“It won’t be much longer,” I promise.
She lifts her head, and focuses her old eyes on me. “I will do everything in my power to help you, my Prince. Everything.”
I incline my head. “Thank you, Zelena.”
She bows low. “Good night, my Prince.”
“Goodnight,” I reply, with a nod.
She takes a respectful step backwards, blows out her lamp, and begins to walk slowly towards the clearing. I watch as she crosses the field on her short, thick legs. As she reaches Autumn’s caravan she turns and glances in my direction, before disappearing behind it.
There is so much adrenaline in my body, my hands are shaking. I start to run. I run as fast as I can. Freezing wind rushes into my face and hair as I streak through the woods all the way to the highway. Then I run along the deserted road for almost an hour. When I finally come to a stop, my hands are no longer shaking with excess adrenaline, but the craving for her has not abated. Not one bit.
I turn around and begin to run back the way I came, towards my car. I take off my light jacket, throw it into the car, and slide into my seat. I turn on the ignition and slam my foot on the gas. My car hurtles through the night as I travel up the narrow, pot-holed, dangerous road at breakneck speed.
As I get to the gates, I see that I have guests.
William greets me at the door, his face impassive. “Your mother and sister are waiting in the music room, my Lord. May I get you some refreshments?”
I don’t allow my expression to change. “No, thank you, William.”
When I arrive at the entrance of the music room I see they are both already on their feet, guarded and waiting. My gaze instantly fixates on my mother. Her hair is worn differently, but the years haven’t touched her at all. Her auburn hair, ruler straight, extends down her back to her waist, but she is slender and as imposing as ever. Like me, her face is carefully expressionless, but her eyes are watchful and calculating as she gazes at me. She is as familiar to me as the hairs on my head, but even after all these years, I still can’t look at her without my stomach turning with hate.
Isadora immediately steps forward, her eyes filled with warning, but I ignore her and address the woman who gave birth to me.
“What are you doing here?” My voice is icy.
She smiles at me, a soft and endearing smile that aggravates me even more. Does she think such manipulations will work on me? I glare back at her.
“It’s been so long, Rocco,” she murmurs. “You still haven’t forgiven me?”
The fury that sears through me is impossible to resist. Forgive her? How dare she? “If you don’t leave right now, I will rip you apart.”
“Rocco,” Isadora breathes. “She’s your mother. She just wants to make up. She loves you. And no matter what she thought she was acting in your best interests.”
A lifetime ago Isadora could have made me believe the fairy tale that because this woman bore me she has my best interest at hand. But no longer. Even an animal will fight to the death to protect its child, but for this shallow, vain creature it is her own best interest that she places above all else.
I turn and begin to walk away.
“Isn’t it high time that you appreciated what I did?” she dares to ask. “That… that woman was a disease. She was going to ruin you and, just like I predicted, she did. Look at you now. It’s been so long and you’re still not over her.”
“Mother!” Isadora warns, beginning to move in front of my mother.
Neither could move fast enough to avoid me.
In a flash, I’m on my mother, my hand is curled around her neck. The smell of her perfume sickens me. “You keep testing me, Junia,” I snarl.
“What are you going to do?” she taunts. “Kill your own mother? Go ahead.”
With an agonized roar, I fling her away, and she crashes into the sofa.
“Is that the best you can do, my son?” she asks, without moving from her prone position.
“Get out of my house. And the same goes for you too, Isadora. I never want to lay eyes on either of you again.”
After I hear them leave, I go to the library and pour myself a drink. I am so furious I can feel a muscle ticking in my jaw. As the fiery drink runs down my throat I know. They didn’t come here to ask for forgiveness or to make up. The old witch was right. There is very little time left.
They have come for Autumn.
Chapter 16
Autumn
The next day Larry comes in earlier than usual. I’m still vacuuming the carpet. I switch it off and face him.
“Everything alright?” he asks, looking at me intently through his glasses.
“Yes, everything is fine.”
He looks relieved. “Good. Sorry, I had to run out on you last night.”
I force a smile. “No problems. You missed a great dinner. What was the emergency?”
“Burst pipe,” he lies uncomfortably, a sheepish look on his face.
I’m not going to call him out on his lie. He has been too good to me. As it happens I enjoyed my time with Rocco so no harm done. “Oh, right. Is it all sorted now?”
Now he looks distinctively guilty. “Yeah. It’s all good.”
“I’ll drop Jenna’s dress off at the cleaners at lunchtime and return it once it’s clean with her coat, but I’ve brought Marion’s shoes back and she can pick them up anytime she wants.”
“Yes, okay, I’ll let them know,” he says, obviously disinterested in the turn the conversation has taken. He pauses then adds. “So… it was a good dinner, then? Everything went well?”
“Yes, everything went well.”
“Good. That’s good.” He stands awkwardly in the middle of the room for a few seconds.
I say nothing.
“Well, I guess you’re busy. You have to get ready for tonight’s party.”
“Mmm…”
“Right. I’ll be upstairs if you need me.”
After he goes upstairs I carry on with vacuuming the showroom and wonder what the Count told him to make him leave the restaurant last night, but as I put away the vacuum cleaner the day pounces on me and there is no more time to think.
