Small groups of Aetherials still gathered around the trees or springs that had once held minor portals. They did so all over the country; all over the world, as far as Jessica knew, in tribute to their ancestry. They brought gifts of flowers, fruit and wine for their Aelyr cousins; but the Aelyr seemed impossibly distant now, untouchable, as if they were ghosts in the Underworld. Or we’re the ghosts, thought Jessica, unable to reach the land of the living.
She’d brought Faith with her, and Faith sat nervously on the edge of the circle, wide-eyed and silent. The girl had been at Oakholme for nearly two years now. Perhaps it was wrong to bring a human to this hidden, Vaethyr rite. Perhaps I’m treating her as too much of a Rosie substitute while Rosie’s away. Yet Faith seemed a natural part of it, and no one had objected.
When the song was done, they each placed their gifts inside the hollow trunk, murmuring a few words to their Aelyr clans or lost relatives in the hope that, somehow, they might hear across the ether.
“For my son, who vanished during his initiation,” whispered Maeve Tulliver. “For all those who went before us, in the hope that we’ll meet again.”
“You know,” Phyll murmured very softly into Jessica’s ear, “I quite understand why you and Auberon want to keep out of Comyn’s anti-Lawrence campaign. As long as the Gates are shut, your children are safe and you don’t have to worry about them ever vanishing.”
“They can vanish in the surface world, too,” Jessica replied tartly. “Anyway, there is plenty to live for on this side.” She smiled at Faith, who smiled shyly back.
They sat in meditation for a while. In everyday life, they were so well camouflaged it was easy to forget they were anything but human. When they came together like this, though, Jess saw the shine of their combined aura and caught hints of their strong, graceful Otherworld shapes, hints of animal elements, ghost wings, or fugitive colors. The glow even reflected off Faith, making her seem part of it.
A far-off echo broke into her thoughts. It was a vibration, like a battering ram striking stone deep underground. A wintry-cold mass of air settled over them. The albinite in Jessica’s hand turned pitch-black and she felt the hairs on her neck stand up.
The moment passed. “What was that?” said Jessica. “Did you feel it?”
She saw from their shocked expressions that they had. “If Lawrence is right, if there is something on the other side,” said Phyll, “I’m damned if we’re going to let it frighten us off.”
“We’re with you, but let’s call it a night,” said Peta Lyon, the mask maker. “Now, how about we all retire to the Green Man and get hammered?”
_______
“Faith,” said Matthew out of the shadows as she headed towards her room. “You know, Mum means well but she shouldn’t be inviting you to those little coven meetings.”
“Why not?” Faith stopped. His disapproval startled her. In the time she’d been at Oakholme, Matthew had evolved from ignoring her completely to being quite attentive, talkative, positively civil to her. She might almost say they were friends, if only she hadn’t found his glamour so intimidating. “Anyway, it’s not a coven. Just, er . . .”
He came close to her. “I know, it’s Aetherial tradition stuff and she really has no business taking an outsider.”
Her heart fell. “No one said they minded.”
“They may not have said it, but . . .” His blue eyes softened. “Hey, I didn’t mean ‘outsider’ in a bad way. I’m one too. All that stuff can mess with your head and do serious damage. All I’m saying is that you can never be a real part of it, because you’re human, and I want nothing to do with it either. So let’s stay out of it together, eh?”
His arm slid around her waist. It wasn’t the first time he’d touched her but the touches had always felt brotherly before. She caught her breath, nodding vehemently. “Yes, okay. I didn’t mean any harm.”
“I know,” Matthew said in a quiet tone that wouldn’t accept refusal. “But next time Mum asks, you just say no, right?”
Then his arm did not fall but tightened insistently around her; and Faith, trembling, wondered if he yet realized that she was incapable of refusing him anything.
Lawrence stood at the Gates; or rather, at Freya’s Crown, the great stone marker that kept the place in the closed book. It was August, the weather cloudy and humid. He was about to make a trip to his New York store, and before he left he had to check over and over again, like an obsessive-compulsive, that the Gates were truly locked. The albinite gem in his hand stayed pale, but he didn’t trust it.
