Jon. Jon. Rosie wrote his name over and over again in swirling ballpoint letters. Jon & Rosie, Rosie & Jon.
First love, unrequited love; it was a powerful drug. If she’d thought that the rest of her schooldays would be haunted by frustration, her heart would have broken on the spot; but she couldn’t think it. Not when each day brought fresh hope of seeing him, of reading volumes into the briefest glimpse or smile.
Jon was friendly towards her, but always distracted, as if he had somewhere more important to be. He wouldn’t let her any closer. Rosie convinced herself that he was concealing some great secret pain. If he’d only confide in her, the barriers would crash down and they would be twining hands and whispering secrets.
“Mel, do you think he’s gay?” Sam’s unkind revelation haunted her.
Mel did a double take. “What? No chance.”
“How d’you know?”
“Having long hair and being a poser doesn’t make him gay, Rosie,” Mel said with conviction. “We need to make him notice you.”
Easy for Mel to say. Radiant and sun-blond, she chose and disposed like a princess. Rosie felt invisible, like the earth-spirit she was. Her abiding impression of Jon was of him hurrying along school corridors away from her, preoccupied, his hair streaming around his sharp, dancer’s shoulders. He’d gathered a clique of hangers-on by then. Rosie tried to join in but she was always on the fringes, couldn’t find the key to the inner circle. The effort wounded her pride. She felt idiotic, like a fan stalking a film star, yet she couldn’t stop dreaming.
Sam, meanwhile, had only a year or so left at school. He hung around with a bad crowd and, although she tried to keep out of his way, she was forever turning around to find him watching her from a distance. He was like a stalking panther, still and predatory, an ice carving in black and white.
He’d taken up with a girl from the rough end of Cloudcroft, a stocky, ebony-haired creature covered in tattoos. Mel nicknamed her the Pit Bull. Every time Rosie went out, Sam seemed to be lurking with his gang, draping himself over this square-faced girl with her short, hard little fringe, and all of them glaring menacingly in Rosie’s direction.
“He’s trying to make you jealous,” Mel said one day.
Rosie was horrified. “Never. He’s trying to scare me. He once admitted he hates my family. He must hate me even more for standing up to him.”
“So ignore him,” Mel said sensibly. “Let’s plan how we can get you and Jon together.”
The usual thrill of misery fell through her. “I don’t think it’s going to happen.”
“Well, there are plenty of other guys who aren’t so in love with themselves, if you’d only give them a chance.”
“I don’t care about them. You don’t know how I feel.”
She tried, but never could shake off the image of her perfect soul mate in Jon’s limpid brown eyes, his shy grace and long, artistic hands. She had only to glimpse him and it all started again. Oh, the drama. Mel tried on boys like shoes, but when Rosie loved, it was forever.
* * *
Rosie turned sixteen, the age of knowledge and initiation. The Gates, however, stayed closed; there was no magical rite of passage for her; life went on as before.
That summer, she and Lucas threw an end-of-exams party at Oakholme. It was an excuse for Rosie to invite Jon—but Jon, to her dismay, didn’t come. Instead, Sam arrived without invitation. When she took him outside and coolly explained that he and his gang weren’t welcome, he simply left; sardonically glowering, but resigned and gracious enough.
“Still worth a try, pet,” he said, tilting one eyebrow at her as he went.
The next evening, as Rosie was walking home alone from Mel’s house, a bulky figure stepped out from the shadows of a hedge. It was Sam’s girlfriend, the biker chick, all muscle and studded black leather. She was no taller than Rosie but could plainly bend her in half like a hairpin.
“You stay away from Sam,” she said.
Rosie didn’t know how to react. The winding lane was deserted. “I haven’t been anywhere near Sam,” she protested.
“I saw you with him last night.”
“Yes, telling him to get lost!” This only seemed to make the Pit Bull angrier. She swaggered forward, all menace and simmering violence. “I know your game. Every time Sam and me are out, I turn around and you’re there. You think you can take him off me. But he’s with me, you bitch.”
“Yeah, you rich bitch,” said another voice behind Rosie, and there were two of the Pit Bull’s female cronies, both as big and tough as bodyguards.
Fear flashed through Rosie. She knew she was doomed and nothing she said would save her. “I don’t want your stupid boyfriend!” she hissed.
