Of Wicked Blood (The Quatrefoil Chronicles #1) - Olivia Wildenstein Page 0,83
okay?”
Papa doesn’t answer.
I swallow back the wad of cookie and bile. The groac’h in the well was crazy, but at least she was contained. Nothing encloses this ghost. Unless the spice blend can truly keep him in place . . .
“And the Rolands’ house?” I watch the ghost study his ex-wife. “Why are we meeting there?”
There’s a beat of silence before Papa says, “Because that’s where Matthias is buried.”
The phone slides out of my fingers and falls onto the blackened doormat.
Papa’s voice rises from the floor. “Adrien thinks Gaëlle needs to lead the ghost back to its bones to defeat it.”
This isn’t just some projection of Gaëlle’s worst fear. This is . . . this is . . .
Her husband isn’t gone. He’s dead.
And Papa knew.
Gaëlle knew.
How?
How do they know he’s dead?
How do they know where he’s buried?
My questions must register on my face, because Gaëlle whispers, “It was an accident. Oh my God, I don’t want to do this.” Her voice breaks. “I don’t want to face him again.”
27
Slate
I stare down at the text ordering me to meet the Quatrefoil crew. There’s a quick explanation about the ghost of Gaëlle’s ex-husband being the Air piece, along with the instructions to go to his resting place. But what gets me are the words at the Roland family home.
Why the hell is Gaëlle’s ex buried at my family’s home?
And also, what the actual fuck: I have a family home? Another thing the Great and Terrible Rainier de Morel failed to mention. Okay. Maybe, just maybe, I could give the guy the benefit of the doubt. Maybe the house was sold right after my parents’ deaths and a new family’s living there. Maybe Gaëlle’s ex was part of that new family. Maybe when De Morel says the Roland family home he really means the old Roland family home.
After no luck detecting a piece in the Beaux-Arts building or in town—I walked around Brume holding my middle finger out as an antenna, which didn’t make me any new friends . . . I got lots of tsks and shocked looks from people misinterpreting the gesture—I headed back to the dorms to grab a clean shirt, fresh bandages, and a double dose of painkillers.
The address is not in the center of town but on the edge of First Kelc’h, near the forest. It takes a good twenty minutes to walk there from the university dorms.
At the end of a long path, a stone house with a steeply pitched roof and red shutters materializes through the mist. It’s nowhere near as large and pretentious as the Manoir de Morel, bigger than a cottage but no castle. Something straight out of a fairytale with its jumbled ivy crawling up the walls and lace curtains peeking from behind nine-paned windows. All that’s missing are the seven dwarves.
It’s charming, that’s what it is. Not my style at all. I like clean, modern lines, bay windows, and city-life right outside my door, so I don’t know why seeing the damn place makes my chest hurt and my throat feel raw. Like this pile of gray stones is some piece of me that I lost and have now found. Complete and utter bullshit. I was too young when my parents died to have a connection to this place.
Bastian would love it, though. It’s perfect for a romantic like him. Yeah, he’d go full hog with a wife and 2.5 kids, a bichon frisé, and rows of tulips planted on either side of the front door. Even Spike might like it. It faces south, so if I put him in the front window, he’d get to sun his prickly ass all day.
If the mist ever clears up, that is.
There’s really something wrong with me. There’s no way I’d move to Dismalville. Why am I even entertaining the thought?
A miniature version of the house sits at the end of the drive. Voices drift from beyond it, so I go around and find my crew standing—for the most part—in a loose circle amidst a wide expanse of unsullied snow. A mass of evergreens stretches far and wide, corralling the backyard like a fortified wall.
Rainier eyes me from atop his souped-up snowmobile. “Slate’s here.” He doesn’t utter the word finally, but it’s there. On his mind.
Asshat.
“Let the games begin,” I bellow with great solemnity as I stroll over to the huge X of sticks laid out between my crew.
“It’s not a game.” Adrien’s firmly aligned lips barely shift around his answer.