Glimpse (27 page)

I fastened my locket quickly around my neck. ‘For a minute there, I thought you were actually going to help me. But you still can’t give me a straight answer, can you?’

‘Oh, you poor child. That woman—’ she pointed at my locket ‘—that woman hates you. But it’s not your fault. Ann is your enemy here, not me.’

With surprising speed, Meg grabbed my hand back between hers. I stiffened my fingers in hers, but she held tight anyway. ‘Here’s my final piece of advice. Take it and think about it, because it’s the best I can give you.’ Her gaze fixed on mine. ‘I warned you about the boy, and you ignored me. It’s too late now to ask you to give him up. But think long and hard about him, my dear. He’s the reason Ann has it in for you. He’s the answer to everything.’

She sat back in her chair, leaving me stunned.

‘Now, go and get my bones.’

I barely noticed my run back to the street where I’d hidden the bowl. Meg’s words echoed like a gunshot in my mind, repeating over and over with my footsteps.
She hates you. She hates you, she hates you, she hates you.

Get out, get out, get out.

It didn’t help me to know my mother both loved me and hated me. I didn’t want my mother to hate me at all. I needed to believe my nightmares were just that – dreams and nothing more substantial. Nothing to do with my real mum.

As for Zachary being the answer to everything, that made no sense either. Obviously he was the reason Ann hated me, but he had nothing to do with my mum or my amnesia or anything else in my life.

I reached the tree where I’d hidden the bones, and nudged the bowl out of the nettles with my shoe, stinging my ankles in the process. I returned the bowl to Meg without saying a word.

I headed back to the inn.

I’d made my final push to learn something about my mother, and it had failed.

I flopped onto my bed. I had failed. I was tired of this – of getting my hopes dashed; tired of never learning anything new about my mum, of never remembering; tired of these fears that she didn’t love me, these nightmares.

I unclasped my locket and dropped it on my bedside table. I could always put the locket back on, could always try again to remember my mother. But for now, I just needed some peace. My heart couldn’t take any more.

With my bedroom door still open, I could hear Dad moving around, followed by a burst of melody from the piano. His music was becoming as pervasive as the blare of his TV had been, and I loved it. Tonight, the melody was melancholy and romantic.

I went to the window and looked out at the woods. Maybe it was the effect of Dad’s music, but I couldn’t help my thoughts turning to Zachary. Every time I pictured my life moving forwards – like Dad’s had, like Philip’s had, like Zachary’s was starting to – Zachary was involved.

When I was being realistic, I imagined finding Bess for him, then remaining his friend. When I was being fanciful, I imagined much more. I imagined the impossible.

The impossible. A ghost and a living girl. A highwayman who loved Bess, yet ended up with me.

Scott and Crowley moved around on the gravel below me, loading Scott’s car boot with tools, but I ignored them, thinking only of Zachary walking out of the woods later tonight. I knew the way he’d look, I knew the way he’d smile, I knew the way his arms would feel around me if my daydreams played out.

Around 10 p.m., Scott’s car pulled out of the driveway, headlights bright in the fallen night. I was glad – I didn’t want to have to think about Scott, I wanted Zachary to be the only thing on my mind tonight.

Zachary must have seen me at the window, because a few minutes after Scott left, gravel crunched lightly far below.

I looked over my shoulder at the door. Dad was still playing his piano. It was risky seeing Zachary this early, but I’d hear Dad if he started to come upstairs. I couldn’t wait another three hours.

I closed my bedroom door and opened the window. Zachary looked up at me, his skin luminescent in the moonlight, his smile huge.

‘Come up,’ I whispered down to him.

I didn’t move away from the window this time as he climbed. I watched every movement – the easy way he swung upwards, from branch to branch, reaching for his next handhold without needing to look. When he stood up on the branch that led to my window, the moonlight brightening his smile and contouring his body with shadow, my insides twisted, though not with the fear he’d fall.

He thudded into my bedroom, bringing the scent of trees and earth. ‘Who’s that playing the piano?’ he asked, surprised. ‘It’s delightful.’

‘My dad.’ I smiled. ‘He’s still up. You’re early.’

‘I’ve arrived at the conclusion that life is too short to wait.’ He smiled too, not without irony. ‘Your father cannot see me, but if you’d rather I came back later—’

‘No. This is fine.’

