Secrets of the Deep (55 page)

She had put on a brave face when she’d had to keep Lil entertained, but now she was left alone with her uneasiness. All she could think to do was to try and stay busy. She kept the coffee brewed. Made another pot of tea. Tended the oil lamps when they sputtered. Trimmed a wick here, relit a guttering oil lamp there.

Though the golden glow of the lanterns mingled with the silver-tinted moonlight spilling through the windows, the shadows yawned all around her, black and deep.

She checked on Liliana, then went to make the rounds again, assuring herself a dozen times over that the villa was secure. She went up to the turret to check on Archie, scanning the horizon for any sign of the
Flying Dutchman
. She opened another window for him while she was up there so the cross-breeze would help to keep the sleepy genius awake. Then she moved on.

In every room she inspected, Dani kept glancing at the mantel clocks and grandfather clocks, waiting for one of them to say six thirty. But it was barely an hour and a half past midnight. They had a long way to go until sunrise, or moonset, or whatever the rule was about the cursed pirate and his shark-faced crew. She shuddered at the thought of them and returned to the oval drawing room.

She had barely sat down, dropping into one of the red velvet club chairs, when the thump landed on the ceiling above her.

At once, Teddy lifted his head, perked up his ears, and gave a low growl.

Dani was still gazing at the ornate ceiling, wondering what to do. Lady Bradford had said not to bother her, no matter what they heard. But that really didn’t sound right, she thought.

“Teddy,” she whispered to her dog, pointing at the sleeping girl, “stay with Lil. I’d better go see if anything is wrong.”

She tiptoed out of the oval drawing room once again to go investigate, and Teddy stayed put.

As Dani walked down the breezy hallway to the stairs, she told herself that, of course, she had no intention of interfering in the Elder witch’s art. She did not want to get accidentally turned into a toad. To be sure, her own ill-fated attempt to use an enchantment once not long ago had proved most humiliating.

She shook her head as she walked up the stairs, recalling the debacle of the Sticking Powder incident. She had purchased a small pouch of it at the fairy market back at Merlin Hall. She had thought it would make a jolly prank to get back at those horrid skunk shapeshifter kids, who had sprayed her and Archie and left them reeking.

Oh, indeed, the Sticking Powder had worked, just like the wart-nosed crone who’d sold it to her had promised.

But Dani had spilled some on herself in the process and had ended up as a freakish rabbit-girl for an hour or so, complete with bunny whiskers, a cottontail, and big, floppy ears. Talk about embarrassing.

No, thank you,
Dani thought. Magic came in handy now and then, but Nixie and her kind could keep it. That stuff was trouble.

She suddenly wondered if Lady Bradford’s magic tonight hadn’t backfired on her somehow. That thump had almost sounded like Her Ladyship had fallen. She was an old woman; she could’ve hurt herself. With that thought, Dani ran the rest of the way up the stairs.

Still, when she came to the baroness’s door, she hesitated before knocking. She did not wish to annoy her employer or break her concentration if she was practicing her craft. She put her ear against the door. If she heard Her Ladyship chanting, then she would be satisfied that everything was fine and would withdraw. Instead, there was only silence. Her sense of alarm intensified.

She did not need Isabelle’s empath powers or Maddox’s Guardian instincts to feel increasingly sure that something was wrong.

Lifting her hand, Dani rapped her knuckles softly on the door. “Your Ladyship? Sorry to bother you, but—are you all right in there?”

No answer.

Flummoxed but determined, she got down on her hands and knees in the hallway and tried to peek through the crack beneath the chamber door. If there were magical things going on in there she wasn’t supposed to see, she supposed she could get in trouble, but she had to make sure her employer was all right.

Her one-eyed panorama only revealed a narrow horizontal sliver of the private sitting room that adjoined Her Ladyship’s bedchamber. Straining her eyeball, Dani swept the tiny crack before her with her gaze.

She could barely see anything but the warm glow of candles suffusing the chamber, the bottom of some furniture, the edge of the Persian carpet…

She suddenly gasped, her gaze slamming to a halt on the inert form of Her Ladyship on the floor. The Elder witch’s eyes were closed, her arm flung out beside her, she wasn’t moving, and blood trickled from her nose.

