Eternally Yours (24 page)

With a sinking heart I realized that breakfast would be a recap of everything he’d found out, which would sound like,
The world is imploding, and it’s Nastasya’s fault
.

With seventeen of us, the table was crowded and we were all squished in together. Showing admirable tenacity, Brynne had situated herself next to Joshua, casually brushing against him every time she reached for something. She leaned forward, and Joshua’s gaze focused on her streaky caramel-colored hair, three inches from his face. He blinked a couple times, and it was right then that I felt he finally got stung by the Brynne seductive charm.

“Though the place called Miss Edna’s seems to no longer exist,” Ottavio intoned, “I did find one or two people who
had heard of it. They were reluctant to discuss any of it. They seemed nervous, even scared, and refused to say much.”

I’m sure it had nothing to do with his forbidding demeanor. Glumly I speared a breakfast sausage and put it on my plate.

“I know you talked to Tallis. Did you find Tante Marie?” River said, asking after some of their old immortal friends.

“I spoke to her—she’s been hearing disturbing rumors about Terävä magick being made, big magick, dangerous. She was in England to check on her family.” Ottavio angrily sprinkled salt on his oatmeal the old-fashioned way.

“What kind of big, dangerous magick?” Daisuke asked.

Ottavio looked frustrated. “No one seems to know. The closest analogy I can draw is that it’s like someone stockpiling weapons. Someone, or a group of someones, seems to be gathering power through dark means. But I can’t get any information about who or why. And you heard about Simon?” This was directed at River.

She nodded. “Simon is a friend of ours in Canada,” she explained to us. “He’s not from one of the houses, but he’s very old and quite powerful. He was attacked but managed to fight off his attackers.”

“Did he know them?” Rachel asked.

River shook her head, looking concerned. “He said he couldn’t even tell that they were human.”

“Wait—couldn’t tell that they were human?” I asked. “I mean, what are our options? They had to be immortals—humans.
It’s not like he was attacked by yetis or aliens. Right?” Or ghosts.

A glance passed between River and Ottavio, and I thought, Oh my God, there are
aliens
, and no one’s ever told me. Maybe
we’re
aliens. Maybe all
immortals
are—

“Not necessarily human,” Ottavio said reluctantly.

“What?” Brynne looked startled.

“There are things worse than human,” Joshua said, looking at his plate.

“Okay, you are freaking me out,” said Brynne, putting down her fork and crossing her arms.

“Not everyone believes in them,” River said a bit impatiently.

“Evil spirits,” Roberto said, not sounding worried. He glopped more oatmeal into his bowl and reached for the butter and salt. “Things neither dead nor alive. There have always been fairy stories about evil people hooking up with them, getting them to do their bidding. Or the evil spirits overwhelming their human partners.”

“Those things?” Brynne said. “Are you saying they’re
real
?”

River made an impatient gesture with her hand, as if she wished Ottavio hadn’t said anything. She was probably used to feeling that way.

“They’re not real,” said Solis firmly. “No one’s ever said they were real.”

River looked at him. “I’ve never known anyone who’s thought they were real.”

We all recognized that this was not a strict denial of their existence.

“Our danger comes from real people,” said Daniel.

“I agree,” said Asher. “We don’t have to attribute these dark works to unknown beings. This is a person, or people, who are human enough to be greedy and power hungry.”

Just then the door to the kitchen swung inward. We all looked up in surprise to see Anne standing there, pale and upset. I hadn’t even realized she wasn’t at breakfast.

“Every plant we set out is dead,” she said simply. “Not from frost. Everything in the greenhouse, all my seedlings. All of the early peas and cabbages in the cold frames. Even the seeds I’d started in peat trays in the big barn.”

“Why? What happened?” Lorenz asked.

“That’s not all,” said Anne, not answering his question. “In the root cellar—we have bushels of carrots, turnips, potatoes. All the things we store down there all winter. We’re down to the last of them, fortunately—because what’s left down there is rotten, full of worms.”

“I got potatoes last night,” Jess said in his scratchy voice. “They were fine.”

“And I got butternut squash from there a few days ago,” said Anne. “It was all fine then. This has happened in the last day.”

