Book of Lies

  “I don’t know,” Zak says. “Maybe she just found them by chance. It’s crazy to think she had anything to do with that, or with Hamley going missing. Totally crazy.”

  “Yeah. But sometimes crazy things happen.” I should know.

  His arms close around me. “Why don’t we leave? You’ve done what you wanted to do—​seen the place where your mum and Quinn lived, met your grandmother. Let’s go home.”

  “Not just yet.” My inheritance itches inside; I have to find it. But will I ever want to leave, even then? I think of Dad, and all at once I’m twisted with homesickness—​for him, my friends, my normal life. Or at least the pretense of being normal, like everyone else. Tears prick in the backs of my eyes.

  This is your home now.

  Yes. I blink the tears away. This is my home now. My home, my inheritance. But what about Quinn?

  “Zak, promise me something. Watch Quinn; keep an eye on her. Make sure she’s all right, and not getting into anything weird. Will you do that for me?”

  “Will it make you feel better?”

  I nod. If Quinn has been following me on the hunt and said nothing about it, she must be up to something. Is she after the Book of Lies for herself? She can’t find it on her own if one of us is always with her.

  Zak leans down and kisses my forehead. “Then of course I will.”

  Quinn

  Finally my chance comes. Gran is still upstairs, where she’s been all day; Zak and Piper have gone for a walk.

  I slip out, not stopping to find a coat even though the air says a storm is on the way. They’re likely to be heading back soon; I don’t want to be spotted and stopped.

  I have to do this. I have to know.

  A sick certainty in my guts already does know. I shake my head; push it away.

  I follow the path we took to go to Wistman’s Wood. As I walk, the wind is picking up even more, raising faint noises all around me as if the whole of the moors is in pursuit. I go faster.

  I’ve nearly reached it—​the bog I showed Zak and Piper. The one where I planted my stick to show them the danger. But the will to go on leaves me, and I stop. Is knowing better than not knowing? I could go back. If my eyes don’t confirm what I fear, I could pretend it never happened.

  I stand there, my hair whipping around me in the wind, the cold plucking through my thin sweater. The moors are alive, everything moving, rustling, speaking to me in accusing voices.

  One step forward. Another. I’m numb with cold and fear. I walk with my eyes focused on my feet, willing them forward but afraid to look up.

  Finally, I stop. I force myself to raise my eyes slowly.

  They refuse to identify what they see. My eyes are sending a patchwork of details to my brain, and the pieces are floating around, unconnected.

  Try one thing at a time.

  Colors: the green of the bog. The red of his hair—​matted with the darkness of blood in the fading light.

  His face is savaged, unrecognizable, but I know it’s him. I was there.

  My father.

  He ran as fast as he could. He stumbled, fell, got up, and ran again, blind with fear.

  He loved Izzy.

  We held back, led him to this place, to his death.

  He was terrified. But not for long.

  He came to see me.

  I warned him; I told him to go.

  He didn’t listen. And now, he’s dead. The father I only just discovered I had is dead.

  The darkness Gran always warned me about has found me, hasn’t it? It has claimed me for its own at last. There’s nothing I can do; there was nothing I could do to stop it.

  “Quinn? Oh my God.”

  I whirl around, tears wet on my cheeks. Zak stands there, his eyes wide with horror.

  “Is that . . . Is he . . .”

  “Yes. It’s our father, and he’s dead.”

  “What happened?”

  “I don’t know,” I answer, truthfully. I know how he died, but not how it came to be—​how I came to be here, in another form, how I could do this. I’m shaking, and the tears run more freely.

  Zak hesitates, then steps toward me. He puts a hand on my shoulder, draws me close, and holds me a moment.

  He takes his phone out of his pocket, looks at the screen. “No signal. Come on, let’s get away from here to somewhere we can call the police.”

  He takes my cold hand, gets me to start walking away from this place. I glance back. The fox is on the rocks above, watching.

