by Anne Barwell
Gingerly, Tomas opened the lid, letting it go once he'd satisfied himself that the hinges were intact enough to keep it upright without needing his assistance. Dropping onto his knees, he began carefully sorting through the contents, running his fingers across the fine cotton that lay across the top before pulling it free, almost dropping it when he realized he was holding a woman's undergarment. Chastising himself, he took a closer look, feeling himself relax when said undergarment turned out to be a cotton lace petticoat. Draping it over the lid, he examined the dress it had protected. It was white, very delicate-looking and long, with a high bodice and a brooch of pink roses at the neck. Peeking out from underneath where the dress was lying in the trunk was netting, stitched onto a comb, faded dried flowers clinging to it, holding the veil....
He stood, holding up the dress in order to see it properly to confirm his suspicions. It was an old-fashioned wedding dress, the petticoat and veil completing the outfit. Had it been hers? Something clattered onto the floor, shaking free as he'd opened the dress out to get a better look. Tiny black pellets, solidified with age.
Shit!
Mouse droppings!
Throwing the dress onto the petticoat, Tomas began sorting through the rest of the contents of the trunk, frantically remembering what he'd read about mice. God no, the letters had to be still intact. They had to be.
Muslin wrapped around something solid. A small wooden box. Fingers shaking, he took off the lid to come face to face with a crystal vase, the twin of the one that had been left in his room. Checking the box again, he noticed a card on the outside, the corners of it chewed but enough to make out the lettering.
Alice,
All my love,
C....
Bloody mice. They'd gnawed the rest of the name. "C. C what? Who the hell is C?"
"Christian." Mikey spoke softly, the sulky tone of a few moments before completely gone. "Her husband's name was Christian."
"How do you know that?" Tomas turned at the boy leaning over his shoulder, wondering if he moonlighted as a ninja. Alice and Christian were characters in a book. This had to be a coincidence.
A hand dived into the trunk, Mikey sneaking past him quick as lightning to retrieve a half-gnawed pink ribbon already unraveling around its precious contents. Now loose from their constraints, previously wrapped groups of papers fell into the trunk.
"No!" Tomas pushed Mikey out of the way, but it was already too late. Spread across the trunk were the letters he'd been seeking, pages still together but now hopelessly out of any order they might have once been in.
He picked the first one up and groaned aloud, cold fingers of disappointment crawling up his spine. Even without Mikey's help, his work was cut out for him. The mice had feasted well, nibbling through a gourmet of fancy rose-embossed paper to leave a hole right through the middle of it.
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Chapter Eleven
"Fuck!" Tomas whispered hoarsely. He couldn't have come this far to lose to some bloody mice. Frantically he opened the first letter, hoping and praying that the damage done by the rodents was not too severe. The pages of the letter were numbered; the date at the top of the page read "17 November 1930." Her writing was legible, a flowing hand that was easy to read. That, at least, was one small mercy.
My darling Christian,
Even now I still hope that you will return to me.
Scanning the page and then the ones folded with it, Tomas sighed in relief. The ink was faded, but the words could still be made out. The mice had nibbled straight through the middle of each page, but he could guess at the missing words. Putting that letter down, he picked up another. It was obviously in the same state, with a ragged hole through the middle of each page.
The second letter appeared to have been written several years earlier; it was dated 1925. It began the same way, addressed to her husband, Christian. Damn it. He'd have to sort them into date order before he could start reading. This one referred to someone called Wynne.
Hold on.
Wynne? Wynne Emerys? Surely she couldn't have known him? Was that why the postcard had been left in the book? Was it a clue to a connection between them?
Tomas swallowed, his excitement growing. Dropping from a half-crouch to his knees, he began picking up the rest of the letters, shuffling them into a pile.
"You can't do that." Mikey shoved in from the side of the trunk, grabbing the rest of the letters, holding them against his chest and taking a step back when Tomas glared at him.
"Let them go!" Tomas hissed. "Heidi said I could look through this trunk. I want those letters!" He fought the urge to add a please on the end, determined not to let the little shit get the upper hand.
