Fountain of Secrets (The Relic Seekers) (7 page)

He leaned back and brushed the hair off her face. His fingers weren’t soft, but they were surprisingly gentle. “You need rest.”

“I know.”

“Are you going back to your room now?” He still looked like he half regretted his chivalrous actions.

“I think I’ll sleep here and see if I get any more answers.”

“Want company?” He said it without a leer, without a smile, and she knew that he would have lain next to her, even held her, and not asked for anything more. Jake Stone was a man of many sides.

“Thank you, but I’ll be fine.” And Jake was probably right about her being emotional, because suddenly she felt too tired to move, much less make love.

One of the guards appeared at the door with a message from Nathan to call him. They had apparently linked with a satellite that enabled cell phone reception at the castle.

“I’ll call him,” Jake said. “You rest.”

The guard gave Kendall and Jake a strange look before he left. Jake followed him. Kendall slipped off her shoes and lay down on the bed where she had been born. Sleep was impossible. The vision replayed over and over in her head, and when it stopped, she tossed and turned, trying to put together the pieces of her past. Her father had told her that her mother died when she was young. She knew it had been when she was very young. She hadn’t realized it had been in childbirth. Why hadn’t he told her?

For God’s sake, Kendall. She died giving birth to you. He was probably worried that you’d think it was your fault she died.
Wasn’t it?

Now she was burning to know more… who her mother was, where she lived, how she’d met her father, if there was a family out there she didn’t know. Why someone had tried to kill her.

When Kendall finally fell asleep, her dreams were just as confusing as her thoughts. Images of the bloody childbirth and her father. Then she dreamed about the plane crash that had killed her father, Adam, and Uncle John. She hadn’t been there, but she’d imagined it in her dreams a million times. Or seen it. She didn’t know. But it seemed so real, she felt the heat of the flames. When she woke, she felt as if she were on fire.

She sat up, heart thudding so hard the bed seemed to shake. Then she saw that she wasn’t alone. Someone stood at the foot of the bed. “Jake?” Had he come to check on her? When her eyes adjusted to the darkness, she saw the robe. The ghost was back. This time he stood looking at the desk where she’d found the hidden letter. His hands were folded in front of him. He looked up and she saw his profile, and she knew why he’d seemed familiar. Why he was attached to this room. Why she had needed to be there in the chapel to protect Jake and Nathan from being killed when Edward died.

The ghost was her father.

“Daddy.”

He turned and looked at her. She saw a faint hint of her father’s eyes, his strong nose and angled cheekbones, his mouth set tight in concentration as it had been when he studied his latest find. There was an intensity about him when he was focused on his work, but that intensity could just as easily turn to a smile whenever she was near.

He moved closer to the bed, staring at Kendall. But she knew he wasn’t looking at her. He was seeing the bloody bed where his lover had died. Her hands reached out for him, but he turned and walked into the same wall he had vanished through the last time.

Kendall threw back the covers and slipped on her Nikes. She grabbed her flashlight and pressed the catch in the wall that opened to the secret passageway. “Wait,” she called. She glimpsed his robes and scrambled to keep up. He followed the same path as before, and she wondered if he even knew she was there or was just repeating the same pattern over and over. She stepped out of the tree that connected the secret passageway and the graveyard.

It took her a few seconds to find him. He stood outside the fence near the two square stones where she’d seen him on her first visit to the castle. He stayed longer this time, staring down at the stones. It wasn’t until she had stepped within reach of the gravestones that he faded away. Was he trying to tell her something? Was it possible that the Fountain of Youth was hidden here? Hiding treasure in graves and tombs was common in many civilizations. Was her father’s spirit still trying to help her find relics, just like the two of them had done when she was a kid? Or was this just a memory she had glimpsed?

Kendall looked at the two lonely graves. She assumed they were graves. There weren’t any markings on the stones, but she had
sensed a funeral procession when she touched one of the stones the last time she was here. It would make sense if his body had been buried here, but it couldn’t be her father’s grave. There hadn’t been a body to bury. None of the bodies from the crash had been found. Her father, Adam, Uncle John.

The authorities had told Aunt Edna that the flames would have destroyed everything but the bones, which wild animals must have carried off. The crash had occurred on a private airstrip in a wooded, isolated area in Italy, and the wreckage hadn’t been discovered for three days. Kendall had searched for the records as an adult, needing to see the place herself, but she couldn’t find any mention of a specific location of the crash. Aunt Edna claimed she’d forgotten, but Kendall suspected she was trying to protect her. Her aunt had seen how devastated Kendall had been as a child. The grief she’d suffered. Aunt Edna had put up a memorial in a cemetery within walking distance to her house so that Kendall could visit whenever she missed her father. She had gone there often, leaning against the headstone, knowing he wasn’t there, wondering why she had lived when everyone she loved had died.

A few times, Aunt Edna had driven her to the graveyard in Great Falls, where Adam and his father were memorialized. Kendall had sat by Adam’s empty grave and talked to him, pretending he could hear her.

Graves, sometimes she hated them. Kendall looked down at the headstones at her feet. They could have been here a thousand years, or a dozen. She slowly put one hand on each of them and waited to see if anything came. She felt a suffocating sense of sadness and loss, and glimpsed a cloudy image of a woman’s face ravaged by pain and grief. The same woman in the tower bed. Kendall knew then it wasn’t just the woman’s sadness and loss she felt. It was her own. This was her mother’s grave. Had her
father buried her there? He must have. And the other grave, who was buried in it? A thought struck her, so alarming she gasped, but something moved closer to the castle, and she hurried to see if it was her father’s ghost or just one of the guards.