The first punch knocked her back into the arms of the bodyguards. As the second came she twisted to evade it and dived to the ground, gravel scouring her palms. A kick to the kidneys took her breath away. Part of her was paralyzed with disbelief that it could be happening; what use was her heritage if it lent her no powers to defend herself? More kicks. Winded, bruised and helpless, she curled up and tried to roll out of range. A hand grabbed her collar and dragged her half-upright. Her legs gave way. She tasted blood.
The Pit Bull punched her in the stomach.
As she collapsed, she instinctively fell sideways into the Dusklands. The world turned lavender and cobwebby. The three females were still laying into her but now the blows landed like gossamer. They looked less substantial, smaller and paler. In a trance, controlled by a deeper self, Rosie rooted her feet in the ground and stood up.
What did her attackers see? Something translucent, she imagined, wild and wolfish with twigs for hair, rising like a specter between them. They froze. She heard one of the girls say, “Jesus.”
The Pit Bull took a swing at her, which made enough impact to drop her to her hands and knees again. Then the attackers were fleeing in a welter of rubber-soled boots, the Pit Bull shouting over her shoulder, “You stay away from my bloke, you fucking freak!”
When she staggered upright, almost disintegrating with delayed shock, a gentler voice whispered above her, “You all right, girl?”
She looked up and saw the leafy face of the Greenlady, high in the branches of the Crone Oak. This must be what she’d meant about blood on her tree; a warning that she w ouldn’t tolerate violence near her beloved oak. “I’m sorry,” Rosie choked.
“You go on home,” said the dryad, sounding kind, not angry. “Go on. Can’t leave my tree, but I’ll watch you home.”
* * *
Rosie told her parents she had fallen in some brambles. They seemed to believe her. The next day, she marched up to Stonegate Manor and presented Sam, who’d opened the door to her, with her black eye and torn hands. He stood open-mouthed and incredulous as she brusquely described what had happened.
“You call your bodyguard bitch off,” she finished furiously, and strode off without giving him a chance to respond.
“Rosie!” he called after her, but she kept walking. For once she felt strong and fearless, and it was a good feeling.
That night, she lay in bed and thought about the Greenlady, and Jon, and what it meant to be an Aetherial trapped in the human world. A golden summer moon glowed through her curtains. What if she and her brothers—and Jon and Sam, come to that—were never able to enter the Spiral or partake of the experiences their parents had known?
A memory rose: She was about seven, sitting on Brewster’s broad back as Comyn led him, gentle as a lamb, around a paddock. They’d often visited the farm as children. She remembered her father and brothers watching from beneath sunlit trees. Her uncle was saying as they went, “You’ll notice things about certain people, Rosie. Adults who don’t seem to grow any older. No comfortable grey-haired grannies for us; no, our grandparents look as fresh as our parents until they simply disappear. Mysterious, eh?”
Rosie had been disturbed. Had the half-remembered adults who’d doted upon her as a tiny child been her grandparents? All she’d been told was that they lived far away now. Her uncle continued, “Don’t be afraid of it, girl; it’s what we are, Vaethyr, not human. Your family lives in the human world but you’ll feel the call of the Otherworld, a need to run under the stars like a wild animal. You’ll know what it is to be both huntsman and hound, tearing into the raw flank of your prey…”
At that point, her father had appeared beside them, saying, “That’s enough, Comyn.”
He’d sounded angry. Her uncle had grunted, “You’ve no right to shelter your children from the truth of what they are,” and Auberon had retorted, “And you’ve no business telling them anything; that’s left to me and Jess, not you.”
Strange, that the memory surfaced to night. The news of Brewster’s death in winter two years ago had saddened her. Had her grandparents made it to the Spiral—her mother’s musical parents, Auberon’s farming family—or were they trapped on Earth? Would the Greenlady die too as all links to the Spiral faded? She remembered the terrifying image she’d had of coming home to find Oakholme deserted, her parents gone without a word. At least, if the portal stayed closed, Jessica and Auberon would surely have no reason to vanish.
Lying in her bed, she let her awareness slip into the Dusklands, felt the changed perception swelling like honeyed moonlight into the room. It was easy. Surely nothing could be wrong when the Dusklands still saturated Oakholme so deeply?
Her bedroom was bathed in light, glistening as if coated with golden dew. She rose and went to her wardrobe, finding not clothes inside but a twisty corridor of dark walnut leading to a chamber where a shining tree thrust up through the floorboards and vanished in the vault of the ceiling.