The florist arrives with the flowers for tonight and I get busy with arranging them around the room. The wine gets delivered and after a while the chairs arrive. I take them out of their stacks and arrange them around the gallery. Afterwards I take the wine glasses out of their boxes, wash and polish them until they shine.
At lunchtime, I drop off the dress at the dry cleaners, then pop into the deli to pick up the trays of finger food I ordered. It’s only five doors away from the gallery, so Ella, the girl who works there, and I walk back carrying the trays of food.
I file away the receipts into the accounts file. A tourist wanders in. Usually, Larry will come down when a customer comes in, but he is on the phone so I deal with the man. To my surprise, I manage to sell him a small sculpture. Feeling proud of myself I run upstairs to tell Larry about the sale.
“This is your second sale. I’ll have to give you a rise,” he says beaming with pleasure.
I clatter back down the stairs and start to open the bottles of red wine. They are good wines and need to breathe. Larry comes down at five thirty and starts spraying the room with his bottles of room fragrances. I retreat to the backroom to allow the aerosols to settle. I use the time to run a brush through my hair and slap on some lipstick.
When the first of the artists and their partners begin to arrive, I remove the coverings from the silver trays of food and start to serve the wine. It is a good night. Most of the artists are too proud to talk to the woman serving the drinks, but I get to hear snippets of their lives, their thoughts about their work, and once I even overheard an artist talking about his secret method of mixing colors. They are great drinkers and after the last dregs of wine are all gone just after eleven o’clock, Larry manages to get them out of the door.
“Want a lift home?” Larry asks.
“Nah, I want to do
some cleaning before I leave.”
“Do it in the morning.”
I shake my head. “I have a different routine in the morning.”
He must still be feeling guilty about running out on me last night because he says, “Well, shall I at least help to clear away the bottles?”
“If you stay any longer Marion will start to think we’re having an affair.”
Larry visibly starts and I laugh at the startled expression on his face. It’s obvious the thought has never crossed his mind.
“Will she?” he asks nervously.
“Just go,” I say, taking out a roll of black trash bags. I promise you, I’ll be done in no time. Half an hour tops.”
He frowns. “Are you sure? It’s so late.”
I grin at him. “I usually leave here in the early hours of the morning.”
“Do you?”
“Yup.”
“All right, if you’re sure.”
Once he’s gone I bag all the rubbish and wash all the wine glasses. Leaving them overnight only makes the red wine dry and much harder to clean. Then I lock up and go out back. I notice immediately that I have a flat tire.
“Oh damn,” I mutter, crouching next to it.
I consider calling a taxi, then decide to just walk back. It is a beautiful night, and will just take me an extra twenty or so minutes to get home. I start off down the road. Ten minutes later it starts to rain. I run to the bus stop with the intention of waiting the downpour out, but even before I can sit down a long black car with tinted windows comes to a stop next to me.
I have never seen a car like that in town before. The window of the back seat rolls down and the most beautiful woman I have ever seen in my life smiles at me. Her eyes are ocean-blue, her skin is pale, and her hair is platinum blonde, but I am certain the color is not from a bottle. She is mesmerizingly beautiful, almost angelic, but I am afraid of her. I glance around me. The street is completely deserted.
“Do you need a lift?” she asks, her voice silky and hypnotic.
Every cell in my body screams at me to beware. I take an instinctive step backwards. “I’m fine, thank you.” Even my voice sounds shrill and panicked.
“Well, at least have an umbrella, then,” she says, and holds out an umbrella in her outstretched hand.
“Thanks, but I’ll just wait the rain out,” I reply warily.
“Go on, take it. I promise, I won’t bite.” She laughs, a tinkling, sweet sound. When she laughs she is even more beautiful.
I stare at her. Something about her flawless beauty reminds me of Rocco, but where he attracts me, hers has a strange deadly quality that repels.
“Go on,” she coaxes softly, her beautiful lips hardly moving.
As if I have been hypnotized, my hand, against my will, reaches out for the umbrella.
“Good night,” she murmurs, once the umbrella is in my grasp.
The electric window rises up smoothly, and the car pulls away, but the encounter is so bizarre for a few seconds I am frozen and staring at the empty spot where the car and the woman had been. Then, as if released from the grip of invisible hands, I find I can move again. I shake my head as if to dislodge the fog in it, unfurl the umbrella, and start walking home. The raindrops fall on the umbrella in a relentless staccato beat.
But my heart is racing even faster. I feel fear, but I do not know why.
Chapter 17
Autumn
I have strange dreams of running and being chased, but they are confused and jumbled and I wake up with a sense of dread. And then I remember, today is the day I paint Rocco and suddenly my body becomes alive with a strange excitement.
The day passes with incredible slowness. During my lunch break I get my bicycle tire replaced then it’s back to more hours that never seem to pass. Finally, Larry goes home and thirty minutes later I start to close the store. As I come out of the backroom holding my knapsack full of my painting gear and a prepared canvas, the rusty doorbells chime.
A man in a dark suit wearing a hat comes in. I know instantly he is Raoul. He has swarthy skin, dark eyes, and the look of a loyal servant.
