Winterspell (13 page)

Mother.

She must have said it aloud, for she heard a strange, choked sound lingering in the air. Nicholas had turned away, and Godfather was distraught.

“They killed her because they couldn't find you,” she whispered. “They tore her open.”

“Clara, please . . .”

“She was innocent. She knew nothing of you and your statues and your secrets. And yet she took the death meant for you.”

He reached for her, and she slapped him away.

“You as good as killed her.” Her tears were making it hard to see. “When were you going to tell me? Or were you too ashamed? You
should
be ashamed. That you would keep such a thing from me . . . Oh, God.” She turned away, leaning hard against the nearest stall, gulping for air. The horse inside whuffed gently at her shoulder.

“I thought,” Godfather said, his voice small, “that you would no longer love me if I told you.”

She stared at him, struck momentarily speechless. Even Nicholas looked incredulous.

“You selfish old man,” Clara whispered, disgusted—at him, at herself for being so thoroughly fooled. He had broken her heart twice. Once with her mother's murder—which was his fault,
his fault
—and now again, tonight.

He looked wounded, but not nearly enough. So she stepped back and said quietly, “I hate you.”

It was not true, of course, but she had to say
something
to ease this sickening fury mounting inside her, something that could inflict even a portion of the pain raking her insides raw. She did not wait to let the shock settle on his face. Instead she ran for the stable doors. Nicholas called out her name, and she ignored him. Godfather flung out his silver-stained arms toward the doors, and they, impossibly, flew shut in answer. But Clara could not be stopped; she needed to be as far away from Godfather as possible. With each step the awful truth of his betrayal grew between them, a great, impassable chasm. She reached for the doors, sobbing. She needed to see her father's face, feel Felicity's hand in hers; she needed to hold them close and then, somehow, get them out of this city—tomorrow,
tonight
. They would run from Concordia, run from Godfather and his deadly secrets, and Clara would lead the way, would keep them safe, as she had not been able to do for her mother. Heartbreak swelled inside her, giving her a desperate strength. She would claw the doors down if she had to.

There was no need. They burst open, wood snapping off and flying every which way. The ragged man from the ballroom stood there, the man who controlled the loks.

The horses shrieked, and both Nicholas and Godfather cried out a warning, but the man was too quick. He grabbed Clara by the arm and wrenched her out into the stable yard before she could even gasp. There, near the horse the loks had slaughtered, soft lights—nearly invisible, like dimming sunlight on calm water—flickered in midair.

The man was dragging her toward them.

“Clara, don't let him take you!” Godfather shouted. An invisible force, icy cold, hit Clara from behind, knocking the ragged man to his knees—but he was quick and lithe. His eyes snapped blue fire. He leapt to his feet and thrust his forearm back toward the stables, as though using it to bludgeon open a door. Another force ripped past
Clara in the opposite direction from the first, this one as hot as the previous had been frigid, and sent Godfather and Nicholas flying backward into the ground.

Clara reached toward them, but the man had pulled her to her feet. “I don't understand it,” he said, his voice deep and sibilant. The hatred he turned her way was stunning in its ferocity. “I should be gutting you right now, leaving you to rot. But I obey my queen. Her wisdom is absolute.” He spat in her face. He cursed her in words she did not understand. “Remember that, filth. You will never match her, no matter your blood.”

She was blind with pain; he had her by her hair. “Who are you?” she gasped.

But he did not answer. He was pulling her on, dragging her across the frosted cobbles toward the strange lights in the air. Everything in Clara resisted, but it was no use; the man was too strong, his grip too relentless. She kicked at him, but it was like trying to fell a mountain. He laughed, lifting her by the waist, and Godfather was screaming behind her, and then Nicholas was there, somewhere in the chaos, naked but for Godfather's coat. He rushed at the man, arms raised to strike, but he was still so weak, and the man knocked him aside easily.

