“No matter,” the mistress replies. “You must know by now that I am not such a delicate creature.”
“I never underestimate you, my dear. You have the body of a woman but the spirit of a warrior. Now, did you bring what I asked for?”
“I did, although it was not easy.” She reaches into her cloak and removes a drawstring pouch, which she dangles tantalisingly in front of him.
“Nothing worth having is easy,” he scolds gently. “Besides, the ritual cannot be completed without it.”
He takes the pouch from her hands and withdraws a glass vial partially filled with a ruby liquid. It is unmistakably blood and my stomach twists at the sight.
“It is all I could get without exposing myself,” Mrs Reade says. “I told Carter I wanted to shave him and the fool was so drunk he didn’t even flinch when my hand accidentally slipped. Will it do?”
The man removes the stopper and inhales deeply. “Oh, yes, it is more than ample. It only takes a single drop to complete the binding spell.”
I know these words are not meant for my ears and yet I cannot tear myself away. I also know that if I am caught the punishment will be most severe.
Mrs Reade leans in close to the man, practically purring with satisfaction. “And how potent would the spell be if we were to use ten or even twenty drops?”
Her accomplice throws his head back gleefully and gives a throaty chuckle. “You are my girl! I would say it cannot fail. We make quite a team, do we not, Isobel?”
Mrs Reade’s eyes light up and she leans forward and takes the man’s gnarly hand between hers. Although I have yet to see his face, his hand seems disproportionately aged compared to his silken voice. “Indeed we do.” She brings the hand to her lips and kisses it. “Father, how I have missed you.”
While I’m still in the vision something changes. The images blur and shift and suddenly I’m not in the dusty shop any more. Becky’s memories merge and I find myself suddenly back at Grange Hall, looking on the scene I most hoped to avoid. It’s almost like Becky’s in a hurry to show me everything now, whether I’m ready or not.
The gunshot wakes the entire household and I am sure I feel the floor shake. I race downstairs to find Cook and Mrs Baxter huddled outside the drawing room door. Mrs Baxter is still in her nightgown, silver hair braided down her back. All her bravado is gone and she looks vulnerable. She holds a candle in one hand, illuminating her face, which is paler than I have ever seen it. The door is ajar and through it I see servants huddled around a shape on the floor. A pair of hands wrings out a rag drenched in blood and I know who has been hurt before anyone tells me.
“There has been a horrible accident,” Mrs Baxter cries. “Mr Alexander has been shot!”
Even though I am prepared, hearing it out aloud is like being impaled with a spear.
“Can you think of anything more awful?” she continues. “And it was the master himself who pulled the trigger, in a drunken fit! Now he has run off in a terrible state. Have you seen the mistress?”
I shake my head, barely registering her question.
“Find her,” she instructs before dashing off to manage the chaos that has descended over the house.
I freeze when I see Mrs Reade at the top of the stairs, her hair unpinned and her eyes wide with terror. She is clutching a bundle in her arms and moving in circles, like someone without sight. She notices me and comes to life, flying down the stairs, muttering feverishly about fetching a doctor and her baby not breathing.
I am not accustomed to seeing the mistress of Grange Hall looking so panicked and I don’t know how to react. Instinctively, I reach out to check the babe, but as soon as I do she jealously clutches him closer to her and pushes past me. Fearing for her safety, I grab a cloak and follow her through the kitchen into the night.
As I blunder through the moonlit grounds, I do not realise I am crying. I cannot believe what I have just heard. Why did I decide to go to bed when I heard the master return home? Why did I not warn Mr Alexander? The idea that I could have prevented this heinous act causes me to collapse to my knees and cover my face with my hands.
But it is too late to act now and I get up again and stumble on. As the lake comes into view, the first fat raindrops begin to fall, turning the ground to mud.
The lake has always been one of my favourite places at Grange Hall. But tonight its dark water looks like glass, reflecting distorted images of trees and sky, and there is something foul in the air. The nearby woods seem too dark, the lake’s waters too deep.
