The implications of what Kate had done rang like bells in Barrie’s head, a new peal striking before the last had even finished. Not only had Kate bound herself, but neither of them had asked the water spirit a single question. Not about the whereabouts of the lodestone, or who the water spirit was, or why she had appeared. They didn’t know what would happen to Beaufort Hall and Watson’s Landing if they let the gifts slip through their fingers. They didn’t know what the bindings meant.
They knew nothing more than they’d known before.
And the binding itself . . . It shouldn’t have—couldn’t have—transferred to Kate. How could it? Not while Seven and Eight were still alive.
Why hadn’t it occurred to Barrie that the binding could be transferred—or that Kate would do what she had done?
She wanted to shake herself. She wanted to shake Kate. Most of all, she wanted to shake up time like an Etch A Sketch, make the lines of her mistakes disappear into dust.
Kate swayed on her feet and stumbled, turning to Barrie with her eyes white-rimmed and her face faded to the color of the marble in the fountain. She pressed her hands to her ears, as if shutting out some sound that Barrie couldn’t hear—as if the more that Barrie heard through her own binding with Watson’s Landing was affecting Kate as well.
“What’s happening?” Kate asked.
“It’s all right. It’s normal—part of the binding.” Catching Kate, Barrie steadied her, resisting the urge to scold her again. “Don’t be scared. You’re all right,” she repeated, as though the repetition—and wishing hard enough—could make it true.
“I’m not the least bit scared.” Kate pulled one hand away. Holding it three inches from her ear, she tilted her head to the side, and then a smile tugged at the corners of her lips as if she had tumbled across a marvelous secret. “Is this what it’s like for you?” She spun around, peering at the roses in the garden and at the house behind her. “Like seeing everything in high definition and hearing it in stereo? I can feel the ground breathing. What is that?”
“Connection,” Barrie said, thinking about all the things Kate needed to know.
Kate jumped as a door slammed behind her, and winced when heavy footsteps pounded toward the stairs. Barrie turned with a tremor of dread.
“What the hell did you do?” Seven’s expression promised fire and damnation. He glanced from Barrie to Kate and back, as if of course whatever had happened were Barrie’s fault.
Which it was. If Kate was bound, Seven must have been unbound. Pru had felt lighter—freer—once the spirit had accepted Barrie’s binding, and Pru’d barely had the gift at all.
Kate’s eyes held Barrie’s with a silent plea.
But they couldn’t deny what they had done. Blood-tinted water still dripped from Kate’s hands. The knife lay on the ground.
“What did you do?” Seven repeated. He didn’t shout, but he didn’t need to—his voice rumbled so deeply that it felt like he was yelling. He towered above Kate, making her seem very small and frail. “Jesus, Katherine Shelby Beaufort. What were you thinking? Tell me exactly what you did.”
“I accepted the binding.” Kate glared up at him defiantly. “It’s the perfect solution. Now you and Eight won’t be stuck here, and I’ve never seen it as being stuck.”
“What about college? Having the chance to find out what matters to you? Your dreams?” He shook his head. “Undo it. Whatever you did, reverse it. How does it work?”
“There’s nothing to undo.” Kate straightened her shoulders and swallowed, looking around the garden. “I want this. My dreams have always been about this place.”
“You’re too young to know what matters.”
“Only someone who forgot what it means to be young would ever say that.” Kate stared at him, neither cowed nor out of words, but it wasn’t Kate who deserved his anger, and after glowering at his daughter another moment, Seven realized that. He turned to Barrie, his hand raised as if he wanted to slap her, or shake her. Fighting the urge, he covered his mouth instead, his expression filled with such rage and horror that Barrie couldn’t stay silent.
“Kate didn’t know what was going to happen. You’re right to blame me,” she said.
Seven’s body clenched up like a spring coiling. “Haven’t you done enough to this family?” he thundered. “Every time I turn around, your meddling tears us apart!”
“If you’d only told Eight the truth . . . or told either of them what you knew about the binding . . . We’ve been begging you—”
“It’s not up to you to decide what’s best for my children.”
“You think bullying them and lying to them is what’s best for them? And you asked me to keep the secret from Eight—that hurt him even worse.”
“I asked for your help! I explained that you couldn’t be together anyway, so all you had to do was walk away from him.” Seven stepped even closer, and he was near enough, tall enough, enough like Eight, that tears welled in Barrie’s eyes. “That’s all you had to do,” he said, “and Eight wouldn’t have been hurt at all.”
“Walk away? That’s your answer? Because telling him I didn’t want to see him, not returning his calls and texts, and never telling him why—none of that would have hurt him at all? Walking away is your go-to solution, though, isn’t it?” Barrie had jerked back involuntarily, but now rage propped her up, egged her on. “Walking away is exactly what you did to Pru when you thought my mother was dead and Pru was going to be bound to Watson’s Landing. You didn’t have the courage to tell her the truth then, either! How’d that work out for you? For Pru?”
