The Keep

  No matter how much Alex wanted to believe Vincent’s motives were purely altruistic, the whole thing reeked somehow of Elias. He supposed Elias must have run out of books, and was now bringing people.

  The only thing Alex knew for certain was that, as traumatic as the experience he’d just had was, it had left him with an unshakeable urge to know more about his own spirit line. It overpowered all other concerns—even the initial reason he had agreed to this lesson, which was to calm himself. He couldn’t stop now. Finally, he was embracing power. He smiled wryly, knowing with a bitter twinge that Natalie would be proud of this step in his personal growth. When he got back, he knew there would be apologies to make and forgiveness to seek, but now was not the time to dwell on that; he had visions to see, answers to find.

  “I’d like to try just once more before we finish,” he said to Vincent. He wanted to master this skill as well as he could, while he had the chance.

  Vincent seemed dubious, but replied, “What is it you need my help with?”

  “Is it possible to focus the lines of my own spirit to get a better image of the memories and lives around me?”

  Vincent thought for a moment, taking his time, tapping a long, pale finger against the edge of his sharp chin.

  “There is a chance,” he said, finally, “though the way you manipulate and travel through spirit lines is different from the way the rest of us do it. It is not something I am entirely familiar with, though I may be able to instruct you. I hope I can, but I can give you no assurances of its success.”

  “I’ll take those odds,” Alex replied.

  “I must warn you—there is one caveat to spiritual travel.”

  “What’s that?”

  “You can only move within the timeline of those who share your magical credentials,” the necromancer explained.

  Alex frowned. “What do you mean?”

  “If you have a non-magical parent, for example, you won’t be able to follow their history or move along their spirit line. You will only be able to see them if they appear in the timeline of your magical side, viewed in a memory, only as your ancestor saw them,” he elaborated.

  The understanding of it saddened Alex; he would have liked to explore his mother’s side a little, but he knew that wasn’t going to be possible now, unless there was a magical side to her she hadn’t told him about. Somehow, he doubted it. If she were magical, surely there would have been a way her magic could have cured her sickness, and as far as he knew she was still sick.

  “Shall we begin?” asked Vincent.

  Alex nodded, closing his eyes.

  Seeking out the glowing heart of his spirit once more, Alex began the increasingly familiar journey down his spirit line, watching the memories of his life whizz past in a blur, taking him backward through his childhood—vacations, school plays, finger-painted porcupines, picnics in the park, hugs from his grandparents, his mother running after him, smiling with the naivety of her remaining youth. He could see they were rapidly approaching the place his memories ended.

  “Now, focus on the bridge between your life and the life before,” Vincent instructed, his voice echoing in Alex’s ears.

  Alex did as he was told, gathering his energy and pouring it into the place where his childhood met the adulthood of someone else, like gluing bits of film together to make a whole reel. Suddenly, his eyes were not his own. He had made the jump successfully, the image before him blazing back in crystal-clear Technicolor. It felt odd at first, slipping into the body of a person from his own history, but it became more comfortable as he moved through the man’s memories, getting a feel for them.

  It took a while for him to realize he was witnessing the moment his father first laid eyes on his mother. He could feel his father’s anxiety feeding into his own emotions, followed by the instant flash of love his father had felt for the girl standing behind the café counter, pouring coffee from a jug. The sight of his mother, so much younger than he had ever known her, broke Alex’s heart. As he watched his father approach the counter, he saw his mother turn and flash her most dazzling smile at him. Yet Alex could feel no joy for the young soon-to-be couple, not when he was privy to the end of the story, flipping to the last page before he had read the whole book. She had been so happy once—he knew she had—so what had gone wrong?

  What happened to you? Where did you go? he asked his father silently.

  With a jerk, the vision shifted.

  Before Alex’s eyes, flashes of his parents’ life together blended in and out, kaleidoscopic to behold. It was hard to keep up, but the visions filled him with bittersweet joy as they played out in front of him. He saw his mother in a way he had never seen her before, so much younger and healthier, without as many worry lines upon her face.

