by E. G. Foley
“Waldrick!” Fionnula cried in alarm when Jake pointed at her.
“She’s not even a person,” he informed them, “but a horrible, wriggly thing!”
“Jacob, that is quite enough,” Waldrick said calmly. “Shout whatever wild things you like about me, but do not speak that way about my lady friend.”
“Lady? Beast is more like it! But whatever she is, you’re worse! You’re a monster!” Jake flung at him. “What kind of sinister bloke cuts the wings off an ‘elpless fairy?”
“Oh dear, oh dear.” Waldrick made a show of rubbing his forehead with a weary air of compassion. “Fairies, ghosts—here we go again. My friends, I beg your pardon for my nephew’s wild ravings. The poor boy has been through so much suffering in his young life. We think he must’ve seen his parents’ murder and the trauma of it all has taken a serious toll on his mind, as you can see. His doctors have assured me that all this should pass once he’s begun to feel safe in his new home. If not, he may need to go into an institution,” Waldrick said through gritted teeth. “In fact, I’m very sure he will.”
“Bollocks!”
The Society mammas gasped in horror at his free use of a curse word; another girl fainted.
Jake’s cheeks were flushed with fury, but at least he had the sense not to use his powers in front of everyone. “I ain’t mad, right! He’s the liar! Every word I’ve said just now is true, and he knows it!”
“Come along, Jacob, that will do. You’re upsetting all the ladies. You need to go lie down.” He seized Jake’s arm and yanked him off the chair. “You’re obviously not feeling quite yourself at the moment,” he snarled, while smiling like a saint. “I hoped you’d be able to meet my friends, but I see it’s still too soon to put so much pressure on you. Everyone, I apologize from the bottom of my heart. This is such an embarrassment.”
He waved to the orchestra to begin to play again.
“Come, Jacob. Let’s not spoil the party for all our guests after they’ve been kind enough to come. Perhaps Fionnula would grace us with a song.”
“Happily, my dear.”
As Waldrick pulled the struggling boy forcibly from the room, the sea-witch took it upon herself to smooth things over with one of her enchanted ditties to calm the guests after what just happened.
Waldrick pulled Jake out of the ballroom by his arm, dragged him through a few more stately chambers, and then threw him into the morning room near the kitchens.
He stepped in after him, then pulled the door shut and locked it. “How dare you?” he hissed when they were alone.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
Family Secrets
“You’re a killer.” Jake backed away from him, but he knew the time had come to use everything that he had learned from Derek. “I know what you did to my parents.”
“You have no proof.”
“Proof enough for me! I saw the memories in your mind through that spell you tried to enslave me with. But guess what, Uncle? Spell’s broken.”
“How?” Waldrick demanded, warily strolling closer.
“None of your business,” Jake retorted.
“What were you doing out in the garden? Flickers saw you come in, and I didn’t give you permission to leave the house.”
“It’s my house,” Jake snarled. “I’m the rightful Earl of Griffon! You’re a fraud—and a murderer. And now you’re going to pay.” With a wave of his hand, he sent a vase flying off the distant mantel, hurtling straight at Waldrick’s head.
Waldrick ducked just in time. But in the next heartbeat, his own possessions began attacking him from all around the room. “Stop that, you brat!”
His umbrella whacked him in the back of the knees.
His cozy throw-blanket glided up from where it was draped over the wing-chair and began choking him, wrapping itself around his neck like a python, spinning him around.
Waldrick tore it away and gasped for air, only to be clobbered over the head with a small flying end-table.
Jake laughed angrily, taunting him as he continued hurling things at him: lamps, statues, pictures off the wall, a footstool. “That’s for my mother, that’s for my father!” he cried with each new object he sent hurling through the air. “That’s for the servants you let Fionnula turn into frogs just so the two of you could cover your tracks! That’s for Gladwin—and this is for Derek—and Dani. You made me throw my best friends out in the street!”
“Ugh—commoners!”
“At least they’re not squids!”