“You think it takes courage to tell the truth?” Seven’s voice was barely leashed. “It takes courage to do the right thing. To deny your children when you know what they want isn’t good for them. Sometimes it takes courage to go to bed at night knowing you have to get up in the morning and face your life.”
“The life you made for yourself.”
“The life,” Seven said, “that was chosen for me three hundred years ago.”
Barrie gaped at him, and her anger vaporized. Not because Seven didn’t deserve it, but because he was pitiable even more than he was infuriating. Because he didn’t begin to understand what he had done. She thought of her mother and all the pain that Lula had lived with. But her mother had never blamed the gift.
“We don’t get to use the bargain and the gifts as excuses for everything,” she said. “Kate getting bound was my mistake—I admit it. I own it. This wouldn’t have happened if I’d thought things through, and if I hadn’t asked her to show me the fountain. At least I’m trying to figure things out! I’m not giving up. You stopped trying to leave, and you gave up on Pru. You talk about not having your own identity, but you never gave Eight a chance to make his own.”
“That has nothing to do with the binding. With Kate—”
“It has everything to do with it. This is Kate’s home! That’s why she did this. And you made Eight want to run away because he hated the idea of being what you tried to make him—another Charles Beaufort. Another number intended to be a carbon copy of yourself. Then you wonder why he’s upset when he feels like he can’t measure up.”
Seven’s throat corded as he swallowed, his face combustible and red. “Get out. Christ. Just leave, and don’t come back. Leave my children the hell alone.”
Barrie glanced at Kate, but she didn’t know what to say. Everything she wanted to tell Kate began with “Don’t.”
Don’t let Seven bully you.
Don’t let him hurt Eight anymore.
Don’t let him convince you that you have to get rid of the binding.
Don’t tell him about Obadiah.
There was so much to say that she couldn’t say any of it. Then a shoe scuffed on the steps behind them, and Eight rushed down the steps. His eyes locked on hers, and she felt the recognition she always felt when she saw him, the sense of foundness. Of not-lostness. She wanted to run to him and apologize again and have everything somehow be all right—
How long had he been there?
How much had he heard?
His eyes slid past her to Kate, to Kate’s hands, and then down to the bloody knife that lay beside her where she had dropped it. “What did you do, Kate?”
“I bound myself. Like Barrie’s bound to Watson’s Landing.” Kate lifted her stubborn chin.
“You’re sixteen,” Seven said. “Barrie was an accident. But you? You haven’t even lived yet. You don’t know anything about love or life. What about summer camp, and sleepovers? College? Or Europe? Or Savannah, for Christ’s sake?”
Eight flicked Barrie another glance, then looked down, as if he couldn’t bear to see her. She hurt worse than if he’d slapped her, and then he was suddenly in motion, running to pick up the knife.
“Eight, don’t!” Barrie and Kate both yelled, and Seven shouted, “No!”
Barrie dove to reach him, but he had already sliced his palms and plunged his hands into the water. “Take me instead of Kate,” he shouted at the fountain. “Whatever I’m supposed to say, consider it said. I’ll accept the binding. I’ll take care of Beaufort Hall, and I’ll guard whatever I’m supposed to guard. I won’t fight it anymore. Just tell me what you want!”
Panic fisted around Barrie’s heart, crushing her until her vision went black around the edges. She didn’t even know what to hope for—that the water spirit would appear again, releasing Kate, or that she wouldn’t appear and Eight would be free of the obligation, free to go anywhere, to be whatever he wanted.
They all watched the fountain. Kate’s whole body was rigid, as if she felt what Barrie felt at the thought of losing the binding—that desperate sense of wanting to hold on to something that wasn’t definable in words. Water trickled down the nearly invisible groove around the rim and seeped away into hidden drains. Seconds dragged themselves into a minute . . . and nothing happened. Ribbons of blood were still spilling from Eight’s palms into the fountain, tumbling over the side and staining the water pink across the pale marble stones. He had cut himself too deeply.
“What do I have to do?” Sounding desperate, he looked at Kate. “Tell me, and I’ll do it.”
Barrie bent beside him and tried to pull him away. “If it were going to work for you, it would have already. Come back into the house. You need to stop the bleeding.”
“It can’t be Kate. I won’t accept it,” Seven said, and he sliced his palms, too—fraught, shallow slashes that trailed wide pink threads in the fountain but left the water still. “No!” he yelled. “You can’t do this. Do you hear me? It can’t be Kate.”
Eight flinched away from Barrie, his hands still bleeding too hard and dripping onto the gravel.
