Belmary House Book Three (8 page)

“What happened with Rose?” Liam demanded, looking around as if he expected Solomon to reappear at any time.

Piper swallowed and moved closer to Lachlan. He put his arm around her, but she shivered and pushed him away. “God, are we ever going to be able to get warm again? You’re like a block of ice.”

Evie ran from the room, returning a few minutes later with her arms laden with blankets. She dropped one in everyone’s lap and sat cross legged in the middle of the circle they’d unconsciously formed, sitting dumbly and staring at one another, trying to figure out what had happened while they waited for her.

“Rose was Piper’s grandma. She was … unhinged, and tried to kill us.” Evie nodded to Piper and Lachlan. “I was unconscious, but when I woke up, she was just gone.”

“It is about the same thing,” Piper agreed, gathering her blanket around herself and closing her eyes tiredly.

Tilly wondered why they continued to sit in that cold room, as if waiting for something else to happen, when she realized everyone was too weak to move yet. Lachlan still moved slowly and Ashford could do little more than lean against the wall, breathing shallowly. She tucked the blanket under his chin and around his shoulders, ignoring the pained look that crossed his face every time she touched him.

Hell no. She wasn’t going to let him retreat so far into his hole that she wouldn’t be able to reach him. That wasn’t going to happen.

“She never came back? You’re sure she wasn’t sent to another time? I’ve never seen anything like that before.”

Tilly wanted to shake Liam for his manic rambles, afraid it would make Ashford feel worse about himself than he already did, but forced herself to try and feel compassion for him. He’d lost his son after all.

“I’m sorry your plan didn’t work,” she said.

Piper snorted and she glared at Liam some more. “Oh, his plan worked fine.” She sighed and sank against Lachlan’s blanketed chest. “And no, my grandma never came back. I don’t know what happened to her, but …” She stopped, giving Ashford a compassionate look. “It happened when I was angry. So angry I lost control.”

A persistent buzzing feeling distracted Tilly from the horror on Ashford’s face, and she realized it was the phone Piper had given her, ringing in her pocket.

“Oh my gosh, we forgot about Emma,” she said. When she answered it was the girl Mellie speaking nearly hysterically into it.

“We couldn’t wait anymore, I think we’re losing her. Should we take her to hospital or to the castle?”

She handed the phone to Piper, quickly explaining, “They think Solomon was connected to Emma somehow. We came down here to tell you not to …” she trailed off, unable to keep from looking at Ashford, who pulled himself to his feet, avoiding her.

Piper and the others jumped up as well. Piper took the phone and barked orders into it. It would take too long to get to the nearest hospital, and if Emma’s illness was really caused by a hex, then there was nothing they could do for her anyway.

Tilly wanted to speak with Dex but he was too distraught to take the phone. They were already on their way, and would be there soon. Evie pulled Piper aside, giving her a pep talk of sorts.

“You did this once before. You saved me, remember? No matter what you think, you have it in you.”

“But I don’t know what Solomon did,” she cried, whirling on Liam. “Have you ever healed anyone before?”

“Broken bones and such, nothing serious.” He continued to furtively search the room as if Solomon was hiding in it. “If he’s really gone, perhaps that weakened whatever hex he put on her.”

Ashford finally spoke. “He told us we couldn’t kill him. Whatever he did was linked to him being killed, destroyed, whatever. It was his insurance plan. He knew we’d never act if innocent lives were involved.” His voice cut off, strangled by emotion. “If Miss Saito— this is all my fault.”

Tilly paused in reaching for him. They had run downstairs to warn them of Solomon’s trickery, but it appeared they already knew. Had they had everything under control, only to be distracted into making Ashford lose control? If that was the case then it wasn’t his fault at all, but Tilly’s for acting rashly.

“That’s not helping right now,” Evie said crisply. “He was about to shoot Tilly. We’d all be dead if he was still here. You just reacted.”

Piper seemed to have pushed her anger at Liam aside and they conferred together quietly in the corner. Evie gathered up the blankets and herded them all to the kitchen to wait, where she put a kettle on to boil. Tilly looked at her questioningly, and Evie shrugged.

