognize it—it’s the old tree that stands only about thirty feet from the main entrance.
I praise the fog now as I skirt around the castle and head for the back door. I overshoot it by a few feet, but I find it easily enough. And there’s no one around.
I open the door, quickly and soundlessly, and peek into the empty back hallway. I scurry down it toward the main staircase, but before I can reach it, two of Alice’s fellow maids clatter out of a nearby room.
I dive for the nearest doorway, catapulting into one of the sitting rooms. I close the door behind me and hold my breath. The door is thick, and I can barely hear the brightly chirping voices of the girls as they pass by my hiding place. When I’m sure they’re gone, I try to even out my shaky breath and head back into the hallway.
I make it up the main staircase, and I’m pretty sure no one sees me. The servants will all be following Mabel’s rules and sticking to the servants’ area of the house.
Poppy’s bedroom door is open. I try not to breathe as I creep toward it. I can’t hear anything inside, and after a few quiet moments, I lean forward and peek in. I want to feel relieved when I see that it’s empty, but I can’t help but feel a pang of sadness as I take in the frilly pink room that’s become so familiar and comfortable to me these past few months. I might never see this room again.
I shake my head and return my focus to my task, scurrying for the door to the master suite.
It’s locked. Of course.
I realize I’ve only ever been here with Alice before. Alice, who has the key.
For one brief, awful moment, I consider seeking her out and asking for her help. But of course that’s stupid and would only result in her turning me over to Blair or Mabel or the hospital. Even if she didn’t already hate me, she thinks I killed Copperfield, just like everyone else. And begging her to help me break into the master suite will only make me seem crazier.
I dash back to Poppy’s room, wishing I had paid more attention to Hex’s occasional lessons on breaking and entering. She considered picking locks a survival skill, though she swore up and down that it was one she hadn’t used in years.
I scramble through Poppy’s hair-accessory drawer, brushing aside headbands and sparkly hair clips until I find a few bobby pins. I grab them and rush back to the door, kneeling down in front of the lock and bending the pins into what I hope are the right shapes. I try to remember how to angle one pin and twist the other, like Hex taught me, but my hands are shaking. I close my eyes, take a deep breath, and try to feel my way.
Finally, the lock clicks, I open the door, and I’m in.
I hurry through the opulent room into the small office and repeat the process on the desk drawer lock.
As I fumble with the lock, I think about exactly how much trouble I’ll be in if they catch me. I won’t just be packed off to an asylum, I’ll be charged with breaking and entering. Even Charlie won’t have any sympathy for me if I’m found rummaging through his mother’s private things.
But I have no choice. I have to know. I have to understand why this woman hid me from my grandparents. Why she brought me here.
I nearly crow when the lock clicks open, but I press my lips together and open the drawer.
I stare at the treasure inside. The drawer is filled with papers and photos and all kinds of miscellaneous objects, including an old tape recorder. I reach for a glass perfume bottle in the back corner. Highland Heather. My mom’s scent. The one that filled my room here that one night, as if my mother were passing through it. I set the bottle down and take out a few of the papers. They’re emails, from my mom to Lily, printed out and marked up. Some of them are brief, only a few lines assuring Lily that she’s fine. Some of them are longer, and I skim them through with tears in my eyes. She writes about my first words, my first day of kindergarten, the stories she tells me as I fall asleep each night. There’s a sentence about the bluebird princess story, which Lily highlighted. Several passages have been highlighted, I realize, including the recipe for the “shortbread with a kick” that she used to make for me.
I click play on the tape recorder, and my mother’s laugh rings out from the small speakers. Just like I knew it would. “Lily, what are you doing?” my mother says, and her voice sounds so young. So carefree. “What am I supposed to say?”
“Say your name, and what piece you’re going to play,” a high-pitched voice answers.
“My name is Moira Cavendish, and I’ll be playing Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata.”
Mom. This drawer is full of her.
“You found her,” someone says, and I click off the tape recorder, slipping it into my coat pocket as I whirl around to see through my tears that Mabel is standing in the doorway of the office, and Blair is peeking over her right shoulder.
Mabel is holding a gun.
And she’s pointing it right at me.
CHAPTER 35
Mabel?
I stare at her, trying to blink away my tears to focus on the gun. I recognize it: It’s one of a pair of antique dueling pistols that I saw in a spare bedroom once when I was following Alice around. “What are you doing?” I ask, more confused than frightened.
“What she wanted me to do,” Mabel says. There’s something different about her voice. It almost reminds me of the dark times, when Mom was in the midst of one of her episodes, and her words would come out too fast. Unsettled. Unhinged.
“What Blair wants you to do?” I ask. I want to keep her talking. I spare a glance at Blair, who is standing silently behind Mabel, her face pale, her eyes piercing into me.
Mabel shakes her head, drawing my attention back to her. “Not Blair. My lady.”
“Lily?” I ask.
“Don’t you dare speak her name,” Mabel spits out.
