This was a different Shawn, as if the gilt of his surface charm had been rubbed off to reveal the compelling power beneath it. It pulled at something inside me, and when he took my dirty hands in his, I let him, just to see where this offer was going.
‘I’ll teach you how to use your connection,’ he said. ‘Do you think Rhys will do that? He’s been trying to keep you in the dark, right?’
That was overplaying his hand. I tugged my fingers free – or tried to. ‘Not any more.’
‘Yes, but he doesn’t belong here.’ Shawn gestured to the standing stone. ‘That rock was brought here by our ancestors and put there to mark this spot, where earth energy is strong. This whole area, where the two rivers converge.’
‘That’s very poetic, Shawn.’ I made my voice wry, despite the spell he wove, the tugging I could feel on the part of me that wanted to be this special, magical person he described. Like the special, magical person I’d been when I danced.
‘Come on, Sylvie.’ He rubbed the dirt on my fingers. ‘I know you can feel it. It’s in your blood. That’s why I need you.’
‘So you can get what you want,’ I said, to remind myself more than to accuse him.
‘And so can you.’
Would that be so bad? Temptation hissed in my ear, made my heart race with anticipation of the mere possibility.
‘What’s the trade-off?’ I asked, thinking about what Rhys had said about consequences. ‘Do you even care?’
‘The trade-off is, the town improves, things go well for me, you get to dance again. It’s a win-win situation.’
I desperately wanted to ignore my instincts. But I’d worked so hard for my success as a dancer – of course, genetics had given me long legs and natural ability, but I’d sweated and bled and ached to achieve what I’d had. Hell, I hadn’t eaten a dessert in six years until I came here. Even without Rhys’s warnings, even without my gut feeling at the summerhouse, I knew in my heart that you just didn’t get things for free.
The thought snapped Shawn’s hold on me, and I pulled my hand loose before my resolve weakened. ‘You’d better go,’ I said, rising to my feet.
He stood as well. ‘Will you at least think about it?’
His reasonable tone irritated me, as if I were being irrational. ‘Just get out of here, Shawn.’
Gigi, picking up on my mood, started to growl again. Shawn laughed, raising his hands in surrender. ‘Fine, fine.’ He seemed so normal, it was hard to believe he’d just been trying to seduce me into using magic for his – and my – selfish ends. ‘I’ll see you around.’
I scooped Gigi up so she didn’t run after him. ‘Not if I see you first,’ I murmured, to no one but the dog. Shawn hadn’t bothered to wait for my reply.
No way had he given up that easily. Though I guess he figured he had time to bring me around. And he must have seen that I was temptable. Not by him, but by what I might reclaim.
I walked to the bluestone monolith, Gigi still tucked in the crook of my arm. I stared for a moment, then pressed my palm to the stone’s surface. Time had dulled the texture, but not smoothed it. And it did feel warm, or at least warmer than I could account for on the grey day.
When my dad took me to the Metropolitan Museum when I was a kid, he would talk about balance in art. I understood it on a more practical, physical level. Staying balanced while dancing was about equal and opposite movements. If I extended my leg in a développé devant – to the front – then I had to tighten my centre of balance and lean backwards slightly to stay upright.
If I took what Rhys had said, and applied what I knew from art and ballet to magical, mystical energy, didn’t that mean that for everything that happened, something opposite had to happen too? Maybe not one for one, but something to balance the equation.
Dr Young had said that ecology was fragile, and if things got off kilter, the effects could be big. The Maddox and Davis families had apparently been messing around with the natural balance throughout our history here. When that happened to a dancer, she fell on her face. What happened when the energy of a geographical area was out of whack? Something had to correct for it.
Was this what Rhys had meant when he said bad things happen when you mess with the balance? Yellow fever? Floods? Horrible prisons? Mine collapses?
What about ghosts? Shawn had said this whole region was powerful, up to the junction of the rivers, which included Old Cahawba. Was Shawn’s messing around with the natural order of things skewing the energy here, making the echoes of the past resonate more loudly, making the intangible more real?
