The Blackwood Curse: A Night Shades Novel, page 22
Wax looked straight from Ollie to Tallulah and down to her watch, hanging at the front of her. ‘It’s OK, it’s just my brother,’ Wax said, ignoring the question.
The remainder of my heart was pulled from my chest. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing.
Lila instantly relaxed and brightened. ‘How charming. Tell him to join us.’
Ollie looked at Tallulah, clearly in as much shock as I was, and she returned a small nod. Then he went and sat on the stool opposite them. Everyone else hung back and observed, figuring the less they moved, the less likely Lila would know they were there. I wasn’t so sure.
‘You were saying,’ Wax prompted.
I was in shock. I mean, I know things had moved fast for me to really know him, but I thought I knew him better than this. I saw his mouth move, but the words didn’t matter. What I saw was the gentle touch to his knee. ‘I was an outcast in my own family,’ she was saying. ‘Overlooked. Put aside. They would go to the other side of the country, to an insipid cousin, rather than see me worthy of the man I loved.’ She sidled closer and put her hand over his and looked intently into his eyes. ‘But the Waxley-Blacks … you … didn’t see class or gender, or barriers at all. You were kind to me.’
Wax tilted his head to the side as if he found her puzzling and, instead of pushing her away, simply replied, ‘These are different times and different people.’
My throat felt like I had an apple lodged in it. She was carefully weaving her spell around him like a spider. Wrapping him in a spiral of half-truths and deceptions so he couldn’t move or escape before he knew what was happening to him. As they continued on in their easy conversation, it struck me and broke my heart the ease and confidence with which he spoke to her. No paranoia or quickness to anger that I’d witnessed first-hand. This was the Wax he was always meant to be and it hurt like hell because he was being it with her. ‘I hate her,’ I said to no one in particular.
‘Me too,’ Tallulah whispered from behind me and I loved her for it.
‘So, say you can get that deep into the mine, what do you plan on doing with it? Why is it so important to you?’ Wax was saying.
I pulled myself out of my quicksand of self-pity. I hadn’t even realised they’d moved onto discussing the mine.
Lila seemed to know the exact moment I tuned in. Her eyes darted to exactly where we were before she spoke and my heart froze. She either had the most highly sensitive extrasensory perception or she’d lied and could see us perfectly, which was quite possible as she wasn’t exactly alive herself.
She picked up Wax’s hand and ran her fingers over the top of it. ‘The spell that freed me from the mirrors has only one lunar cycle for physical representation.’
I ignored what she was doing as I raced to catch up with what that meant.
Wax narrowed his eyes. ‘It has an expiry date? So, the spell will send you back?’
My mind stalled at the thought of her here with me. I willed Wax to ask the real question of what would happen to me, but he didn’t. Instead, he looked at her intently and waited for her to answer.
Lila shook her head sadly, like something out of a soap opera.
I felt sick, not buying a second of it. Wax was absorbing it all.
‘No, the cost of the month is to burn brightly with the living and then to cease to be. It was the price to break the curse that bound me. So you see how badly I need the elixir.’
Ollie looked as shocked as we were. ‘Wax?’ he said, trying to get his attention. When he couldn’t get it, he looked anxiously over his shoulder at us. He’d drawn the same conclusion as I had. If the spell and the curse would be shattered, where did that leave me? Where did it leave any of us?
Wax didn’t seem ruffled by it at all. ‘And my uncle?’ he asked.
Lila’s eyes twinkled with mischief. ‘He’s very sweet and everything …’ She didn’t finish her sentence but looked deeply into Wax’s eyes and, still holding his hand, they shared a long moment of something. Something I wanted to scream and push out of my line of vision.
‘Where will you go?’ Wax said, in a voice suddenly gone hoarse.
‘Oh, I have no idea. There are so many things I want to see in this century, far far away from here,’ she said, wistfully. ‘All ties will be gone and I’ll be free to go anywhere and with whomever I want,’ she finished with a coquettish smile straight at Wax.
I wanted to smash the screen. The inference was clear. She was dangling the carrot for Wax to go with her. No doubt, the same one she’d offered Jedediah, Ainsley and his uncle, before him.
