Cordelia ignored her. “Will she get better here? Can she finish her chemo treatments?”
Dr. Mabee gave Eustace a sympathetic look. “Unfortunate diagnosis,” he said. “And one that is likely to remedy itself if you remain put. How do you feel?”
Eustace’s scowl was out of line with her answer. “Great since coming here, thanks for asking.”
He pursed his lips, gathered his bag of supplies. “At least the legacy is working for one of you.”
But Cordelia had one final question. “I don’t mean to offend you, but there seem to be stories in town about our family affliction. Have you or any of your staff ever—”
“Let me be frank,” he interrupted. “I have been paid handsomely by your family for my services and my discretion. I would in fact be laughed out of my profession if any of this were to leave this room, and I would lose my medical license. I do not involve my staff in these visits, and your files are locked in a private cabinet. So, no, I am not responsible for the local folktales. But people are observant, Ms. Bone. And your family has lived here a very long time. However exaggerated over the years, most tall tales spring from a kernel of truth. You would be wise to remember that.”
With that, he gave them both a brisk nod and turned to go, leaving a card with his private number on the desk.
CHAPTER THIRTEENTHESECRET
CORDELIA FELT THEbrush of cold fingers over her cheek and opened her eyes. The enormous pink bed surrounded her. A black figure was passing through the door as she sat up, the ruffle of a skirt barely audible in the darkness.
“Hello?” she whispered.
Standing, she stepped into the hallway, where she caught sight of square shoulders and a dark shawl rounding the banister to the stairs.
“Who are you?” She followed on quick feet, always one bend behind the folds of black fabric, the loops of white hair glowing like moonlight, trailing like fog. “Answer me!”
The frigid parquet floors numbed her toes as Cordelia watched the person glide across them into the library.
“Wait.” She dimly recalled her mother’s warning never to speak to them—the shadows that walk. But it seemed far away and unimportant now. She was here. Her mother wasn’t.
She slipped into the library, smelling of moths and old leather, as the woman sailed into the study, circling the slab of desk, crossing before the picture of Erazmus like a thick wind.
“Please stop.” Cordelia rooted to the carpet, blocking the doorway.
The shadow jittered in the corner, rotating slowly as if on pinion gears until she was facing her niece. Augusta’s blanched hair fell long over her shoulders. Her face was pale as mist, marked with luminescent lines of ash, a horrible, unreadable mask. She worked her jaw, trying to speak, but her lips would not part. The red symbols stretched over them like cords of blood, binding her mouth shut. She clutched helplessly at her throat.
Every hair on Cordelia’s body rose as if the room were filling with static charge. “I know you,” she whispered.
Augusta raised a knotty finger at her, the knuckles shining like points of light. The curve of nail was a polished white, slick as opal.
A bolt of energy struck Cordelia between the breasts, passing through her like a bullet. She doubled over, chest caving, mouth caught between a twist and a scream, her lungs crumpling inside her like torn wings. Stumbling back, she met her aunt’s glistening wet eyes.
Augusta turned, a flourish of black, and dove into the bookshelf, disappearing in a spray of sable mist.
Cordelia sat up in a flash and switched on the lamp. She was not in the library at all, but in her sad, pink room, her sad, pink bed. The door stood open to the hallway, and across its threshold lay a dark, woven shawl.
Quietly, she slid from the bed and made her way to the door. She crouched, touching the threads like they might sting, the wool of an asp. When she was certain they wouldn’t, she picked the shawl up and balled it against her chest, then held it to her nose.
Jasmine and black pepper.
She looked up and saw that the door to their aunt’s room was ajar as well.
Cordelia rose to her feet and stared into the stillness across the hall. Slowly, she closed her door. And this time, she locked it.
IN THE STUDY,Cordelia switched on the banker’s lamp and stared up at the portrait of Erazmus. His prominent scowl turned her stomach. The dream last night had been so vivid, so real. She could practically see her aunt Augusta still standing in that far corner, mute and imposing, rippling with dark energy. Cordelia had felt certain there was something the woman wanted to say, something she was trying to convey to her, but then she’d felt the power pierce her chest, that accusatory finger aimed at her heart, and the breath had flowed from her body in a rush and all she could sense was the heightening of her own fear.
This morning, she’d returned, drawn by her aunt’s restless spirit and the secrets whispering from every surface of this room.
“What do you know that you aren’t saying?” she asked the portrait, drawing close and staring into the blue-gray strokes of his eyes. She let her fingers dance over the texture of the canvas, let the things trapped inside the paint begin to inform them. It was time for Erazmus Bone to give up a secret or two.
At first, Cordelia could feel only his protectiveness over the space, the invisible weight of his confidences, the skeletons hiding out in his closets. She could feel the way her fingers tripped over them like stones under a blanket, the shape of things unsaid, the bulges and gaps glanced over. And then she could feel something else—urgency.It rose like a panic through the paint, pricking at her fingers like thorns on a briar. Maybe Gladys was a little off her rocker, and Dr. Mabee’s theories were questionable, but the town’s suspicions weren’t entirely unfounded. Because if Cordelia could hear one whisper in this room, it was simply this—Erazmus Bonewashiding something. And her aunt Augusta. And every relative in between. And she needed to know what it was.Now.