  “Quinn, there is something I have to ask you.”

  “What?”

  “How did you know where to find him?”

  I don’t answer.

  A moment later, I ask, “How did you find me?”

  “I followed you.”

  After that, there doesn’t seem to be anything else to say.

  We walk to Wisht Tor. The wind is ever more wild; the sky is dark, but not because the sun has gone down.

  Zak takes out his phone, dials. What will he tell the police? I don’t even care.

  “Hello, this is—”

  He stops, and curses under his breath.

  “What is it?”

  “The battery’s dead. We’ll have to walk to the hotel and call from there.”

  But even as he says the words, violent streaks of light cross the sky. There is an immense crash of thunder—​a massive boom so near we are thrown from our feet.

  Wisht Tor—​the high point, just meters from where we stood—​was struck by lightning. Rocks are scorched, smoking. The air has a strange, singed smell to it.

  “Are you all right?” Zak says. He helps me up as the rain starts pelting down.

  He looks at the sky and curses again. “It’s too dangerous to walk to the hotel in this storm. We’ll have to wait until it passes. Come on. Let’s get back to the house.”

  Piper

  Sometimes it pays to be direct.

  I arrange tea things and lemon cake on a tray, and carry it up the stairs. I knock once and open the door.

  “Hi, Gran. Brought you some cake.” I smile, as if she never freaked out on us about darkness or anything. I walk across the room with it before she can tell me to leave.

  I put it on the table next to her bed. She glances, sees there are two cups, and shakes her head. “Leave it and go.”

  I smile again, shake my head in turn, and sit in the chair next to her. “You and I need to have a talk.”

  She glances at the door. “Where are Quinn and Zak?”

  I shrug. “Quinn went for a walk, and Zak followed her.”

  “In this weather?” The howling wind seems to whistle into the house, through the stone walls. The wall hangings are living things, swaying slightly with the cold air that seeps around their edges into the room.

  I pour the tea, angle a cup toward her, and pick the other up in my hands. I take a sip and look at her over the rim.

  Something about Will Hamley and what she heard has knocked the stuffing out of her. She looks old, tired—​ordinary, and not frightening like she usually does.

  “Gran, I was hoping we could be straight with each other. Can you tell me what the inheritance is?”

  She shakes her head. “That is for you to discover.”

  “Perhaps it would help if I tell you what I know.”

  She raises her eyes to mine. “Go on.”

  “I know about the burning place.”

  “From the ‘dreams’ you and Quinn had, years ago?”

  “Not just that. I went there last night, you see.”

  She shakes her head again. “You shouldn’t have done that. It’ll have you now. But perhaps that makes no difference. Perhaps it always had you.”

  “Why can’t you ever speak plainly?” I frown, shake my head, then smile again. “Anyhow, I know what happened, Gran. It was our ancestor, wasn’t it?”

  “Yes. Aggie of-the-Black-Woods. She was treated like an animal by those Hamleys.” She spits out their name.

  “Te
ll me—​why did they do it?”

  “They wanted this land to have free run for their fox hunting, over three hundred years ago. She wouldn’t sell it to them. They chased her with their hounds and burned the house down with her in it.”

  “But that isn’t the whole story, is it? There was a book, one she wrote in before she died. To get her revenge against them and their family. And that’s what is in that box in your room—​all the grim details of what happened to them, generation after generation.”

  “Yes. They have all paid the price since then. As have we. One comes at the expense of the other. So high a price, Piper.” She shakes her head. “And what has happened to Will Hamley? Poor Isobel. She loved him, you know. She sent him away to try to save him.”

  I shudder. How could she love that man, of all men? “How does the book work, Gran?”

  “Whatever is written in the Book of Lies becomes true. It started with simple things—​good fortune, health, love—​but it got darker. Write in the book that someone who still lives is dead, and they will die. Write a curse like Aggie did, and it will be so. The book strengthens any lie written in it, beyond what you can do by merely speaking the lie out loud, as you so often do. Spoken lies only affect the belief of those who listen.”