“She wanted you to kill me?”
“She wanted me to shut you up, put you somewhere no one could ever find you.”
Of course. “Somewhere my grandparents could never find me, you mean. Why?”
Mabel doesn’t answer. I look back at Blair, but her face doesn’t offer me anything either.
“Money?” I say finally. “She wanted my grandparents’ money, is that it?”
“And her children will get it,” Mabel says firmly. The strange darkness in her voice is gone now, and I finally feel a frisson of terror. She sounds determined.
I glance again at Blair, but she says nothing. She makes no move to help me, just stands there.
“Why does it matter so much to you? Why get so involved with her personal affairs?” I ask Mabel.
She blinks, as if she thinks the questions I’ve asked are absurd. “This is my family. Lillian—I knew her from when she was just a wee bairn. I raised her, better than her own mother ever could have. I wanted the world for her. She deserved so much more than the life she was born into. She deserved this castle, and the old magic that keeps it safe.” Her voice falters for a moment, and for just that moment, she lowers the gun a fraction. But then it’s right back up, level with the space between my eyes. “I should have paid more attention to the rituals. If I had, they would have protected her.”
I think of her disappearing into the darkness of the tree room, carrying the burning bundle of juniper branches through the house on New Year’s Day. All because she thinks those strange rituals would ke
ep this family—her family—safe.
I’ve been so blind. I’ve been so focused on Blair that I didn’t recognize the larger enemy.
“I’m sorry,” I say softly. “I’m so sorry for your loss.”
She wraps her free arm around herself, as if she’s trying to hold all that loss inside her. The gun is still shakily pointed at me. “I will not let her children lose any more than they already have.”
I spread my hands in front of me, trying to look as unthreatening as possible. “The inheritance is theirs. Even if the Cavendishes did offer it to me, I wouldn’t take it. I’d refuse it. I want what’s best for Poppy, too. And for Charlie.”
My voice catches on his name, and Blair finally reacts, her eyes narrowing and snapping to mine. They are filled with venom.
“Charles is mine,” she hisses. “I won’t let you take him from me.”
“Of course. I would never try to take him from you,” I vow, trying to ignore the sadness that curls through me as I say it. “I just want to go back to Texas, back home. I won’t say anything to anyone. Please, just let me go home.”
“Blair, go make sure everyone is where they’re supposed to be,” Mabel says. And, like a good little servant, Blair nods her head and hurries away.
Mabel’s been in charge all along.
The two of us are now alone. Mabel raises the gun a little higher, pointing it right at my forehead. Her hand is steady, no longer shaking, and I can see the determination in her eyes. She knows I’m lying. She knows I’d never leave Poppy and Charlie here in the same house with a madwoman. With two madwomen. She’s not going to let me go.
So, before she can say anything else, before she can pull the trigger and do what she thinks must be done, I act.
I run straight at her, pushing her to the floor, my terror making me strong. And there’s a horrible explosion from the gun.
I suck in a breath, but I don’t feel any pain. I must have knocked the gun off course. I sprint down the hall, screaming for help.
But no one is answering me. Can’t anyone hear me? Time seems to slow, and my legs feel impossibly heavy. I can’t push them any faster. I wait to hear Mabel’s footsteps right behind me, for the sound of the next gunshot.
Finally, I make it to the main staircase, leaping down the steps three at a time. I’m almost to the next landing when my feet slip from under me, and I’m rolling to the bottom.
I can’t breathe. I can’t even tell if I’m injured. For a moment, all I can do is lie there in a heap, stunned, the world spinning.
I have to move. I have to get up.
I hear footsteps above me, and, in a haze, I see Mabel hurrying down to me. There’s no one to help me. I have to help myself.
I shove myself up, finally getting some good breath in my lungs but also feeling a sharp, searing pain shooting from my left ankle.
I keep running down the stairs, trying to ignore the pain that feels like lightning cracking up my leg.
I keep screaming. Where is everyone?
There is another explosion, and something whizzes past my ear.
I push myself faster, my ankle now screaming in protest.
I turn and hurry to the back door, limping, my teeth gritted in sheer determination. She can’t kill me. I won’t die this way, right now.
I push open the back door and hurry out into the snow. I’m running toward Gareth’s cabin, desperate to find someone, anyone, who might not want to kill me, but when I get there I see that there are no lights on inside. He’s not home. Where is everyone?
Another bullet rushes past my left ear, burying itself in the wood side of Gareth’s cabin, and I instinctively veer right, my eyes landing on the large hedge maze. The fog envelops me as I find the entrance and run in.
It’s only when I’ve made a few random turns and gone deeper inside that I realize what a mistake I’ve made. I’ve trapped myself in a disorienting, confining structure with just one entrance. This maze doesn’t lead to an exit but to a fountain in the center, which means the way I came in is the only way out. I’m cornered.
