Elora grinned at the thought. Somewhere along the way, the path had changed to cobblestones under their feet. The great wooden door, studded with squares of beaten metal, swung open.
Ripley gestured toward the open door. “After you, milady.”
Eyes wide, Elora shook her head and tightened her grip on Ripley’s hand. “Oh, I don’t think so. This is your world, not mine.”
A woman's laugh drew Elora's attention through the door and toward a staircase made of the same stone as the castle walls. "It seems it's your world, too, Frosh." It was the brunette from the laundry room.
“Can it, sister.” Elora looked up sharply at Ripley.
“She’s your sister?”
He snorted. “Sorority sister. Phi Alpha Epsilon.” He shot the girl on the stairs one of his patented smirks. “Happily, Mer and I are not related.”
Sorority sister Mer descended the stairs. There was no railing. She looked pointedly at their joined hands before turning to Elora. “I’ve never really seen the point in having a pet.” Elora pulled her hand from Ripley’s; things were awkward enough at the moment. Even so, she felt colder without that reassuring touch. Rather than brushing past Elora, Mer smacked into her arm hard enough to push her back a step. “And I loathe cats.”
“Aw, Mer, no self-respecting cat wants anything to do with you.” Still grinning, Ripley turned to Elora. “Don’t mind her. She’s just mad because technically, you outrank her.”
“Ripley, stop it.” She was still trying to wrap her head around all that had happened, but then his words sank in. “Wait. What did you say?” How could she outrank anyone? She was nothing but a college student fresh out of the state’s foster care system. She didn’t outrank a flea.
Mer stopped halfway down a hallway lit by torches. “Welcome to Castle Caldwell.” Her tone said Elora was anything but welcome. Mer turned and cocked her head to the side. “You mean your pet didn’t bother to tell you?”
Standing with his feet wide, Ripley crossed his arms over his chest. “What are you doing here, Mer? I didn’t think breaking and entering was your style.”
“I wish somebody would tell me something.” Mer stared at them, her gaze drifting down to Ripley’s bare feet. One imperious eyebrow rose in a perfect arch.
“Whatever you’re calling yourself, Frosh, you’re a Caldwell, and that makes you a member of the ruling family.” Mer started toward them, her heels tap-tapping on the stone floor.
Arms still crossed, Ripley looked over at Elora. “Mer here is part of the political machine, too, but a step down from you.”
Elora backed away from them both, raising her hands as if they could act as some kind of barrier or a shield. “No. No, we do not know anything of the sort. My parents were Mallory and Randall Snow. I’ve never even heard of anyone named Caldwell.”
With a melodramatic sigh, Mer stopped in front of Elora. Mirroring Ripley’s stance, she crossed her arms beneath her breasts. She looked from Elora to Ripley and back again. “If you must know, shifter, I’d heard a Caldwell heir had come out of the woodwork and was a student at Westerly. I thought I might have seen her on campus and came here to look at that portrait of Mallory.”
She took yet another step toward Elora, invading her personal space. Elora stood her ground. No way was she going to let this bully intimidate her. Mer studied Elora for a moment longer and then uncrossed her arms. She took a step back and held out her hand. At first, Elora thought Mer actually meant for her to take her hand. With a whooshing sound, a ball of yellow-white light appeared in Mer’s palm. Like a tiny sun, it lit up the hallway in which they stood. She shot a challenging look at Elora and turned to walk back down the portrait-lined hallway. Elora glanced at Ripley who shrugged.
“After you, milady.”
“Stop that.” He grinned, unrepentant.
Determined to ignore Ripley as much as she could, Elora followed Mer. In the brighter light, she saw Mer’s footprints in the thick layer of dust on the floor. She was sure she kicked up some of that dust herself with each step she took. Walking behind her, Ripley sneezed.
They caught up with Mer at a large portrait of a young woman. Porcelain skin, chestnut hair, hazel eyes. Even the oval shape of her face and the light dusting of freckles caught by the painter were the same. Elora saw that face in the mirror every time she brushed her teeth or did her makeup.
