Simon didn’t have a television, of course. I’d have been surprised if the manor even had a radio, since he and Mrs. MacLeod were clearly happy to live like they were Amish, passing the time by freaking me out with ghost stories.
I managed to find a library, which was mostly stocked with history books, all of them mildewed and dusty, and a shelf full of legal thrillers marked with V. MacLeod inside the flap.
I put them all back. I was bored, not stupid enough to take Veronica’s property without asking. Besides, I couldn’t stop thinking about her story, and even though I didn’t believe in magic and curses and whatnot, I did wonder a little about the violent-death-and-murder part. Rather than poor Aislinn’s curse, maybe there really was something wrong with all of us, something medicine at the time couldn’t explain, and still couldn’t.
It sure would explain a lot about Mom. And me.
Finally I found a trove of Dark Shadows novels. Set in Maine, the copy told me, based on the TV show, so I took an armload to my room. Vampires and witches and a campy Bela Lugosi–looking guy on the covers were about what I could handle right now. Silly vampire books were always easy to find at thrift stores and book sales, and I’d pretty much read them all at one time or another—Interview with the Vampire, ’Salem’s Lot, I Am Legend—if it involved blood drinking and brooding, it was the perfect distraction from real life.
Reading didn’t work this time, though. When I was really upset, I couldn’t focus on print or much of anything else. My solution used to be to go for a walk, but it was just before full dark outside. Gulls screamed, and I watched the black dots of their shapes track back and forth from the lighthouse as they wheeled over the sea.
Stupid gulls. They were free, able to fly away from here at will.
I threw the book back into the pile on the floor. Campy vampires weren’t going to help me stop thinking about the weird shit that had started happening since I’d gotten to this island. About Doyle clearly knowing who I was before he met me, about my uncle, even that story about Aislinn and Connor.
I looked at the drawer of my nightstand and then sighed and yanked it open. Yeah, they held bad memories, but if I admitted it to myself, I knew why I’d kept the tarot cards. When I’d had bad dreams, my mother and I would look through the cards, at the major arcana, and she’d tell me the meanings and the stories, tracing the faded drawings with one of her thin fingers, nail spotted with the remains of black or purple or crimson polish until I drifted off again.
I could recite them in my sleep: the Fool, the Hanged Man, the Tower, the Magician. One of the only times my mother used a calm voice, spoke to me like she cared, even held me if I’d had a really epic nightmare. Ignoring that her comforting me over a nightmare caused by her own actions was kinda fucked-up, I remember it as one of the few good times we had.
I pulled at the drawer again, but it wouldn’t open wide enough to get at the cards. Damn damp manor house. I might as well live in a cave.
Reaching under the nightstand, I tried to knock the drawer loose. Instead, my fingers brushed cloth, and I pulled out a crumple of white fabric, jammed behind the drawer, hidden from all sight.
I knew what it was before my shaking fingers smoothed it out, but I still couldn’t accept it. I stepped back like it was a snake, my foot kicking over the pile of books and sending paperbacks slithering around the room. It couldn’t be, but it was, sitting on my bed, real as everything else in this ratty bedroom. This time, I was definitely awake.
The thing hidden in my nightstand was my tank top. And the front was covered in dried blood.
I grabbed the plastic bag out of the trash can beside my bed before I could spend time thinking things over. Like how my nightclothes were covered in blood, and how they’d gotten hidden. The tank top went in the bag, and I went out the door, making myself slow down and walk like I wasn’t about to go find a place to dispose of what could easily be called evidence. Of what, I had no idea, but nothing good left you covered in that much blood that wasn’t yours.
Once I was outside, I froze. The woods were out—after what had happened earlier, I couldn’t risk one of the Ramseys seeing me. The landscaped gardens wouldn’t work. I was sure Mrs. MacLeod watched the entire grounds like a hawk.
I didn’t even consider telling anyone. Who would I tell? Sorry, Simon, it turns out the delinquent teenage niece you took in out of the goodness of your heart is off hacking up woodland creatures, serial killer–style.
At least I thought it was animal blood. It had to be—there was nobody unaccounted for on the island as far as I knew, unless you counted the dead guy in my dream, which I certainly didn’t. And while my mother might have been convinced I was evil incarnate most days, homicidal blackouts would be a new wrinkle.
