The Secret of Kingsway House

by Jessica Lancaster

  Vivian shrugged. “Witchcraft is all the same. You say the words, do the hand gestures, and things fall into place.”

  Definitely not a witch.

  “No,” I said. “I can’t.”

  She pulled the hanky from her sleeve. “Remember what I have.” She dangled it in front of me like I was a donkey after a carrot.

  Dark spells took part of the caster’s soul, it’s why people drove themselves crazy when they practised black magic. “What spell do you want me to cast?”

  A red silk bookmark placed between two pages, a blank page, and a page titled, ‘Osmosis and Fusion’.

  I slammed the book shut. “No,” I said. It went against everything. Fusing two things together, unless it was cuisine, was always a bad idea, and even some fusion food was never the answer.

  “That is unfortunate,” she said.

  I stood, pushing myself from the chair. “What do you need it for?”

  “A riddle. Two girls, alike in all ways, from appearance to speech, yet they’re not twins,” she said. “No relation at all.”

  “Fusing people?” I asked, my brows creasing. “People?”

  She smiled. “Sit,” she said. “I can pay you.”

  I didn’t want to be paid. I turned, quickly toward the door. I had to get out of the place. Get away from these people. Remove myself from the situation. I wasn’t going to be the replacement for whatever witch they’d done this to before.

  “Goddess,” I mumbled, reaching for the door handle.

  Vivian chuckled. “Evanora,” she said. “I might not be like you, but I will get what I want.”

  Glancing at her, I noticed her fumble around with the tissue in her hand.

  A pain throbbed at the palm of my left hand.

  “See,” she said.

  I saw.

  A black circle in the centre of my palm.

  TWENTY-ONE

  The locked door gave way under my will. I pushed it open to the empty hallway. To my left, the foyer was empty. Everyone had gone elsewhere and Elliott’s body no longer occupied space on the ground. There was little in the way of knowing that he’d ever been there.

  Vivian shouted after me as the pain in my palm grew.

  I found myself climbing the stairs from the foyer, straight up to the floor I’d been chased from. There had to be more to the secrets here, the places they didn’t want anyone to go, the reason they wanted a fusing spell cast.

  Leaning against a wall to take a better look at the mark on my hand, I wondered what kind of magic she was using. If she wasn’t a witch, there wasn’t a lot she could’ve done to do this. I pressed my thumb in the centre of it – regretting the decision instantly, sucking in air through my clenched teeth.

  I headed to the room where Camilla had been earlier.

  Stepping on the tips of my toes. I couldn’t be caught again, not now, not knowing what I knew about Vivian and her wish to get me to perform some sick sadistic spell. It was probably some form of immortality that she was looking for.

  What exactly was she wanting me to do? It was only her and I in the room. Unless she wanted to fuse the two of us together.

  My stomach knotted at the thought. It could’ve been a ploy to get her hand on witchcraft. I’d seen many strange ways people thought they could become witches, but this one was one of the more radical paths to follow.

  “Camilla,” I said in a whisper, trying the door handle at the end of the room.

  The door opened into darkness. Empty.

  I took a couple steps into the room, turning on the spot to get a full scope.

  “Camilla?” I spoke again.

  Nothing.

  There were many doors, but none of them appeared to have any life beneath them. I tried another handle in the hallway, opening to a bathroom.

  Finally. What I was looking for, originally, before being dragged into this giant mess.

  I turned the light on and closed the door.

  The bathroom was fancy, covered in a chrome white tiles and a single wall made entirely of glass.

  Looking myself in the mirror, I straightened out my dress and tucked the stray hairs behind my ears. Mirrors were witches’ best friends, everyone’s best friend, but more so a witch, they allowed us to channel energy back into ourselves instead of expelling it into the ether.

  In the sterile white room, reflecting all light, I looked at the black mark on the palm of my hand with more precision. In the centre of my hand was the darkest spot. I turned my hand to see the back. It had transferred a little, a small dot, light blue in colour, like a bruise forming.

