Legacy (30 page)

Something stirred inside me. “Set herself . . .”
Kaboom.
There it was. Why hadn’t I seen it before? “Oh, my God,” I said.

“I’m sorry. I thought you knew.”

“I did. It was just—”

“Every day of my life since then, I’ve wondered if things might have been different. If I hadn’t made her choose, if I hadn’t taken her daughter away from her . . .”

“No, Dad,” I said quietly. “It wasn’t you.”

He looked at me quizzically.

It wasn’t him
. It had never been him. It had always been about Eric, and the Darkness, and what my mother knew.

“Dad, I have to stay in Whitfield,” I blurted.

“What?”

“I have to stay.”

He blinked. “I don’t think that’s for you to decide.”

“I know you don’t want me to, and that you don’t approve of Peter, or Mrs. Ainsworth, or any of the others, but I’m telling you that I have to stay here.”

“You’re telling me?”

I hesitated. “I’m sorry, but yes.”

A long moment. Eternally long. And then he sighed. “Where do you want to stay?”

“At my great-grandmother’s, until school starts again.”

“Starting when?”

“I want to be there now, Dad.”

“Is it because of that boy?” he asked. “Is that why you want to stay?”

“Partly.” There was no use in lying anymore. I couldn’t tell him about Eric and the Darkness, but I wanted to be as honest as I could. “It’s everything—the school, Gram, Aunt Agnes, Miss P . . .” The words just came tumbling out, all the things I’d wanted to tell him for so long, but never had the chance to.
“There’s Verity and Cheswick . . . and Hattie. I had a job with her for a while. I learned to cook. Did I tell you about that? But now they’ve torn down her restaurant and her house so that a new Wonderland can be built on the Meadow, when no one in Old Town even wants the stupid thing, anyway.” I gathered my courage and took a breath, “It’s my world. I
belong
here, Dad. I know who I am now. And no matter what happens, I don’t want to be anywhere else.”

I didn’t realize it, but I guess I must have been crying, because all of a sudden my father swooped down and cradled me in his long, strong arms and hugged me so fiercely that I almost couldn’t breathe. And then, for the first time ever, I
felt
him opening up to me, allowing me to see into his deepest heart.

In that heart he loved me. Truly, absolutely, eternally.

“I love you, Dad,” I said.

“I love you, too, Katy.”

“I know.”

He took out a handkerchief—he always used real cloth handkerchiefs, like Peter—and dabbed my eyes with it.

“I’m a doofus,” I said.

“Me too.” He wiped his own face with the handkerchief. “We are both . . . is ‘
doofi
’ a word?”

I laughed though I was still crying. “I guess.” I squeezed his hand. After a moment, I said, “I’m sixteen now.”

He looked surprised at first, and then really upset. “Oh, baby, I’m sorry,” he said. “Your birthday. It was yesterday, wasn’t it. God, I’m a screwup.”

“It’s okay. But I was thinking that maybe my punishment’s gone on long enough.” I gave him my sweetest smile. “Being
un-grounded would be a great birthday present.”

He exhaled roughly. “I’m going to give you a better present than that.”

“Dad, you don’t—”

“I’m leaving town,” he said.

“What?”

“I need to get back to New York. And I think things would be easier for you with the Ainsworths.” He looked sheepish. “Also, Madison and I are taking a little break.”

“Ouch,” I said.

“To be truthful, there’s much less ‘ouch’ without her.”

“Not a big surprise,” I said. “But are you sure?”

“Yes, Katy,” he said. “I’ll come visit. As a tourist.” He kissed my cheek. “I want you to have your world.”

“But you won’t . . .”

“Abandon you? No.” He stood up and tucked me into the hospital bed, pulling the blanket up around my chin. “Never, never, my darling girl.”

They moved me out of intensive care the next day. Gram was waiting in my new room when the nurse wheeled me in.

“We’re trying to get you out as soon as we can, dear,” she said.

“I can’t wait to go home.”

“Neither can we. Your Aunt Agnes and Jonathan send their love,” Gram said. “They’re at the Lammas festival, but I didn’t want to go.”

“Why not?” Lammas was sort of like Thanksgiving, except that it was held at the beginning of August. There was always lots of food and decorations made of grains in honor of the wheat and corn harvests.

