Legacy (29 page)

“You.”

He nodded.

“Wait a minute, Peter. If your father killed himself—”

“He didn’t. I think he was going to. He drew up all the paperwork giving custody of Eric and me over to Hattie, but he never got a chance to leave Hattie’s house.”

“He died at Hattie’s?”

He nodded. “He had a heart attack.” He turned away. “Look, you don’t want to—”

“Tell me,” I said.

Slowly, creakily as an old man, Peter sat down on the visitor’s chair and closed his eyes. “I remember every second of that night,” he said quietly. “We were all in Hattie’s kitchen. Eric was lying in a basket on the kitchen table. Hattie was at the stove, boiling water for tea. My father was holding me by both arms, telling me how I had to look after Eric. He said the rest of the family wouldn’t understand, but we’d both be safer with Hattie.”

“Were there harbingers?” I asked.

“No. Nothing. The Darkness had no power then. It had slipped into my mother, and then my father, and then . . .” He gave a bitter little laugh. “It’s funny, everyone said that Prescott Shaw died of a broken heart. Maybe that was true. All I know is that he was holding me by both shoulders, making me promise to take care of Eric, when all of a sudden he sort of flung his arms out. I didn’t know what was going on. He knocked me down. His eyes were bulging and his skin turned dark red, and he kept opening his mouth, but no sound came out. Mostly, I just remember being scared.”

He ran his hand through his hair. “And the quiet. I remember that,” he said slowly. “It had started to rain, and outside the window, lightning was flashing silently, the way it does before a big storm begins. Everything was so quiet, and yet at the same time so violent.

“My dad sort of spun into Eric’s basket on the table and pulled it down with him as he fell full-length on the floor. The basket hit Hattie, and Eric fell out. Hattie tried to catch him, but she couldn’t. He kind of bounced into the air, and then he landed on top of my father.

“Then Eric started screaming. And, like that, my father was
dead on the floor with this frozen look of horror on his face.”

I closed my eyes, trying to erase the image.

“That was how Eric got infected,” Peter said.

We looked at each other for a long moment. “You can’t keep this to yourself any longer,” I said finally.

Peter’s gaze shifted toward the open door, his face flushed. “Katy, don’t,” he pleaded.

“Hattie has to know. They all have to know. This is the Darkness, Peter.”

“This is
Eric
!” he spat through clenched teeth, his eyes grown instantly wild with panic.

“Eric’s not who put those scars on your back,” I said. “Eric’s not the one who keeps telling you to kill him.”

“I’ll never kill him.”

“You’ll never want to, but I don’t think you can hold out against this thing by yourself, Peter. You need
us.
The witches. All of us.”

His face fell. “You?” he whispered. “You’d side with them against me?”

“It wouldn’t be like that—”

“Oh, no? Do you know what they’ll—what
you’ll
do? Do you know what Hattie will do? Eric’s like her own baby, but she’s high priestess, and she’ll burn him.
Burn
him, Katy. Because that’s how they deal with this.”

“Peter, please—”

“I’m begging you, Katy, keep your mouth shut.”

“And what will
you
do, then? Allow yourself to be tortured every night?”

“I can handle it.”

“No, you
can’t
,” I said. “How long do you think—”

“I’ll be all right,” he said, taking my hands in his. “I have a plan.”

I flung his hands off me. “What are you thinking about doing?”

“Never mind. Besides,” he added with false cheer, “I might not have to do anything. As long as Eric’s alive, the Darkness is held captive in his body.”

“How long do you think that’s going to last?” I demanded baldly. “The harbingers have already started. Fires everywhere, sinkholes, death . . . Something’s coming, Peter. It’s been coming for ten years, and it’s not going to stop now.”

“How do you know how the Darkness works?” he snapped. “It hasn’t appeared here since 1929. Look, I’ve been reading about it. A lot of things were done wrong then, and probably at every other time it showed up too. There must be some way to get rid of it without sacrificing Eric. We just have to find it.”

“There’s no more time, Peter.”

