by S E Holmes
He leaped up and raced out in time to watch a form plummet the void in awful pin-wheeling slow motion, broken balustrade raining shards of wood. He had recognised the yell. Reece!
Jace lunged in the hopes of cushioning his fall, but was too late. His brother hit the floor with terrible crunched finality. A spear of railing protruded from his chest, merciless heart pumping blood from the wound. A blistered hand print branded his cheek.
Jace skidded to his side. “Ohh, no. No. No. No!”
“Jace,” Reece said feebly, grinning up at him. He made a gurgling, sucking sound when he spoke, bubbles escaping. His extremities twitched. “Don’t touch anything. Poison, acid, everywhere.”
“Shh, Reece. We’ll get out of here.” Somehow. He took off his t-shirt and pressed around the stake, refusing the instinct to rip it out. The fabric drenched immediately. “Can you help me pull you up?”
“Let me think... Nope.” Ker...chink. Kerchink. Jace traced the sound to Reece’s open palm. “Get Rea. Get... Out. Burn it. Kill the witch.” The smile slackened and his eyes drifted to distant shores, far beyond Jace’s aid.
It wasn’t true! It couldn’t be happening. Reece was not dead, Jace a huddled outline over his corpse. He was holed up somewhere hallucinating. Stuck back in the ditch with a nasty concussion, feverish and crying out for rescue. Reece would show up in his own sweet time, laughing at Jace lost so close to camp and never letting the embarrassing fact go. And he’d be thankful for the hassle.
But the ache gouging a hollow inside told him otherwise. Jace remembered grief, he was an experienced practitioner. Both parents, his adored Grandfather. And now his tool of a brother all because of Noel’s oblivious flapping gums, a mirage cameo and the genetically coded avarice of his stupid, stupid twin siblings. It was Jace’s fault and guilt joined the angst. He should have treated Laini’s warning proactively to haul them out of there much earlier. Drugged them. Clocked them over the noggins. Chained them in the back of the ute. Hell, anything to force obedience.
The stealthy patter of feet jolted him alert. He peered the gloom at a blur of white. The mansion of old jumped to being, its reception unmarred by a grieving boy, his dead brother or the ravages of neglect. A petite girl flitted dimness from niche to niche, upraised face gleaming pale. Laini. Speak of the devil. Or was she an archangel descended to avenge those wronged? In the periphery, Sienna stealthily mounted the stairs, unaware of the little spy on her heels. Jace could do nothing but stare as the story inexorably pulled him along to the end.
“Blake?” Sienna called, voice timid in the echoing vastness of Grey Manor.
This was her first visit inside. Jace had no notion of how he knew. On the scale of events that wasn’t such a biggy though. There came a loud series of bumps and dragging from overhead. Sienna scurried down the stairs and across the expanse behind the bear, utterly ignorant her sister played the same game opposite, concealed by the canon’s plinth. The stress of it had Jace’s pulse galloping, never mind the weirdness and horror of his own predicament.
A trio of faces upturned to witness Lady Grey in peach waft the stairs to the bottom and retrace Sienna’s path, stopping momentarily to glance about suspiciously. Jace held his breath. After what seemed forever, her shoulders relaxed and she disappeared from the entryway. Sienna rushed back up the stairs. Laini peeked out, but stayed put. Eventually, a cry of anguish echoed the hall.
Lady Grey materialised, pinched features carved in stone. She halted in the centre and glared skyward. Sienna’s face popped over the balcony, a mask of tear-drenched misery, diamond-and-opal pendant dangling.
“You ugly old harridan! You murdered him. I don’t know how, but you did it!”
“Harlot! How dare you breach my sanctuary.” Lady Gray’s accent was low and refined, but with a sibilant quality, which to Jace mimicked a basket of hissing serpents. She ascended with a blade-like glide. “Flaunting your sluttish theft of my husband and my jewellery to boot. In my own home. The brazen gall!”
“Only someone as arrogant as you could believe a withered, decrepit wasp had a genuine hope with Blake.”
Lady Grey unbuttoned her suit jacket with deliberate intent. She shirked it to wrap her forearm and smash the case holding an archaic-looking gun, wrinkled flesh under her arm wobbling like an unfurled flag in her cream silk camisole. Sienna realised her peril and receded into the upper level. As Lady Grey advanced ever higher, she regaled her quarry with a lecture, while checking the barrel and retracting the hammer.
“The Major was obsessed with firearms from past eras. Best not discuss his fascination with young boys in leather. He made purchases on the absolute proviso his weapons functioned. It took three hours every day, dismantling, oiling, tamping gun powder in his study... A terrible aggravation, the love and attention he showered upon cold bits of metal. And others less appropriate. Of course, he’d shoot each and every collectable at targets. My pompous fart of a husband, Sir Major Major-Grey. That was his name, so ludicrous.” She chuckled in a dry, mirthless way.
“Do not misjudge the appearance of my pistol, odious parasite. It works as well today, as it did when first manufactured all those years ago. Perfectly capable of blowing a large hole in your Judas heart.”
Laini stepped out from her hidey hole. Her face combined fright for her sister and a fierce determination unusual in one so young. Jace frantically gestured to stay hidden, gut clenching, but he was not present at this ordeal and had no power over her actions. Lady Grey sighed, now in the exact spot Sienna had recently vacated.
“I suppose there is no chance you’d be a dear and adjourn to the garden? This will make quite a mess.”
“You wouldn’t dare!” Sienna shouted from the cavernous depths.
“Oh, but dear, I already have. Thrice. So satisfying that little shot of succinylcholine. Nice interaction with the Major’s Digoxin. Flopped about like a gutted fish while his poor organs spasmed. I told him to go on a diet, that all the adipose would crush his degenerate heart. Of course, the Pathologist concurred. I used to be a chemist, you see.”
“You won’t do well in prison.” Jace willed Sienna to save herself by keeping quiet. Desperation coloured her tone.
“Why whoever mentioned jail? No-one knows you’re here. All that sneaking sealed your lonely fate and none shall be the wiser.”
A bad luck constellation guided happenstance to this life-altering pivot. Glass snapped beneath Laini’s foot. Lady Grey emerged scowling imperiously down at yet another intruder.
“More vermin! I shall need a larger gun.” She took aim and fired the bang a thunderous ricocheted in Jace’s mind.
***
Chapter Eleven