In an enchanted state of consciousness, Rosie circled the tree, climbing over its roots. The leaves were flakes of green light and the trunk was silvery, thick and swollen with rounded excrescences, slippery as silk and warm to the touch. In her strange waking dream she trailed her fingers over the undulations. She rested her face on its silken bark. Her arms went around the trunk and as she pressed the length of her body into it, its hard warmth seemed to swell into her, molding perfectly into the strange urgency that transported her.
Rosie floated, breathing hard as she dissolved into golden fire. The Dusklands softly exploded. She came awake in bed, gasping, hands flung back on the pillows as she convulsed. For once there was no thought of Jon in her mind, only the simple wonder of ecstasy. She slid one hand between her thighs to make the feeling linger.
What lay behind her wardrobe door was not quite Narnia, but it was hers. Her beautiful secret tree of knowledge.
* * *
School terms and seasons rolled by. Rosie never saw Sam with the Pit Bull again. The girl was still around the village—keeping a safe distance from Rosie—but Sam had left. Gone, said the rumors, to backpack around Europe. Lawrence apparently was not pleased. Rosie wasn’t sure what she felt; relieved, mostly.
One firm conviction anchored her; her love of trees, earth and living things. She was a true Elysian, a natural gardener. To be affiliated to earth meant going into the natural world, to the greenwood, to silver lakes where willows kissed their reflections; being absorbed into rock and the moist wormy soil… and rising out again, remade. She tended Oakholme’s rambling grounds, speaking softly to the shy elementals who peeped down from the branches as she worked. She began to redesign the neglected rose arbor, taken with an idea to create a sacred space. Always when she passed the Crone Oak she bowed and greeted the Greenlady, even though Luc teased her, and the dryad herself was rarely in evidence. It was a matter of respect.
At eighteen, she left school with good grades and a place at horticultural college. Jon was now at art college in Nottingham and rarely seen, yet Rosie’s obsession lingered. She couldn’t bear the thought that she’d never have a renewed chance of what should have been.
One day in August Lucas came running to find her, breathless. “I just met Jon in the village,” he said. “He’s having a birthday party next Saturday. Everyone’s invited—all his mates from college, school and the village. D’you want to go?”
Rosie nearly said no. She was annoyed at herself for the wave of yearning, heart-pounding excitement that swept over her. If Jon wanted her, he knew where she lived and he’d had an open invitation for the last four years. She did not need to humiliate herself at a wretched party. But, she thought helplessly, but… what if this time…?
* * *
Every time she entered Stonegate, it was different. This time, the house became a dim and smoky morass of adolescents, lit by candles and saturated with the odor of spilled beer. Guests were dancing in the great hall, sitting on the stairs and along the galleries. Factions spilled into bedrooms; there was a ghost-story session in the rooftop conservatory, wreathed in incense. There were a few locked doors, but no sign of Jon’s parents. Mel, Faith and Rosie all had to agree, it was a damned good party.
Apart from the elusiveness of Jon. Wherever Rosie went in the house, he was elsewhere. She no sooner entered Jon’s presence than he had somewhere more exciting to go. She ended up sitting on a rug in his bedroom, drinking cider from a bottle, her ears full of trance and indie music. She started college soon. This could be her last chance with him. Certainly, at this rate, her only chance to see the inside of his bedroom.
How drunk would Jon have to be to find her suddenly enticing? How drunk must she be to fling away caution and grab him?
Faith was beside her, sipping lemonade and clearly out of her depth; Mel was in a corner kissing a boy she’d known for quite some minutes. Others were sprawled over the floor and bed. It was too noisy to make conversation. The bedroom was dark, but misty light spilled from the corridor and she saw Jon out there, talking intently to someone, half a dozen student friends around him. She felt a bite of envy. What did they do in their secret circle? Smoke pot, talk politics, play truth or dare?
Rosie saw that the person talking to Jon was Lucas. She rose unsteadily to join her brother, but in the four seconds it took her to reach the corridor, they had all vanished.
* * *
Lucas saw Rosie in the doorway, her hopeful face appearing from the darkness, and he wanted to wait for her; but it was too late. Jon and the others, oblivious, were herding him away and the moment when he should have said something was lost.
