I pause, but Castor bounds ahead without me, his giant body barreling down the path toward the stables, intent on finding the source of the noise.
“Castor!” I call, but he doesn’t listen, and doesn’t even look back.
“Castor!” A male voice barks through the stillness, and Castor skids to a stop at Dare’s feet. “Sit!”
Castor sits obediently and immediately, poised in front of Dare.
I stare at him in awe.
“How did you do that?”
Dare looks up at me and I decide that he must be…. eleven? His hair is a bit shaggy, almost touching his shoulders even. But his eyes… his eyes haven’t changed.
Dark
Dark
Dark as night.
“You have to be firm,” he tells me, his voice clipped and British. “You have to be the boss. They’ve been trained this year, but they’re still puppies. You have to control him.”
I’m hesitant, because Castor is twice, maybe three times my size. Why would he listen to me?
“Call him,” Dare tells me. “Do it firmly. Say, Castor come.”
I do it, trying to mimic the sternness of Dare’s voice.”
Castor looks at me without moving, and Dare snickers.
“You’ve got to call him with authority, little mouse.”
My head snaps up. “Don’t call me that. I’m not a mouse.”
He laughs. “Then don’t act like one. Call him with purpose.”
My lip curls and I snap, “Castor, come.”
Castor gets to his feet and comes straight to me. He stands in front of me, waiting for my command. “Sit.”
He sits.
Like magic.
Dare smiles, and his teeth are very white. “See? He’s been trained. And I’m sure he remembers you. They were both trained with your scents.”
“Our scents?”
Dare nods. “Yeah, yours and your brother’s. Sabine kept a few of your shirts to use for them. It worked, didn’t it? He knew you?”
I nod and I can’t argue. He did know me. But it feels weird to know that my scent was being used without my knowledge this year, even though that’s dumb. My scent doesn’t belong to me. Not really. I put it out into the world, and once it’s released, it never comes back.
Dare walks to me, a little bit skinny, a little bit gawky, but he seems so sophisticated to me, so worldly. He’s three years older after all. The eleven-year olds at school won’t even look twice at me. Well, unless it’s to call me Funeral Home Girl. I cringe at the memory and Dare looks at me curiously.
“What?”
I swallow because I’ll never tell him of that particular shame. “Nothing. What are you doing out so early?”
He’s the one who seems to cringe now, but then he hides it. “It’s the only time I can come,” he shrugs, without explaining. “Don’t tell Sabine, ok?”
That seems like a dumb thing to ask because we aren’t doing anything wrong, but I agree. “Ok. What are you doing out here?”
Dare shrugs. “Nothing. Just walking around.”
He’s smart because he has a jacket on.
“Can I come with you? I don’t know my way.”
Dare hesitates, but finally nods. “Fine. But you have to be quiet. We don’t want to wake anyone up.”
“This place is so huge,” I answer. “No one will hear us out here.”
“There are eyes everywhere,” he tells me. “Don’t doubt it.”
“Ok,” I answer, because he wants me to agree. But I think he’s being paranoid.
We walk along the path toward the grounds, far away from the house, and Castor stays a few feet in front of us. Every once in a while, he lifts his giant nose to the breeze, checking checking checking for something.
“What’s he watching for?” I ask Dare curiously.
“Anything,” Dare guesses. “Everything. Who knows? Newfoundlands are known for their hero instincts. He’d probably die to protect you.”
“And you?” I ask quietly. Dare glances at me.
“Probably. But he’s not mine. He’s yours.”
I’m dying to ask why Dare couldn’t have a dog, because he so obviously loves Castor. But I don’t. Because I have a strange sense that it would offend him, that it would hurt his feelings, and I don’t want to do that. I have a strange fascination with this boy and his dark eyes.
Dare pauses on the path, and he seems to be trying to catch his breath. I suddenly notice that he’s pale, paler than the last time I’d seen him. I touch his elbow.
“Are you ok?” I ask quickly, and he yanks away in annoyance.