"Why?" Mike smirked at him. "They're not yours." He made a tsk-tsking noise. "You really need to work on those manners. Reading other people's letters is a no-no." Keeping his grip firm, he opened one of the letters while shoving the rest of the pile under his arm. "But then you are my elder and I'm supposed to respect you, right, so maybe it is okay to read them." His voice rose into a false falsetto, his eyes scanning the letter in his hand. "My darling Christian. I miss you even as the baby I--"
"Give it here!" Tomas lunged for the letter, but Mikey took a step backward. Damn it! He couldn't get this close to lose out to this bloody kid. If Alice knew Wynne, the letters could hold some of the answers he sought.
Mikey grinned. "Heidi's going to hear us if you keep yelling at me." He shook his head. "Even if it's okay to look in the trunk, I'm sure neither she nor Donovan would be happy about you taking the letters."
Taking a deep breath, Tomas stepped between Mikey and the trunk. He needed to find some way to get the remaining letters back. Knowing his luck, those would be the ones containing the crucial bits of information. There was also the problem of keeping him silent. "How much?" he asked.
"Excuse me?" Mikey's widening eyes didn't quite give the aura of innocence he was most probably aiming for. If the kid possessed a halo, which was highly unlikely, it was more likely to be black and have little horns attached.
"How much do you want for them?" Mikey was after something he could use to fundraise for his jamboree. Everyone had a price. It was just a case of finding his.
"Money?" Mikey stared at Tomas and then at the letters. A slow smile crossed his lips. "Or maybe something else? I am open to negotiation, you know." He took another step back.
Tomas frowned. This was not going the way he'd planned. "Something else?" His eyes narrowed suspiciously. "Like what?"
"Tell me why you want them so badly, and I'll think about it." Mikey tucked the letter in his hand back into his pile and opened another, this time reading it silently.
There was no point in lying. Tomas took a deep breath. Telling the truth, or at least some of it, might be the way to go. "They were written by an artist who used to live in this inn, and I think she knew a writer I'm researching."
Mikey nodded slowly. "Yeah, I've seen some of her stuff." His grip on the letters loosened, but not enough that making a grab for them might work, especially with the distance Tomas would have to cover. "She liked dragons."
"What makes you say that?" There was nothing Tomas had seen to suggest that, and he wasn't about to believe anything Mikey said without good reason.
"I've seen some of her stuff," Mikey repeated, waving the letter he'd been reading at Tomas. There was something that could have been a dragon doodled down the side of the page, but it was difficult to see unless he got closer. "Dragons." Taking a piece of gum out of the pocket of his hoodie, Mikey unwrapped it and popped it into his mouth. Chewing thoughtfully, he refolded the letter and tucked it under his arm with the rest of his pile. "The way I see it," he said, "I have these letters you want, and you could do something for me I want." A pink bubble formed and popped before Mikey resumed chewing. "We could help each other out."
"What do you want?" Tomas sighed. Mikey was being far too cooperative. The other shoe had to drop. W
hatever was doodled on the letter could have been an overgrown grasshopper, for all he knew. Mikey was yanking his chain; if he'd found out about the book, he'd know there were dragons on the front cover and could be using that information to get what he wanted. But what if that doodle really was a dragon? It could be further proof that Alice and Wynne were connected. A thought struck him, and his breath hitched. She was an artist, and In Hidden Places was beautifully illustrated. No, she hadn't been credited for the artwork. He was reaching.
"I like dragons," Mikey announced as though that explained everything. "I want to find out what the letters say. They said she saw stuff, but then they said she was crazy too." He glanced at the door behind him, as though he expected to see Heidi there, lowering his voice when she wasn't. "I'm not supposed to know about the gossip, but people forget I'm there and I hear things."
Great, Mikey wanted to help. Tomas fought the urge to point out that this was his quest, and Mikey could go find his own. Hang on, when had this become a quest? He sure as hell wasn't a knight, and there weren't any damsels in distress who needed rescuing.
