Autumn (5 page)

             
“How do we know you haven’t done something to the young lady?” he snarled.

             
The proprietor looked aghast. “We run a respectable establishment here, sir, and no one has ever gone missing from our grounds before! While we are truly saddened and upset, we are doing all we can!”

             
The large man did not seem appeased and the general air was filled with a tension so thick that Arabel felt no one was safe. It was as if the grey swirling energy was baiting them, laughing at their efforts somehow. Arabel knew she and Eli had to leave, and soon, as events were going to take a darker turn, so she ordered food to take with them and quickly packed up her small haversack.

             
The ghostly woman in grey was standing at the window, peering out anxiously.

             
“Let me know if you see anything,” Arabel said to her wryly, and then turned and vacated the premises.

             
The ride back to Blue Jay Hollow was uneventful and Arabel and Eli spoke very little, each lost within their own respective thoughts.

             
Arabel received no further intuitions in the matter of the missing girl, the dead woman, or the three mysterious men and the grey swirling energy. All Arabel knew was that she desired a hot bath and a good meal, and directly following those, the haven of her own, sweet bed. Arabel wondered if she was shallow, to be yearning for these small comforts when one girl had lost her life and another might very well be fighting for hers at this precise moment.

             
Eli glanced at Arabel. She was frowning as she rode and her black hair was slicked to her forehead from the precipitation. She looked so young and vulnerable that he wanted to comfort her but there seemed to be nothing to say. Eli sighed and wished again that Klara had been located and that their inquiries about the grey eyed man would have yielded some answers. Unfortunately instead of enjoying answers, they now had more questions than they’d had prior to setting out upon their journey.

             
Eli knew they were both tired of traveling, just as he knew they were both discouraged and worried. He wondered if it had all begun with the finding of Lady X or if something had been going on prior to that, some hidden intrigue only now coming to light. The thought jarred Eli. It rang within him as a very real possibility and despite how much the intuition disquieted him, he could not seem to let it go.

             
“Do you think Lady X was the first?” he questioned.

             
Arabel glanced over at Eli, as if remembering suddenly that she was not alone.

             
“I hadn’t thought of that,” she responded slowly. “I’m not sure. Why do you ask?”

             
“It’s been bothering me for some time now,” Eli admitted. “Perhaps the story of Lady X leaving her husband for her lover is all a lie. After all, who is her husband? Why has he not stepped forward to claim the body?”

             
“A good question,” Arabel replied, wondering what the update from Chief Constable Bartlin would be.

             
“And where’s her damn lover, then?” 

             
Murphy Estates came into view and Whipsie let out a delighted whinny.

             
“Someone’s glad to be home,” Eli declared as they cantered toward the stable.

             
The stable master spotted them immediately and came over to take the reins. Arabel dismounted thankfully and gave Whipsie a quick lump of sugar and a few strokes of appreciation before the stable master led the horses away for their rubdowns.

             
Eli turned to Arabel once they were alone. “I can help you tomorrow evening if you like,” he offered.

             
Arabel smiled. “Come for supper. My grandmother will be at her club tomorrow night so you can keep me company.”

             
Eli smiled back. He put his hand on Arabel’s arm, tentatively. The colours jumped to life in front of Arabel’s eyes – the blue, the green, the red infused with pink. Arabel felt suffused with energy, and warm, as if blushing.

             
“See you then,” Eli said lightly, affording her one of his slow honeyed grins before turning away to enter the stable and resume work.

             
For a moment Arabel simply stood there, watching, as the colours slowly faded and Eli’s lanky frame shrank from view. When the colors had completely disappeared, she turned and made her way up the tree-lined drive to the main house to see Shelaine before venturing home. Arabel hoped she would get lucky with a quick visit with her friend and then, perhaps more importantly, be able to sneak back into the house undetected by her grandmother.

             
Arabel was lucky. Incredibly lucky. Grandmother Amelia Bodean was in a prayer circle and not to be disturbed.  Arabel knew ‘prayer circle’ was generally code for ‘inebriated’ so she was able to make it to her room without interrogation. She had yet to understand how a prayer circle was formed with just one participant but it was folly to question her grandmother and Arabel was not foolish.

             
Morna, their housemaid, was a plucky, motherly woman given to gossip and exaggeration but today even she didn’t need to embellish upon the horror of the last day’s findings.

             
“They say she was…forced, if you know what I mean,” she was saying now to Arabel as brushed out her long hair with a fancy silver paddle brush. “Poor thing. Glad she wasn’t innocent!”

             
Arabel turned to look at Morna. “Who says this?” she demanded.

             
“Why, everyone,” Morna replied, “and there’s not a one to claim her body, even! The Chief said he thinks her husband’s folk are from outside The Corvids, so who knows when they’ll claim the poor lass. Not that anyone rightly knows who or where that husband is, mind you, or where her own dear folk might be.”

             
Morna worked at a resistant knot in Arabel’s shiny hair, pulling her head this way and that. She tsked under her breath. “What’ve you done to your hair, missy?” she queried. “You’re all in knots, and you, not sleeping in your own bed last night!”

             
“Well it wasn’t what you think,” Arabel returned with a smirk, for even she knew the facts of life.