Desperate, I try to scramble up the hedges, hoping I can climb over them and run out into the woods. But the shrubs aren’t sturdy enough, and they collapse beneath my weight. They’re too dense for me to push my way through, no matter how much I scrabble at the branches.
I clap a hand over my mouth to muffle a scream of terror and frustration.
I can hear faint footsteps now. Mabel. Stalking me. I creep away from them, making more random turns until I come to a dead end.
Her footsteps are closer now.
I’m going to die.
CHAPTER 36
I press myself back against the hedges, trying to think of what to do.
“I knew your mother, did you know that?” Mabel calls out from somewhere in the maze. “She was always ordering my lady around, ever since they were children. She grew up in that big manor, and my lady’s parents could hardly afford their little house in town, so Moira thought she was better than her. But then your awful mother ran off with your winking, devilish father, and my lady finally got everything that she deserved.”
I can hardly focus on her menacing words; I’m too distracted by how much better I can hear them. She’s getting closer.
The venom in her voice grows sharper. “I hated her. I hated your mother. My lady and I celebrated when we found out that all along she was crazy. We knew there was something wrong with her.”
I need something to fight with. I slip my hand into my coat pocket, wishing I still had my cell phone. But it’s gone, left behind when I went to the hospital to be evaluated. In its place, there’s the tape recorder that I found in Lily’s drawer.
The tape recorder. For a moment, I consider pressing play. Then at least I can hear my mother’s voice one last time before I die.
But then I get another idea.
I do press play, but I hurl it over the hedge across from me. The notes of Moonlight Sonata float through the air, the melody moving farther and farther away from me. And I hear Mabel’s footsteps hurry after it.
I’m off like a shot, sprinting out of my dead end and back onto the path I came from. My twisted ankle is white-hot with searing pain, but still I run blindly, fueled by a desperate hope. Then, somehow, I find my way out of the maze again.
I’m nearly sobbing in relief, checking over my shoulder to make sure Mabel’s not behind me, when I run right into something. No, someone.
I choke on the sob in my throat, sure that Mabel or Blair has caught me.
Instead, I look up to see Alice.
“Fee,” she says, clearly shocked, her hands on my shoulders, bracing me. “What—”
“She has a gun,” I whisper frantically. “Mabel—she has a gun, and she’s after me.” I’m tugging on her hand, my eyes on the entrance to the maze. “Hurry!”
Alice lets me pull her along a few steps, then plants her feet, stopping the both of us. “Fee, what’s happened? You sound—”
“Crazy?” I finish for her. “I sound crazy, yes, but we have to go. Please!”
She looks back at the maze, and that’s when we see Mabel running out of it. Her hand still clutches the antique dueling pistol.
Alice sucks in a startled breath as Mabel raises the gun and fires. She’s still running as she shoots, though, and her aim is unsteady. The bullet flies wide, and finally Alice starts running.
I don’t know where to go. I have no idea where we’ll be safe. Suddenly my ankle gives way, and I slip on the fresh snow, but Alice grabs my arms and pulls me back up before I can fall.
She keeps pulling me onward. We hurry around the castle and out to the garage, and finally I see why no one answered my calls inside the castle. This is where everyone’s been. I choke out a sob of relief.
The whole staff is crowded around the staircase to Albert’s apartment
, some of them moving in our direction. They must have heard the shot. I see Poppy standing at the edge of the group, weeping into the cook’s arms.
“Mabel,” Alice says as I kneel over, trying to catch my breath. “She’s out of her mind. And she’s got a gun.”
Then, as if I’m in a dream, I see Charlie striding down the stairs from Albert’s door, his expression almost comically frozen in shock as he spots me. And then I watch his expression shift to pure horror as he sees Mabel careening around the side of the house, gun in hand.
“What the . . . ?” he starts to ask, but then Mabel raises her arm once again, still intent on killing me. And he runs.
Right in front of me.
And for once, Mabel’s bullet finds a mark.
CHAPTER 37
Charlie stumbles back, and I cry out.
I hook my arms under his shoulders as he falls backward, trying to soften his fall. There’s a shock of red on the snow beside him—his blood.
Everyone around me is screaming, including Mabel, who has sunk to her knees in the snow, her face twisted in sorrow and regret, her gun dropped and forgotten beside her.
I bend over Charlie. The bullet must be in his left leg, in his thigh. “Charlie?” I ask, frantic, my fingers searching him. There’s so much blood; I need to stop it.
His eyelids flicker, then close, and I scream his name. His eyes startle open again, and he looks up at me.
“I’m okay,” he says, the weakness of his voice completely contradicting him.
I look down at his leg. The pool of blood around his left thigh has grown even larger. It’s too much blood.
Without thinking, I rise to my knees, unbuckle the thin belt around my waist, yank it off, and wrap it around his upper thigh, as a tourniquet. I pull it tight, then tighter still, and press my hands against the wound until he groans and the blood seems to stop pouring out of him quite so quickly.
“You stupid idiot. You stupid, stupid idiot,” I murmur, over and over.
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