“You're next,
prince
,” the man said, and then he was pushing Clara toward the lights, though her boots dragged on the stone and she reached for Godfather's limping figure. The lights were growing brighter; they were sizzling at her sides.

“Move!” The man shoved her hard toward the swirling brightness, and though Clara did not know what it was and what would happen to her if she passed through it, she knew it couldn't be anything good.

She screamed a wordless protest, clawing at the air.

The man cursed her and gave one final push.

Clara closed her eyes.

It threw her back.
Something
threw her back. It was as though she had hit a wall, as though her unwillingness to pass through the lights
had manifested as some magnetic repulsion. The shock sent her staggering, sent the man flying into the stable wall.

The lights vanished.

For a moment everything was still. Nicholas lay crumpled beside Godfather, breathing hard, clutching his side, and Clara's eyes locked with his.

Then the man roared something furious and leapt to his feet. He bounded toward Clara, more beast than human. She tried to punch him and was easily subdued. He threw her over his shoulder and ran toward the mansion, kicked open the nearest door, and barreled through the wreckage of the ballroom and up the grand staircase—past Felicity's bedroom, past Clara's bedroom, and into her father's.

There he threw her to the floor and went to the great canopied bed her parents had once shared. With minimal effort he dragged her unconscious father from the pillows.

“Wait,” Clara cried, struggling to her feet. “Don't hurt him!”

The man turned at the window, her father held brutally by the collar in one white, scabbed fist. Only then did Clara notice the strange blue substance streaking the man's forearm. She was reminded of Godfather's silver blood, and froze.

“You will want to pay close attention,” the man said, sneering at her. “His life is in your hands. And she is anything but patient.”

Before Clara could move, the man had kicked out the window. Winter gusted in. The man punched his palm into the night air and then drew it back, his fingers clenching into a fist.

With the movement of his arm, a flash burst into being outside the window, then faded into the subdued, shifting lights Clara had seen in the stable yard.

The man jumped onto the windowsill, turned to wag a finger at her. “In your hands now,” he said, and flung himself out the window, dragging John Stole behind him.

Clara rushed to the window, too shocked to scream.

She looked down, fearing the sight of smashed bodies on the pavement below.

She saw nothing.

The man and her father had vanished, and the soft lights still swirled in the air, like someone had drawn ripples on the surface of a pool.

For a moment Clara stood there, hanging half out the window, shivering. Any explanation for what had happened eluded her. The lights in the air transfixed her, and she knew, instinctively, that she had to
jump through the lights after them.

She stepped back from the window, leaned on her father's bed for support. “But that can't be right. That's
impossible
.”

A commotion sounded from downstairs—doors flinging open, boots crunching on glass.

Clara turned and raced for the stairs, dazed. This had been a hallucination brought on by the stress of the night; she would find her father waiting for her downstairs.

It was not her father.

At the base of the staircase, Clara stopped short. Police officers swarmed at the entrance to the ballroom, which had reverted back to its previous self. The room looked brutalized, yes, smashed to pieces—but the maze of mirror and metal had vanished, dishes and drapery and ripped upholstery in their wake.

Clara felt crazed laughter building inside her. Godfather's dragons, it seemed, had done their work.

“What is the meaning of this, Clara?” Patricia Plum emerged from the crowd, Dr. Victor at her heels, and yanked Clara close. Her voice, normally so collected, shook with anger. Clara had never seen her like this. “What happened here? My men say they saw figures running in and out of the mansion.” Plum paused, taking in Clara's appearance. Delicate revulsion twisted her mouth. “What in God's name happened to you?”

Clara could think of no plausible explanation; the night had
exhausted her small capacity to lie. “Father's gone.”

Dr. Victor's eyes narrowed. Plum grew still. “What did you say?” she breathed.

The words said, Clara felt her composure crumbling. “I don't understand it, but he's gone. . . . The ballroom . . . His bed is empty, and I don't know where—”

Dr. Victor cursed. “She told him. She told him, and he got scared and turned tail.” He grabbed Clara's wrist. “You deceitful bitch.”

