look exposed, but with Alden so close Charles felt perilously, truly
exposed.
Shrugging his regrets, the bearded man winked at Charles and
followed Alden off the porch and onto the lane where they walked
toward town.
Charles shivered in spite of the afternoon heat. He had decided
that whatever this Ladon Vitae was planning, he really did not
want to find out how they worked. It was one thing to come to
terms with dying a natural, if early, death. Another to face it in a
burning building, to watch it threaten the people he cared about
most in the world.
Few things scared him anymore, but Alden filled him with a
terror bigger than he had ever known, because Alden had found
the only remaining things that could hurt Charles: Thom,
Minnie, and Cora.
He leaned to the side and tapped three times against the win-
dow to the library.
Immediately Thom, Minnie, and Cora were outside. “Where
are they headed?” Thom asked.
“Toward town.”
He nodded, and Charles noticed an odd bulge beneath his
vest. “What have you got there?”
Thom avoided his eyes, but Minnie gasped, turning to Cora.
“You didn’t!”
Cora glared at her. “I did, and you’ll keep your mouth shut
about it.”
A movement in the corner of his vision caught Charles’s eye,
and he had just enough time to see Arthur, melting between trees,
already following Alden and the bearded man.
“Arthur’s beaten us!” he said, standing and hurrying down the
steps.
“No, Charles, you stay here.” Thom grabbed his elbow, trying
to turn him back toward the boardinghouse.
“And leave me unprotected and alone? That’s precisely what
they have in mind.” Charles thought no such thing, but he was not
staying here.
“Come on, we’re going to lose him!” Minnie ran ahead, the
ribbons from her hat trailing behind her.
“Blast that girl,” Cora muttered, taking Charles’s arm and
going as fast as she dared.
“Everyone follows my lead,” Thom said when they caught up
to Minnie. At every bend he slowed and peered cautiously ahead.
“We only want to see who he is meeting with and where. Then we
go to the sheriff and demand he listen to us. My father’s name isn’t
worthless, and even if they don’t believe us outright, I doubt this
Ladon Vitae group wants to be noticed. And if the sheriff doesn’t
scare them off . . .”
He trailed off darkly, his hand drifting to his vest.
Charles did not like the bulk in Thom’s vest. It made the ach-
ing in his chest sharper than ever. Thom was going to get himself
in trouble. That’s why Charles needed to come, though every part
of his body was screaming in agony, begging him to lie down right
here on the road.
They were as stealthy as they could be, following two men in
broad daylight through a summer resort town. When they nearly
knocked Arthur down as he slid out from a shadowed stoop, they
were all shocked that Minnie was the first — and loudest — to
curse in surprise.
“Go home,” Arthur hissed.
“Make me,” Minnie responded, glaring at him with an inten-
sity he’d never seen.
Charles felt suddenly, painfully lonely.
“We’re losing them.” Cora pushed past, hurrying down the
street with Charles on her arm. He wished she’d walk with a little
less determined purpose.
“There! Into the same teahouse as before!” Thom nodded in
grim triumph. “Let’s go get the sheriff.”
They turned and, Arthur and Minnie quietly arguing in the
rear, made their way to the sheriff’s office. Cora stomped up
the stairs, pushing open the door without knocking. A man stood
with his back to them, and Cora exclaimed in relief.
“Daniel! Oh, good. We need your help.”
Daniel turned around, and Cora screamed in horror.
face an expressionless imitation of a man’s. He lifted a gun and,
without blinking, pointed it directly at Thom.
Arthur slammed into Thom, knocking him out of the way as
a bang and the scent of gunpowder assailed Charles’s senses.
“Run!” Arthur shouted, pulling Thom up and dragging him
toward the door. Daniel lurched toward them, his movements
stiff and awkward as though he wasn’t quite in control of his
muscles.
Cora grabbed Charles roughly by the arm and they tripped
down the stairs, bursting onto the street outside. “The church!”
Minnie shouted, turning and sprinting down the sidewalk, elbow-
ing a surprised and angry older woman out of the way.
Charles and Cora followed. Thom, glancing back, glared
darkly. “You go! Arthur and I will try to draw him off.”
Before Charles could protest, Cora had tugged him after Min-
nie, and they were running along toward her. She darted through
crowds and sidewalk stalls, heedless of the gasps of indignation
that followed her.
Charles wanted to help Thom.
He wanted to protect the girls.
But he could do neither because he couldn’t breathe —
He couldn’t, he couldn’t, he couldn’t breathe.