Outside, the night was summery, with a hint of cool breeze. Jon led them through tangles of rhododendron and birch to a hilltop where a volcanic crag thrust from the heathland grass. Below the rocks lay a shallow, ridged dip in the ground. The night was sourly fragrant with bruised grass and bracken. Oak trees shivered against a midnight sky.
Lucas knew this place. Freya’s Crown. In the dip, Jon threw down a red velvet cloth and sat cross-legged on it, his hair flowing over an Indian patchwork top. He looked like a beautiful shaman seated there, ethereal and-self contained.
The others were four lads and three girls from Jon’s college, all human as far as Luc could tell. Some had musical instruments. Warily Lucas sat in the circle, facing Jon. There was a hush, a sense of ceremony. Jon produced a packet of brownish, leathery disks; mushroom caps. Placing them on a red enameled plate, he took out a penknife and cut each one into thick slices. Then, holding the plate as if it held communion bread, he offered it around. Lucas watched the others taking slices, holding the stuff on their tongues with closed eyes. When the plate reached him, he hesitated.
Jon’s gaze met his. “Go on,” he said.
“What is it?” He immediately felt idiotic, marked as a virgin.
“Dream agaric,” said Jon, his eyes intense and compelling. “It grows in the Dusklands. It opens the corridors of the imagination. It’s strong stuff. Are you scared?”
“No,” Lucas said quickly. He took a thick slice and slipped it into his mouth. It tasted musty and bitter, its texture rubbery with a hint of sliminess. Wincing, he chewed and swallowed quickly. It went down whole and he almost threw it back up again. Only pride and panic kept it down. Everyone sat cross-legged, eyes closed, waiting for it to take effect. Fighting nausea, Lucas waited with them.
A chalice of syrupy wine came around, followed by a foul-smelling joint. Jon began weaving leafy twigs into a crude shape: a spiral threaded through a pentagram. One of the students was playing a flute, while a spiky-haired girl tapped a rhythm on a bodhran.
Nothing happened. Lucas frowned, feeling trapped in this absurd situation and wishing Rosie were there. He didn’t know why Jon had taken to him. They’d met on the stairs and Jon had begun talking to him with a steady gaze—as if he’d suddenly registered Luc’s existence.
Nothing happened, but he noticed how soft the ground felt, friable as if he could feel all the space between the atoms, like soil fragments on a cobweb. He lay down to feel it more fully. The sky was the face of a goddess with blue-black skin and star-streams for hair. Estel, Lady of Stars, staring down at their tiny forms exposed on the hillside like a sacrifice.
Lucas suddenly understood the Dusklands as a state of altered awareness, as opposed to a physical Otherworld. Of course! He couldn’t fathom why he hadn’t got it before. The humans around him became indistinct, but Jon glowed red and gold, like a religious icon.
Freya’s Crown was huge and bright, covered in silver snail trails. The trails were runes glimmering on the surface. Everything around him went shadowy but the rocks grew more solid and he began to hear their insides moving. Huge cogs were grinding like millstones, like Russian dolls, one inside the other.
Lucas felt that grinding inside his body. The w hole crag was turning, drilling the earth like machinery chewing through rock. He felt the ground fall away as the churning vortex sucked him in. With a scream he fell right through the Dusklands, down into a chasm of fire and steaming ice… down through an endless corridor of arches, until he saw a vast, mausoleum door of granite waiting for him. It was so real he saw the spirals and runes engraved on its surface. He was going to smash into it—and when he did so, he knew he would die.
White light crackled around him. He felt the heavy shudder of the door cracking open—and that was worse. There was something terrible behind it, gigantic and so dazzling that it blinded.
He felt the immense pressure of a flood straining to break through—only the flood was not water but shadow, utter darkness and blinding fire. As he fell towards it, he knew he must will the door closed again, even knowing the impact would kill him. Death was preferable to letting that hideous force burst into the world.
He fought, shadow-boxed, twisted his fingers in magical gestures but nothing helped and he could only fall, helpless. Then out of the whirling chaos a pale and terrible face surfaced. It was far away but huge—glaring at him with blazing, mad eyes, reaching for him—all he knew was that he must slam shut the Gates before this horror burst through—and suddenly it was not far away after all but human-sized and close.
“Lucas,” a voice hissed in his ear.
His whole self turned inside out on a scream as he saw that the terrifying face looming over him was that of Lawrence Wilder.