I am gripped by memories of all the times I have seen Mr Alexander working at his easel on these grassy banks. I think of the portrait he painted of Mrs Reade, which now hangs in the upstairs gallery. It captures her spirit exactly, and when it was unveiled I thought it the highest form of flattery to be immortalised in such a way. Now its creator lies bleeding on the drawing room floor.
At the lakeside I come to an abrupt halt. Is there something in the water? What could it be? It seems too large for an animal. I draw closer to see the shape in more detail. That looks like lace. Has someone thrown a gown into the water, where it billows a little like the parachutes I’ve seen in books.
I am utterly perplexed for a moment, until I see the white hands and the hair streaming like seaweed, darker than the water. I swallow back a scream. The body of a woman in a waterlogged nightdress lies face down in the reeds, her head bumping gently against the shore. I can tell from the way her arms float limply in the water that she is already dead. It cannot be the mistress of the house, I refuse to believe it. Yet who else could it be?
Chilled to my very core and with a hammering heart, I edge closer, but stop short as a figure emerges from the trees. He is hooded and facing away from me, but in the moonlight I can see he is dressed in a dark frockcoat and wearing gloves.
Without hesitation, he wades into the water and gently turns the body to lie face up. My hand flies up to muffle my cry. It is the mistress! Poor Mrs Reade looks as cold as clay and I wonder how long she has been floating in her murky grave. And where is baby James?
I watch as the strange man bends over her, slipping an arm under her neck. With some effort, he manages to lift her into his arms. Water streams from her hair and nightdress, but the man seems not to notice. His posture does not suggest grief. Rather, it is commanding and full of concentration.
“Have no fear, my darling,” he says tenderly. “You have not left us for long.”
I freeze. It is the same unmistakable voice from the apothecary, where that strange transaction occurred. This man is Mrs Reade’s father and her accomplice in something wicked.
He carries her body back toward the dense trees. Where is he taking her? Should I call out or attempt to stop him? But I am too paralysed by fear to act.
Before he disappears from view, I catch a glimpse of his face framed by that long silvery hair. He is handsome for his age, but there is something menacing in his features. Perhaps it is the pallor of his skin. Or the way I imagine his mouth curling between a smile and a sneer.
I opened my eyes to find myself lying under a duvet on Zac’s sofa. Zac and Alex were leaning over me. On the coffee table behind them the candles were still burning, but I noticed the black scrying mirror we’d made had shattered.
“Thank God.” Alex let out a sigh of relief. “You scared the life out of me.”
“You sure you don’t want to rephrase that?” Zac asked, although this time I could tell the barb was light-hearted. Despite that, he looked haggard. The strain of the past few hours was really starting to show.
When I tried to sit up, my head felt cottonwool cloudy. I was exhausted, like I’d just run a marathon.
“How long was I out?”
“Not that long, but it was pretty scary,” Zac said.
“How do you feel?” Alex took my hand. “Are you able to tell us what you saw?”
“Well,” I started and heard my voice come out shaky. “It turns out Becky knew exactly what to show me. Can I g
et some water, please?”
“Of course.” Zac darted into the kitchen and returned with a bottle.
I downed half of it before going on. I was still trying to digest what I’d seen. It had stupefied me.
“I know who the necromancer is,” I said, and felt Alex’s hand tighten around mine. “Becky saw Isobel’s body floating in the lake at Grange Hall, but someone got to her first. A man showed up and stole her away. I heard him speak to her, even though she was dead. He said she wouldn’t be gone for long.”
“Who was he?”
“You’ll never believe it. I can hardly believe it myself. I mean, it doesn’t seem possible.”
Alex knelt beside me, his brilliant blue eyes shining. “Who was the man you saw with Isobel’s body?”
I had the feeling he was anticipating my answer. Maybe he’d known all along and just needed confirmation. There was no way to soften the blow. I let out a long breath and gave a small shudder of disbelief.
