by Ally Carter
“How many guards on the perimeter?” Tim asked.
“Four,” Sadie said.
“We can handle four. Can’t we?” April asked, but Sadie glanced nervously around.
“Plus dogs. I don’t do dogs,” Colin said, but Tim just crossed his arms.
“I’ve got the dogs,” Tim said, and April kind of didn’t want to know what he meant by that, so she didn’t ask any questions.
“We could do an Avon Lady,” Colin said. “That’ll get us past the gates.”
“I don’t know what that is,” Sadie admitted.
“For you we’d make it a Girl Scout. But he knows us. Darn it. Ooh! How about the Three Horned Dragon?” Sadie looked at him like he was crazy, so Colin rolled his eyes and said, “Cons are in my blood, love. You’ve got to trust me. All we’d need is a hot-air balloon, a blowtorch, and three monkeys.”
“Colin—”
“Okay, Sade. Two monkeys. Tops!”
“Colin!”
“One monkey and a larger-than-average ferret?”
“Enough!” Gabriel snapped. “Go to bed.”
“It’s seven o’clock,” Colin complained, and April couldn’t exactly blame him. She didn’t want to go to bed, either. She wanted to steal her key back and find the lock. And she was just starting to say so when something on the monitors caught her eye because, for once, Evert was doing something different.
She got up and eased closer to the screens. She didn’t even realize Gabriel was behind her until he said, “It’s poker night.” On the screens, Evert sat around a table with five other men. There was a deck of cards and stacks of chips. “He plays every month. Has for years.” Then he looked at April. “You’re not the only one who does homework.”
She heard a banging sound on the far side of the cellar and heard Colin say, “Ooh, where does this go?”
He was reaching for the old-fashioned key in the lock of a wrought-iron gate when Gabriel snapped, “That’s the old wine cellar, and it’s dangerous. Stay out of there.” Gabriel glared and started after Colin, but April was stepping closer to the screens, and Gabriel didn’t dare leave her alone.
“Who are they?” April asked.
There was the creak of an old gate swinging open, and soon Colin was shouting, “Ooh! More swords!”
Gabriel winced, but he pointed at the man on the screen to Evert’s right, then went around the table. “Chief of police. District attorney. Mayor. Federal judge. United States senator. My uncle has cultivated powerful relationships, April. Power protects power.”
“You’re more powerful than all of them. You’re Gabriel Winterborne.”
“Am I?” He gave her the saddest smile that she had ever seen. “Sometimes I can’t remember.”
On the other side of the room, there was the clang and scrape of steel against steel.
“En garde!” Colin said, while Tim barked. “Be careful!” but April kept her eyes on Gabriel.
“People still talk about you,” she tried to explain. “They want to know where you went. And why. And—”
“You’re doing that wrong,” Gabriel tossed over his shoulder at the boys, but he never stopped looking at the men who sat around his uncle’s table.
“People would listen to you. They may be powerful—” She glanced at the men on the monitor. “But you’re famous. And rich. And you have friends, too.”
Gabriel looked at her like he didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. In the end, he just snapped, “You’re doing that wrong!” again, then stalked toward Tim and snatched the sword away.
He stood there for a long time, considering, before he asked, “Do you want to win fencing matches, or do you want to win fights?”
Tim smirked. “What do you think?”
“Okay.” Gabriel smiled. “Then hold it like this.”
31
Birthdays
April couldn’t see the sea, but she could hear it in the waves crashing against the rocks. She could smell it in the salt on the breeze. But, most of all, April could feel it in the chill against her arms and the way her hair wanted to curl. It wasn’t raining, but she could tell a storm was coming. Sometimes, way off in the distance, the clouds would flicker and flash, and April knew it wouldn’t be long until she heard the thunder.
Out on the water, boats passed up and down like they’d been doing for days, moving steadily back and forth. Like a grid. Like—
“They’re still looking for him.”