“Yes, there is! There is if you’ll just keep quiet, give me a chance—”

“Time’s up, kids,” the nurse announced loudly as she strode into the room. “Sorry, doctor’s orders.” She checked my eyes again, and the wound on the back of my head. “No promises, but if you ask me, you’ll be on a regular floor by tomorrow.” She turned to Peter with a smile. “She’ll be able to have all the visitors she wants then.”

Peter’s gaze held mine. I knew he was begging me not to tell anyone what I knew.

“Will you come back tomorrow?” I asked quietly.

He didn’t answer.

“Don’t do this,” I said, my voice breaking.

He took a deep breath. “You’re here because of me,” he said somberly. “As long as I’m around, you won’t be safe.” He looked at the nurse and at Gram, who was just coming in. Both women were regarding him with alarm.

“Peter . . .”

“I love you,” he said. Then he turned and walked out.

The click of his shoes on the floor as he left was the only sound I could hear. Then silence filled the room, as solid as death.

“Wow,” the nurse said at last. “Intense.”

Gram cleared her throat. “Now I really do need a drink of water,” she said.

I love you.

He loved me. Now that the world was ending.

My dad walked in looking irritated. Last night seemed like a million years ago, and the things he was so concerned about—my breaking curfew, going to Peter’s house, falling off the trellis, ending up in the hospital—seemed so trivial now, compared with what Peter, and ultimately the rest of us, were facing.

“Why did you do it, Katy?” he asked.

“Huh?” For a brief, confused moment, I thought he was referring to the fact that I’d asked to see Peter before him. “There was just something I needed to . . . Oh. You mean why I left the house in the middle of the night.”

“Of course that’s what I mean,” he bristled. He exhaled a long, disappointed breath. “I thought that you and I had come to some sort of
rapprochement.
” He seemed genuinely puzzled, even though he’d used a pompous French word with an even more pompous French pronunciation. “After everything that we discussed, why did you go to that boy’s house?”

I stared at my hands. I knew I’d let him down. We’d ironed out so many of our problems, and I’d spoiled it all by blatantly disobeying him.

It didn’t matter that I’d discovered something important while I was disobeying him, because I couldn’t tell Dad about that, anyway. The Darkness wasn’t a concept he’d ever understand.

What he did understand was that I’d broken his trust again. I’d blown it.

“I’m sorry,” I said quietly.

“I’m afraid that isn’t good enough,” he said. “You don’t belong here, Katy.”

“Wake up, Dad,” I shouted, nearly pulling the IV out of my arm. “It’s the only place I
do
belong.”

“I’m not going to listen to this—”

“You’ve never listened to anything I’ve said. And taking me away from Whitfield isn’t going to accomplish anything. I was away for eleven years, Dad. Eleven years of not knowing who I was or where I belonged. Eleven years of keeping to myself, of never touching anyone, of watching you leave every night and wondering what I’d done to make you not want to be with me, ever—”

“That’s not true.”

“Was it because you were afraid I’d be like my mother?”

His hands balled into fists, the knuckles white.

“Because I am,” I said quietly.

The monitor attached to my heart raced for a couple of minutes, but then decelerated, beeping in a regular rhythm. Outside my door, the bustling hospital corridor was filled with noise and motion, but the two of us, my father and I, remained
apart from everything, removed even from time and space, trying to find our way to each other.

Then, slowly, his fists opened. The color returned to them. I heard him breathe again. “I guess I’ve always known it.” His voice was raspy, as if he hadn’t spoken in days. “You can move things,” he said.

I nodded. “I can read objects, too. And people. By touching them.”

He recoiled. It was subtle and momentary, but there was no mistaking the disgust on his face. Touching has never been something the Jessevars were very good at.

“But it’s voluntary,” I added quickly. “I won’t read you unless I make an effort to.”

“That’s good to know,” he muttered.

“We’re all different. All the Whitfield witches, I mean.”

He winced at the word. I knew he would, but I wasn’t going to hide anything anymore.

“How . . . how are you different?” he asked meekly, his fingers toying nervously with the bedcovers. “What can the other . . . witches . . . do?”

I felt a surge of happiness. He had used the word! He was trying. Really trying.

“Well, some can see things that are happening a long way away,” I said, cataloging. “Some can make thoughts materialize into matter. There’s djinn here—a woman who can bend people’s wills. She’s very careful, though, very well trained.”

