The Skeleton Key Page 6

My eyes widened. ‘But you said I would be able to control it better, especially because I am the Seventh. You said that the Sanguine had that natural predatory ability, that mesmerising effect, but I would learn to become immune to it.’

  ‘I did say that, and it is true, but not now, I’m afraid. It’s because of his blood.’

  ‘His blood?’

  ‘You do remember, don’t you? You drank his blood,’ my great-aunt said patiently. She adjusted her stole.

  ‘But it was only a sip, right? I wasn’t even conscious!’ I protested.

  They’d made me drink it. When I had come to, I’d seen the wine glass sitting there, filled with red stuff, and it’d taken me a moment to register what it was. The idea of having drunk Deus’s blood – anyone’s blood – had been sickening to me. It still was. But Sanguine blood, particularly Deus’s, was powerful and it had worked as an effective antivenene for the paralysing and potentially deadly spider bite I’d suffered. I’d probably have died without it.

  I frowned. ‘It was just a sip, wasn’t it? Tell me it was just a sip.’

  She tilted her head. ‘A little more than a sip. It is very tasty.’

  Ewww.

  ‘That’s why you’re tanned. The blood makes you light sensitive.’

  ‘No!’ I screamed and grabbed my face.

  She stepped towards me and placed a cool hand on my shoulder. ‘Darling, there is no need for hysterics.’

  ‘I have a tan because I’m becoming a vampire. Oh my God!’ I started to shake.

  ‘Language, Pandora. And anyway, you most certainly are not. Goodness, if everyone who sampled ichor happened to turn . . . well, the balance of the undead and the living would become quite a problem indeed. Just use more sunblock for a while. It’s best to stay out of the sun, anyway.’

  I had thought my tan was strange for early spring in Manhattan. ‘So I’m not turning?’ I pressed.

  ‘I should think not.’

  I relaxed a touch. I had to believe she was right about this. I didn’t want to end up like my Fledgling friend Samantha, nibbling on the wooden railings in the house like a teething puppy. Or worse, I didn’t want to end up like Athanasia and her horrible friends.

  I frowned. ‘Wait. Ichor?’

  I’d been raised on my mother’s books on mythology, folklore and the beliefs of different cultures. Ichor was described as the ethereal nectar of the gods – their blood. I recalled the tale of Talos, a giant man made of bronze with huge wings, who had a vein of ichor running through his body, stopped with a nail in his back. As legend had it, when the sorceress Medea pulled out the nail, he bled to death. I hadn’t heard the term used in relation to vampires.

  ‘Wasn’t ichor the word for the “nectar of the gods” in Ancient Greek mythology?’ I asked.

  ‘Indeed it was,’ my great-aunt said and smiled slyly.

  In ancient Crete they had believed in Talos. That was where the legend began, I realised. Perhaps that was why Celia used the term for Deus? He was a little godlike in certain ways and that was what his name meant in Latin. Deus. I thought of him again and shivered. I was so exhausted by our exchange in the antechamber. It had taken a lot to resist the temptation to just stare at him and succumb to his strange magnetism.

  ‘So, will his blood, or ichor, or whatever it is, leave my body?’

  ‘Eventually, yes. But in the meantime, Deus may have more of a hold on you than we’d hoped. Don’t worry, you are strong and his hold will pass.’ She patted me on the arm and left me, heading towards the antechamber. I felt sure she was going to see Deus, the ancient creature whose blood pumped in my veins. I watched her go, feeling exhausted and dispirited. It was late and I needed sleep.

  And still, there was no sign of Lieutenant Luke.

  I stood barefoot on a grassy hilltop, dressed only in my long white nightgown, the one I wore each night. The hem of my gown rustled in the breeze, the light fabric pushing back against my body.

  This hilltop was familiar to my dreams – a place of some nameless primal significance. I shut my eyes and tilted my face to the sun’s comforting rays, letting the sunlight caress my eyelids, and I held my arms aloft, palms open. Next to me, silent and majestic, was a grand tree, roots snaking across the soil at my feet, its bare, twisted branches stretching up to the sky, reaching so much higher than I could. And above us both, all was bright and blue, with only the barest wisp of white cloud moving across the vast, clear, convex sky. In time I heard the tree breathe, and the sigh of the earth, her heart beating in time with mine, the sky above spinning slowly, ever so slowly.

