“What the hell happened?”
“I don’t even know. I just remember falling down the stairs at school yesterday—”
“You were not at school yesterday.”
“What?”
“Really, you were not at school yesterday. Bastian and I waited at the entrance for you until the bell rang. You didn’t show up at all.”
“How do I remember a fall then?”
Gwenn shook her head, and her shoulders slumped. “What the hell is going on here?”
“I don’t know. I just don’t know,” I said, stepping back and carefully sitting on the unmade bed.
“Do you remember anything other than that from yesterday?”
“Just Kate promising to take me home to the States. This morning I woke up on a grave.”
“What?”
“I had a dream about that woman again,” I said, looking down at the scars that formed the words help me.
“I don’t understand why all of this is happening to you. I mean, I’ve lived here for almost three years now, and nothing—don’t get me wrong—everyone in this town is weird, but nothing this strange has ever happened.”
“Nothing like this has ever happened to me before either. I haven’t even lived here for a week.” I suddenly lost the energy to keep speaking and looked out of the window where the snow was still falling so heavily I couldn’t see the outside world.
“Okay, so, you’re going to be stuck here until this storm moves on one way or another,” Gwenn said, finally moving away from the door and setting my bag down near my feet. “I think we should go back to the passageway and open the rest of those doors.” She placed her hands on her hips.
“How are we going to get there in this?” I asked, looking toward the window.
“We can survive some snow.” She nodded as she spoke. “I mean, if people can live in Siberia, we can walk half a mile down the road.”
“I don’t know, Gwenn. I mean, I’m leaving Greyhaven anyway. What does it matter if we figure out what’s going on or not?” I said, exhaling as I spoke.
“Oh, come on. You’re not going to leave me here in this town without helping me figure out what’s going on, are you?”
Our eyes met, and she crossed her arms over her chest. “All right,” I said. If I was stuck here, I would also want to know what was going on. “I think we should probably have lunch first though, Rebecca may not forgive us if we don’t.” The smell of Rebecca’s cooking had somehow made its way through the crack under the door.
“Yeah, let’s go—I could see that Grams was literally dying to feed you anyway.”
We walked down the stairs, and I followed Gwenn into the cozy wooden kitchen with slate floors and stone countertops.
“We’re ready when you are, Grams,” she said, pulling up two chairs from the small wooden table in the middle of the room. Bronze pots hung everywhere, and jasmine grew from a ceramic pot over the only wooden window at the end of the room.
“You can sit right over there, honey. Make yourself at home,” Rebecca said, pointing to the chair Gwenn had pulled out for me when I didn’t move. I grinned and sat down next to Gwenn, who was examining her nails. “A house is not a home unless it contains food and fire, for the mind as well as the body. You know who said that?” She turned toward me with a large bronze pot cradled in her hands.
“Benjamin Franklin.” I smiled. “My stepmom used to say that every winter when we lit the fire.” I grinned, remembering Grace. Her memory seemed out of place here somehow.
“I bet you’ve been itching to leave,” she said, narrowing her eyes. “I sure as hell was when I first got here. I was about your age, and I was constantly fixing to run away from this place. I arrived here from New Orleans with my parents. Can you imagine how left out I felt?” Rebecca smiled. “There I was, fifteen years old in Victoria Baxter’s year.” She lifted her brow. “Those kids were so mean. It was 1973, and they were all still behaving like it was 1840 with their nonsense. There was no internet back then, so you can imagine how isolated and narrowminded they all were.” She kneaded some dough.
“Victoria? Baxter?” Gwenn said, immediately looking up at her grandmother, whose eyes had widened just slightly.
“I meant to say Gillian Baxter, Victoria’s grandmother,” she said, turning away from us.
Gwenn raised her left brow, cocked her head, and glared at her grandmother’s back and then at me with an expression that said: Did you just hear what I heard? I shrugged.
“Come on, you two, this will all be quicker if you help. Idle hands and all.”
Rebecca put us to work, and before we knew what had hit us, we were helping with lunch. Gwenn and I were stuck peeling potatoes and chopping onions. I got the feeling that Rebecca did not trust either of us with more than that. Whenever we tried to start a conversation, Rebecca would interrupt with “more working less talking, girls.”
“She definitely said and meant Victoria,” Gwenn hissed as Rebecca disappeared into the pantry and our eyes had dried from the onion chopping.
I nodded. “In 1973,” I whispered through gritted teeth.
“Come on, you may as well help pit the cherries,” Rebecca announced as she walked back into the kitchen and placed a bowl of cherries in the center of the table. Gwenn sighed and slumped.
“You just had to finally decide you wanted to eat something,” she mumbled as we walked back to the table.
An hour later, we were sitting down at the old wooden table in the kitchen. It had been such a long time since I’d sat down for a real family meal that I didn’t want it to end. After lunch, I was so full I couldn’t walk with my back straight, and Gwenn and I laughed until we cried at how we were both walking like cavemen.
“I feel ready to hibernate,” I groaned, regretting the second helping of cherry pie.
