Dreaming Darkly
Page 24
“I think you’re gonna be okay,” I said, sagging with relief. “It’s through and through.”
“Fantastic,” he grunted. “That totally makes up for the agonizing pain.”
I got Doyle by his good arm, laying it across my shoulders and helping him stand up. The two of us staggered awkwardly up the steps, gingerly avoiding Simon’s prone form and Liam as he lay across two steps.
“Should we help him?” I said. Doyle’s lip curled.
“I’ll call him an ambulance when I get to the mainland.”
That was just fine by me, and we kept going, until at the top of the steps I paused, groaning. “The boat keys.”
“Huh?” Doyle said, leaning against one of the stone walls that marked the edge of the formal grounds.
“Simon has the only set,” I said. “They’re on his keychain.” I’d have suggested we take the Ramseys’ boat, but Doyle was in no shape to trek to the other side of the island. I sighed, not thrilled at the prospect of having to get that close to Simon again, when Doyle’s eyes widened.
“Ivy—” he started.
I spun, and almost smacked into Simon face-first.
“You,” he hissed, grabbing me by the shirt, “are in a lot of trouble, Ivy Bloodgood.”
I shoved him, but his grip was like a vise, and we both stumbled toward the edge of the steps. Simon hit one of the railings, and it cracked, rotted wood and rusted nails tumbling down the steep cliffside. I grabbed the portion that was still steady with my free hand, crying out as splinters and jagged metal bit into my palm. Simon swayed, losing hold of my shirt but grabbing my hand. We hung there for a split second, and then he smiled at me. “Go ahead.”
I blinked through the fog of pain and adrenaline. “What?”
“I knew we had more in common than DNA!” he said. “You’re like me, Ivy. Not Myra. She was weak. You’re a survivor. You know what you have to do.” His smile got wider, so wide it seemed to be pushing his face out of shape. “You want to let go. You’d enjoy it. It’s okay, Ivy. I understand. We’re the same.”
He suddenly reared back toward the edge, putting all his weight on me, yanking my arm so painfully I felt a joint pop. “Come on!” he shouted. “You’re my daughter. You hold on to me, you die!” He scrabbled at my wrist as I felt the railing slipping out of my grasp, tearing at my flesh. My upper body was out over open air now, and I could see straight down to the beach. “Maybe that’s how it should be,” Simon sighed. “Father and daughter, together. Maybe that’s just. I did those awful things to your mother, after all.”
“You’re wrong,” I said. “About everything except this.” The railing creaked even as I held on for dear life, and I felt the timbers shudder as they started to give.
“Ivy . . . ,” Simon said as he tipped out over the cliff, only the toes of his shoes still on solid ground.
“I am a survivor,” I told him. “And you’re not worth dying over.”
As the railing snapped, I opened my other hand and his sweaty palm slipped free, gravity sucking him away from me as quickly as breathing. I thought I was all right for a split second, and then I was sliding over the edge, trying desperately to grab anything I could to slow my descent.
A hand locked on my ankle, and a strong arm pulled me backward, until my center of gravity was back on the cliff top, and I could crawl away from the edge.
Doyle sprawled on the ground near me, white as a sheet, good arm reaching for me. “Is he dead?” he asked, panting.
I stood shakily, going to the edge of the cliff and looking over. At this distance, Simon looked like he’d just decided to lie in the sand, peacefully, while the waves lapped at his one outstretched hand. “I hope so,” I said, and turned my back on the cliff. Doyle was trying to stand, and I helped him.
“I guess we never did get those boat keys,” he said. I pulled out the ring I’d grabbed from Simon’s pocket when he’d first appeared at the cliff top and tried to manhandle me. Pickpocket skills don’t just go away because your psycho uncle-slash-father is trying to throw you off a cliff.
“Have a little faith in me, Doyle,” I said.
He groaned in relief. “Good, because I really think I need a hospital. And a transfusion. Maybe like six or seven.”
We limped back to the Jeep, and I drove us to the dock, helping Doyle into the boat and making sure he was strapped in before I pulled out into the bay. I didn’t look back at Darkhaven once.
Epilogue
There were Christmas lights stringing the docks in Darkhaven Harbor when Doyle and I took the boat back to the island, but none when we approached the dock at Darkhaven. I hesitated before climbing out, thinking back to when I’d first arrived, with friendly Officer Brant, and the first meeting with Mrs. MacLeod.
