I thrust harder and faster, and as my fingers find her clit, she moans so loud it bounces off the walls of the orangery, filling the air and wrapping around us like music. Pleasure short-circuits my brain, and we’re both panting. I continue pumping, the sound of skin slapping against skin, so much slippery wetness. I’m beyond words now, only sensation, lost in her magnificent, dripping cunt, and then, just as she tightens around me and comes in shuddering, gasping relief, I explode.
—
In the morning, Josie’s awake and full of energy, a wild thing I can’t quite catch no matter how fast I try to move. I follow her, smiling despite myself, my hands in my pockets as I watch her spin around, teasing me with those bright green eyes of hers.
“Come on, Axe.” She laughs, beckoning me. “Show me something interesting.”
What she doesn’t realize: Josie Greene is the most interesting bloody thing in this whole damn castle. I spent the most unhappyyears of my life here, wandering the halls, hiding from monsters, but she’s been here five minutes, and it no longer feels like a prison. I’m no good at words, though. Not when it comes to tender things like this. I just shake my head and huff a laugh, trailing behind her.
“All right, lass,” I say to her. “If you want something interesting, follow me.”
I take her down a side passage, toward the portrait gallery. The door creaks as I push it open, and Josie slips inside, her curiosity vibrating off her. She stops in the center of the room, taking it all in. It’s just as I remember it—Hamish didn’t change a thing. The portraits stretch from floor to ceiling, grand and intimidating, generations of MacKenzie eyes following our every move.
She doesn’t seem to mind, though. She marches right up to the biggest one. The one that’s always been hardest for me to look at. Too much truth in those brushstrokes. I stand on the left, frozen in time as a lad of about sixteen, tall and broad-shouldered, but still more scrappy than filled out. There’s a tightness to my posture—like I’m not built for sitting and would bolt if I could.
Hamish stands beside me. He’s trying to look the part of the older brother, but he holds himself with a false, awkward confidence. His skin is pale, almost sickly, like he hasn’t seen the sun in weeks. His frame is frail, and his clothes hang off him in a way that makes him seem smaller than he is. His hair, as dark as mine, is slicked back too tight.
But it’s his eyes that give him away; their blue is dull and shadowed, with dark circles beneath them that the artist couldn’t paint away. Before I went off to boarding school, before his mum died, Hamish moved with lightness and ease. The portrait captures him in the after, the new Hamish I returned home to from my year away.
“Poor thing,” says Josie. As she turns away, the morning light catches her hair, and it glows as bright as a summer strawberry. “Did you ever really get along?” she asks softly.
“When we were young, yeah. And then later, it was like he had given up on being good or kind. He wanted to be like Da,” I answer. “He was desperate to be loved.”
Josie steps closer to the painting, her fingers ghosting lightly over the frame. “It’s so sad,” she says. “At first, becoming like your father probably felt so much easier, but then, I bet, once he crossed that line, it must have been hell. Must’ve stung him even more, watching you manage to keep your decency in this place.”
I exhale, crossing my arms. “He always seemed to hate me for not participating. Like my rejecting Da and all the terrible things he did was a betrayal of Hamish, too. I don’t know. Maybe he hated me because I couldn’t do it and he could. And then he started living so hard and recklessly, there was no reaching him.”
Josie’s eyes widen. “I guess then it makes even more sense that you thought he died.”
“Aye,” I say, my voice rougher now. “Drunk driving was the least of it. I could hardly believe he made it to twenty. Him smashing up his car felt fitting. Hamish was always trying to outrun whatever was eating at him.”
Josie steps back from the portrait and shakes her head.
“I reckon he eventually pulled himself together and knew there was no way I’d let him turn completely into Da—I’d have immediately reported him or taken him down somehow. So he made his fortune quietly, shuffling it through shell companies, reinventing himself as fucking Niles von Grafenhagen. Bought the castle through small-time brokers and corporations I’d never think to trace.”
“I knew that name had to be made up,” Josie says.
“I don’t know why, after all these years, he wanted to come after me.”
“Maybe because he knew it was only a matter of time before you came after him.” Josie takes my hand and links our fingers.
“He was sick,” I decide, finding a bit of compassion for my brother now that he’s dead. Josie’s quiet for a long moment, her gaze still on the painting, though I can tell she’s not really seeing it anymore. She’s somewhere else, far off in that wild mind of hers. I step closer, wanting to touch her, to pull her back, but she speaks before I can say a word.
“The Moon…the Star…the Ten of Pentacles,” she whispers so softly I almost miss it. “She was sick, too.”
“What was that?”
“We need to get home,” Josie says, a new urgency in her voice. “I have something I need to take care of.” She swallows. “It’s time.”
Fifty-Five
Josie
It clicks.
I’m standing there, staring at the painting, and suddenly it feels like the floor has dropped out from under me. Not in a thrilling, fun-house way, either; it’s more like I’m in free fall, my stomach churning, my heart racing, everything in me braced for maximum holy-fucking-crap, everything-I-thought-I-knew-is-upside-down impact.
Hamish. Nonna’s cards.