“They always boil water in emergencies,” she said, and though she’d been acting the calmest of all of them up to that point, Tilly could see how rattled she was.

She wondered if Evie had drawn the same conclusion, that their interference had caused everything to be in such a mess. Lachlan waited in the back courtyard, to help carry Emma in when they arrived, and Tilly and Evie made tea with the boiling water, trying to get Ashford, Piper, and Liam to drink some to restore themselves. They declined. Piper and Liam continued their harried planning, and Ashford drifted closer to the door, obviously wanting to escape upstairs to their room.

“You need to stay,” Piper said without looking up, as if she sensed his objective. “We might need you.”

“I don’t think that’s wise,” he said, edging out the door.

“I’ll go get him,” Tilly said, putting her teacup down. It tasted bitter, but the heat had been comforting after the freezing cold of the library.

“It doesn’t matter,” Piper said, her voice bordering on cruelty, but Tilly knew she was just concentrating. “He’s probably right, anyway.”

She didn’t want Ashford to be alone in the bedroom, knowing he’d just sit on the edge of the bed and stare off into space, blaming himself and thinking of ways to keep her at a distance. She told them to call her if they needed her to come back down, but they looked past her as if she wasn’t there, lost in their own magical problem.

Tilly cared about what happened to Emma, but she knew there was nothing she could do, save pace and worry and get in the way. Evie and Lachlan were there to do grunt work if necessary, and right now, Ashford needed her. Whether he thought he did or not.

***
 

Dexter held onto Emma, laid out in the backseat of Shane’s old beat up car. The kid turned out to be an impressive driver, maneuvering the winding, hilly roads with ease. The young nurse, Mellie, had finally lost her professional sense of calm when Emma started seizing, and demanded shrilly that they head out, either for the hospital or the castle, she couldn’t say, but they couldn’t stay at the inn doing nothing.

She tried to call Piper on her own phone when they reached the point in the road where they’d have to decide which way to turn. When Piper didn’t answer, he tried to call Tilly, tossing the phone to the front seat when she answered, all the while trying to keep Emma from rolling to the floor, which was littered with sandwich wrappers.

Once they were instructed to go to the castle, the iron band around his chest eased a little. If they were allowed to head up that way, that meant everything was settled. They’d found a way to reason with Wodge, that fiendish, lying monster, and now they’d get Emma the help she needed. He’d do whatever it took to get her better. He stroked the hair off her pale, clammy forehead, silently promising that everything would be fine, and wishing the kid would drive faster.

“Almost there,” Shane said, glancing in the rearview mirror. “Just up this driveway now.”

Dex forced a grateful smile, readying himself to jump out of the car the second it stopped, but the driveway turned out to be at least a mile long and he found himself tensing up again, longing to punch something, throw something, anything but sit there helplessly.

After winding around several gardens, they pulled into a large gravel courtyard, leading in one direction to a barn further down a hill, and in the other to the back entrance of a giant stone castle. He hadn’t noticed it at all driving up, so engrossed in keeping his eyes glued to Emma, afraid she’d stop breathing if he looked away too long. He gaped up at the mad compilation of brick and stone, towers and turrets.

A tall, burly man with long black hair grunted at him as he got out of the car, reaching to help carry Emma. He gathered her up like she weighed no more than a kitten and raced for the door, Shane fast on his heels, leaving him standing with Mel, not sure what had happened.

“That’s Lachlan, Piper’s husband,” Mel explained, motioning for him to follow. “Let’s try and stay out of the way unless they ask for help.”

“But you’re the medical professional, right?” he asked. “Shouldn’t you be in there telling them what to do?”

“Ah, but it’s not a medical issue, remember? Your girlfriend’s under some sort of spell, or else it’s the time travel sickness, but as far as I know that only happens with the bad spell, and you said she came through a portal, is that right?” He could tell by her soothing voice she was using a distraction technique and he shoved his way ahead of her. She caught up and grabbed his sleeve. “You have to stay calm. You must listen to what Piper tells you, even if it seems odd, aye?”

