He told himself the feeling was irresponsible, even cowardly. That they couldn’t start doing something about Melanie until he’d spoken about it. But he also knew how impossibly hard it was going to be to tell this story.
Kate was silent again, but beside him. He looked into the overgrown meadow on their right, when they reached it. Nothing there but butterflies and bees, birdsong. Wild grass, clover, a few poppies, some bright yellow flowers on the bushes at the edge of the woods.
At the villa gates he hesitated again, his fingers hovering over the code box that opened them.
Kate said, “We could wait here. For your aunt?”
He had been hoping, to be honest, that Aunt Kim might have been at the bottom of the road waiting to drive them up. He could have handed this off to her. Been there, done that? You tell them.
He looked at Kate, who had volunteered to help him, though she’d never even met Melanie, or his father or the others. She’d known Ned for only four days, and she was here.
He punched the code, the gates swung open. He punched it a second time, to lock them that way, and they walked through. Time moved again.
His father was on the terrace, at the little table, a tall drink in front of him. Steve was in the pool, doing his laps in the cold water. Ned couldn’t see Greg. The gates clanged, as they always did when they opened. His father turned in his chair at the sound and waved.
“Yo!” Steve called, not pausing in his laps.
“You walked?” Ned’s father called. “Better phone Melanie and tell her. She went down to get you!”
“Where was Greg?” Ned asked, walking across the grass. Kate trailed behind him.
“Fell asleep when we got back from the abbey. They were planning something dire for him when you called. I think you saved him. Why’d you phone if you were going to walk? And who’s your friend?” He smiled at Kate.
Ned had a sudden, sharp awareness that this was the last moment of peace his father was going to know here. It was a hard thought: the terrible innocence of people before hearing news that could shatter their lives. The doorbell, a policeman on the porch at night in rain, news of a car accident . . .
He wasn’t sure what had made him think of that.
He said, “This is Kate Wenger. Kate, my father, Edward Marriner.”
“Hi, Kate,” his father said. “Ned’s told us about you. You sell essays for walk-around money?” He grinned.
“Hello, sir. No, not usually.”
“Ned, have Vera set another plate. Kate can join us for dinner.”
“I will,” Ned said. He took a breath. “But I need to tell you something first. Something’s happened.”
It was awful, but he was actually afraid he was going to cry again.
His father’s expression changed, but not in a bad way. He looked at Ned, then Kate. “Sit down, both of you. Tell me.”
They sat. Ned took a couple of steadying breaths. Steve was still swimming. It had to be freezing in the pool. A black-and-white bird lifted suddenly from the grass and swooped across to the trees by the lavender bushes.
“It’s about Melanie,” Ned said.
“Oh, God,” his father said. “The van? Ned . . . ?”
“Not the van! I would have phoned.” He saw Kate biting her lip again.
“What happened, then? Where is she? Ned, tell me.”
“She’s gone, Dad.”
“Melanie? She wouldn’t leave us in a hundred years.”
Maybe in two thousand, Ned thought.
“Is she joking again?” his father added. “Are you? Jesus, Ned, I’m too old for—”
“It isn’t a joke, sir,” said Kate. “Something bad happened and . . . it is really, really hard to explain.”
She sounded earnest and intense, not even close to a practical-joke kind of person. Ned’s father looked at her, and then back to his son.
“You’re scaring me.”
“I’m scared too,” Ned said, “and I don’t know where to start.”
“That doesn’t make me feel any better.”
Ned took another breath, like the one before you went off the high board at a pool. An idea came to him, and he followed it before he had time to change his mind.
“Dad . . . do you know what story Aunt Kim would have told Mom, before she went away? Did Mom ever tell you?”
He had never seen anyone, let alone his father, look so astonished.
“Aunt Kim?” Edward Marriner repeated blankly. “Kimberly?”
Ned nodded. “Did Mom tell you anything about it?”
“Ned, Jesus, what does—”
“Please, Dad. Did she?”