He closed his eyes and reached out to touch the rocks.
For a blinding second he saw clear through all realms to the heart, the vast engulfing Abyss. Its immensity fell away from his feet and he was staring into it, teetering. And he saw the giant rising out of it, a huge shadow horned and silhouetted against a blazing icy light. It was coming for him. In silence it came, smashing the Gates in its path like eggshells.
He fell before it. A scream broke from his throat, a low-pitched jagged scream of despair, of surrender. It was searching for his sons, mouth gaping to drink their souls. He’d tried so hard to protect them and failed . . .
“Lawrence?” He was on his hands and knees. A woman was standing over him, shaking him by the shoulder. “Dear, what happened?”
She loomed against the sky. She was in gardening clothes; jeans, an old shirt, hair escaping from beneath a waxed hat. He couldn’t see her clearly against the glare and for a moment he thought she was Ginny. “You should never have made me come back here,” he gasped.
“What?” She crouched beside him and he saw it was Sapphire. For a moment, unable to help himself, he reached out and clung to her. “Lawrence, what’s wrong?”
He let her help him up. An impulse gripped him to pour out all his fears—but the image of himself as a gibbering hysteric horrified him. He savagely mastered his weakness, turning back to glacial stone. “Nothing. I tripped.”
“Don’t treat me like an idiot. You seem to forget that you told me everything, a long time ago.”
“I should never have told you. You don’t feel the shadows. You don’t understand.”
“It’s not my fault I’m human.” Her voice was warmly chiding. “I’m not any human; I’m your wife. So tell me the truth.”
Her eyes were bright and intense, the pressure of her gaze a physical weight. Lawrence felt suffocated. Sapphire didn’t belong here. It was his mistake to remarry, but that gave her no right to demand answers. “No,” he said impatiently. “It was a vision. The point of a vision is not what it can do, but the implication . . .” The words came up heavily from his stomach. He had to stop.
“Were you trying to open the Gates?”
“There is no hope of that.”
“What, then?”
“Making sure they’re locked fast. So everyone will remain safe while I’m away.”
“It’s only New York for a couple of weeks. I won’t let anything happen.”
“It’s not in your control,” he said, looking away.
“You can’t keep shutting me out of your life like this, Lawrence.” Frowning, she placed her hand on his forearm. “You’d better decide what I am to you—a wife, or a glorified housekeeper? What do you want?”
Sapphire, beneath the veneer of control, was angry. The more he closed her out, the more she tried to force her way in, and the farther he withdrew in response. His eyelids fell. “I want peace. I want Sam to come home.”
Her lips bowed in a tight smile. “We all want that. I was right in persuading you to tell Lucas the truth, wasn’t I? You’ve gained a son.”
“Indeed.” Another son for Brawth to hunt down, he thought bleakly.
“So you owe me. If you’d only let me into this secret world of yours!” Her voice became impassioned. “We could open the Gates together, side by side. That’s how it should be. You and I, conquering the Otherworld together, king and queen.”
He covered her hand with his own, and p
lucked it off his arm. As he bent to kiss her cheek, he whispered, “Never, my dear. The Otherworld was never on offer.”
Sapphire sat in her apartment at the top of the house, fuming. Even in her gardening outfit she was elegant in her setting, like a tousled film star about to be photographed for a magazine feature. One bare toe tapped repeatedly at the air.
Things were not supposed to be like this.
It was her nature to operate with sweet reason, not anger. That was how she’d trained herself. If it were otherwise, she would have punched Lawrence off his feet.
“He will swallow you and spit you out,” Jessica had murmured sweetly in her ear the first time they’d met. Sapphire had thought her jealous—poor chaotic earth mother—but she’d been right. Sapphire had dreamed of the social scene she would create; opening up the house, presenting herself plus perfect new family to the world; becoming queen of a shining court.
But Lawrence would not play.
