Rising Dark (The Darkling Trilogy, Book 2) (49 page)

“
Avery.”

“
Of course, sir. I mean,
Avery.”

She began to move away but I stopped
her.

“
On second thought, book
that trip to England for Mallory and me. You can have that week off
instead. It has been some time since I spent some quality time with
Mallory.
Don’t you
think
?”

She gulped but managed to keep the
consternation from her features.

“
Yes, sir.”

She fled down the corridor to another
room, but her thoughts still reached me.

Good God. That man is so
damned creepy. If it wasn’t for Mallory, I’d pack my bags and get
the hell away from him and this house!

I stared at the vase.
It
was
ugly. I
didn’t remember seeing it before today, but it seemed as if there
was a lot going on in this house that had escaped my attention of
late. I had to pull myself out of this fugue long enough to pay
attention to what was happening around me, especially if what she
said about Mallory running wild was true. Which it most likely
was.

So that evening, I had dinner with
Mallory for the first time in months. When I entered the dining
room, Mallory immediately left her seat and ran up and hugged
me.

Good evening, Uncle
Avery,
she signed with an adoring
smile.

Over dinner, I listened to her
thoughts as always. She yawned through most of dinner, her thoughts
on her classes, her annoying teachers, her friends. But she mainly
seemed to be preoccupied with a science project she had to finish
that evening.

I noticed some tension between her and
Bernice when Bernice came to tell us she was finishing for the
evening. She lived at the mansion, in one of the rooms on the
ground floor, so she was nearby if Mallory needed her. Bernice’s
gaze was icy when she told Mallory to make sure she got a good
night’s sleep. Mallory gave her a smug smile and nodded. Bernice
turned to me with a smile and bid me goodnight. But her thoughts
were of contempt for me as she left the room.

As was the norm, I stayed in my study
until Mallory came down at around nine in her nightgown and bid me
goodnight. When I heard her settle into bed, I left the mansion. I
waited a short distance away where I could hear what was happening
within. Sure enough, I heard movement in Mallory’s bedroom, the
tinkling of the phone in her room when she made a phone call, along
with a hurried conversation.

Twenty minutes later, a car pulled up
outside the mansion gates. Mallory exited the mansion a few seconds
later and ran toward the car. I was shocked when I saw her fully as
she got into the car, her pretty, delicate face marred with heavy
make-up, hot pants exposing her pale slender legs. The other thing
that shocked me is that the driver was a male in his late twenties.
This wasn’t the first time he had been to the mansion to pick her
up. The car pulled away.

I re-entered the mansion. Bernice was
in her room talking, or, I should say, shouting down the phone. I
heard my name substituted with a few choice insults before I moved
upstairs toward the sound of breathing coming from Mallory’s
bedroom. I entered and stared down at the source of the breathing.
A portable tape player lay on the pillow.

I felt something for the first time
since Luna’s death. Anger.

I went down to my car. There was no
need for me to hurry, for I had seen where they were
headed.

***

They were parked by a bayou beneath
ghostly trees dripping with Spanish moss when I drove up to them.
The headlights of my car cast a flare of amber light across them in
the back seat of the car, but my supernatural vision had seen them
long before then.

I won’t describe what I
saw.

The car headlights startled them
enough for them to disengage from each other, and I saw intense
fear in Mallory’s face when she recognised my car.

I got out and walked toward the car,
giving them enough time to fumble with their clothing. I pulled the
unlocked car door on her side open, took hold of her by the arm and
dragged her out.

“
Go and wait for me in the
car.”

She folded her arms over her chest and
shook her head, scowling.

I stared at her for one long moment,
my anger simmering beneath the surface. She held my gaze for a few
seconds before she looked down. With a fleeting glance at her
companion, she walked over to my car and got in, slamming the door
shut behind her.

I turned my gaze to the fleshy faced,
dark-haired man.

“
Hey,” he drawled. “I
don’t know who you are to her, but she’s old enough to choose her
boyfriends.”

“
Old enough,” I hissed.
“You call
fourteen
old enough?”

He paled visibly.

“
She told me she was
eighteen! I swear, if I’d known there’s no way I would have touched
her.”

For the first time in decades, I
desperately wanted to kill someone. And I could not trust myself to
stay around him.

“
You’ll be hearing from me
again.”

I got back into my car and we drove
home in silence.

Bernice appeared in the corridor the
moment we entered the mansion. She took in my hand on Mallory’s arm
and the anger blazing in my eyes, eyes that had been vacant the
entire time she had known me. She immediately grew
anxious.

“
Mr Wentworth. Is
everything okay?”

“
Yes, Bernice. You go on
back to bed.”

Her gaze was on Mallory, who was
wiping away angry tears. “Are you sure you don’t want me to get the
two of you something to eat, or perhaps some warm milk? Or maybe
some hot chocolate? I’ve—”

It seemed she was going to run through
every single thing in the kitchen, but I interrupted her. “Thank
you. But we will be fine.”

I pulled, or, more accurately, dragged
Mallory along with me toward the study. I paused at the study door,
realising how abrupt I had been. “Thank you, Bernice. I will let
you know if we need you.”

Her anxious gaze was on Mallory as we
entered and closed the door behind us.

In my study, she sat with her arms
crossed and glared at me stonily. Her thoughts were as closed as
her lips when I placed the tape player I found in her room on the
desk in front of her.

