Winter's Dream (The Hemlock Bay Series)

by Jaeger, Amber

  “My lord,” Emma boomed out, “may I present your lady.”

  Martha shrank as far away from Emma and Luka as she could, pressing her shivering back against the invisible wall.

  “Thank you, Emma,” Luka mumbled.

  She strode past him and lightning fast he grabbed her arm. “Is she … is Bixby …?”

  In her zombie state she didn’t acknowledge him or his question. Defeated, he dropped her arm and she left.

  He kept his head down for several long moments. We all watched him and hidden in the shadow of the staircase no one noticed me. Finally he raised his head and regarded Martha with red-rimmed eyes. “I’m sorry,” he whispered and reached for her.

  She whimpered but didn’t cry out until he grabbed her wrists, holding them out. She was frozen with fear and my heart ached for her.

  “Until my blood is satisfied,” Luka said with a cracked voice.

  Light burst from his hands, engulfing her hands. She cried out and I understood, knowing how painful it was. I waited for him to drop her hands and walk away but he didn’t. He stared down at her wrists in disbelief, turning them over in his hands.

  I struggled to move forward to see what he was looking at but Jordan held me back.

  David broke the silence, his voice filled with awe. “She’s the one.”

  Jordan gasped behind me.

  Instead of bracelets with wispy smoke chains on her wrists, she had a thin, silver ring on the ring finger of her left hand. Luka held his left hand up to examine the twin of it.

  “What does that mean?” I wondered aloud and they both jumped at the sound of my voice.

  Lincoln sat up, frantically looking around the room. Jordan released my arm and I stepped into the weak light.

  “Bumble bee!” he cried, trying to get up and slipping on the wet marble. “How did you, how are—”

  I ran to him and slid in the water. I crashed into his legs and took us both down but we didn’t care. He wrapped me in a bear hug as the freezing water soaked my clothes.

  “I thought I would never see you again,” he began to choke out but his sentiment was interrupted by another body crashing into us.

  “Bixby!” Martha cried, pulling one of Lincoln’s arms away from my shoulder so she could squeeze into the hug. If Lincoln was surprised he didn’t show it. He put his arms around both of us and buried his face in the edge of my sweater.

  We laughed and cried and hugged on the wet floor. Finally I was able to pull back a little and glanced towards the stairs where Jordan stood with a little smile on his face. I looked and saw Luka and David standing over me.

  “You got away,” Luka whispered.

  “How did you do it?” David asked hoarsely. His eyes were red and I loved him for it.

  “Yeah, how did you do?” Lincoln echoed.

  I hesitated on the details, finally just saying, “Jordan did it.”

  My brother’s eyes shifted from my face to Jordan’s. Slowly his glare softened and finally he gave a curt nod. Jordan smiled back and I breathed a little sigh of relief.

  Martha finally let me disentangle myself from her and Luka helped us both to our feet. He gazed at me with evident relief—and something else. His eyes shifted to Martha and his cracked back into grief when she shuddered and jerked her arm away from him. He had wanted me to be the one. And a little part of me had wanted that too.

  I cleared my throat and slipped an arm through Martha’s. “Martha, this is Luka.”

  She nodded her head imperceptibly.

  “It will be okay,” I whispered in her ear. “I promise.”

  “Um, guys,” came a tiny voice from the doorway. We all whipped around and my jaw dropped when I saw tiny, rain soaked Minnie peeking her head through the door.

  “Minnie,” Martha and I cried. She stumbled over to us, shaking with cold.

  “Oh my gosh,” I gasped, wrapping my arms around her freezing frame. “Somebody get a blanket.”

  Minnie’s lips were blue and her teeth were chattering but unbelievably she was happy.

  “Bixby, I missed you so much!” she forced out. “Nobody would tell me where you went—”

  Lincoln wrapped a heavy blanket her shoulders and tucked the edges around her. She looked up gratefully and inhaled sharply when she saw my brother’s face.

  I had to bite my lip not to grin. She was not the first to have that reaction to my brother.

  David was frowning at me and nodding at Minnie. “Uh, Minnie, how did you get here?” I asked, pushing her wet hair off her forehead.

  “I followed them,” she said simply.

  I shook my head. “No, you shouldn’t have been able to.”

  “Why not?” she asked and I realized the aunts had truly kept her in the dark. “You said to look out for Martha so I did.”

  David shook his head and Luka shrugged his shoulders. Lincoln was stupidly gazing at Minnie and this time I let myself grin. “Okay, whatever.”

  “Whatever?” Martha asked sharply. “She shouldn’t be here—and neither should you. And where are my bracelets? I thought I was supposed to have creepy manacles.”

  Luka cleared his throat. “Perhaps we should all take a moment to dry off and warm up. I’ll ask the kitchen staff to prepare a small spread. I see we have quite a few things to figure out and go over.”

  “What is that smell?” Linc suddenly asked. We all looked around, sniffing the air.

  Suddenly it hit me. “Is that smoke?”

  David’s face went from happy amazement to fear. “No,” he said. “No!” He lurched towards the staircase and ran up.

  “Uncle?” Jordan called as David roughly brushed passed him.