“Jacob, stop for a second and listen to me! Listen carefully. I have something to say!”
“You think an apology’s going to be good enough after all you took from me?”
“It’s not an apology, it’s a plan! Don’t you see?” Then he lowered his voice to a whisper. “With you, I don’t need Fionnula anymore. We could be a team, you and I! We could be unstoppable. Quit that!” he ordered, ducking with a curse as Jake responded by sending a Wedgwood china doggy flying at him from the curio in the corner. “You’re only making it worse for yourself!”
“How could it be worse?” Jake asked bitterly.
Waldrick grabbed a fire-poker just in time to parry the umbrella that now thrust at him like the blade of an invisible swordsman.
“En garde!” Jake made the umbrella engage his wicked uncle in a fencing match.
Fortunately for Waldrick, he was a well-trained swordsman, blocking another stab of the umbrella with a skilled parry.
Bored already of this game, Jake made the fire-poker fly out of Waldrick’s hand and come to him.
Jake grabbed the fire-poker out of the air and lifted it in his grasp like a spear, drawing back his arm. “Goodbye, Uncle.” With that, he hurled the fireplace poker at him like a spear.
“Egads!” Waldrick dove out of the way, then looked at his nephew in astonishment. “You just tried to kill me!”
“How do you like it?” Jake retorted.
Waldrick couldn’t believe a mere boy had actually tried to impale him! “Enough of this, you rabid little cur! You remind me why I never wanted children. On the other hand, maybe you’re more like me than I thought.” With a cold smile, he reached down and picked up the fire poker from where it had landed by his feet. “Think you can skewer me, eh?” Sweat running down his face, he advanced toward his nephew in fury. “Put out your hands, Jake, and let me break them.” He gripped the weapon like a club. “We’ll see if you can still do your magic tricks when I’ve turned your hands into mangled, bloody stumps.”
Jake looked a little unnerved by his ruthless advance. He took a backward step. “I’m not afraid o’ you!”
Waldrick laughed softly, sensing real fear for the first time in the boy. Finally! It pleased him. “Aren’t you, indeed?”
“What are you going to do now? Kill me the way you killed my parents? Why? Why did you hate them so much? What did they ever do to you?”
The question touched a nerve in him. “Oh, don’t give me those sad-puppy eyes! You think you’re the only who’s ever suffered in this world? For your information, your father ruined my life. He stole what was mine! He got what he deserved.”
“What are you talking about? What did he steal?”
Waldrick glared at him, fighting the urge to tell.
He could not hold back. “Your father robbed me of my magic. That’s right, Jake. I had a gift once, too, but your father couldn’t let me keep it. He had to be the only one, the center of the world! So full of himself. Him and Derek Stone. The two great pals,” he fairly spat.
Jake eyed him warily. “Did you have telekinesis, too?”
“No. I had something better.” Waldrick gave him a chilly smile. “You can move things without touching them? Well, I…could burn them.”
Jake’s eyes widened.
“Yours is called telekinesis. Mine was called pyrokinesis. And one day, when my power first arrived, just as the Kinderveil began dissolving—well, I admit, I had difficulty controlling it. I was only a boy! I’d barel
y had my gift for forty-eight hours. Hadn’t even told my family yet…except my big brother found out. He saw what happened. But it was an accident! I never meant to hurt anyone!”
Waldrick shook his head, lost in his memories. “No one would’ve found out it was I who caused that fire, anyway. Who’d have believed it? It merely looked like a cooking fire got out of control and burned down those peasants’ cottages… No one would’ve known. But Jacob couldn’t let it go. Some brother! He said the Order would punish me or hand me over to the human authorities for arson—but even that was nothing compared to what our father would do.”
Waldrick’s eyes glazed over as he stared into space, remembering. “Father already disliked me enough. Jacob was always his favorite. I was nothing to him,” he said with a sneer. “So I begged my brother not to tell what I had done. Finally, Jacob agreed to help me. But in exchange for my brother’s silence, I had to pay a terrible price. He said if I wanted him to keep the secret, I had to submit to the Extraction.”