  He couldn’t deny there was a strangeness to it, and he made sure to skip quickly over any romantic moments that came along, but there was a pleasantness to the rest of the memories—to wander with her on warm, sunlit walks and to hear her laugh again, the sound ringing comfortingly in his ears. His mother had always loved to laugh, and it was heartwarming to see that she had once been deeply in love. Her affection glimmered in her eyes each time she looked at Alexei. She had truly adored his father.

  The images slowed for a moment upon the sight of his mother holding up a plastic, pen-like object with two tiny displays that showed pink double lines. She looked scared but excited, and Alex wished he could see his father’s expression, but he could only feel the emotion his father had felt. It echoed his mother’s—there was fear and excitement bristling within.

  “I’m pregnant,” she whispered. “We’re having a baby.”

  “I can’t wait,” he heard his father reply, his voice choked with emotion.

  Alex moved swiftly on, leaving them to their moment in the bathroom, not wanting to intrude upon it, even though he had technically been present at the scene anyway.

  In the next image, Alex realized they were in the house he had grown up in, though there were subtle differences. The walls were the same color, but the carpet was different, with a garish pattern Alex was sure hadn’t been popular since the seventies, and there were paintings and pictures on the walls that he had never seen before. Many of them were of Alex’s mother and Alexei, grinning into a camera, posing against beautiful backdrops of glistening lakes and bright forests. There was one of his mother standing beside a giant redwood that towered over her like a skyscraper. It seemed somehow familiar in Alex’s mind, but he could not place where he’d seen the picture before. In the shoebox under the bed, perhaps? He wasn’t certain. He realized his mother must have taken the pictures down when his father went away, wherever it was he had gone.

  A feeling of sudden panic shivered through him, not one of his own emotions, as the visions shifted onto a street. Alex recognized it as Main Street in his town, with most of the shops unchanged, even now. He smiled with invisible lips—not a lot ever changed in Middledale, Iowa.

  Alex could sense that his father was behaving strangely, his mood shifting rapidly, his eyes constantly looking over his shoulder as he walked beside Alex’s mother, though Alex couldn’t see anything untoward in the direction his father kept glancing. It was as if Alexei were trying to find a face in the crowd. To Alex, there was nothing but plain old Main Street, with the grocery store, the clothing boutiques, and the antique shops he had only ever seen old people go into, the displays unchanged since the 1940s. Cars beeped their horns and people wandered up and down the sidewalk, minding their own business. Nothing seemed out of place. But perhaps that was the problem. There was definitely something worrying Alexei, and that, in turn, worried Alex.

  In every vision afterwards, Alexei’s mood felt tense, his eyes perpetually looking all around, scanning the horizon, flinching at the smallest sound. Even Alex’s mother seemed concerned by her partner’s behavior, always asking if he was all right, always getting the same response.

  “Just tired, my love,” he replied.

  To Alex
, Alexei still seemed happy, still brimming with love for the beautiful mother of his unborn child. It didn’t feel as if his father was planning to up and leave, in the way that Alex had always thought he had. There was no hatred, no animosity, no lack of love—but there was a permeating chill of dread running in Alexei’s veins.

  What had he been so afraid of? It didn’t add up to Alex—they seemed so happy.

  With another jerk, the vision jolted forward.

  Alex’s mother and father were walking through Middledale Park in the early evening, the sun heavy in the deepening azure sky, casting a bronze glow upon the world below as it sank. It was a balmy evening, signaling the arrival of a baking hot summer. As they wandered, his mother turned to Alexei with a mischievous grin.

  “Feel like some ice cream? I think the little kidney bean is after some mint chocolate chip,” she said, contentment clear in her soft voice.

  Alexei nodded. “Whatever the kidney bean wants,” he replied, leaving Alex frustrated that he couldn’t see his father’s expressions. It made him feel strange, to hear himself referred to as “the kidney bean”—somewhere between happy and sad. “You want me to go?”

