13 Treasures (32 page)

The chest of drawers yielded no answers. Fabian closed the last drawer clumsily, clothes spilling out. In frustration he kicked at one of the boxes which he had not bothered to push back under the bed. It landed with a thud, and he flinched as footsteps came thundering back down the hallway.

“
Warwick!
”

Amos appeared in the doorway. His sunken eyes were pits of madness.

“I didn’t do it!” he spat. “I keep telling them it wasn’t me. She ran away!”

“I… I know,” Fabian whispered. He began to back away, toward the servants’ door.

Amos walked jerkily to the unmade bed and sat down.

“I loved her, I loved her,” he repeated, rocking softly. His withered hand moved across the bed-clothes and slipped beneath the pillow. It was all Fabian needed.

With a speed that surprised himself he sprang forward and flung the pillow aside. There, beneath the space where his grandfather laid his head every night, a lock of hair was looped like a thin black noose. Guilt eroded him like acid rain as he tore the lock of hair from the old man’s frail fingers.

Amos cried out like a wounded animal.

Fabian made his escape through the servants’ door, his grandfather’s cries ringing in his ears. He emerged from behind the tapestry, waiting a moment to make sure the coast was definitely clear. Hearing nothing but Amos’s tortured wailing, he slid out of the alcove—and collided with a hard body that was standing just around the corner.

Fabian gasped as he looked up.

“W-what are you doing here? I thought y-you’d gone hunting!”

“Change of plans,” Warwick hissed, taking in his son’s ripped and bloody clothes. “I decided to come back early—and a good thing too, by the look of it!” He grabbed Fabian’s shoulder roughly. “Now you better tell me what
you’re
up to this time of night!”

Fabian opened his mouth to speak, but no words would come out.

“
Explain yourself!
”

“Warwick!” Amos called out.

Warwick glared at his son. Then, still holding on to his shoulder, he marched him along the hallway to Amos’s room.

“What is it, father?” His usually gruff voice was surprisingly gentle.

Amos shuffled to the door, his shoulders shaking wretchedly as he began to sob.

“He took it… he
took
it.”

Warwick caught sight of the hair in Fabian’s hand, and a flicker of recognition crossed his face. “What are you doing with that? What do you want with your grandmother’s hair?”

Fabian instinctively held the hair behind his back.

“It’s not… it’s not my grandmother’s hair.”

“Give it to me!” Amos sobbed. “I promised her I’d keep it forever!”

Warwick’s eyes widened. “Where’s the girl?”

Fabian froze.

“
Where’s Tanya?
”

“She’s… she’s in the woods!” Fabian croaked, unable to contain it any longer.

Warwick’s face went completely white. Without a word, he grabbed Fabian’s arm and wrenched the lock of hair out of his grasp.

“What are you doing?” Fabian cried. “Give it back!” He raced after his father, who was already halfway down the stairs, leaving Amos sobbing behind. He caught up with him on the first-floor landing, and tried to snatch Morwenna’s hair from his father’s hand.

Warwick lashed out angrily.

“Give it back!” said Fabian. “You don’t understand!”

His father turned and shook him like a dog shaking a rat. “You little fool! It’s
you
who doesn’t understand! Do you realize what you’ve done? All these years we’ve been working to protect her—and now you’ve led her straight into danger!” Warwick turned and continued down the stairs, slowing only to step over Spitfire at the foot of the grandfather clock.

Fabian felt his knees give way beneath him as the truth finally dawned. Warwick knew everything. “We didn’t know,” he said feebly. “We were just trying to help!”

“
Help?
Who did you think could be helped?”

“Both of them! Amos and Morwenna!”

“They’re beyond saving! Amos’s life was over the day the rumors started! And as for Morwenna Bloom, did you even consider the consequences if she should come strolling out of the forest, fresh-faced and fourteen years old after fifty
years
? They can’t be saved, either of them!
They could never be saved!
”

Fabian could not answer. His father’s words pounded heavily in his skull. A door creaked from the first floor, then Florence’s face appeared over the banister. She looked haggard and half-asleep, and was in her nightgown. “Warwick? What’s going on? Is everything all right?”

“Everything’s fine,” Warwick said, his tone flat. He gave Fabian a look that warned him to keep quiet. “Just this one, getting up to mischief as usual.”

“Oh,” said Florence, giving Fabian a sour glance. “Well, I’ll see you in the morning, then.”

Fabian stared at his father as Florence’s bedroom door closed. “You’re not going to tell her?”

Warwick pulled on his boots. “No. I’m not.”

“She has a right to know!”

“She’ll know soon enough,” said Warwick, grimly. “And when she does—if Morwenna succeeds, it’ll destroy her.”

Fabian blinked back tears of shame and checked his watch. It was seven minutes to twelve. “We’re running out of time!”

“You think I don’t know that?”

Warwick left the house through the front. Fabian followed him and watched in confusion as his father stalked around the side of the house toward his den.

“What are you doing?” said Fabian. “We need to go back to the woods, now!”

Warwick threw open the door to the den. “Get in there!”

Fabian stepped forward hesitantly. Never before had his father allowed him anywhere near his work-room, let alone inside it, but as Warwick shoved him between the shoulder blades he fell through the door and all became clear.