Kate put her arms around her father’s shoulders, leaning against his back, holding him the way that Barrie wished she could hold Eight. “Dad, stop. I wanted this. I chose it. The fountain chose—or this isn’t how it works. I don’t know. But I’m fine. I’m glad.”
Seven raised his hands, held them up to examine the palms as if he couldn’t believe that the cuts were still bleeding and order hadn’t been restored. Finally, he shook himself and took one of Eight’s elbows to draw his son away.
“Come on, Eight. Barrie’s right about one thing. You need bandaging. Or stitches.”
“Kate, too. She’s cold and probably in shock.” Barrie said, nudging Kate toward the house.
“Don’t you touch her!” Rage rekindling, Seven pulled Kate out of Barrie’s grasp and folded her against him. “Just leave, and I don’t want you coming back here or calling. As far as you’re concerned, my children don’t exist. You understand?”
Barrie had nothing to say in her own defense. Her actions had left both of Seven’s children hurt and bleeding.
She turned to go . . . but . . . no. She had to fix things. Seven had to be afraid for Kate. He had to feel responsible, and she hated the thought of adding to his pain right then, but more pain would come unless they found the answers that they needed.
“I’m not leaving until you tell us how this works,” she said. “Why didn’t you know that the binding couldn’t be transferred back once Kate took it? Why didn’t you know this was a possibility? If there’s a ceremony that passes the binding from one person to another—”
“This wasn’t a ceremony,” Kate said.
Barrie studied the fountain, which appeared entirely peaceful again. No trace of blood or spirits. “Then what was it?”
“It’s none of your concern, that’s what it is! It’s a Beaufort family matter.” Seven reached for her arm as if he wanted to spin her around and physically push her out of the garden.
Eight stepped between them. “You’re wrong, Dad. Barrie and Kate are the ones most concerned right now. And if you’d told me what you knew in the first place, this wouldn’t have happened. You didn’t just lie and withhold information; you asked Barrie to keep secrets from me. How can you not see what kind of damage you’re doing? You act like what you want is the only thing that matters, like you know what’s best for everyone. You’re so busy trying to control everything—”
“I can’t control anything about this!” Seven cried. “Don’t you understand? None of this is logical, and it’s all dangerous.” He stood toe-to-toe with his son. Then his shoulders finally loosened, and he looked away. His voice was suddenly flat as he spoke. “The problem isn’t what I know. It’s what I don’t. I never told you this would happen because I had no idea that it could.”
• • •
They moved to the library inside the house, but Pru refused to come over when Seven called and demanded she come deal with Barrie. Barrie wanted to stand up and applaud. But the decision was practical as much as it was Pru asserting herself. The movers were scheduled to arrive with Lula’s furniture in a matter of hours, and Pru didn’t want to risk leaving in case they showed up early.
“Put me on the speakerphone and tell me what happened,” she told Seven. “Then we can all figure it out together.”
Seven mashed the button with his thumb and started the long explanation. On one end of the leather sofa across the room, Eight sat with his head in his bandaged hands, while down on the other end, Kate couldn’t stop shivering, despite the hot cocoa she was sipping and the blanket wrapped around her.
Barrie’s shivers were all internal.
How was it possible that Seven had never been bound? He had the migraines. Were there different ways of binding? Different degrees? There had to be. Lula had never had the ceremony and yet she’d felt the pull to return to Watson’s Landing. Barrie’d had the migraines, too, even before she had given blood and the spirit in the fountain had appeared.
Rubbing her temples, Barrie prowled the room while Seven talked. Hundreds of small pings of loss called out from all around the room, and she filled the time retrieving those things closest to her, long-forgotten notes, bookmarks, letters, and receipts left in books no one had opened in decades or maybe even centuries. None of these types of lost items existed at Watson’s Landing, where up until Luke’s murder, the family gift had found anything the moment it went missing. Even without the gift, things would have been easier to find on the orderly shelves. Here at Beaufort Hall, shelves crammed with books ran floor to ceiling on three walls of the room, and files of papers, notebooks, and stacks of old yellow legal pads, their pages curled and fading, were stuffed into every cranny. Ancient leather-bound volumes and modern paperbacks were thrown together without obvious connection.
It didn’t occur to Barrie at first that “modern” was a misnomer. The newest books were from the 1940s, as if decades before Seven’s time someone had decided that they had run out of space for books and didn’t need any more.
Glancing over to where he was still pacing beside the desk, Barrie wondered what his childhood must have been like. Maybe in its own way, growing up at Beaufort Hall had been as confining for him as Watson’s Landing had been for Pru and Lula.
The gifts hadn’t treated anyone well in the recent past.
“Are you saying you never had any idea it was possible to transfer the binding to someone else?” Pru’s voice came through the phone’s speaker sounding thin and frightened. “Your father didn’t warn you?”
“He died before he had a chance to tell me anything. I went to talk to him when it became clear that Lula wasn’t coming back,” Seven said.