I couldn’t bear it and had to put my hand to my mouth to stifle a sob. It was the worst kind of torture. I was in a fishbowl, doomed to go round and round, only seeing through the glass, while the world, in full view, went on without me.
It was Ollie who spoke up. ‘Ask her about the brothers back then: Jedediah and Ainsley. What happened to them?’
It was clever of Ollie to steer Wax’s mind back to what we were all thinking ourselves. Wax repeated Ollie’s question, though I strongly suspected that Lila had already heard it. Her posture stiffened very slightly. I would tell Ollie later. It made more sense to make her think she’d fooled us.
She immediately took on the damsel in distress persona. She was the consummate actress, it was clear. ‘Jedediah murdered me, brutally, and refuses to leave these walls. Ainsley passed over and abandoned me.’
She took a handkerchief from her sleeve and delicately dabbed the corner of her eye.
It made me sick. It also occurred to me that Jedediah didn’t have much of a choice. Lucinda had already told me he could go as far as the Blackwood house and no further and Ainsley had been noticeably absent.
Male laughter sounded loudly from behind us. Tallulah turned sharply and I saw Wax’s father and uncle walk back into the kitchen a lot more jovially than when they’d gone out.
‘Ah, you’ve got to know each other a little better, I see,’ Wax’s uncle said. ‘Splendid.’
Olivia followed behind them, blowing her nose. We all moved out of the way so the newcomers could sit around the island with Wax and Lila.
‘Did you see him?’ Lila asked Olivia immediately, throwing a devilish look our way.
Lila was too arrogant to see the stiffness in Olivia’s posture when she answered. Only I knew how she managed to hold it all together with sheer determination. ‘I felt very close to him,’ Olivia said and blew her nose again. ‘It was a great comfort, thank you.’
Lila smiled with no real warmth. ‘Many of these old houses are haunted.’ Her eyes went directly to me. It was in that moment that I understood. It wasn’t a poor poker face on her part, but a game. Everything was all a game where she enjoyed setting up scenarios and watching how the dominoes fell. A player, in every sense of the word.
She grinned as if she knew. Well, she could grin all she wanted. She was far too confident for her own good and we were growing in numbers. We had less than a month to get rid of her before she took the Elixir of Life. And we had to save ourselves.
Chapter 24
The next days were some of the darkest I’d ever known. Almost as dark as losing Pete. Like Lucinda before me, I had nowhere to go to call my own and I was forced to watch helplessly as Lila took everything. When I say everything, I mean Wax.
On top of all that, I was becoming more and more convinced I wasn’t alone. There was something dark and menacing with me in Wax’s closed IP. At first, it felt like a growing anxiety tingling up my spine, something ominous. Ollie said it was anxiety because of the stress I was under. But I started to hear noises too. It sounded like something was being dragged across the floor and got louder the closer it got. Like something huge was being pulled across it.
It was all the more terrifying as there were no corridors that I could see, only boxes for the various devices in the loop of Wax’s system. The only way to escape was to hop through the fibre optic cable and jump into a different device, which I had to do more and more frequently, only just escaping in the nick of time. It could no longer be put down to paranoia. I had to tell Ollie that I wasn’t alone.
‘Are you sure?’ Because it’s closed. There’s only one place it could have come from if you’re right and that’s The Dark Web.’
‘Yes, I’m sure,’ I said, my heart already speeding up to run. The small hairs on the back of my neck were rising and my breathing began to come in shallow pants. It was getting closer again and I could hear the scrape … scrape … then, thump… THUMP. My eyes widened in fright. ‘You have to get me out of here. Ollie!’ I screamed.
Ollie’s fingers worked frantically over the keys.
Tallulah screamed, ‘Get her out!’, panicking along with me.
But my eyes were fixed to something black and growing in the corner. It smelled of decaying meat and invaded the room, spiralling to the ceiling like bonfire smoke. It grew to twice my size, moving constantly, without any definite shape. It crept closer, menacing and looming over me, until I lost all feeling in my legs. My hands were ice and my stomach churned. ‘It’s here …’ I said, too quietly for anyone to really hear.
