The Firebird's Vengeance (16 page)

“You all right, Grace?” he asked softly.

Grace could not find her voice, but she found she could dredge up some shreds of dignity. The warmth of the wheelhouse and the throaty chug of the motor that covered the slap of the waves against the hull helped. She nodded, drew herself up straight, and closed the door firmly behind herself.

“It’s good and clear, at any rate,” Frank said around his pipe stem.
Sailors and islanders begin any conversation with the weather
. “Should hold too,” he went on. “Wouldn’t want to push it, though.”

You’re not going to say anything. You’re going to let me decide what to tell
. Grace bowed her head.
Thank you, Frank
. She knew she should say that aloud, but the words would not come to her. “I don’t expect to be long,” she murmured instead.

“Okay then. I’m going to drop you off at Lighthouse Pointe. You can do what it is you need to while I run ‘round to Eastbay with the mail and some canned goods for the store, pick up whoever’s set to go. I’ll be back in four, maybe five hours.”

“I’ll be ready for you.”

“That’ll be fine then.” Frank clamped his mouth closed around the stem of his pipe, his attention all on the water.

Grace too stared out at the water. Only one hardy gull wheeled in the bright, brittle blue sky. The lake had no touch of that blue in it today. It was as grey as it had been the long ago day, the day the squall had come up, and the waves, so small and civilized today, had swelled into curving walls of water, and come crashing down across the deck of the old tug, wrapping her tight and hauling her over and forcing her down into the dark, into the cold …

Grace tried desperately to push those memories aside. She instead turned her mind to thoughts of her niece. Unfortunately, her two or three direct memories of Bridget did not give her much to chew over. She’d kept track of the doings up at the lighthouse through gossips like Hilda, or through genuine news, such as when a ship ran aground. Only occasionally had she actually seen the girl Bridget, or the woman she became. Everett Lederle had never stopped to call on Grace when he was in Bayfield, and she, of course, had never gone back to the island.

The dead had always been able to compel her more forcefully than the living.

She had met Bridget face-to-face just once. It had been ten … no, almost fifteen years ago. Grace had arranged a seance to try to drum up some extra business. Her clientele had fallen off and she needed to raise a little talk about herself. She hadn’t been so foolish as to actually invite a newspaperman, of course, but she had advertised in the paper so that all “seekers of truth” might “receive the words of those who have gone before.”

She remembered sweeping into the parlor, not in gypsy gauds that day, but a severe black skirt and blouse, and her hair pulled back in a tight bun, every inch the distant and respectable woman. She’d delivered a general message to each of the ladies sitting there, some token that she could elaborate on during the actual seance. Then, the thin girl in the face-covering sunbonnet had lifted her head, and Grace had stared into Bridget’s eyes. She’d known her at once, the girl looked so much like Ingrid. She’d almost stammered then. She knew why Bridget had come. Bridget had the second sight. Everyone knew it. Her visions of the future were real, and they invariably came true.

Bridget had come to her aunt, who was supposed to have the same gift. She had come for comfort, guidance, and companionship.

And Grace had let her down.

Grace bit her lip. A stream of guilt chittered through her mind and she had to steel herself against it. It was not she, but Ingrid who was responsible for the life the girl led. If Ingrid hadn’t run off, if she hadn’t left Grace alone with ghosts and gossips, it all would have been different.

Usually, Grace could work up some righteous indignation to warm her cold depths with those thoughts, but not today. Today, caught between the empty sky and the grey water, she just felt tired of them.

From the corner of her eye, she caught Frank watching her. She turned her gaze toward him, and he was already looking out at the lake again.

Despite everything, Grace felt a small smile form. “Should I ask what you’re thinking, Frank?” she called over the noise of the engines.

“Probably not,” said Frank around his pipe. He removed the much used object from his mouth, inspected it to see that it had well and truly gone out, and tucked it into his pocket. “I was thinking ‘bout you as a girl,” he said.