“Of course,” he snaps. “Why wouldn’t I be?”
Because you can’t breathe.
I don’t say that though because obviously he doesn’t want me to notice. So I wait quietly with him, patiently. Finally, after minutes and minutes, he continues on his way, although his steps are slower this time. Castor slows too, determined to stay near us.
A boy in my class at school has something called asthma. He has to carry an inhaler, and oftentimes during recess, he has to stop playing so that he can breathe. I decide that Dare must have that too, although it’s stupid to me that he wants to hide it. Having asthma is nothing to be embarrassed about.
Dare points to a stone building in the distance.
“There’s the mausoleum. Every Savage has been buried there. You will be too.”
How depressing.
“And will you be?”
The question comes out before I can stop it.
Dare laughs, but there is no humor in it. “Doubtful, and I don’t want to be. My father was French, and I’ll be buried in France. They can’t keep me here.”
There is as much distaste in his voice now as there is in Eleanor’s when she speaks of him. Bad blood, my father would say. But why?
“You don’t like it here?” I ask, hopeful that he’ll tell me something, anything, to help everything make sense.
Dare is silent though, his dark eyes trained on the horizon.
“Please tell me,” I add. “I don’t like it here, either.”
“Why don’t you?” Dare glances at me and he seems almost interested.
“Because I miss my dad. I miss my room. I live in a funeral home. Do you remember that?”
Dare nods.
“I don’t like that part because the kids at school tease me, but I miss home. I miss the ocean. Whitley is too big. It’s scary here because it’s dark and everyone is quiet. It feels like everyone hides things from each other, but I don’t know what.”
“You don’t know the half of it,” Dare mutters and I look at him sharply. He looks away.
“Tell me about living in a funeral home,” he says, redirecting my attention.
I smile because he doesn’t sound mean or judgy. He just sounds interested.
“It’s ok. It smells like flowers all of the time. The smell gets into my hair and my clothes.”
“Do dead people look like they’re sleeping?”
I snort. “No. They look dead.”
Dare nods. “I figured.”
We’re quiet now, and we walk, and Castor pants. The tiny pebbles tumble under my shoes and I once again wish I were home, on the cliffs of Oregon. But then again, Dare isn’t there, and he interests me.
The wind blows my hair and I raise my hand to shove it behind my ear, and as I do, something moves in the corner of my eye.
I turn, and what I see is the stuff of nightmares.
I see Castor and Pollux, broken and bloody, dragging themselves along the path, their legs broken, blood pouring from their eyes and their noses. Blood trails behind them, it fills the pads of their paws and leaves crimson prints on the ground. There is so much blood that I can smell it, I can taste it.
I scream and try to run to them, but my feet won’t move. They feel like they’ve been glued to the ground and I’m frozen frozen frozen. My heart pounds and pounds, the blood racing through my veins and I can’t move I can’t move
I can’t move.
“Castor,” I whimper.
Castor tries to pick his head up, he tries to come to me because he’s obedient, he’s been trained, but his bones his bones his bones are splintered. He can’t walk and he falls to the ground with a loud boom, so loud and hard that it shakes the ground under my feet.
I scream
And scream,
My hands over my mouth.
Dare turns to me calmly, his eyes like lifeless pools, and it’s him, but it’s not him.
“You did this,” he says, his voice dead like a corpse. I try to breathe but I can’t
I can’t
I can’t.
I squeeze my eyes closed and fall to my heels, rocking on the path.
“Calla! Calla! Open your eyes! Shh! Everything is fine, it’s fine. What’s wrong?”
A voice is desperate and anxious and I focus on it, trying to come back to my body, trying to hear it.
“Calla!”
I focus on those two syllables, on the voice.
It’s Dare’s and it’s full of life this time, not like before.
I open my eyes and his face is in mine, his dark eyes panicked.
“What’s wrong?” he asks me, his hands closed around my arms. “Are you ok?”