* * *
He came to, lying flat on a couch. He was gasping and dizzy, his stomach sore. Sapphire Wilder was bending over him, wiping his mouth with a damp cloth.
“It’s all right, Lucas. Can you hear me? Open your eyes, that’s it.”
Lucas managed to sit up. His limbs were softened wax. The walls around him glowed red and gold. He had no idea where he was, but it didn’t matter. He’d closed the Gates, hit the hard surface, and lived. Sapphire gave him a glass of water and he drank, coughed, and drank again. He was shivering violently.
“Good lad.” Sapphire turned away and said, “Has he taken something?”
Jon was a vague figure near the door. He shrugged. “Only if he took it before he got here.” He looked levelly at Lucas as if daring him to contradict.
“Funny, I didn’t think he was the type to take drugs.”
“Me, neither,” said Jon. “He was drinking cola. Maybe someone spiked it.”
“That would be extremely serious,” she said, turning back to Lucas. Her hands with their long nails were warm on his, and she exuded a fresh, exotic perfume. “How are you feeling, dear?”
“Okay,” said Lucas. He knew it was essential not to admit anything. The world felt as sharp as glass. “I’m sorry, Mrs. Wilder.”
“I’m thinking you should see a doctor.”
“No! No, I don’t want my parents to worry. Honestly, it was just cider. I’ll be fine.”
“Cider? Jon, this party was supposed to be soft drinks only. We agreed.”
Jon rolled his eyes. “Some of them smuggled it in. For heaven’s sake, we’re all over eighteen.”
“Lucas isn’t. Anyway, that’s not the point. We had an agreement; I kept out of the way as long as everyone behaved.” She looked at Lucas with her head on one side, her lovely mane hanging over one shoulder. A gem at her throat held a universe of tiny rainbows. “Still, we do these foolish things as teenagers and there’s no need for parents to know every humiliating detail, is there?” She stood up. “Jon, would you watch him while I make tea?”
Jon stood to one side of the door, thumbs hooked in his jeans, until his stepmother had gone. Then he came to the couch and looked down at Lucas with dark, intense eyes. “Are you all right?”
“I don’t know.”
“It made me sick the first time I tried it, too,” Jon said with a twisted smile.
“Sorry,” said Lucas, compelled to apologize for acting in an uncool manner. “I feel a right idiot.”
“It doesn’t matter.” He squatted down by the arm of the couch, his voice falling to a whisper. “My father cannot find out about the mushrooms. Promise you won’t tell anyone. He’d go ballistic. Promise?”
“I promise,” said Lucas, startled. “I wouldn’t, anyway.”
“You don’t know him. He’s terrifying when he’s angry. He’s forbidden me to even think about the Gates, let alone try and see what’s on the other side. If he found out what we were doing, he’d kill me.”
Lucas looked at him, startled. At the same time he became mesmerized by the luminosity of Jon’s face and the incredible bronze-copper texture of his hair. “That’s awful.”
Jon shrugged. “We have to be careful, that’s all.”
“Is that what we were doing?” said Lucas. “Trying to look through the Great Gates?”
“Yes, you know, through visions.”
“You didn’t say.”
Jon grinned. “I know. It’s better that way, then people don’t make things up to impress me. So, what did you see?”
Lucas hesitated. He liked Jon and wanted to please him. “It was a muddle. I was falling. The rocks turned silver and opened up to let me through, but I hit this massive stone door…” He didn’t want to describe the nightmare. It made no sense, and the fear was too raw. “It sounds lame.”
“No, that’s really interesting. You saw more than I ever do, even though I’ve tried and tried. There are forces that want to stop us and we must learn to see through their illusions.”
“And your human friends… do they see anything?”
Jon shrugged. “Not really. Humans haven’t got the wiring. Y’know, they’ll report seeing all sorts of exotic garbage, but nothing real.”
“Why do you bother with them, then?”
He gave a one-sided smile. “I enjoy being a guru. It makes them feel special. And you never know, one of them might have a genuine revelation. But we’re different, Luc. We’re Aetherial so we’re tuned in; it’s already there inside us, waiting to be channeled. We can try again sometime, if you’re up for it?”
“Here’s tea,” Sapphire interrupted brightly, bearing a tray. Jon rose, putting a fingertip to his lips. “Anything else you want, Lucas?”
He smiled, grateful for her attention. “Just if you could find my sister, please?”