He nodded. He looked awkward suddenly, as though he wasn’t sure what to do with himself – a first for him. His gaze swept the room, dismissing the bed, then he curled to the floor, like he’d done on the night he’d told me his story.

He arranged his long legs. ‘So how was your meeting with the spirit-seer?’

I curled down next to him, crossing my legs, leaning back on my hands, mirroring his posture. It would have been more comfortable sitting on the bed – assuming he could sit on the bed – but this felt just as intimate. Curled between the bed and the wall, we were in our own private space.

‘It was . . . interesting,’ I said. I’d told Zachary my plans to talk to Meg last night. ‘The trick with the bones worked. It got Ann out of the way, and Meg told me more than she did last time. But I’m still not sure I can trust her. She did tell me something interesting about Bess though.’

Zachary raised his eyebrows, looking more alert. ‘What?’

I leaned forwards and spoke in a hushed voice. ‘Meg told me Bess is still here somewhere, that she hasn’t moved on. She also told me that Ann knows where she is.’

A cloud darkened Zachary’s face. His posture, casual before, grew stiff. ‘I should have trusted my instincts.’ He sounded mad with himself. ‘Ann denied any knowledge of what happened.’

‘Meg didn’t say Ann caused it. Just that she knew where Bess was.’

Zachary leaned forwards, matching me. ‘Then I will ask her again. And this time I won’t desist until she tells me. Thank you, Elizabeth, for the information. It’ll be easier to talk to Ann now I know for certain she’s been lying.’

I gave him a sympathetic smile. I was sure that nothing Zachary said could make Ann reveal something she didn’t want to, short of him pledging his eternal love to her. Zachary’s grim expression told me he knew it too.

‘How about you?’ He tapped the bottom of my foot with the toe of his boot. ‘Did you find out what you wanted about your mother?’

I rolled my eyes, and explained what Meg had said about my mum both loving and hating me. ‘Then she said something else that made even less sense. She told me—’ I played with a ring on my finger ‘—she told me you were the answer to everything.’

Zachary’s forehead creased. ‘The answer to what?’

‘She wasn’t clear. I don’t think she’s capable of giving a straight answer. She just said to think harder about my connection with you.’

‘You see me as if I’m alive,’ he said. ‘You help me, and I help you – as little as I’m able. We’re—’ he hesitated ‘—friends. What else is there to know?’

I shrugged. We held each other’s gaze a long moment, each scrutinizing the other. I noticed little flecks of brown in the green of his eyes, the way the scar on his jaw was slightly indented, the dusty texture to his hair as though he’d been sprinkled with soil, but nothing that was the answer to everything. At least, not in the way Meg meant.

My cheeks started to feel too warm. I leaned back on my hands. ‘I don’t know how much I trust her. She might have just been trying to confuse me.’ I licked my lips. ‘So what are you going to do about Bess?’

Zachary sighed. ‘Elizabeth, you know how much I love her.’

‘I do.’ I kept my voice neutral.

‘She was my world for so long. And I am going to do everything possible to get her back.’ He shifted, as though uncomfortable. ‘But I have to say, since meeting you . . .’

He trailed off, and I held my breath.

‘Since meeting you, I’ve remembered there’s a world outside my own. I have no desire to be like my brother.’ Pain flashed through his eyes. ‘I don’t want my sole existence to consist of waiting for something, searching for something.’

He could have been speaking of me and my mother, as much as about him and Bess. I didn’t want to spend my life waiting to remember my mum.

‘I wish Bess hadn’t gone,’ he said. ‘Yet I also know that if she hadn’t, nothing would have changed. Bess and I would be continuing the same routine, meeting every night, discussing events that occurred centuries ago, eavesdropping on the lives continuing without us.’

‘I understand,’ I said. And I meant it – completely. ‘I want to move on from my past too. For the same reasons. I want a future and a life.’

‘Then we understand each other.’ He tapped my foot with his again. I tapped him back, making him smile. ‘If Bess comes back, I won’t return to my old ways. I’d like you to remain my friend. I’d like us to go to all those places we talked about.’

I smiled, though something clawed and wailed in the pit of my stomach at the mention of the word ‘friend’. ‘Glad to hear it,’ I said.

‘And you?’ He brushed the hem of my dress, his fingers skating through the lace. ‘What happens next, with your mother?’