“Is Whitfield the only place in the world like this?”

“I don’t think so. I’ve heard about other witch communities. They’re not publicized, though.”

“No, I imagine not,” he said, subdued.

I hesitated for a moment before going on. I wasn’t sure he’d want to hear what I was about to say.

“Mother had a very special gift,” I said, plunging in.

He looked up at me.

“She could see the future.”

He folded his arms over his chest. “No one can predict the future, Katherine.” He looked down. “Katy.”

“Not in specifics. There’s the butterfly effect, where changing one small action can result in a completely different outcome.”

“Exactly.”

“But there are some forces that can’t be stopped. Natural forces, benevolent forces, even forces of evil.”

His face colored. “The Darkness,” he said, as if he were speaking a foul word.

“She told you about the Darkness?”

“There’s no such thing, Katy. No documentation whatever—”

“There’s plenty of documentation, Dad,” I interrupted. “Every family in Whitfield has a record of everything that’s gone on here for the past three hundred years, and many go back a lot farther than—”

“Well, it doesn’t exist in the
real
world,” he insisted.

“Which one is that?” I shot back.

“The one that would have kept my wife alive!” He buried his face in his hands.

Whoa. I wasn’t expecting that.

“Dad?” I ventured, inching my hand toward him.

“The things she saw . . . or thought she saw . . . Either she was crazy, or she was looking into a future I didn’t want any
part of. You should have heard her, Katy! It was impossible to live with that . . . with that
horror
. . .”

“Is that what she saw?” I asked gently. “Horror?”

“She wouldn’t tell me for a long time. But then she began to unravel. All she talked about was the Darkness. And burning. Fire, fire. She was obsessed with fire. I just didn’t know what to do, Katy. I thought that if we left this place, changed our names . . .”

“Became normal,” I said dully.

“Yes.” He looked at me with a defensiveness that was almost belligerent. “I thought it might work. Get her away from these people, and their fairy tales about some mumbo-jumbo comic-book bogeyman. The Darkness! Who in their right mind . . .” He sighed. “She could have had a normal life. She could have—”

“She was an
oracle,
Dad,” I whispered. “She saw things that no one else could. And once you see something, even if it’s something no one besides you believes exists, you can’t unsee it. It’s like taking back knowledge. You just can’t do it.”

I managed to touch him then, just a brush against his fingers. For a moment he stiffened, as if a jolt of electricity had run through him. But then he softened, I could see it on his face. He turned toward me and his hand felt like it melted over mine. “Oh, Katy,” he said. “In some ways, she was the sanest person I knew.”

“What?” I hadn’t believed he would ever speak those words. That anyone would. My mother was not only insane; she was criminally, famously insane. “Why do you say that?” I asked hesitantly.

He stood up and walked to the window, then placed both
hands on it as if it were a wall. “I knew what she was,” he said. “How could anyone not know? She was so utterly different from everyone else on the face of the earth.” He turned to face me. “She was incredibly beautiful, Katy. Her eyes changed color with her mood, from this brilliant emerald to Caribbean blue, to dark green. Like yours.”

“You noticed?”

“It used to hurt me to look at you, because you reminded me so much of her. It’s funny, Agnes is her twin, but you actually look more like her than Agnes does. She lacks a special quality your mother had that lent her a . . . a
radiance
that was unearthly.” He sighed. “I loved her so much,” he whispered.

I was confused. “Then why . . . why didn’t you believe her?” I asked.

He waited a long time to answer. “Because I couldn’t,” he said finally. “I had no place here. I could never belong here.”

“And she couldn’t belong anywhere else.”

“That was my mistake,” he said. “I thought she could. But the incident at Wonderland changed everything. Everything.”

“Did she ever tell you why she did it?”

“No.” He turned back to the window. “I’d left by then.”

“You left her?”

“I gave her a choice. Her family—you and me—or Whitfield. I thought it would be an easy decision. When it wasn’t, I left and took you with me.”

“And she didn’t follow you?”

“No. Instead, she went to Wonderland, tried to kill the Shaw baby, and then set herself on fire.”