  Am I never going to just get to be happy, I wondered in the split second before I raced after David.

  “Bixby, wait!” Lincoln called but I didn’t stop. There was something in David’s eyes that terrified me. I followed him up several staircases with Jordan right on my heels and was out of breath before he finally stopped in front of a large window looking out below.

  Far behind the castle in the forest an orange light was growing. I squinted and saw flames just beginning to shoot over the tops of the dark trees.

  “What is that?” I asked. “Is that my aunt’s house?”

  Everyone else had followed us and I could hear them coming up the stairs but couldn’t take my eyes from David’s tear stained face. Pain and shock masked his normally calm features and I began to shake. He took a step back from the window and reached his hands up to smoothly part the reality in front of him.

  Hot air and black smoke poured out of the tear, blowing his hair back but he stepped through anyway. I waited only a second before following him and Jordan was still right behind me.

  We were in the woods in front of a huge, burning house. It wasn’t my aunt’s house and I breathed a tiny sigh of relief before I noticed David was on his knees with his head bent almost to the ground. He gave a shuddery sigh before lifting his hands again to draw them down in front of the house.

  The wind that was pulled from the sky knocked me to the ground and suddenly everything was dark with the fire extinguished. Thick smoke still rolled off the hot building.

  I coughed and rubbed at my burning eyes. “Are there people in there?” I cried, trying to edge closer to the extinguished inferno.

  “Not anymore,” David said thickly. “They’re all gone.”

  I crawled over to where he still knelt and put a hand on his shoulder. Tears were streaming down his face and he wouldn’t meet my eyes. “Are they dead?” I asked, shuddering at the horrible thought of burning to death in a fire.

  He wiped his face with the back of one huge hand before responding. “They’re not dead, they were taken,” he said hollowly.

  “W
ho?”

  “The Gatekeepers the curse rejected.”

  Despite the heat coming in waves off the shell of the building I was suddenly cold.

  I heard a low growl and snapped around to find Luka had followed us through the tear. “You said Emma killed them.”

  “I know,” David said sadly. He didn’t turn around to meet his nephew’s furious glare. “I had to, nobody could know they lived.”

  I heard another growl from my other side and watched Jordan circle in. “You knew Bixby would live and let us believe—”

  “I had to—”

  “Liar!” Luka cut in, striding to face his broken uncle. The two boys stood shoulder to shoulder, glaring down at the man. I shifted to put my body between them.

  “Get out of the way,” Luka and Jordan said as one.

  I was scared, too scared to be able to stand up so I settled for crossing my shaking arms. “No. I want to hear what he has to say.”

  “He’s a liar,” Jordan bit out.

  “He’s your uncle,” I snapped back. “Shouldn’t you at least hear him out?” I turned to David. “So tell us.”

  He looked up at us with an apology already in his eye. “I’m sorry I couldn’t tell you.”

  “Tell us now!” Jordan growled.

  David nodded and sat back on his heels. He took in a long, shaky breath before he began. “When my brother set this curse he didn’t really care what happened to the rejected girls. But he did want them out of his castle and he wanted to keep hurting Miriam so he didn’t let them go back to their world, their homes. Instead he made this prison in the woods, very similar to the one Jordan made for Lincoln.” I grimaced but didn’t look away from David as he continued his story. “Emma would lead them there and once inside, they couldn’t get out. Even more cruelly, he made sure Emma wouldn’t remember so she couldn’t go back later and try to help them. There were even spells in place to keep wanderers away and to silence the girls’ cries outside of the invisible walls.”

  “So they were just stuck in the middle of the woods?” I asked, confused.

  David wiped another tear away. “Yes, without food or water. I searched for almost a year before I discovered what my brother was doing with the rejected girls. Three were dead and one was very close to it. I tried to take her but I couldn’t, his spell was too powerful. I brought her food and water and built a small shelter and then the next one came. And the next one.” He looked up at the burned out structure. “That house took up nearly all of the space inside that little prison.” I tried to envision the house before it had burned. It could have easily held hundreds of girls.

  “But why would you do that?” I asked. David had been a mystery to me since I met him, always claiming to be an enemy but always acting like a friend.

  His voice was a low rumble and I had to lean forward to hear him. “Because it was my fault. All of it. Machian would never even have known of Miriam if he hadn’t heard me talking about her and her way with animals.” A tear ran down the ridge of his nose and dropped off the tip.

  “So you felt guilty?” I asked, but that explanation seemed thin.

  “You loved her,” Jordan said suddenly. “You did, didn’t you? I always wondered what had happened between you and your brother and why you kept going to see him anyway.”

  “He never came to see him,” Luka interrupted. “You were going to check on them, on the girls,” he guessed.

  I felt sorry for David but my anger was much greater. “You are a liar. I trusted you! Is that why you’ve been helping me? Why you helped Lincoln get to me? Because you’ve been feeling guilty?”

  “Why couldn’t you just tell us?” Jordan snarled. “I killed Bixby to get her free! What if I couldn’t have revived her? If I had known she was just in the forest—”

  “You don’t get it,” David said numbly. “You couldn’t have gotten her out. And I couldn’t tell anyone, I couldn’t draw any attention to them.”

