Raquel Byrnes (23 page)

A white mound on the floor at the far end of the deck near the railing caught my eye. The flashlight beam illuminated a crumpled ball of material. I crept forward, reached for it, and held it up in the light. The mass unfolded and a shock of red marred the bottom of a T-shirt. Blood. I dropped it, backpedaling with my racing pulse. Wiping my hand on my jeans, I panned the shaking beam across the floor but stopped when I found the drag marks. Dual lines of dirt traced a path from the French doors to the railing. I followed them, my mouth dry, not knowing if I wanted to see what was there. I followed the deck as it wrapped around a jutting section of the house to a small alcove cast in shadows.

Please be empty.

The beam glided along the wood deck, and I breathed a sigh of relief to find nothing there. I turned, my eye catching something on the side of the house that made up the back wall of the decking. There, encircled in the light, a bloody smear.

Tendrils of terror wrapped around me, squeezing the air from my lungs, and I panted, not able to take a breath. I scrambled back towards the door. Fear made my hands fumble with the handle. I ran through the study, closing the door behind me and relocking it with trembling fingers.

Simon. I had to show Simon.

I flicked off the flashlight and hurried down the hall to the stairs as fast as the limited light allowed. Almost to the steps, a door squeaked open. I froze, flattened against the wall of the stairwell, and held my breath. Footsteps, muffled in the plush carpet, sounded in the hallway.

The rusty lock rattled and I tried to creep down the stairs away from the hall. I paused on the landing, listening. I thought of Lavender—that she might be in danger—but hesitated. If I was found out, then whoever it was might be pushed into doing something rash. I bit my lip, debating, then slipped through the kitchen and out the side door to the gravel path.

I ran to the cottage, my arms and legs pumping, hair on my neck standing on end. The light was on, a square in the darkness.

“Simon,” I yelled and slammed my palms on the door. “Simon, open up!”

I looked back over my shoulder at the swirling fog, and my heart rammed. Something moved in the mist. Back against the door, I fumbled with the flashlight, dropped it, and groped on the ground for it. The crunch of gravel floated out of the night, and I fell back against the door, fear suffocating me. The bottom half of the door gave way, and I tumbled backwards into the workshop.

“S-Simon,” I yelled and crawled forward, pushing the door shut with my feet and slamming home the lock. “Simon, where are you?” The lights of the workshop blazed bright.

I scooted against the wall, listening, willing the panic to not take over. Ten seconds passed. Nothing. No sound outside. No movement. I chanced a peek out the window and peered from the corner through the wire mesh. The night sat still and the silence unbroken.

Sliding back down with my back against the wall, I tried to settle my racing heart and looked around the workshop.

Where was he?

“Hello?” I got to my feet and walked the main workroom. The tables still in disarray looked more jumbled. How could he work this way? “Are you here?”

I moved to the living area. The couch cushions and pillows littered the floor. Clothes and dishes took up the coffee table. I smelled the pungent odor of his tea and found a tipped over cup on the floor. Worry rocked through me. A moan came from the bathroom, and I hurried over. I flicked on the light and found Simon crumbled on the floor by the shower stall, his clothes covered in mud.

“Simon.” I rushed to his side. “What happened?”

“Rosetta?” His eyes swam, and he looked at me with confusion. “Where am I?”

“We’re in your bathroom.” I tried to help him up, but he stumbled, going back down on his backside with a grimace.

His hand went to the back of his head and came away with blood.

“What…How long was I out this time?” Fear flitted across his face, and he reached out to me. “Did I hurt you?”

“
This time
, Simon?”

“I’m sorry,” he mumbled. He slurred his words, seemed off balance. “They’re back…I tried to stop them, but…”

Alarm thrummed. I helped him to the toilet seat. Wetting a washcloth, I rung it out, and pressed it to his head. “This has happened before?” I dabbed at the cut in his scalp. It wasn’t bad, but it might need stitches. “You need to see a doctor.”

“No.” He clasped my wrist. “Don’t tell anyone.”

I froze in his grip, and he looked at me with bleary eyes but let go.

“Simon, are you saying you have blackouts? Is it from drinking? Do they happen a lot?”

“Not alcohol.”

“Then why?”

