The Kingdom tgqs-2

by Amanda Stevens

  “Just a figure of speech. Anyway, why all the interest?”

  I hesitated, still considering how much I should tell him. “Something happened earlier and I’ve been trying to figure out what it means. I saw Catrice in town and she asked for a ride home. Then she offered to give me a tour of her studio. She never said a word about anyone else being there, but Bryn and Luna were in another room. And then I saw Hugh coming up the path to the studio as I was leaving.”

  “So?”

  “Why didn’t she mention that the others were there? Why did Luna and Bryn stay out of sight? Don’t you find that odd?”

  “I take it you do.”

  “Very odd. I had the distinct impression that they had all gathered at the studio to…observe me.”

  “To observe you,” he repeated. “That’s—”

  “Disturbing. I know.”

  “And maybe a little paranoid,” he suggested. His tone was light, but I had a feeling he meant it. I did sound paranoid.

  “Why would they want to observe you?” he asked in a cautious tone, as though wanting to placate but not encourage me.

  I hugged my knees tighter. “I don’t know. But it’s not my imagination. Something strange is happening to me here, Thane. I have this awful feeling…this premonition…” I looked past him to the mountains. “You must feel it, too,” I said in a half whisper. “It can’t just be me.”

  He glanced away. “What do you think is happening to you?”

  “I don’t know, but it has something to do with the flooding of Thorngate Cemetery. And Freya’s death. Maybe even Wayne’s attack and that hidden grave in the laurel bald. They’re all connected somehow. There’s a design here, some bigger scheme, and I know it sounds insane, but I can’t shake the feeling that I’ve been brought here for a reason.”

  “You were brought here for a reason,” he said. “To restore a cemetery.”

  “But think of the circumstances.” A hint of desperation crept into my voice. If he hadn’t thought me paranoid before, he certainly would now. “The donation that brought me here was made anonymously. Why? And why restore Thorngate now after years and years of neglect? Why hire me when there are other restorers in the state with far more experience?”

  “Your credentials are impressive,” he reasoned.

  I shrugged.

  “Why else do you think you were brought here?” he asked softly. “You’ve never been to Asher Falls before, have you? You don’t have family here.”

  “I don’t know why. But there’s a tie. I know it.” The breeze blew a dead leaf against my leg, and it clung for a moment before tumbling away. “Remember that day at the falls when I told you I felt a vibration? It was strong, like the pulse of an electrical current, but you couldn’t feel it because it was coming from within. It’s like this place, this land…even the mountains are calling out to me, and something inside me is responding.”

  An emotion I couldn’t name flashed across his face before he rose and put out his hand. “Let’s take a walk.”

  Angus followed us down the stepping-stones, but he wouldn’t come out on the wooden walkway. Instead, he remained on solid ground, keeping watch while we strolled to the very end to gaze down into those murky depths.

  As the sun slipped toward the treetops, the shade from the forest deepened the shoreline to black. I leaned over the railing, peering through the shadows and algae, straining to see the headstones and monuments of that watery graveyard. If I stared long enough, would I see Freya’s ghost float to the surface?

  “Have you ever been down there?” I asked Thane. “To Thorngate, I mean. It seems like something an adventurous kid would want to see.”

  “I did dive down there once,” he admitted. “I was maybe twelve or thirteen at the time.”

  “What did it look like?”

  “Visibility is pretty limited. There’s a lot of sediment and debris. I didn’t see any graves or headstones. No coffins or bones, either,” he said with a grin. “But there was a statue…an angel. It was tall and still upright and it seemed to appear out of nowhere right in front of me. There was just enough light shining down through the water that for a moment, she looked alive. It was…unnerving to say the least.”

  “What did you do?”

  “Surfaced and got the hell out of there.” The grin flashed again.

  “You’ve never gone back down?”

  “No, but not because of the angel.” He rested his arms on the railing and stared out across the calm water. “It seemed intrusive somehow. Disrespectful. Like I was disturbing their rest.” He slanted a glance. “Feel free to call me crazy.”