As I went inside, I noticed the Colonel’s chill wafting down the stairs, and wondered what had him stirred up in the middle of the day. Maybe Shawn unsettled him as much as he did me.
Despite my weak joke, I climbed the stairs warily, but the cold seemed to be fleeting. A thought stuck with me, though, about Shawn’s effect on people: If I had this elemental affinity for the garden, what was Shawn’s superpower? Charm was obviously part of it. That was blindingly obvious in retrospect. It worried me what he might be capable of. My scruples were susceptible to temptation, but at least I had some.
Chapter 32
Still unsettled by my conversation with Shawn, I distanced myself from the garden a bit, and brought both Hannah’s diary and the reverend’s journal downstairs and into the den. With the big-screen TV and the modern furniture, I felt grounded in this century and less likely to lose myself. I brought a glass of iced tea for myself and a chew for Gigi, which she promptly took to the love seat and started gnawing.
As soon as I sat down, the lights went off. My heart stopped for a painful, panicked second. Then reason kicked back in – along with my pulse – and I registered that the light on the satellite receiver box was black, the LED on the answering machine was dark and I couldn’t hear the hum of the refrigerator down the hall.
The power had gone out. Paula had warned me that might happen if there were storms in the area, and had pointed out where the flashlights and candles were. I found a flashlight and nervously put it beside me on the couch. Expected or not, it was unnerving.
To distract myself, I picked up the Reverend Holzphaffel’s journal. Gigi left her chew and pranced down the length of the cushions, then climbed into my lap, licked my chin and went to sleep. I petted her silky fur and tried to relax. One or both Griffiths would be back soon.
The dates on Hannah’s headstone had been December 21, 1852, and June 20, 1870. I realized, with a start, that it was almost midsummer, the anniversary of her death. Opening the Reverend Holzphaffel’s journal to 1869, about nine months before Hannah’s end, I read to see if he mentioned young Miss Davis’s suitors.
The facsimile of the handwritten pages wasn’t any easier to read than Hannah’s scrawled entries, but at least they were more detailed. Reverend Holzphaffel didn’t hold much with Thou Shalt Not Gossip About Your Neighbour. There was the reference to Mr Ethan Maddox I’d read the other day, which I scanned again with new understanding. It didn’t take me long to find the answer that Hannah hadn’t bothered writing for herself. Ethan’s brother, the scalawag, was named Jacob.
He was trying to bring investors to the area – even ones from the North – but he didn’t seem like a profiteer. Just the opposite, in fact. He was an outspoken young man who pointed out some hard truths about his own family, like how Davis Ironworks and Maddox Shipping were leaving their neighbours in the dirt as far as recovery from the war was concerned.
It was clear that the reverend liked the guy, even though everyone else was pushing Hannah towards Ethan. I didn’t want Jacob to be the one who left her in the lurch, but having read Hannah’s journal, that seemed more than likely.
I remembered the blistering animosity radiating from the window last night, aimed at the spot where Rhys and I came out of the woods. Was I some kind of trigger for the Colonel? I certainly identified with Hannah. If she had been meeting Jacob on the sly, her father would certainly have been seething as he watched from the wind
ow.
I filed those questions away and kept reading. The story, even without my personal connection to it, engrossed me. I lost track of time, squinting until my eyes ached. Gigi shifted positions twice, getting up, stretching, sinking back into my lap with a sigh.
Then the bottom of one page ended in the middle of a sentence about Easter services, and the top of the next one talked about the fall harvest. Confused, I flipped back and forth, and found that the entries skipped from March to September 1870.
I carried the book to the window and angled it to catch what light the clouds hadn’t cut off. Inside, near the binding, was a shadow of the tattered edges of the missing pages. But it was flat, just a copied image. The pages had been torn out before the journal had been reproduced.
Lowering the book, I looked out the window, surprised at how dark it had gotten. Even with the distraction of Hannah’s story, and the missing months, my disquiet came back in a rush. Shouldn’t one or both of the Griffiths be back?
