Warped (10 page)

Scytha looked up from the Wyrd to her sisters. She traced the shining blue thread, her fingers crawling along its length like a monstrous spider. “We will contact this human. She will be made to return the threads.”

Spyn’s fingers trembled and twitched as she worked. “You do it,” she said querulously. “I don’t like talking to humans. They never understand anything. And they always have to ask the question. Always the
same
question. It makes a buzzing in my head.”

Weavyr spoke. “We must find out how this happened. How did this mortal winnow the threads from living beings? Has she destroyed them? Is that what caused this mess?” She waved a frustrated hand at the Wyrd.

“No,” answered Scytha. “The threads are not destroyed. We would have sensed the pain of the souls that were ended.”

Weavyr and Spyn nodded.

“We will get the threads back.” Scytha’s voice seemed now, more than ever, to carry the gloom of a deep abyss. “Or there will be consequences.”

Her shears flashed.

Chapter 15

“S
o you pulled a thread from the tapestry. Room starts shaking. Bing bang boom. Guy lands on the floor.”

“Right,” Tessa said into her cell, to Opal. “Stop repeating it, okay? He’s from England in the fifteen hundreds, and practically royalty. According to
him
, anyway.” Tessa added this in a low voice. She watched as William de Chaucy paced her room, examining her books, her photos, the computer, smelling a felt-tip marker with a look of distaste. “He’s really from the past,” she went on. “He doesn’t know anything about our time. Cars, planes, phones, nothing. This Gray Lily person, who sounds like a real piece of work, put some kind of a spell on him and took a thread with his soul or his life or something, and used it to make him into a unicorn. The unicorn from the tapestry.”

“Was he naked?” Opal asked.

“
What?
”

“Was he, like, all naked when he came out of the tapestry?”

“No. He wasn’t naked!” Tessa hissed in an undertone.

“Opal, have you been listening to me?”

“I dunno. I just thought—”

“Look, I’m serious. I mean, I’m not crazy or anything. But maybe I am. And if I am, I need your help even more.” Tessa stopped and took a deep breath. She tried to ignore William, who had turned and was now watching her, arms folded, leaning against the wall.

“And you really buy all this?” Opal asked. “You believe him?”

“Yes,” Tessa said simply. She
did
believe him. She wished she had told Opal about the strange visions she’d had when she touched the tapestry. She didn’t know how or why, but she had seen William de Chaucy’s world. Somehow she’d
been
there. “I can explain more when you come and see for yourself.”

“It just sounds weird,” Opal said.

Tessa looked at the tall, muddy guy in her bedroom, who had just noticed the light switch. He flicked it off and on again. A look of shock came over his face, then a delighted smile.

“We passed weird a few stops back,” Tessa answered. “This is real.”

“Okay. I’ll be right over.”

Tessa touched the wet facecloth to the dirty, torn flesh on William de Chaucy’s cheek. He never moved, but she winced as the dried blood and grime came away, revealing a ragged cut that traveled from his cheekbone to his jaw.

“This is a mess,” she said, staring at it. Winced again.
Not the best thing to say, Florence Nightingale
.

Opal hovered over Tessa’s shoulder. “Did Gray Lily do that to you?” she asked.

“No,” William de Chaucy answered, staring straight ahead. His voice was as expressionless as his face, but both still relayed a clear message:
It’s none of your business
.

“You should probably have stitches,” Tessa said. She waited to see if that broke his cool. A lot of tough-looking guys went surprisingly weak-kneed about stuff like that. But the comment didn’t seem to faze de Chaucy.

“Here, put some of this on it.” Opal handed Tessa a tube of antibiotic ointment. Tessa began to daub it along the wound, but William shied away from her hands. He stood up.

“Enough,” he told her.

“But it could get infected,” Tessa said indignantly.

“What is
infected?
” he asked, glaring down at her. His tone was suspicious.

“You know, germs,” said Tessa. “Pus, gangrene, flesh-eating bacteria?” Now he was looking at her like that again. As if he didn’t trust her. “I don’t suppose my lord has ever heard of a
tetanus shot,
” Tessa finished, sounding harder than she meant to.

She didn’t feel afraid anymore. Mostly, Tessa realized, she felt kind of helpless and, for some reason, angry. And the angry had nowhere to go but toward
him
.