“Oh, Charles!” Cora cried out as he slumped against a wooden
vegetable cart and slid to the ground, gasping for the air that
would not fill his lungs, clutching at his chest as though he could
tear the pain in his heart out.
Bright spots filled his vision as the edges of it dimmed, but
before it faded to black he was lifted up as he heard Alden say in
an oil-slick voice, “That’s all right, ma’am. I’ll take care of the boy.
Come along, Cora. There’s a good girl.”
One Week Later
twenty
M
innie wouldn't wait in the church. She ran back
along the sidewalk, retracing her route.
Where had the others gone?
Her panic rising with every second, she searched desperately.
Cora. Charles. Thomas. Arthur.
No one! Where had they gone?
A hand came down heavily on her shoulder, another over her
mouth as she was yanked into the narrow alley between the chem-
ist’s shop and the post office. Whoever had her held her squeezed
against his chest, grasping her tightly around the waist and pin-
ning her arms at her side.
“Well now,” a voice, heavy with the scent of garlic, breathed in
her ear. “I’ve caught one, too. I think it’s my turn to choose a prize.
I’ve seen you with the boys. Kisses as free as spring rain. You won’t
mind.” He wheezed a laugh and Minnie felt a coarse beard scratch-
ing at the bare skin at the base of her neck.
She stomped on his foot as hard as she could, and, when his arm
loosened, she grabbed the knife from under her skirt and turned.
She’d misjudged the space between them. The blade slid into
his chest with a sickeningly wet sound.
“Oh,” Minnie said, her voice soft and calm in spite
of the hor-
rible disconnect from reality she felt.
The bearded man looked down, his own eyes open wide in
surprise.
Minnie pulled on the knife — it gave more resistance than she
would have expected — and it came free with a spurt of dark blood.
The bearded man looked at her.
He smiled.
She turned and ran, the bloody knife still clutched in her fist.
She didn’t know what to do. All she could think of was the soft,
wet give of his body beneath her knife, and the way he’d said, “I’ve
caught one, too.”
Too.
She was back at the church, pacing the steps, before she knew
it. She kept repeating their faces — Cora, Arthur, Thomas,
Charles — wondering who was gone.
She wondered if she’d just killed a man.
She wondered if she cared.
Wiping the knife on her dress, she put it back in the makeshift
sheath against her leg. If something had happened to anyone she
loved, she wouldn’t care if she’d killed him. She would never care.
She would do it again.
“Minnie!”
Her heart bright with hope that hurt like pain, she looked
up to see Arthur, her Arthur, running toward her, followed by
Thomas. And then she looked past them and saw no one, and the
hope crashed into terror and despair.
“They aren’t with you,” she said.
“Where is my brother?” Thomas demanded, putting his hands
on her shoulders and shaking her. “Where is he?” His face was
shadowed in the dimming evening light. There was already a large
bruise blooming on his cheekbone.
Minnie ignored him, looking to Arthur, pleading silently with
him to make it not true. He would produce Cora and Charles. He
would have already saved them.
Minnie saw the gun was now in Arthur’s hand, his eyes fixed
on a point to the left of her.
For a brief moment she wanted to sink to the ground in
despair, to give up, to be anyone but herself. This was not a story
she wanted to tell. It was not the story she wanted to be in. She had
dreamed so many times of danger and intrigue, weaving imagin-
ings around herself so tightly she could no longer see reality.
Had she created this horror, then? Had she wished it upon all
of them?
Steeling her shoulders, she pushed Thomas’s hands away. “If I
knew, I wouldn’t be here! They’ve been taken. We have to get
them back!”
“Why is there blood on your skirt?” Arthur said, a note of
unaccustomed panic in his voice.
“I’m not hurt.” She glared at him and then at Thomas, daring
either of them to question her further. They didn’t, just as she
didn’t question why Arthur held the gun.
“The teahouse,” Thomas said, twitching, already moving in
that direction. “They meet at the teahouse!”
“They won’t be there.” Minnie knew for certain. That had been
the trap, the lure. Whatever Alden and his friends had planned,
they were not deeds for teahouses and towns, certainly. “Arthur, I
need you to tell me everything you know about the Ladon Vitae.”
His voice came out a dead whisper. “No.”
“We don’t have time for secrets! They have my sister!”
“I know!” He choked on the words, looking at her with wild
fear in his eyes. “But if I tell you, if you know, then you’ll be tainted,
too. I can’t let that happen, Minnie. I have to keep you safe.”
She held up her hand, still stained with blood. “We’re not safe
anymore. None of us. It’s too late for that.”
“I can’t lose you. I love you.”