  I ignore the condemnation in her eyes. “And as you told us the other day, only one of us can inherit the book.”

  “Yes, one in each generation.”

  “Where is it now?”

  She shrugs. “It was in Aggie’s house when it burned.”

  “But that wasn’t the end of it.”

  “No. It was hidden safely. Her daughter came and found it. Years later she rebuilt the barn into this house we live in now.”

  “Where is the book?” I ask again.

  “I don’t know.”

  “You’re lying.”

  “Am I?” Now she smiles. “Perhaps I am, perhaps not. But there is something else I know that you may not.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Isobel sent me a message just before she died.”

  This I wasn’t expecting. “She did? What about?”

  “She said we’d got it wrong, and she needed to see me. But she never came. What happened to your mother, Piper? Tell me the truth.”

  “You know the story from the news, the clipping Quinn showed you. The one that landed you in the hospital.”

  “You tell me—​I want to hear it from you.”

  “I wasn’t there.” I sip my tea. “But it was a pack of dogs. Guard dogs, big and vicious. They escaped and went wild. They hunted her down and attacked.”

  Gran’s eyes are full of tears. “My Isobel. The horror of how she died; hounds, like Hamley’s hounds, all those years ago. Like Wisht Hounds then and today.”

  “She didn’t die then, not straightaway. She was still alive when the police found her the next morning. She died later at the hospital.”

  Gran looks at me, head tilted as if considering something. Her eyes widen.

  The door opens downstairs. “Quinn!” she calls out, her voice stronger than I would have thought it could be.

  Then she starts to shake. The color drains from her face, and she clutches her chest.

  Quinn

  I open the door. Piper is there, by Gran’s bedside. She turns. “I think she might be having another stroke or something.”

  “Gran!” I run across the room to her. She’s lying back in bed, and her eyes are shut.

  “Gran, Gran,” I say again. No response. I take her hand, and it’s limp. I hold a finger lightly to her neck, feel for her pulse, her breath, and sigh with relief. “She’s breathing; her heart is beating,” I say. “What happened?”

  “I don’t know! One minute we were talking, and then she clutched at her chest and collapsed back in bed.”

  “She needs an ambulance.”

  Thunder crashes—​boom—​outside; the rain on the roof is almost deafening.

  “You can’t go out in that,” Piper says. “It’s too dangerous. Get Zak to call?”

  I shake my head. “His phone is dead.”

  I smooth Gran’s hair, and hold her hand. “Gran, please be all right,” I whisper, shaken by how much I care.

  It’s a revelation. Despite everything, these feelings I have for her were buried somewhere deep inside. Is that why I phoned the hospital from Winchester to make sure she was all right? Maybe even without Piper wanting to come here, Gran would eventually have drawn me back.

  Perhaps I’m able to admit this now because I’ve seen it reflected in Gran’s own eyes. Right from when we went to the hospital, and she said I could keep Isobel’s bracelet, to the first night, when she said something I never thought I’d hear her say—​that she was sorry. She’d seemed cruel for so many years, but did it all stem from her caring for me, wanting to protect me from the darkness? However misguided she may have been, I’m finally starting to understand her reasons.

  Piper goes downstairs to fill Zak in on what is happening.

  A moment later, Gran stirs. Her eyes open, she looks wildly around the room, then relaxes. “Quinn,” she says.

  “Yes, Gran, I’m here. You’re going to be all right.”

  She shrugs. “Old. I’m old. Maybe I’ve had enough.” She half smiles, and the smile falls away.

  I take her hand and look down when she winces. “Gran, you’re bleeding. Have you hurt yourself? I’ll get a bandage.” I start to get up.

  “Never mind that now, it’s just a nick.” She shakes her head. “Piper.”

  “Do you want me to get her?”

  “No! Quinn, you must listen to me.”

