Cordelia rose from the bed and hurried after her on bare feet.
When she reached the stairs, she could see Arabella below her, spiraling around and around in a smooth dance of steps, as if she were gliding on water. At the bottom, she floated to the pond, passing through the drooping fronds and delicate blooms as if they didn’t exist, and sat on the low stone wall, looking overthe edge. She combed long fingers through her hair and pinched her cheeks, using the water as a mirror. She glowed like Artemis bathing in the forest, a nymph at play.
Satisfied with her appearance, Arabella stood and started down a walk toward the garden door, plucking a hibiscus bloom and tucking it behind her ear. Her body was lean and sculpted beneath the thin fabric of her gown, with small breasts and strong thighs, a gentle swell to the womb that had borne so many children. At the garden door, she glanced back once as if looking for someone, craning. When no one appeared, she pulled the door open and stepped through.
Cordelia rushed to keep up, passing quietly through the solarium to the chill of the evening. Outside, the night was holding its breath. She caught sight of Arabella only paces ahead as she made her stroll across the grounds, stopping here and there to stroke a tree or waft over the top of a waist-high shrub.
Cordelia hugged herself in the dark, nervous to be out so late alone. There were bears in this part of the state. And worse. But she had to know where Arabella was going.
Leaving the garden behind, her great-great-great-grandmother continued across the property, as pale as if she’d been born of the moon. It wasn’t long before Cordelia began to recognize where they were headed. In the distance stood the carriage house where Gordon lived, hunkering beneath the trees. She tiptoed behind her as Arabella walked toward it, set on her course. It was here where Gordon had found the picture of her.
When Arabella reached the steel French doors, she pulled one back. Again, she glanced over a shoulder, and this time her eyes met Cordelia’s, steady and unafraid. Her lips lifted in a ghostly smile. And then, without a sound, she slipped inside.
Cordelia stood shivering in the dark. It felt wrong to invade Gordon’s space, but she didn’t want to lose her captor now.Creeping up to the door, she poked her head in, but Arabella had vanished.
“Hello,” she whispered softly, feeling foolish. “Arabella?” She slipped inside and looked around, searching for some vital clue to where the spirit had gone.
A rustle caused her to look up. Gordon stood on the stairs to the loft, dark hair coursing down his shoulders, a pair of black sweatpants sitting low on his hips. His eyes found hers across the room.
“I thought I saw someone,” she said, paralyzed at being discovered, the soundless way he was watching her.
He walked down the stairs, his eyes pinning her. When he reached the bottom, her blood hammered with need, sending a throbbing spike of adrenaline through her hips and legs, causing her to forget everything else. “I–I don’t want you to leave,” she told him.
He reached past her and gripped the door, pulling it gently closed behind them.
Cordelia’s lips parted. Her breath came heavy and light at the same time, shallow then deep, as if she’d lost the ability to regulate herself.
Gordon pinched the fabric of her nightshirt between his fingers, pulling her to him. Her nipples bristled against him as she looked into his face, his eyes holding nothing back, a question in them, and deeper still, a command.
Neither spoke. They had passed the point where words held dominion. Here, only touch mattered. And the flare of instinct, of action and reaction, push and pull.
Gordon put his mouth to hers, and his craving flowed into her as their lips crushed against each other—his body firm in the moonlight, hers supple as moving water.
Without a thought for why she’d first come, she let him leadher up the stairs. In the pressing dark, she found him solid and ready, a force beneath her that she scaled with ragged longing. Her body dissolved into chasms of ecstasy, and then they lay beside each other, weak and heaving, each shattered in their own way. Until they found each other again and spent themselves over and over in the dark.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREETHESTRANGER
CORDELIA WOKE BEFOREdawn. She tiptoed lightly down the stairs to Gordon’s living room and looked out the wide glass doors. All was inky but for a barely perceptible light beginning to infiltrate the mist, washing it gray and gold. She stepped outside, a ridiculous grin glued to her face. With her nightshirt only half-buttoned and her legs still bare, she started across the property. Every step she took, the mist shrunk back, revealing patches of flowering bluets, mounding like silky blue stars at her feet.
She noticed the chill in the air, and the sun burst over the horizon, sending tendrils of warm light streaming high. She stopped to watch it rise, the sky blushing. The forest gilded itself about the edges. Everything came into crystal focus, as if the world were being born before her eyes. Taking a deep, delirious breath, she willed the breeze into motion, bringing with it the scent of cherry blossoms and old roses. It was all tied to her by an invisible silver thread. She could feel the magic weaving in and out, causing the land to gush with life even as her heart was gushing. Eastern bluebirds circled, alighting in nearby trees and landing at her feet to peck the ground before taking off again.
Cordelia knew in that moment, as surely as the sun was goodand the trees were good and the birds were good, that so was her power good. She’d been looking at it all wrong, so afraid to embrace who she really was. Eustace wasn’t the light sister and she the dark any more than night was evil and day righteous. They were two halves of a whole, she and her sister, two branches of the same tree. Undivided. Just as death was undivided from life. To her sister had gone the power to heal, to grow, to connect with the plants and animals so deeply she became them. And to Cordelia had gone the power to command winds and call rain and shake the bedrock. To hear that which had no voice. To sing the dead to her side. One wasn’t a reward and the other a punishment. Their power wasonepower, flowing as it had for generations, now through two women. They were both daughters of Maggie Bone. Both cast from her mold and made in her image. Her love belonged to both of them. And so did her gifts.
Cordelia was done being sorry, being scared, being ashamed.
She was just turning back toward the big house when a frantic chittering caught her ear. Looking behind her, she saw Marvel break from a stand of trees, barreling in her direction. The fox was little more than a streak of red, and as she reached Cordelia’s legs, she practically climbed up them, leaving scratches all over her calves.
“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” Cordelia said, trying to calm the animal. “What is going on?”
The fox danced in panicked circles, a cacophony of earsplitting noise.
“Eustace?” Cordelia asked, unsure. She knelt down and reached toward Marvel, who stilled. At the brink of contact, a booming, throaty roar cleaved the morning. She looked up to see an enormous male black bear bounding in their direction. The fox dashed behind her legs in fear.
The world spun around her as he gained ground, a loping boulder of coal fur, tiny eyes, and teeth like a polesaw. Everything she’dever learned said not to run from bears, but Cordelia wanted to run more than anything. Only, her legs weren’t working. Shock and paralysis had taken over. Behind her, the fox wailed.
Its sheer size meant the bear could cross the distance that separated them in no time. Cordelia had only moments to think of something.
She threw a hand up, palm out, and shouted, “Stop!”