Eight looked up. “What did Lula have to do with it?”
After shoving aside a stack of current law books and legal files, Seven leaned tiredly against the desk, as if all the pacing, or perhaps the question, had worn him out. “I asked my father what would happen if Pru inherited the binding and then came to live at Beaufort Hall. Or what would happen to me if I tried to live somewhere other than at Beaufort.”
His voice throbbed with remembered pain, and Barrie felt like an intruder, listening to what should have been a private conversation between him and Pru. A private confession, because he was as good as admitting what Barrie had suspected, that he had given Pru up because of the binding.
Hearing him say that now made Barrie wish that she could blink herself across the river to go hug Pru and hold her. Pru shouldn’t have had to be alone while she heard what Seven had done and how many years he’d wasted.
“Can you repeat what you just said?” Pru asked in a shaking voice.
Seven glanced self-consciously around the room and leaned closer to the speaker. “I asked my father what would happen to you if you came to live at Beaufort Hall after you inherited the binding—or what would happen to me if I tried to live with you at Watson’s Landing. It had never been an issue as long as Lula was going to inherit.”
Pru was silent so long that he bent in even closer. “Pru, did you hear me that time?”
“I heard you the first time,” Pru said. “I just wanted you to have to say it again.”
Seven stiffened. His profile reddened. Then he smiled sheepishly, an unself-conscious smile that transformed him, and for the first time in, well, ever, Barrie could see what drew Pru to him.
“I suppose I deserved that,” he said.
“You deserve worse,” Pru agreed, “but we can discuss that later. What exactly did your father tell you?”
“He gave me the only example he knew of a Beaufort who had left. His great-uncle—Four, that would have been—who enlisted in World War I with his best friend and was still in France when Three died unexpectedly. Because of the war, Four couldn’t get home, and the migraines grew so bad that he couldn’t function. He miswrote a message and got his unit shelled by friendly fire in the Argonne Forest. A lot of the men died, including his friend, and he blamed himself. He committed suicide once the battalion was finally rescued.”
“That’s horrible,” Barrie said.
“But that was your great-great-uncle? Not your great-grandfather?” Kate asked.
“I never knew that,” Eight said.
“My great-grandfather was his brother, Robert Somerset Beaufort,” Seven said, looking at Eight instead of his daughter. “Once he inherited, he named his son after his brother and called him Five to keep up the tradition. But the sudden disruption in the family line meant that most of what Three and Four had known about the binding died with them, and by the time it got to my father, all he knew was that we were meant to protect the fountain in the rose garden, in the same way that the Watsons were meant to protect the tree in the center of the Watson woods, and that it had something to do with a guardian.”
“A guardian for what?” Eight asked.
“Or from what?” Kate said. “Where’s the danger?”
Seven sat down on the edge of the desk, drawing in on himself like a cornered animal, as if the reminder of all the things he didn’t know was too hard or painful for him.
“What happened to your father?” Desperate to keep him talking, Barrie asked the question even though she already knew the answer. “How did he die?”
Seven fidgeted with the files on the desk, remaining silent so long that she was afraid she had pushed him into silence instead. But then he raised his head. “When he realized what the binding would mean for me and Pru, he went out and attacked the fountain with an axe. I don’t know what he was thinking, but he collapsed as soon as the blade struck, and they said later that an artery had ruptured in his brain. The binding had killed him.”
The raw pain in Seven’s eyes stole Barrie’s ability to breathe.
It was Pru who finally answered him. “Why didn’t you tell me? I’ll bet you’ve been scared and guilty about that all this time, haven’t you?” Pru’s voice sounded like she wanted to crawl through the telephone to reach Seven, and Barrie wished so hard—again—that the two of them could have been together for this conversation instead of having to do it on the phone. Barrie wished they hadn’t been apart for twenty years because of a misunderstanding. She wished so many things . . . Glancing over at the sofa, she found Eight looking back at her. She wondered what he was thinking.
Kate brushed all that aside with an impatient wave. “So what you’re telling us is that you never knew about putting blood into the fountain? And your daddy didn’t know, either? I just got the binding, but I can already tell you that everything feels different.”
“She’s right,” Barrie said, nodding. “You see and smell and sense the land more intensely. You feel the connection with it as if it flows through your veins. I think you’d understand better if you could experience it. The binding is a trust, not a burden.”
Seven and Kate both looked over at her, and Eight hadn’t stopped looking. Pru was silent on the phone. Barrie knew she should have been sorry that Kate was bound at sixteen, stuck before she’d been anywhere in the world or discovered who she was. Yet Kate, for all that she seemed more frivolous than Eight on the surface, knew herself. She had depth. Maybe that had been there all along, or maybe the binding was bringing it out the way a stonecutter revealed the facets of a gem.