  For a while I held that sense of peace: that sense of somehow being part of the earth, part of that giant, magnificent tree, part of the ground I stood upon.

  And then a visitor came.

  There was a low rumble beneath me, the earth shaking, and I opened my eyes to observe a figure on horseback approaching. I knew immediately that it was Second Lieu­tenant Luke Thomas, astride his mighty white stallion. The steed’s hooves pounded the earth and the vibrations shook my feet and caused the tree at my side to shrink back into its roots. Yet it was Luke, and so I welcomed him.

  ‘Lieutenant Luke! I’m here!’ I tried to call out, relieved to see him. But though I tried, I made no sound. The words died in my throat.

  Smiling, my arms open, I watched him ride closer, a mere speck on the horizon at first, then growing steadily larger. He wore his dark blue uniform, his cavalry sword at his hip, the edges of his dark, fitted frockcoat catching the wind. His posture was formal and upright. The stallion he commanded began to neigh and whinny, and when he stopped before me, his horse bent down, kneeling, its magnificent head bowing. Lieutenant Luke removed his cap and inclined his head to me.

  ‘Thank goodness, Luke,’ I began but again my words would not come out.

  Thunder cracked above us and immediately the bright sky turned a dark midnight blue, the pretty white clouds glowing an eerie green, morphing swiftly into something sinister, some alien force to be feared. They slithered through the air, terrifying and unnatural, coiling as if ready to strike. And that’s when I saw the other figure – a figure in a black suit. I caught the movement out of the corner of my eye as the figure came towards us with unnatural speed, its legs unmoving as it rushed forward. Though all I could see was his silhouette, something about him gave me a terrible sense of foreboding. In seconds he was as close as Luke. So fast. He was already here.

  I stepped back, fear taking me. The tree had been half swallowed up by the ground. Or perhaps it was trying to flee back to the earth.

  ‘Luke, what’s happening?’ I tried to call out, but still I had no voice.

  Luke lifted his head to look at me.

  And I screamed.

  I woke with a start on Friday morning. My bed sheets were in disarray, the lace-edged pillows strewn across the covers and on the floor. I sat up and scratched my head. Somehow, I felt Lieutenant Luke’s proximity, as if we’d just been face to face, yet I had no idea whether or not I’d been visited by him.

  Luke is gone.

  He had not visited me, I recalled: he was still missing. Yet he’d been in my dream and something about him had been horrifying. What was it?

  Hmmm.

  I looked at the bedside clock. It was already past seven, I realised with a jolt. It was nearly time to leave for work. I needed to hustle.

  ‘What happened? The date didn’t go well?’

  It was lunchtime when my friend Morticia approached me at my little cubicle, wide-eyed and eager to hear all about my mysterious date. ‘What happened?’ she asked again. ‘You’ve looked miserable all morning.’

  She’d noticed I’d arrived at the office five minutes late, which was unlike me. Pepper, the deputy editor, had noticed, too.

  Oops.

  Grinning one day, miserable the next. Perhaps it wasn’t so good to have a dead boyfriend.

  Yes, I was more than a bit glum and I shouldn’t have been surprised that Morticia had noticed. I didn’t
know what to make of Lieutenant Luke’s sudden disappearance, and since then I’d been feeling quite out of sorts. I looked around and saw that Morticia and I had a little privacy, giving us a moment to talk. (Pepper was out for lunch and Skye was just plain out. Or under the ground. It was impossible to know.) But what could I tell Morticia, really? I paused, considering my words, and in the end I merely shook my head.

  ‘Oh, Pandora,’ she said, and put a hand on my shoulder.

  I shrugged. ‘I’m okay. I’d just rather not talk about it right now.’

  I didn’t want sympathy so I thought I’d best shut it. My satchel was at my feet and I pulled it out and fished around for the bagel I’d packed. Morticia pulled a chair over from one of the empty desks and we sat side by side, eating our lunches.

  ‘I’m really sorry it didn’t go well,’ she said between mouthfuls, genuinely trying to be helpful.

  ‘It’s fine. I’m going to cover this thing on Saturday night for our social page. Do you know anything about it?’ I said, hitting on the perfect topic to change the subject.

  Who needed to talk about boys, anyway? Boys from the Civil War, who made you feel like you were floating when you kissed . . .