  Alex’s mother shook her head. “No, it’s okay. My treat.” She grinned, bounding off toward the ice cream truck parked beside the children’s play area. There were still a few kids scrambling over the brightly colored, somewhat rusted jungle gym, and Alex watched as his mother paused for a moment, watching them with a wide smile upon her face, gently rubbing her stomach. She wasn’t visibly pregnant yet, her belly still mostly flat, but Alex knew he was in there, and he knew what she was thinking. She was picturing a bright future for herself, her child, and the love of her life.

  Alexei turned, wandering toward the edge of the lake that gleamed in the center of the park, the murky water looking oddly tempting in the close heat of the evening. Where Alexei went, Alex had to follow. Stepping as near as he dared to the lake’s edge, Alexei looked down into the shifting surface, giving Alex his first proper sight of his father, in the flesh. The reflection was wobbly, small waves distorting the image, but it was definitely the same man Alex half-remembered from the grainy photograph he had found in the shoebox beneath his mother’s bed—the one that had made her cry such painful tears. Alexei was handsome and youthful, bearing a strong resemblance to Alex himself, making him wonder how his mother could bear to look at him, when the similarity was so clear.

  Suddenly, Alexei looked up.

  There was a man standing on the opposite side of the lake, watching Alex’s father intently, a smirk upon his face. Alex didn’t recognize the man, nor did he have the chance to get a better look. Alexei broke into a sprint, running away from the lake and his dearest love, who was standing obliviously beside the ice cream truck, ordering a cone of mint chocolate chip.

  Alex wanted to scream at his father to turn back, but he had no control over his father’s actions—he could only watch and wish things were different.

  It took a while for Alex’s focus to move away from his mother, but once he understood he could not go back to her, Alex realized his father was running down a familiar route. He ran across the main road that skirted the town, ducking into the dark, cool shade of the forest that ran alongside the highway, then moving down toward the train tracks and the railway bridge that crossed the ravine. It was the spot Alex had liked to run to when he was a kid, eagerly awaiting the arrival of a train so he could watch it clatter across the rails above him, the sound of it thundering in his ears, the vibrations shaking his whole body.

  Alexei climbed past the place between the wooden beams where Alex had liked to hide, clambering up onto the train tracks themselves, not pausing for a moment as he took off across the bridge. Alex could hear the sound of footsteps behind his father. Alexei flashed a look back over his shoulder for any oncoming trains. Instead of a train, Alex saw the same man from across the lake, gaining ground, chasing his father down with a determined, cruel look upon his unkempt face.

  The man was impossibly fast, and Alex realized with a sinking feeling that the pursuer was now too close to his father. He was almost within arm’s reach.

  Alexei turned back, Alex’s vision following, just in time to see a shadow swoop from the darkness beneath the tracks and cut straight through the body of Alexei’s would-be attacker. For the briefest moment, Alex felt a wave of relief, but it was not to last. Seconds later, he felt his father’s body buckle. Alexei froze, turning back to see his pursuer evaporate into a black mist, blown away on the wind, disappearing into nothing.

  In the shifting shadows below, Alex could see the flash of teeth and the ripple of a vaporous form. It was unmistakable—a sight Alex had come to associate with relief, now filling him with horror.

  Something caught Alexei’s eye in the tree-line on the right-hand side of the tracks, distracting Alex for a moment. A hooded figure stood between the mossy trunks, smiling coldly from beneath the overhanging branches. Alex was certain he knew who that was too, making him wonder if the two had been in cahoots all along. He wanted to watch the figure for longer, to try to get a clearer image of the mostly shrouded face, but Alexei’s focus had turned to the sluggish river trickling away at the bottom of the ravine, far below where he stood.

  The shadow swooped again. Alex looked down at his father’s hands, only to see that they were beginning to disappear into the same dark mist. Alex guessed, with a heavy heart, that what had happened to the pursuer was now happening to his father, as everything went black.