* * *
Rosie looked at her watch. Half past midnight. Mel and her latest conquest had vanished, Faith had fallen asleep in a corner and Rosie was frankly bored. There were a few necking couples and semicomatose loners around the room; no one she could actually talk to. Apparently it was expected for guests to stay overnight, but Rosie wished she could go home. How annoyed would Jessica be if she walked down the hill in the middle of the night and left Lucas behind? She sighed. Perhaps she would find Jon’s party crowd in the conservatory, but knowing her luck, this would be the night Sam chose to come home and she’d meet him, or something worse, in a darkened corridor.
And then her dream strolled in. Jon was in the doorway. He was coming towards her, ignoring everyone else, hair flaring around his shoulders, his face serious and radiant in the semidarkness.
“Rosie, could you come with me? I need to talk to you.”
“Sure,” she answered, affecting nonchalance. In silence, he led her along the passages where she always got lost. Her heart was lurching. Jon’s presence beside her was so vivid, warm and silken, it was all she could do not to grab him. This tactic usually worked for Mel, but Rosie was too nervous to risk the utter hash she knew she’d make of it.
“So, what’s up?” she asked lightly, to break the silence.
“Lucas was taken ill,” said Jon. “He threw up and sort of passed out. He seems okay now, but he’s asking for you.”
Rosie’s heart plunged. Her dream shattered; fear filled the void. “What’s wrong with him?”
“Too much cider, he says.”
“The stupid idiot!”
Jon brought her to a staircase she’d never found before and led her to the top floor. The scent of flowers and candles wreathed the landing. Everything was ivory with touches of green, and Japanese calligraphy on the walls.
“He’s in here,” said Jon, smiling apologetically as he opened a door to a Chinese-style red sitting room with two sofas.
She was furious, but when she saw Lucas, bone-white and shivering, with Sapphire tending to him, her heart melted. “What’s all this?” she said, sitting beside him. “You can’t start knocking drink back like a Norse god, you know. You’re not even old enough.”
He gave a wan smile. “I know. Promise you won’t tell the parents.”
“I’m really sorry, Mrs. Wilder,” Rosie said, feeling awkwardly responsible. “He usually knows how to behave.”
“Not your fault, dear. All part of growing up, unfortunately.”
Jon said, “Is it all right if I go, Sapphire? I should get back to the others.”
Sapphire turned coolly to him and said, “Your guests might want to think about going home or to bed. Sort them out and I’ll look after these two.”
“Thanks.” Jon sidled out, to Rosie’s dismay. He was obviously relieved to escape, and not remotely interested in spending time in her company. Nothing had changed. Something died a little inside her.
“I could phone my father and ask him to collect us,” she said.
As Sapphire leaned forward, all gloss and serenity, Rosie had a strange mixed feeling of being cosseted and trapped. Her creamy voice was enchanting. “No need for that. We don’t want Lucas to land in trouble, do we?”
“Dad’s not an ogre,” Rosie said sharply. “He’d tut a bit, then it would be forgotten.”
“Still be embarrassing,” said Lucas. “I’d rather stay, Rosie, honest. I’m fine.”
She sighed, her nerves wavering at the thought of a long, haunted night in the manor. If she were pressed close against Jon all night, of course, that would be different—she suppressed the thought. “As long as you’re feeling better.”
“I’ve made camomile tea,” said Sapphire, pouring from a bamboo-handled teapot. “It’s so nice, having this chance to know you better. We’ve never really talked, have we?”
“No, not really,” Rosie said guardedly. Sapphire was so charismatic and confident. Her presence filled the room like the fragrance of jasmine, and Rosie still wasn’t convinced she was human. With some Aetherials, as Auberon had said, it was hard to tell. They held their aura in so tight you couldn’t sense it. Why would someone like Lawrence marry a human?
“It’s lovely to see such a happy, close family as yours,” Sapphire went on, handing Rosie a cup and saucer. “I’m afraid Jon and Sam have suffered from the absence of a mother or a proper home life. I’m trying to make it up to them.”
“Um—yes. I can’t imagine life without our mum.” She sipped the scalding honeyed tea to cover her awkwardness.
“You’re a cautious soul, aren’t you, Rosie?” Sapphire smiled. “You don’t give much away. I hope you’ll open up once we know each other. Unfortunately, Lawrence and I have been too busy with the jewelry business to socialize as we planned, but I’d like that to change.”