  “Come on, Nora,” I spoke to myself, staring at my reflection.

  There had to be something I could do.

  Ivory, I called out. Find me.

  I knew she couldn’t reply, and it was a shot in the dark whether or not she’d be able to find me. I was doing this blind, they seemed to have a field over the house.

  Frisking my blouse, I could check my phone. But it was in my jacket, and I’d taken that off when I sat down at the dinner table.

  I washed my hands, gently wiping at the marks, but they didn’t budge, it was deep, even if in the back of my mind I thought it could’ve been some trick. She wasn’t a real witch, so whatever she’d done to me, had to have been easily undone.

  “Undone,” I said to myself. You could always undo a spell, but you couldn’t undo the part of your soul it takes.

  Waiting inside the bathroom, I turned the light off and stayed in the darkness, listening for any sign of movement outside.

  It was all-clear.

  I made my way down the main corridor, facing out to both windows, my eyes in search of life beneath any of the doors.

  “Ugh,” I gasped, clenching my hand as a shooting pain whooshed through it. Whatever the old woman had done to me, it was surely real, there were no tricks to this one, only a teeth-gnashing pain.

  Hiss.

  I paused, pressing myself against a door, my head swishing from side-to-side, trying to locate the sound.

  Hiss.

  I wasn’t scared of many animals, but anything that slithered, and anything that was too small to be seen without a magnifying glass gave me shivers.

  The doorknob twisted beneath my elbow, opening. I stumbled back inside the room. Quickly centring myself, I turned before I was on the ground.

  “You found me?” a soft voice asked.

  I looked up, and there I found a dull orange light cast across three figures. Two on the bed, and one standing over it.

  TWENTY-TWO

  The woman waved me in, moving from the bedside. The closer she came, the more I recognised her as the chef’s helper; the girl who’d spotted me at the bottom of the stairs while I held her cat.

  “Hi,” she said. “Quick, close the door.”

  I closed the door, and slowly pushed the lock across it, bolting it in place. “I have no idea what’s going on here,” I said in an exhausted breath, clutching my sore hand.

  “I should properly introduce myself,” she offered with a smile. “I’m Cassandra, but feel free to call me Cass.” She held her hand out to shake mine, and as I stretched out, she quickly grabbed it, marvelled by the black circle.

  “Cassandra?” I asked, gnawing the inside of my cheek in thought.

  She looked up at me. “Yes,” she said. “Your new mentee.”

  “Oh.” The anvil of weight vanished from my shoulders. “What are you doing here?”

  She continued to look at my hand. “Something hexed.”

  “That’s it,” I said. “You don’t need to be a witch, just mix a hexed object with the person’s DNA, and voila.”

  Cass hummed. “Yeah, but I wouldn’t look too happy about it,” she said. “It looks like it’ll spread.”

  I peered over to the bed where to figures laid on top of the duvet. I half expected to see Elliott, but he wasn’t there. It was Camilla and her twin brother, Conrad. “Are they okay?” I asked, approaching them.

  “Th
at’s why I’m here,” Cass said. “I knew I’d be coming to Cottonwood, and when I saw this on the job’s board, apparently Camilla had called it in, I figured I’d get one investigation in the bag.”

  “And how’s that working out?”

  “Well, you’re here, so—” she shrugged. “So, let me give you the rundown of everything I’ve found out so far.”

  “First of all, how long have you been here?”

  “Couple—five days,” she said. “The family is incredibly strange, I’m still trying to figure out what’s going on. The entire place is warded, they don’t even know I’m a witch, but—but I’ve heard them talk about needing a witch to perform a spell. I thought they’d already have one, but no. Not sure how they found out about you.”

  “Me either,” I replied. “I’ve been keeping a low profile, but I guess the word on the grapevine is about a witch in Cottonwood, especially after I disbanded the vampires a couple weeks back.”

  A fluffy cat-shaped ball of fur came crawling out from beneath the bed. Cassandra knelt to pick it up. “I heard about that,” she said. “Sometimes you’ve got to follow your hunch.”

