Chapter Thirteen
THE LIBRARY door burst open, and a comforting pair of arms wrapped themselves around my trembling body.
“Grandpa! What’ve you been told about scaring the guests?” Connor scolded the translucent image of a man who now occupied the seat.
Grandpa? I exchanged looks between the image and Connor’s face, now unnervingly close to mine.
“But your grandfather’s…dead,” I said.
“And yet he hangs around like a bad smell, don’t you, Grandpa?”
I suddenly realised whose arms were wrapped around me and eased out of his hold, my eyes still glued on the apparition.
“You know I can’t leave, dear boy. Perhaps you should warn your guests of my presence, and my partiality for this chair, or maybe you could keep me properly informed when visitors arrive, so I don’t mistake them for burglars and treasure hunters. That is a rather valuable book, you know.”
Connor turned to face me, and I can’t have been a welcome sight. I’m sure my wide eyes and slightly salivating, gaping mouth must have been off-putting. I was witnessing my first ghost. I tried to compose myself as Connor spoke again.
“Sophie, this is…was Grandpa Joseph. Grandpa, this is Sophie, Seb’s girlfriend. She’s staying with us for a while.”
“Sebastian’s girlfriend, eh? Well, that is a first. I’d shake your hand, my dear, but that would be a pointless exercise. Eh, what? Haw-haw. I’ll say one thing, though: he knows how to pick them, my grandson. You’re quite the looker, girl.” He pondered. “Yes, lucky boy, my grandson. You too, Connor.”
“Enough, Grandpa,” Connor said, cutting his grandfather off. “Here, Sophie.” He handed me the book. “Let’s go sort some grub out. Grandpa, later.” He bowed his head to one side, in Grandpa Joseph’s direction, and touched two fingers briefly to his nose before dragging me out of the door.
Lounging on the rug in front of the fire a little while later, Connor reluctantly told me his brief life story.
He’d never met his biological mother. He was born out of wedlock after a one-night stand between her and his father while they were still at college. She was a devout, religious girl who couldn’t bear to have an abortion but didn’t want her future career ruined with a child, so she’d put him up for adoption. His father—Mr Lovell Senior’s brother—adopted him, but wasn’t ready for the responsibility of a child, and so had passed him from various nannies straight into public school without giving him a moment’s thought. Only after Connor had learnt what he was had he realised that he hadn’t been adopted because his father had wanted him; he’d been adopted because his father couldn’t let anyone else have him. It was quite a depressing story, and I felt sorry for the poor motherless boy as I stared into his older eyes and saw the sadness behind them.
After we polished off copious amounts of chicken fried rice and spring rolls, the already sparse conversation dried up altogether, and Connor made his excuses to leave.
I’d forgotten to pack my PJs, so I kept my sweatshirt on and hastened to bed with my book, wrapping the blankets tightly around me to stave off any icy drafts. It hit me then, the loneliness. Being alone didn’t bother me too much, but being alone in a strange house, a really strange house, did. I hoped that sleep would come soon.
It didn’t. Lydia and Wickham had already run away to London by the time my eyes closed.
In the end, I slept well, a dreamless sleep, woken only by my softly spoken name.
“Sebastian? Is that you?” I murmured.
“Sorry to disappoint,” Connor said, placing a tray on my bedside table. “Breakfast?”
“Oh. Thanks,” I said, pushing myself to a sitting position as he perched tentatively on the side of the bed.
He smiled. “Do you?”
“What?”
“Love New York?”
I squinted down at my sweatshirt. “Oh, right. I’m sure I would, given half a chance.”
He nodded. “I sussed you’re not the sort to eat takeaways every night, so I ordered the kitchen fitters to start work. I heard you like to cook, and seeing as you could be here for a while, well, I thought it’d give you something to do.”
“Oh…um…that’s very generous of you,” I stammered, barely awake.
“Nah, bit selfish, really. It was nearing the top of the to-do list anyway, but the pleasures of a family credit card and great connections can sometimes help to speed things up. Anyway, I haven’t had a home-cooked since school.” He grinned and carried on. “Not that I’m expecting you to cook for me or anything, just offering my services as a taste tester if you need one. They should be finished in a few hours.”
He paused and looked at the tray. “Um, okay. I’ll, um…let you have your breakfast and…um…stuff.” He made to leave but turned at the last minute. “In case you didn’t know, there’s a TV in that cabinet over there.” And then he was gone.