“It was Doctor Ritter.”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
I knew Alex well enough to read his face and right now it showed me his fears had just been confirmed. Zac, on the other hand, looked like he’d finally been given sufficient evidence to declare me officially crazy.
“Doctor Ritter?” he repeated, looking at me as though I might have concussion. “As in the French sub teacher?”
I knew how absurd it must sound to him because I was struggling to believe it myself. But I knew in my heart that Becky’s memories were genuine. Everything had happened exactly the way I’d seen it. There was no reason for her to mislead us.
“I don’t understand it either,” I said. “But he was right there in Becky’s memories and he looked exactly the way he does today. I’m just telling you what she showed me.”
“Becky continues to be a loyal friend,” Alex added. “She has tried to help us the only way she knows how: through sharing her memories with you.”
“But how could a man who lived over a hundred and fifty years ago be walking around Sycamore High today?” Zac asked.
Alex threw him a look and Zac realised his mistake.
“No offence, Alex.” Then he turned back to me. “Are you saying Doctor Ritter is a ghost?”
“No, I’m saying he’s very much alive, and he’s trying to bring Isobel back to life too.”
I was a little embarrassed that I hadn’t realised this earlier. I’d sensed something fishy about Doctor Ritter the moment I’d first laid eyes on him and my instincts had been right. You only had to look at his face to know something was wrong. His features were always composed, like a clay mask, and his skin was stretched tight. He didn’t really look human because he wasn’t; he was a walking, talking cadaver that should have been fertilising daffodils many decades ago. Now he’d found his way into our school under the guise of helping out, when in fact he’d probably orchestrated Madame Giles’s accident in the first place to get himself hired. The thought made me furious.
“But how does someone manage to cheat death?” Zac asked.
I could see he wasn’t dealing well with this new information. It was one thing to accept ghosts were real, but now we were talking about one of the teachers at our school having somehow made himself immortal.
“I don’t know,” I said. “But the first time Becky saw him, she overheard a conversation between him and Isobel in an apothecary shop. He was planning to make some kind of potion using human blood. He must have found a way to prolong life.”
Zac shook his head. “That’s one messed-up dude! This kind of stuff only happens in movies.”
“Everything you have told us makes sense, Chloe,” Alex said slowly — I could almost see the cogs turning in his head — “but it still leaves one significant question. What reason could Doctor Ritter have for bringing Isobel back? Did they have some kind of pact?”
“That’s where it gets really weird. Before she left, she called him Father.”
Alex looked surprised. “Are you sure? Isobel’s father died shortly before she and my brother married.”
“Maybe that’s what she told everyone, but at this point I’d assume everything you knew about her was a lie.”
“That does not surprise me,” Alex said. I’d never seen him look so sad. “I have a very bad feeling about all this.”
“Great,” Zac muttered. “When even the ghosts are worried, you know something bad is about to go down. So what now?”
“What can we do?” I said. “It’s not like we can barge into school and take out the French teacher.”
“No, but we can’t just sit around waiting for him to execute whatever twisted plan he has in store either,” Zac argued. “He’s not raising the dead for no reason.”
“Indeed he is not,” Alex replied. “Whatever his intent it will be up to us to intervene. You two should try and get some rest so we can deal with whatever tomorrow brings.”
Alex’s words struck a chord. We really had no idea what might happen next. Up until now I had taken comfort in the knowledge that the dead were confined by certain limitations that separated our two worlds. But now it seemed all restrictions had been lifted and the dead had free rein. They could show up at any time in any place with powers we couldn’t even begin to understand. How could you fight an enemy like that? I sure hoped Alex was working on a plan because I felt totally unprepared.
It was this feeling that prompted me to finally go home. I didn’t feel right leaving my father and brother unprotected with monsters like Isobel and Doctor Ritter on the loose. I didn’t know what they had in store for us, but past experience told me Isobel would always strike for the heart, and in this case that would be my family.