“Not a chance,” she said as I followed her back up the stairs.
Gwenn dug out heavy-duty winter clothing, including ski jackets and gloves. “We should be okay in these,” she said as we dressed quickly.
“It took Viktor about two minutes to get me here. That must be about a ten-minute walk, right?” I asked, looking out of the window. It had stopped snowing, but the blanket on the floor was so thick only the tops of shrubs could be seen poking out.
“We’ll be fine. We just need to keep moving and get there as quickly as possible,” Gwenn confirmed, zipping her ski jacket all the way to her chin.
“Why do you have so much ski gear?” I asked, looking at her outfit and then mine.
“My dad loved to ski. I kept hoping they would come and get me for a ski vacation, but, I’m still waiting.” She shrugged.
“You haven’t seen your parents for three years?” I asked, gaping.
“Nope, not once. They put me on a plane in Washington, and that’s the last time I saw them. I mean, they’ve called___ And we still have the old family house in New Orleans, but I don’t think I’ll see them unless I go visit. I think they’re getting ready to leave Egypt anyway, moving to South Africa or something. I mean, it’s not like it’s as bad as your situation.”
Wasn’t it? Parents who were alive and clearly didn’t care enough about their daughter to see her even once in three years? Dad and Grace would have never done that to me, ever.
“Come on, let’s get out of here before Gran tries to feed us the rest of that pie,” Astrid said, taking my arm.
We made our way down the stairs, holding our breaths and moving so slowly I could hear my heartbeat.
“And where are you two going?” we heard Rebecca cry from behind us just as we made it to the front door.
“Evelyn forgot her handbag at home, and it has her passport and all her important details in it, Grams,” Gwenn said, turning to face her grandmother.
“And you think it’s smart going out in that?” she said, pointing to the fr
ont door and glancing at both of us.
“It will take ten minutes to get there. It will be fine,” Gwenn said and waved her off.
I decided not to say anything. I liked Rebecca, and if she wanted us to stay at home, well, we would have to try and sneak out later.
“Okay, but if you get too cold, come back and go tomorrow,” she said, her eyes still narrowed suspiciously.
“Sure,” Gwenn said just before pulling open the door. The cold air entered the house and smacked me in the face. The entire world seemed completely white. From the sky to the ground, there was not one other color visible.
“Let’s go,” Gwenn said, taking my arm and closing the front door behind us before Rebecca could say anything else.
“She has a habit of changing her mind. Let’s get to the road and out of sight,” she said. I nodded, and we fought our way through the snow. My body ached from all my injuries, and the impact from ploughing through the knee-high white fluff was not helping at all.
“She meant Victoria, I know she did,” Gwenn said in a level tone as soon as we made it out to what we assumed was the main road.
“I think so too.” I sighed, so tired of having to second-guess everything in this town. “It wasn’t so much that she said Victoria’s name, but let’s put it this way, you’re a better liar than your gran is.” I grinned.
“Good thing too, or we wouldn’t be walking in this wonderful snow,” she said, waving away a few falling flakes.
“If Rebecca was right, and she was in Victoria’s class in 1973, that makes Victoria sixty-three years old,” I said, shaking my head.
“Victoria is our age,” Gwenn replied immediately.
“She definitely acts our age,” I said.
“Or like a twelve-year-old.”
“Maybe Rebecca did just make a mistake. That, or, do you think the town just froze in time?” I said. It sounded so ridiculous, I scoffed.
“Maybe that would explain the Greyhaven bridge disappearing and you not being able to find it again. I mean, I haven’t left Greyhaven since I arrived,” she said, frowning deeply.
“I think we should look in the passage but also in Kate’s study and the other rooms. If she was hiding something, we’re bound to find it somewhere in that house.” I watched as my breath turned into a wisp of white as I spoke.
We walked in relative silence the rest of the way, only breaking it to complain about the cold. When we arrived at Kate’s gate, we had to manually push it open against all the snow, and I had never been so grateful for gloves in my life.
“Did you have to walk all the way up this driveway earlier this morning?” Gwenn moaned, clutching her side as we made it to the halfway mark.
“Barefoot,” I said, remembering the icy cold against my feet.
We held on to each other as we made it around the bend.
“Fina—”
“Who did this?” Gwenn mumbled as we took in the house.
Someone had boarded up the front door and every window.
“Never mind who did it, how the hell are we going to get in?” I said, my eyes darting around the entire house.
“Someone definitely does not want us getting back in there.”
Chapter Seventeen
“Come on,” I said, pulling Gwenn toward the front door. “We can pull those off.”
“I mean, we are experts in breaking and entering where doors are concerned.” She nodded as we arrived at the thick wooden planks that had been nailed across the door arch.
“I think we can just pull these off,” I said as I examined the door. “Just grab the other side and pull.” I took hold of one end of the plank and Gwenn the other. It was harder than it looked, and finally, when the nails separated from the arch, Gwenn and I were both flung backward into the snow.
“Maybe not as easy as we thought,” she said, trying to get back up as gracefully as she could.
