Chapter 46
December
Alex
“So where’d you go this morning?” Maryanne asked.
Alex suppressed a groan. That was about the umpteenth time Maryanne had asked that question since Alex had returned at noon. It was now after midnight! Shouldn’t she give it a rest?
Alex gave her the same answer she’d given all day. “Out.”
“I could have gone with you.”
Alex said nothing, her jaw set so tightly it ached as she walked ahead of Maryanne across the attic floor to the old dresser. She bit back the answer she really wanted to give Maryanne—None of your business. But Maryanne was just being concerned. Everyone had been so concerned about her since she’d come home from the hospital. Okay, maybe justifiably so. But it was killing her!
“Excited about tonight?” Maryanne asked. She was changing the subject, Alex knew, in an attempt to change the mood.
“Yeah.” she answered, and she was.
Though Brooke and Maryanne had been out on short excursions, this was the first time Alex would be casting out since coming out of the coma. And yes, she was excited, but she was also nervous. She really had no idea what would happen. Would it be different this time? Back at this original window? What if somehow, weirdly, it sent her back into her coma? She glanced over at the smiling Madonna and the night beyond the window.
Alex was a caster. How could she not take that chance?
She’d been out of the coma for almost three weeks. Of course, her family had rushed to her bedside immediately—the whole family this time, not just her mom. And then they’d whisked her off, over her objections, back to Halifax, where they insisted she undergo a battery of medical tests. Finally, in the face of overwhelming evidence, they’d had to concede she was perfectly fine. And eventually, Alex convinced them the best thing she could do was return to Streep. Based on her academic performance this year, not to mention the fact that she was finally staying out of trouble and running with a much more responsible crowd, they’d had to agree. On the condition that she phone her mother twice a day, once in the morning and once at night. That was a small price to pay to get back, and frankly Alex didn’t mind that much.
Things were... getting better all the time. Still, everyone was too damned nervous around her. At Harvell House and beyond its walls, she was the talk of the town. Well, she, Maryanne, and especially Brooke. However, they’d been bumped, at least briefly, from the top of the rumor mill leaderboard.
There’d been a horrible accident today. A fatal accident.
Seth Walker had been killed—trampled to death under the feet of his white horse, in the wee hours of yesterday morning. The whole town was in shock.
They were saying it was a tragic accident. That the prize stallion had been skittish for weeks now, since that night it and the other horse had escaped. Seth’s father had told both of his sons not to go into the barn alone. But Seth had.
John Smith had brought the news early as the girls sat around the table for their Saturday morning hot breakfast. All eyes had turned on Brooke. She’d set her fork down carefully. Picked up her coffee cup and said over the brim, “Sucks to be him.”
But Alex, who sat beside her, picked up on it, if no one else did, that smallest tremble in Brooke’s voice.
“We made that horse skittish,” Maryanne had whispered to both Alex and Brooke once they were back in their room after breakfast.
None of them could deny it.
That was upsetting enough. But the little bit of extra news from Danielle Mann was even more upsetting.
She’d stopped by Harvell House late in the afternoon, on the pretense of seeing how Alex was doing—actually bringing her a get-well stuffed bear! But more to the point of her visit, Dani had brought gossip.
They’d sat—Brooke, Alex and Maryanne—in their upstairs bedroom while Dani shared what she knew.
Huxley and Bryce were the ones who found Seth. It was still dark out when Hux had gone in his truck to pick Bryce up, on their way to a hockey tournament in Moncton. Bryce was in the yard when Hux got there. The horses were neighing loudly, and after Bryce threw his gear in the truck, the boys went to check it out. Seth was on the barn floor inside the stallion’s stall, just by the opened door as if he’d tried to crawl away. The horse itself had been pressed up as close as it could be to the wall at the back of the stall. Seth’s rib cage had been trampled in.