He was pretty sure it was because Kate Wenger was beside him, worried and serious and biting her lip, that his father answered.
“She told me very little,” Edward Marriner said, finally. “It happened before we met. She’s almost never talked about it, or her sister.”
“I know that,” Ned said quietly. “I asked you once or twice, remember?”
His father nodded. “It was some supernatural story, I know that. Mystical. Very . . .” He clasped his hands together on the table. “Very New Age, I guess. Things from Celtic roots your mother never liked, never believed in.”
“And then Aunt Kim went away?”
“Uh-huh. Your grandmother used to keep in touch with her. Your mother wouldn’t even let her talk about Kimberly. She was angry, hurt. I still don’t understand all of it, but I learned not to ask.” His gaze held Ned’s. “Is your aunt involved in this, Ned? Whatever this is?”
“Sort of. Can I . . . may I ask one more question, first?”
His father’s mouth moved sideways. “You’re going to, aren’t you?”
“Are you . . . do you . . . hate that New Age stuff as much as Mom does?”
Edward Marriner was silent a moment, then he sighed. “I don’t believe any of us knows everything about how the world works. Go ahead and tell me.”
Ned found that there were tears in his eyes again. He wiped them away. He said, “That’s good, Dad. Thanks. I didn’t expect . . .”
His father waited. Steve was still swimming, out of earshot. Ned said, “For the past three days, Kate and I have sort of stumbled into something off-the-wall weird.”
“Where?” his father asked.
“It started in the cathedral. The baptistry and the cloister.”
The blue eyes were direct now. “Where you sent me?”
“Yes.” Ned took a chance. “Did you feel anything there?”
Another silence. “Leave that for the moment. Go on.” His father was used to giving commands, Ned thought, but he didn’t do it in a bad way. It was almost reassuring.
He looked at Kate. “We met, I guess that’s the word, we met a man in there, and then later some other people who . . . who don’t seem to belong in our time. Like, they’re from the past? And it . . . it is a Celtic kind of story, I think.”
“You think?”
“It is,” said Kate. “We know it is. We’re just really hesitant because it’s scary and totally weird and people won’t believe us. But today is, well it’s May Day eve.” She stopped.
“I knew that, as it happens,” Edward Marriner said, after a pause. He looked at his son. “We used to go on picnics, when your grandmother was alive.”
“I remember. And tonight was . . . is a really powerful night. For the Celts.”
“Jesus, Ned.” His father shook his head. “What are you trying to tell me?”
“Kate and I went up to a ruined site near here, called Entremont, this afternoon.”
“It was my fault,” Kate interrupted. “Ned didn’t want to go.”
“I did want to. But Aunt Kim said I—”
“You tried to stop us.”
“But I went.”
“Hold it,” said Edward Marriner. “Aunt Kim said . . . ?”
Ned closed his eyes. He hadn’t meant to do it that way. But if there was a good way to do this, he sure hadn’t thought of it.
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“I know. Mom will kill all of us. Or she’ll get spitting mad. Aunt Kim says she used to get spitting mad.”
“Ned. Please. Be extremely clear. Right now.”
Ned nodded. “Aunt Kim called me when we were leaving that restaurant two nights ago. After I had that headache thing by the mountain? She realized somehow that I had connected to something she knows about.”
“She called you? Your aunt telephoned you?”
That same look of disbelief, the one that should have been funny.
“Yeah. Remember, in the restaurant driveway? She was already here. She flew down because she realized something had happened to me. She knew, Dad.”
“Flew down?”
“From England. She lives there. With Uncle Dave.”
His father sighed. “I actually knew that. And she . . . ?”
“She met me that night. When I said I wanted to go for a walk?”
“Jesus, Ned.” Third time he’d said that.
Ned still thought he might cry. It was embarrassing. “Dad, she’s really great. And she was trying to help. To explain what had happened to me. That it was in her family, and Mom’s. And she told me not to go anywhere that might involve . . . those guys. But I did.”
“I made him go,” Kate said again. “And we got trapped, and had to call for help.”