“But our protection spell,” I said. “That really powerful protection spell. How could anything get through?” Oh. Because maybe I had flawed it, weakened it.

“I don’t think it could,” said Asher. “Maybe this was set in motion a while ago. Before the spell.”

“The spell wouldn’t wipe it out?” Amy asked.

“It might not,” River admitted, looking horrified. “The spell as we crafted it was about warding off evil, protecting each and every thing from spells, starting the second after we finished it. Somehow, unbelievably, I didn’t think to put in anything retroactive. So if our seeds and seedlings had been spelled, our circle probably wouldn’t have counteracted it.”

Well, now I felt like going back to bed and staying there. For weeks.

As it turned out, even bed was not the haven of solace and warmth that one would hope. That night we were awakened by flashing lights, sirens, and a bullhorn telling us to all come outside, slowly and with our hands up. (Yes, they really say that.)

I was sitting in bed, groggily wondering what the hell was going on, when Reyn crashed through my door, his eyes wild.

“What’s wrong?” I said, suddenly extremely awake. I scrambled for my jeans, pulling them up over the long johns I slept in.

“You’re okay,” he muttered, pushing a hand through hair that was already sticking up.

Outside the sirens screamed, and I wondered if all the poor farm animals were freaking out.

“What’s going on?” I repeated. I pushed my feet into my clogs as fellow Riverites streamed past my door toward the stairs. Then we were out in the hall, hurrying downstairs as someone on a bullhorn kept ordering us to come out. It was like being in World War II again, and I could feel how tense and anxious we all were.

“Is it a fire?” Anne asked, sniffing the air.

River opened the front door slowly. Looking past her, I saw six or seven squad cars had driven up onto the grass, close to the house. Each had an armed policeman pointing a rifle at us.

Shading her eyes against the spotlight, River walked out onto the porch. We all followed her, starting to go down the stairs until one cop shouted at us to stop right there.

“Who runs this place?” A man not in uniform stepped forward. He was wearing a bulletproof vest under his open jacket.

“I do,” said River calmly. “My name is River Bennington.”

The man consulted a clipboard and spoke to a woman who had gotten out of an unmarked car.

“Who else lives here?” the man asked.

“My fellow teachers and students,” said River.

Several cops opened car doors, and we heard excited barking. The K-9 unit. This seemed surreal, unbelievable. I still had no idea what was happening.

“How many people are here now?” The man consulted his clipboard again.

“Twelve of us live here,” said River. “And we have five guests.”

“Is everyone here outside?” The man looked at us, as if counting.

River turned around and also counted us. “Yes,” she said. “Everyone’s here. Can you tell me what’s going on, officer?”

“We received a phone call that you were holding people here against their will,” the man said brusquely. “Keeping hostages. The person reported at least one murder. Said the body was buried on the property.”

River looked positively stunned—she almost swayed, and Asher stepped close and took her arm. “What? Who reported that? That’s ridiculous!”

“I’m sorry, but we have to search the place,” the man said, not sounding sorry.

River sat down on the bottom step of the porch, almost as if she could no longer stand up. Three different K-9 units set off; one inside the house, one into the side yard, and one headed toward the back, where the barns were.

The rest of us sat down, too, and a judge would have been hard-pressed to award the “most shocked expression” trophy.

“This is ridiculous,” I said, echoing River’s words. “Who would say something that absurd?”

“I don’t know.” River had grabbed a shawl, and now she wrapped it more tightly around her shoulders. “But I guess if the police get any kind of tip like that, they’re duty bound to check it out. They couldn’t risk it being true and not following up on it.”

“If this is some local causing mischief, I want to know who,” Ottavio snapped.

“You and me both,” Reyn murmured. He sat close to me, solid and warm, and I remembered how strong he was, how capable he was to deal with anything, even crazy cops.

Asher remembered about Molly and Jasper in the barn and got permission to go put leashes on them so they wouldn’t interfere with the K-9s.

“Where’s Dúfa?” I asked Reyn.

Reyn pointed at his feet, and I saw the familiar white head, the pink-rimmed eyes. She was peering through his legs, growling softly at the cops.