“Miss Delaney?” he says, bowing his head courteously.
I never told Rocco my last name, but I suppose he could have asked Larry. “Yes, that’s me.”
He gives an old-fashioned bow. “I’m Raoul. Are you ready to leave?”
For a split second, it feels as if I am standing at a crossroad. Making an important decision that will alter my life forever, but then the feeling passes and I say, “Yeah, I’m ready.”
He offers to carry my knapsack for me, but I tell him it is not heavy. Instead he picks up the easel that I had already brought into the showroom. He drops into silence as he waits for me to lock up. We get into a grey and yellow mini, and old French songs stream out of the music system. It’s not my thing, obviously, but it’s not exactly unpleasant either. In fact, it kind of suits the man and his lost-in-time vibe.
Soon we leave the town. As every sign of human habitation begins to fade we start on the winding road up the mountain. I look around me curiously. The road is dangerously narrow and full of loose stones. Sometimes it feels as if we are an inch away from falling right off the road and careening down the mountain, but Raoul is an excellent driver, and after a while I start to relax and notice that the higher we climb the more beautiful the scenery becomes.
The different types of trees give way to tall, looming pines. Dark has already fallen, but I can still make out the vibrant wildflowers that grow between the rocks at the side of the road. I roll down the window and breathe in the fresh mountain air. It is crisp and cold and smells of the pine trees.
As we turn the last bend, the house comes into view and I gasp with surprise. Enormous, Gothic, and utterly majestic, it’s dark jutting peaks soar up into the sky and tower over everything with a stern, forbidding beauty. It seems impossible that such a massive mansion is home to one man. I stare with amazement as a big set of black gates open as if by magic and the car drives through them.
To withstand the elements, it has been built like a fortress, with thick walls; numberless, narrow Gothic windows set deep into them, and jutting corners that give the impression of an abode that harbors dark and sinister secrets… perhaps even foul truths. It won’t surprise me to hear there is an unlit dungeon underneath the house guarded by ferocious dogs.
“Welcome to Ze Dem Adelar.”
I feel a shiver go through me. My voice is hushed and awed. I taste the foreign words quietly on my tongue. “Ze Dem Adelar. Is that German?”
“Yes.”
“What do the words mean?”
“It means at the Eagle in German.”
It is an apt name for a house so high on a mountain, but I remember the insignia I saw on the buckle of his belt. That two-headed bird must be an eagle and it must be the emblem of his family or something.
Suddenly, it starts to lash with rain and the smell of wildflowers and pine needles fills my nostrils. The car stops directly in front of the flight of shallow stone steps. As I get out the great wooden door opens and a tall, erect man in a black suit stands in the entrance. His face is in darkness, but his silent, stillness seems to belong in an old-fashioned movie. I have the weird sensation of going back in time. As if the house is suspended somewhere in the past.
I hesitate at the foot of the steps. A fierce gust of wind slaps cold rain into my face.
“Go on. A storm will be upon us soon. I’ll take your easel into the house,” Raoul encourages from behind me.
I walk up the steps and see the face of the man. It is long and carefully expressionless, but because his eyebrows droop down he appears sad. He is wearing white gloves and holding a small silver platter with a white towel folded neatly on it. He bows his head, then repeats Raoul’s words, but in a more formal, distant way.
“Welcome to Ze Dem Adelar, Miss Delaney.” His accent reveals him to be English. “I am William, the butler. May I take your coat?”
&n
bsp; “No, I’ll keep it on for a while longer.”
“Of course,” he murmurs, as he holds the silver platter out to me. “A towel, if you need it.”
“Thank you.” I take the towel and hurriedly run it on my face and hands while he politely glances away.
When I put it back on the silver tray, he says, “The Count awaits you in the drawing room. This way, please.”
I turn around and note that Raoul has disappeared. There must be another entrance for the staff and no doubt he will bring my easel in through there. Silently, I follow William through the house. The ceiling soars above us like a church, and the stone walls give the place a very still and silent air. When we are walking on flagstones, our footsteps echo through the vast spaces, but when we walk on runner carpets, it feels as if we are walking in a mausoleum or museum.
One thing for sure, it doesn’t feel like a home. The mixture of gothic architecture and grey stones is forbidding. Here and there, I see beautiful figures and creatures carved into the stone, famous scenes from the past, mostly Greek, but the coldly precise lines repel rather than invite.
Finally, William gives a knock and opens a door.
“Miss Delaney,” he announces, and stands back.
Chapter 18
Autumn
I walk into the lofty room, tastefully decorated in shades of duck-egg blue. Rocco is standing next to a massive fireplace with a fire crackling inside it. The flames add an orange glow to the side of his face and I realize that this house is the perfect setting for him. This house may not look like home to me, but I see now that it is perfect for him. Here, for the first time, he doesn’t stand out as an object of awe and curiosity. Dressed in a fine-knit, black, turtle-neck sweater and perfectly-tailored, black trousers, he looks every inch the aloof master of his cold and aloof surroundings. He is the rightful owner of the rugged, isolated eagle’s perch.
The Other Side Of Midnight Page 6
