Eustace folded the leather cover back. She cleared her throat and, breathily, she began to read.
“Your mother is gone,” she said, raising her eyes to meet Cordelia’s briefly. “Her luck ran out, as I knew it would.Youare the future of our line. There is so much you should know, so much we should have taught you. Time grows short. Soon our ancestors will sing me back home and everything will fall to you. You were no more than a seed planted in your mother’s womb when she left, Eustace. Your sister was but a distant dream. I would have pursued her, were I able. Though that did not stop me keeping an eye on her. I have been watching you for years, doing everything in my power to keep you safe, even going so far as to have the soil of our home laid outside your window. Your mother sensed my intrusion again and again and slipped away, trying to keep you both from me. But she cannot outrun the power of our family line, our family name.
“Your birthright is not a house or a hill, though you will inherit both.Yourbirthright is so much more. I leave you this gift in place of what should have been. A gift to explain your own. But all giftscome at a price, and the price for ours is very great indeed. So great, in fact, that even as I write this, I do not know if you will find it before you pay for yours.
Forgive the secrecy. I’m afraid anything we have to say must be protected from those who would do more harm than good with it. Even if they are our own kin. Deciphering this letter may feel like a test. Let me assure you—it is. But it is not your first. And it will certainly not be your last. The trials that await you, I cannot prepare you for. You must make yourselves ready. There are many wrongs to right. But whatever you face, you are precisely where you belong, where you have always belonged.
Bone Hill is your home.
Bone Hill is your family.
Bone Hill is your heritage.
I am watching over you now, as I ever have been. And beyond me, a long and proud line ofvolvas.
Silent in life; vocal in death.
—Augusta”
Eustace’s eyes were glistening when they met her sister’s. “It’s dated a year to the day before she died.”
Questions lapped Cordelia’s mind like tadpoles. She dropped the rose. “The roses, Eustace. Thesoil.”
“I know,” her sister said. “I put it together too.”
Cordelia recalled her dream of their aunt, that damning finger pointing through her in the study, the feeling when she woke of being the target of their family’s rage. But this letter didn’t sound angry or accusing, just sad and afraid.Forthem more than at them. She looked at Eustace. “What does she mean bywrongs to right?”
Eustace shook her head. “I wish I knew.”
“What was that one word you read? The strange one—volvas? I’ve heard that before.”
“I’m not sure,” Eustace answered. “But I’ll look into it. Shesounds fearful, like there are people that can’t be trusted. Maybe even in the family.”
Cordelia rubbed at her arms, feeling the weight of the oath ring around her wrist. “Who? There is no family. We’re it.” She turned to glance over her shoulder into the mouth of the crypt. “Aren’t we?”
“I guess now we know why Mom never stayed put,” Eustace said. “She knew she was being followed, watched. And all those loser boyfriends—I bet she put their names on the leases.”
“What did she think would happen if they found us?” Her mother’s words behind the shed that day took on new meaning.Bad things will follow. They’ll come for you. They’ll take you away… and there won’t be a damn thing I can do to stop them.What if she never meant the ghosts at all, but their family?
Eustace shrugged. “Aunt Augusta had an enormous amount of resources at her disposal, from what we can gather. And our mother definitely did not. Which brings us back to the real question—why leave at all? Why take the risk? With her own life and with ours?”
“Whatever her reason,” Cordelia said, eyes scrambling over the dark and drafty tomb behind them, “she thought the risk of staying here was greater.”
CORDELIA WENT TObed troubled that night. Her mind kept replaying the day’s events over and over. Gordon planning to leave. Their aunt’s letter. John showing up. The madness in his eyes. The earthquake. The feeling of standing over him with that candlestick in her hand… She hadn’t wanted to do it, not really. At least, she didn’t think she had. But the feeling of having that power over him, all that rage crashing through her—she’d liked it. More than she dared to admit. And that frightened her more than anything else.
She’d half expected to look down once he was gone and see that the oath ring had fallen off. She’d gotten her revenge all right. But the bracelet had stuck fast. Which meant it wasn’t her revenge the spirits were interested in.
She leaned back on her feathered pillows and let the dark swim around her. In the dining room with John, she’d called itherhouse. Despite her original desire to sell, seeing him here inherspace, touchingherthings, wanting to take what had beenherfamily’s… It had cemented something between Cordelia and the estate, giving her a powerful sense of possession. It made her want to lay claim to what she’d waffled over for so long.
And it wasn’t just the house.
It was Gordon.
She realized now, alone in the dark, burning for him, twisting in the sheets, that despite the countless arguments she’d made to the contrary, the fear it stoked in her breast, and the life and business she’d been clinging to eighteen hundred miles away, Cordelia wanted Bone Hill and everything that came with it, including the groundskeeper—especiallythe groundskeeper.
Just on the edge of dreaming, she heard a low creak. Her eyes fluttered, taking in the dull pink furniture in the unlit boudoir, the diaphanous form wafting by, tall and feminine, the open door.
Cordelia sat up and saw the ghost of Arabella—blond hair and white silk—standing at the door to the solarium. She turned to look through Cordelia and placed a finger to her lips. And then she passed onto the stairs.
