Winter's Dream (The Hemlock Bay Series) (23 page)

I closed my eyes against his silent apology. I still fully put all the blame for everything on him. And his helping had literally killed me. But it had worked. I remembered him trying to tell me how different humans and jinn were, that he didn’t feel the same way about things because he wasn’t a person. And he had proved it, many, many times.

My heart melted. I could hate him for not being a human and move on or … I could accept what he was and trust that at least in one way he felt the same in his heart as I did in my human one. He loved me and really would do anything to keep me safe.

Slowly I reached out, my eyes cautioning him to be still. I gently picked up his hand, the hand that had held the pillow over my face and raised it to kiss the knuckles. I watched his eyes close in happiness as tears squeezed between his lashes. “I forgive you,” I said. “For everything.”

He hung his head and his shoulders rose and dipped with raspy breathes. “Thank you,” he finally whispered, bringing his face back up.

I gave him a tiny smile and he gave me one back. Suddenly I realized we had all the time in the world to make our apologies, to learn about each other, to find a way to love each other despite our differences.

A door downstairs slammed with such force I could hear it shatter against the wall.

I gasped and jumped to my feet. “They don’t know,” I said, running out the door. “Lincoln,” I cried, racing down the hall. Jordan followed at my heels but didn’t try to impede me.

I slid into the banister overlooking the front hall and the collision knocked the wind from my lungs. Lincoln was crumpled on the floor, his arms wrapped around his head. David stood over him, clearly not knowing how to comfort him.

I tried to say his name but couldn’t pull in enough air to. Jordan pulled me up and helped me down the stairs. No one looked up at the footsteps as they were drowned out by the storm whirling outside the door, throwing ice and water in.

My shaky legs wouldn’t let me run down the stairs and throw myself at Linc. Every second I watched him falsely mourn my death was searing into my heart.

We had almost reached him when the storm suddenly halted and the silence flooded the room. Jordan’s arms tightened painfully on my arm and I looked back at him, annoyed. His marble features stopped me and I followed his gaze to the front door.

Zombie Emma stepped in, her eyes blinded with that horrific blankness, and turned toward Luka. He stood just under the archway, his face tight and pained.

“What—” I tried to ask but Jordan clamped a hand over my mouth and released my arm to point back towards the doorway. The evil bubble I remembered so well was literally dragging someone. She rolled and fought along the wet marble, clawing frantically at the invisible wall. Her face flashed out of the madness for one clear second and my heart stopped.

It was Martha.

But it couldn’t be, my mind argued. Jordan had done it, he had broken the curse! I tried to twist away from him, tried to run to Martha. Jordan held me firm and breathed into my ear, “You can’t help her right now. And I don’t know what will happen if Emma notices you alive in her current state.”

I reluctantly nodded, tears burning my eyes. The curse wasn’t broken, I had just managed to escape it. I had tried to save her but she was going to be tied to a never ending curse that would eventually claim her life anyway.

“My lord,” Emma boomed out, “may I present your lady.”

Martha shrank as far away from Emma and Luka as she could, pressing her shivering back against the invisible wall.

“Thank you, Emma,” Luka mumbled.

She strode past him and lightning fast he grabbed her arm. “Is she … is Bixby …?”

In her zombie state she didn’t acknowledge him or his question. Defeated, he dropped her arm and she left.

He kept his head down for several long moments. We all watched him and hidden in the shadow of the staircase no one noticed me. Finally he raised his head and regarded Martha with red-rimmed eyes. “I’m sorry,” he whispered and reached for her.

She whimpered but didn’t cry out until he grabbed her wrists, holding them out. She was frozen with fear and my heart ached for her.

“Until my blood is satisfied,” Luka said with a cracked voice.

Light burst from his hands, engulfing her hands. She cried out and I understood, knowing how painful it was. I waited for him to drop her hands and walk away but he didn’t. He stared down at her wrists in disbelief, turning them over in his hands.

I struggled to move forward to see what he was looking at but Jordan held me back.

David broke the silence, his voice filled with awe. “She’s the one.”

Jordan gasped behind me.

Instead of bracelets with wispy smoke chains on her wrists, she had a thin, silver ring on the ring finger of her left hand. Luka held his left hand up to examine the twin of it.

“What does that mean?” I wondered aloud and they both jumped at the sound of my voice.

Lincoln sat up, frantically looking around the room. Jordan released my arm and I stepped into the weak light.