“But it was supposed to be Greg.”
“And if Melanie hadn’t come when she did it would have been me who became . . . someone else.”
Kate was the one who was crying, Ned saw. He watched his father register that.
“Why you?” Edward Marriner said quietly.
“There . . . needed to be a woman. Both men were there, they were calling her. They needed Ysabel. And I was supposed to become her . . . it was already happening. Then Melanie came, because we’d phoned.”
Wordlessly, Edward Marriner picked up a serviette from the table and handed it to her. Kate wiped her eyes, and then blew her nose.
Ysabel. The name, spoken on a villa terrace, a bellsound in the word. He could still see her. He could see Melanie, changing, between flames.
They heard a car changing gears on the steep slope of the road.
His father turned quickly, and Ned could see hope flare in his face: the heart-deep wish that this was Melanie in the van, that it had all been an elaborate practical joke, to be dealt with by a thunderous grounding of his only child.
Ned looked. He saw the red Peugeot.
“That’s Aunt Kim,” he said. “I asked her to come. We’re going to need her, Dad.”
His father stood quickly, scraping his chair, staring at the car as it came through the open gates. They watched it pull into the first gravel parking space. The engine was turned off.
A woman got out and looked across the grass at them.
Medium height, slender. White-haired. She wore a long blue-and-white flower-print skirt and a blue blouse over it, held a pale-coloured straw hat in one hand. She closed the car door. It made a chunking sound in the stillness.
Ned lifted a hand to her. She took off her sunglasses and began crossing towards them, walking briskly. His mother’s walk, Ned thought.
Edward Marriner watched her come up the stone steps. He cleared his throat.
With real composure, given the circumstances, he said, “Kimberly Ford? Hello. Ned and his friend have . . . have been trying to explain what this is about. Thank you for coming. You do know what your sister will do to all of us?”
He extended a hand. Aunt Kim ignored it. She dropped her hat on the table and, stepping forward, gave him a long, fierce hug.
She stepped back, looking at him. “Edward Marriner, I have no idea why my sister lets you keep that silly moustache. I am so glad to meet you, and so sorry it is this way.”
She stepped back, a brightness in her eyes. She was crying now. There seemed to be an epidemic of it.
Ned’s father cleared his throat again. He handed Kim another of the serviettes from the table. She took it and wiped her eyes. She looked over. “Kate?”
Kate nodded. “Hi,” she said in a small voice.
“Hi to you, dear. Are you all right?”
“Sort of, I guess. Not really. We were saying . . . trying to say . . . it was going to be me up there it happened to, if Melanie hadn’t come.”
Kimberly held up a hand.
“Stop, please. I don’t know enough. And I’m sure Ned’s father knows less. Back up, start with the cathedral, take us to what just happened.” This crispness was his mother’s, too, Ned thought. She took a chair.
Edward Marriner sat opposite her. He glanced meaningfully towards the pool where Steve was still swimming. Kimberly looked over. She turned to Ned. “Melanie’s been changed? Into someone else? Is that it?”
Ned nodded. “Both men were there. The one Kate and I saw, and the one you and I met by the tower.”
Aunt Kim closed her eyes. “Damn.”
“I’m sorry,” Ned said, miserably. “I know you told me not to . . . even Phelan told us.”
She stared at him.
“He’s the one we met first, Kate and me.”
“He has a name now?”
Ned nodded. It was all really hard, sitting here above a swimming pool, holding images in his head of twinned fires and a slaughtered bull, that stone bowl held high, filled with blood. “The other one’s Cadell. Melanie named them, after she—”
Aunt Kim held up a hand again, like a traffic cop. She looked at the pool, and then at Ned’s father. “You still need to back up. But I think everyone has to be here,” she said, gesturing towards Steve. “You can’t keep it from him, if she’s really gone.”
“Is she?” Edward Marriner asked. “Gone? I mean, that’s so . . .”
Kim nodded. “She’s changed, anyhow. They wouldn’t make this up.”