“And you want to hear something strange?” Dani asked, lowering her voice in a most conspiring tone. “When Huxley and Bryce found him, Hux thought he saw something drawn on the floor. Scrawled into the dust, really—that’s what he said, right by Seth’s hand. Bryce stayed with his brother’s body while Huxley ran to the house to get his parents. But... ” And here Dani faltered. Alex watched as she bit down on her bottom lip in a moment of wondering if she should go on after all. “Huxley swore me to secrecy, guys, so please don’t tell a living soul what I’m about to tell you.”
Dani Mann had actually paled, and though she had a reputation for gossip, maybe this time her secret would go no further.
Once they all swore it, Dani went on. “When Huxley and Mr. Walker returned, those letters were gone. Dusted away.”
“Well,” Brooke said. “What did Huxley think he saw?”
Dani wet her lips. “He thought he read the letters BR.”
Maryanne knocked lightly on the old dresser, grabbing Alex’s attention and dragging her back to the present. “So, did you go up to the hospital this morning? Is that where you went? Maybe you weren’t feeling well, and headed up there without telling anyone? Or did you have more tests?”
Argh! The girl was relentless!
Alex growled more than groaned. She flicked her lighter and lit all three of the candles. One for each of them. Brooke would be here soon. She should be here soon, anyway.
Pocketing the lighter, Alex turned to Maryanne. “Look, I went for a walk, okay? Just a long walk, by myself.”
Maryanne looked at her skeptically.
Well, Alex wasn’t technically lying. Though the truth wasn’t that simple. But Maryanne would throw a fit if she knew where Alex had really gone.
She’d gone deep into the woods. Alex had left within a half hour of breakfast, packing her backpack with her compass, a flashlight, a couple bottles of water, some energy bars just in case, and her cell phone. Though there wasn’t much snow on the ground—only a couple of inches—the forecast was calling for the first major snowfall of the season to start within the next 24 hours. She had to do this today.
After all, she’d promised.
Alex had pulled on her heavy mitts and hat, buttoned up her pea coat and wrapped a scarf around her neck. Then she’d walked through the now-fairly-familiar woods to Connie’s house. No dark caster came out to meet her. She spotted a few thick-furred squirrels around the trees near Connie’s nest. The animals were coming back, now that the caster was gone.
Not gone—at rest. Connie was at rest. That made the lonesome easier.
But as she neared Connie’s home, Alex’s heart sank. Connie’s bower had been destroyed, the small trees snapped at the base. The copper had been collected and removed, so the Heller couldn’t carry it off to line a new nest. Someone had even made a small fire, and the branches that Connie had used to cover her nest had been reduced to ashes.
They’d destroyed a Heller’s nest. People were looking for the Hellers again and someone had found Connie’s nest and destroyed it. They’d been hunting for her. No, not specifically Connie. They’d been hunting for them. And now that the stories had started again, that hunt wouldn’t end any time soon.
Alex had felt sick at the sight. Sad and so angry! And she’d sunk to her knees by the big tree—the one where she and Connie had knelt the first day Alex had brought all the copper. As she leaned on the tree, her hand slid down the trunk, right at the place where Connie had rested her copper doll as she’d gone through her gifts. And miraculously, she’d felt a little wire poke
through her mitten. When she bent to look closer, she found a tiny copper X shoved in the bark at the base of the tree.
X marked the spot.
Oh shit, could it be... could Connie have... Alex scattered the snow with her mittens, then, using a half-burned stick, scraped away the hard layer of earth until she saw it—Connie’s copper doll! Alex drew a grateful breath. Her baby had been buried there.
No, not buried there—not this time. Connie had hidden her doll.
Around the doll’s body was a copper bracelet. A thick one—thicker than the other ones that Connie had made for the girls. And on this copper band, scratched meticulously were Alex’s initials—AR, a heart, then Connie’s initials too.
Connie hadn’t buried her baby. She’d protected it. She must have known the Heller hunters were rising again, rising anew—looking for her, looking to destroy her nest. Connie had hidden her baby away for safekeeping until Alex could take her.
The doll—Lily Michelle—that had to be her name now—was now hidden in the girls’ bedroom, underneath two wide floorboards Alex had pried up one day during her convalescence. She had needed a place to hide the diary. And for now, Lily Michelle rested there too, wrapped in the softest hand towel Alex could find, with a folded face cloth for a pillow.