Dani leaped to her feet with a cry of horror. At once, she grasped the doorknob, but it was locked. She jiggled it violently, to no avail, unsure if Her Ladyship was unconscious—or, sweet Mary, dead.

“Lady Bradford, wake up! Can you hear me? You need to let me in!” She dropped down to look through the crack beneath the door again and saw the old woman had not stirred in answer to her calls.

Panicked, Dani knew she had to get the door open so they could help her. She started ramming it with her shoulder and kicking it, but she wasn’t strong enough.

Jake.
His telekinesis.

In the next heartbeat, she was racing down the stairs, taking them two at a time, her hand on the banister to avoid falling. Teddy sprang off the couch and scampered after her when she ran by the wide doorway of the sitting room.

Dani barreled outside, ignoring Nixie, who had paced down to the far end of the terrace. Rushing over to the balustrade, she cupped her hands around her mouth and screamed Jake’s name into the night.

# # #

Jake nearly fell off the rock where he had been counting stars and half dozing when Dani’s scream tore through the darkness.

Instantly wide awake, he leaped to his feet and whirled around.

“Jake, come in here!” she cried frantically. “It’s your aunt! Something’s wrong!”

“What happened?” he bellowed back, already running toward her.

“I don’t know! She’s on the floor—she’s not moving!”

Hearing this, all down the beach, the others had had a similar reaction. Thus, it was not just Jake who went racing toward the house; Isabelle and Maddox abandoned their posts too.

Sapphira waved them on. “Go, I’ll keep watch!”

Baffled by Dani’s claim, Jake sprinted as fast as his feet would carry him through the deep sand higher up the beach until he gained the bottom of the stone stairs leading up to the villa. From separate directions, the other two were also converging on the beach stairs, but Jake arrived first, since he had launched into action from the minute Dani had screeched his name.

He had never heard her sound so hysterical.

“What happened?” he clipped out as the redhead flung halfway down the steps the sooner to reach him, then ran back up them again by his side, babbling with fright.

“I was in the house and I heard a bump on the ceiling and I knew something was wrong. I went up to check on her and she didn’t answer, so I looked under the door. She was lying on the floor, not moving! She had a bloody nose, Jake! She needs help, but I couldn’t get the door open. It’s locked!”

“I’ll get it,” he said grimly.

“Oh, please, don’t let her be dead,” Dani whispered. “She looked dead, Jake, I swear.”

Inside the villa, they pounded up the stairs, ignoring Liliana, who stood looking dazed in the doorway of the oval drawing room. Teddy was barking at all the clamor and followed them up the stairs.

“Be quiet!” Jake ordered as he stalked to the door of Aunt Ramona’s suite.

He tried the doorknob as Maddox and Isabelle came pounding up the stairs, their weapons still in hand.

“Aunt Ramona? Can you hear me?” Jake called, jiggling the handle.

“I told you, it’s locked!” Dani said, starting to cry.

Jake dropped to his knees to peer under the door, confirming that what Dani had said was still accurate, and making sure his aunt was not in the way of the door before he opened it.

The sight of her there struck him like a blow to the gut, though. Aunt Ramona indeed looked lifeless, a trickle of blood coming from her nose. “What has she done to herself?” he said as he climbed to his feet, his knees turning to jelly at the mere possibility of facing life without her.

It had been a rhetorical question, but Dani answered in a shaky voice. “I don’t know. But she told us it was something she thought she would probably regret. Remember?”

Jake’s mind was reeling to think that his aunt, the Elder witch, who was like a force of Nature herself, should have fallen in whatever sort of mystical, long-range battle she had been trying to wage.

“Don’t just stand there, hurry!” Isabelle said. “Get the door open, Jake!”

“I’ll do it,” Maddox said, but Jake barred the way with his arm and then took a step back, using his telekinesis to blast the door open.

It shot back so hard it half tore off its hinges.

At once he strode in. Isabelle and he rushed across the room, dropping to their knees on either side of their aunt.

By now, Archie and Nixie had arrived too—he with a cry of shock, setting aside his pneumatic blunderbuss, she with a gasp at the sight of Aunt Ramona on the floor.

Lil had also followed them as far as the sitting room doorway, while Teddy ran around, getting underfoot and barking. But not even that noise was enough to wake the old woman.