  I nodded. “That would be lesson number one,” I chuckled. “Well, be on guard, is lesson number one.”

  She nodded. “Gotcha.”

  “So, is this your familiar?”

  “Yep.” She scratched at the bridge of the cat’s nose. “She’s called Jinx.”

  “And does she—”

  “Speak?” she chuckled. “Usually, but not on catnip. I can’t have her outing me to the family.”

  A twinge of pain struck my hand again. I settled myself on the edge of the bed, glancing over Camilla and Conrad once again. They looked peaceful. “Are they sleeping or—”

  “Yes, they’re both asleep,” she said. “I heard Conrad escaped a couple nights ago, apparently he got all the way down the road before he was caught.”

  “What was he escaping?”

  “From what I gather, this family, and they’ve been doing it for years now,” she said, stroking her cat as she sat beside me on the bed. “Both of them, they’ve been so worried.”

  They were worried, but I couldn’t help but wonder what about. This family had a lot of cause for concern, but nothing I could stick my finger on. Nothing I could say for sure. Their grandmother perhaps, she seemed like she was the mastermind to all of this.

  “I saw Camilla earlier in a room at the end of the hall,” I said. “She was acting a little erratic.”

  Cass shook her head. “Not possible,” she replied. “Camilla was brought up twenty minutes ago. She’d been in the dining room with Doctor Jones.”

  “Peculiar,” I said. “I was certain it was her. The butler and the maid even chased me down the hall, they’d even called her Miss Kingsway.”

  She shuddered. “This place gives me the creeps,” she said. “Can you believe they have two sets of stairs, one for the family and another for the help.”

  That, I could believe. “What else have you found out about them?”

  “For starters, the house is much bigger than it seems,” she said. “The rooms are constantly changing. Never in one spot for too long, and an abundant number of secret doors everywhere.”

  “And what does your gut tell you about that?”

  “The family isn’t meant to be trusted,” she said.

  I nodded, agreeing with her thought. “Rich people who use witches are usually looking for trouble anyway. More money, more power,” I said. “I think the spell they want me to cast is to bond two things together.”

  “Like a power transference?” she asked.

  It was worse. Much worse. “Like one thing absorbing another.”

  Thump.

  The handle of the door rattled, cutting us off.

  We stared at the handle as a long creak extended out from the floorboards.

  TWENTY-THREE

  The rattle came again, followed by a whimper and a thud.

  “Who do you think it is?” I asked.

  Cass shook her head. “Could be anyone,” she said. “But when I took this case, I knew I’d have to protect her.”

  I nodded. “I’ll have to leave sometime,” I said, “if this continues to spread around my body, there’s no knowing what might happen.”

  “Open the door,” she said. “I’ll prepare.”

  She placed the cat on the floor as it skittered off back under the bed.

  With a swift wave of my hand, the door was unlocked, and the handle turned.

  Dum. The door opened.

  In the darkness from the hall, a figure laid in the doorway.

  “Petra?” I asked, squinting to see her properly.

  “H—help,” she whimpered, clenching her stomach.

  I jumped forward to grab her, placing a hand beneath her arm. Cass joined me in helping her to her feet. And as Petra was stood, it was visibly clear she was pregnant. But the large bump hadn’t been there before.

  “Has she always—”

  “Been pregnant?” I finished, shaking my head. “If she had, she was definitely not almost ready to give birth.”

  We helped her to the edge of the bed where she perched herself, spreading her legs and cradling the bump with both hands. She began heavy breathing, her fingernails dragging the duvet from beneath Camilla and Conrad.

  “Stay calm,” I said, closing the door quietly. I placed myself in front of her, my hands on either side of her hot face, pressed against her cheeks to get her to look at me.

  “What happened?” Cass asked in a low voice, her eyes crossing me to the bump pushing on Petra’s dress. “She wasn’t like this—”

  “It’s moving,” Petra said, her grasp moving from the bed to my sore hand.

