“Then Eric started screaming. And, like that, my father was dead on the floor with this frozen look of horror on his face.”
I closed my eyes, trying to erase the image.
“That was how Eric got infected,” Peter said.
We looked at each other for a long moment. “You can’t keep this to yourself any longer,” I said finally.
Peter’s gaze shifted toward the open door, his face flushed. “Katy, don’t,” he pleaded.
“Hattie has to know. They all have to know. This is the Darkness, Peter.”
“This is Eric!” he spat through clenched teeth, his eyes grown instantly wild with panic.
“Eric’s not who put those scars on your back,” I said. “Eric’s not the one who keeps telling you to kill him.”
“I’ll never kill him.”
“You’ll never want to, but I don’t think you can hold out against this thing by yourself, Peter. You need us. The witches. All of us.”
His face fell. “You?” he whispered. “You’d side with them against me?”
“It wouldn’t be like that—”
“Oh, no? Do you know what they’ll—what you’ll do? Do you know what Hattie will do? Eric’s like her own baby, but she’s high priestess, and she’ll burn him. Burn him, Katy. Because that’s how they deal with this.”
“Peter, please—”
“I’m begging you, Katy, keep your mouth shut.”
“And what will you do, then? Allow yourself to be tortured every night?”
“I can handle it.”
“No, you can’t,” I said. “How long do you think—”
“I’ll be all right,” he said, taking my hands in his. “I have a plan.”
I flung his hands off me. “What are you thinking about doing?”
“Never mind. Besides,” he added with false cheer, “I might not have to do anything. As long as Eric’s alive, the Darkness is held captive in his body.”
“How long do you think that’s going to last?” I demanded baldly. “The harbingers have already started. Fires everywhere, sinkholes, death . . . Something’s coming, Peter. It’s been coming for ten years, and it’s not going to stop now.”
“How do you know how the Darkness works?” he snapped. “It hasn’t appeared here since 1929. Look, I’ve been reading about it. A lot of things were done wrong then, and probably at every other time it showed up too. There must be some way to get rid of it without sacrificing Eric. We just have to find it.”
“There’s no more time, Peter.”
“Yes, there is! There is if you’ll just keep quiet, give me a chance—”
“Time’s up, kids,” the nurse announced loudly as she strode into the room. “Sorry, doctor’s orders.” She checked my eyes again, and the wound on the back of my head. “No promises, but if you ask me, you’ll be on a regular floor by tomorrow.” She turned to Peter with a smile. “She’ll be able to have all the visitors she wants then.”
Peter’s gaze held mine. I knew he was begging me not to tell anyone what I knew.
“Will you come back tomorrow?” I asked quietly.
He didn’t answer.
“Don’t do this,” I said, my voice breaking.
He took a deep breath. “You’re here because of me,” he said somberly. “As long as I’m around, you won’t be safe.” He looked at the nurse and at Gram, who was just coming in. Both women were regarding him with alarm.
“Peter . . .”
“I love you,” he said. Then he turned and walked out.
The click of his shoes on the floor as he left was the only sound I could hear. Then silence filled the room, as solid as death.
“Wow,” the nurse said at last. “Intense.”
Gram cleared her throat. “Now I really do need a drink of water,” she said.
I love you.
He loved me. Now that the world was ending.
CHAPTER
•
THIRTY-TWO
SIX OF SWORDS
My dad walked in looking irritated. Last night seemed like a million years ago, and the things he was so concerned about—my breaking curfew, going to Peter’s house, falling off the trellis, ending up in the hospital—seemed so trivial now, compared with what Peter, and ultimately the rest of us, were facing.
“Why did you do it, Katy?” he asked.
“Huh?” For a brief, confused moment, I thought he was referring to the fact that I’d asked to see Peter before him. “There was just something I needed to . . . Oh. You mean why I left the house in the middle of the night.”
“Of course that’s what I mean,” he bristled. He exhaled a long, disappointed breath. “I thought that you and I had come to some sort of rapprochement.” He seemed genuinely puzzled, even though he’d used a pompous French word with an even more pompous French pronunciation. “After everything that we discussed, why did you go to that boy’s house?”
I stared at my hands. I knew I’d let him down. We’d ironed out so many of our problems, and I’d spoiled it all by blatantly disobeying him.
It didn’t matter that I’d discovered something important while I was disobeying him, because I couldn’t tell Dad about that, anyway. The Darkness wasn’t a concept he’d ever understand.
What he did understand was that I’d broken his trust again. I’d blown it.
“I’m sorry,” I said quietly.
“I’m afraid that isn’t good enough,” he said. “You don’t belong here, Katy.”
“Wake up, Dad,” I shouted, nearly pulling the IV out of my arm. “It’s the only place I do belong.”
“I’m not going to listen to this—”
“You’ve never listened to anything I’ve said. And taking me away from Whitfield isn’t going to accomplish anything. I was away for eleven years, Dad. Eleven years of not knowing who I was or where I belonged. Eleven years of keeping to myself, of never touching anyone, of watching you leave every night and wondering what I’d done to make you not want to be with me, ever—”
“That’s not true.”
