Winter's Shadow (7 page)

If only you knew!
Winter thought as she escaped down the hallway to the bathroom. She ran the taps, splashing the refreshing water onto her cheeks. Lucy had nearly had an aneurysm because Winter had taken a ride home with a strange man – how would she react if she knew how close Winter had come to being buried beneath a ton of rubble? Winter turned off the water and regarded her freshly scrubbed reflection critically. The same plain-faced girl she’d seen in the mirror this morning stared back at her. This version was just a little damper. There was her unruly red hair desperately in need of a trim; her pale skin with a smattering of freckles across the bridge of her nose and cheeks; and her mouth that sometimes looked a little crooked.

With a decent haircut and a few dozen tubs of makeup she might be able to scrape into the category of
pretty
, but it would take some work. And there was nothing she could do about her quirky mouth to make it look even remotely kissable.

No wonder she’d felt so intimidated around the physical perfection of Blake. They might as well have been different species. He
had
driven her home and they
did
seem to have some things in common – she still couldn’t
believe he knew who Johnny Winter was! There might be a chance Blake wasn’t as superficial as pretty much everyone else Winter had ever met, including herself. Perhaps freckly, crooked-mouthed girls were his type? She sighed, smiling at the foolishness of the thought.

A girl could dream.

Winter went to her room and flopped down onto the bed. She thought about putting some music on, but decided that the sound of the rain pattering on the roof was a fine accompaniment to her thoughts. Though she’d come very close to being killed today, that particular momentous event wasn’t the one she now turned over and over in her mind.

It was Blake who occupied her thoughts. His hypnotic eyes shining with their own magical light. Calling to her. Drawing her in . . .

Blake sat in the flickering dimness of the study, writing furiously in his diary. A solitary candle lit the page he was working on, but had he needed to he could have easily written without it. The absence of light did nothing to affect the sharpness of his vision. Sometimes, though, a little light was all one needed not to feel so alone.

It had been a mistake to save Winter.

His pen paused as the girl’s face floated to the forefront of his mind. The light in her eyes was different now, but in that brief moment when he’d caught her watching him from across the graveyard, he’d caught a glimpse of how special she was. No wonder he’d felt compelled to intervene, despite knowing the consequences of his actions. If time had taught him
anything it was that he was weak in the face of such compulsions.

It would be unsafe for both of them if he saw her again, yet she wouldn’t last long without his help. Already forces were gathering around her, forces that would soon begin to exert their dark influence. The idea of her suffering pained him – much more than it should, considering the brief time they’d spent together. She was an innocent and didn’t deserve the fate that awaited her – the fate he’d condemned her to. There was something about the girl, something more than the secret gift she possessed. She had a shy loveliness, a quality that reminded him of another . . .

Blake wrote with renewed vigour, hoping the words spilling from his pen would exorcise some of his turmoil. Usually the act of writing calmed him, allowed him to arrange his thoughts and re-examine them with cool detachment as they lay on the paper. Tonight it wasn’t working. All Blake could feel was a growing dread in the pit of his stomach.

He dropped the pen, exhaling in frustration. He should be watching over her right now instead of sitting here deliberating over what to do. However, he couldn’t leave the house, at least not during the night. It would be risky to leave the thing upstairs unattended. He’d made that mistake in the past and the consequences had been dire.

Blake watched the candle’s flame twist and curl around the wick. As if sensing his master’s conflict, Nefertem crept softly into the study and rubbed affectionately
against Blake’s leg. Grateful for the company, he smiled down at the cat and scratched him lightly behind the ears. While Nefertem purred with pleasure, a thought occurred to Blake. He kicked himself for not considering it sooner. He might not be able to leave the house, but there were other ways to keep Winter safe.

Blake tensed as music suddenly began playing upstairs on the vintage gramophone he’d bought the thing a decade ago – a purchase he’d regretted ever since. A chill ran down his spine as the haunting voice of Vaughn De Leath crooning ‘Are You Lonesome Tonight?’ echoed through the old Velasco place.

It was awake.

During the night, Winter dreamt there was a cat outside her bedroom window.

The fat orange cat peered at her through the glass with an eerily knowing expression. Winter knew she was dreaming because despite the darkness she could see everything so clearly. The orange stripes on the cat’s fur, the fuzzy M on its forehead marking it as a tabby, the twitching whiskers and lazily swishing tail. The cat crept back and forth on the window ledge before finding a comfortable place to curl up. It watched Winter, luminous green eyes floating in the darkness like Alice’s Cheshire Cat.

At one point in the dream, Winter saw something else moving behind the cat. Three tall figures, blacker than the night, materialised in the air over her backyard.
Winter was afraid of the shapes, even though she couldn’t quite see who or what they were. She knew they were bad. They were
wrong
somehow. The cat seemed to sense the shapes too, and whirled around, hissing and spitting at them. The three shapes drifted away, disappearing, and the cat relaxed and resumed its watch over Winter.

In her dream, Winter felt grateful for the cat. It was her protector.

Her guardian.

Madeleine stood on the balcony of the villa watching the moonlight spill over the black Tuscan hills. A faint perfume of citrus drifted from the orange groves in the darkness below. She could see the silhouette of San Gimignano in the distance, its turrets and walls sharp against the night sky. Lovely as the view was, it offered no respite from the fears that shadowed her heart. She might as well have been staring at a blank wall.

There was a subtle shift in the air around her, a thickening of the atmosphere, as though it was about to storm. A flash of light, and Ariman stepped out of the shadows haloed in flickering green fire. The vivid witch-light lasted mere seconds before fading into the ether. Madeleine was not astonished by his arrival. She had
been expecting him, though she was distraught to see him return alone.

‘Where is he?’ she asked, her voice betraying her emotion.

‘Your husband has taken measures to protect him.’ Seeing her distress, he added somewhat awkwardly, ‘I tried.’

Madeleine felt tears pricking at the back of her eyes. The thought of Antoine, crying in the night for his mother, was a pain she could barely endure.

‘You must try again.’

‘Your son is lost.’ His mouth tightened slightly. ‘I’m sorry, Madeleine.’

Madeleine went to Ariman, imploring him, ‘Please, my love, you have such power —’

Ariman shook his head. ‘My power has limits. Your husband has surrounded himself with men who are not fools. Men who know the methods that can keep me out.’

‘The Bane.’ Madeleine scoffed at the name Victor had given the men he’d enlisted in his sick crusade.

Ariman nodded. ‘They grow stronger, more organised by the day. The depth of your husband’s obsession is . . . remarkable,’ he finished, the faint note of admiration in his voice infuriating Madeleine.

‘There is nothing remarkable about it. Victor’s a madman. I can’t leave Antoine alone with —’

‘You must. He’ll kill you before he lets you have your son.’

‘He’ll kill me anyway.’

It was the truth. They both knew it.

Despondent, Madeleine fell against Ariman, resting her cheek on his chest. The moon blurred in the night sky as she began to weep. She waited for Ariman to stroke her hair, for him to offer some small comfort in this bleak hour, but he remained rigid. Cold.