April couldn’t really see Tim through the darkness, but she could imagine the brooding look in his eye. Over the past week, he’d started to morph into Mini Gabriel. He was two swords and a thick beard away from going full-on alpha dude, and April didn’t want to hear it. One full-size Gabriel Winterborne was more than enough, thank you very much.
“Evert knows he’s back. He’s hoping Gabriel died out there that night. But he’ll be ready. Just in case.”
“So?” April said. “We’ll be ready too.”
But Tim just stood there, hands in his pockets. Wind in his hair. He didn’t face her when he said, “He’s pretty good with those swords.”
“He used to take fencing lessons when he was a kid.”
“What he can do he didn’t learn as a kid.”
“Yeah. Well. It’s been his hobby for his whole life. I’m sure—”
“You need to ask him why he came back,” Tim cut her off.
“He came back to prove who his uncle is—which we will. We just have to get my key and find the lock, and . . . What?”
“He didn’t come back to get a key he didn’t know you had.” Tim was looking at her the way he looked at Violet sometimes—like she was too young and too naive to understand the world, and so he was going to protect her from it. Even if it killed him.
“Sure he did. He’s helping us figure out how to get the key and find the lock.”
“Is he?” Tim asked. “Or is he keeping us busy while he gets his strength back?”
“Of course he needs to get his strength back if we’re going to steal the key! He has to . . .”
April looked back at Winterborne House while, out at sea, the lightning got closer and the wind blew hard enough to make her feel like she might fly away like a kite without a string.
“You need to ask him, April. Ask him why he really came back before you go fooling yourself into thinking that key opens up a happy ending.”
And then Tim was gone, back into the mansion and whatever it was that jerk boys did after saying jerk things to perfectly nice girls whose only crime was believing that everything might turn out okay.
But the worst part was the little voice inside of April, whispering that he might be right.
* * *
Winterborne House wasn’t haunted. April was positive. Almost. The only ghost she’d seen was the man in the cellar, and he wasn’t going anywhere. Yet. But as she crept through the dark halls, she heard the laughter of children. She watched pale lights dance and flicker across the floor. And she heard a boy’s voice, shouting in the distance, yelling, “Come on, Izzy! Catch me if you can!”
When she reached the door of the home theater, she didn’t go inside. She just stood there, looking in at Ms. Nelson, who sat curled up on one of the big, soft chairs. There was a blanket over her lap, but those two mismatched, hand-knitted slippers peeked out from underneath, and she didn’t even turn around when she said, “You should be in bed, April.”
“I know. I’m sorry. I . . .” April trailed off as, on the screen, a boy-size Gabriel laughed and chased after a girl-size Isabella.
Ms. Nelson must have sensed April’s confusion because she said, “I was raised here. Did I ever tell you that? My father was Gabriel’s head of security.”
On the screen the picture changed, and April stood frozen, watching Smithers carry a cake with eleven candles and set it in front of Gabriel while everybody sang.
“It’s his birthday,” Ms. Nelson said. “Or it will be. Tomorrow. He disappeared on his birthday.”
I know. He
told me.
“Ten years sounds like a long time, but it’s not. That’s the weird part. It feels like just yesterday he was in this house.”
He’s in this house right now.
Ms. Nelson sighed. “Ten years. I thought I had time.”
April couldn’t keep herself from asking, “Time for what?”
“Stopping Evert,” Ms. Nelson whispered, and April knew she wasn’t supposed to hear it. But she did. And it was all she could do not to shout, We’re gonna stop Evert too!
But instead she asked, “Stop him from doing what?”
Ms. Nelson went still. She seemed to realize what she’d said. And done. So she blurted, “It’s nothing!”
“No. It’s something. What’s—”
“Evert is going to get a judge to declare Gabriel dead tomorrow morning. That’s all. It’s not a big deal.”
It is so totally a big deal.