I think he’d been shaking me, trying to get me to focus. But I don’t know.
I shake my head. “What happened to the dogs? Oh my God. What happened?”
Dare cocks his head, quizzical. “What do you mean?”
From behind him, Castor whimpers and I startle, sitting up so I can see.
Castor is sitting a few feet away, staring at me with canine concern, whimpering because I’ve unnerved him, wagging his tail hopefully. His bones are fine. There is no blood.
He’s fine
He’s fine
He’s fine.
I suck in a breath. It wasn’t real. Was it real?
“I thought… Castor was…” my voice trails off, because this is exactly what happened when I thought my brother had died. It wasn’t real.
It clearly wasn’t real.
“I need Finn,” I say finally.
Because Finn will help me understand. Finn is the only one who can know.
“Are you crazy?” Dare asks me as he helps me to my feet. “My step-father said you were.”
“No!” I snap. But I’m not sure. I probably am. “That’s a mean thing to say.”
“My step-father is mean,” Dare answers without apology.
From behind him, my mother rushes down the path, in a robe and her hair standing on end.
“What’s wrong, what’s happened?” she asks as she reaches me, pulling me into her arms. “I heard you scream.”
Finn is behind her, and Sabine. They are all watching me, because they know what I won’t admit.
I’m crazy.
“Nothing,” I tell them all. “I thought I saw something and I didn’t.” Clearly I didn’t. Pollux is with Finn and he’s fine.
Sabine looks at Dare. “You know you aren’t supposed to be out here,” she tells him. “You know there will be consequences.” He nods seriously and Sabine looks at me.
“You shouldn’t be out here, either,” she announces. “You shouldn’t invite trouble, little one.” She’s stern and I feel like I’m in trouble and I don’t know why. If anyone should be mad at me, it’s my mother. But mom doesn’t say a word, she just holds me in her arms.
“It’s my fault,” Dare interjects quickly before I can respond to Sabine. “She heard me and followed. It’s my fault.”
“It’s no one’s fault…” I start to say, but Sabine is already nodding.
“Don’t misguide her, boy,” she says. “Richard will hear about this, if he hasn’t already.”
Dare’s face pales and he’s silent, but it didn’t stop him from trying to save me from trouble. He stood up for me. I grab his hand, but he pulls it away without looking at me.
“Let’s go inside,” Finn tells me, guiding my elbow with his hand. My mother rustles us to the house and back to our rooms, and I don’t see Dare for the rest of the day.
Sabine comes to my room mid-morning and sets a tray down on my desk.
“Your mother sent me,” she tells me, handing me a cup of steaming liquid. “Drink this and tell me what you saw this morning.”
I take the tea and sip at it, and it’s bitter and I hate it. I try to hand it back, but she shakes her head.
“Drink.” Her voice is firm.
I drink, but I don’t speak. I don’t tell her that I saw the dogs broken and bloody. Because why would I have imagined such a thing? I must be a monster. Only a monster would do that.
She waits and I’m silent and finally she sighs.
“I know about you,” she says, her hand on my thigh, her fingernails biting into my flesh. “You don’t have to hide it. I told you to trust me.”
I want to answer that you can’t just tell someone to trust, that trust has to be earned. That’s something my dad has always said and he’s right. My dad is smart. But I keep my mouth shut about that.
“What do you know about me?” I ask instead.
“You know what,” she answers. “I know what no one else does. I know all about you, child.”
I shake my head though, because there’s no way. I haven’t told anyone what I saw. I sure won’t be telling her.
She clucks and shakes her head. “I can’t help you until you’re honest,” she tells me as she picks up the tray and starts for the door. She pauses though, and turns to me.
“You should stay away from Dare, though,” she tells me. “Someday, he’ll be your downfall.”
“My downfall?” I can’t help but ask. She smiles and it’s grim as she nods.
“Your downfall. It will be one for one for one, Calla.”
“What does that mean?” I’m confused but she’s gone, the door closing behind her with a heavy creak.