I wasn’t actually that hungry, but I didn’t want to appear ungrateful, so I ate the buttered toast, poured some tea from the teapot into the china cup, and found the television.
It was later than I’d thought. The usual round of morning housewife shows had already begun, and I wasn’t in the mood to listen. It was all too real and normal, and I was beginning to prefer this new fantasy world.
I got dressed and decided to check out the kitchen.
Faint notes from a piano caught my attention as they drifted up the stairs. I picked up my tray and crept down towards the sound. It seemed to be coming from the ballroom, and I approached cautiously, entering unnoticed.
The room looked bare. Tables and chairs were neatly stacked around the edges, and all traces of decoration from the Halloween ball had been removed. The space where the stage had been before was now occupied by a shiny grand piano, and the wolf’s image from the round window reflected off its shiny surface. Connor was sitting on the stool with his back facing me, playing beautifully.
I advanced slowly. “Pretty tune,” I said, balancing the tray on my hip and leaning lightly against the piano.
He didn’t look up. “Chopin.”
“Music runs in the family, then?” I said, thinking about Jimmy.
“Public school. Had to learn an instrument.”
“Oh, really? What did Sebastian learn?”
He stopped playing, leant back and gripped his knees with his hands, but still didn’t look up. “Look, sorry. I’d rather be alone. Do you mind?”
Shocked at his rebuff, I took it as my cue to leave, and made a swift exit without knowing what I’d done to annoy him.
Outside the kitchen, one of the workers took my tray without letting me in, so in the absence of a new toy to play with, I took my paints out onto the front steps for the afternoon, and I didn’t notice the time passing until the light began to fade.
I knew the kitchen was finished. I’d spotted a white van leaving about half an hour previously, and after depositing the wet paintings in my bedroom, I skipped down to check it out, excited to see the result of the day’s efforts.
Surprisingly, but pleasingly, not much had changed. The same sink remained under the newly glistening window. The back wall dresser had been retained, now clean and crammed full of glass storage jars filled with an assortment of dried ingredients. In place of the rickety old shelving, there now stood a silver American style double fridge, next to a newly built unit that housed a stacked double oven and grill. Located in the centre of the room, and perfectly matched to the units in green-painted wood, an island unit had been constructed to provide some much needed extra space.
I walked over to the fridge and opened the door. It was packed with fresh produce. I picked out a pear, took a bite, and surveyed the other contents. There was so much choice I didn’t know where to start. I wasn’t particularly hungry anyway, so I grabbed a can of pop, and a banana from the fruit bowl on the island, and returned to the sanctity of my room.
The news had just finished when Connor lightly knocked and entered. He placed a white gift box tied
with a pink ribbon on my bed and waited.
“What’s this?” I asked.
“Sorry,” was all he said.
“What for?”
“Earlier.” He looked down and nervously studied his feet.
Inside the box, wrapped in tissue paper, was an ivory coloured silk nightdress. I held it aloft to admire it.
“Need one,” Connor said. It was a statement, not a question.
“Yes…um…thanks.”
“Try it on,” he ordered, sparing me a glance and gesticulating towards the bathroom.
“What, now?”
He nodded.
Not wanting to upset him further, I obliged.
It was the perfect size. The material brushed the skin of my body like early-morning mist, and clung to my every curve in the places a woman should be touched. It made every inch of my skin tingle, and I ached for Sebastian. If only he were here to admire my new gift.
When I gingerly exited the bathroom, I couldn’t have felt more exposed if I’d been naked.
“Thank you,” I murmured.
Connor slowly looked me up and down, then swiftly saluted and left. Would I ever figure the guy out?
“A pleasure almost talking to you,” I called after him.
The following days passed slowly, blurring endlessly into one another. I longed to return to uni. I’d been sent assignments, but I needed to recover a sense of normality, see a few friendly faces. Every day, I settled into the same routine of television watching and painting—if the weather allowed—and surfing the Internet, if not.
I phoned Mum and only half-listened as she told me everything Todd was doing at school, and how he wasn’t happy about my leaving. Mum blamed the fact that Todd had gone off the rails and become a troublemaker on my absence. Although perhaps the fact that she’d met a new man who appeared to be fixing his feet firmly under the kitchen table had more to do with it than I did.
I did a bit of cooking. I even let Connor sample a dish or two. He repaid the kindness by having some more of my things sent over and lighting me a new fire each day, but his monosyllabic responses were becoming tiresome. I felt as if I were a chore to him. He only seemed to spend time with me under sufferance.