“This is Mallory Caldwell.” Mer turned from studying the portrait to studying Elora. “You look like her. I think she was twenty or twenty-one when your grandfather commissioned this.” She glared at Ripley. “Only a few weeks before she and her shifter bodyguard died in a car accident.” Elora frowned. Her parents had both been twenty-one when Elora was born. “Although I suppose that was fake or otherwise we wouldn’t have you.” And it was Elora’s turn for the older girl’s glare.
Stepping to the side, away from Mer, Elora looked up and down that wall. Portraits lined the hallway on both sides. It seemed for every individual portrait, there was also one for a spouse. Several were family portraits with parents, children, grandchildren. There was no portrait of her father, none of their family.
“What about my dad?” It made sense Elora wasn’t on the wall; she’d been born after her parents had apparently faked their deaths.
What could they have wanted to escape so badly?
“Randall Snow was a shapeshifter tasked to guard Mallory from harm." She looked at Ripley. "That's what shifters are – hired muscle. And Mallory was the heir, the next in line to lead the Phantoms of Dusk. Some wanted her dead even before she took up with a shifter. It wasn't a huge surprise when they found the burned-out car. Someone cut its brake lines."
Mer turned away and walked toward the foot of the stairs. After a moment, Elora followed, Ripley right behind her. He stayed close to Elora, closer than she was to Mer. It was almost as though he was protecting her. Kind of like a bodyguard.
He'd been there that first day, helping her carry her things into the dorm. He was there after the funeral to rescue her from the ghoul. And then again earlier that evening to save her from the vampire. Had he known who she was all along? But he said he hadn’t, not when he first saw her.
Elora hurried to catch up to Mer again. “You said my mother was the heir to the Phantoms of Dusk. What does that mean?” They reached the top of the stairs to stand in a large landing area. There was furniture there. At least, Elora assumed it was furniture under the sheets, all covered in the same thick layer of dust as in the entryway below.
How long had the castle been abandoned?
The light Mer carried set into sharp relief the cloth-covered things on the landing. It illuminated the long hallway that stretched the length of the castle. Black shadows ebbed and flowed as she stepped onto the carpeted floor and turned left. She passed several closed doors to her right.
There was nothing but a sheer drop to her left until she neared the far end. There the hall widened. A set of double doors indicated a room at the very end, but there was also one to the left.
Mer stopped and set her hand to the handle of the smaller door but didn’t open it. Facing the heavy wood sans the metal studs of the castle entrance, she spoke to Elora over her shoulder.
“The Phantoms of Dusk have protected mankind for centuries. Some say they began with the Crusades, others that they formed well before then.” She shrugged. Pushing open the door, Mer ducked a mesh of cobwebs before walking through with her light. “We’re witches, born with power and sworn to use it for the greater good.”
Mer blew on the light in her hand, and it floated up and up, coming to rest on the high ceiling. It had the effect of turning on an ordinary overhead light. They stood inside the doorway of a large office. Or maybe it was a library. Books lined the available space of all four walls. There were three large, high windows on the far wall and a fireplace to the right. There was a large table in the center, a sheet covering it against the pervasive dust. Beneath a window and near the stone fireplace stood a desk and cha
ir if Elora could believe the shape of the sheet covering them. An ornate Middle-Eastern style rug covered most of the wood floor. I wonder if it flies.
“We Phantoms are all that stands between humanity and the Darkness that would swallow it whole.”
Ripley’s guffaw of laughter stopped Mer in her tracks halfway to the desk. If looks could kill – maybe they can – the gleeful shifter would be a goner. “Do you even listen to yourself? What a pretentious load of crap!”
“Laugh it up, fuzzball.”
“Really? You’re gonna quote Han Solo at me?” He turned toward Elora, still chuckling. “The Phantoms are a group of about a dozen families. They take an oath to protect and serve when they reach majority. The Caldwells were in charge because they were not only witches but sirens. They could make everybody do whatever they wanted.”
There was a separate bookshelf, much smaller than the others, behind the desk. Mer opened a glass door protecting the books on the top shelf. Tracing along with her fingertip, she pulled out a book bound in green leather. The title was in gold. It wasn’t English. She carried it over to the cloth-covered table and opened it to the center, laying it flat.