She followed the movement and saw the garden with the maze where Jake had first gone with Raphael, scouting out a way to get inside the castle. She’d never had a chance to explore here. The place looked haunted in the moonlight. A perfect place for a ghost. Topiaries stood at the entrance of the garden. A vine-covered wall surrounded it, isolating it from the rest of the castle grounds. There were a variety of trees and bushes, and a fountain stood near the maze, like the one in the entrance of the castle. Fountain? It couldn’t be that simple. Moonlight reflected off the water spouting from the fountain and falling into the pond at the base. It was stone, old, like everything here. Kendall dipped her finger in the water and touched the stone.

She felt herself flying through a dark place, then a hard jolt and she was back at the fountain.

What was that?

She heard a noise and thought the whispers had returned. Then she realized the sound came from the rustling leaves of the maze. Turning, Kendall saw the hem of a robe disappear inside. “Wait.” She dried her fingers on her pajamas as she hurried after him. Shining her light, she stepped inside the entrance to the maze. It was five feet wide, and even though the top was open and she could see the night sky, she felt spooked. But she wasn’t going to give up. She needed to talk to her father. He had all the answers to her past.

The maze continued for several yards before making another turn. The turns came quickly after that, and in minutes, she realized she was lost. She hurried down another narrow passage, her light darting over foliaged walls as she searched for her ghost.

The feel of the maze changed. Kendall felt heavy, as if she were trudging through water. Her head started spinning and memories flashed through her mind. She saw Jake the first time she’d met him, then Nathan, Jake, and herself in the inn after Nathan had broken in. Then she saw Nathan the first day she’d met him. She remembered the unguarded look on his face when she’d found his missing relic at the museum. A look of shock and pain. His expression had haunted her. She’d never understood why.

The memories kept coming, each older than the previous one. She saw herself before she met Nathan, saw her aunt Edna rummaging in her antique shop, and then Kendall was on a cliff in Egypt with Adam. The heaviness lifted and she felt as if she were floating.

She heard a noise behind her and turned, almost expecting to see Adam. A man wearing a dark garment stood behind her. “Daddy?” Then he tilted his head, studying her, and she saw the writing on one side of his face.

She gasped in shock. “You!”

She took a step backward and fell through the air. She reached out but nothing was there.

K
ENDALL OPENED HER
eyes and saw nothing but blackness. No moon or stars overhead. She didn’t feel injured or bruised, just shaken and disoriented, as if she’d been taken apart and put back together again. She rolled over, thinking she must have fallen facedown, but the moon wasn’t there either. She wasn’t in the maze. Her fingers registered a hard cold surface. Stone. She was lying on some kind of stone. She’d fallen through another hole. Jake would never let her forget this.

She felt a lump underneath her leg and found her flashlight, still on. Swinging the light around her, she saw that she was in some kind of tunnel or cave. Her brain felt like thick syrup. It took a full minute before she could stand, and even then she felt like her legs would collapse. She must have hit her head. Maybe she had a concussion.

She raised her light, looking for the hole she’d fallen through. The ceiling was forty feet above her. If she had fallen that far, she should be dead. Maybe she was dead. She’d seen Raphael just before she fell. He was dead. She felt dead. And cold. It was dark. What about the light? Going toward the light? She’d expected something far different than this. Would Adam be here?

“Get a grip, Kendall. Dead people don’t use flashlights.” She examined the wall but couldn’t find any openings or secret catches, only some markings that reminded her of cave drawings. But these were etched in stone and were some variation of circles. At least someone had been here before her, and she hadn’t seen any bones… yet, so there must be a way out. She studied, pressed, and prodded the walls, but she didn’t find any secret doors. It must be a one-way door or she needed a key.

A quick look around showed that the cave continued behind her. She searched the wall farther back, but after several minutes, she hadn’t found any answers except that she was lost and finding it hard to stay awake. She started calling for help. If she was just under the maze, one of the guards might hear her.

Her head began to buzz, and she heard someone calling her name. “I’m here,” she yelled. It must be Jake. She’d rather face his jokes than keep wandering in this damned cave. “Jake?” He didn’t answer. She heard the voice calling her name again. It wasn’t Jake. Nathan? She closed her eyes and listened closely. No. Not Nathan either. The voice came again. Adam? It was Adam calling her. But his voice sounded older than she remembered. “Adam?” she called, and then felt silly. Her addled brain must be playing tricks, unless she really was dead.

She continued checking the walls for openings or secret catches. The markings were so fascinating she forgot for a few moments where she was and how fatigued she felt. She finally gave up trying to figure them out and started walking. Jake had told her to explore, so it would be morning before anyone discovered she was missing. She would have to rescue herself.

The cave was large in places, narrowing at times, and the floor was remarkably level. She was used to exploring tight areas, but there was always someone with her or close by. She and Adam never went into a cave or tomb without the other.

It wasn’t long before she realized she wasn’t alone.

“Who’s there?” She whirled and looked behind her. “I know you’re following me. Daddy? Adam? Is that you?”

There was more than one spirit nearby. Animal. Creature. She didn’t know what they were, but she wanted out of here.

“Go away.” The whispered voice sounded rusty and old.

She shivered. “Who are you?”

“Get out.”

“I’m trying.” This time she hoped it was her imagination. She kept walking, goose bumps growing with each step. There was a feeling of anxiety and unrest. Perhaps it was fatigue, or she was picking up something from whatever was in here.

The castle grounds were large, but given the location of the catacombs and the tunnel leading to it, she should run into something soon. She’d walked for several hundred yards when she heard humming sounds like the statues made. They must be near. She didn’t have a cross to protect her. Could they kill her underground?