  I tucked a strand of hair behind my ear. “I’m the woman who feels phantom vibrations, remember?”

  I saw a smile in his eyes and something darker. Something that made me tremble in anticipation as he put his hand over mine on the railing. “About those vibrations. Maybe it’s not the land you’re responding to.”

  I glanced away.

  “Do I make you uncomfortable?” he asked.

  “Yes, because I think you’re somehow a part of this.”

  “That’s ridiculous. There’s no grand design to all this, Amelia. There’s no such thing as destiny. What you feel is what you feel. You just have to trust it.”

  I thought about the girl he’d wanted to marry—Harper—and wondered what she’d been like. Pell had said she was unstable. A danger to herself and to others.

  Like Devlin’s family, she’d died in a terrible car crash. But her ghost hadn’t lingered. For whatever reason, she didn’t haunt Thane. I wondered if that was his doing or hers.

  I could feel his warm gaze on me. Shakily I said, “This is hard for me.”

  He nodded. “I understand. You still have issues with that detective. No one knows better than I do how hard it is to let go of memories. But the past is no place to live your life, and sometimes the best way to move on is to move on.”

  “And if I’m not ready?”

  “Then you’re not ready. I won’t push you. But I won’t go quietly away, either.”

  “You won’t have to. Once the restoration is finished, I’ll be the one to go away.”

  His eyes darkened as he stared down at me. “Charleston isn’t so far.”

  Wasn’t it? At the moment, my beloved city—and my beloved Devlin—seemed a million miles from me. “Why me?” I asked softly.

  He stroked a knuckle down my cheek. “Why not you?”

  I closed my eyes on a shiver. “Ivy once told me that you would never choose me…an outsider.”

  “She said that?” He sounded annoyed. “Ivy’s a troubled girl. I don’t think she has much family support. Her father is some high-powered attorney in Columbia and her mother is always traveling. Half the time, Ivy is left on her own. Poor kid’s starved for attention. That’s why I’ve tried to cut her some slack. But she knows nothing about my choices. Or anything else about me, for that matter.”

  “But there is a caste system in this town. Sidra told me earlier that she’s not allowed to visit Tilly Pattershaw’s house because Tilly isn’t one of them.”

  His hand dropped away, and I could sense his irritation. “She’s probably just parroting what she’s heard her mother say. Bryn’s an insufferable snob.”

  “No. Catrice said something like that, too.” I glanced down at the blisters in my palms and thought of Tilly’s burned hands. “She said that Freya was always trying to fit in where she didn’t belong. I suppose that’s why she turned up in all those pictures. She wanted to be one of them.”

  He sighed. “You do realize you’re sounding a little obsessed.”

  “Yes.”

  He watched me for a moment. “Why does this stuff matter to you so much? It’s ancient history.”

  “You said the other day that you have a responsibility to find out who’s buried in that hidden grave because it’s located on Asher property. I feel a similar responsibility to Freya.”

  “But why? You never even knew her.
And she’s been dead for years.”

  I thought of her ghost wavering at the end of the pier, right where we stood now, and I felt something well inside me, that deep sadness that wasn’t my own but had somehow become a part of me. “I don’t understand it myself, but I feel driven to find out what happened to her. To find out why no one will talk about her death.”

  “That’s just the way it is around here. Folks tend to mind their own business.”

  “Even when it comes to dog fighting and hidden graves,” I said bitterly.

  “When it comes to anything.”

  I stared down into those gloomy depths and envisioned Freya’s ghost. I could see her in my mind, dressed in her burial finery, hair blowing in the breeze. If I found out what happened to her, would she be able to rest? Would she leave me in peace?

  Or would she come back at every twilight to feed on my warmth and energy so that she could sustain her presence in the world of the living?

  Either way, I had to know.

  Twenty-Seven

  After Thane left, I stayed outside to watch the sunset. As late afternoon drifted toward evening, the air and light shifted, and the scattering of clouds across the western sky turned bloodred. Dusk dropped and I felt, not a vibration or even a ripple, but a waiting stillness. A held breath… .