‘I think it’s time to give her a break. Like you said, I don’t want my existence to be taken up with searching for something that might be impossible to find.’

‘Sounds a wise decision.’

I nodded, and played with my dress hem where he’d touched it. ‘I’m ready for a future too. I have one good friend at school, but I want to make more. I want to get involved in some of the activities at school this year. I’ve always been too scared I’d make a fool of myself, and I’m tired of it. This is my last year at school, and maybe of being at home with my dad, and I want to make it as perfect as it can be.

‘And I’m looking forward to being your friend too. In that future.’ It wasn’t what I wanted to say at all, but my cheeks flared anyway, as if I’d said what I really meant.
If we don’t find Bess, I want to be more than your friend.

He said nothing, but he smiled, more with his eyes than his mouth. Then he lifted my hand, his eyes on mine, and kissed the backs of my fingers. His lips were firm yet soft on my skin. It wasn’t a promise, but it wasn’t a ‘no’ either.

Dad chose that moment to creak past my bedroom door, both ruining and saving me from a moment almost unbearably intense.

‘Are you going to bed soon, Liz?’ His voice floated through the door. ‘School in the morning.’

‘Yes, Dad,’ I called.

His footsteps creaked on, punctuated by the bang of his bedroom door.

‘I should let you retire,’ Zachary said. ‘That was another reason for coming here earlier. I’ve been keeping you up too late.’

I nodded, though I didn’t want him to leave. Not ever. ‘Stay a little longer?’

‘It would be my pleasure.’

I got ready in the bathroom, changing into my longest nightdress. When I got back to my room, I turned off the light and climbed under the covers. My thudding heart calmed almost instantly. It should have been a big deal to have a boy in my room at night, but it didn’t feel like it with Zachary. He was barely a shadow in the darkness next to my bed, but his calm breathing relaxed me. When he reached his hand under the covers to hold mine, I knew I wouldn’t have nightmares tonight.

I drifted towards sleep. Images and music swirled through my mind as my dreams descended.

Zachary’s whisper cut through them. ‘Elizabeth, I have to go.’ There was a sense of urgency to his voice that pulled me out of my sleep, but only for a moment. My dreams sucked me back down.

‘I’ll return tomorrow night,’ he whispered.

I nodded into the pillow, and sleep reclaimed me. Zachary filled every dark velvet fold of my dreams, and I found Meg was right – he really was everything.

Someone grabbed my arms and yanked me upright in bed. It was like being tipped from sleep into a bath of icy water. I choked on a gasp. I only had a split second to register the bulky figure standing over me in the dark before something coarse plunged over my head, blinding me, scratching my skin, forcing a scream from my lungs.

Hands grabbed my ankles. I kicked out, too late. I squirmed, but more hands grabbed my arms. Pain shot through my shoulders, the bed dropping away, as the hands lifted me, swinging me blindly through the air.

I screamed again, my breath humid against the sack. My mind was fully awake now. Disorientated.

I tried to shout for Dad, but panic destroyed my words. All that came out was a wail.

‘Shut up or you’re dead,’ Crowley’s voice growled above me.

Suddenly, it was impossible to breathe. My thoughts fogged with panic.

The floorboards groaned like something in pain. Electric light seeped through the holes in the sacking. My head tipped downwards as they carried me down the stairs. I swung from side to side with their footsteps, my joints protesting.

I found my voice, though it shook. ‘What are you doing?’

‘Shut it. No one’s going to help you.’ Scott was with him.

I was too panicked to cry. I hyperventilated into the sack, inhaling dust and mildew. There wasn’t enough air.

Crowley and Scott’s footsteps shifted from creaking floorboards to the crunch of gravel. Cold air oozed through the holes in the sack and prickled over my skin. Their footsteps shifted again, from gravel to concrete. We were at the outbuildings.

I braced myself, expecting to be dropped, but instead Crowley grunted above me and my head tipped downwards. We were going down more stairs – some kind of a basement below the outbuildings?

Why this was happening, I had no clue. A thousand scenarios – kidnap, rape, murder – ran through my mind. But why would Crowley and Scott want to do me any harm?

The air grew colder as we moved downwards. Crowley swore whenever he stumbled, which was often. He almost dropped me more than once. Electric lights shone orange through the burlap. Scott’s breathing was loud and violent.