Tamar and her grandmother never left their quarters, and I didn’t feel welcome enough to intrude. I was bored. I needed stimulation. It was like serving a prison sentence with no chance of parole. I stared at the same walls and felt them closing in on me. Many times, I thought about taking more of the tour, but I was all ghosted out, and I didn’t fancy any other long-lost relatives popping out at me unannounced.
Sebastian had hardly been in touch at all. I’d emailed him every day, but the only response I’d had was one quick reply last week to say he wouldn’t be long now and not to worry. What could he be doing that would keep him away for so long?
Finally, after two weeks of incarceration, my ordeal ended. I was making tea in the kitchen one afternoon and didn’t hear anyone approaching, so when I felt an arm around my waist I swung around sharply in surprise, flicking potato pie on the wall.
“Whoa. I come in peace.”
“Sebastian? Oh, thank God.” I buried my face against his chest and hugged him tightly. “You’ve been gone for ages. You are staying this time, aren’t you?”
“Yes…and no. I haven’t got long before Connor and I have to get to the mine. I’m sorry, really sorry, I left you so long, but it was an emergency. I promise to make it up to you tomorrow.”
“You have to go to the mine? You mean—?”
“Yes. It’s a full moon tonight, and I feel it calling strongly this time.”
“I want to come,” I said, turning off the cooker.
“What? No. You can’t.”
“Do you think I’m letting you walk straight out on me after one minute together? I just want to see where you go, how you do it. I promise I’ll leave before…you know.”
“Okay, then. But if I tell you to go, run.”
The interpretation my brain was putting on his statement made me uneasy, but I nodded my acceptance anyway.
It wasn’t yet four o’clock, but the light was fading fast, and we moved quickly down a passageway between the house and the cliff before finally reaching a small opening in the side and entering.
I tried to talk to Sebastian about his time away, but it was difficult enough keeping up with them, and all I got was a ‘later’ or a ‘tomorrow’ as an answer.
Sebastian and Connor lit fire torches and placed them in sconces along the passage. Orange flames flickered bursts of light against the sheer rock walls, highlighting the trickles of rainwater seeping down from the earth above.
Connor stopped next to a deep shaft, saluted us, and began climbing down a rope. Sebastian watched him descend before raising the rope back up and leaving it in a coil on the floor next to us.
“I need you to do the same for me,” he said. “Tamar usually helps us, but when you said you were coming, I gave her a break.”
He grabbed my hand and led me a little deeper into the cave to another shaft, where he stopped and pulled me into his arms. His goodnight kiss was deep and sensual. I didn’t want it to end and longed for more time with him. But without another word, he pushed me away and began to climb down the rope, leaving me bewildered and wanting. My eyes held his gaze as he disappeared into darkness, and I squinted, trying to discern his form in the depths.
“Get the rope up now. Quickly,” Sebastian shouted.
I pulled on the fibrous length. It was quite heavy and took all of my strength to haul it up.
“What happens now? Do you just sit and wait?” I called down the shaft.
“After taking my clothes off, yes.”
I didn’t need to know that. “Is that necessary?” I asked, placing the last of the rope on the floor.
“Not really, but I’ve ruined some good gear on these full moon changes,” he shouted. “You’d better go now.”
“Oh, okay, then.” I tried to shake away the image of a naked Sebastian now forming in my head.
“Hurry,” he shouted.
“I’ll see you in the morning, then.”
“YES…GO…ARGH…”
I ran through the dimly lit passage and out into the night air. The muffled sound of anguished cries and roars mingled together but grew fainter as I reached the house, and I shuddered with thoughts of what was happening at the base of those shafts.
Back in my room later that evening, with my stomach full after a huge bowl of potato pie, I whiled away the time watching a film, and then tried to grab an early night. It wasn’t easy. I struggled to get to sleep. The television had drowned out all the earlier outside noises, but lying in the quiet loneliness of my bed, I could hear distant howling, and I couldn’t relax. My one solace was the knowledge that the source of the noise was known to me, and that it was friendly—at least most of the time.
I dozed off briefly in the early hours.
Tokala floated, ghostlike, at the end of my bed. ‘Your strength grows. You are ready for the next step. It takes a truly selfless soul to wear the stone of power. It will sit well on you.’ She removed a necklace from around her throat, a round flat stone the size of a large coin, with the appearance of an opal. I sat up, and Tokala secured the pendant around my neck. ‘Be careful what you wish for. Choose wisely.’ I knew the pendant was special, and I felt like Aladdin with his lamp.