Ollie hissed, ‘Shit!’ from behind me and slammed the Enter button.
I was catapulted backwards, so fast I couldn’t breathe. All I could see were javelin bars of light whizzing past me. It felt like a lifetime, but, in reality, it was probably no more than a couple of seconds, until I landed painfully with my arm caught underneath me. I blinked, finding it hard to focus after the bright fibre optic light. I recognised the familiar blue-grey light of the Inside Out. I was back in the hallway of the mirror spell.
Except before I could fully get my bearings, there was a second blast and a whoosh of air. Followed by something huge and black that landed with an earth-shaking thud next to me. I didn’t wait to see what it was and scrambled to the far wall. Whatever it was had been expelled from Wax’s IP too. As I turned to face it, my stomach sank into my bowel. The same monster I’d run from started to reform and grow in the centre of the room.
My fear was a visceral vice that gripped the sides of my head right down to my toes clawing in my shoes. I looked left and right for a place to run while I stumbled to my feet, but all that happened was I hopped indecisively in both directions, and my tongue rolled around my spitless mouth. Then, just as the creature wound its wisps of arms around me, I screamed and a wall of black robes appeared in front of me. It roared the loudest roar I’d ever heard and I flinched down to the skirting board, between a large urn and a chest. My jaw went slack as I gawped up in amazement. I recognised that roar immediately. Jedediah stood ferociously guarding me; huge, black and threatening. His white, soulless eyes fixing on the monster like spotlights.
I’d never thought I’d be so pleased to see the malevolent spirit, but I was. I crouched behind him. Lucinda said they were on my side and here Jed was, bigger and badder than whatever had followed me here. I could gradually relax enough to stand up.
The darkness was shrinking under his roar, snaking and snarling as Jed bore down on it, literally pushing it through the floor of the room. Then Lucinda appeared from nowhere and ran to me.
I was shaking uncontrollably.
‘My dear,’ she said, hugging me in her translucent arms that felt pretty real at that moment.
‘Is it gone?’ I said, still expecting it to appear and get me.
‘It has … for now, at least.’ The scent of violets surrounded me in a warm cloak. ‘But it will be back.’
The spirit of Jedediah stopped roaring and gradually brought his arms down to his sides. He slowly turned to face me. I couldn’t take my eyes off him. He still scared me, but I fought not to show it. I owed him my life. He wore a long black robe with a hood that had moved back to reveal his face. His skin was stretched and pale with dark pits for eye sockets, but, instead of eyes, light shone out as if power was escaping from the holes and was barely contained. He pulled the hood forward again so that it shrouded his face. It made me feel sad that he felt the need to cover it. I could still make out the shape of a strong, stubbled jaw remarkably like Wax’s. He must have been a handsome man once. My heart broke at the family resemblance that nobody saw because he scared everyone off.
I guess it was the fall of adrenalin, the sense of relief, or simply my narrow escape, but I began to cry. Lucinda shot a warning look to Jedediah, who went to recede into the background. ‘Please don’t go,’ I said, desperately.
‘He doesn’t want to scare you,’ Lucinda explained.
‘No,’ I said, swallowing down my tears and trying to get a grip. ‘I’m grateful to him. It’s just the shock. They’re all so strong and they have Wax.’
Lucinda looked at Jedediah, who slowly shook his head. ‘He doesn’t think so,’ Lucinda said. ‘Keep faith in the young master. Jed is watching over him.’
He bowed his head and disappeared into the wall. I felt oddly comforted, which was bizarre. He was no longer the big bad ghoul out to get me. ‘We need to get back up to Ollie’s room,’ I said. ‘They’ll be worried about me.’
Lucinda inclined her head. ‘I’ll be close by.’
I ran back up the staircase with renewed energy, still relishing the lack of plaster on my leg. I flew into Ollie’s room and stopped dead, right in front of the mirror of his dressing table. With a wave of my arm, I could already see there was a drama going on the other side.