A gull screamed out over the water, and I headed for the steps to the beach, crumpling the bag between my fingers. Mrs. MacLeod had said the steps weren’t safe, but if it were between breaking my leg and somebody finding the bloody shirt, I’d risk a limb any day. I didn’t know either Simon or Veronica, not really. I had no idea how they’d react if they found this, except that it wouldn’t be good. I wasn’t ending up in juvie or some ward for disturbed teens, not when I was so close to being on my own. Destroying the bloody clothing anywhere in or near the house was way too much of a risk, given how damn nosy Mrs. MacLeod was. So I sucked up my fear of the creaking steps and started down.
I would dispose of the tank top, I told myself. That was step one. Step two was figuring out what the hell was going on. One step at a time. That’s how you keep from losing your cool, panicking, and getting caught. Don’t think too far ahead.
I tested the first tread, and when it held my weight, I picked my way down the cliff face. The beach was a good fifty feet below me, and the stairs swayed with every step. The wood was slick and rotten, and I clutched the railing.
One almost-fall and a bunch of splinters later, I found myself on a small strip of rocky sand. The waves pounded the cliffs around me, hollow booms that sounded like thunder. There was a cave entrance off to the right, and I headed for it.
I couldn’t even see the house anymore. It was just me, the fog, and the waves. It was unsettling, to say the least, especially coming from places where you could see the horizon in every direction.
I’d never thought I’d miss Kansas, or Minnesota, or New Mexico—any of the places my mother dragged us—but it had to be better than here.
I climbed up a flat rock at the cave entrance, perfectly smooth like a table, with four smaller rocks set on top. There was even an indentation in the middle for some kind of fire pit. Maybe when the weather didn’t suck, some long-ago owner of this place had actually had fun; picnics on the beach, back in the era of giant hats and those weird woolen bathing suits that went down to your shins.
I looked at the swirling tide pool before I slid down the other side of the rock, and that cold stole over me again. The wind was turning all my exposed skin numb, but this was more than that. Bad memories always made me cold, ever since the time my mother had shoved my head in the bathtub.
It caught me hard—black swirling water, salt in my mouth, cold bottomless ocean waiting to accept me and keep me.
I fell hard, landing on my butt inside the mouth of the cave, salt water soaking into my jeans. If my phobia of water had gotten to the point where I couldn’t even look at it, I was sort of screwed. Maybe now that I had a rich relative, I could get some pills to help out with that.
Either way, I buried the tank top in a corner of the cave, deep under the sand and pebbles, down past where the tide would pull it out. My hands were red and my nails were bloody by the time I finished, but I breathed deep for the first time since I’d found the top in my drawer.
The climb back to the house was long and slow. I crept back up to my room and stripped off my wet clothes. I showered to get warm, slapped some bandages on the worst of the cuts, and tried to come up with a convenient excuse if someone asked me what had happened. “Joined a fight club” was right out. Maybe Simon would believe I was just a really intense nail-biter?
I didn’t need to worry, though—nobody bothered me, not even when I went back to the kitchen to forage for a real meal; after covering up evidence of a violent crime, another ham sandwich just would not cut it. Mrs. MacLeod had left a note on the kitchen table: Gone to the mainland overnight for shopping. Please do not leave dirty dishes in the sink. Don’t disturb Simon.
The adrenaline had worn off a long time ago, and now I was more bored than anything.
I tossed what had happened earlier around in my head. Point in my favor: I’d never blacked out and lost time before. Point against: the shirt was definitely real, and something had definitely happened. But I’d never had any urge to kill anything. I didn’t even eat the venison Mom’s boyfriends brought home, if they hunted.
I couldn’t even be sure it was blood. I’d freaked out and buried the thing—not exactly waited to do a lab test. It was dried stiff and felt a little sticky and looked like blood, but if I’d gotten that much on my shirt, there’d be some on me, on my shoes, somewhere.
Which circled back to the idea I was sliding into delusions or hallucinations. I didn’t like that idea much, but technically it was better than covering myself in blood with no memory of it.
I groaned, and dumped the leftover casserole I’d found, minus a few bites, into the garbage. It was really terrible—I was almost nostalgic for truck stop hot dogs.
Before, I’d been able to stay busy to keep these thoughts away. There were parties to go to, people to hang out with, weekend trips if I knew somebody with a car. Even though my life with Mom kept us isolated in a way, in practice I’d spent very little of my life alone. Sharing a motel room or a bus-station bench or a tiny trailer with someone for sixteen years doesn’t really equip you for the profound silence of an empty house.
I was about to sneak out and see if Doyle wanted to hang—he might be a certified weirdo, but I couldn’t exactly be picky—when I saw someone leave the servants’ entrance that I was supposed to use, to avoid embarrassing Simon in front of the nonexistent neighbors, and walk through the garden to the woods.
