Page 68 of The Secret of the Three Fates
Hecate’s hawklike gaze shot to me then Ruan as if we had any part in this.This,whatever it was, was certainly not part of the plan.
My chest tightened.
The autumn winds moaned over the hills, reverberating in the silence of the room and I began to understand why Hecate feared the dead.
“Sh… sh… should we close the window?” Lady Morton asked, her hand clutching her daughter’s. Evidently real spirits were more than either had bargained for tonight. It was a wonder they even came after the scene that first night. It seemed we were to have a repeat performance.
Ruan was intent, fixated on something in the distance out the window—something only he could see. His hand covered mine and with his forefinger he started tracing something.
L-O-O-K.
I struggled to see what he saw, but there was nothing there. Nothing but an open window clattering in the frame. He tapped again to underscore. S-E-E?
Do I see it?
Of course not. There is absolutelynothingout that window but the ruin of a castle.
Growing increasingly frustrated, I shot to my feet and startedfor the window to close it—but Elijah beat me to it, fastening it back tight.
She broke the circle.The words came, hushed and low, from somewhere behind me. I turned for the source, but couldn’t find the speaker.
She broke the circle.
The voice whispered again, its breath at my ear, ruffling my hair.
Cold fingers wrapped themselves around my throat as I saw what the voices meant. I’d disturbed the salt circle, just as it had been the night Lucy died.
She broke the circle.
She broke the circle.
Again and again the voices chanted in my ears. Did no one else hear it? Had I gone fully mad here in this castle? I looked from face to face, but they all were staring at me, open-mouthed. Perhaps it was their own thoughts I heard? But that made no sense. I couldn’t hear the living any more than I could hear the dead.
Genevieve stood at the far side of the table facing me, my back to the now-closed window. Her rich brown eyes grew darker—nearly black in the dimness of the room—and she began to rock on her feet. “The dead have a message… a message… the dead have a message.”
That unearthly voice returned again, with the same lilting not-quite-song that had taken over Lucy in the hours before her death. Genevieve’s lovely eyes closed.
Hecate shot to her feet, grasping the rod in her hand. “This must stop. It must stop now!” She began to speak in a language I did not understand. It wasn’t Cornish. It was something else. Something older.
But there was no stopping what we’d unintentionally begun.
The spirits ignored the White Witch as the cold air wrapped tighter around me. I could not have moved if I wished to.
“She will not speak to you, Ruby Vaughn.”
I stared at Genevieve, not believing. This could not be real. It could not be. Genevieve herself told me she couldn’t speak to the dead.
With bravery I didn’t feel, I confronted Genevieve again. “Didn’t she rattle the window? Do the dead have a taste for theatrics? Storming in and then refusing to speak to the one who called them? Sounds like my great-aunt Pulchritude.”
“Morvoren, we do not taunt the dead!” Hecate snapped, her eyes possessing strange brightness. “You will sit and restore the circle before you unleash something we cannot trap back.”
It wasn’t real.
Itcouldn’t be.
Genevieve glared at me, her lovely face contorted. “The dead will have their say.”
“I want to help them. That’s why I’ve come.”
