Page 65 of The Sisters of Crimson House

“I saw nothing,” she heard Sy say before he ran from the room, and she said nothing in response. She couldn’t blame him for running as far away from her as he could.

***

Astrid put her to bed, standing sentry with a mug of tea until she herself was falling asleep, finally taking leave of Charley around 2:00 a.m. Charley watched her go, unwilling to surrender to sleep, unable to rid her mind of Celeste’s ruined face, her sister’s inhuman screams. Sy had held her hand and kissed her, and they’d unleashed a nightmare. Sleep felt like anything but a refuge.

She got out of bed and walked down the hallway, past Miranda’s empty bedroom and down the grand staircase, drawn to Sadie’s parlor like a dream. She shivered as she stood in the entrance, her attention drawn to the ruined fern in the corner. She picked shards of broken pottery and cradled the fern in her arms like it was a child before setting it all down on Sadie’s desk, studying it like the puzzle it was. Had the pot shattering had been a magical by-product of the violence she witnessed in the vision? Or a well-timed explosion to bring them both back to sanity? There were too many questions and no one she could trust for answers. She exhaled, frustrated and scared.

She didn’t like being in this room. If pain was a living thing, it resided here, in that dark corner by the window that called to her. She tried to brush off that watchful feeling now. What had pulled her here?

Maguire.

Of all the revelations unearthed in this room with Sy, this name floated around her thoughts like a relentless spirit. A name Sy had mentioned, the owners of the house that was for sale. Haunted by the ghosts of two broken children. One crossed over. One who was still here but whose heart had never left that childhood bedroom.

She opened Sadie’s desk drawers, rummaging past new clippings and folders full of stories of Crimson House in its glory days. Archived Martha Stewart articles on entertaining. She was very close to being sucked into a piece on Halloween decorations when she found it, the folder marked Guest Lists. Charley laid the folder on the desk and browsed through the pages, a museum of the Bryde Spectaculars of yore under her fingertips. Invitations over the decades. Her heart twisted as she ran her fingers over her mother’s name, Nicole the seer just a memory in letterpress type. Then the roster of names: the Martins and the Selvidges, the Cartwrights and the Maguires.

The Maguires.

Her heart pounded as she looked at the grouping of names. The guest list was broken into categories by donor potential, a bloodless, honest assessment of who would be pouring the most money into the Dennan Family Foundation. The Maguires were listed as the Founder’s Circle for the Dennan Family Foundation. Sy’s foster parents before he was adopted by the Prescotts and moved to Texas.

Sy Prescott was a Dennan recipient.

Charley reeled with the information. Sy was a Dennan kid because someone in his life had disappeared. His mother, Margaret, had disappeared. She’d visited Crimson House, met with Sadie, who later tried—and failed—to find her. The foundation had given him money for a fresh start, to try to mitigate some of the pain of walking through life without his loved ones earthbound. They were the ones Sadie couldn’t save, when the trail had gone cold. Like little Ashley Dennan. Like Margaret Humphreys.

Sy had said her family was the destruction of his.

She looked at her palm, the newly formed fourth mark of the Seeker’s Star red and shiny like a neon sign. She was terrified of her sister, but she was equally terrified of not understanding what was happening. She needed Miranda’s help, and she had an idea of where she might be.

Thirty-Two

October 23, 2008

The park was technically closed after dusk, but Charley made her way down the path in the deepening gloom, strangely feeling more at home than she had in a decade. The path forked at a massive American elm tree with a gnarled growth on its trunk, the mid-century modern art college nestled in the center of the park looming like a dark monolith just beyond. Overton Park was smack-dab in the middle of the city, and Charley treasured the secret heart of the park, the ten-thousand-year-old Old Forest. Walking through the trails when she was a kid, she’d wondered how much these trees had seen, how little she ever would by comparison.

After their parents died, Charley and Miranda holed up in the guest bedrooms of Crimson House, never to return to their small bungalow on Kenilworth that looked out onto Overton Park. It had been sold by Celeste to help cover the costs of running the mansion and ostensibly raising Charley, but losing the house was just another scar across her heart. The park was a place she had avoided ever since losing her parents and their childhood home, but for the first time in ages, Charley felt like she had returned to an old friend. A man-made lake flanked the vast grassy greensward, and out of habit, Charley scanned its perimeter in search of an apparition in blue. A local urban legend claimed that a woman had been stabbed sometime in the 1960s and left for dead, her body later discovered floating in the lake. In the years they had lived in the bungalow on Kenilworth, Charley had looked for the Blue Lady and had never seen her. Her dad said it was just a tall tale. Her mom said there actually was a Blue Lady, but that she hadn’t been stabbed. She’d died of a broken heart. The lake was a bad decision made eternal.

Whatever the case, Charley had never seen her.

Until now.

A woman stood at the edge of the lake, moonlight reflecting off her hair like spun silver. Charley felt her stomach curdle with dread. It certainly could be a fellow late-night trespasser in the park, but as Charley slowly made her way through the greensward, she couldn’t be clear if it was friend or foe. Or the Blue Lady. As she steadily made her way closer, Charley wasn’t sure who she would be more afraid to face. Mere feet from her now, the woman seemed to sense her presence and slowly turned around to face her.

“Hello, Charlotte,” she said.

Charley froze. She did not recognize the voice at first. It had been years since she last heard it, the way she could make even a friendly greeting sound like a warning. “Celeste?”

Celeste nodded at her, the long black hair she always had twisted into a knot now loose around her shoulders, shot through with streaks of white. Her eyes were no longer sad like Charley remembered but fierce, narrowed like she was forever scanning her environment for threats. But most prominent was the scar that started just inches below her right eye, snaking down to her neck and ending just a few inches shy of her jugular. Celeste Bryde in the carved-up but still-living flesh. But how? Charley had seen what happened to her.

How Miranda had happened to her.

How the blood had flowed from her palm as proof.

“When I was your age, I went looking for the lady of the lake,” she said, examining her wrinkled hands with a rueful smile. “Somehow I blinked, and I became her.”

“Where have you been?” said Charley, her voice shaking. All these years later, the wraith that was her aunt still intimidated her, but she didn’t have time for her cryptic riddles. “How are you not dead?”

“That requires a longer answer than I fear we have time for.” Celeste looked past her, her gaze falling on the large oaks lining the perimeter of the park. “I take it you know where your sister is?”

Charley turned and followed her stare. “Yes,” she said plainly. “Home.”