Shadow Silence (29 page)

B
y the end of the evening, we were all sitting around the glow of the tree. It was covered with sparkling ornaments, and everything felt soft and fuzzy and beautiful. I had turned off all the other lights, and we just finished watching
It's a Wonderful Life
.

“It's too bad that we can't summon up the Ghost of Christmas Past and have him tell us how those ship beams got there in the house. By the way, did Clinton have anything to say when you met him over there yesterday? I totally forgot that you two were meeting up, with our engagement and then the fire today.”

“I forgot, too,” Peggin said. “I still think he seemed awfully eager to have me move out of there, though I guess he's seen too many people sucked down by the Lady.”

“What does Clinton Brady have to do with the matter?” Deev looked concerned. In fact, he looked so concerned that it caught my attention.

“Do you have something against Clinton? He's always struck me as a pretty good guy.”

“I just . . . there's something odd about his pub. Every time I go in there, I feel like I'm being watched. And the pub feels haunted.” Deev looked at a loss for words, which didn't surprise me. He wasn't all that chatty of a guy.

“It probably is. The place is four hundred years old,” Peggin said. “Anyway, what did he have to say, Bryan?”

Bryan took on long sip of his eggnog. “He agreed that the beams probably came from the
Maria Susanna
. As to how or where the original builder of the house found them, he has no clue. The shipwreck was never found, or any part of the ship. I had a closer look at them and I swear, they look like they were built right into the house as it was erected. So I'm guessing they were there all along, though Clinton disagreed. If I'm right, that means that Herschel Dorsey had to have found some part of the ship within a year after it went down. Because he built the house in 1920, and the
Maria Susanna
went down in 1919.”

“I still think that the Hounds had something to do with that shipwreck.”

“Do you think that they know that we found out about it?” Bryan gave me a long look. “It could be they don't want anybody to know what really happened back then.”

“I don't see why,” Aidan said. “After all, anybody involved in taking the ship down would be dead by now. You can't prosecute dead men.”

“I just can't shake the feeling that the Hounds are still involved and that they may have had something to do with the fire, though I don't know why.” Bryan looked so worried that it began to worry me.

I was about to say something, when I heard the call of crows. Startled, I began to stand up, but the next thing I knew I was standing in front of the Crow Man, and we were looking at the remains of the house.

*   *   *

T
here are bright glittering secrets hidden down there,” the Crow Man said, pointing to the remains of the basement. “And there are hawks looking for them right now. It's a race, Kerris. And it's a race you need to win.”

I glanced back at the charred foundation. “But hawks don't fly in the dark, do they?”

“Neither do crows, but I'm out and it's dark. And so are you, and you are the daughter of the Crow goddess. Sometimes birds fly at night. And old secrets could give new life to some of the battles that await in your future. Old secrets that could have helped your grandmother and great-grandmother.”

The smell of burned wood drifted up to cloud my senses. I shivered. “Old secrets? How old?”

“Oh, they go back years on the family tree, to the beginning. There was a wide span between spirit shamans, and during that time Whisper Hollow was extremely vulnerable. A gift was brought from the mother country, meant to be given to your great-grandmother when she arrived. The Heart and the lament singer joined forces to protect it. But the Hounds managed to weave their own magic, and the Heart and the lament singer lost track of the gift, and it vanished, hidden away. They died without remembering their secret. But time has a way of bringing the past to surface, and those who still seek to hide misdeeds fear the revelations.”

I tried to sort through the riddle. “Are you telling me there's something in that house, besides those beams, that I need to know about?”

“Perception is the beginning of wisdom.” He laughed then, his voice ricocheting through the night. “I am the Crow Man. I lead the procession of the gods. I trick and I tempt. And I am the liaison of the Morrígan and her children. My messages are for you to decipher. I am not your oracle, but I am a
whisper on the wind reminding you of what you once knew, of what you must know. Mind my gifts, they are only given to those who listen. But don't wait—or you will be too late.”

*   *   *

I
blinked, suddenly aware that I was back in my living room. “We have to go over to the house now. We can't wait until tomorrow. Whatever's there, and there is something hidden there, the Hounds are searching for it. They don't want me to find it.”

“Let's go.” My grandfather grabbed his jacket from the hall closet, handing Ivy's to her. Deev had draped his duster over the back of a kitchen chair, and now he slid into it, as Peggin grabbed her coat and my jacket from the wall pegs in the kitchen.

“We'll go in my SUV. It will hold all of us.”

“No, head over to my place and we'll take my SUV. You still have to get yours serviced and checked out, and I have a feeling you didn't do that today.” Bryan gave me a sideways look. “I know the dents seem superficial, but I'd rather we know that it's running in good condition before you go driving it around much more.”

“I'll make an appointment tomorrow.”

We trooped out of the house, stopping to unplug all of the beautiful lights. As I locked the door behind me, the snow softly began to fall again.

*   *   *

A
fter a stop at Deev's to drop him and Peggin off—he wanted to get something, and he followed me in his truck from there—we eased into the driveway of the burned-out shell.

Bryan stopped a good ways before the actual house. “I don't want to accidentally drive over a nail or a piece of glass. We can walk from here. There are flashlights in the backseat.”

Aidan fished around and found several flashlights in good working order. He handed one to Bryan and one to Deev, who was opening the tailgate of his truck.

