“Mr. Togers,” she gasped, shooting Arkin’s look-alike a wary glance. “What are you doing here? You forgot the papers last night in all the madness. I can fetch them for you. They’re just inside.”
Bennett tucked his hands behind his back. His smile was that of someone who’s just been told a silly joke. “We won’t be needing those,” he said.
“Get the staff,” he told the young man. Turning back to Cordelia, he said, “You’ll have to forgive my nephew. He has a tendency to unsettle people. We don’t let him out all that often.”
“Arkin’s brother?” she asked, aware that she was in the crosshairs of something she didn’t fully grasp. She needed to proceed with caution. “The resemblance is remarkable.”
She could hear the young man bounding down the stone steps, shuffling around, and then stomping back up again. He emerged with Hella’s staff in hand.
Bennett gestured for it, and the boy paused, something warring inside him.
“Han,” he commanded. “To me.”
Han handed it over reluctantly, barely hiding his gleam of resentment.
“Temper, boy,” Bennett growled, snatching it from him with an agitated frown.
Cordelia watched them with interest.
“You were saying,” Bennett said, turning back to her.
“You’re Arkin’s brother,” she said directly to the young man, who glared at her and grunted.
“His twin, actually,” Bennett told her. “He lacks Arkin’s social graces,” he said with a chuckle. “But he more than makes up for it with power and gusto. He has a real zeal for learning the family trade.”
“You mean law?” Cordelia couldn’t imagine this boy behind a book or a desk. She wasn’t sure he could read. She wasn’t sure he could speak.
Bennett smiled in that shit-eating way again. “Cordelia Bone, meet Han. My sister’s boy. Your third cousin. Please say hello.”
“Cousin?” Cordelia’s mind reeled and her stomach lurched as several things came vividly into focus at once.
Beware the pair. Beware the heir.
Both boys had the same platinum hair she’d seen on Hella. And the many times Togers had said something about “thisfamily,” he’d really meant “ourfamily.” The way he’d known the house and their history, the secret compartments, the literal skeletons in their closets.
“Shall I give you a little history lesson?” he asked, gripping the staff in the crook of his elbow as he pried a pair of black leather gloves off one finger at a time. “Your great-great-great-grandfather, Erazmus, built this monstrosity for his simpering bride, Arabella Devall, after he’d made his fortune robbing graves and selling corpses to the medical trade. It was easy for him and his father and uncle. Too easy. When the dead tell you where they are, it’s like shooting fish in a barrel.”
Cordelia stepped back carefully as he watched her, unperturbed.She wanted to call Gordon, to warn him somehow, but it was his phone in her hand. And there was nothing she could do.
“Of course, they graduated from that to other nefarious endeavors,” Bennett went on. “Gambling. Rune casting. The selling of a few simples and charms. But the seances really put them over the top. And by then, they’d begun to make legitimate investments. The dead know many things,” he told her. “Horse races… the stock market… They needed only to ask.” He clucked his tongue several times. “Poor Arabella. She’d been raised genteel. Not at all prepared for her husband’s dark business dealings or his stern hand. I’m afraid she found him rather repulsive. But he had a partner, you see. My dear ancestor Reginald, whose son—Arran—was a strapping lad by all accounts. Arabella was taken, and they began their affair in the carriage house.”
The portrait Gordon had brought her suddenly made sense, the way she’d tracked Arabella’s ghost to the carriage house that night, following in her footsteps in more ways than one.
Bennett looked bored as he continued. “When Erazmus found out, he was livid. He conjured a storm this county has never seen the likes of since. Not even your tantrum last night could compare—though I must say, I was a little impressed. Lightning struck the carriage house and burnt it nearly to the ground. Arabella survived, as did her lover. And the binding spell between our families held fast. Erazmus did not kill Arran, however much he wanted to, because he needed him. He sought revenge another way. He seduced Arran’s wife and quickened her womb with his own seed. And thus, my great-great-grandfather was born—Tobias Togers.”
Cordelia gawked. She took another step back, angling toward the open door of the crypt. Her gaze bounced between uncle and nephew.
Bennett smiled. “Of course, I’m using the termseducedlightly.Love charms can be so tricky. Not quite rape. It’s a gray area, I’m afraid.”
Cordelia didn’t think it was gray at all, but she didn’t argue.
“When Arran learned of his wife’s infidelity, he drowned Arabella in the pond as payback.” Bennett shoved his gloves in a pocket. “Spouses do not share the same limitations, you see—or the same protections. We Togers have been Bone bastards ever since. Waiting and watching from the sidelines for our chance to take what is ours.”
Hella’s words to Cordelia that morning now made much more sense—Ours is a tree with one root and two branches… For the tree to survive, one must be felled.
Bennett Togers was the dragon, gnawing at the root of their family tree, trying to bring it down. How long had the Togers been trying to undermine them? It had been a Togers who coaxed her great-great-aunt Morna to jump from the tower, posing as her nurse. Cordelia’s mind whirled over the possibilities. It wasn’t one enemy they were facing; it was generations of enemies.
“Binding spell?What ties our families besides blood?” she asked, stepping back again. She bumped into a stone pillar behind her and carefully scooted to the side of it.