“What’s that?” Jake breathed.
“You don’t want to know.”
“Tell me!”
“The Extraction is a very dangerous spell to remove a person’s magic. A dreadful and agonizing ordeal. But Jacob said my gift was too powerful for me. That we couldn’t risk my accidentally hurting anyone else. So he sneaked into Bradford House next door and ‘borrowed’ an ancient grimoire from the old witch, Lady Bradford. We used the incantation in her book to transfer my pyrokinesis into an enchanted holding vial.
“The Extraction nearly killed me,” Waldrick continued. “Or rather, your father nearly killed me, doing the spell. I daresay I’ve never been the same. But he barely knew what he was doing. He was just a boy himself, only fourteen. He must have gone overboard with it, just like he did with everything, because once he took away my fire, I haven’t been able to get warm since.”
Jake stared at him.
Waldrick sighed. “Even so, I was glad to be rid of what seemed to me a curse at the time. Young as I was, I knew he was right. Pyrokinesis was too much for me. It’s a very rare gift. Far as I’ve heard, only one or two of the Dark Druids has it. In any case, my brother promised he’d help transfer my gift back into me when I was ready. Till then, we hid the enchanted vial in the vault beneath Griffon Castle.
“From that day on, we two brothers kept the secret from all the world, even our parents. Even his best friend, Derek Stone. We had to protect our family’s good name, and Jacob knew that Stone would’ve gone straight to the Order with the truth about what happened. Not that anyone died in that fire, but a few of the peasants were injured. We were frightened. We did not know what the world might do to me.
So we covered up my involvement in the fire and let everyone assume I had not inherited any magic.”
Jake shook his head.
Waldrick smirked. “To be honest, for a long time afterward, I was glad to be rid of my gift. I wanted nothing to do with magic. Unlike most Evertons, I got the chance to be normal. And for about a decade, that was good enough for me.” He paused. “So now you know our little family secret, Jake, and you’re the only one who does, besides Fionnula.”
“If my father helped you cover up your crime, then why did you murder him?” Jake demanded.
“Because he lied to me.” Waldrick’s eyes glittered in the darkness. “Betrayed me. He promised me that one day, when I was ready, he’d help restore my gift. The Extraction doesn’t have to be permanent. But when I grew older and that day came when I wanted my magic back, he refused.”
Jake lifted his eyebrows at this revelation.
“I was twenty-three years old by that time,” Waldrick ground out, “but my brother had the nerve to say that I still wasn’t mature enough and probably never would be. The arrogance! He said I could never have my power back. That I’d only misuse it. And when I pressed him, he admitted he had already destroyed the vial—and my power with it—long ago.”
Jake drew in his breath.
Waldrick’s anger snapped. “What right did he have to do that, I ask you? How dare he destroy what was mine—what was once a part of me? Who was he to make that decision? But that’s just how he was. Arrogant to the core. Always knew better than everyone else. Well, I showed him.”
“So, you murdered him?” Jake breathed, shaking his head as he stared at him in shock. “That just proves he was right. You’re a monster.”
Waldrick’s grasp on the fire-poker tightened at the insult, but he forced a cold smile. “I don’t care if you call me names, boy. All I care about is keeping what I’ve rightfully earned. You are not going to take it away from me.”
“Rightfully earned? You stole it all!”
“Turnabout’s fair play. He stole my gift. I stole his earldom. I gave you the chance to cooperate, Jake, but you refused to go along with the program.”
“Dashed right I refused. I want nothing to do with you or your plans! You’re twisted! Look what you did to Gladwin! My father was right to strip you of your talent. That’s a terrible power, and you’re the last person in the world who ought to have it!”
At that moment, a light knock sounded on the parlor door. Jake glanced over, probably hoping for help.
“My lord,” the butler called through the door, “Lady Fionnula is asking for you!”