  I pulled away, ripping my hand from her grasp. I ground my teeth together, clenched in the pain. I looked back at the circle. It had spread. “Oh, Goddess.”

  Cass took over, focusing Petra’s breathing while I controlled myself and the blinding pain in my hand, like a blister your shoes kept rubbing against, the pain on my hand was a hundred times more than that.

  “She wasn’t like this earlier,” I finally said.

  Cass nodded. “I’ve definitely not prepared for a home birth.”

  “Get—the—doctor,” she said.

  I couldn’t do that.

  I couldn’t bring the doctor here. Or any of the family. Not while Camilla and Conrad laid there, protected by Cassandra. For all I knew, the doctor was part of the problem. They were all part of the problem.

  “How long have you been pregnant?” I asked, trying to get her eyes focused on me.

  She shook her head. “I’m not,” she spat. “I’m not pregnant!”

  If she wasn’t pregnant, then we had different definitions of the word.

  A twitch of movement came from the top of the bed. Camilla’s arm moved. She twitched once more, waking herself until she sat upright and rubbed her eyes.

  “Camilla?” I said, moving to her side. “Are you okay?”

  “I—I—It tastes like iron,” she said, sticking her tongue out.

  Petra continued to groan heavily in pain.

  “What’s happened?” she asked.

  “We’re hoping to find out,” I said. “We have no idea.”

  “We?” she asked.

  Cass waved a hand at Camilla. “I’m here,” she said.

  “Thank goodness,” she replied. “I was so worried they might have done something bad.”

  They still might. “Do you know what your family are planning?” I asked.

  She shook her head. “They’re not my family,” she said, glancing to Conrad laid beside her. She reached for his hand. “Except him.” A single tear fell down her cheek. “I can’t believe it’s got this far.”

  “What’s got this far?” I asked, glancing from her to Cassandra and Petra.

  She shrugged, dipping her chin to her chest. “Just evil.”

  “Get this out of me!” Petra continued, yanking the du
vet under her grasp.

  I left Camilla’s side to help Cassandra keep Petra under control.

  “Quiet,” I said, hushing her. “I can help you.”

  “Can you?” Cass asked.

  I could try. “There’s a crystal, I brought it as a gift,” I said. “They don’t need it now, but it’ll help with her pain. It’ll help with all this, it’s a cleanser.”

  “What type?”

  “Celestite,” I said.

  “I guess they’d have no use for something of such good energy.”

  The remark made brought a smile to my face. “I’ll have to be careful, but what if the room moves, like you said.”

  She looked away in thought. “Follow the sound of Petra, maybe.”

  “I don’t think my brother is breathing,” Camilla said.

  “What?” I pulled away from Petra to check him. He was laid still. Camilla had her fingers on his wrist, checking his pulse.

  “It’s faint,” she said.

  Cass stood. “I’ll go,” she said. “It’s stupid if you go, they’re looking for you. I’m the chef’s assistant, they won’t think I’m anything but the help.”

  “Perfect,” I said with a quick finger snap. “It’s in a purple box with white ribbon.”

  She nodded. “Gotcha.”

  Before Cassandra could leave, she’d have to let go of Petra’s hand.

  “Noooo!” a piercing scream left Petra’s mouth.

  There’s no chance her scream went unheard.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  Grabbing pieces of fabric from around the room. I placed a bunched-up cloth ball in Petra’s mouth for her to bite, and hopefully keep her much quieter.

  “I’ll see if anyone heard,” I said.

  “I should,” Cass began, but I was already at the door.

  I pulled on the handle and peered out, taking a step to look down the hall. It didn’t appear familiar. It was shorter, with no windows at the end of the hall. The door slammed shut with an almighty whoosh.

  “No, no, no,” I grumbled, pressing myself forward and leaning into the door on the handle. The door opened into a bathroom.

  Empty and dark.

  I pulled away back out into the hallway, looking in either direction. I hadn’t seen this corridor before. The floor was the same throughout; wooden with a long length of fabric rug going the length of it.