Deev snapped his fingers. An odd figure, squat and short on four massive legs, eased out of the truck. Made of brass and wood, it was five feet tall, about four feet long, and looked like it had been built of metal Legos and Tinkertoys. The head was featureless but it was wearing a jaunty bowler hat of enormous size. The creature came to attention.

“What is
that
?” I cocked my head, intrigued.

“This is Kyler. Kyler came to life last night and I couldn't figure out why, but he was made to protect and to guard. When I was building him, I was focusing on the energy of a sentinel. Since he woke up last night I figured it couldn't hurt to bring him along.” He smiled, sounding like a proud papa.

“Well, I doubt he can hurt matters.” Bryan motioned to Deev. “Let him take the lead, if that's okay.”

With Kyler in front, we gingerly proceeded. The explosion had thrown debris right and left, and before we even reached the yard, we were encountering bits of wood and charcoal. I kept my eye on Peggin, realizing how close we were to the lake. She kept lifting her head, glancing through the trees as though she were hearing something.

Kyler suddenly stopped, turning toward the tree line. One of his jointed arms reached out, pointing to the lake.

“Do you hear her calling?” I asked, suddenly going on high alert.

Peggin looked startled. “Actually, I do. I didn't realize what was happening, but you're right. I can hear her calling now. She's singing, promising me that she can put an end to my problems. That she can make everything okay again.” Her voice was wistful, and I could tell she was struggling with the desire to answer the call.

The look on her face scared the hell out of me. I had never seen Peggin look so enraptured.

Deev was listening to our conversation and now he pulled up beside her and wrapped his arm around her waist. “You're not going anywhere. Not while I'm here.”

She flashed him a grateful smile. “Thank you. I've never
felt like I needed a protector before, but I'm beginning to feel so helpless in the face of all of this. I hate that feeling. My life has spun out of control and all I can do is hold on while the ride takes me on a journey I never wanted to explore.”

“Tomorrow night, the ritual will remove the Lady's binding from you,” Ivy said. “It's a dark descent, but it should take care of the matter.”

Peggin shuddered again. “I don't care what I have to go through. I want that mark off me. Every time I look at it, I can feel her watching me. And now that we're out here tonight, I can feel her calling and I don't want to hear her voice. I don't want to listen to her whispers.”

“Kyler, forward.”

We started up again, Deev holding tight to Peggin's waist as we approached the shell of the house. Three of the walls were partially standing, but they were leaning dangerously. The fourth was totally gone, and the upper stories of the house were nothing more than so much soot and ash. The air was filled with the smell of burnt wood, and as the snow settled down over the remains, it was starting to stick in places. I suddenly realized that the heat had been so intense that it had melted off every flake up until then.

“I think we want to go down in the basement. The Crow Man kept talking about buried secrets. That would indicate underground to me. And given that that's where the timbers were, I can't help but feel that there's something down there.”

“That's going to be tricky; we'll have to watch our footing carefully or we could end up breaking our necks. For one thing the stairs are wooden and it looks like they're mostly burned away. We have to find a different way down into the basement.” Bryan frowned, looking around. “I wish I had thought to bring a ladder.”

“Do you have a rope?” Deev asked. “We could use it like a belay line.”

“Good thought!” Bryan pulled out his keys. “I'll be back
in a moment. Don't anybody do anything stupid while I'm gone.” He jogged his way back to his SUV.

I turned back to the house, realizing that there had been a reason I couldn't tell Peggin about my dream. She had needed to move into the house in order to stir this to life. Whatever
this
was. But even as I recognized the way circumstance worked, it hit me in the gut that she had to go through everything she did in order to bring me here now, tonight.

Without her moving in, without the fire, without even the Lady, we would never have been here, searching out secrets the Crow Man wanted me to find.

“I think this is what all of this is been leading up to,” I said. “Sometimes the gods use us as pawns.”

“Well, I jolly well would rather they use me as a queen instead.” Peggin's voice was both sarcastic and wistful. “If I have to be somebody's tool, maybe they could pay me for my time and effort.”

“Hear you there.” I laughed. “Here comes Bryan now.”

Bryan looked around for a sturdy beam he could tie the rope around, but it was hard to tell which beams would give way. “Can Kyler support weight?”

Deev shook his head. “Unfortunately, even though he's fairly strong, I made him of lightweight material and I doubt if he could keep balanced with anybody hanging off of him.”

Aidan motioned to Bryan. “No worries. Give me the rope and I'll tie it around my waist and act as the fulcrum. I've got strength enough to lift anybody out of there who might need it.” My grandfather wasn't just talking big. He really was the strongest of the group. I wondered if Bryan would grow into his own strength, given he was also a shifter.

Bryan handed the end of the rope to Aidan, who wrapped it around his waist and tied it off in some sort of slipknot. Most of the floor that had formed the basement's ceiling had burned away. None of us really trusted testing the rest of it. So Aidan stayed at the side on the ground, bracing himself against a large beam that had fallen. It was near enough to
the hole so that we could slide over the edge and go down that way. I moved forward, but Bryan held up his hand.

“
You
are not going down there. You are going to let
me
go down there. Deev, you and Kyler watch the women and Aidan's back. If there really is a race to find something down there, we don't want be surprised if the Hounds show up.”

I hadn't even thought of the possibility of the Hounds showing up while we were here. Somehow I had translated the idea in my mind to: We come out here, we find what we're looking for, and we leave. The thought that the Hounds might show up while we were in the process of our adventure set my stomach on edge.