             
Morna finished up the brushing without further salacious comment but she did send a few sidelong glances at Arabel before she went to draw Arabel’s bath. Clearly there was more to this story than she was being told. Morna sniffed, a little put out that Arabel didn’t want to confide her womanly adventures to her, seeing as she told Arabel all of the juiciest gossip and even if she thought she might get in trouble with the sharing, Morna never omitted the best details.

             
“How long has the prayer circle been going on for this time?” Arabel asked.

             
Morna let out a long suffering sigh. “Mrs. Johnston has been locked in the parlour for the best of two days now. We leave the supper trays outside the door.” Morna shrugged her sturdy shoulders.  “I’m glad you’re home though, what with that girl from Magpie Moor gone missing and all!”

             
“What have you heard of that?” Arabel asked sharply, unaware that word would have traveled so quickly through the townships.

             
“She’s another one like the one from the Priory,” Morna said. “That’s the story I’ve been hearing.” She placed a fluffy white towel down beside the rim of the bathtub. “All these young women leaving their marriages – and not one of their scurvy lovers turning up to help figure it out or tuck them safely away!” Morna’s disgusted tone echoed Arabel’s own anger and the heat of it filled the room.

             
Arabel gladly stepped into the warm, fragranced water and felt it close around her like a favourite blanket. Her tired limbs and cold skin finally felt warmed. Arabel leaned back as Morna went to the door, lighting a few candles to keep the darkness at bay. Arabel hoped she wouldn’t fall asleep and drown in the bath, as all of a sudden, she felt incredibly tired from the strain of the last few days.

             
“Thank you, Morna,” Arabel said thickly before dunking her head under the water for a moment to warm her head. She lay soaking in the water for a long time, revelling in the warmth while thoughts swirled in her head like bees.

             
Two girls in such a short time. How many more were there to come and was Eli correct that this had been perhaps going on for some time? Arabel thrust her mind back over the last year – who had moved away or disappeared or been unaccounted for? She thought of the Gypsies – who could ever track them? She made a mental note to ask Eli to question them, to see if any of their numbers had vanished without word, or if anything suspicious had been going on in the last year or so. 

             
Arabel was curious about the Gypsies. She wondered what Eli’s parents were like. Did his mother share his long thick lashes and expressive almond brown eyes? Did Eli inherit his father’s lean, muscular build and softly curling brown hair? And where did those beautifully chiselled cheekbones come from?

             
And then Arabel laughed out loud. How can I possibly be thinking of him now as some sort of romantic object? she chided herself. How absurd! Or not… 

             
I must be very tired, she reasoned to herself with a small smile.

             
Arabel never felt this way about any of the young men she chanced to meet. No one in all her years had really interested her, even in the slightest. When Shelaine would go on and on about some new fellow, Arabel would roll her eyes and laugh at Shelaine’s dramatic posturing. Arabel herself had never experienced the pangs of infatuation. She’d only had one real kiss and that had been on a dare. It had proven to be a big letdown.

             
The boy had been nervous and Arabel merely curious. He had moved in awkwardly to meet her lips and his hand upon her arm felt clammy. His breath tickled Arabel’s mouth and she had had to fight back the persistent urge to laugh. Arabel knew it wouldn’t do to laugh at the poor fellow when he seemed so earnest and desperate to kiss her. His lips had been soft but when they met hers, she’d felt no spark, no tingle, no anticipation or desire. All in all it had been a bore. Arabel confessed to Shelaine that it had been a massive letdown and she’d since felt no pressing need to repeat the experiment.

             
Of course the boy who’d kissed her hadn’t had those cheekbones she so enjoyed looking at or those expressive brown eyes. Arabel smiled to herself and realized ruefully that the bath was getting cold. Reluctantly she leveraged her body up in the tub and pulled the drain. The water circled the drain, rushing down the pipes and emptying the tub. Arabel watched the water as it circled down and it appeared to turn to blood. Alarmed, Arabel looked away and then looked quickly back. To her relief the blood was gone. She shook her head, as if to clear it, unsure if this was a vision or a reality. Sometimes it was difficult to tell, the lines blurred back and forth so often for her.

             
Once in bed, Arabel did her best to empty her mind of all thought. She relaxed her muscles one by one, wiggling her toes, stretching her legs, breathing deeply, watching her breaths as they moved in and out of her chest cavity. She felt a sudden burning sensation at her throat and the grey energy swirled above her, menacing. Arabel tried to dislodge the invisible fingers pressing on her windpipe but seemed unable to. Panic set in as she thrashed in her bed and the energy moved and filled itself. In horror, Arabel watched as it began to take shape.

             
A man with dull grey eyes. A slight bump upon his nose. Nondescript brown hair. His mouth moved and a low sigh emerged. Arabel stilled her body; her breath came sharply but she found she could now breathe. In sick fascination she watched the arms, legs and torso of the man form themselves. 

             
A cold wind seemed to permeate the room, blanking out the heat from the fire which roared in the grill of her bedroom. Arabel shivered; the chill was intense. The fingers had now moved off of her throat and she was no longer a captive of the grey swirling energy. It was as if the grey eyed man was more concerned with his emerging body than her presence.

             
Arabel leapt out of bed, grabbed her wrapper off of the chair and put it on quickly. She had no talisman to ward against this evil. She did not know what Gypsy spells might work or what magic she might devise to entrap it. She knew there existed special bottles to capture spirits within but she herself did not possess any nor did she know of anywhere to locate such an item, especially right this instant when her life was in danger.