On the screen, Little Gabriel was bowing to Little Izzy and then they were both pulling on face masks and brandishing child-size swords while a much younger Smithers and Sadie’s father and a third man cheered from the sidelines and the two kids started to parry and jab.
“What happens then?” April asked, truly terrified of the answer.
Ms. Nelson sat up and turned off the movie. She ejected a shiny disc, then put it in a cabinet with about a billion others, all neatly labeled with dates and names. April wondered what that would feel like—to have decades of family memories all safely stored and locked away. But April didn’t even have a picture of her mother. She didn’t even know her name.
“Ms. Nelson?” April asked again. “What happens when Gabriel Winterborne is dead? Legally.”
“Evert will inherit everything, and we’ll move into a house that isn’t old and drafty and full of mice. That’s what will happen.” Her smile was bright. “Don’t worry about us, April. We’ll be fine!”
Ms. Nelson was a really, really, really good liar.
* * *
April didn’t go to bed. She didn’t even try. Instead, she found the little bundle she’d hidden away and went back down to a cellar that suddenly seemed too quiet.
She found him in the room he’d called a wine cellar, behind the metal gate, sharpening his swords.
He looked up when he heard her—took in her messy hair and sleepy eyes and the package she held in her hands, then snapped, “Go to bed, April,” and pushed past her, into the big room.
He gave a quick glance up at the monitors, but April already knew what was there: guards and dogs and a killer safe in his bed. On the screen, the only movement was the ticking of the clock on the bedside table and the flutter of the draperies as wind blew through the open window, while Evert slept on, totally unaware of the storm that was coming.
“I mean it, April. Go to—”
“Here.”
Gabriel looked more than a little skeptical when she thrust a lumpy package into his hands, but that might have been because April had never wrapped a present before, and she hadn’t wanted to ask Sadie for help.
“What’s this?”
“Tomorrow’s your birthday,” April said, suddenly nervous. “I wanted to get you a gift. That’s what people do, right? I mean, I’ve never had one, but . . . Whatever. That’s for you.”
He looked down at the package, but his voice sounded funny when he said, “You’ve never had a birthday gift?”
April shook her head. “No. Never had a birthday.” She shrugged because it wasn’t that big a deal. “I had a foster mom one time who said we should use the day I was found. But that’s the day I was left, too, you know? So I’ll just wait till my mom comes back. Then she’ll tell me when it is.” She gestured to the package. “Anyway, happy birthday.”
He didn’t talk again as he tried to tear apart the old newspapers that April had taped around the bundle. She was just starting to wonder if maybe twenty pieces of tape might have been too much tape when he groaned and pulled a knife from his belt. He sliced, and the paper fell away, and then he stood there for a long time, looking down at what seemed to be a big pile of rags in his hands.
“Oh. Thank you. It’s—”
“A coat!” April explained as he unfurled the bundle, cloth draping almost to the floor. “We had to cut yours off, when you were . . . you know. About to die. So I thought you could use that.”
She’d sewn it herself out of a bunch of old coats she’d found in the master bedroom. They’d probably belonged to his father, once upon a time, but they were all full of tiny holes now and too small to fit Gabriel himself, so April cut them apart at the seams and sewed them back together until she’d made something that looked like it belonged on Frankenstein’s monster. But the black and brown and green didn’t look too terrible together. If anything, they blended into the shadows of the cellar. And it was warm. And heavy. April’s fingers had hurt for days from forcing a needle through the dark, thick fabrics.
“You made me this?” he asked as he slipped it on. “Did Smithers teach you?”
“No. I already knew how,” April said, sounding too defensive. “Not all foster homes are awful, you know? Sometimes there are nice people who do crafts and rescue kittens and make soup. Sometimes they’re okay. They just don’t last.”
“I’m sorry,” he said eventually, breaking under the weight of so much awkward.
“It’s okay. Nothing lasts.” She didn’t know why she was suddenly snapping. Maybe because she wanted him to like the coat she’d made him. Or maybe because she wanted him to like her.