“Oh… I know my dad and Mr. Wilder are acquainted, but we’ve never seen much of him—I mean, we don’t know what our parents get up to, it’s like a different world.” Rosie smiled weakly.
“But you’re quite close to Jon and Sam?”
“No, we never had the chance. They were away at boarding school and…”
“Yes, it’s such a shame. Sam’s a law unto himself, of course, but you and Jon seem to get on well, don’t you, Lucas?”
“Yeah, he’s great,” said Lucas, looking startled.
“He really likes you too, dear. I think Jon and Lucas are like peas in a pod, don’t you, Rosie?” Sapphire smiled, showing perfect white teeth. “A pair of truly fine-looking young men.”
Lucas squirmed, coloring. In other circumstances it would have made Rosie laugh. She said, “I hadn’t noticed, but I suppose they are.”
Sapphire’s smile became knowing, confidential. “Of course you’ve noticed. Women do. We understand, at a deeper lever, things that aren’t apparent on the surface.”
There was a strange moment in which Sapphire’s gaze hung on Rosie’s; probing, implying, watching her reaction. Puzzled, Rosie frowned. Sapphire caught the look and the probing abruptly stopped.
“You know, dears,” she said, smoothing over the moment, “if there’s one thing I’d advise young people to do, it’s to talk to their parents. Honest communication is the key to happiness.”
“We do talk to them,” said Rosie, concerned that Sapphire was implying a problem where none existed. “They’re great.”
Sapphire’s perfect eyebrows twitched. Her full pink lips parted. “Good,” she smiled. “We’ll talk again. Now, you should sleep. We have spare rooms, but not many with actual beds in them; Lawrence’s ex-wife wasn’t much for homemaking, as you’ve probably gathered. Will you be all right on the sofas here? I’ll bring duvets and pillows. That way you can keep an eye on your brother.”
“Thanks so much,” said Rosie. “It’s really kind of you.”
“My pleasure, dears.” Sapphire blew them a kiss.
* * *
Lucas was in the attic with Jon. The winged being was there in front of them—not a painting, but alive and hiding its face in its hands. Now and then it uttered a faint, anguished sob.
Sapphire was there too, bending over the angel’s head. She was barely visible among the heaped shadows. “This is your father’s business,” she said.
“We have to let it go,” said Lucas, distraught. “You can’t keep it prisoner here, it’s wrong, it’s cruel!”
“There’s nothing I can do,” said Sapphire. She put her hand beneath the being’s face and caught a large, shining tear. When she held it up, Lucas saw that she was holding a tear-shaped Elfstone. “This is where albinite comes from. It’s the tears of the caged god.”
“Why’s it crying?” said Jon. “For all the unrequited love, dear,” said Sapphire.
Lucas woke violently, his heart racing from the horrible, haunting dream. It took him moments to work out where he was. He looked up at the ceiling and wondered if the attic was above him, the angel in the painting still up there weeping?
He tried to sleep, but the room spun and he was falling into the stone jaws of the Gates again. His sister was fast asleep. Thirsty and starving, Lucas decided to go in search of the kitchen.
Rosie didn’t stir as he slipped from the room. He tiptoed into the corridor, barefoot in pajamas, and felt his way down to the middle floor, where chill moonlight lit the long gallery. Rosie always complained that the house shifted and played tricks, but to him it felt all too solid, like a fortress.
Carpets prickled his feet; the stair treads were cold and waxy, then came the flagstones of the great hall, like walking on ice. The drug was still working through his system, making every sense too vivid. Perhaps he was still dreaming.
The kitchen had been expensively refitted and smelled of new wood—Sapphire’s touch. Lozenges of moonlight fell on blond wood and black marble. He found the sink under a window, put his mouth under the tap and took a long cold drink of water. Then he groped his way along a countertop until his hands found a china cookie jar.
As he removed the lid, he had a sudden impression that the jar was mounded to the rim with human brains—or mushroom caps. He recoiled. No, only oat cookies. He took one and it tasted incredible.
He ate and wondered about Jon—what he’d truly intended by handing out magic mushrooms—but he couldn’t think straight. The moonlight was solid like crystal, and the darkness had a furry texture against his skin. Nothing felt right. Only the mealy warmth of oats on his tongue anchored him to reality.
