“Sorry to be so long, Jules, I got caught up with Jasper. Said he was seeing things, like—Well, doesn’t matter, couldn’t have happened. Poor old guy, he’s really come off the rails.”
Hugo’s broad shoulders sank. Julia heard the defeat in his voice and rubbed his arm. He could never bear to know someone was in trouble and not help. It was why he had been so easy to fall in love with, once she’d had the idea.
Nat’s voice was strangely intense. “I don’t know what Jasper said, Hugo, but I’ll tell you what I just saw. Tonight.Emma.”
Hugo’s broad brow creased.
“We both did,” Venetia cut in.
Julia felt a noise escape her. Because Emma was gone. Julia had run ahead that night, and Emma had disappeared. She could still see Emma’s face, fading into the darkness. Her brain tortured her with fantasies of going back, of taking Emma’s hand and refusing to let go. But she had not done any of those things. And so Emma could not be here, alive. Because Julia had failed her.
Nat took one of her hands. “Julia, I don’t know how, but Emma ishere.We saw her. She ran off, but I need”—his voice cracked—“we need to find her.”
It was too awful. They’d both gone mad. Julia turned to Hugo, longing to hide her face in his lapel. But he was looking past her.
“Oh my God,” he rasped. “I know where she went.”
Julia reeled back from him.
“Jasper kept saying he saw it. Emma being taken toward the river, too far away to catch up. I thought he was raving, but—Richard. He said it was Richard.”
Julia felt their eyes on her. They seemed shocked. But all she felt was numb certainty, an echo of something known already. She’d never been able to explain why she stopped answering Richard’s messages after Emma was gone. Her mind never let her examine why she felt she had to walk a different route home from lectures. Why she’d struggled to breathe in bed every night until Gabriel College let her switch rooms to one in the modern block, the one with keypad entry and security cameras. Why she jumped at shadows.
Now she was sure. Richard had always understood her. He had known the stinging pressure she’d worn like a noose all her life. Her family’s demands for her to succeed. To exceed. To prove worthy of her position. He’d said he felt it too. Felt the way it warpedthe inside of you until living felt like a soundless scream. But there had been a difference between them, she realized now. She had directed all of that pressure and rage in on herself. But Richard’s fury was for the world around him. A cold, steely undercurrent. So if Richard was involved, she knew one thing. The others weren’t afraid enough yet.
She strode from the group. Above her, the undersides of the leaves showed white in the wind. Lanterns strung between trees creaked. The weather was rising. The others scampered behind her. Or, at least, she thought they did. She didn’t turn to check. The ground near the riverbank was churned up. There were no punts tied to the mooring posts. And there was a handprint in the mud.
“Julia, wait—” Hugo was panting to keep up.
“The towpath. There’s nowhere else to take her.”
“But which way?” Nat’s tailcoat was whipping in the wind. “South, toward Regent’s College? Or North to Gabriel—to the Meadows?”
“Lots of nice lonely murderous spots there,” Venetia drawled.
“Not helpful,” Nat hissed, a wary eye on Julia.
And then they heard the scream.
South, then. And Julia found herself, with a suddenness that dizzied her, panting through the dark. The river gleaming in sly little ripples beside the towpath. Her gown catching on brambles. The others ran behind her. College after college passed, and there was no sign of Emma.
“Maybe we should stop. Regroup. Call the police.”
“There’s no signal.”
“Richard could have taken her anywhere. Back into town. Or had a car waiting.”
A year without slipping on her running shoes—and without eating or getting out of bed much either, if she were honest—was making itself known. Julia’s breath was coming in gasps. But her body felt as though it was waking up. Moving through a memory of someone she had forgotten how to be.
“No,” she said. “If it’s Richard, he’s taking her to the Library. He’s always had a key. We’re going there.”
CHAPTER 37
Richard Wellesley-Jones felt entitled to a little grievance.
A sacrifice had never escaped. A sacrifice had never been linked to the Turnbulls. Yet there she sat in the punt, staring and insolent. And in the past year, the Turnbulls had been hauled before the lowering stare of cameras and columnists. Centuries of secrecy shattered. Because of this nothing. A girl so unremarkable, her own father hadn’t bothered with her.
Although. Was there something about her? Something that hadn’t been there before. Weak, malleable Emma Curran had not had eyes that sparked with the light of burning stars. The creature that faced him was no girl. The lines of her were too perfect, as removed from humanity as a drawing or a statue. She sat with the eerie stillness of a predator in wait. Richard crushed the instincts that were insisting, quite firmly, that he should turn and flee.