The only person he was interested in was definitely no damsel and probably would not be happy being compared to one. However, Cathal did seem determined to believe that there was no sequel. The letters Mikey was holding could contain the proof that there was.
"Okay." Tomas tried to ignore the feeling he'd just signed his soul away to a teenage devil with red hair. "You can help me." He held his hand out for the letters.
"No." Mikey shook his head. "You get them when I know I can trust you and we have a working partnership. That's the deal." Another bubble blew and popped. Tomas would have liked nothing better than to rub the pink goo all over Mikey's mouth, or better yet, use it to gag him with. "Part of it anyway."
"Part of it?" Tomas gritted his teeth, reminding himself that yelling at the kid--correction: his new partner, would only serve to bring the situation to Heidi's attention.
"I want your help." Mikey licked the gum off his face with his tongue and began chewing again. "I found some stuff to build this really cool skateboard ramp. I can't do it on my own, and my dad's too busy to help me." He grinned. "But now I figure I've just found someone who will."
* * * *
Mikey was a difficult person to negotiate with. For every suggestion Tomas made, the kid had a counter one. In the finish they'd each sat down on the floor opposite each other, holding onto their own pile of letters while they hammered out an agreement. Mikey refused to part with his letters until he was sure that he could trust Tomas, and nothing Tomas said convinced him that he could.
A promise to meet in the field next to the inn the next afternoon to work on the skateboard ramp was about the closest they'd got to a truce. Once the ramp was built, they'd talk further. All of this could be simply solved by telling Heidi that Mikey had the letters, but for the moment Tomas wanted some privacy in which to sort through and read them before being placed in a position in which he'd have to share the reason why he wanted them in the first place.
That was his problem, not Mikey's, but of course Mikey didn't see it that way. If anything, the kid was stubborn as hell and smug with it. Tomas wanted nothing better than to wipe the smirk off his face. By the end of the conversation his mind had also come up with a list of rather inventive uses for the pink gum, none of it pleasant, the common theme being ways in which to shut Mikey up. Once he had started talking, he didn't stop.
It took all of Tomas's willpower to stay polite and relatively calm. After all, he reminded himself, Mikey held the upper hand, at least for the moment. Once that changed, so would the way in which this game was played. Revenge could be sweet if executed at just the right moment in the correct fashion.
"Tomas, are you finished yet?" Heidi called from the bottom of the stairs. "Mrs. O'Neil is here."
"I'll be down in a moment," Tomas replied in kind, dropping his voice in volume and tone before giving Mikey a final word of advice. "You tell anyone about this and the deal's off. This is our secret, okay?"
"Do I look stupid?" Mikey stuffed his letters into the front of his zipped-up hoodie. "Don't worry. I'll keep your precious letters safe. I want to figure this out as much as you do."
Tomas very much doubted that, but he wasn't about to argue the point yet again. He'd had enough of that for one day. Following Mikey's example, he used his jumper to hide his own stash of letters. He'd go downstairs via his room and put them in his bag with his writing journal. They'd be safe there for the time being. For a moment he wondered whether he should share them with Cathal. Perhaps he might be able to help put the puzzle pieces together?
Hold on! Realization struck, and Tomas dived back into the trunk, retrieving the card that had gone with the vase and adding it to his letters. It was another clue and possibly the only thing he had which hadn't originated from Alice herself but from her husband.
"Finished?" Mikey was watching him carefully but making no move toward the door.
"You're not coming down for morning tea?" Tomas thought Mikey would have jumped at the opportunity to eat more of Heidi's cooking judging by the way he'd wolfed down what she'd served him for breakfast.
"Nah." Mikey shook his head. "I have stuff to find for the jamboree still." He grinned. "Besides, why would I butt into your quality time with Heidi and Mrs. O'Neil? After all, I have manners, remember?"
Tomas snorted. "So you keep saying." He smirked, a thought suddenly crossing his mind. "Do you want me to remind Heidi you're still here? I'm sure Mrs. O'Neil would love to see you too."