When I woke up, my neck was disappointingly bare.
It was still dark. I looked at the clock: 6:32, about half an hour until sunrise.
I cleaned my teeth, dressed simply in a pink, fluffy jumper and jeans, snuggled into my puffa jacket, and added my long, multi-coloured scarf and gloves.
The air outside was bitingly cold, but at least the darkness had started to fade as morning arrived. I could now discern tree silhouettes and the outline of the cliff, which eased my journey back to the cave.
The light from the torches had dimmed, leaving only a soft glow, and I entered cautiou
sly, easing forward on my knees towards the first shaft to peer over the edge.
A ferocious growl echoed around the cave as the monster sprang up, just for a second, before sinking back into the depths. Startled, I fell back onto my bottom and scuttled towards the cave wall using my hands and feet.
It had been a good twenty feet from the top of the shaft, and had vanished back into the blackness almost immediately, but those glowing red eyes and that face, all matted fur and long teeth glistening with saliva held no trace of the boy inside.
I stayed there, frozen to the spot, hyperventilating, my eyes flitting between the shafts for any sign of movement and back to the entrance where the light was becoming brighter. It was stupid of me to have come early. I should have waited until I was sure it was safe.
After what seemed like an eternity, I heard a low moan coming from Sebastian’s shaft. I stealthily advanced towards it.
“Seb? Are you okay?” I said, removing a torch from its holder and tentatively holding it over the drop.
“Just a minute,” he groaned.
He sounded like himself, so I carefully moved forwards to take a peek. In the diminishing torchlight, I could just about make out his half-naked body facing away from me as he fastened his jeans. Breathing a sigh of relief, I hauled the rope coil to the edge before releasing it over the side.
“Hi,” I said when his face, now streaked with dirt, drew level with mine.
“Hey, you.” He smiled and heaved himself up to a standing position.
“Good job I don’t have to do that. I’ve never been able to climb a rope to save my life,” I said, trying to sound calm. “I used to get blamed for being a wuss and not trying hard enough at school, but really, I must just have weak arms or something.”
My motor mouth was silenced by a kiss, a too brief kiss. Sebastian broke away and went to kick Connor’s rope down to him before returning to grab my hand and rush me back to the house.
“Aren’t we waiting for Connor?”
“He’ll be fine.”
“Can’t we just slow down for a minute? Why are you always in such a hurry? I still haven’t got my breath back from seeing Connor back there.”
He stopped abruptly. “You saw him?”
“Yes. But it’s fine. I’m fine. He scared me half to death, but at least I know now.”
“That’s not something I wanted you to see. Connor is still troubled by the whole thing. It makes his wolf angry and unpredictable,” he said as we climbed the stairs. “Look, I’ll just go and clean up, and then we can have breakfast, and I can give you the good news.”
“Good news? What good news? Is it Beth? Is she okay?” I asked, entering his room.
“Five minutes, then we’ll talk.”
He disappeared into the bathroom. I paced the floor, occasionally stopping to stare out of the window, growing increasingly impatient and anxious. What was taking him so long?
He emerged minutes later, looking clean and smelling so good I almost forgot Beth altogether, but then I remembered.
“So, what’s the news?”
“First things first. Come here.” He hooked his arm around my waist and pulled me in. His gaze was bewitching, and I couldn’t resist.
We kissed passionately until I found the power to break his spell. “Please. Stop being annoying and tell me.”
“Are my kisses annoying you?”
“What? No. Look, stop it. I’ve waited too long. Do you get off on torturing me?” I asked, wriggling out of his hold and backing away angrily.
He followed, laughing mischievously. “I’m sorry. Beth’s going to be fine. She’s had the antidote, and we can pick her up this afternoon.”
“Oh, thank God.” I sank back onto his bed and let relief wash over me. “What was it?”
“A mystical poison. That’s why the doctors couldn’t decipher it.” He joined me on the bed.
“I still can’t believe anyone would do that.”
“We found the culprit too.”
“You did? Who?”
“Nula. She’s an old flame of Vincent’s, terribly jealous. This wasn’t her first attack of vengeance. Whenever she finds out he’s seeing, or is even interested in, someone else, she takes them out.”
I stared at the ceiling and tried to absorb his words. A jealous girlfriend? Wow. That was a first for me.
“Don’t worry,” he continued. “She won’t get a second chance. In fact, she won’t be a danger to anyone anymore. She’s gone…for good.”