William stared at her. “Most of your words I cannot construe,” he said. “But I take your meaning. The wound will heal. I don’t require any further attentions. And I am not a lord,” he added. The faint curl of his lip made Tessa wonder if he was making fun of her or himself. “Being the younger son of an earl, I am only an esquire.”

“That’s cool,” said Opal. She’d been ogling him with transparent awe ever since she walked in. “William de Chaucy, Esquire.” She grinned.

“Please. Call me Will,” he said to her. He flashed an easy smile, grimacing slightly as it caught up to his cheek. He had a crooked front tooth, Tessa noticed.

But Opal was charmed. She grinned even wider, showing gums that had probably never seen daylight before. Tessa scowled and wiped her hands.

“I thank you for your help, Tessa, Opal,” Will said, nodding to both of them. “But I must go now. Just get me some food and ale.” He crossed to the chair where his cloak lay, covering the distance in two long strides. He grabbed the cloak and slung it over his broad shoulders. “I’ll take one of your horses.”

“Oh really?” snapped Tessa. “Well, we don’t happen to have any horses in the old corral at the moment.” She flung the bloody cloth to the floor. “Do you always order people around like this?”

“
Yes,
” he said, with stormy emphasis, as if pleased that she finally understood.

“Fine,” Tessa shot back. “But it seems to me, having just been
rescued
or
released
or whatever”—she threw her hands up—“you could be a little nicer.”

Opal stood by, looking at Tessa with wide eyes. Blinked. Looked at Will.

He never took his eyes from Tessa’s face. “Perhaps I have my reasons,” he said quietly, his expression unreadable. “But it is true. I do believe I owe you my life, mistress. Such as it is.”

There was a bitter irony in his tone, in his words, that baffled Tessa.

Before she could react, his expression changed. He smiled again and laid his hand on his chest. “And so, if my manner has been surly, please accept these, my sincere apologies. I shall try to be, henceforth, nice.” He bowed once more, but this time it was deep and, no mistake, mocking. His eyes were trained on hers, glinting a challenge from under tousled hair.

Tessa tried to ignore the strange little hiccup in her pulse. “Okay then,” she managed. “But I still don’t see how you can go off on your own. You’ve got no money, no food. And there’s presumably somebody out there who could . . . ”
Take your life and basically turn it into macramé
. “Hurt you,” she finished.

Then she remembered something else. “The woman who owned the tapestry,” she said. “She wants it back. Maybe she knows something about it, something that could help.” She frowned, trying to recall the name.

Meanwhile, William de Chaucy’s face was set in firm lines that seemed to express cool disdain for the idea. “Thank you, but I shall take my own counsel on the matter,” he replied.

“We should find out, at least,” Tessa argued. “Besides,” she reasoned, “where would you go?”

“Home,” Will said, as if it were just that simple.

Opal looked back and forth from Tessa to Will. “You know, the two of you are acting like this isn’t totally whacked.” She waggled a finger between them. “Do you think you could both be crazy together? I’ve heard of stuff like that happening—mass hypnosis or psychosis. Hysteria, that’s it.”

“Hello?” said Tessa, raising a hand. “Not hysterical here.”

“I am standing before you, Mistress Opal,” said Will dryly. “And that”—he pointed to the empty clearing in the tapestry—“is where I
was.
”

Tessa allowed herself to gaze at the tapestry once more. She took a step toward it. “What is it like?” she asked. “Inside there?”

Will de Chaucy regarded her gravely. “As you see. A forest,” he answered. “Exquisitely beautiful. And deadly. And endless.”

She stared at the dark center of the tapestry, then said in a quiet voice, “I wonder if there might be a way for you to go back?”

He stiffened. “Is that what you wish?”

“No,” said Tessa simply. “I didn’t mean—”

“I will
never
go back into the tapestry,” Will said. He glared at her. “I would die first.”

Opal shook her head. “A unicorn,” she said, eyeing Will. “People just don’t get turned into unicorns. I mean, this is a mythical creature we’re talking about.”

Will picked up a snow globe from Tessa’s desk and turned it in his hands, studying it. “I don’t know how Gray Lily performed the witchery.” He looked at Tessa closely, and again she saw distrust in his eyes. “Or how
you
managed to reverse it, mistress. But I am, as you can see, real. And as for the unicorn,” he added to Opal, “it is not mythical. It’s legendary.”