She’d be spending her golden years in jail, fortunately, for going along with Simon’s drugging me and who knew what else. He’d glossed over the details of my paternity, promised her money, and just like 99 percent of people, that was all it took. I hoped the prison cafeteria served nothing but meat loaf and stew for her entire sentence.
Doyle touched my gloved hand with his. “You okay?”
His arm was still in a sling, his wool coat only draped on one side, and he shivered a little. I pulled him close so he wouldn’t get too cold. “Are you?”
“My dad got charged with accessory to murder, most of the rest of my family are in jail thanks to the state police swarming all over the island and finding their stash, you almost died saving my life near this very spot, and I’m headed back to the manor of a psychopath who drugged and killed people for fun,” Doyle said. “I’m fan-freaking-tastic.”
“You saved my life too,” I reminded him. “If you hadn’t attacked Simon, we’d be turning into skeletons number five and six in that creepy cave.”
Doyle grinned at me. His bruises had entirely faded, and he looked happier, less like he was carrying weight on him, than he had in the time I’d known him. I guessed putting your abusive asshole father in jail had that effect on a person.
Simon had been buried in the state-run cemetery near Thomaston. I didn’t go to the interment. I’d said everything to him that I needed to say.
Before we went up to the manor, I drove past it to the little cemetery, and I put a wreath next to Mom’s grave. I didn’t say anything to her either, but I figured once I’d had another month or two to process everything that I could come back. It wasn’t like she was going anywhere, not this time.
“Nice,” Doyle said. I shook my head.
“Mom hated Christmas, and wreaths, and anything sentimental,” I said. “So this would have totally pissed her off.”
Doyle stuck close to me as we went back to the manor, turned on a few lights, and headed out the rear door to the beach steps. The railing had been repaired, blond two-by-fours where the rotten old railing had been, complete with a new sign that read: Dangerous Cliff—Stay Back 10 Feet.
“We don’t have to do this,” he said as I carefully brought out Mom’s velvet-wrapped tarot deck.
I shuffled until I found the Devil card and held it up. “This was so Mom,” I said. The cards were all dog-eared and worn from decades of use, and I slid my thumbnail into the crease at the corner, peeling the two thin layers of card stock apart. Inside, on vellum paper so thin it was transparent, sat a tiny folded map. In all the questions from the cops after we’d made it to the mainland, the meetings with Simon’s lawyer, all the papers I’d signed to be the legal owner of the property on Darkhaven when I turned eighteen, I’d kept this to myself.
“We absolutely do have to do this,” I said to Doyle. “After everything we’ve been through, I am not just leaving this tunnel thing alone.” We took the steps down, and I flinched when I saw the dark bloodstains on the two steps where Simon and Liam Ramsey had gone down. This time, I’d brought lanterns and a satellite phone and everything else I could think of that we might need for exploring bootlegger tunnels and possibly finding a cache of loot hidden by my ancestor.
>
The map branched off from the tidal cave, through a sliver in the rock so small you couldn’t see it unless you knew to be looking for an opening. It was deceptive, though, a sort of L-shaped atrium to a network of dry, carefully excavated tunnels, and it didn’t take long, following the turns on Connor’s map, to find the small hollow at the end of the chain.
Doyle shone his lamp inside. There was a crooked stack of chests and crates in one corner, a pyramid of wine casks that looked like they were probably as old as the house, and a lot of odds and ends from centuries of occupation.
I put my hand on the lid of the top chest. Doyle gave me a grin. “Ready to be rich for real?”
“I’m ready to figure out what Simon was willing to kill me over,” I said, and flipped the lid.
It was empty. I opened the next, and the next. A dozen chests and as many crates, all empty. The only thing that wasn’t broken and used up was the wine and a small stack of spare bricks, piled in the corner along with other odds and ends from mansion construction—sheet metal, old tiles, boards eaten up with dry rot.
I waved away the ancient dust, sneezed, and started to laugh. “All of that, and it’s all gone,” I said. “I guess Simon was more right than he knew.”
“So Connor Bloodgood was as much of a grifter as his descendants,” Doyle said, also starting to laugh. I choked on the dust and picked up the flashlight.
“Let’s get the hell out of here. And maybe chuck one of those bricks through a window before we go.”
Doyle laughed. “Can’t blame a con for doing what comes naturally.”