The words charged through her like lightning, a physical sensa-
tion she felt to her fingertips. She stood on her tiptoes and pulled his
face down, meeting his lips with her own in a kiss so longed and
hoped for it was more an act of desperation than passion.
He looked dazed as she pulled back, still holding his face so
that he couldn’t break eye contact. She locked him there and didn’t
let him go. “You will never lose me.”
Finally he nodded, swallowing painfully. “We need some-
where old. If this is one of the places they visit, they’ll have a
history here and they’ll use it. There are certain places they con-
sider powerful, and they come back to them over and over again.
That’s one of the ways my father tracked them.”
Thomas cleared his throat. Minnie had forgotten he was right
there. She didn’t care. He nodded toward the church. “Isn’t this
one of the oldest buildings?”
Arthur shook his head. “Older. We’re talking centuries.”
“But the town isn’t that old!”
They both looked toward Minnie. She ran through every
structure, every building, but they were right. Nothing was older
than one hundred years. Nothing had the kind of deep-rooted
history that Arthur was talking about. It would need to predate
the town, predate the first settlers, even.
And then she knew.
“The caves!” she said, immediately breaking into a run. “They
were used for rituals!”
“I thought that was just a story!” Arthur said, running to catch
up so that he and Thomas flanked her.
“Everything is just a story. Stories are the only things that
matter.”
Minnie prayed silently that they would make it in time to
rewrite the ending.
July, 1982
twenty-one
T
he low tones of an argument echoed around cora.
They were punctuated by the slow, maddeningly arrhyth-
mic dripping of water from the cave ceiling into pools
around them. She sat on the ground, unforgiving shards of rocks
beneath her, with Charles’s head cradled in her lap. He was start-
ing to get some color back, and his breathing seemed less labored,
but she wanted to get him to a doctor right away.
Unfortunately, their way was blocked. They were being kept
by Alden, Mary, the woman she assumed to be Constance, and
several other people she didn’t recognize but who seemed vaguely
familiar, as though she’d passed them on the street. Alden stood
nearest to the way out, his tall frame almost pushing his head
against the cavern roof. Around him, carved into the rock, were
designs Cora had mistaken for water grooves, but that she
could now see were symbols and letters, painstakingly created to
blend in.
Mary, ignoring the heated exchange between Alden and
Constance, drifted toward Cora, trailing her finger along the rocks.
She looked down and smiled tenderly at Charles. “Don’t
worry,” she said.
“Of course I’m worried,” Cora hissed, too angry to be fright-
ened of the woman who had plagued her nightmares for years.
“Charles will die if we don’t get him help.”
“Oh, he’s going to die anyway. Didn’t you know?” Mary
looked up, her wide eyes crinkled with sympathy.
“I know he’s sick, but it doesn’t mean he has to die!”
“No, child, he’s going to die tonight.” Sig
hing heavily, Mary
sat down next to them, then put her head next to Charles’s in
Cora’s lap. Cora wanted to shove it away, but some mad, lonely
fierceness in Mary’s face stopped her.
Mary reached out and stroked Charles’s hair. “Lucky,
sweet boy.”
“Did I kill my father?” Cora whispered, staring at Mary.
Mary shifted so she looked up into Cora’s face. She frowned.
“Did you? I thought you were a nice girl.”
“That day I fell out of your tree. You told me death was chas-
ing me. I ran home and then my father died. Did it — did death
follow me and take him instead?”
“It doesn’t work that way.”
“You mean, you didn’t send death after me?”
Mary laughed, the sound ringing through the cave. “If I could
command death, none of us would be here.”
Cora let out a shaking breath. It wasn’t her fault, then. She
hadn’t brought tragedy to her home. It had found them all on its
own. For some reason random pain was more comforting to her
than pain that could be traced to a definite cause.
“Thank you,” she said, nodding at Mary.
“Mary, darling, come away from there.” Alden glared reproach-
fully at her, and Cora had the sudden urge to draw Mary closer.
She put her arm around Mary’s fragile shoulders.
“See, that is my point exactly.” Constance held a handkerchief
to her nose as though the entire scene offended her every sensibil-
ity, including smell. “You have demonstrated an inability to choose
wisely when it comes to your pets. The girl never should have been
involved. She’s a local; she’ll be missed. This is neither the time nor
the place for games you have never played well.”
“Hear, hear,” a tall, exotic-looking man said, nodding toward
Constance. “We should be deciding how best to expand our
influence.”
Alden sneered. “Is that wise? I should think we’d want to be
quiet for the next few years, given our elements in play in Europe.
Am I the only one who thinks long-term?”
“And that’s why you’ve kidnapped another girl? Long-term