But Waldrick didn’t answer. Instead, he lifted the fire-poker and used that fleeting chance to take his best shot while Jake’s head was turned.
Whack!
The boy instantly crumpled to the floor, knocked out cold by the blow to the side of his head.
“Go away!” Waldrick bellowed at his butler, his chest heaving.
He tossed the fire-poker aside and quickly untied the cravat from around his neck. “It’s too bad you had to be so stubborn, Jake,” he said under his breath. “But what else did I expect? You are your father’s son.”
He coiled his cravat into a rope and used it to tie Jake’s dangerous hands behind his back, still muttering under his breath. “Call me a monster, you insufferable brat? I’ll show you a monster, if you really want to see one. And it’s due for its next feeding!” He grabbed one of Jake’s ankles and began dragging his unconscious nephew across the floor.
While the party went on in another region of the house, Waldrick dragged Jake to an unused scullery room off the kitchens. Beside the giant dishwashing sinks was a small, locked door at about waist level. It opened to the chute where they threw down the creature’s food.
Waldrick was still so infuriated by the memories of his brother that his hands were shaking as he slid the bolt open and tilted back the door.
He told himself it would be easy enough to make excuses later as to why the brat had disappeared again. All of Society had just seen his dear, precious nephew behave like a raving lunatic. He would simply tell the world that the demented lad had run away, never to be seen again.
Then he would be the earl for good, with no more bother from pesky magical twelve-year-olds who should’ve done the world a favor and died long ago.
“In you go!” Waldrick lifted the still-unconscious Jake off the floor and shoved him, feet first, into the chute. Still stunned from the blow to the head, Jake was only just beginning to stir as Waldrick let go of his arms. “Bon appétit, Jakey, old boy!”
With that, he dropped him into darkness.
“Noooo!” Jake’s voice trailed away with an echo.
“Good riddance!” Waldrick muttered as he let the little door bang shut. Sliding the bolt home with a narrow smile of satisfaction, he cast an evil look behind him at the kitchen door, eager to get back to his party.
Well! That’s handled. Dusting off his hands, Waldrick lifted his chin, smoothed his waistcoat and his hair, then strolled back out to his guests, a happy man. Now he actually had something to celebrate!
Sing loud, Fionnula, he thought with a smile.
Her tune would help to cover up the screams.
“AHHHHHHHHHH!”
Jake regained consci
ousness in the middle of falling endlessly down a long, smooth slide through pitch darkness.
Thud.
“Ow.” He landed on his rear end in a dark dungeon somewhere far beneath his uncle’s house. His hands were still tied behind his back, leaving him defenseless.
It was not the most comfortable position, either.
Where am I?
Uneasily, he scanned the black space around him. His eyes were slow to adjust to the darkness. Indeed, he could barely think straight after that blow to the side of his head.
Finally, heart pounding, Jake saw he was in some sort of underground cell, an old limestone cave reinforced with iron bars. Three torches burned far above, but they did not provide much light. As he struggled to get his bearings and collect his thoughts, he suddenly became aware of a presence nearby. He went very still as he realized he was not alone. Something was down here with him.
Something big.
He held very still—suddenly afraid to move or get up or to draw attention to himself.
All the while, his head throbbed with pain. He could feel a trickle of blood oozing from his left temple where his uncle had clobbered him with the fire-poker.
Great, he thought. If there was some sort of animal down here waiting to eat him, the scent of blood was only going to whet its appetite.
Just as he was trying to think of some sarcastic comment to help convince himself this was no big deal and he could easily get out of it, his eyes widened and his blood ran cold.
A low, angry growl rose from the shadows.
PART V
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
The Fairy Courier
Dani and Derek were doing surveillance on Waldrick’s mansion from the leafy shadows of the park across the street. Trying to see what was going on inside, all they could do at this point was watch and wait for a chance to rescue Jake—though it did seem odd to have to rescue someone from a big, glamorous party where he was the guest of honor. There had to be worse fates.