Elora and Ripley joined her. Ripley smelled like the woods outside the castle. He stood so close behind Elora she could feel his heat. She remembered read somewhere cats ran warmer than humans.
“A few weeks ago, this page changed.” Mer traced her finger over what looked to Elora like a hand-written genealogy. She stopped at a set of question marks ending a line that began with the names Mallory Caldwell and Randall Snow. Both her father’s name and the question marks were a different color than the rest. “So the entire Frost line” – Mer looked at Elora – “that’s my family” – she pointed at the name Meredith Frost – “got the update. I was in the room when my dad’s copy changed, but he wouldn’t let me see it.”
“Aha. So that’s the real reason you were here. To check out The Book.” Elora could hear in Ripley’s voice the capital letters.
“That, too. I did want t a look at the portrait, but I had hoped the newly discovered heir’s name would be in here.”
“But even without anyone else knowing who she is, that puts you even further down the line of succession.” Ripley moved away from Elora and boosted himself up to sit on the edge of the table, bare feet dangling. “What is your dad, anyway? Like eighth after his sisters’ families? You were never gonna be the leader anyway, Mer.”
“Well, neither is she.” The look Mer shot at Elora held such contempt Elora couldn’t help but take a step back.
“What the hell have I ever done to you?”
“You exist.” She spat out the words along with almost palpable waves of anger.
Ripley leaned forward, putting his head between them; Elora felt the sudden tension in him. “She does exist, Meredith Frost, and that means she’ll be the Phantoms’ leader.” He stopped and looked at Elora. “How old are you?”
“Eighteen.”
He returned his attention to Mer. “She’ll take office in two years, whether you like it or not.”
Straightening, Mer crossed her arms and sniffed. “She’s not qualified.”
Ripley slid off the table and crossed his arms to mirror Mer. “She can learn.”
“What if I don’t want to take office?”
They both looked at Elora. Mer waved her away and started toward the door. The light drifted down from the ceiling to follow. "It doesn't matter anyway. My Aunt Stefanie will likely have you killed." She turned toward Elora again, walking backward. "By our law, if someone extinguishes a bloodline, they get the spoils. Everything. If Aunt Stefanie kills you, the Caldwells die with you, and Aunt Stefanie will rule us all." She spun around and left Elora and Ripley standing there staring after her.
Chapter 16
The day that followed the freak-out worthy revelations was Saturday. Elora had mid-terms both Monday and Tuesday, but the things she had learned over the past twenty-four hours would not leave her alone. Angela skipped out to do laundry while Elora showered. Knowing her roommate would bail if Elora showed up, she decided to push her own laundry to the next day. She’d study in the relative peace of the basement Sunday afternoon. In the meantime, she needed to chill and figure some things out.
She didn’t know if she could find the clearing in the woods again. She was sure she wouldn’t remember the words Ripley spoke to reveal the castle. Even so, she intended to try. The spell or whatever it was had had an Irish lilt to it. Before she left her room, she downloaded a translation app for her phone that included Gaelic. Just in case. Then, coffee in hand from the machine in the common room, she ventured across the courtyard for the woods.
The clouds overhead were battleship gray. It wasn't snowing, but it might as well have been. The day before, the temperatures were in the 70s. Elora watched the steam from her coffee curl up through the opening in the lid, saw her breath every time she exhaled. Wishing she'd thought to wear a hat or gloves, she wrapped both hands around her foam cup to suck the heat from it. Cold coffee never hurt anyone.
The soles of her Converse All-Star knock-offs made almost no sound on the concrete sidewalk. The wind overnight had blown all the leaves into golden-brown drifts against the base of the administration building to the east. A few of those leaves spilled across the walk where it left the courtyard. Elora shuffled her feet through them, scattering them in front of her with each step.
An old memory surfaced. A good one of raking leaves with her dad and diving into the crunchy, earthy-smelling pile. If he were standing there with her, would she know he was a shifter? That he transformed into a wolf to run on four legs and howl at the moon? She could see the cheetah in Ripley, now that she knew what to look for.