“Was it because you were afraid I’d be like my mother?”
His hands balled into fists, the knuckles white.
“Because I am,” I said quietly.
The monitor attached to my heart raced for a couple of minutes, but then decelerated, beeping in a regular rhythm. Outside my door, the bustling hospital corridor was filled with noise and motion, but the two of us, my father and I, remained apart from everything, removed even from time and space, trying to find our way to each other.
Then, slowly, his fists opened. The color returned to them. I heard him breathe again. “I guess I’ve always known it.” His voice was raspy, as if he hadn’t spoken in days. “You can move things,” he said.
I nodded. “I can read objects, too. And people. By touching them.”
He recoiled. It was subtle and momentary, but there was no mistaking the disgust on his face. Touching has never been something the Jessevars were very good at.
“But it’s voluntary,” I added quickly. “I won’t read you unless I make an effort to.”
“That’s good to know,” he muttered.
“We’re all different. All the Whitfield witches, I mean.”
He winced at the word. I knew he would, but I wasn’t going to hide anything anymore.
“How . . . how are you different?” he asked meekly, his fingers toying nervously with the bedcovers. “What can the other . . . witches . . . do?”
I felt a surge of happiness. He had used the word! He was trying. Really trying.
“Well, some can see things that are happening a long way away,” I said, cataloging. “Some can make thoughts materialize into matter. There’s djinn here—a woman who can bend people’s wills. She’s very careful, though, very well trained.”
“Is Whitfield the only place in the world like this?”
“I don’t think so. I’ve heard about other witch communities. They’re not publicized, though.”
“No, I imagine not,” he said, subdued.
I hesitated for a moment before going on. I wasn’t sure he’d want to hear what I was about to say.
“Mother had a very special gift,” I said, plunging in.
He looked up at me.
“She could see the future.”
He folded his arms over his chest. “No one can predict the future, Katherine.” He looked down. “Katy.”
“Not in specifics. There’s the butterfly effect, where changing one small action can result in a completely different outcome.”
“Exactly.”
“But there are some forces that can’t be stopped. Natural forces, benevolent forces, even forces of evil.”
His face colored. “The Darkness,” he said, as if he were speaking a foul word.
“She told you about the Darkness?”
“There’s no such thing, Katy. No documentation whatever—”
“There’s plenty of documentation, Dad,” I interrupted. “Every family in Whitfield has a record of everything that’s gone on here for the past three hundred years, and many go back a lot farther than—”
“Well, it doesn’t exist in the real world,” he insisted.
“Which one is that?” I shot back.
“The one that would have kept my wife alive!” He buried his face in his hands.
Whoa. I wasn’t expecting that.
“Dad?” I ventured, inching my hand toward him.
“The things she saw . . . or thought she saw . . . Either she was crazy, or she was looking into a future I didn’t want any part of. You should have heard her, Katy! It was impossible to live with that . . . with that horror . . .”
“Is that what she saw?” I asked gently. “Horror?”
“She wouldn’t tell me for a long time. But then she began to unravel. All she talked about was the Darkness. And burning. Fire, fire. She was obsessed with fire. I just didn’t know what to do, Katy. I thought that if we left this place, changed our names . . .”
“Became normal,” I said dully.
“Yes.” He looked at me with a defensiveness that was almost belligerent. “I thought it might work. Get her away from these people, and their fairy tales about some mumbo-jumbo comic-book bogeyman. The Darkness! Who in their right mind . . .” He sighed. “She could have had a normal life. She could have—”
“She was an oracle, Dad,” I whispered. “She saw things that no one else could. And once you see something, even if it’s something no one besides you believes exists, you can’t unsee it. It’s like taking back knowledge. You just can’t do it.”
I managed to touch him then, just a brush against his fingers. For a moment he stiffened, as if a jolt of electricity had run through him. But then he softened, I could see it on his face. He turned toward me and his hand felt like it melted over mine. “Oh, Katy,” he said. “In some ways, she was the sanest person I knew.”
“What?” I hadn’t believed he would ever speak those words. That anyone would. My mother was not only insane; she was criminally, famously insane. “Why do you say that?” I asked hesitantly.
He stood up and walked to the window, then placed both hands on it as if it were a wall. “I knew what she was,” he said. “How could anyone not know? She was so utterly different from everyone else on the face of the earth.” He turned to face me. “She was incredibly beautiful, Katy. Her eyes changed color with her mood, from this brilliant emerald to Caribbean blue, to dark green. Like yours.”
“You noticed?”
“It used to hurt me to look at you, because you reminded me so much of her. It’s funny, Agnes is her twin, but you actually look more like her than Agnes does. She lacks a special quality your mother had that lent her a . . . a radiance that was unearthly.” He sighed. “I loved her so much,” he whispered.
I was confused. “Then why . . . why didn’t you believe her?” I asked.
He waited a long time to answer. “Because I couldn’t,” he said finally. “I had no place here. I could never belong here.”
“And she couldn’t belong anywhere else.”
“That was my mistake,” he said. “I thought she could. But the incident at Wonderland changed everything. Everything.”
“Did she ever tell you why she did it?”