  He wanted to travel back to the park, to see what his mother had done, but he couldn’t. It was no longer in his father’s timeline. His father was dead. Alex didn’t need to see a funeral or a headstone; he understood what the abrupt, black ending meant. But he realized, with a pang of heartache, that his mother did not. The thought of her being oblivious to the truth frustrated him more than he thought possible, as he imagined her turning with two ice cream cones in her hands, only to find her lover gone, never to be heard from again. Worst of all, he knew she would have agonized over it, wondering if it was something she had done that made her love leave without a word. Alex couldn’t even begin to imagine how that must have felt, but he found he now had a greater understanding of her tears whenever he had brought his father up in conversation. She must have thought he had up and left her pregnant self, since there was no body to find, and she would never know why he had run or where he had gone.

  Slowly, he unfurled from the vision, feeling utterly overwhelmed and vengeful toward the evil, shadowy sprite who was responsible for all this mess—the creature who had killed his father. He wanted answers. He wanted to know why. He wanted to know everything.

  “Are you well?” Vincent asked, reminding Alex that he was still in the room.

  Alex turned to the eerie necromancer. “I will be,” he said quietly. “Thank you for all you have shown me. It’s time for me to leave.”

  “Certainly, young Spellbreaker. We have much work to be getting on with,” Vincent said, though there was a flash in his black eyes that made Alex wonder how much the necromancer really knew of what he had just seen. There wasn’t time to ask now.

  “Of course,” said Alex. He stood, almost in a trance, and hurried from the room.

  He ran toward the doorway, up to one of the small turrets he had passed days before, and pounded the stairs to the summit. Bursting out into the cold evening air, Alex stepped up to the very edge of the wall and screamed at the top of his lungs.

  “ELIAS!” His voice echoed until he had no air left, his chest burning. “Elias, come out and face me, you coward!” he yelled, hot tears prickling his eyes. “Face me! Face what you did! Come out and admit your crime, you monster!” He slammed a fist into the wall, feeling it crackle against his skin as he screamed and screamed, the tears running down his cheeks.

  Nothing made sense. Why had Elias bothered to help him, when the shadow-man had been keeping such a vile secret to himself all this time?

  As his
screams echoed into the ether, Alex became aware of a shadow loitering at the very edge of the steps behind him.

  Chapter 10

  Siren Mave stood at the entrance to the turret.

  An initial shock rippled through Alex, seeing the toady woman standing there, her cheeks ablaze with liberally applied blush. But his gaze quickly moved elsewhere, driven by frustration. He didn’t want to see Siren Mave; he wanted to see Elias.

  “Oh dear, Alex Webber, what a state you’ve gotten yourself into,” she murmured quietly, her voice not unkind. Cautiously, she approached.

  “You?” he snapped. “What are you doing here?”

  “I go where am I needed, Alex,” she replied simply.

  He glowered in her direction. “How can you even be here?”

  “I go where I please,” she said, making Alex remember her appearance at Stillwater too.

  “It’s not you I want to see… Where is he?” Alex growled, completely beside himself. This wasn’t what he wanted—Siren Mave was no good. He wanted the shadow-man, and nothing else would suffice.

  “You know I’m not going to tell you that, not with you like this,” she said firmly, adjusting her horn-rimmed spectacles. “Let’s try some breathing, see if we can’t get you to calm down.” There was a slightly patronizing note in her voice that set Alex’s nerves on edge.

  He shook his head. “I don’t need to calm down, I need to see him. If you stand in my way, I will take you down too,” he hissed.

  Siren Mave sighed like a henpecked mother. “You won’t, Alex, and as much as I’d love to see you try, I don’t think you’d come out of it too well,” she said, amused. “You really do need to calm down—getting worked up like this will do nobody any favors, least of all yourself.”

  He glared at her, wishing she would go away and disappear into the hallways of the keep, as she had done in all the other hallways in all the other havens. Why was it that the one time he least wanted to see her, there she was? He thought about saying so, but held his tongue, reserving his venom for Elias.