Wax was in Ollie’s room and they were arguing. ‘What do you mean, something else was in there,’ Wax shouted, pointing at Ollie’s laptop.
‘Something must have got past the Firewall and got in there with her,’ Ollie explained, red in the face too.
‘Where is she now?’ Wax demanded.
‘We don’t know,’ Tallulah and Ollie said together.
The others were behind them and the room looked pretty full.
‘It’s OK, guys. I’m in here,’ I said and they all followed my voice to the mirror above the dressing table.
Wax pushed between them and sat down on the stool in front of the mirror, without even looking at me. ‘I’m putting her back onto my system if it’s out.’
I sagged in exasperation. They were talking like I wasn’t even there.
‘You don’t know that,’ Ollie said.
Wax’s fingers continued to work nimbly over the keys.
‘No!’ I said, flatly. I wasn’t about to jump to it now he’d decided to turn his attention to me. He finally looked me in the eye. ‘I don’t feel safe there. I’m too alone. I have my friends,’ I said, pointing at the others, ‘And I have Lucinda and Jed protecting me in here.’
I watched the split second flinch that registered the blow across his face, that he wasn’t included on the list. ‘I’ll carry you with me at all times,’ he said a little more gently. ‘You’ll be safe.’ I could see he was hurt or angry because his cheeks were going pink.
‘What, like you did in the kitchen, when you left me on the counter and allowed your new friend to cast me aside?’
‘It’s not like that,’ he said, becoming angrier.
I saw Ollie pull Tallulah back and the others followed his lead. They were expecting Wax to blow. I didn’t care. I was at a safe distance and this felt a long time coming. ‘What’s it like then?’
I could see him breathing hard, trying to keep hold of his temper. His chest was rising and falling more quickly than it should. ‘We were just talking. I’m befriending her to find out the best way of fighting my uncle so we can all be free.’
‘Or you could be as gullible as all the other Waxley-Black men before you. Can’t you see this is what she does? She uses the next man to get rid of the last.’ I glared at him and for a moment he glared back, until he swept his arm across the table, knocking everything all over the floor.
‘Your temper tantrums won’t work with me, Wax,’ I said, sounding more bored than I felt. He was pretty scary even from where I was sitting.
‘You’re impossible,’ he shouted into the mirror.
‘You’re letting that manipulative bitch lead you around by the nose,’ I shouted back.
His eyes widened and he drew back his fist and for a moment I thought he’d punch through the glass. But he paused and it was all I needed to try and calm him down. ‘Think about it, Wax. She has a month to get the elixir to become real. That’s her goal. So, what is she waiting for?’
He frowned. I was getting through to him because he was thinking about what I said.
‘There must be something else she needs. Why isn’t she up at that mine right now? Something doesn’t add up. There’s something missing. Something we don’t know about.’
The anger drained out of him as if I’d pulled out a plug and he slumped back down into the chair. The others looked at each other in relief, as if I’d just talked down a roof jumper. ‘Your uncle is being used but he can’t be enough. Think! What else does she need?’
Wax shook his head, clearly confused. ‘My uncle has been quiet. He’s holed up in the basement, working on something with my father.’
‘There’s your answer. I bet whatever it is, it’s for Lila. We need to get down there and see what it is.’
Chapter 25
I’d let myself get talked back into the phone. ‘It’s the safest way for us to stay together,’ Wax said, still angry, I could tell. I decided to let it go and choose my victories, even though he was still pushing me around.
‘It is the most portable way for you to be with us, Becks,’ Ollie said more softly.
We were soon down in the kitchen again, waiting for an opportunity to get into the cellar. Wax’s father and uncle came out like old buddies and his dad put his arm around his mom’s waist a little unsteadily. He was smiling, cheeks rosy and drunk.
‘You go ahead. I’ll catch you up.’ Wax put up a hand to his mom. I had to kick myself again, that he was the only one of us any of the living could see.
Ainsley locked eyes with Lila, stone-cold sober, and some silent communication passed between them. Wax’s mom didn’t lose the opportunity to kiss Wax on the cheek. ‘Well, don’t be long. I want to hear all about what you’ve been up to.’
