“I’ve heard that Morna was troubled,” Cordelia told him, nervous the name might conjure the ghost. “Dangerous.”
“She was shy,” he replied. “Misunderstood by those who didn’t know better. They say she jumped,” he told her, pointing to the house’s tower. “But my father never believed it.”
“Didn’t he?” Cordelia quickly sipped her wine to conceal her surprise.
“She had a pair of ravens,” the man said. “They were like her children. She fed them and talked to them. Ravens live an awful long time in captivity, you know. Smarter than chimps, they are. Something happened to them birds. Something awful. My father would never say what, but Miss Morna wasn’t the same after that.”
“How terrible,” Cordelia said, glancing toward the tower, where the windows were empty, still glowing golden from inside. “She didn’t harm them herself?”
The man stuck out a lip and shook his head slowly. “My father said she’d sooner hurt herself than them birds. Didn’t have it in her to even swat a fly.” He leaned toward Cordelia as he went on. “They set her up with a nurse. Sister to the town solicitor. But poor Morna only got worse in her care.” He clutched at Cordelia’s arm with a withered, shaky hand. “My father thought it was the nurse that done it.”
Cordelia jerked back reflexively. She recalled that the article she read claimed the nurse had been in the tower with Morna that day, presumably to stop her. She spun to stare up at its glinting windows, half expecting to see Morna standing there now, a smudge behind the glass. When she turned back, a woman she didn’t know was escorting the old man away.
Her sister slid an arm into hers, sneaking up from the side. “No sign of him yet,” she whispered. “But he’s here. I know he is. I have a feeling.”
Cordelia looked at her, then up to the sky. The light was all but gone. “Come, let’s get everyone to the promenade. It’s time.”
Eustace nodded, and together they made their way through the garden, rounding up guests as they went, ushering them onto the gently rolling mounds and wide-open grass beneath the sprawl of flowering branches. On their way there, Cordelia latched onto Bennett Togers, towing him along in earnest.
A table had been set up under two dogwoods, with a fountain pen and the necessary paperwork, held down by a brass paperweight in the shape of a hand that they’d taken from the study. Cordelia escorted Bennett behind it to stand beside her sister. Raising a silver dinner bell, she rang it loudly until she had everyone’s attention. “My sister would like to say a few words,” she told the hundreds of eyes blinking at her from the dusk.
Eustace cleared her throat. “It is with great honor that we ask you here tonight to witness the signing of our inheritance with Mr. Togers, steward of our family’s estate for many years. When my sister and I first got the call about our aunt Augusta, we came expecting to find a little country house, perhaps a few sentimental heirlooms, and nothing more. You can imagine our shock when we pulled up to this place. The grandeur that is Bone Hill overwhelmed us in the beginning, but after many weeks here, we now know it as home. We missed the opportunity to truly knowour family as we might have wished, and that gives us something in common with all of you. It is our great hope that, moving forward, you will share in the special magic that is this place alongside us, and allow us to share in the magic of community with you.” She took up the pen and quickly scrawled her name on the final page, handing it then to Cordelia.
Coming around the other side of the table, so that Bennett was sandwiched between them, Cordelia also signed. She held the pen out to the attorney, whose placid mask slipped for a moment, his face suddenly dismayed, even panicky, as if he’d have liked to crawl under the table and escape them. But as soon as she saw the emotion there, it vanished, replaced by his veneer of calm. Taking the pen, he scratched his name onto the page.
“To many years to come!” Eustace finished, raising a glass, and everyone toasted the moment as the sky split with a squealing streak of light that burst into a thousand drops of colored fire.
The first of the fireworks had gone off right on time.
This was Cordelia’s secret weapon—a grand show for the end of the night and a way to send them off with something rapturous still burning through their minds. A crew of three was on the far side of the promenade. They’d been setting up for the last couple of hours. But having failed to tell Mr. Togers what was coming, Cordelia noticed him duck as if a gun had been fired.
“Don’t worry,” she told him, placing a hand on his shoulder. “It’s just some fireworks I ordered. Pretty incredible, right?” She looked up to see the sky flashing purple.
Bennett growled next to her. “Just some fireworks? Ms. Bone, this is precisely the kind of thing I warned you against. Fireworks are responsible for nearly twenty thousand fires a year. Would you like to burn the house down? A house that has been in this family for over a hundred years?”
“Relax,” she told him, eyes glued to a sky lit with gold and green and red. “You worry too much for a man so close to retirement.”
“A Togers never retires,” he snarled acidly before stalking off.
Cordelia turned her face back to the sky.What a funny old man,she thought.Amoody, funny old man.But she wouldn’t let Mr. Togers or anyone else spoil this moment for her. They’d pulled it off. The papers were signed, the town appeased. Pretty soon, her accounts would flood with money and her financial worries would be over. And after tonight, she and Eustace would know who’d been leaving those curses. And they would deal with them.
She turned to her sister to congratulate her, only to find that Eustace, too, had disappeared.No matter,Cordelia thought, feeling the wine swim through her head. She was probably just restocking the madeleines. Or working over the crowd, looking for the man she would know once she saw him.
The sun had sunk fully beneath the horizon, and the woods echoed with insects. A pale sickle moon rose behind the spray of colorful gunpowder. It was a dark night, and dark nights were good for displays such as this one. Despite her earlier reservations, Cordelia didn’t feel frightened or on edge. She felt alive, burning with magic like the sky above her, ready to burst with her power.
She stood silently as the fireworks eventually wound down. Turning, she noticed that Eustace hadn’t returned, which meant it fell to her to herd everyone back toward the house so they could begin the shuffle of cars allowing people to leave. Once the sky was black again, she announced that if everyone would follow her through the gardens, they could wait inside where final mocktails—vanilla-bean toddies—had been prepared, while Arkin retrieved their vehicles one at a time.
It didn’t take much more than that to get them all headed inthe right direction. Cordelia snaked her way to the front of the crowd, nearing the house with a flock of guests at her heels. But just as she broke from the garden into the small clearing at the solarium, her eyes fell on a grisly scene.
Clapping a hand over her mouth, she quickly turned to try to stop the people behind her, but it was too late. Those just following were already getting an eyeful, their gasps and shrieks of terror bringing the rest running. She turned back, and a howl of unbridled horror ripped from her throat. Where was Eustace?
“Look away,” she kept saying to everyone. “Look away!”
She had given them a show all right. Or someone had. One they would never forget.
Cordelia gripped the arm of the man nearest to her—a pharmacist she recalled, named Douglas something. “Tell Arkin to be quick with the cars! I need these people gone,” she commanded.
She reached out to another, but he shied away. “Guide them around the side of the house!” she shouted at him, enraged by his reaction. Couldn’t he see she was just as shocked as everyone else was? Couldn’t they all see this wasn’t her or Eustace’s doing?