He wondered how much odder anything could get. She asked him if he needed a slap in the face, catching him off guard and making him laugh. He quickly swallowed it, tears rising in his eyes at the thought of losing Emma after all they’d been through to get her home.

Inside the overly warm kitchen, he found Emma laid out on top of a big plank table, a blanket draped over her legs. A roaring fire took up almost one entire wall of the room, and he peeled off his jacket, already starting to sweat. The others didn’t seem to notice how hot it was, in fact the big man who’d taken Emma sat huddled in front of it as if he’d just come in from skiing, along with a nervous looking red-haired woman.

A tiny woman with a cap of sleek dark hair argued with another man over Emma’s still form. Dex raised his hand, wanting to beg them to do something, but Mel took his arm and led him away from the table, further from the fire.

“I don’t know why it’s so warm in here,” she said. “But they must have a reason for it.”

As he anxiously sat in the chair Mel offered him, Piper locked her gaze with his, her eyes round. She looked directly at him, but he was quite sure she wasn’t seeing him, and he fought the goosebumps that rose along the back of his neck.

“You love her,” Piper said, raising her hand and pointing at him. “If so, I need you here.”

He jumped up and ran to her side. She took his hand and placed it on Emma’s heart. She moved her own hands back and forth, a few inches above Emma’s body, elbowing the other man who stood beside her out of the way.

“You stand by her feet, and focus like you’ve never focused before,” she told him, in a completely different sounding voice from the one she’d use to call him over. The man nodded meekly and hurried to do her bidding.

Dex had to fight the chills the entire he time he stood next to Piper. Her body emanated cold waves, and he began to understand why they had the fire stoked up so high. Minutes dragged by, in which Piper moved her hands back and forth, alternating pressing down on Emma in spots. Her face was screwed up in extreme concentration, and Dex longed to ask if he was doing what he was supposed to be doing right. All he did was stand there with his hands pressed to Emma’s faintly beating heart, sick with worry and fear.

Piper staggered back, her husband jumping up to catch her before she crashed to the floor.

“It’s not working,” she said. “This is everything I did when Evie got cursed by Rose, but it’s not working this time.” She looked at the man standing at Emma’s feet and he shook his head.

“I don’t know what more we can do without Solomon,” he said.

Dex kept his hand on Emma, but swung around to look at them incredulously. “What do you mean, without Solomon? Where is he?”

A resounding silence told him everything he needed to know. “You killed him? When you knew he had something to do with Emma’s sickness? How could you do that?”

“Now, lad, calm yourself,” Piper’s husband said. “We’re not giving up yet.”

“No, of course not,” Piper said, shivering. “I’m so cold, though. I need to warm up.”

Dex dropped his head onto Emma’s chest, her heartbeat the only thing keeping him from falling to pieces. She was alive, but where was she? Why couldn’t she wake up and return to him?

Tilly paused outside the door, giving Ashford some time to collect himself. She was sure he wasn’t okay, but was she okay? She was shaken from shooting the gun, and from everything she’d witnessed. She knew that he came from a long line of witches, and that he’d been traveling through the portal in his house for many years. But she herself had gone through the portal, and while it had been a strange jolt into another time, it didn’t seem all that extraordinary.

She’d seen what his sister Camilla could do, and it had scared the daylights out of her, but even through that, she’d felt confident that Ashford was nothing like his twin. He said time and time again that he’d never had any magical inklings. Not once in his life had anything even remotely otherworldly ever manifested because of him. Until today.

And the thing he’d done today. She removed her hand from the doorknob wondering if she shouldn’t go back downstairs. Was she afraid of him? No, certainly not, just confused. A massive ray of light had exploded from him, causing a man to disappear. Where he’d gone, she didn’t much care, and if Piper was correct in assuming it was the same thing that happened to her in the past, Wodge wasn’t coming back. She shuddered, praying he wouldn’t. If anyone deserved it, it was Solomon Wodge. She didn’t feel bad about that, but Ashford’s own confusion and lack of control threw her. If anyone was ever completely in control at all times, it was Ashford.