  And then she was there as I somehow knew she would be. Freya’s ghost.

  Her shimmering form appeared to me a split second before Angus growled a warning. I didn’t turn toward her, of course. I couldn’t discard my father’s rules that easily. So I sat there quaking in that abnormal chill as I watched her from the corner of my eye.

  She floated up from the lake, pausing on the stepping-stones as if some invisible barrier kept her from coming any closer. As I tracked her in my periphery, I talked soothingly to Angus, but he wouldn’t settle down. He paced in front of me, hair bristling in agitation.

  “It’s all right,” I soothed. “We’re perfectly safe here.”

  Perfectly safe. Was there even such a thing?

  A few steps and we would at least be on hallowed ground. That was the one rule that hadn’t changed since my time with Devlin. My sanctuary had yet to be penetrated by ghosts. I had to believe that Freya’s spirit wouldn’t be able to breach my refuge, either.

  But instead of retreating into the house, I turned my head slightly, pretending to gaze out over the lake. The first thing I noticed was her demeanor. She wasn’t staring up at me as she’d done on that first night. Nor did she challenge me as she had on the second. I didn’t feel her confusion or her anger or any other emotion. She was just…there, suspended in that strange in-between time when the glow of the sunset lingered even as the moon started to rise. Trapped in that eerie light, she hovered motionless until I looked at her. And then slowly she lifted her head and impaled me with her ghost eyes.

  My heart tripped, and the air expelled from my lungs in a painful rush. There was no wind to speak of, but I felt the icy bite of a draft down my spine, the bristle of fear at my nape. Now I was desperate to retreat, but I couldn’t move. I sat frozen in terror, frozen in time as those nebulous tentacles reached out to me, connecting for one split second my mind to hers. In that fleeting moment of illumination, everything around me and inside me went very still, and yet the silence teemed with imagined noises. With moans and whispers and a million hellish sounds that threatened to blend at any moment into one very real scream.

  I saw her in my mind but not as a ghost. Gone was that ethereal façade, the otherworldly beauty of her specter, and in its place was the grotesque death mask of her corpse. She hadn’t perished in a tragic fire. She’d been murdered, her throat slashed from ear to ear. And as she lay prone on the ground, eyes open and sightless, I could see the outline of a pregnant belly through her bloody dress.

  It happened in a heartbeat, that vision. As the breeze swept up from the lake, it was already starting to fade. But I remained in the grip of that terrible paralysis, unable to move, barely able to breathe. My fingers had automatically gone to the stone at my neck, and I clutched it frantically, trying to summon the protection of Rosehill Cemetery. Not just for me, but for Freya and her unborn child.

  She was fading, too. I could see through her now, all the way to Bell Lake where mist swirled and writhed over the surface. Below, the bells started to ring as the dead began to stir.

  The ghost turned toward the water, tilting her head as if listening to the phantom tolling. She looked back once, over her shoulder, and then she was gone.

  * * *

  I remained on the steps as the mist coiled over the lake. My disregard of the rules was reckless and stupid, and yet there I sat.

  It was almost as if I was daring Freya’s ghost to come back. I didn’t understand my behavior. What was happening to me here? How could I be so drawn to and repelled by the same bizarre place?

  Go home, a little voice prodded. Forget about this town. Forget about restless souls and Freya’s murder and that hidden grave in the laurel bald. Forget about Pell Asher and Luna Kemper and poor Tilly Pattershaw, with her wounded birds and burned hands. Forget about that presence in the mountains, those odd vibrations and the bells that toll for the dead beneath the lake. Forget that you have a connection to Asher Falls. Forget that you were ever here.

  I drew a breath and slowly released it. But I couldn’t forget because now I knew that Freya had been murdered. I might be the only person other than the killer who did know. And no matter how many years had passed, justice would have to be served. Maybe that was why I’d been brought here.

  Angus had been lying at my feet, but now he got up and trotted down the stepping-stones. He was too close to the water’s edge. Too close to the mist. My heart started to pound in trepidation.

  “Angus, come back here!”

