Gemma had tried to go back to sleep, but between the noise of the storm and worry, she couldn’t. After about an hour she gave up, got dressed, and used one of the little trucks that always seemed to be nearby and drove to the big warehouse at the back of the property. She hadn’t been surprised to see young Shamus inside, drawing the carriages his ancestors had made.
It was just minutes later that Colin showed up. So now it was hours later, and all she could think about was sleep. Ah, pregnancy, she thought as she fell across her bed and was asleep instantly.
When she awoke it was 6 P.M. She’d slept the entire day away! Groggily, she got up and picked up her phone. She had four e-mails and six text messages. Her adviser had approved her topic of women in medicine in Virginia in 1840, and a professor knew some people at William and Mary.
“Good,” Gemma said, smiling as she went into the kitchen. She wanted to eat everything that was in it.
Four of the texts were from Colin. The missing teenager had been found with her boyfriend, and her parents were grounding her for the next twenty years. He wrote that he would be there in half an hour, but then he said that someone had spray painted the back of Ellie’s grocery and he had to see to it. See you when I can, he’d finished.
The last message was from Tristan and had been sent an hour ago. I need to see you ASAP.
As Gemma ate her second piece of toast, she frowned. Colin’s jealousy was absurd, but she didn’t see any reason to fan it into flame, so she didn’t immediately get in her car.
Is it important? she texted back.
Very came the reply. I need you at my house right away.
That didn’t sound like Tris, she thought. Maybe it was Colin’s fear, or maybe it was that Gemma now had a life growing inside her, but she was cautious.
You know what happens at seven, don’t you? she texted back.
While she waited for an answer, she noticed Shamus’s art box on the coffee table where it had been for days. She picked it up and pulled the tape off the end of it to examine the damage. The corner was broken, but the piece was there, and as she fiddled with it, she noticed paper inside. More of his secret drawings, she thought, and wondered who the boy had portrayed with pinpoint accuracy.
When her phone buzzed, she put the box down.
I’ll hold your head again was the text. Please come NOW!
There was no denying that that request was from Tristan, and where better to be than with him when “morning” sickness hit?
She called Colin, but it went to voice mail, so she texted him that she was going to Tris’s house to do some research. Please meet me there, she wrote.
She grabbed a cold hard-boiled egg from the refrigerator and a bottle of fruit juice and went to her car.
As Gemma neared Tris’s driveway, she didn’t pull in. She didn’t like Colin’s jealousy, but she also didn’t want to cause him any embarrassment, and for right now, for all she knew, half of Edilean was watching. She drove past until she saw another gravel road and turned down that. To her right she could see the top of what looked to be a large white house, and she remembered Colin saying that Mrs. Wingate lived near Tris.
Gemma pulled her car off the road into a large clearing in the woods. Bushes hid the entrance so her vehicle wouldn’t be seen by anyone driving past.
If her sense of direction was right—and it usually was—then Tris’s house was directly in front of her. She sent another text to Colin to let him know where she was, but the message didn’t go through. The trees were blocking the signal.
It was because she was in the woods and not on the road that she saw Jean’s silver Mercedes hidden under the trees. The second she saw it, she knew she should leave. She should run, not walk, back to her car and get out of there.
But she knew that the text message had been from Tris. Only he knew about her 7 P.M. nausea, and he needed her.
Quietly, she went to Jean’s car. It was empty, but the fact that it was hidden furthered her belief that something was wrong. It had always been her guess that whatever was going on had to do with the Heartwishes Stone. If Jean’s uncle was an international thief, wouldn’t he want to steal something that was believed to be magic?
Gemma tried to send another text to Colin and an e-mail to Joce. She wrote,
Please send help to Tris’s house. Send police with guns.
If there was nothing wrong, she’d look like a fool, but better that than anything bad happening to Tris.
She went through the woods quickly, stopping where she could see Tris’s house. It had been designed to look out the front at the lake, so the back of it had few windows. On the right was the big conservatory, and she could see the orchids inside. On the left were three tiny windows for a powder room and the laundry. Smack in the middle were two glass doors that led to the big room that had been added on to the house.
If Gemma walked straight up to it, she’d be seen.
It took her a few minutes, but she went to the side of the doors and plastered herself against the wall. After a few moments she quickly bent to look inside.
What she saw made her breath catch. There were two people in the room, Jean and an older man, who Gemma assumed was the uncle. What was astonishing was that the man was seated in a straight-backed wooden chair in the middle of the room and his hands were tied behind his back. Jean was a few feet away, her back to the man as she was typing out a message on her phone. There was a gun on the table beside her.