Ned’s father drew a slow breath, processing that. “Greg, too, then,” he said, finally. “We’ll have to wake him.”
“I’ll do it,” Ned said. He needed an excuse to move.
He went into the house. Veracook smiled at him. He saw that she’d gathered some stalks of flowers and leaves, had laid them above the kitchen sink, sideways on the ledge, not in a vase.
She noticed his glance and flushed a little.
“Don’t tell Vera,” she said, in French, a finger to her lips. “She laughs at me.”
“What are they?”
“Rowan. To protect the house. A special night tonight, very special.”
Ned stared. He didn’t say anything, just went upstairs to get Greg. He felt burdened, heavy with a weight of centuries.
IT WAS STEVE, surprisingly, who insisted they call the police.
He was almost shouting. Greg, perhaps still half asleep, perhaps not, was watchful and quiet after Ned and Kate finished their story. He was eyeing Aunt Kim and Ned’s father, waiting to see what they did.
“They aren’t allowed to kill each other?” Kim said.
Ned shook his head. “That’s what she said. Not while they look for her.”
“She gave them that set time to find her,” said Kate. “Three days.”
“It would be three,” Aunt Kim said. “But she’s doing something differently, I think. Sounds as though they would fight for her, normally.”
“Maybe not,” Kate said, hesitantly. “It seemed as if sometimes she just . . . chooses one, and then there’s a war. In revenge, maybe?” They all stared at her. She flushed, looked at Kimberly. “But this was different. I think they were both surprised.”
“So what does it mean, if it’s different?” Edward Marriner asked.
“I’m not sure,” Aunt Kim admitted.
“Then what do we do?” Greg asked.
“You know what we do now! This isn’t goddamned Scooby-Doo!” Steve glared around the table. “We make a call, for God’s sake! Melanie’s been kidnapped and we aren’t detectives!”
“She’s been changed, not kidnapped,” Kim said calmly. “Steven, Steve, the gendarmes will have
no possible way of dealing with this.”
“And we do?” Steve said, his voice rising. “I mean, way I make this, Ned and his friend saw some whacko cult, pagans or Wiccans or whatever, faking a ritual, and Melanie got grabbed when she walked in and interrupted them.” He looked at Ned. “Admit it. You could have missed what really went down. You said there were fires and smoke.”
“I wish,” Ned said. He felt miserable. “Steve, I do. But too many things have happened. I mean, Aunt Kim and I saw the guy—Cadell—with stag horns, and then he changed into an owl.”
Steve stared at him.
“And Melanie never disappeared,” Ned added, after a moment. “I saw her all the way. I could see really clearly up there. I don’t know why. She just changed, as she walked between the fires.”
“Jesus! I’m supposed to . . . we’re supposed to believe that?”
“I think we may have to, Steve,” said Edward Marriner, slowly. “I don’t like it any more than you do, but something inexplicable seems to be going on. I think we let Dr. Ford—Kim—guide us here.”
“Why’s that?” Greg asked, but quietly.
Kim looked at him. “I’ve seen this before,” she said. “Long time ago. Not identical, nothing’s ever quite the same. But I can tell you that Ned and I . . . our family . . . have a connection to this sort of thing.”
“What sort of thing?” Greg again, still calmly.
“Call it Celtic, pagan, supernatural. Pick the word that works for you.”
“And if none of them work?” Steve asked, but his voice had softened. Aunt Kim was pretty hard to yell at, Ned thought.
She smiled wryly at Steve. “Not even ‘idiotic mumbo-jumbo’?”
Steve looked at her. His expression changed. “Maybe that one,” he said. “That might do.” He hesitated. “What do you want, then? How do we get her back?”
“Yeah. What do we do?” said Greg. “Tell us, we’ll do it. Right now.”
They were assuming they could do something, Ned thought. He glanced at Kate, saw her looking back at him.
The others hadn’t seen Ysabel, or the two men facing each other among the ruins. Or the bull being led between flames. Ned wasn’t sure about doing anything useful at all. He felt sick, thinking about that.