At the start he’d tried, until the anger of the Vaethyr community had thrown him back into brooding, self-imposed solitude. She was exasperated with him for giving up so easily—but saw now that she’d been a fool to think he could change. Meanwhile she’d forged on, acting the hostess, fond mother, glamorous face of Wilder Jewels, general pillar of the community—but while he refused to support her, it was a hollow masquerade. And that’s exactly how Lawrence was using her: as his mask.
Some years ago—long after Virginia had left, for it had taken Sapphire an age to win his trust—he’d taken her to a conference. In the hotel suite, he’d let her demonstrate her massage skills upon his back, and that had flowed into hours of sex and champagne. Drunk, he’d confessed that he was of an older race, charged with keeping the Gates between worlds; told stories of a kind but demanding grandmother, a hostile father, a child by another man’s wife . . . of his own wife leaving, because she could not forgive him for loving his business more than he loved his sons.
He spoke of Eugene Barada, a brutal human enemy who had tried to take the mine from him.
“What happened to him?” Sapphire had asked, her head close to his on the pillow.
A pause. “He lost. I proved the more ruthless. Gems are all I trust; they’re solid, they don’t demand fear or love. They are worth protecting, at any cost. I don’t expect you to believe my story—I don’t need you to—but it’s the truth.”
Sapphire, however, had believed him. She’d made herself a student of Lawrence Wilder, long before she ever met him. It was the first and last time he opened up to her like that, but it was enough. He proposed to her that night.
On paper, it was a perfect arrangement: two attractive, glamorous people who formed the ideal couple. Arrangement, however, was the key word. Yes, he’d gained a glossy companion, substitute mother and homemaker, and she’d gained wealth and a fabulous mansion. But love?
Sapphire fingered the teardrop of albinite at her throat. It was worth a fortune, this hard cold lump.
Sometimes life had been good. Promoting the business, poring over jewelry designs and gemstones. Making plans for the house; trying to drag its curmudgeonly bulk out of the eighteenth century. As long as she played the innocent, everything was fine; but step on his territory, dare to mention Gates or matters Aetherial, and she became an instant pariah.
Sex had been amazing—and suited Lawrence since it was a chance to avoid talking—but even that was sporadic now. Mostly she kept to her rooms and he kept to his. She had her tranquillity zone and yoga to keep her sane. He haunted the big drafty library or shut himself in his workshop with his gem specimens, his only companion a bottle of single malt.
Sapphire bit her lip. She wasn’t sorry for herself; simply frustrated. Lawrence’s last marriage had failed because Ginny didn’t know how to handle him. With me, Sapphire had thought, he’ll be different, because I’ll prove my smooth creamy perfection to him every single day.
She never forgot her background, how she’d clawed her way out of poverty in Brazil to remake herself. And the man who’d helped her do that, the one man she’d truly loved, had been taken away from her by his obsession with Aetherials. She’d made promises to him. She had made it her life’s mission to find out what Aetherials were, why the fascination, what lay behind the Gates.
The triumph of marrying Lawrence had been incredible. The problem was she hadn’t planned on falling for him. In that honeymoon glow, her life could have gone a different way. She could have discarded her bitter feelings, abandoned her mission, truly loved her husband. Their life need not have been a masquerade. It could have been real.
How swiftly she was disillusioned, when Stonegate unsheathed the cold flint core of Lawrence. He used her; he wouldn’t let her near his secrets; he would not open the damned Gates, even for her. She wasn’t special to him after all. He wanted a beautiful servant, not a partner with thoughts of her own.
Amazing, how abruptly love became hate. Wounded, Sapphire withdrew in turn, angry with herself for losing sight of her quest. Her need for answers flamed into a drive for revenge—but she kept it hidden. Her poised control was her only weapon. When she removed her real self from him and replaced it with a smiling facsimile, Lawrence didn’t even notice. Didn’t notice! That self-centered blindness made her despise him.
It was good, though, that he didn’t notice. As long as she presented a chilled, smooth surface to him, he didn’t suspect a thing. She must bide her time.