I was glad of Alex’s offer to accompany me home, especially in light of the disturbing new revelations. I drove as fast as I could along the winding Malibu coastline, cursing the traffic. Ahead the sun was melting into the horizon, creating a mirror effect on the surface of the ocean.
“It is strange how reality can prove so different from fantasy,” Alex said. “This is not at all how I imagined our reunion.”
“How did you imagine it?” I asked, feeling a rush of pleasure at the word reunion.
“I thought it would be full of happiness, not despair and chaos. And never did I imagine Isobel would have any further part to play.”
“She’s hard to shake,” I agreed. “Deceased ex-lovers who refuse to move on do have a way of putting a damper on things.”
Alex looked shocked for a moment and then he began to laugh. It was a crazy and contagious sound that quickly got me laughing too. It felt good, even if it was only a temporary distraction from whatever calamity lay around the next corner. At the very least it reminded me that I wasn’t facing this battle alone. I had to believe we could come through it, that light would find its way through the darkness. We just had to stand firm and not lose heart.
It was about six thirty by the time we pulled into my driveway. It felt like I’d been away a lifetime instead of a couple of days. I was relieved to see my dad’s car parked in the driveway, although my mind wouldn’t rest until I saw him and Rory for myself.
“I shall wait here,” Alex said. “I expect you will want to see your family alone. But fetch me at the first sign of anything amiss.”
“Thanks,” I said. “Just give me half an hour.”
I felt nervous as I headed inside, worried I might find the place trashed or empty. But as I pushed open the front door, I heard the kettle whistling and the television chirping just like normal.
“Hello?” I called, not wanting to startle anyone by barging in. But there was no response.
I walked into the kitchen to find the kettle trilling away on the stove with no one there to answer its call. Feeling my throat grow a little tighter, I poked my head into the den. Cartoons played to an empty sofa.
“Rory?” My heart began to turn somersaults in my chest. I ran upstairs, feet thudding against the carpeted steps. “Rory? Are you home?”
I b
urst into his bedroom and immediately heaved a sigh of relief. My little brother looked up in surprise from his desk where he was plugged into headphones and engrossed in a computer game.
“Chloe!” He leapt up and flew at me, wrapping his skinny arms around my waist. “You’re back!”
“Hey, kiddo. Is everything okay here?”
“Sure, but it’s better when you’re here. You are staying?”
“Yeah, I’m staying. Hey, what are you all dressed up for?” I asked, realising his hair was neatly combed and he’d put on a clean button-down shirt.
“Have you forgotten the school play opens tonight? Aren’t you going?”
“Tonight?” I couldn’t believe how time had flown. It seemed like only hours ago I’d found Alex hiding in the shadows of the theatre. “Wait, you’re going to sit through Macbeth?”
Rory sighed. “Mrs Hudson says we have to be there to have a cultural experience. Even Dad and Marcie are going.”
“Who’s Marcie?”
“Dad’s girlfriend. She’s not so bad, Chloe. She helped me with my math homework last night.”
“That’s nice,” I said. I didn’t want to get into a discussion with Rory about our father’s changed relationship status.
“Hey, are there any cool explosions in Macbeth?” he asked.
“Afraid not.”
“How about sharks or crocodiles?”
“Sorry. But there are witches, murders, a scary ghost and a few bloody battles.”
Rory perked up. “That doesn’t sound too bad.” He looked past me at the door. “Dad, look who’s back!”
I turned to find my father standing there. He looked more haggard than I remembered and the lines around his eyes seemed deeper. Was the waistband of his pants a little looser too?
“Hey,” I said, raising my hand in an awkward half-wave.
“Hey, Chloe,” he said. “I’ve been worried about you. Are you alright? I phoned Sam and Natalie, but they said they hadn’t heard anything. Maybe next time you could send a text letting me know where you are?”