I scrambled to the window and peeked through the crack in the velvet drapes, which puffed dust into my face. The blond hair was familiar even in the moonlight, and I watched Simon disappear into the tree line. I had to get better about learning the sounds of this place. I didn’t like thinking somebody could be creeping around within a couple of rooms of me and I’d have no idea. I’d figured Simon was upstairs, in his room. I hadn’t even heard the outside door shut. Simon moved like a cat burglar. I waited about thirty seconds, until he wouldn’t see me leave the house, and then followed him out the servants’ door. It was truly freezing, now that the sun was down; I shoved my hands into my pockets, turning in a slow circle until I saw Simon’s blond head bobbing through the trees.
This is weird, Ivy, even for you, I thought as I followed him. Simon was probably just taking a walk—he looked like the kind of dude who’d go for strolls around his estate.
But then why wasn’t he wearing walking shoes? Or walking on a trail, or out in the open? Or, I don’t know, doing this all in daylight instead of by the moon, with no flashlight?
I had an idea of where he was heading even before I heard the whisper of the stream that divided us from the Ramsey land.
Simon stopped at the end of the clearing, and I tucked myself behind one of the massive pine trees, feeling the damp bark scrape against my cheek and my palms.
A sliver of silver light peeked through the fog, and then it was dark again. Simon pulled out a small flashlight and checked his watch, sighing and picking at his jacket.
“You look more nervous than a jackrabbit in a dog run,” said a voice from the other side of the stream. I watched a tall guy with silver hair emerge from the trees. He wore one of those padded jackets that hunters like, jeans, and a plaid shirt open at the neck. He was as huge and swarthy as Simon was skinny and pale, and he towered over my uncle.
“Liam,” Simon said. “If it’s all the same to you, why don’t you tell me what you want? The less time I spend in your dog run the happier I’ll be.”
The Liam guy glared, taking a hard step toward Simon. I wondered if I was going to have to save my uncle from getting his ass kicked. Maybe that would help us bond.
“Neil’s dead,” he rumbled. “Something caught him while he was out rabbit hunting, and he’s dead. You wouldn’t know anything about that, would you, Simon?”
Simon rolled his eyes. “You mean when he was out poaching on my side of the island?”
Liam’s face twisted up like a rough stretch of road, and he let out an actual growl, taking a step toward Simon. Simon held up a hand to halt him. “What reason would I have to hurt any of you? That would be like cutting my own throat.”
“Well, someone did it,” Liam snarled. “And I’m going to find out who.”
“Clean up your own house, then,” Simon said. “You know what kind of people your nephews deal with—or should I say try to rob and cheat. Neil never did know when to back off.” He didn’t seem to care that this Neil person was dead, whoever he was.
I wished I felt the same way. I was thinking about the bloody shirt again, about my dream of the dead guy in the clearing. At least that had been a dream. This wasn’t the same clearing—the one I’d been in had been hacked out of the forest, it wasn’t natural like this spot. And as much blood as it was, if I’d killed an actual person, there would be more.
If I’d killed a person, I told myself, I’d know. Simple as that. I trusted myself, if almost nobody else, and I knew what I’d seen had been a dream. And whatever the bloody shirt pointed to, it wasn’t this Neil guy dying by my hand.
Simon turned to leave when Liam called out to him. “My boy met your niece today.”
Simon stopped, his skinny shoulders bunching up. I pressed back into the shadows, afraid he’d spot me, but he spun around. “You tell your mutt of a son to stay away from Ivy.”
“When Doyle listens to a word I say the sky will be falling,” said Liam. “And the way I hear it, she trespassed.”
“To trespass, she’d have to go somewhere that wasn’t her birthright,” Simon said. “And she doesn’t know about all this. Not yet.”
“You telling me everything, Simon?” Liam took another step. “Is she going to play her part? Or do you have plans for her you’re keepin’ to yourself?”
Simon shook his head. “Your kind doesn’t understand mine, and that’s the way I like it. Keep Doyle away from her. I mean it.”
He walked past me, and I had to dive to the ground when Liam shouted again. “We will find out what happened to Neil, Simon! You mark my words.”
Simon smiled, and it wasn’t a nice smile. It was thin and nasty, completely at odds with his bland, pasty face and the laid-back guy who’d given me tea. “Good luck with that, Liam,” he said, and walked back toward the manor.
I waited until I couldn’t hear Liam crashing through the trees anymore and then followed Simon, shivering from more than the cold wind.