“Bumble bee!” he cried, trying to get up and slipping on the wet marble. “How did you, how are—”

I ran to him and slid in the water. I crashed into his legs and took us both down but we didn’t care. He wrapped me in a bear hug as the freezing water soaked my clothes.

“I thought I would never see you again,” he began to choke out but his sentiment was interrupted by another body crashing into us.

“Bixby!” Martha cried, pulling one of Lincoln’s arms away from my shoulder so she could squeeze into the hug. If Lincoln was surprised he didn’t show it. He put his arms around both of us and buried his face in the edge of my sweater.

We laughed and cried and hugged on the wet floor. Finally I was able to pull back a little and glanced towards the stairs where Jordan stood with a little smile on his face. I looked and saw Luka and David standing over me.

“You got away,” Luka whispered.

“How did you do it?” David asked hoarsely. His eyes were red and I loved him for it.

“Yeah, how did you do?” Lincoln echoed.

I hesitated on the details, finally just saying, “Jordan did it.”

My brother’s eyes shifted from my face to Jordan’s. Slowly his glare softened and finally he gave a curt nod. Jordan smiled back and I breathed a little sigh of relief.

Martha finally let me disentangle myself from her and Luka helped us both to our feet. He gazed at me with evident relief—and something else. His eyes shifted to Martha and his cracked back into grief when she shuddered and jerked her arm away from him. He had wanted me to be the one. And a little part of me had wanted that too.

I cleared my throat and slipped an arm through Martha’s. “Martha, this is Luka.”

She nodded her head imperceptibly.

“It will be okay,” I whispered in her ear. “I promise.”

“Um, guys,” came a tiny voice from the doorway. We all whipped around and my jaw dropped when I saw tiny, rain soaked Minnie peeking her head through the door.

“Minnie,” Martha and I cried. She stumbled over to us, shaking with cold.

“Oh my gosh,” I gasped, wrapping my arms around her freezing frame. “Somebody get a blanket.”

Minnie’s lips were blue and her teeth were chattering but unbelievably she was happy.

“Bixby, I missed you so much!” she forced out. “Nobody would tell me where you went—”

Lincoln wrapped a heavy blanket her shoulders and tucked the edges around her. She looked up gratefully and inhaled sharply when she saw my brother’s face.

I had to bite my lip not to grin. She was not the first to have that reaction to my brother.

David was frowning at me and nodding at Minnie. “Uh, Minnie, how did you get here?” I asked, pushing her wet hair off her forehead.

“I followed them,” she said simply.

I shook my head. “No, you shouldn’t have been able to.”

“Why not?” she asked and I realized the aunts had truly kept her in the dark. “You said to look out for Martha so I did.”

David shook his head and Luka shrugged his shoulders. Lincoln was stupidly gazing at Minnie and this time I let myself grin. “Okay, whatever.”

“Whatever?” Martha asked sharply. “She shouldn’t be here—and neither should you. And where are my bracelets? I thought I was supposed to have creepy manacles.”

Luka cleared his throat. “Perhaps we should all take a moment to dry off and warm up. I’ll ask the kitchen staff to prepare a small spread. I see we have quite a few things to figure out and go over.”

“What is that smell?” Linc suddenly asked. We all looked around, sniffing the air.

Suddenly it hit me. “Is that smoke?”

David’s face went from happy amazement to fear. “No,” he said. “No!” He lurched towards the staircase and ran up.

“Uncle?” Jordan called as David roughly brushed passed him.

Am I never going to just get to be happy, I wondered in the split second before I raced after David.

“Bixby, wait!” Lincoln called but I didn’t stop. There was something in David’s eyes that terrified me. I followed him up several staircases with Jordan right on my heels and was out of breath before he finally stopped in front of a large window looking out below.

Far behind the castle in the forest an orange light was growing. I squinted and saw flames just beginning to shoot over the tops of the dark trees.

“What is that?” I asked. “Is that my aunt’s house?”

Everyone else had followed us and I could hear them coming up the stairs but couldn’t take my eyes from David’s tear stained face. Pain and shock masked his normally calm features and I began to shake. He took a step back from the window and reached his hands up to smoothly part the reality in front of him.

Hot air and black smoke poured out of the tear, blowing his hair back but he stepped through anyway. I waited only a second before following him and Jordan was still right behind me.

We were in the woods in front of a huge, burning house. It wasn’t my aunt’s house and I breathed a tiny sigh of relief before I noticed David was on his knees with his head bent almost to the ground. He gave a shuddery sigh before lifting his hands again to draw them down in front of the house.