She made a cryptic gesture. “I doubt it will be the same,” she said. “Without Hattie.”

“Why wouldn’t Hattie be there?” I asked, alarmed.

“She hasn’t been well,” she said. “No one’s seen her around Old Town or elsewhere.”

Hattie knew about Eric.
She had to. The Darkness had spread its horror and dread from little Eric to Peter, and now to Hattie. And to me.

I wanted so much to confide in my great-grandmother. But I’d promised Peter that I wouldn’t say anything. I’d promised.

“She’s resigned as high priestess,” Gram said. “Livia Fowler will replace her at the ritual.” She gave a little snort.

“Livia Fowler?” I repeated, hoping I’d heard wrong.

“Yes. She has a daughter at your school.”

“Becca,” I sighed. “The Fowlers hate our family, you know. Miss P told me.”

“Well, ‘hate’ might be rather too strong a word,” she said.

“The Fowlers think that the Ainsworth women are responsible for every instance of the Darkness.”

“Is that so?” she asked calmly. She didn’t seem even slightly put out. “Well, they’re a clannish lot.”

“Worse than that! I’ve heard that the Fowlers have their own private army of thugs who’ll beat up anyone they don’t like.”

“Nonsense. Mr. Fowler is the coach of some community sporting team. Football, or baseball, one of those things,” she said with a dismissive wave. “That’s why there are always young men at their house. Good gracious, how easily rumors start!”

“Still, doesn’t it bother you, even a little?” Just the thought of a private army headed by Livia Fowler was making my stomach churn.

“Bother? No, dear. Sciatica bothers me. Indigestion bothers me. Bunions, arthritis, irregularity . . . These are things that bother me. The opinion of the Fowlers, however, has nothing to do with me. Or with you.”

“Gram,” I began, feeling as if I were sliding off a cliff, “if the Darkness were to infect one of us . . .”

“Yes?” She was arranging herself in the visitor’s chair, leafing through a copy of
Quilting
magazine. “Oh, look. They’re already showing pumpkin prints.”

“Fine. Well, if that happened, how long would it take to show?”

She brought the page closer to her face. “I think jack-o’-lanterns are far too scary for baby blankets, don’t you?”

“Gram . . .”

“Show what? Oh, the Darkness? I don’t know. As long as it likes, I imagine.” She tittered. “I don’t mean to be flippant, dear. But it’s true. The Darkness can manifest quickly, or it can take years to reveal itself.”

“And during those years, no one would know anything? There wouldn’t be any harbingers?”

“The harbingers have always signaled imminent danger.” Suddenly she put down the magazine, her face stricken. “Oh, dear, all these goings-on have frightened you, haven’t they, dear?” She stood up and fluttered around me.

“No, I’m all right, really. I just wanted to know.”

“Well, you are still new to our ways. Perhaps you don’t understand why we’re concerned about something beyond the sinkholes and fires. Granted, they’re certainly bad enough.”

“Uh . . . yes,” I waffled. “This thing, the Darkness . . . People act like it has a mind of its own . . . as if it were a person.”

“But it does, Katy. It has its own intelligence. It uses the minds of its victims—and don’t forget, they are
all
victims—but behind those minds, those personalities, the Darkness follows its own agenda.”

“So it could be inside a person for a long time without anyone even knowing it?”

“Indeed, yes. There have even been instances of the Darkness infecting children, although one can hardly bear thinking about that.”

“But if that were to happen . . .”

“Gracious, you mean a child?”

“Hypothetically. There would be something we could do, wouldn’t there? I mean besides the . . .”

She raised troubled eyes to me. “The burning?” she finished. The words sounded sticky.

I nodded. “Given that it’s a child, there must be exceptions—”

“There is no other solution,” she said. “The infected ones, once found, must be destroyed.” Her voice was no more than a whisper. “I wish there were some other way.” She clapped her hands together, and a bright smile transformed her face. “But we don’t have to worry about things like that, do we?”

“Maybe there is another way,” I persisted. “Maybe it just hasn’t been found yet. A spell, or an incantation . . .”

She thought for a moment. “Well, there is the ‘Song of Unmaking’—”

“Say what?” I felt my pulse quicken. “The song of un-what?-ing?”

“Unmaking. It’s a spell for dispelling the Darkness.”

“Oh,” I said, deflated. “The burning spell.”