Plum slapped him away, surprising everyone. “I don't know what you're playing at, Clara. I thought we had a bargain.”

“I didn't say anything to him!”

“Obviously someone did. People don't disappear into the night for no reason.”

“Clara?”

At the small voice from the stairs, they turned. Felicity stood there, tiny in her nightgown, and unnaturally groggy, tears in her eyes.

“Father's gone?”

Dr. Victor went to her and pulled her close. Beyond him a small swarm of people were peeking in at the ballroom doors, despite the police officers' best efforts to keep them out—a haggard-looking reporter, neighbors in their nightcaps, Concordia gentlemen still dressed to the nines.

“Now, now, pet,” Dr. Victor crooned, stroking Felicity's back. His hungry eyes met Clara's, making her skin crawl. “Don't worry. Your sister will put everything to rights, won't she?”

Plum turned away for a long moment. When she spoke once more, her voice, soft as it was, had turned to steel. “If he's not back here by New Year's Eve, and with a good explanation at that, your sister's life
will
be forfeit, and I'll make it as painful as possible for both of you.” She seized Clara's wrist, her movements fluid. A casual observer might never have suspected the iron force of her grip. “Do we understand each other?”

“What's she saying, Clara?” Felicity said, rubbing her eyes. “What's happening?”

In that moment, with Felicity's tearful face gazing up at her, and Dr. Victor smirking down at her, and the whole world turned to chaos—Mother dead, and Godfather a liar, and it was
his fault
she was dead—Clara understood what to do next. She had no choice. Never, it seemed, did she have much of a choice.

“Don't worry,” she said, turning away and pulling free of Patricia Plum. If she looked at Felicity, she would lose the courage to leave her. “I will find him.”

She hurried up the stairs without a backward glance, past clawed paintings and unraveled carpet. Back in her father's room she stood at the ruined window. The lights remained, undulating outside in the night air.

The man had taken her father through those lights, had leapt toward them into nothing. Would the same thing happen to Clara? Would the mysterious force once again repel her? Or, more simply, would she fall to her death?

Regardless, she had most certainly lost her mind.

“It's a Door,” gasped a voice from behind her—Nicholas's voice.

Clara turned to see him leaning hard against the wall, Godfather limping up behind him.

“What are you talking about?”

“Watch.” Nicholas picked up a shard of glass from the carpet and threw it out the window, toward the lights.

The glass disappeared. It did not fall or shatter, or float away in the wind. It slipped between folds in the air, and vanished.

Clara kept her face neutral, watching the air for some sort of trick.

“Clara,” Godfather began, sickly gray and thin, as if the night's events had sucked some great vitality from him, “listen to me carefully, and whatever you do, don't go near that window.”

“Why should I believe anything you say?” The sight of him made her ill. “Don't you take another step toward me.”

“Clara,
please
—”

She turned away from him, kept her voice hard. “Nicholas, tell me what's going on.”

Nicholas's gaze, careful and dark beneath his hair, gave Clara a bit of unexpected steadiness. Godfather's greatcoat gaped open, revealing a sliver of vile shapes on white skin and the trousers from Godfather's supplies, belted low on his hips. He had, she noticed, threaded the belt through Godfather's sword, which he must have recovered from the ballroom; it hung at his side.

“The Door is exactly what it sounds like,” he said, his speech still halting, putting itself back together, “and I don't know how much longer it will remain open.”

Door. Now that this usage of the word had settled in her mind, she realized that she recognized it, albeit vaguely; it reminded her of something Godfather might have spoken of in a story. “That man who attacked us—”

“Borschalk,” Godfather said, on the verge of exploding, but Clara ignored him.

“He took my father, dragged him through the—through that Door.”

“Probably because he could not take you,” Nicholas said.

The words chilled Clara. “Why couldn't he?”

Unexpectedly, his mouth quirked. “That I don't know. But it is interesting, isn't it?”