“I don’t know, Rosetta.” His voice was pained, and he looked at me, his gaze pleading. “I have to tell you something.”

“What is it?”

“No…never mind.” Simon stood, stumbled out of the bathroom, and I followed. He looked around and the blood on the back of his shirt made me remember why I’d come.

“Simon, I have to show you something back at the house. I found blood up on the deck.”

“What?” He turned, braced himself on the wall. “What are you talking about? You went back onto the deck? I thought it was locked.”

“Did you lock it?”

“O’Shay, I think. I went to go and find the telescope, but he said he’d already removed it and locked the door. He said the railing is rusted.”

“Simon.” I crossed to him, put the cushions back on the sofa, and led him to it. “I went to see if it was O’Shay that fired the rifle that night. You remember? Out in the woods when I saw the…the thing in the fog?”

“So dizzy.” He sat with his elbows on his knees, head in his hands. “What time is it?”

“It’s five in the morning. Simon, do you remember that night?”

“No.” He shook his head as if to clear it. “Five, really?”

“Simon, listen to me.” I knelt in front of him, held his face in my palms and tried to catch his gaze. “You’re scaring me. What is wrong with you?”

He looked at me then, and something dark flitted behind his gaze. “I don’t want to hurt you.”

I rocked back, dread gripping my gut. He reached for my hands and held them together as he pulled me closer.

“What are you doing?” My pulse raced. “Simon, let me go.”

“Promise me, Rosetta,” Simon breathed. “Promise you won’t let anything happen to you or Lavender.”

“Anything like what?”

“I don’t remember, but I woke up the next morning, and I was like this.” Simon let go, tried to stand, but fell back against the couch. “Covered in dirt and outside.”

I watched him with growing alarm.

“The morning after what, Simon? When did this first happen?”

“Two years ago,” he whispered, a pained expression on his face. “The morning after Amanna went missing.”

28

I stood against the wall watching him. He pulled on a clean shirt buttoning it slowly, his hands shaking. He seemed clearer now, but it had taken close to twenty minutes. The shower helped.

“How do you know it wasn’t me?” he asked.

“On the deck?” I shrugged, not sure what to say to him. He was who I’d run to when I was scared, and now I wasn’t sure of anything anymore. “The blood was dried, old. The cut on your head is fresh. It wasn’t you. Not that, at least.”

He stopped what he was doing and looked at me. Purple shadows traced fatigue under his eyes. Rubbing his hands over his face, he sighed heavily.

“I’m sorry, Rosetta.”

“Please stop saying that.”

“I had no right to get close to you, not with what happened before.”

“You don’t know what happened before, Simon.” I put my hand to the ache at my temple, tired. “You said the first one was two years ago. Have they been happening all along since then?”

“No, they stopped just as suddenly as they’d started two years ago. Then it happened again about a month ago. I don’t know why.”

I sat up, alarmed. “You mean when I got to Noble?”

“A week or so after, I think.”

“And you never went to the doctor?”

“I…they stopped,” Simon said and shrugged. “I thought it was grief or something like that.”

“But they started again, and every time you come out of one of these, you don’t remember anything, right?”

“No.” He shook his head, his face full of sorrow. “I wake up and don’t know where I am or how I got there. Sometimes I lose hours, Rosetta, hours at a time.”

“Then why don’t you get help?” I asked, exasperated.

“Because of how it looks. I lose time, and my wife just happens to go missing during that time, too? Lavender can’t take…” He shook his head. “I thought I was protecting her, but now I’m not so sure.”

“Something is going on here that is tearing this family apart,” I said and pushed off from the wall. I took his hands in mine. “I can’t explain what happened before, but you didn’t do anything to me tonight.”

“What happened to you?” He searched my face with a look of alarm. “Are you hurt?”

“No, not hurt, but scared.” I told him about waking up with the lock of black hair woven into mine.

“Someone was in your room?” Anger flashed in his eyes. “They touched you?” He strode to the door, his fists clenched. “I’ll wake the entire household. We’ll question everyone. This will not happen.”

“Simon, wait!” I ran to stop him. “Look, we know it wasn’t you. There’s no way you could have sneaked into my room and done that. Not in the shape I found you in. Besides, why would you? The whole thing is so bizarre.”