“No.” He turned back to the window. “I’d left by then.”
“You left her?”
“I gave her a choice. Her family—you and me—or Whitfield. I thought it would be an easy decision. When it wasn’t, I left and took you with me.”
“And she didn’t follow you?”
“No. Instead, she went to Wonderland, tried to kill the Shaw baby, and then set herself on fire.”
Something stirred inside me. “Set herself . . .” Kaboom. There it was. Why hadn’t I seen it before? “Oh, my God,” I said.
“I’m sorry. I thought you knew.”
“I did. It was just—”
“Every day of my life since then, I’ve wondered if things might have been different. If I hadn’t made her choose, if I hadn’t taken her daughter away from her . . .”
“No, Dad,” I said quietly. “It wasn’t you.”
He looked at me quizzically.
It wasn’t him. It had never been him. It had always been about Eric, and the Darkness, and what my mother knew.
“Dad, I have to stay in Whitfield,” I blurted.
“What?”
“I have to stay.”
He blinked. “I don’t think that’s for you to decide.”
“I know you don’t want me to, and that you don’t approve of Peter, or Mrs. Ainsworth, or any of the others, but I’m telling you that I have to stay here.”
“You’re telling me?”
I hesitated. “I’m sorry, but yes.”
A long moment. Eternally long. And then he sighed. “Where do you want to stay?”
“At my great-grandmother’s, until school starts again.”
“Starting when?”
“I want to be there now, Dad.”
“Is it because of that boy?” he asked. “Is that why you want to stay?”
“Partly.” There was no use in lying anymore. I couldn’t tell him about Eric and the Darkness, but I wanted to be as honest as I could. “It’s everything—the school, Gram, Aunt Agnes, Miss P . . .” The words just came tumbling out, all the things I’d wanted to tell him for so long, but never had the chance to. “There’s Verity and Cheswick . . . and Hattie. I had a job with her for a while. I learned to cook. Did I tell you about that? But now they’ve torn down her restaurant and her house so that a new Wonderland can be built on the Meadow, when no one in Old Town even wants the stupid thing, anyway.” I gathered my courage and took a breath, “It’s my world. I belong here, Dad. I know who I am now. And no matter what happens, I don’t want to be anywhere else.”
I didn’t realize it, but I guess I must have been crying, because all of a sudden my father swooped down and cradled me in his long, strong arms and hugged me so fiercely that I almost couldn’t breathe. And then, for the first time ever, I felt him opening up to me, allowing me to see into his deepest heart.
In that heart he loved me. Truly, absolutely, eternally.
“I love you, Dad,” I said.
“I love you, too, Katy.”
“I know.”
He took out a handkerchief—he always used real cloth handkerchiefs, like Peter—and dabbed my eyes with it.
“I’m a doofus,” I said.
“Me too.” He wiped his own face with the handkerchief. “We are both . . . is ‘doofi’ a word?”
I laughed though I was still crying. “I guess.” I squeezed his hand. After a moment, I said, “I’m sixteen now.”
He looked surprised at first, and then really upset. “Oh, baby, I’m sorry,” he said. “Your birthday. It was yesterday, wasn’t it. God, I’m a screwup.”
“It’s okay. But I was thinking that maybe my punishment’s gone on long enough.” I gave him my sweetest smil
e. “Being un-grounded would be a great birthday present.”
He exhaled roughly. “I’m going to give you a better present than that.”
“Dad, you don’t—”
“I’m leaving town,” he said.
“What?”
“I need to get back to New York. And I think things would be easier for you with the Ainsworths.” He looked sheepish. “Also, Madison and I are taking a little break.”
“Ouch,” I said.
“To be truthful, there’s much less ‘ouch’ without her.”
“Not a big surprise,” I said. “But are you sure?”
“Yes, Katy,” he said. “I’ll come visit. As a tourist.” He kissed my cheek. “I want you to have your world.”
“But you won’t . . .”
“Abandon you? No.” He stood up and tucked me into the hospital bed, pulling the blanket up around my chin. “Never, never, my darling girl.”
CHAPTER
•
THIRTY-THREE
LAMMAS
They moved me out of intensive care the next day. Gram was waiting in my new room when the nurse wheeled me in.
“We’re trying to get you out as soon as we can, dear,” she said.
“I can’t wait to go home.”
“Neither can we. Your Aunt Agnes and Jonathan send their love,” Gram said. “They’re at the Lammas festival, but I didn’t want to go.”
“Why not?” Lammas was sort of like Thanksgiving, except that it was held at the beginning of August. There was always lots of food and decorations made of grains in honor of the wheat and corn harvests.
She made a cryptic gesture. “I doubt it will be the same,” she said. “Without Hattie.”
“Why wouldn’t Hattie be there?” I asked, alarmed.
“She hasn’t been well,” she said. “No one’s seen her around Old Town or elsewhere.”
Hattie knew about Eric. She had to. The Darkness had spread its horror and dread from little Eric to Peter, and now to Hattie. And to me.
I wanted so much to confide in my great-grandmother. But I’d promised Peter that I wouldn’t say anything. I’d promised.
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