  He looked up at me and whimpered, his tail working furiously, but he didn’t obey and I didn’t want to go get him. Already the fog rolled toward the shoreline. The spirits would soon rise. All those restless souls reaching out for me… .

  I shivered and called to him again. “Angus! Come, boy! Time to go in!”

  Another mournful look, another whimper and then he began to paw frantically at the exact spot where the ghost had disappeared.

  Dear God, what had he found? And did I really want to know?

  Reluctantly, I got up and walked down the stepping-stones, my gaze on the lake, on that creeping, swirling mist.

  “What is it, Angus?”

  The offering lay on one of the stones.

  I had almost expected to find a puddle of blood, but what she’d left instead was a rose and a bud, both severed from a thorny stem.

  As I bent to pick them up, the rose started to wither.

  * * *

  Not surprisingly, I couldn’t sleep that night. I lay wide-awake for hours, contemplating Freya’s murder. She’d been pregnant when she was killed, and for whatever reason, she wanted me to know that she and her unborn child had been buried together in that hidden grave, not in the cemetery as Thane had said. Which begged the question, who was buried in the Thorngate grave? Who had perished in that fire?

  And who had been caring for that hidden site in the laurel bald? The killer?

  Luna’s voice drifted out of the darkness. Someone knows. Had she been talking about Freya’s murder?

  The questions went on and on, and as I lay there wide- awake, I tried to think of possible suspects. As much as I wanted to pin the blame on Edward—someone already dead—I had a very bad feeling that the murderer still resided in Asher Falls. After all these years, they must have thought they were home free. Then I’d found that hidden grave. I’d started to ask questions about Freya, and now I’d made myself a target.

  Angus whimpered in his sleep, the sound a manifestation of my own anxiety. It was only from total exhaustion that I finally drifted off, but my mind still wouldn’t rest. Visions swirled in my head of Freya and her unborn baby. Of someone lying in wait for her at the falls.

 
And then the whole dream shifted and I was in Thane’s arms in that same glade. I could feel the mist on my face as we lay entwined by the pool. I could feel my heart pounding even in sleep, and my whole body pulsated with the need to have him deeper, deeper inside me. I clutched at him frantically, my nails leaving marks on his back, and the pain seemed to excite him. For a moment, he didn’t look altogether human, but something savage, something beautiful, something not quite of this world.

  “Soon,” he whispered. His mouth found my breast, and as I responded to his rhythm, the creatures stirred. One by one they crawled from their holes to stare down at us. Not ghosts this time, not the Others that had been awakened by Devlin and me, but abominations that belonged neither to the living world nor to the realm of the dead.

  A wind blew down from the mountains, rippling leaves and carrying night scents, and the half-beings began to howl. Or was that noise coming from me?

  I tried to push Thane away only to realize that he was already gone. I was alone in the glade, shivering in the mist from the falls. I drew my knees to my chest and wrapped my arms tightly around my legs. Never had I felt so lost, so alone. So afraid.

  I glanced up and saw someone gazing down at me from the top of the cliff. Not Ivy this time, but Luna… .

  Eyes gleaming like a cat in the moonlight, she lowered herself over the edge and slunk headfirst down the cliff. Then came Bryn and Catrice, and the unholy trio formed a circle around me as I buried my face in my arms.

  I felt lips in my hair, a breath on my neck and the trail of icy fingers down my spine. They lifted me to my feet, touching and crooning as they dressed me. I looked down to find that I had on Freya’s burial frock. Through the diaphanous folds, I could see the swell of my belly, could feel the vibration of a second heartbeat inside me… .

  My own gasp woke me up. Heart still pounding, I clutched my flat stomach. It took a moment to realize that I’d been dreaming. Oh, thank God.

  The room had grown colder while I’d slept, and I pulled the covers to my chin as I pushed myself up against the headboard. Angus wasn’t in his makeshift bed, but instead had gone over to the window to stare out. He glanced around when he heard me stir, but then his head whipped back to the glass, as if he’d spied something in the dark that he needed to keep an eye on.