If people knew this, every one of her old friends—bar none—would think she was off her nut!
Snorting a laugh, she wondered herself.
“I wonder where Brooke is?” Maryanne asked. She walked to just below the Madonna. Earlier in the day, she’d dared to bring more pillows up to the attic to make their body landing softer. She scattered them, strategically, on the floor now.
“Who knows? She’s been doing that a lot lately—slipping out.”
“Got to be hard on her, Seth dying.”
“I can imagine.” Alex looked pointedly at Maryanne. “I can imagine lots of things.”
After a moment’s hesitation, Maryanne nodded. “We have to watch out for her. She’s... ” Maryanne let the sentence die on her lips.
“She’s her own worst enemy,” Alex said.
“She’s our friend.”
“Yes she is. And I only hope she remembers that. But this caster thing... this caster power... and now this thing with her killing C. W.—”
“I know. She’s a legend in this town, and she’s good with that. Too good.” Maryanne took a seat on the floor. “We can’t let her get carried away. Get lost in the power—all of it. We have to watch out for her. We have to watch out for each other.”
Alex stared over at Maryanne, who seemed lost once again as she looked to the stained glass window. There was sadness still in those big brown eyes. All that grief. And it suddenly turned to alarm.
“Did you... did you hear people talking to you, Alex? When you were in the coma? Did you hear me?”
They’d talked a lot while Alex had been in the coma. And Alex had been moved by how much Brooke and Maryanne had done for her, especially Maryanne. But this was the first time Maryanne had asked this question. This was the first time that she’d dared.
And it deserved a careful answer.
Alex walked over and sat down beside Maryanne.
How much did Maryanne really want to know about what Alex remembered? How much did Alex really want to tell her?
“I remember bits and pieces,” she offered with a shrug.
“Nothing major?”
Alex knew the anxious look on Maryanne’s face. Surely it was pretty damn close to the one she’d worn herself when Maryanne had handed back Connie’s diary. It was a look that pleaded, “Please don’t know.” One that begged both a lie and the truth.
“No,” Alex said. “Nothing major.” But she turned her eyes away from Maryanne as she said it.
They heard quiet footsteps coming up the stairs.
Brooke. Finally—she was here. She shrugged her coat off at the top of the stairs and walked quickly across the floor.
Alex could feel the cold coming off her as she approached.
“Where were you?” Maryanne asked.
Argh! Well, at least Alex wasn’t the only one getting Maryanne’s overprotective attention.
“Just driving around.” She’d been crying, clearly, but Alex knew better than to mention it.
Apparently so did Maryanne. “You got past Betts!”
So obviously pleased with herself, Brooke almost smiled. “Always.”
“How are the roads?” Maryanne asked.
“The snow’s just starting.” As she said this, the few flakes that had dotted Brooke’s hair melted away, making it almost glisten in spots.
Snow. Casters in the snow was a daring mix.
But it was now or never.
Wordlessly, she and Maryanne stood. With Maryanne on one side of her and Brooke on the other, Alex took the few steps toward the window.
“Oh, wow. The snow’s more than ‘just starting’, Brooke,” Alex said. “It’s really coming down.”
“Yeah,” Brooke said. “But I’m casting.”
“Me too,” Maryanne added.
They both turned their attention to Alex. She could feel it on either side of her.
Was she ready for this? Was she ready for... all of this new life?
Alex looked up into the Madonna’s face. It was a beautiful picture with the large petals of snow falling behind her. She walked—this beautiful lady—through those roses. Regardless of the thorns.
Well, to hell with the thorns.
“Me too,” Alex said. She looked first to Brooke, then Maryanne. “We’re casters. Let’s do this.”
The three raised their hands to the glass. Together they tapped, together they chanted, I want out, I want out—And suddenly they were out again, joining with the night.
Giddy with the sheer joy of it, they soared off through the falling snow into the Mansbridge night.