Ripley.
He was one of the things she had to figure out. She liked him. Kind of a lot, if she thought about it, if she was honest with herself. Sometimes it seemed like he wanted to spend time with her because he wanted to. At others, it seemed as though he was protecting the heir to the throne or the Phantoms or whatever. Nothing personal. She’d never had a boyfriend before, and she didn’t now, but she might want to.
She took a sip of her coffee, which was still quite warm if not hot. The sidewalk ended, and the hard-packed earth took over. A rock skittered out in front of her when she clipped it with the toe of her shoe. A few steps later and the dirt gave way to grass and weeds, overgrown and turning brown with the colder weather.
She stopped, studied the wall of trees. Most of the leaves had fallen and blown away; there were far fewer than had been there the night before.
Elora scanned left to right.
There.
The opening in the trees Ripley had led her through was just a few feet to the right. She headed that way and into the woods. Almost immediately, the air turned noticeably warmer. The gloomy daylight had a hard time filtering through the trees. She hadn’t noticed it the night before, but the woods where she stood held their leaves. They were still green, for the most part, just starting to turn with season. The maples and oaks and sycamores shared space with pine and spruce. When viewed from the outside, there were no evergreens in the woods.
A willowisp landed on Elora’s cup. Another winked in and out and back in a few feet away. The simple beauty of it made her want nothing more than to stay there and let her troubles float away. She could sit and watch the – what had Ripley called them? Wisps? – she could watch the wisps dance and play, painting the air with pastel brushstrokes of light. A pale green wisp fluttered in front of Elora’s nose, touched the tip, a whisper of sensation as soft as a mirage.
Elora smiled and brushed it away. Ripley had warned her to stay clear of the wisps, but they seemed harmless enough.
She started walking, trying to stick to the path she and Ripley had followed. The wisps played all around her. More joined the first few, darting in and out of sight, winking blue or lavender, pink or gold, green or white or yellow.
Here and there was a flash of red
or deeper purple. Elora found herself paying more attention to the antics of the wisps than to where she walked. She didn’t know how long she’d been in the woods when she noticed there was no clear path anymore. There was only the winking light of the willowisps, the sweet scent she’d smelled last night, the chirping of frogs and insects.
The wisps formed a ribbon of rainbow-colored light. She reached out a hand, and three of them, blue, green, purple landed on her knuckles. Half a dozen more played with her hair. She thought she heard her name, but more wisps darted around her face. They landed on her ears and her eyelashes, distracting her. She kept walking.
Fingers closed hard around her wrist, squeezed until the bones felt like they rubbed together under muscle and skin. Ripley jerked her backward with so much force they fell to the loamy, leaf-covered ground. Elora cried out from surprise as much as from the pain in her wrist. Blinking, she stared up at the scudding clouds.
Beside her, Ripley rolled to his feet. He brushed dirt from his jeans, plucked leaf shards from his sweater. A grim expression on his face, he held out a hand to help her up. As soon as she was on her feet again, he turned away from her, ran his fingers through his hair. But then he turned back to her, tawny eyes flashing with anger behind his black-framed glasses.
“What the fuck do you think you were doing, coming in here alone?” She was wrong. It wasn’t anger she saw in his eyes; it was fear.
Elora’s heart beat faster. She felt a little sick from the adrenaline rush that mixed with the coffee in her stomach. “I was going back to the castle.”
“You don’t know how to find it yet!” He took a step toward her, another. “You shouldn’t have been able to find the path, let alone the castle.” For the first time she realized how much taller he was than her. “Look at that, Elora!” He flung his arm out to point at something behind her. Reluctant to see, she turned, her gaze following where he gestured.
There was nothing there. The ground ended about three feet from where they stood. Eyes wide, Elora approached the edge. Before she got there, Ripley had hold of her arm again, but this time his grip didn’t feel like it would break bones. They stood on the edge of a cliff that rose at least a hundred feet from the rocky ground below. She’d had no idea anything like it existed near Westerly, but then again, maybe they weren’t near Westerly.