The wind that was pulled from the sky knocked me to the ground and suddenly everything was dark with the fire extinguished. Thick smoke still rolled off the hot building.

I coughed and rubbed at my burning eyes. “Are there people in there?” I cried, trying to edge closer to the extinguished inferno.

“Not anymore,” David said thickly. “They’re all gone.”

I crawled over to where he still knelt and put a hand on his shoulder. Tears were streaming down his face and he wouldn’t meet my eyes. “Are they dead?” I asked, shuddering at the horrible thought of burning to death in a fire.

He wiped his face with the back of one huge hand before responding. “They’re not dead, they were taken,” he said hollowly.

“Who?”

“The Gatekeepers the curse rejected.”

Despite the heat coming in waves off the shell of the building I was suddenly cold.

I heard a low growl and snapped around to find Luka had followed us through the tear. “You said Emma killed them.”

“I know,” David said sadly. He didn’t turn around to meet his nephew’s furious glare. “I had to, nobody could know they lived.”

I heard another growl from my other side and watched Jordan circle in. “You knew Bixby would live and let us believe—”

“I had to—”

“Liar!” Luka cut in, striding to face his broken uncle. The two boys stood shoulder to shoulder, glaring down at the man. I shifted to put my body between them.

“Get out of the way,” Luka and Jordan said as one.

I was scared, too scared to be able to stand up so I settled for crossing my shaking arms. “No. I want to hear what he has to say.”

“He’s a liar,” Jordan bit out.

“He’s your uncle,” I snapped back. “Shouldn’t you at least hear him out?” I turned to David. “So tell us.”

He looked up at us with an apology already in his eye. “I’m sorry I couldn’t tell you.”

“Tell us now!” Jordan growled.

David nodded and sat back on his heels. He took in a long, shaky breath before he began. “When my brother set this curse he didn’t really care what happened to the rejected girls. But he did want them out of his castle and he wanted to keep hurting Miriam so he didn’t let them go back to their world, their homes. Instead he made this prison in the woods, very similar to the one Jordan made for Lincoln.” I grimaced but didn’t look away from David as he continued his story. “Emma would lead them there and once inside, they couldn’t get out. Even more cruelly, he made sure Emma wouldn’t remember so she couldn’t go back later and try to help them. There were even spells in place to keep wanderers away and to silence the girls’ cries outside of the invisible walls.”

“So they were just stuck in the middle of the woods?” I asked, confused.

David wiped another tear away. “Yes, without food or water. I searched for almost a year before I discovered what my brother was doing with the rejected girls. Three were dead and one was very close to it. I tried to take her but I couldn’t, his spell was too powerful. I brought her food and water and built a small shelter and then the next one came. And the next one.” He looked up at the burned out structure. “That house took up nearly all of the space inside that little prison.” I tried to envision the house before it had burned. It could have easily held hundreds of girls.

“But why would you do that?” I asked. David had been a mystery to me since I met him, always claiming to be an enemy but always acting like a friend.

His voice was a low rumble and I had to lean forward to hear him. “Because it was my fault. All of it. Machian would never even have known of Miriam if he hadn’t heard me talking about her and her way with animals.” A tear ran down the ridge of his nose and dropped off the tip.

“So you felt guilty?” I asked, but that explanation seemed thin.

“You loved her,” Jordan said suddenly. “You did, didn’t you? I always wondered what had happened between you and your brother and why you kept going to see him anyway.”

“He never came to see him,” Luka interrupted. “You were going to check on them, on the girls,” he guessed.

I felt sorry for David but my anger was much greater. “You
are
a liar. I trusted you! Is that why you’ve been helping me? Why you helped Lincoln get to me? Because you’ve been feeling
guilty
?”

“Why couldn’t you just tell us?” Jordan snarled. “I killed Bixby to get her free! What if I couldn’t have revived her? If I had known she was just in the forest—”

“You don’t get it,” David said numbly. “You couldn’t have gotten her out. And I couldn’t tell anyone, I couldn’t draw any attention to them.”

“But why?” I asked. “Maybe someone could have helped you get them free.”

He reached a hand out to touch my cheek. “So sweet and so trusting,” he said quietly. “Do you think we’re all like this? So kind, so willing to help?” He cocked his head to the side. “We’re not. If any of my kind had even suspected there was a treasure of Gatekeepers stuck right here in their world they would have taken them in an instant.”