“There’s a good girl.” She pats my cheek, and that, more than any good-luck charm, has the power to rid my soul of ghosts. “When you first came in your mourning weeds, I thought you the strangest thing. It’s your green eyes—they put me in mind of that poor Mary Dowd ’oo died in the fire and her friend, Sarah. But you’re nothin’ like them. Nothin’ at all.”
“Thank you for the bread,” I say, though it’s turned to lead in my belly.
“You’re welcome, luv. Best get back. You’ll be missed.” She looks again at the dark beyond. “Ain’t right putting it back. I can feel it. Ain’t right.”
The all-seeing eyes of Eugenia Spence watch me climb the stairs to my room. Her white hair is arranged in the fashion of the day, with curls on her forehead and a mass of coiled hair at the back of her head. Her dress has a high collar and an elaborate ruffle running down both sides of the bright green bodice—no sedate gray or black for Eugenia Spence. And there at her neck is the crescent eye amulet that now hangs from my own, hidden beneath my gown.
My mother caused your death.
In my room, I take out my mother’s diary and read again of Eugenia’s heroism, of how she offered herself as a sacrifice in place of Sarah and my mother.
“I will have payment,” the creature cried, grabbing fast to Sarah’s arm.
Eugenia’s mouth tightened. “We must hie to the Winterlands.” We found ourselves in that land of ice and fire, of thick, barren trees and perpetual night. Eugenia stood tall.
“Sarah Rees-Toome, you will not be lost to the Winterlands. Come back with me. Come back.”
The creature turned on her. “She has invited me. She must pay, or the balance of the realms is forfeit.”
“I shall go in her place….”
“So be it. There is much we could do with one so powerful….”
Eugenia threw to me her amulet of the crescent eye. “Mary, run! Take Sarah with you through the door, and I shall close the realms!…”
The thing caused her to cry out in pain then. Her eyes were filled with a pleading that took my breath away, for I had never seen Eugenia frightened before. “The realms must stay closed until we can find our way again. Now—run!” she screamed…and the last I saw of Eugenia, she was shouting the spell to close the realms, even as she was swallowed by the dark without a trace.
I close my mother’s diary and lie on my back, staring at the ceiling and thinking of Eugenia Spence. If she hadn’t thrown her amulet to my mother and closed the realms for good, there’s no telling what sort of terrors might have been visited upon this world. In that one act, she saved us all, though it meant her destruction. And I wonder what became of her, what terrible fate befell the great Eugenia Spence because of my mother’s sin, and if I could ever possibly be enough to atone for it.
When my dreams find me, they are disquieting. A pretty lady in a lavender dress and hat races through London streets thick with fog. Her ginger hair falls loosely about her frightened face. She beckons me to follow, but I cannot keep pace; my feet are as heavy as lead and I can’t see. The cobblestones are coated with paper adverts for a spectacle of some sort. I reach for one: Dr. Theodore Van Ripple—Illusionist Extraordinaire!
The fog clears, and I’m mounting the stairs of Spence, past the enormous portrait of Eugenia Spence. I climb until I find myself on the roof in my bedclothes. The wind rips through me. On the horizon, storm clouds gather. Down below, the men continue their work on the East Wing. Their hands are as quick as an owl’s blink. The stone column rises higher. A shovel strikes the ground and will not go farther. It has hit something solid. The men look to me. “Would you like to open it, miss?”
The lady in the lavender dress opens her mouth. She’s trying to tell me something, but there is no sound, only alarm in her eyes. Suddenly, everything moves very fast. I see a room lit by a single lamp. Words. A knife. The lady running. A body floating upon the water. I hear a voice like a whisper in my ear: “Come to me….”
I wake with a start. I want to sleep again but I can’t. Something’s calling to me, pulling me downstairs and out to the lawn, where a full moon spreads its buttery light over the wooden skeleton of the East Wing. The turret rises into lowlying clouds. Its shadow reaches across the lawn and touches my bare toes. The grass is cold with dew.
Upon the roof, the gargoyles sleep. The ground seems to hum beneath my feet. And once again, I am drawn to the turret and the stone there. I step down into the hole. The framing of the East Wing looms above my head, and the night clouds move like lashes from an angry whip. The crescent eye glows, and in the faint light, I see an outline in the stone that matches the amulet’s shape.
A tingling begins in my fingers. It travels through my body. Something inside me wants release. I can’t control it, and I’m afraid of whatever it may be.
I put my hands to the stone. A surge of power pushes through me. The stone glows white-gold, and the world pitches. It is like looking at the negative of a photograph: Behind me is Spence; before me are the skeletal East Wing and, farther on, the woods. But if I turn my head, shimmering there is another image of something else that stands between. I blink, trying to clear the image.
And when I look again, I see the outline of a door.
“Gemma, why have you brought us out here in the middle of the night?” Felicity grouses, wiping sleep from her eyes.
“You’ll see,” I say, shining the light of a lamp over the back lawn.
She shivers in her thin nightgown. “We might at least have brought our cloaks.”
Ann wraps her arms about her middle. Her teeth chatter. “I w-want to go b-b-back to b-bed. If Mrs. Nightwing should f-find us…” She glances behind us for signs of our headmistress.
“I promise you won’t be disappointed. Now. Stand here.” I position them beside the turret and place the lantern at their feet. The light washes them in an unearthly white.
“If this is some childish prank, I shall kill you,” Felicity warns.
“It isn’t.” I stand on the ground above the old stone and close my eyes. The night air nips at my skin.