“Aunt Ramona, can you hear me?” Isabelle pleaded, while Jake stared at his aunt in shock.

“I told you she was like this,” Dani said, then picked up her dog and managed to shut him up a bit.

“I have medical equipment, I think.” Archie dashed out of the room to fetch whatever he could find.

Maddox, however, walked over calmly to the dowager and crouched down on one knee. He picked up her hand and felt her wrist for a pulse, while Isabelle tearfully continued trying to wake her.

Jake remembered belatedly that Guardians received basic emergency medical training.

Maddox nodded. “She’s alive.”

Thank God,
Jake thought.

“But her pulse is weak,” he added. “I think she just fainted.”

“I have smelling salts!” Isabelle shot to her feet. “What?” she added defensively at Jake’s startled glance. “Miss Helena says every girl’s got to have them!”

“Get them; they might help,” Maddox said in a steady tone. “Let’s get her off the floor.”

“Careful, she might have broken bones from the fall!” Isabelle warned, halfway to the door. “She’s old, remember? Don’t make it worse!”

“I’m not going to hurt her,” Maddox retorted.

“Not now, you two!” Nixie cried.

Isabelle and Maddox looked at the young witch, then glanced warily at each other.

“I’ll get the smelling salts, Izzy,” Dani mumbled. “You stay with your aunt.”

Isabelle nodded with gratitude and the redhead hurried off, taking her dog with her.

“Well, we can’t just leave her on the floor like this,” Maddox said.

“He’s right.” Archie marched back in with his medical reference book already open. “We have to elevate her upper body by a few degrees and apply pressure to her nose until it stops bleeding.”

“I could’ve told you that,” Maddox said quietly.

“I could levitate her onto her bed! It’s only in the next room—”

“Everybody, just calm down,” Maddox ordered. “I’ll carry her. Don’t worry; I’ll be careful. Remember the gnomes the Elders made me take care of for two weeks for my Assessment?”

Jake remembered. The lesson had shown that a Guardian had to be gentle and kind as well as strong and courageous.

Nobody argued as Maddox bent down and tenderly lifted Aunt Ramona’s frail body off the floor. Archie supported her gray head and rested it against Maddox’s shoulder while Jake ran ahead to open the door to her bedchamber.

Isabelle glided in first, holding up a candle to light the way, then Maddox walked in carrying Aunt Ramona. As Izzy set the candle on the dresser, Archie hurried over to the bed and stacked some pillows against the headboard so she could lie down slightly elevated, as the book had specified.

The bed was made up, but they didn’t bother trying to put her under the covers. Maddox just rested her on top of it, propping her head and shoulders on the pillows Archie had arranged.

The room was dark with only the one candle, but over by the dresser, Jake saw Isabelle pouring some water out of the pitcher into the shallow white washbowl. She dampened a washcloth and brought it, along with the bowl of water, over to their aunt’s bedside.

She sat down on the edge of the bed and began wiping the blood off their aunt’s wrinkled face, and trying anxiously all the while to get a response. “Aunt Ramona, can you hear me? It’s Isabelle. We’re here to help you…”

Still, the old woman didn’t stir, but at least they saw that her nose had stopped bleeding. Jake finally managed to scrape his wits back together after the shocking sight of the powerful and intimidating Elder witch in this helpless condition. But Maddox’s mention of the Assessments had triggered a memory.

“I had a nosebleed like that once,” he said grimly. “During the final test in my Assessment. It happened because I strained my powers too much. So what was she doing in here?”

They all looked at Nixie, who had come only as far as the bedroom doorway. She bit her lip and looked over her shoulder at the round table in the sitting room, where Aunt Ramona’s crystal ball was set up.

“I don’t know much about High Magick. It’s really advanced. But I would assume she was trying to participate in the rescue mission on the astral plane.”

“People do that?” Jake asked in astonishment.

“Most people can’t,” Nixie answered. “May I remind you, Her Ladyship may just be Aunt Ramona to you, but to the rest of the magical world, she’s sort of a legend. So…” Nixie shrugged.

“If she’s such a legend, then why would she faint like some ninny of a girl?” Archie exclaimed. “Did she overuse her powers like Jake said, or did somebody out there on this astral plane of yours
do
this to her?”