“This is so weird,” said Brynne, huddling for warmth. She’d drawn her long, bare legs up close and tried to wrap her coat around them.

Several bad thoughts crossed my mind at that point—like, What if Incy had killed someone and buried the body somewhere around here? Stuff like that.

It took almost two hours for them to go over every inch of the property. Finally, after conferring with the woman, the man came over to River, much more conciliatory. “I’m very sorry, ma’am,” he said. “Obviously this was a nuisance call.”

“Can you find out who it was?” River sounded calm and dignified.

“Believe me, we’ll be looking into it,” he said. “We know it came from a cell phone in the area. We’ll be triangulating its position.”

“So someone called up and said we were killing people out here?” I still couldn’t believe it.

“Yes,” the man said. “Not only us—they called the FBI, too.” He nodded to the woman, who was talking into a cell phone. “Can you think of anyone who would want to cause you harm? Someone who would set you up for something like this?”

Slowly River shook her head. “I actually can’t think of anyone. We’re just a school—an organic farm. Nothing controversial. We’ve always gotten along with everyone in West Lowing.”

The man nodded. “I’ll ask around. We will investigate this—these were serious accusations. You could sue someone for defamation. And we could prosecute him or her for filing a false claim.”

River nodded. “Can we go inside now?”

“Yes, ma’am. I’m really very sorry, but you understand that we had to investigate such a serious claim.”

“Yes, of course,” River said, standing up.

I thought, after all that excitement, I wouldn’t be able to go back to sleep, but in fact as soon as my head touched my pillow I was out heavily, dreaming weird, dark dreams that I couldn’t remember when I woke up.

W
ith Ottavio back, he and River amped up their quest for answers, and we often saw them poring over old books, maps, and charts of various kinds. I was curious about what they were looking for, but at the same time reluctant to get sucked into it. I was committed to facing hard things now, but that didn’t mean I had to face every hard thing all the time.

My adjunct project was coming along. Of course there wasn’t a plant nursery in West Lowing. I had to go twenty miles away to Wintonville to get some kind of shrubbery situation that would survive these heinous winters. I started
to direct Harv and crew about where to put what, but he was itching to create an urban oasis with, like, rhododendrons. So I left him to it and went back inside, where it was warm.

But on the surface I was pleased with my shops, now almost complete. This had been a good project for me. And it would be good for this benighted town, too. I had made all this possible. It had been my idea. And though I loathed in-person displays of gratitude, this had been a good thing. I had done it for myself, but it wasn’t bad that it had helped out a bunch of people.

And what was stopping me from doing this somewhere else? There were other abandoned buildings around here—and in the neighboring towns, too. And even in big cities—I could gentrify the heck out of any number of places.

A worker standing in front of me, his thumb running blood, broke into my happy reverie.

“Yuck. What happened?”

“Caught my thumbnail on the table saw. Pulled it off. First-aid kit is out of Band-Aids.”

“Ew. Okay…”

“Pavel.”

“Okay, Pavel. You go wash it off—with soap—and I’ll run across the street. Hang on. Have you had a tetanus shot lately?”

Pavel, already on his way to the sink, nodded.

“And don’t drip blood on my floors.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

I trotted across the street to MacIntyre’s. A glance at my watch showed it was only two thirty—Meriwether would still be in school. In the first-aid aisle I got an assortment of Band-Aids, the good kind that really stay on, and went to the back. There was no avoiding it—Old Mac would have to ring me up.

And there was Mrs. Philpott, standing at the back counter, talking to him. As I approached I heard Mrs. Philpott murmur something, laughter in her voice, and then… Old Mac smiled. Smiled sincerely, his eyes crinkling at the corners. I stopped where I stood, staring. He looked so normal when he smiled. It was amazing. He himself was like an eyesore of an empty lot that Mrs. Philpott was renovating.

He didn’t look thrilled to see me, but he didn’t scowl quite as hard as he’d used to. Mrs. Philpott said, “Hello, dear,” and I said hello back. Then he checked me out, and I skibbled back across the street, where I helped Pavel stick his thumbnail into place and then carefully put several Band-Aids over the whole thing.