Annis gripped the moonstone. She had no time. In seconds he would take hold of her, and she didn’t know if she could fight him off a second time. Swiftly she whispered the words of Harriet’s cantrip, the lines tumbling over one another so quickly she didn’t know if they would mean anything.
Mothers and grandmothers, guard my way
Every night and every day.
Let no danger me befall,
Nor evil catch me in its thrall.
James paused, one foot in front of the other, his ruined shirt dangling from his hand. He gasped for breath as he peered at her through the dimness. “What—” he began.
One more uncertain step brought him so close to her she could feel the unnatural heat radiating from his body. His long arm reached toward her, the trembling fingers outstretched.
The moonstone pulsed beneath her palm as if it had a heartbeat of its own, pounding in synchrony with her own panicked heart.
She repeated, louder now, faster,
Let no danger me befall,
Nor evil…
She didn’t finish. James’s momentum faltered. His arm dropped to his side, and his eyes rolled back in their sockets. He fell to his knees and then, with an awful groan, to one side.
Annis couldn’t restrain a soft cry, fear for herself giving way to fear for him. She knelt beside him, taking one of his hands to chafe the wrist with her fingers. “James! James?”
He didn’t respond. His eyelids were open, but his eyes were as vacant as if he were dead. She felt the pulse in his wrist and heard the whistle of his breathing. He was alive but senseless.
This tall, heavy man was unconscious on the floor of her bedroom, and there was no one she dared call for help without revealing her secret, and his.
She had never in her life felt so helpless. Clutching the moonstone in her closed fist, she bent her head and focused on calling for assistance. On summoning Harriet.
30
Harriet
The silhouette of Rosefield Hall loomed against the pale, cloudy sky. The sea whispered to Harriet’s right, and to her left the stable block stretched toward the pasture. She could see the folly from her vantage point at the edge of the woods, but she felt the pull of Annis’s summons. She needed to go inside the hall.
Undoubtedly the staff locked the doors at night. She detected no flicker of light in any window, not even on the third floor, where she guessed most of the servants slept. If anyone was watching, she would be visible as she crossed the lawn, but she did it anyway. Whatever awaited within those walls, there was urgency about it. She knew it by the trembling of the ametrine against her breast, and by the sense she had of being tugged, as if she were attached to a rope.
As she hurried across the lawn to the small door in the back of the house, the one she had seen Annis use, she glanced up at the blank, dark windows. Was there a face, there at one of the mullioned windows on the second floor? She slowed, just for a step, but it was gone before she could be certain.
She reached the door and tried the latch. As she had expected, it was locked. How many such doors were there? Could she count on any servant having been careless, forgetting one? It seemed unlikely.
She drew a slow breath to calm her heartbeat and focus her mind. She placed the flat of her left hand on the chilly wood of the door, bent her head, and closed her eyes. She placed her right hand on the amulet as she called upon her special gift. Upon the knowing. She couldn’t hurry it. She had to let the knowledge seep into her mind at its own pace.
She waited. Off in the darkness the breakers rolled against the shore. In the shrubberies night birds twittered. Filtered moonlight gleamed on the gables above her head, and a horse stamped in the stables. Harriet observed all these things, but at a distance. She kept her mind as blank as she could, as open as she could, and—
There it was. A window to her right, left open to allow fresh air into a stuffy room.
She had never understood how the knowing worked. Did part of her mind break free from her physical self? Possibly. Or possibly it was that all minds, if they were open enough, sensitive enough, could perceive things not obvious to the eye.