  “But why?” I asked. “Maybe someone could have helped you get them free.”

  He reached a hand out to touch my cheek. “So sweet and so trusting,” he said quietly. “Do you think we’re all like this? So kind, so willing to help?” He cocked his head to the side. “We’re not. If any of my kind had even suspected there was a treasure of Gatekeepers stuck right here in their world they would have taken them in an instant.”

  I started in surprise. “Taken them? For what?”

  Luka cleared his throat but when I turned to look at him he wouldn’t meet my eyes. Jordan wouldn’t either, so I turned back to David.

  “What would they want with them?”

  “Take them, keep them, convince them they weren’t so bad and then have children with them.”

  My stomach rolled. “I … I don’t get it.”

  He sighed again. “It’s so they could try to have children that were jinn and Gatekeepers. Their daughters could potentially open the gates to your world for them.”

  “That … no way. Wouldn’t the mothers tell them what a bad idea that is?” My mind was all over the place but kept going back to one very painful place.

  “Not if the jinn had won the woman over.”

  “That’s not likely. So why don’t they just,” I gagged a little, “have the kids and get rid of the mom?”

  David shook his head. “Without the mother to teach the daughter about Gatekeeping the girls wouldn’t have known how to open the gates. A jinn would need a trusting mother who loved them to teach a daughter how to let them pass through.”

  My stomach was a ball of hard lead high in my chest. “All right. And the jinn don’t just come to our world to kidnap Gatekeepers and try out this evil plan because …?”

  He wouldn’t meet my eye. “Because they can’t. They can’t just take Gatekeepers, one would either have to have taken and rejected by the curse or … bound by one of us. Willingly.”

  I swallowed hard and rubbed a hand over the painful beating in my chest. “So these discarded Gatekeepers were just sort of up for grabs, right?” I said coldly. I stood up and heard shifting behind me. “But if you wanted your own personal little open door into my world you would just have to find a Gatekeeper dumb enough to bind herself to one of you guys.”

  I began to shake. All it would take was one uneducated Gatekeeper, one lonely, stupid, trusting girl and a jinn could have his own personal doorway to my world. I thought back through all the lies, all the betrayals, all my pain and heartache. Everything, every moment had been so Jordan could go between worlds unhindered. Anger and shame rose in me and I struggled not to burst into tears or throw up. I was just a pawn to him, just something to use so he could get what he wanted. Every last thing had been a lie.

  Jordan placed a hand on my shoulder and I shrugged it off. My heart was breaking all over again and I could barely hold myself together. “Oh my God, is that what you wanted me for?” I whispered.

  He turned me around and his arms where cold iron on my shoulders, nearly as cold as the bracelets he had put on my wrists only moments ago. “Bixby, you need to listen to me, that is not what happened between you and I, I didn’t even know you—”

  I swallowed past the lump in my throat. “Take them off,” I said, shoving my hands under his nose.

  Jordan’s face was pale and for the first time ever I saw real fear there. “Bixby, I love you, I swear—”

  “You don’t get to say that. Now take these off.”

  He nodded and slid his hands down to my wrists.

  “Jordan, don’t,” David said, his voice clearer and stronger. “She’s safer with them on.”

  I ignored him and stared at Jordan. “Now.”

  “Don’t, Jordan,” his uncle stressed and Jordan turned his eyes toward him. “She’s too involved; she’s already been to our world. She’ll be a
target. I know you want her to love you but it’s more important to keep her safe. They can’t take her if you’ve already bound her.”

  I waited for Jordan’s eyes to meet mine again. “I will never forgive you,” I promised, “there will never be a chance for us if you don’t take these off now.” Jordan slid his hands down my arms towards my hands.

  “Wait,” David interrupted again.

  “Are you in on it too?” I snarled. “Is this like a family operation, trying to get a hold of Gatekeepers to make some weird hybrid babies that could let you funnel into our world unchecked?” I snapped my face back to Jordan’s. “You probably weren’t even planning on going that far, you wouldn’t have to with such a pathetic, love sick girlfriend, huh? A couple more weeks under your thumb and I probably would just open them for you?”

  David spoke again. “I know how this all must seem but it would be safer for you if you kept those bracelets on.”

  “I cannot effing believe you,” I said and saw Luka’s startled glance from the corner of my eye. “I want the bracelets off. And then I’m going to go find those girls. Now, Jordan.”

  He hesitated only a second. White heat flared up in his hands when he clamped down on my wrists and when I jerked them back a second later the bracelets were gone.

  He kept his green eyes locked on mine. “I only ever wanted you,” he swore.

  I searched his face, his wide open eyes, and the way his body strained slightly towards me. “Thank you,” I finally said.

  His face fell a little at my formal response. “I would do anything you asked of me. You can trust me and I will prove it to, no matter how long it takes. You’ll see.”

  “She isn’t going to see from inside whatever prison they lock her up in,” David interrupted angrily. “You’ve put her in danger, she’ll never be safe.” He turned to glare at me. “I don’t know how they found out about the girls but if they find out about you they will come after you for sure.”