“All the more reason,” he growled, his hand on the door knob. “No one should lay a hand on you. No one.”

“Please, just wait a second.” I eased between him and the door, my hands on his chest. “We need to be smart about this. If we go about this logically, retrace your steps, we can eliminate you as—”

“Smart, Rosetta? We wake the staff and find the perpetrator.”

“And then what? We won’t know why this is all happening.”

Simon’s gaze slid from mine. His brows furrowed as if he were mulling something over.

“You need to leave here. Lavender needs to leave. I’m calling the Kane Academy in the morning. The boarding school will take her early with a large enough endowment.”

“Simon,” I tried to settle the desperate fear in my gut. “Lavender should leave, yes. To be safe, but I won’t just leave here. What about you?”

“Rosetta, I won’t put you in danger. Not more than I already have. It was selfish and blind to not see that before. You have to leave Shadow Bay. Tomorrow morning.”

“What? No!”

“You’re being unreasonable.” Simon shook his head. “I couldn’t live with myself if something happened to you.”

I jutted my chin, eyes holding his. “I believe you’re innocent.”

“You have no evidence that I am.”

“Simon, you were hurt when I found you. The cut was on your head. And when you changed shirts, I saw the scar on your side. That injury was fresh too.”

“Proving I’m dangerous,” Simon said and pulled his hands from mine. “It’s only a matter of time.”

“Until what?” I said stepping into him. “You could barely walk, barely stand. The only thing you’re capable of in that state is falling. I don’t believe you could harm anyone but yourself like that.”

“But she went missing the night of my first blackout, Rosetta. We had a fight, and she ran off and then nothing.”

“About what?”

He backed away, shaking his head.

I asked again. “Tell me, Simon.”

“I blamed her,” Simon snapped, his face filled with anguish. “It was Lavender’s birthday, September first, but all I could think about was my son. He’d died only two weeks before. I tried to smile, to sing to her, but we all felt it. Lucien was not blowing out candles with her. He was gone. She insisted I should be celebrating, too, and I had…I had the most terrible pain in my head. I said things to her, Rosetta. I hurt her, and the next day she was gone. Whether I hurt her myself or drove her to jump from those cliffs, it was my fault!”

“Simon…” My heart broke for him. For never being able to take back hurtful words, never being able to ask forgiveness. I reached for him, but he turned away, strode from me. “It was an accident. Your father said it was.”

“But not Nalla,” Simon said. “I know what she thinks. I know what they all think of me.”

“Not Josif, Simon. Not Yasmine and others.”

Simon turned back to me, his face lined with pain. Clearing his throat, he continued. “When I woke up, I was covered in scratches.” He rolled up his sleeve and showed me the light crisscross of scars on his bicep.

“I saw the same kind of marks on O’Shay when he came out of the brambles. You could have gotten those the same way.”

“What if we fought some more? What if she tried to defend herself and I, in my anger—”

“No. You needed help getting to the couch, Simon.” I shook my head.

“There’s no proof I’m like that during a blackout. You only saw me after. You know the last thing I remember? Tucking Lavender in bed last night and coming here to work. That was hours ago. You don’t know what I could or couldn’t do during those hours.”

“But you don’t either. You can’t disprove my version. You don’t know that she jumped and didn’t fall, Simon.” I reached for his hand, held it to my cheek. “You might not trust yourself, but I do. You couldn’t do what you fear.”

“Why do you refuse to believe me when I say that you are in danger if you stay with me?” He hooked my chin with his thumb and fingers forcing me to look up into his eyes. They burned with intensity and sorrow. “You
must
leave here.”

“I won’t.” I tugged from his hold, lip trembling. “And you can’t order me to leave. You and me on the boat. That was real to me. I meant what I said, and I’m not leaving. I won’t walk away when you and Lavender need me most. Look at what’s happening to her. She’s terrified of ghosts and secrets and she…she’s falling apart. I know what it’s like to be alone, Simon. I know what it’s like, and I won’t let her—” A sob tore from me, and I wiped my tears angrily. “I won’t let you two face this by yourselves.”

“Rosetta…” His jaw worked, and he hugged me and kissed my hair. He was so warm. So strong. How could I leave him to fight this alone?