Castor lies at my feet and I’m so happy that he’s healthy that I hug his neck, breathing in his dog smell, and feeling his fluffy hair on my cheek. “I love you, Castor.”
He pants in reply and lies with me as the room swirls around me, my vision foggy. I don’t know what’s happening, but I can’t keep my eyes open. My eyelids are heavy
Heavy
Heavy.
My hands are hot, my legs are cold and everything is swirling into blackness. As I close my eyes, I see something on the edge of my periphery, in the shadows of my room.
A boy in a hood, a boy with black black eyes. He watches me, waits for me, and he seems so utterly familiar.
But it’s not real. He can’t be real. It’s just like the bloody dogs.
I want to open my eyes to check, but my eyelids are so so so heavy.
So
Heavy.
Everything ceases to matter and I can’t trust myself anymore.
I’m crazy.
As I drift into sleep, into oblivion, I think about Dare. The boy who risked trouble to keep me out of it. “It’s my fault,” he’d said.
But it wasn’t his fault.
He’d lied to try and keep me safe.
No one has ever done that before.
Chapter Six
Whitley Estate
“I love him.”
My whisper is small in my large room, but it is heard by my brother. Because Finn has sneaked in like he does every night. Whitley is much too large for us to stay in our own rooms alone. There are far too many shadows, far too many things to fear. Our dogs lie at the foot of my bed, protecting us as we sleep. They are sentinels and it is comforting.
Finn pokes his head out of his covers, his light brown curls unruly.
“You’re dumb,” he announces. “You can’t love Dare. He’s our cousin. And I heard mom talking to Uncle Richard. Dare is a lost cause, Cal.”
Rage almost blinds me, red and hot, billowing from the corners of my eyes like ink.
“Don’t say that! It’s not true. He’s not lost. And Uncle Rich
ard is a monster,” I tell him. “You know that. Plus, Dare is only our step-cousin. We’re not really related.”
“Close enough,” Finn answers. “You can’t love him. It wouldn’t be right.”
“Why does it have to be right?” I sniff. “Who decides what is right and not right, anyway?”
Finn rolls his eyes before he covers his head back up with his covers. “Mom does. Besides, you have me. I’m all you need, Calla.”
I can’t argue with that.
So I drop it. Soon I hear Finn’s even breaths, signaling me that he’s asleep.
I lie still, watching the shadows move across the ceiling. I’m not scared when Finn is here, which probably really is dumb. I heard Jones telling Sabine that Finn couldn’t beat his way out of a wet paper bag, but that’s only because he hasn’t hit a growth spurt yet. Regardless, I know he’d die trying to protect me. Somehow, that’s comforting and morbid at the same time.
I close my eyes.
And when I do, all I can see is Dare’s face.
Dark hair, dark eyes, stubborn glare.
I love him.
He’s mine.
Or he’ll be mine someday. I know it in my heart, as sure as I know my name is Calla Elizabeth Price.
I sleep to the sounds of the moors…the wind, the dark, the silence, the growls. The moors here at Whitley growl, although no one else seems to notice. At first I thought it was Castor, but it’s not. He’d never growl at me. But the moors do.
After the morning sun wakes me up, I pull some clothes on and dash down to the kitchens, hoping to see him before breakfast.
“Is Dare here?” I ask as Castor and I skid around the corner. Sabine eyes me from beneath her scarf as she hands me a croissant.
“Shh, child. I think I saw him slip outdoors.”
She’s quiet so that no one will overhear her. I tell her thank you over my shoulder and head for the grounds, because that’s where Dare likes to be. He hates the house, and he hates most of the people inside.
But he doesn’t hate me.
Even though I’m only eight and he’s eleven. I know this because he told me.
I race down the paths, over the cobbles and between the gates of the secret garden with my dog on my heels. I watch for Dare above the flowers, beneath the massive angel statues, and I finally see him sitting on the edge of a pond, his dark eyes thoughtful as he skips a rock across the glassy surface.