“We can use this one for leverage with the others,” I said. I slid the plank into the space between the door and the rest of the boards. It took us a solid ten minutes to pry the five boards away.
“Door is still unlocked,” Gwenn said, pushing it open.
As I followed Gwenn into the dark entrance hall, my back muscles spasmed and bolts of adrenaline coursed through my veins and to my fingertips.
“I swear something happened here last night,” I muttered, looking at a dark spot on the shiny wooden floor.
“Are you remembering something?” Gwenn asked. She closed the front door behind us as I made my way to the middle of the room.
“I think so—”
I looked toward the red curtain. It wasn’t that.
“I think someone was here last night,” I said as my eyes darted around the room again. Try to remember.
“Um—was this place always so empty?” Gwenn asked, turning on the spot and taking in the entrance hall.
I looked up and realized that besides the paintings on the walls, everything else was gone.
“Someone’s taken all the furniture,” I mumbled.
“How did they even empty this place so quickly?”
I shook my head. “And why?”
“Let’s go to Kate’s study first. It’s going to get dark in about an hour, so we need to move quickly,” Gwenn said, turning toward the stairs when she realized remembering the previous day was going to take me more than just a minute.
My eyes met with the blue eyes in the painting. “Gwenn,” I called.
Gwenn, who had already reached the landing, turned around.
“This boy, I feel like I know him,” I said, turning to look at her. Her eyebrows raised in confusion.
“Evelyn, we’ve already talked about this, that looks like Blake,” she said slowly, forming each word.
“Blake?” I said, trying to remember who he was and when we had had the conversation.
“Greyson? Blake—you’ve run into him a few times.” She cocked her head in disbelief.
I shook my head and felt the panic surge in my veins. It was as if my brain knew that I should know who Blake was, but I just couldn’t remember anything.
“God, what happened to you?” Gwenn whispered and placed her hand on my shoulder. I shook my head as goose bumps formed on every inch of my skin.
“I have no idea,” I mouthed, and I crossed my arms over my chest. For what felt like the hundredth time in the past week, I wanted to run away screaming and not look back. “I really met him?” I looked into her eyes, hoping somehow, she could be wrong.
“Yeah, and against my better judgement. I think you liked him or something. You can’t remember any of this?”
“No,” I admitted, inhaling the dusty air.
“Well, I think we can both agree that there is nothing logical about any of this. Let’s just go check out Kate’s study and see if we can find something there,” Gwenn said as I climbed to the landing.
“Come on, it’s this way,” I beckoned as I walked down the hall and pushed the door open to Kate’s study.
“Wait,” Gwenn said, grabbing my arm. “Is that where she died? Do you think her body will still be there?”
“They wouldn’t have taken the furniture, left the body here, and boarded up the house,” I replied, rolling my eyes.
I pushed the door to the study open. “They’ve taken everything in here too,” I confirmed as I stepped in.
“What do you mean?” Gwenn walked into the empty room now.
“Everything’s gone, even the rug,” I said, pointing at the bare wooden floor. “The desk, the bookshelf, all of it, gone.”
“Where is Kate’s bedroom?” Gwenn turned to me.
I jerked my head. “I don’t actually know,” I admitted.
“We’re checking every room,” Gwenn said as she walked out of the study. I followed.
“You take t
his passage, I’ll take the one to the right,” I said. We split up, and I walked to the wing of the second floor I hadn’t even ever seen. I tried desperately to remember Blake, but no matter how hard I strained my mind, I couldn’t even begin to formulate what he looked like, what he sounded like or where I met him, and somehow, it felt empty, like there was in fact, something missing.
I opened the first door I came across. Empty. My heart slammed against my chest.
“This one’s empty too,” I called out to Gwenn, my voice faltering at the end.
“Two of these are completely empty,” Gwenn called back.
I walked to the next door and pushed it open. Nothing. Next one. Empty. I tried one behind me. Empty.
“They’re all empty,” I called after checking the seventh and last door.
“These are too,” she called back.
I left a bunch of my things in my room.
“All of them?” I asked, dashing across the passageway toward my old bedroom door.
“All of them,” Gwenn said, coming out of what had been my room.
I walked inside, my heart beating so hard that I thought it would break through my chest cavity.
“Gwenn, I left this room full of my things. There was a massive bed in here.”
“So, someone came to empty the entire house and board it up during a snowstorm?” she asked so quietly I could barely hear her over the sound of my pounding heart.
“The passageway,” I groaned. Our eyes met, and we immediately bolted out of the room and down the staircase. This time, we pulled the curtains apart.
“They’re not dusty anymore,” Gwenn mentioned.
“The door is unlocked,” I said, pushing it open.
“It’s all gone, all the paintings in here are gone,” she whispered as we stepped into the gray stone passageway.
All the doors in the passage had been unlocked and left open. We walked down the echoing passage in silence and glanced into every room.
“They took everything. Whoever they are,” Gwenn said, her voice hollow.
“Not everything,” I whispered and walked into the last room at the end of the hallway. I headed straight to the fireplace at the end of the room.
The Eternal Page 15