“Okay. So what’s the difference?” said Tessa.

Will shrugged and set down the globe. “Mythical creatures are imaginary. A fiction. Legends are based on something real.”

“Right,” said Opal, nodding agreement. “I get it. Kind of like Elvis.”

Will turned to her. “Who?”

“The singer. Elvis.” Opal held up an invisible microphone, slicked back an imaginary pompadour and swiveled her skinny hips.

Tessa smiled despite herself. This was getting crazier by the minute.

“Elvis is a legend, right?” said Opal. “But he was a real guy first. The King of Rock and Roll.”

Will nodded thoughtfully. “Yes.” He turned back to Tessa. “I am like Elvis.”

Tessa gave in to a helpless laugh at his serious expression. William de Chaucy cocked his head, looked at her and raised one brow. Someone knocked on the door.

“Tessa?” her father called. “May I come in?”

“Oh. Just. Perfect,” Tessa bit out under her breath. Then she yelled, “Uh. No. Wait a minute, Dad. I’ll be right out!”

She grabbed Will by the arm and pushed him toward her closet. “Come on,
Elvis
. I don’t want my father to find you. I am so not ready to have that conversation.”

Will allowed himself to be pushed, but ambling backward, he shot a smile down at her. A real smile that went straight into her eyes. “That was
King
Elvis, I believe,” he said in a low voice as she shut the door.

“Is Opal staying over tonight?” Tessa’s father asked when she scrambled downstairs to the kitchen.

Staying over?
Tessa thought, suddenly panicking.
Was
he? Where was she going to put him? What could she do with the sixteenth-century-tapestry-unicorn-turned-really-good-looking-though-very-disturbing-and-kind-of-snotty guy upstairs, hiding in her closet?

“Staying over? Yeah, I think so,” she choked out. “Is that okay?”

“Of course. I wanted to tell you about what the appraiser said.” Her father sat down at the kitchen table. He wore white cotton gloves, and he carefully picked up the old book that had accompanied the tapestry. Through the protective plastic sleeve Tessa saw the title once again:
Texo Vita
.

“Believe it or not,” her father said, “this book seems to be from somewhere around the sixteenth century.”

“Really,” said Tessa. She turned away, opened the fridge and peered inside. She could have probably narrowed its age down a bit more than that. But she wasn’t ready to tell her father what had happened.

Jackson Brody watched as his daughter took out cheese, milk, sliced ham, pickles, mustard, mayonnaise, two sodas. “I’m sorry, honey,” he said. “I promised you some dinner, didn’t I? You must be hungry.”

“Starved.” She pulled a loaf of whole-grain bread from the drawer and grabbed a thick handful of slices from the bag. “So’s Opal.” She began constructing sandwiches and piling them on a paper plate.

“I guess I haven’t been paying too much attention to you lately, have I? I’m sorry about that, Tessa. You know, about Alicia and me—”

“Dad,” Tessa interrupted. “You don’t need to say anything. Please. I’m fine with you guys going out or whatever.”

Her father gave her a perplexed look and shrugged. “Okay. But we’re going to have to talk about the ‘whatever’ sometime.”

Tessa’s eyes dropped. “What were you going to tell me about the book?”

Her father tapped the spine of the thick tome. “Professor Waterhouse has never seen anything like this or even
heard
of anything like it. He also can’t explain the level of preservation. The paper, the binding, even the vegetable inks are all consistent with this book being roughly five hundred years old.” Her father shook his head. “The paper should be crumbling by now, but it’s not. And the text is in Medieval English, interspersed with Latin. It seems to be a journal, detailing local tales around a particular region in Cornwall, especially about witchcraft but also, strangely enough”—her father frowned—“about weaving.” He laid the book down and pulled off the gloves.

Tessa stopped. “Weaving?” A cold tingle of fear passed from her core along her arm to her fingertips, retracing the streak of warmth she’d felt when she pulled the silvery thread.

“Yeah.” Her father came over, popped a gherkin into his mouth and munched. “Very intriguing. In fact, translated,
Texo Vita
means ‘the weave of life.’ ” He frowned. “Waterhouse was really disappointed that I took it back. He’d already contacted someone at Yale to do further testing.”

“Listen, Dad.” Tessa worked nervously, slapping bread on the last sandwich and squishing the whole stack down. “We can’t give the book back. Or the tapestry. At least, not yet.”