The phone rang from the kitchen, the only one that wasn’t cordless and worthless with the power out. I was stiff after sitting curled on the couch for hours, and by the time I reached the phone, I’d lost count of the rings. When I finally picked up, Professor Griffith sounded relieved.
‘Sylvie! Are you watching the news?’
‘The power went out a little while ago.’ I had tried to stay calm about it, since I’d lived through a power outage before, and it was a lot scarier in the city, where the whole world stopped. But the worry in his voice turned up the volume on my nerves.
‘Call Rhys,’ the professor instructed me, in a noarguments tone. ‘The water is headed downriver much faster than anyone thought. I don’t know if I’m going to be able to get back to you two. The state police are already putting up road barricades.’
Maybe some part of me had anticipated this, but it was much smaller than the part that wondered what I’d been thinking, staying by myself.
Deep breaths, Sylvie. Don’t panic. I felt safe in the house. I just had to trust my instincts. Bluestone Hill had stood through floods before. Gigi and I would be all right.
‘OK,’ I said, surprising myself with my calm. ‘Don’t risk coming back here if it looks dicey.’
‘There’s a torch in my room, and Rhys should have one, too. You’ve still got a good bit of daylight left, but it won’t hurt to be prepared.’
‘Yes, sir.’ I looked at the clock on the wall. How had it gotten so late? Had I lost that much time in the past?
‘You have Rhys’s mobile number? It’s on the tablet by the phone in the foyer.’
‘OK.’
It was starting to be my mantra. Everything was going to be all right. Storms had come before, and they would come again. That was nature.
But so was the destruction they left in their wake.
The professor rang off, and I went to find my cell phone. I’d plugged it in after I talked to John that morning, so it should have charged before the power went out. At least something had worked out.
At the bottom of the steps I paused, one hand on the banister. The stairwell was cool, in a way that had nothing to do with the overcast skies and the distant storms. Defiantly, I put a foot on a stair, gripping the railing tightly, telling myself the ghost couldn’t startle me like it had Clara. It couldn’t hurt me unless I let it.
I braved it out, but my heart was pounding when I reached the top landing and saw the sheer curtains of the French doors shifting in an unearthly breeze. My knuckles went white on the banister and I held my breath in dread, but there was no shape or form.
I’d never seen the Colonel during the day, so maybe he had limits. But what had stirred him up?
Think, Sylvie. I’d first glimpsed him when I’d been out on the lawn. Then again from the same place. Then I’d sensed him from inside after I’d seen Addie going to meet the TTC – out on the grounds.
So someone must be out on the grounds.
I forced myself forward, ignoring the prickle of fear on my neck. When the cold didn’t get worse, I held my breath and pushed through the spot that nothing occupied. I threw the latch and flung open the windows, stepping onto the balcony to scan the storm-coloured twilight.
The wind was cool and damp, tangling my hair around my face. It smelled of distant rain but also of the river, of everything that was washing down with it. Of fish and industry. Of decaying vegetation and urban storm drains. What was coming was the flip side of the coin of progress.
The wind carried a noise as well – the first ghost I’d sensed, and the last I’d identified. I knew the highpitched cry now, and I could hear the hunger and fear and loneliness in it. It was far off, and so was the sound that came with it: the faint, brave bark of a tiny dog.
My stomach knotted with a painful yank. I’d left Gigi on the couch with her chew when I’d gone to answer the phone. I hadn’t heard her growl at the cold on the stairs.
Rushing back inside, I was so chilled with panic, I could have walked right through the Colonel fully manifest and I wouldn’t have known it. In my room, I grabbed Gigi’s favourite toy and squeaked it as I ran through the upstairs hall, calling her name, listening for the jingle of her tags.
I dashed down the stairs, for once without a single thought of falling. In the den, I squeaked the toy and called her again. The parlour was empty, and so was the dining room. I got to the kitchen and found the back door standing open, sick dread halting me at the sight.
It hadn’t been like that when I was on the phone. All the doors were closed tight. Rhys and Professor Griffith had checked before they left.
I ran out into the yard, without a jacket, without a flashlight, and sprinted to the edge of the terrace, looking out on the rolling drop of terrain to the woods, and beyond that, the river.
