Page 39 of The Secret of the Three Fates
“Gone?” A frisson of tension crawled up my spine as I peered into Ruan’s empty room. “What do you meangone?”
“As in he is not here. But I was looking for you.” She lifted her hand, the brightly colored bracelets jingling with the movement. I did not pause to wonder why she would look for me in Ruan’s room at this hour. “The other medium. She is not what she seems.”
I let out a strangled sound at the thought of adding this medium to Mr. Owen and Mr. Sharpe—or Elijah—whichever one he might truly be. This place was a den of deception masquerading as a resort.
A strange look of sympathy crossed her icy features. “None of us are who we pretend to be. Some simply do not know what they are, others are afraid of their truth, others still are afraid of what that truth might mean. We should pity them, Morvoren.”
Fabulous. The White Witch was now giving me mysteriously phrased life lessons. “Do you know who she is, this other medium? Is she connected to Mr. Sharpe, the hotelier, at all?” The image of the pair of them on the bridge returned to my mind. They certainly looked acquainted, yet there was fear in her face and Ruan had sensed the same.
“I am not certain. But I do not believe she is Russian. I will keep looking. We must find the answers you seek and you must leave soon. Quickly, before what I have seen comes to pass. That vision must not happen.”
Right. Before I kill Ruan.I sighed in frustration. At least she wasn’t repeating that dire warning anymore and was beingmoderately helpful. I should be grateful for small mercies. “Thank you. I mean it.”
Her head cocked unnaturally toward the corridor behind me. “Someone comes, Morvoren. Hurry. Go before they find you.”
I saw no one. “What is it you sense?” But when I turned back to face her, the White Witch had disappeared and the air before me smelled vaguely of lightning. Lovely. This was precisely what happened when dealing with witches.
UNABLE TO FINDRuan in the castle, I went outside to clear my head, pulled by some sort of unearthly call. Was it the water? I’d always loved the seaside, spending as much time in the ocean as possible—even to the point of having built a bathing pool in Mr. Owen’s rose garden back in Exeter. But this was more than that—much more.
The October wind was crisp and the sky bright and clear as I set off across the pasture. The early morning birdsong was periodically punctuated by the distant crack of a shotgun and the shatter of clay targets. I pushed through the reeds, traipsing down into the thick mud near the water’s edge. I was grateful for my boots, as the soles of my feet still ached from the thorns and brambles I’d walked over the night before.
This was where Ruan had found me. Not ten feet from where I’d pulled Lucy from the lake. It had tomeansomething, didn’t it? Though more likely than not, this place was simply driving us all mad. Mr. Owen’s changing moods, Ruan’s inability to control his powers, my returning dreams—could Manhurst itself have something to do with it? Perhaps Mariah hadn’t run away at all—she’d simply been driven mad.
I swallowed the thought down, unwilling to even think that a place could have such power over man. The lake was still as a painting with golden light coming through the white clouds,reflecting on the mirrorlike surface. The slight indentation of where my body had been pressed into the mud by Ruan’s remained. As did the tracks we made—his and mine—on our way back to the castle.
And that was when I saw the second pair of tracks.
Once again, we were not alone.
Her blood will be on your hands,Malachi had said to Mr. Owen this morning. Had it been me that they were discussing?
Had my mysterious follower watched me go into the water as they had Lucy, waiting on me to die? Or were these the prints of whoever was on the bridge last night, seeking something they thought Lucy had left behind?
I pinched the bridge of my nose, struggling to connect the dots. Someone wanted us at the estate, someone was trying to frame me for the murder of Lucy, and presumably the photographs have something to do with all of it. I could cry—if I were the crying sort. Simply flop down on the mud and weep for all the frustration growing in my chest.
Balling my fist, I started back to the house when I noticed a figure on the bridge. It was dreadfully early for anyone to be awake, but I made my way up the muddy embankment to see who it was. As I reached the bridge, I recognized the woman at once—the youngest medium. She sat on a stone bench looking out over the water, her thoughts a thousand miles away.
She is not who she pretends to be.That’s what the White Witch had said. But who was she? The witch did not believe the medium to be Russian, and considering the number of people who had fled the revolution in Russia, it would be a sensible enough disguise to assume. Or, she could simply be a woman displaced by her own country’s unrest, seeking to start over.
There was only one way to find out which side of the coin was true. The medium was dressed this morning in a pale butter-colored dress with her auburn hair swept back into a delicate knotat the nape of her neck. She looked vastly more peaceful than when I’d seen her here yesterday, angry and afraid and quarreling with Mr. Sharpe. Could Mr. Sharpe be my mysterious shadow? If he trulywasElijah, and I was growing certain he must be, then he’d likely take umbrage with my knowing his identity. But framing me for murder seemed a bit drastic.
Admittedly, I was not the best gauge of character. Mother said it was my nature to love ferociously, claiming it to be a strength rather than a weakness, but I disagreed. Mynaturehad caused me nothing but pain and was part of the reason for my current predicament. If I didn’tcarefor Mr. Owen, I wouldn’t be at Manhurst at all.
I’d not gotten a good look at the medium before, but up close, she was quite possibly the most beautiful woman I’d seen in my life with the sort of loveliness that only grew with age. Her hair was a medium shade of brown, shot through with strands of gold and copper that shone in the early morning sun—with not a single strand of silver in it, despite the fact she had to be at least a decade older than I. Her skin was flawless, giving me the impression of one of those delicate French dolls I played with as a girl.
“I cannot believe she is dead,” the medium whispered.
If shewasRussian, she must not have been there in quite some time as her voice carried only the faintest of accents and her diction was that of someone who had been at the finest of schools. A mark in the White Witch’s column. Nowwhoorwhatthe youngest medium truly was—that was an entirely different question.
I took a step closer and leaned against the rail, crossing my ankles. “It’s a terrible thing. Did you know her long, Miss…?”
She turned the cigarette over in her fingers, studying it intently before patting the bench beside her. “Demidov. Genevieve Demidov. They say you pulled her from the water.” Her voice broke as she turned around. “Thank you for that. It was a kindness.”
“I thought she was alive. I am sorry she wasn’t. I mean to find out who did that to her—who killed her.”
Genevieve let out a surprisingly bitter laugh as she stubbed her cigarette on the bench. “Better you than those two”—she struggled for the word before saying something in Russian I didn’t understand—“who are supposed to be investigating.”
“Are they giving you trouble too?”