  “I’m listening, Gran.”

  “Piper, the dogs, and Isobel started it all. You must stop the hounds.”

  Is she wandering in the past in her mind? “Isobel is at peace now, Gran.”

  “No, no; you must stop the Wisht Hounds. Our ancestor, Aggie of-the-Black-Woods, imprisoned her enemies as Wisht Hounds. They thought they had destroyed her, but she returned in the form of a fox. She led them to the wood, destroyed and imprisoned them there. And so it has continued.”

  There are footsteps downstairs.

  “Listen,” Gran says fiercely. “I had a vision when you were born that one of you—​Piper—​would be dangerous to us all. I told Isobel only that one of you was dangerous, that I would keep the dangerous one and guard against her always. But I didn’t take Piper. I kept you instead, so I could keep you safe. I never thought that the moors would call to Piper from so far away, that she would be able to command her power away from here. Poor Isobel. I thought the bracelet she stole from me all those years ago was enough to protect her, but I was wrong.”

  “What do you mean, you kept me instead?” I stare back at Gran, more shocked to hear this than anything else. Could it be that the way Isobel treated me all these years was because of mistaken identity?

  “I told Isobel you would destroy your family and steal your sister’s life. She assumed that meant you were the dangerous one, the one we needed to guard against. She was wrong.”

  “Then it isn’t true? That I’m the bad half?”

  She doesn’t answer. “Quinn, you have to be strong. Cut the tie with Piper, or you’ll both die.”

  I stare back at her, unable to process her words. A door opens downstairs.

  “And, Quinn, I hope you have the courage to do what I didn’t.”

  “What do you mean?”

  There are footsteps on the stairs.

  “Take the bracelet off and go to the ruins—​then you’ll understand,” Gran whispers hurriedly. “But you must put the bracelet back on after. It will protect you.”

  She says the words like she believes them, but the bracelet didn’t protect Isobel.

  Piper

  Zak is changing into dry clothes when I get downstairs, just pulling a shirt over his head. I reach for him, put my hands on his warm skin, and his arms go around me.

  “Everything OK up there?”

&n
bsp; “Gran isn’t well. She had some sort of attack, then passed out. She needs a doctor.”

  “Oh no. We won’t be able to go for help until this storm passes.”

  “Quinn said something about your phone battery being dead. Were you trying to call someone?”

  “Yes—​the police. I’ve got something to tell you. It may be a shock.” He takes my hands and leads me to the sofa to sit down next to him.

  “What is it?”

  “I followed Quinn like you asked. You remember that place with the bog she showed us? She went there. But it was weird. First she was almost running; then, when she was nearly there, she stopped. Just stood there, like a statue. And finally she started walking forward again, not looking up. One step at a time, really slowly.”

  “And?”

  Zak shudders. “And there, in the bog—​it was Will Hamley. Your father.”

  I stare back at Zak. So Quinn came along on the hunt again. Has she been spying on me? I remind myself that I shouldn’t know any of this and make my face look shocked.

  “What do you mean? Was he stuck in the bog—​is he OK?”

  “No, Piper. He was dead.”

  “What?”

  “It looked like he’d been attacked by something. Like those sheep we saw that I told you about.”

  “Oh my God. And Quinn just went straight there, like she did with the sheep?”

  “Yes.”

  “She knew where he was. She must have. But how?” Is she following me everywhere I go, even as a spirit hunter in the dead of night? She hasn’t told me she was there; she must be plotting against me. Maybe she is trying to gather evidence to betray me. I have to stop her.

  “I don’t know.” He runs his hands through his hair. “I can’t begin to believe Quinn had anything to do with what happened to Hamley, but if she didn’t, how did she know where to find him? And the way she walked at the end. It was like she knew there was something horrible ahead of her, and she was making herself go on.”

  “Listen to me, Zak.” I take his hands and stare intently into his eyes. “Quinn is dangerous.”