I hefted one of the bricks. “Heavy,” I said, surprised at the weight. “Maybe I can sell these on eBay or something.” I dropped the brick back on the stack, and then started at the dull metallic thud. The red-brown outer layer of the brick flaked off where it had hit, and something gleamed underneath. Doyle’s breath caught.
“Ivy,” he said, scrambling to hand me his pocketknife. My hands were vibrating with excitement as I scraped away the thin layer of clay, the shimmer of silver reflecting my flashlight beam around the tiny room.
There were thirty silver bars in all, heavy and handmade, the spoils of Connor Bloodgood’s life melted down and hidden away for the future. They wouldn’t make me manor rich—private island rich—but they’d definitely pay for a couple of plane tickets to San Francisco. An apartment. Even college, if I wanted it. I could stop, and live, and be normal. If I still wanted to take off, given that I did, after all, have something holding me in Maine.
We locked up the manor and drove back to the dock, silver weighing down our backpacks. I cast off the lines while Doyle started the engine. I was getting pretty good at knowing my way around boats, and once some snow fell and things got quaint and festive, Maine wasn’t so bad. Valerie’s mom was letting me live with them while I finished out the year, Officer Brant had let Doyle move in with him in town, and neither of us had to go into a foster home, so in my book that was as happy as an ending got. Betty and I went to movies almost every weekend, and I’d even let her talk me into playing “Girl on the Beach” in one of her own works, so she could build up a reel to apply to film school.
And there was Doyle. He held my hand with his good one while I steered us out into the bay, and gave me a smile when I looked over at him. I could see myself with him, at least for a longer time than I’d ever seen myself with anyone, anywhere. Darkhaven had felt temporary. Doyle didn’t.
I looked back once at the looming manor house, the crooked light tower, the stark gray cliffs. If I never saw the place again, it would be too soon. The creditors could have it, sell it to pay the family debts. I’d been poor when I walked onto the island, and I didn’t need all the trappings I’d found there. The little bit left of Connor’s fortune would help me take my first step as an adult, but I didn’t need money in the visceral, desperate way Simon had. For a long time, I’d convinced myself I didn’t need anything.
But that wasn’t true anymore. I opened up the throttle, and the boat skipped over the waves, aimed back toward the mainland, and the first place I’d felt like I could maybe settle in my entire life. San Francisco was still out there, no longer an end goal but a new chapter. After that . . . I really could do anything I wanted.
Doyle smiled at me, and I smiled back. He put his arm around me, and for the first time I stood on my toes and kissed him, quick, tasting salt on his lips. He leaned in, and we stayed close, arms around each other as the lights of the mainland got closer. I didn’t know if I’d stay in Maine forever; I didn’t know if I’d get together with Doyle officially, and, if I did, if I’d stay with him beyond the end of the school year. I didn’t know if I’d go to college or even if I’d be on the track team next year. But for the first time in seventeen years, I knew I could stay in one place long enough to find out.
Acknowledgments
This book could not have come about without the Maine branch of my own family tree, who I spent summers with as a kid on an island, for better or worse, just as small as Darkhaven. You either love island living or you hate it, and unfortunately even though I have a lot of good memories of those summers, I admit my feelings about it are close to Ivy’s—too long surrounded by water and I feel claustrophobic. Still, five or six generations of my family managed to hang on in a tiny town on what is essentially a granite rock covered with dirt and a few trees, and without the deep roots they put down—and the stories my great-grandmother Hazel told about being adopted after her entire family was wiped out by tuberculosis—I would not have been able to write the story that became Dreaming Darkly. So thank you to Hazel, Edwin, Grandpa Keith, and the Snow family—I owe you.
About the Author
Courtesy Caitlin Kittredge
CAITLIN KITTREDGE has written several comic books and novels for adults and teens. She spends her time in Massachusetts fixing up her 1881 Victorian house, which she shares with several spoiled cats and a vast collection of geeky ephemera.
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Books by Caitlin Kittredge
Black Dog
Grim Tidings
Dreaming Darkly
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Copyright
Katherine Tegen Books is an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.
DREAMING DARKLY. Copyright © 2019 by Caitlin Kittredge. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
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Cover art © 2019 by SAMMY YUEN
Cover design by CATHERINE SAN JUAN
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Library of Congress Control Number: 2018941659
Digital Edition APRIL 2019 ISBN: 978-0-06-266564-5
Print ISBN: 978-0-06-266562-1
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1920212223PC/LSCH10987654321
FIRST EDITION
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