  ‘Oh!’ Morticia exclaimed suddenly, taking me by surprise. She sat up straight and put her sandwich down. ‘So you did score an invite!’ Her eyes were huge, more huge than usual. This thing was obviously a bigger deal than I’d realised. I hadn’t given it a whole lot of thought, with everything else going on. ‘I thought I heard her mention it to you but I was trying not to eavesdrop.’

  I doubted Morticia had tried very hard not to hear.

  ‘Well, I wouldn’t call it an invite,’ I said. ‘I mean, Pepper just wants me to take photos.’

  ‘That is so cool,’ she declared, waving her hands around a little crazily. ‘All the famous people will be there!’

  ‘Really?’ That seemed unlikely, technically speaking. Unless the venue was very large indeed.

  ‘It’s an annual thing,’ she went on excitedly. ‘I’ve always wanted to go.’

  And I’d never even heard of it. Maybe you can go and take the photos, I nearly said, but I held my tongue. I was hardly in a position to reassign my duties.

  I arrived home to Spektor after my day at Pandora, just as the final colours of a purple sunset faded to starry black. My boss Skye DeVille had not shown up all day (again) and, as promised, Pepper had given me her camera along with the address for the party on Saturday, plus a list of names of people to photograph and a media pass to get me in. The list included some pretty famous designers and actors, and the idea of meeting them, even just to photograph, gave me something to look forward to. It seemed possible that Morticia was right about it being an exciting event.

  It wasn’t quite enough to take my mind off Lieutenant Luke’s MIA status, but it was something.

  The walk through Central Park that evening was uneventful and the streets of Spektor looked as uninhabited as a ghost town as I passed Harold’s Grocer and arrived at the front door of the mansion unmolested by my fanged neighbours. Yet when I put my key in the lock I immediately sensed that something was different. I couldn’t say what it was or how I knew, but I was learning to trust my instincts, and my instincts told me something was up.

  My stomach went cold.

  Someone is here.

  Or something?

  Visibility was poor, the street particularly foggy. I looked both ways and pulled some rice from one pocket before I turned the key, unlocking the heavy door, worried some Sanguine supermodel might ambush me. The lobby was in absolute darkness, lights off. No sounds. No one lunging at me. Quickly, I flicked the switch and the big chandelier came on.

  ‘Oh!’ I cried and covered my mouth.

  A woman hung from the chandelier.

  She was dressed from head to toe in black, her long widow’s veil cinched tight at the neck by a knotted rope, looped around the light fixture. Her black crepe veil was bunched up tightly across her face, showing the shape of a nose and the hollow of an open, screaming mouth. For one horrible instant I thought it might be my great-aunt Celia, as she was the only woman I’d ever seen wear a black veil. But the clothing was wrong. The figure hung from the chandelier in a dull, ankle-length black dress with long sleeves and a tight-laced bodice, the skirt made full with dark petticoats, giving her the shape of a funeral bell as she hung lifelessly, her small lace-up leather boots dangling. I recognised it as a turn-of-the-century mourning dress.

  The woman spun slowly, the chandelier twisted to one side, and a thought flashed into my mind: Has she always been there, twisting that chandelier?

  I needed to cut her down. Now.

  The front door of the house slammed shut behind me and I jumped. When I looked again the woman was gone.

  Impossible. She was right there.

  ‘Um, hello?’ I said to the empty lobby. The chandelier was askew, draped in cobwebs. ‘Is anyone there?’

  I was not afraid of ghosts, even faceless ones. Yet my heart was pounding quickly in my chest and my skin had come up in tiny bumps. The woman was gone but the strange feeling remained. What was it exactly? An energy? Or the opposite – something cold and deathly, like a new void in the house?

  ‘Hello? Luke, are you here? Lieutenant Luke?’

  There was no response.

  I knocked on the door and entered Celia’s penthouse, shaken.

  My great-aunt regarded me. ‘Darling, you look like you’ve seen a ghost.’

  I nodded, feeling jittery. ‘I did.’

  She tilted her head and narrowed her eyes. ‘Well, I’m going to make us some tea,’ she announced, and before I could protest she was sauntering towards the kitchen in her elegant slippers with Freyja trailing behind her.