“Wellll . . .” She stretched out the word. “That’s how it’s always been interpreted.”

I blinked. “You mean it might have been interpreted wrong? For all these centuries?”

She looked thoughtful. “It may have been centuries, but it has actually never been used.”

“What?”

She shrugged.

“What about Dorothea Lyttel? Or Constance Ainsworth, back in 1929?”

“Both those women set the fires that killed them
themselves.
”

“Like my mother,” I whispered.

She nodded. “It is what has been done since the beginning of time.”

“But the spell—”

“The song is ambiguous. It has been studied ever since Hattie’s ancestor Ola’ea wrote it, but no one knows for certain what it means.”

“Aren’t the instructions clear?”

“Spells don’t have instructions, dear. It’s all a matter of interpretation. At first, anyway. After the first time, it’s called tradition. Anyway, it can only be found in the
Great Book of Secrets
, which is very difficult to get to. The whole community has to take part in order to open it. I know, because we were almost called upon to perform the opening spell in 1955, when floods in the area . . . Well, never mind that.”

“The
Great
. . .” I got it. “You mean the book of secrets for Whitfield, collectively.”

“Quite. Everything about us is in that book. Every spell we’ve evoked. Everything we know. Every bit of information and lore that any of the original twenty-seven families brought with them from England. If it is known, if it has
ever
been known by any witch in Whitfield or her ancestors, it is recorded in the
Great Book
.”

“Must be a pretty big book,” I said lamely.

Gram clucked. “Of course, it has no real size, until it is called up. And it can only be accessed by magic.”

“Then we have to look there,” I said.

“But why, dear? Do you have some question?”

I stared at her for a moment. “Er . . . if anything comes up, that is. That would be the thing to do.”

“Yes, certainly.”

I finally got my walking papers that afternoon, after Dr. Baddely put me through the usual tests. Gram had signed all the papers and we were on the elevator when a couple of candy stripers from my school got on, so excited that they were actually squealing.

“Can you believe it?” one of them chirped.

“It’s horrible. The most horrible thing I ever heard.”

These were Muffies. That was how they talked all the time. Everything was the worst, the most fabulous, the most absolutely heinous, the most devastatingly awesome. They never even noticed me, of course. I just counted the seconds until the elevator door would open, so I could get away from them.
One, two . . .

“How’d he do it?”

“Razor. He’s in the emergency room now.”

“It doesn’t make any sense. He was the cutest guy in school.”

No he isn’t. Peter is. Three, four . . .

“I heard he was in some kind of trouble with the police.”

“Not him. His mother was.”

Muffled Muffy laughter. “That’s not his mother! She’s black, duh.”

Five . . . Oh no oh no oh no . . .

“Oh, right. Didn’t she run that restaurant or something? The one on the corner?”

“It got torn down.”

“Yeah. The geeks all went there.”

“That’s it.” Heavy sigh. “I guess you never know when somebody’s going to flip out.”

“Peter!” I screamed as the doors opened. I shoved past the candy stripers, nearly knocking one of them over.

I ran to the emergency room. In the waiting area, two policemen were questioning an emaciated old black woman. They were flanking her on either side like two stone monoliths beside a gnarled old tree. It took me a moment to recognize the woman, but when I did, it felt as if my heart had fallen out of my chest. “Hattie!” I called. Her gaze, tired and vacant, wandered toward mine.

“Is he alive?” I demanded. I knew it wasn’t the right time or place to be questioning her, but I had to know. One of the policemen turned to glare at me.

“Yes,” Hattie answered, nodding almost imperceptibly. Her voice was weak and trembling.

Relief flooded through me like warm butter. “I’ve got to see him,” I said, heading toward the double doors that led to the treatment area.

“You can’t go in there, miss,” the receptionist said.

I ignored her, banging through the doors like a crazed bull. “Peter!” I shouted.

Cloth screens sectioned off patients into makeshift rooms. I ran from one to the next, calling Peter’s name. And then I found him, his wrists bandaged, tubes going into his nose, two
IVs in his arms, a bag of blood hanging near his head.

“Peter?” I tried to be quiet, though I felt like screaming at the top of my lungs.

His eyes opened, and he looked alarmed. I fell down on my knees beside him. “Peter, why? Why?” I moaned. Hot tears were streaming down my face.