Then something touched him in the dark.
There was a shadow by his thighs, nosing for the crumbs he was dropping. He pushed forward with one knee but it went through thin air. The shadow had no weight and no scent, yet it was there. Not animal, but something sinuous and hungry, with a touch like damp leather.
Lucas was petrified. His arm flattened along the wall and found a light switch. A blaze of light dazzled him, but through it he saw there was no demon at his feet.
There was, however, a man in the room with him.
An island unit stood in the center, and the man was on the far side, staring at him. Pallid skin molded over harsh bones, black hair swept back, narrow eyes colorless. The face from his drug nightmare. “Turn out the light,” he hissed.
Terrified, Lucas obeyed. Now he was blind in the darkness. “I—I—I’m sorry, Mr. Wilder,” he choked out. “I didn’t know you were—I’ll go.”
“No.” A hand fell on Lucas’s left shoulder, making him jump as if a live electric cable had lashed him. “It’s all right, Lucas.” Lawrence’s deep, quiet voice rolled out of the velvety darkness. “I didn’t mean to give you a fright. I’m sorry.”
“’Sokay.” He knew Lawrence could feel him trembling but he couldn’t stop.
Another hand came behind him to grip the right shoulder as well. “Are you all right? Take deep breaths. I think that’s the advice.”
Lucas shuddered, mortified. He felt his heart slowing as the wave of shock faded.
“Couldn’t sleep either, eh?” Lawrence asked. He sounded friendly. “No, sir,” Lucas mumbled. “I was hungry.”
“Absolutely. Help yourself. I was about to make tea.”
The massive hands fell away. Silhouetted against the window, Lawrence filled a kettle and switched it on. Then he leaned on the countertop beside Lucas, in darkness in the weirdest silence Lucas had ever experienced. He didn’t know how to escape. Again he sensed a gryphon shape moving around the room. He daren’t say anything, but he stared, trying to see it.
“It’s only a dysir,” said Lawrence. “One of my household guardians. Trouble is, they’re of dark Aetheric substance from Asru, so how can one be sure they’re not fragments of Brawth? I suspect they’re the same thing.”
Lucas had no idea what he was talking about.
“Making no sense, am I?” said Lawrence. “They’re like guard dogs but only there to warn, not to hurt. I command them, since the official dysir keeper deserted me, but that’s not to say I want them here, these compulsory trappings of office. Guardians or spies?”
If Lucas had been human, he would have been convinced that Lawrence was utterly mad. Since they were both Aetherial, Lawrence seemed only three-quarters mad. “I’ve never seen anything like that in our house,” he said. “Not even in the Dusklands.”
“Well, you wouldn’t,” Lawrence said softly. “Your family are happy and wholesome and they live as creatures of Aether should, with their roots in the earth and their branches in the light. Such haunts don’t plague your household.”
“I—I should go back to bed.”
“No, stay. Have some tea and talk to me.” Lawrence’s tone was impossible to disobey. He poured boiling water into mugs. “I’ll take a little whiskey in mine. Would you like some? For the fright?”
Lucas coughed. “No—no thank you.”
“Just a drop. You’re not a child.”
“Oh, oh—all right then, sir, thanks.” Lucas began, rather innocently, to suspect that this was not Lawrence’s first drink of the evening.
“You’re sixteen, aren’t you?”
“Yes.” The tea was black, sweet and fiery. If Rosie smelled it on his breath in the morning, she would have a fit. At this moment, though, he felt that morning would never come. Lawrence Wilder would surely drink his blood, or smother him.
“Sixteen. Old enough for initiation rites. Old enough for knowledge. I suppose your father has painted a very grim picture of me?”
“No, not at all,” he said. “I always got the impression he admires you—grudgingly, sort of, but he does.” Lawrence gave a bark of laughter. “Extraordinary. Ever the diplomat, the philanthropist, the backbone of our community, your father. I say your father…”
Another silence. The laced tea was floating Lucas even further from reality. He watched the slithering dysir and waited for Wilder to continue.
“Of course, the thing you should have been told, which you’re now old enough to be told, which no doubt your lovely family hoped to sweep under the carpet forever, is the fact that I am your father.”
“You’re what?” Lucas laughed involuntarily. Lawrence laughed too, his barely visible face contorted with mirth.
“You are my son, dear boy. Not Auberon’s. Mine.”