  Celia did make very nice tea, but I wasn’t sure that could fix everything just now. Slowly, I placed my heavy satchel on the floor, took off my coat and hung it up, and slipped off my shoes, trying to absorb what I’d seen and, particularly, my reaction to it. The sight of that woman had really shaken me. It wasn’t just that I’d seen a ghost because I’d been seeing ghosts for as long as I could remember. It was something else. Something about her. Or something about the new strangeness in the house that had seemed to arrive just as Luke had disappeared; just as he’d warned me.

  That mouth. Open. With the black veil pulled tight across it.

  Freyja came over to herd me gently into the kitchen, purring against my ankles and nudging me forward.

  ‘How was work today?’ my great-aunt asked casually over her shoulder as she put the kettle on, calmly absorbed in her ritual.

  I leaned against the doorframe. ‘Work was fine.’ I paused. ‘But there was a woman hanging from the chandelier in the lobby just now.’

  She turned and cocked her head, the veil sitting against her high cheekbones. ‘Well, then. Hanging from the chandelier?’ she said, watching my face. ‘And she is gone now?’

  I nodded. ‘But I did see her. She was there.’

  ‘I have no doubt,’ my great-aunt said. She prepared a tray with the lovely pot and cups, a little jug of milk and some cubes of sugar, and once the tea was ready she walked to the lounge room and sat down in her reading chair, the tray jingling a little. She placed the tray on the little table next to the chair and I perched myself on the edge of the leather hassock.

  ‘The widow Elizabeth Barrett,’ Celia said calmly, waiting for the tea to steep.

  My eyes widened. ‘Dr Edmund Barrett’s widow? You think that was her I saw hanging from the chandelier?’

  ‘Yes, the sad thing. She seems the most likely person. She’d been in deep mourning for a year before she hanged herself on the anniversary of her husband’s death.’

  Oh.

  ‘Some people don’t handle becoming widows very well,’ she said, and I thought of how well Celia had coped all these years. Being a widow hadn’t exactly held her back; though, of course, I knew she had loved her husband very much. It must be incredibly hard to
lose a partner like that. ‘I believe she killed herself in the lobby,’ she said.

  Then it would have been from the chandelier, I thought. There was nowhere else to facilitate such a gruesome end.

  The tea was ready, the pleasant and invigorating scent filling the room, as familiar as anything I’d come to know since moving here. Celia poured me a cup, and I added a sugar cube and a dash of milk and stirred, the little silver spoon clinking against the china.

  ‘It sounds like Mrs Barrett, but I haven’t seen her before,’ I said and took a sip. I remembered Celia mentioning something of her, when she had first explained about the history of the old house. ‘Great-Aunt Celia, the house feels different lately. Lieutenant Luke, before he vanished, said there was something powerful here. Um, you haven’t seen Lieutenant Luke at all?’

  ‘Your soldier? Well, no, not since you left together last night.’

  Celia often called him that – my soldier.

  ‘Though, of course, I don’t normally see him. It is not my gift,’ she added. Celia had gifts of her own, but communication with the dead was not one of them.

  It had been a silly question. Of course, she would tell me if she’d seen him, which she couldn’t unless he was flesh. I was grasping at straws.

  ‘Deus said the same thing, something about a powerful force.’ I paused. ‘Tonight I think I will explore the mansion,’ I said, though the idea did frighten me somewhat, after seeing Mrs Barrett – if that’s who the hanging woman was.

  Celia nodded. ‘I see.’

  ‘Luke has to be here. I just can’t accept that he’s gone.’

  ‘If you cannot accept it, perhaps you are right?’ she replied. ‘If that is what your instincts tell you.’

  ‘Thank you for the cup of tea, Great-Aunt Celia,’ I said when I’d finished. I excused myself and left the lounge room. Then I pulled the skeleton key from my satchel and held it firmly in my palm.

  Right or wrong, I had to find out.

  I took the lift, wrapped in my coat (with uncooked rice in the pockets), warily watching the dusty landings pass through the gaps in the dilapidated ironwork, a battery-operated torch in one hand and the skeleton key in the other. There was no movement and no noise save for the whine and rattle of the old lift. When I reached the lobby I stepped out and listened to the doors squeak shut behind me. Luke had to be somewhere. His spirit was trapped in this house. He couldn’t just vanish.