So much for playing the perfect stepmother. Sam had loathed her from the start and the feeling was mutual. Whatever Sam thought, he came straight out with it, and that was never going to make him popular. Sam come home? Over her dead body. Sapphire half-hoped he might be murdered on his foreign travels, or at least catch something exotic, if Vaethyr were vulnerable to disease; malaria perhaps, or Ebola.
Jon was the opposite; insecure, secretive. He tolerated her with that fey, indifferent manner he had; but he’d come to rely on her. He turned to her for advice and approval; he was vulnerable. His need was her power.
She knew she’d pushed Lawrence too far today, but his reaction had made her furious. He’d been so contemptuous. How dare he? Who was he, anyway, to forbid her from the Otherworld?
So her life had taken this path instead, the way of cold vengeance. Ultimately more satisfying than mere love, she suspected. After all, her promise had been made to someone far more important than Lawrence. If she couldn’t control Lawrence Wilder—well, there were others she could control, and other ways to hurt him.
Sapphire threw her hair back and grinned. King and queen, indeed. One of these days she’d seize his kingdom with one hand, and with the other stab him right through the black flint heart.
“It doesn’t look much,” said Rosie. “It looks neglected.”
“That’s kind of the idea,” said Jon. “It’s meant to be discreet.”
The fabled entrance to the Otherworld was a crag of folded diorite and tumbled blocks, its bedding planes deformed and striated with quartz from the vast forces that had thrust it from the ground half a billion years ago. Bracken sprouted around its roots. The flanks of the mound fell away steeply behind and gently in front, where the shallow dip cupped a handful of Jon’s college friends. Masses of oak and beech encircled the summit, glowing green in the dawn.
Lucas added, “You can’t have a huge golden arch with neon arrows flashing ‘This way to Elfland’ on it.”
“Or every Tom, Dick and Legolas would be in and out as if it was Las Vegas,” said Rosie. To her delight, Jon actually laughed. Wow, she’d made him laugh!
It was the summer break at the end of her second year. Now Jon was at art college in Nottingham, Lucas had been spending weekends there—against Jessica’s wishes, since she was fretting about his education. He and Jon had started a band, as students did. Rosie had been to see them last night and they weren’t bad; slightly pretentious, mercifully in tune, with Luc in the background on guitar, three others on drums, bass and keyboards, and Jon singing cryptic lyri
cs that only Vaethyr would comprehend. His voice was nothing special; but his charisma in the spotlight held the audience.
Afterwards, they had partied. Rosie had been first indignant, then wretchedly unhappy, to see what she could only describe as groupies draping themselves around Jon’s neck. All evening he’d been the center of attention, as if caught in a beam of light. She didn’t like the look of his hangers-on. The idea of Luc associating with them made her uneasy. Jon was so close, yet she couldn’t get near him, and instead had to endure bleached-blond freaks throwing themselves at him. So she’d drunk enough to make the evening blur and, in the early hours, the hard core had climbed into taxis and headed for Stonegate. Lawrence was in New York, Jon explained, so it was safe.
The groupies had fallen away by then and the only constant at Jon’s side was Lucas. He’d grown his hair and started to dress like Jon and even to stand like him, shoulders up and hands in pockets. She still couldn’t see them as brothers but they looked wonderful together, like a pair of gorgeous young actors in a costume drama. They spoke softly so the humans wouldn’t overhear.
“I’m surprised you two never knew this was the portal,” said Jon.
“Well, it’s in your back garden, not ours,” said Rosie. “No one said.”
“It’s wrong.” Jon looked straight into her eyes. Despite herself, she thrilled to his attention. “All Aetherials have a right to pass in and out. Instead our parents kept us in the dark. We’ve been cheated. They held their ceremonies in secret—then by the time we’re old enough for initiation they tell us, tough, the Gates are locked.”
Rosie nodded. She was sober now, her eyes sore with tiredness, but she couldn’t stop gazing at him. She only had to glimpse him for all the painful feelings to start again. It was like looking into the delicious heart of life and finding it looking radiantly back at her. It’s no good, she thought; I’m not over him at all. Damn.
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