“Maeve?” Rowan’s dark eyes were wide with concern.
“Give me a minute.” I shoved my cup back into Clara’s hands and darted for the stairs.
This is insane. This is the most insane idea I’ve entertained since I entered this castle. If I’m right, I can’t explain this away with theoretical physics.
I wound my way up, up, up the spiral staircase to the first-floor hallway and my mother’s portrait. The words she’d written for me in her letter reverberated in my head.
‘There are so many things I wish to tell you, but there is so little time. I will die tonight, of that I am certain. I saw my death many years ago. The power of premonition is an ugly gift, and I pray that you will not inherit this curse from me.’
But was it precognition? Had she really seen her own death, or did she just believe that because she knew she was the only one capable of stopping the fae? Why did she keep all the witches – even her own coven - out of the ritual? Was it ‘destiny,’ or did she really make a choice?
Did she choose death over me? Is she now haunting me?
“I hope for your sake you’re a victim of retrocausality,” I yelled up at the portrait. “You were supposed to love me above all others, like Jane loves Connor, and I think youchoseto leave me. But now I might have to make the same choice, and I’m afraid, that even if I did still have parents, this situation is woefully out of their sphere of interest. If it really is you haunting me and saving my boys, then I need answers, because ghosts don’t exist and paintings don’t talk and I’m so fuckingscared?—”
My words died on my lips. I stared up at the painting, seeing for the first time that night that my mother wasn’t staring out of the wall with her sparkling eyes and mysterious half-smile. Once more, her face had been twisted into an expression of extreme horror.
“Maeve,” Corbin’s footsteps clattered up the stairs behind me. “Don’t listen to Clara. We’ll find a way to?—”
Corbin’s words died on his lips. He’d seen it, too.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CORBIN
“See?” Maeve yelled. “I wasn’t just imagining it.”
I couldn’t find the words to answer her because I was too stunned to see that face staring back at me. Aline’s eyes were wide, filled with terror. Her mouth hung open, exposing the pink of her tongue and the black depths of her throat in a scream of silent horror. Even her posture seemed to have shifted ever so slightly, her limbs tight with tension.
This is insane. That painting has smiled down from this wall my entire life. How does it now look so completely horrifying?
Just as Maeve had already told me she’d done, I ran through the possible rational explanations in my head.It’s not the light shining on it in an unusual way. It’s not different portrait underneath showing through thin paint.I tapped the heavy gilded frame, wondering if someone had come into the castle while we were at the baptism and exchanged the painting for this creepy copy just to terrify us. But the frame was so heavy it would require at least three people to lift. There wasn’t an elevator in Briarwood, and we hadn’t been gone long enough for anyone human to complete that trick.
And even if someonehadmanaged to exchange the painting both times, that didn’t explain how Maeve had seen it last time and then moments later, it had transformed back.
So then what the hell am I looking at?
Maeve inched closer. I grasped her arm, my head spinning.
This can’t be real.
Footsteps clattered up the stairs behind us. “Mother Mary,” Flynn whispered as he too saw the face in the painting.
“That’s not possible,” Arthur hissed.
“Interesting,” Blake echoed.
“Aline certainly looks upset,” said Clara.
Okay, so everyone had seen it.
Either we’re having some mass group hysteria, or…or the painting really has moved.
I gulped down my rising fear. No time for that. We had to figure out what was going on.
I sucked in a deep breath, pushing the fear further down until it was a flicker of a shadow on the edge of my mind. Now that I could focus again, my mind started to whir through possibilities.
It had to be some sort of magic. That was the only explanation. It couldn’t be a fae’s doing, because they wouldn’t have been able to get inside the castle to enchant the portrait. Judging by the dust on the frame, the portrait hadn’t been moved outside. So that left us with a couple of possibilities – it could be some sort of ghost-related phenomena. The castle was certainly old enough to have a resident poltergeist, and although we’d never noticed any activity like that before, I couldn’t rule it out.
