Page 30 of Thornbound
At any moment, I would face the wrath of Annabel’s fellow inspectors. I had to arm myself with as much information as possible beforehand.
“Who discovered she was missing?” I asked, ignoring his question.
“She never came to supper. Of course, neither did you,” Jonathan added with a wry glance, “but inyourcase, we all knew you must have got wrapped up in one of your projects, as usual, and not even noticed the passing of time.”
“Hmmph.” That...might not be entirely inaccurate, but it still made me sound too much like young Luton for my liking. I started down the stairs, moving quickly. “And then?”
“Well, no one would ever imagine that of ourdearAnnabel,” said Jonathan with heavy irony, “as the only books she’d ever find that absorbing would be other people’s private papers. Speaking of which, aren’t these old Romulus’s journals? He was meant to move into Thornfell himself, you know, if he hadn’t caught that influenza that killed him only days beforehand.”
“That is hardly—” I began.
But my brother had always been too easily distracted by history. “I thought I was the only one who’d ever bother to read these. What were you looking for, exactly? Clues to his mysterious, forbidden romance? Because I can tell you, I’ve read every single volume from cover to cover, and he never slipped up once when it came to keeping her secret. Up through the very last page, it’s all meticulous observations about the plants and enigmatic sighing about how they could never truly be together.”
“Never mind all of that!” I swung around the first curve in the wide staircase, the lantern dangling from my hand. “What happenedto Annabel?”
“Ah. Well, Amy went to look for her when Lady Cosgrave started fussing.”
Of course. Amy would have planned to manage that battle in private whilst delegating Jonathan to charm and distract the rest of the company. As a partnership, they’d often worked wonders in that fashion. In fact, if only the Boudiccate weren’t too hidebound to admit it, my brother would have made anexcellenthusband for any politician. He didn’t need any spell-cast magic to support Amy perfectly in all of her aims.
“When she came back, she told everyone else that Annabel was lying down with a sick headache and wished us to eat without her...but she whispered to me to come and find you without delay.” Jonathan’s voice was grim. “Apparently, Annabel wasn’t anywhere to be found, but her bedroom was an utter shambles. Amy said it looked as if the woods had come inside.”
Damnation! Blowing out the lantern, I lifted my skirts and broke into a run, dread pounding an inexorable beat in my ears.
No, no, please, no—
I flung open the door to Annabel’s room.
The windows had been wrenched wide open. One hung half-detached, swinging in the evening breeze. Marks and dents had been punched into their wooden frame and into the wall below.
The bedcovers were tangled into a knotted mess. Perhaps Annabel had been lying down with a headache before supper after all. It was difficult to imagine her truly at rest—impossible to even conceive of her being vulnerable—but horribly familiar green leaves lay scattered across her bed, marked with unmistakable spots of blood.
The sight knocked every certainty out of my chest and left it hollow. I stood gaping, my fingers numb against the door handle.
How could this have happened?
Air hissed through Jonathan’s teeth and ruffled the top of my head. “What the devil—?”
“We need Miss Birch.Now.” I lurched inside to tug hard on the bell pull. “But don’t let anyone else inside. I mean it!” As footsteps sounded on the staircase nearby, I pushed my brother’s big body back and shut the door firmly between us. His sigh sounded through the wood, but a moment later, he addressed whoever was coming up the stairs in a perfectly cheerful whisper. “Just standing guard for Mrs. Renwick’s nap! If you wouldn’t mind keeping your voices down as you pass...”
Thank Boudicca for truly reliable men! Leaving the protection of the room to him, I strode quickly across the long, narrow floor, searching for clues on every surface. Of course I knewwhathad taken Annabel—I could visualize the whole event only too clearly, based on that desperate tangle of sheets and leaves on the bed, not to mention the trail of small, dark drops of blood between them and the open window.
Butwhyhad those vines taken her, of all people? And how had they travelled so far—and broken through Miss Birch’s guard—despite all the stablegirls set to watch for them by Luton’s staff cottage?
I could barely stand to see those tiny, bloody drops. I stepped around them to peer out through the window, gripping the chipped windowsill with both hands...and then I saw another window hanging open just below.
Those vines hadn’t had to grow all the way from Luton’s cottage and around the bulky mass of Thornfell after all.
I was lunging through the bedroom door before I’d even had time to think, brushing past Jonathan’s startled yelp as he jumped aside. “Downstairs,” I snapped. “Quickly!”
We hurtled together down the staircase to the ground floor, making no attempts at silence anymore. I’d passed the point of caring for discretion the moment I’d seen that second pair of open windows below me and realized exactly which room they’d come from. Thatanyonewould dare to usemylibrary of magic as their setting for a forbidden fey summoningagain—!
The dining room door flew open as we passed, students and inspectors spilling out with raised voices and wide eyes, but I ignored every question shouted after us.
Damnation! From this point onward, I was going to lock that library door whenever I wasn’t there to guard it, no matter how important those books might be for my students’ education.
Tonight, I was too late. The windows stood wide open to the evening breeze, which fluttered the long curtains as I exploded into the room. The culprit—whoever it had been—was long gone. Only green leaves, scattered across the carpet, along with marks I recognized on the windowsill itself, remained as taunting evidence of what had happened in the room I loved most, whilst I’d been buried in useless old family gossip three stories away, oblivious to what was transpiring below me.
Perhaps Westgate was right after all. I’d always understoodmagicon a bone-deep level, but when it came to looking after other people...