"Fuck no." Mikey looked at Tomas in horror. "She'll ask me how school is and all that crap old ladies think is way important."
"Just you make sure you look after my letters," Tomas reminded him, "and don't touch anything else in that trunk, or I might accidentally remember you're not finished already and gone home."
"Bastard," muttered Mikey. "Just you make sure you're at the field tomorrow to help me build my skateboard ramp, or I might accidentally remember you've got those letters."
"You've got some too." Tomas rolled his eyes. The kid had a lot to learn about blackmailing techniques.
"Yeah, so?" Mikey grinned. "You're the adult. I'm just a kid who's been led astray because I didn't know any better."
"Brat." Tomas ignored the way in which Mikey's grin widened. The bloody kid was enjoying this.
"Yep." Mikey turned his back on Tomas and started walking toward the racks of old-fashioned clothing. "Have fun!" he called out in a stage whisper.
"Oh, I intend to." Tomas glared at the kid's back, wishing just for a moment that looks could kill. This whole incident had not gone the way he'd planned at all.
"Tomas!" Heidi was definitely not the type of person one kept waiting.
"Coming!" Tomas yelled a little more testily than he intended, banging the attic door closed behind him, taking the stairs two at a time until he reached the landing of his own floor. The letters quickly stashed, he made his way down the rest of the stairs, slowing down when he reached the bottom, taking a couple of deep breaths and running a hand through his hair, resetting his outward composure to cool, calm, and collected.
"Good morning, Mr. Kemp." Mrs. O'Neil glanced in his direction when he entered the kitchen before returning her attention to the cat on her lap. Blackthorn yawned, stretched, and licked at Mrs. O'Neil's hand lazily. "How nice of you to finally join us." Reaching over, she picked up one of the mini quiches off one of the plates on the table.
"I was busy," Tomas said defensively, unsure why he even felt the need to explain himself.
"So I see." Mrs. O'Neil began picking peas out of the quiche, placing them on a saucer to the right of her own plate.
"Would you like some coffee, Tomas?" Heidi gestured to one of the empty chairs, and Tomas slid into it, noticing they'd set a place for him. There seemed to be an awful lot of food for a mere morning tea: mini quiches, sandwiches, and scones, although the latter appeared to b
e of the cheese and bacon variety rather than sultanas like the day before.
"Thanks." Tomas debated informing Mrs. O'Neil that taking apart food before eating was in very bad taste.
Blackthorn purred, sat up, and looked at her attentively.
"You're such a good kitty, aren't you?" Mrs. O'Neil broke the quiche in two and placed the halves on her lap, petting Blackthorn as she devoured one and then the other. "This cat just loves human food," she explained. "Doesn't she, Heidi, dear?" Blackthorn pawed her lap and looked pitiful. "I always feed her when I visit. We're good friends, Blackthorn and I." Another quiche joined the first, the peas already carefully removed.
"Someone needs to tell her that it's important to eat your greens," Tomas noted dryly, earning a dirty look from the cat for his comment.
"But she doesn't like peas," Mrs. O'Neil said, stroking the cat under the chin. Blackthorn gave Tomas another look and then purred louder, lapping up the attention. "Nasty little squishy round things, they are, aren't they, Blackthorn?"
"Spoilt brat," Tomas muttered under his breath. He helped himself to one of the scones. "This is very nice, Heidi."
Heidi beamed. "Thank you, Tomas." She pushed the plate of sandwiches toward him. "You must try one of these as well."
"I will when I've finished this," Tomas said through a mouthful of scone.
"Heidi said you were researching the area for your book." Mrs. O'Neil's sudden change of subject took Tomas by surprise, a piece of his scone going down the wrong way. Coughing, he took a swig of coffee to wash it down, using the action to compose himself before answering.
"Yes," he admitted, holding his hand up to indicate to both women that he was all right and there was no need for them to fuss. The last thing he needed was mothering times two. Blackthorn settled back down on Mrs. O'Neil's lap, having arched her back, her tail twitching as she kept a careful eye on him. "I have some questions I was hoping you might be able to answer."