The far wall was stacked with cages from top to bottom, one on top of the other. Inside the cages were fairies. In the largest cage at the bottom of the stack were two of the ugliest creatures he had ever seen. The taller of the pair, who had a somewhat toadlike quality about him, grasped the bars and grinned.

“Don’t just stare,” he said. “The key’s over there!”

“Where’s the other goblin?” Fabian asked, feeling dazed. “Tanya said there were three of them.”

“Brunswick poses no threat. He’s part human. A changeling. He simply mimics the other two because it’s all he knows.”

Fabian surveyed the rest of the cages. There were easily a dozen, each containing one or more fairies. In one a wizened little creature with a cane sat clutching a teabag as if its life depended on it. The hearthfay was in another—a tiny, ugly girl in a dish-rag dress peering out from behind a curtain of long hair. Her face brightened as he looked at her, and she gave him a shy, pleading look before huddling into herself once more.

Warwick grabbed his air rifle from the opposite wall and began loading it.

“Why are they in cages?” Fabian whispered.

“Because that’s what I’m paid for!” said his father. “And one of them has betrayed us!” He grabbed a bunch of keys from the mantel—next to which was a large vat of a familiar looking gray-green liquid.

“But how…?” said Fabian, suddenly starting to feel very sick. “How come they haven’t escaped?”

“The cages are iron. They can’t escape until I release them.”

“All this time,” said Fabian. “You knew what really happened to Morwenna Bloom.”

Warwick slipped his hunting knife into his belt.

“And all this time the hair was there, right under my very nose. Florence always suspected that Morwenna might have been clever enough to leave something behind to preserve the pact—and herself.” He examined the lock of hair carefully, then folded it and put it in his pocket. “The pact was created in the woods where the magic is strongest. Only there can it be destroyed.”

“But it’s nearly midnight!” Fabian cried, almost beside himself with panic.

“There is still time,” said a voice that Fabian did not recognize.

“Raven,” Warwick exclaimed.

Fabian spun around and saw three small figures standing on the ledge of the open window: one male, one female, and the other a mangy creature with moth-eaten wings. It was the female who had spoken. He took in her feathered gown and her chiseled features.
The raven.

“She’s in the forest,” said Warwick. “We’ve got to leave now.”

Raven nodded. “There’s no time to waste. But there’s something you need to know—Feathercap is gone.”

“We have not seen or heard from him since yesterday,” said Gredin.

Warwick’s lips were pressed into a thin line.

“How do you know you can trust them?” Fabian asked. “Why aren’t
they
in cages?”

Warwick had already left the den. “They’re on our side.”

Fabian ran outside. He was starting to feel strangely detached from reality, as if he had stumbled into an alternate universe where nothing was what it seemed. His father was not a groundskeeper, he thought numbly. His father was not a caretaker. His father was a fairy hunter.

Warwick sprinted to the mud-spattered Land Rover. “Get in!”

Fabian fell into the passenger seat with barely enough time to shut the door before Warwick released the hand brake and sped toward the open gates of the manor, spraying grit into the air behind them.

“I just hope we make it in time.”

In her room at the back of the house, Florence’s eyes fluttered open at the screech of the Land Rover speeding urgently through the night. It sounded like Warwick, she thought drowsily; but her eyes closed again as sleep pulled at her. Muttering softly, she shifted position. It couldn’t be, she reasoned. Warwick watched the woods and guarded the house most nights—but he always went by foot. Always.

She drifted further away; to a place free of thought and worry. She was tired, dog-tired. Sleep had never come easily when her granddaughter was in the house. Until tonight.

Ironically, this was to be the best night’s sleep she’d had in a long time.

Tanya’s limbs were aching. Every inch of her was tired from fighting, but her bonds had not given in the slightest. Finally her body sagged against the tree in despair. Red wasn’t coming. No one was coming.

“The poem was a clever touch. You knew we’d try and solve the mystery, didn’t you?”

Morwenna stepped toward her, the motion reminiscent of a snake slithering toward its prey. “Yes, I did. Though I would never have thought of it if it were not for my guardian.”

“What guardian?” said Tanya, fear creeping back into her. “What are you talking about?”

Morwenna laughed. “All born with the second sight are appointed a guardian from the fairy realm—whether they are aware of it or not. I suspect that you were not?”

Tanya shook her head.

“The guardians I speak of serve the purpose of protecting our best interest. My best interest was finding you.”

“Then who is my guardian?” said Tanya. “Why weren’t my best interests protected?”

“Oh, they were,” said a familiar voice. “You were protected. Or at least, for as long as I allowed you to be.”

“
You!
” Tanya whispered.

Feathercap emerged from the shadows.

“It took a long time for me to get you here.
I
delivered the poem.
I
took the newspaper clipping from Amos’s room and put it into the book for you to find. And I gave you a reason to hold on to the witch’s compass. Without my interest, you would have discarded it.”

“It was you,” Tanya realized. “On the bus that day. You wanted to buy the compass from us.”

“No, I
pretended
to want to,” said Feathercap. “Because I knew then that you would keep it. It was easy. All of it, so very easy. I knew you wouldn’t be able to resist following the clues, trying to solve the mystery of the missing girl. You and your silly little friend.”

“So this is what you’ve all wanted, all these years? To lure me here, for this? For
her
?”