“It has a hood,” she added lamely, and he flipped it up, covering his dark hair and concealing his face. “It’s cold down here.”
“Thank you, April. No one has given me a gift in a very long time.”
He was rich, and April was poor. He was missing, and April knew that if she was gone too long, then Sadie would make a device that could track her anywhere within the mansion. But they were both orphans, she remembered. On that front, she and Gabriel Winterborne were exactly the same.
“Why did you go to Evert’s house?” April didn’t know where the question came from, but she didn’t even try to hold it in. “That night. When I saved your life—”
“You mean the night when you got me stabbed?” He raised an eyebrow, but April didn’t take the bait.
“You were there because of my key, weren’t you? I told you it was missing, so you went to get it back. Right?”
It should have been an easy question, but it took him a long time to say, “I went there because of what you told me, yes.”
It was the way people talk when they’re trying to lie and tell the truth at the same time, and April didn’t like it. She didn’t like it one bit.
“Why did you go? Really?”
“Because you told me someone broke into your room. With a knife.”
“So you did go to get the key?” April asked, afraid of the answer long before Gabriel started shaking his head.
“The key won’t prove anything, April. And it won’t stop him.”
“Sure, the key itself doesn’t prove anything.” April wanted to roll her eyes. “But once we have the key, we can find the lock and whatever it is he’s so desperate to get his hands on, and then we’ll get proof—”
“There is no proof!” He hadn’t meant to shout. And he didn’t want to cry. But he couldn’t stop talking—April could tell. He had to get the words out before they finally dragged him under. “The evidence is a boat at the bottom of the sea. The proof is a trail that’s been cold for twenty years.”
“Then why did you even bother coming back?”
“I’m not back, April. I’m never coming back.”
“Look at where we’re standing! You’re in Winterborne House. You’re home!”
“This isn’t my home.”
“Oh, it’s not? Then where is your home, huh? Somewhere on the other side of the world? Some mountain or island. Fine. Go there. Live there. Be happy or whatever. But there are people who love you. There ar
e people who miss you. There are people who have been waiting for ten years and maybe waiting gets a little bit harder every day, but they can’t stop because if they stop waiting for you, then who are they, huh? What are they supposed to do then?”
April heard her voice quiver and crack. She felt the tears that burned her eyes and the snot that leaked out of her nose, but she didn’t stop to think that maybe she wasn’t just talking about Gabriel Winterborne anymore. Maybe she wasn’t talking about him at all.
“I think you came back because you don’t want to be dead. I think you came back because running away is one thing, but staying gone forever is another.” April took a step forward, and he took a step back. “I think you came back because—”
“You’re wrong,” he said.
“Then why did you come back right before Evert declared you dead, huh? Why’d you come back now?” she asked again.
“Because I’m finally strong enough!” Gabriel snapped, but backed away. “And he thought I really was dead until your little stunt on the dock. I had him. I was right there . . . I had him!”
“Gabriel, why did you come back now?”
“You know why, April.”
“Then say it. Say what you’ve been too chicken to—”
“I came back to kill him!”
April froze, waiting for the words to shock her or scare her, but she didn’t feel anything for Gabriel Winterborne but pity.
“You don’t have to do that.”
“I always had to kill him. That’s the only way this ends.”
“Not if we find another way,” she pleaded.
“I won’t—”
“Wasn’t talking about you,” she cut him off.
She’d been walking as she talked. Inching closer and closer to him. And Gabriel Winterborne, being a big, tough guy and all, had been inching farther and farther back. He hadn’t even noticed when he stepped into the wine cellar. Not until April reached for the metal gate.
He was fast. But not fast enough. And a split second later, the metal gate was slamming shut and April was turning the key and pulling it out of the lock. It was almost like the one she used to wear around her neck, she realized. Once she got hers back, she’d have a pair.