‘Gigi!’ I yelled her name into the wind. The faint wisp of a baby’s cry came back to me and, with nothing to guide me but a hunch, I desperately followed it. Since that first night, my dog had been determined to track down that sound.
I didn’t go into Hannah’s woods. I kept heading north, parallel to the river, weaving in and out through the trees until I stumbled onto a trail, and realized I was on the path to the ruins of Old Cahawba. Maybe Gigi remembered the way, and it had made her bold in her pursuit.
Seizing that hope, I ran along the path, stopping every hundred feet or so to rest my leg and call into the trees for my dog. I’d given up trying to use an alphadog voice. My yells were frantic, and hoarse with my terror for her.
When I reached the Cahawba graveyard, it was almost dusk. The thin cover of clouds diffused the light to a uniform glow, turning the trees into towering monsters and the moss dripping from their branches into vampire cloaks.
Suddenly one seemed to come alive in front of me. I screamed, my nerves stretched to their limit. The figure raised its arms, like flapping wings, and spoke.
‘Sylvie! What are you doing here?’
I recognized his voice and would have felt foolish if I hadn’t been so upset. You would think I would’ve known by now that if someone was going to grab me or loom out of the dark, it was going to be Rhys.
‘Gigi’s gone,’ I said, wheezing with fear and exhaustion. ‘I followed a noise this way. I have this horrible feeling—’
He took my shoulders in a steadying grip. ‘We’ll find her. You said you followed a sound?’
I nodded, then shook my head. I’d trailed the faint cry at first, but hadn’t heard it in a while. Yet my instincts had carried me this way, and they kept proving smarter than I was.
‘Shawn came to the house earlier,’ I said. My teeth had started to chatter once I’d stopped moving. It hadn’t been this cold up on the Hill. Rhys rubbed my arms, warming me outside with friction, and inside with his careful attention. ‘He wanted me to work with him. Make this crazy magic dynasty. And when I told him to leave …’ I shivered too hard to talk.
His fingers tightened in anger, but not at me. ‘Did he hurt you?’
I
shook my head. ‘No. He didn’t even get mad, which was worse. Maybe he took Gigi or lured her away.’
‘Sylvie, this is where the two rivers converge, and there’s a flood coming down both of them. We need to get out of here.’
Determination burned off fear, and maybe good sense, too. ‘I can’t leave without Gigi!’
We were yelling over the wind now, which moaned and growled like a living thing. But it carried something else with it, a real growl, from a real animal.
I shook off Rhys’s hold and ran towards the sound. It led me towards the bluff where the joined rivers curved around, and the chimney marking the space that had once housed the prison.
Shock made me stumble. I could see the ghosts now. In the dusk was a cloud of suggestion, formless hints in pillars of sickly grey light. Even more appalling were the sounds, wretched moans that pulled at every dark, miserable part my soul.
Rhys came up beside me as I stared into the cold mist of suffering. ‘Can you see her?’
‘No.’ Only masks of horror floating in and out of the cloud, faces with hopeless eyes, hungry to drag me down with them. Terror stole away my breath, and my chest burned, as if I were drowning, too.
Then, from the midst of them, I caught a small dog’s ferocious barks, and desperation buoyed me back up. I grabbed Rhys’s arm, afraid even to hope, and somehow dug below the horror for my voice. ‘Gigi, come here.’
Her next bark was sharp, distinct. Obedient. Standing at the very edge of the invisible wall that imprisoned the ghosts, so close that the frigid mist dampened my skin and my hair, I called her again.
Her excited panting reached out from the fog, as if she was running to me. But then I heard a horrible snap, and a yelp, and a heartrending cry of pain.
Without thinking, I plunged into the icy haze, feeling Rhys’s grasp just miss me. He called my name, and I knew why Gigi hadn’t come to me sooner. Once inside the cloud of ghosts, I could barely hear anything but their misery. My heart beat against my ribs and an overwhelming despair clawed through my insides.
The Splendour Falls Page 36