“
Clever, very clever.
Unfortunately a heartbeat cannot be duplicated quite as
easily.”

Well, it was good enough
to fool you all these months!

“
Months?”

She paled, but the defiance reasserted
itself. I inhaled and tried to calm my anger. Deciding to move on
to marginally less emotive subject matter, I picked up the tape
player.

“
How long have you known
about me? Or, to be precise, what exactly do you know?”

She merely gave me a withering glance
and then leaned back in the chair with a smug smile on her lips,
her mind still completely blank.

“
Clearly not as much as
you think, if you really believe that little wall can keep me out
of your mind.”

I briefly leaned against the mental
wall she had put up, having no intention of searching her memories,
as I did not want to see the excruciatingly intimate details of her
extracurricular activities. She reacted visibly to the mild
intrusion and screamed out, bringing her hands to her head although
I had already backed away.

Her reaction shook me and for a few
moments, all I could do was stare at her wide-eyed.

When she met my gaze, her eyes were
glistening with tears of anger and of fear. Her mind, or I should
say its surface thoughts, was open once more.

I’ve always
known
, she spat at me mentally.
I would have to be stupid to not know you’re
different.

“
I see,” I
replied.

My attention was only partially on
what she was saying, as now I was caught up in a memory of hers
with Bernice, some weeks old.

Bernice was standing in
the foyer in her dressing gown and slippers, her hair covered by a
black headscarf. It was four o’clock in the morning and she was
shouting at Mallory, demanding to know where she had been and
threatening to call and tell me about Mallory’s nightly
outings.

Mallory glared at her and
then swept past her to the stairs. She stopped then and faced
Bernice, signing rapidly.

Who do you think he’ll believe? His
little white princess or the black help? You’ll be looking for
another job by the end of the week!

Bernice stared at her
stonily. Mallory let the silence linger for a few moments and then
moved to Bernice.

I love you,
she signed.
I don’t want
you to leave. I would be all alone without you.

She wrapped her arms
around Bernice briefly and kissed her on the cheek before she ran
up the stairs to her room, knowing Bernice would not tell me a
thing.

Of all the surprises that night, that
little exchange between her and Bernice was the worst.

After a few moments, I was able to
speak.

“
I have neglected you. For
that, I apologise. But that is still no excuse for your behaviour,
especially the way you spoke to Bernice a few weeks ago. I had no
idea how much she loved you until today.”

I had the satisfaction of seeing her
gaze shift away from mine in guilt.

“
As I said earlier, you do
not know as much as you think you do about what I am. Otherwise you
would know just how close your little friend came to dying this
night.”

She was completely still, her thoughts
retreating slightly.

“
I want you to go upstairs
and bring me all your make-up and any item of clothing that is not
suitable for a girl of your age. And I mean all of it!”

She glared at me before she got to her
feet.

“
There will be no
boyfriends and you’re grounded until I can be sure you can be
trusted to behave like what you are—a fourteen-year-old
child!”

An angry flush crept to her cheeks and
she flounced out of the room. I listened to her stomp up the stairs
to her bedroom and slam the door shut. Half an hour later, she
stamped her way down the stairs and entered the study, her arms
full with two bin liners of clothing and make-up. She threw it on
the floor. She moved to the door then stopped long enough to glare
at me, her eyes shining with rage and tears.

I hate you!

She was gone before I could
react.

I was left alone in the silent study,
shaken by the vehemence behind those words. The sound of her
bedroom door slamming shut moments later caused me to
flinch.

I tried to reassure myself that
countless parents had heard those same words articulated with just
as much heat, but I was still deeply shaken.

About five minutes after Mallory
slammed her bedroom door shut, I heard footsteps muffled by
slippers treading carefully up the stairs and then along the
corridor to Mallory’s room. Mallory’s bedroom door was opened
quietly a few moments later.

They signed to each other, the silence
occasionally broken by Mallory’s sobs. Bernice stayed with her in
her room that night whilst I remained in my study, pondering
everything I had discovered, angry at myself for failing to notice
Mallory had steadily been running out of control for months. Her
friend’s round, fleshy face came to mind and it was an effort to
restrain myself from paying him a visit, one that would see his
battered body covered with earth before the sun rose.

Just before dawn, I entered Mallory’s
room and gazed down at her curled in Bernice’s arms, the two of
them fast asleep. I knew she had told Bernice nothing about what I
was, for she had been keeping my secret for years. But I entered
her mind and modified the conversation we’d had and made her forget
everything she had noticed about my being “different.”

I still felt shaken by the hatred she
displayed before leaving the study and considered erasing that,
too. But it would not be fair. Besides, that hatred was a reminder
for me to stay present and do what I entered into when I signed
Mallory’s adoption papers.

I left the room as dawn seeped into
view and materialised outside in the field of flowers to face the
pain. She was not there waiting for me. She was gone. I could no
longer hide from that fact. She was gone.

***

At first the ferocity of Mallory’s
anger continued to stun and wound. She did not speak to me at all
during the month-long grounding I imposed. But in comparison to the
intensity of Luna’s silent treatments, it seemed extremely trivial.
A few weeks into her punishment, I could even be amused as I
watched Mallory at breakfast one morning. Feeling my gaze on her,
she looked up and gave me a poisonous glare before she returned to
her cereal.