“Ah.”
Not a safe subject. No
.

But now that he had begun, Frank did not seem inclined to stop. “Prettiest thing for miles around, you were, with a smile for everybody.”

As if she had forgotten that girl. “That was a long time ago.”

“What happened, Grace?” A plaintive note crept into Frank’s voice. It sounded strange coming from so solidly built a man. “You didn’t have to go this way.”

Grace’s mouth twitched. She should keep silent, she knew, but she was worn to the bone with fear and cold. There was no strength left in her to hold back her words.

“What happened? Ingrid vanished with that … fisherman Avan, and Papa decided he was going to take it out on me. When I got to Bayfield, and I was made … promises, by first one young man and then another. Fool that I was, I believed my pretty face and my smile were enough to make them keep those promises. But they went off with other girls who knew better ways to make them keep their word, and had fathers who would back them up. Then, I met a man who said what he wanted from me up-front, and paid by showing me how I might earn a living for myself.”

A traveling spiritualist had come to her boardinghouse. He’d organized a seance in the parlor to drum up interest in his trade. Grace had heard the knocks and rattles, and saw the automatic writing, and saw not a single real ghost. She kept her mouth shut however, and when he’d approached her later, in private, she’d told him flatly he was nothing but a fraud.

He’d smiled then, and shrugged. “So I am, but it’s a good living, if you can manage it.” She remembered how he’d eyed her, appraisingly, not lasciviously. “In fact, I’d say a sharp girl like you should be able to pick the fat cats of this town over easy.”

He’d been right, and he’d been generous in teaching her the tricks and the patter, letting her participate in his several seances to practice her own abilities at cold reading and falling into “trances.” Grace couldn’t say she remembered the man fondly, but by his own standards, he’d been honest.

None of which Frank would understand, especially not with the despairing light that shone in his eye. “Couldn’t you have gone into service? Or one of the shops?”

Grace fussed with the ends of her shawls rather than look at him. “Evidently not.”

“Couldn’t you …” Frank clamped his mouth down to cut off the rest of that sentence.

Grace let him have his silence. Partial payment for the favor he now did her. But she found herself recalling how Frank had no wife, and no children, and for the first time it occurred to her to wonder why.

Well, Frank. She sighed. I suppose I could ask why you couldn’t have come to me
.

But she let the silence carry that question away too. Frank went about his work, stoking the boiler, correcting the boat’s course, keeping his eye on the water. Grace waited for him to speak again, but he did not.

At last, Sand Island rose from the horizon, snow-white and ice-grey. Frank idled back on the motor and eased the wheel around, putting the shore on the port side. Ice still made a ragged white skirt for the shore and bobbled in big chunks on the waves. Careful as ever, Frank kept the tug well out in open water. The shoreline grew craggier, rising up into jagged walls of red stone. Water dripped from the long, toothy icicles hanging from the cliff. Grace kept her gaze on the far end of the island, and gradually, the lighthouse came into view.

The Sand Island light wasn’t one of the tall white towers they had down south and out east. It was an octagon of brown stone from the local quarry standing a bare two stories over the white-trimmed house that was the keeper’s quarters. The light was dark now. The new keeper wasn’t due for another week yet.

They rounded the point of land and Grace saw the boathouse and the long flight of weathered, wooden stairs that led up the cliff to the light. Frank’s attention had gone entirely to the management of the tug — slowing and reversing the engines, steering carefully between the rocks hidden by the grey water and the ice that floated on its surface. Despite his care, ice still grated against the hull and Frank’s jaw tightened. Slowly, patiently, he eased the tug up to the tiny jetty beside the boathouse. At the sound of the dock thumping gently against the tug’s side, Grace felt ready to cry out in relief. As quickly as she could, she hurried to the rail and let Frank help her disembark.

“I’ll be back for you this afternoon,” he said. “I want y … to be safe in Bayfield before full dark.”

“I’ll be here,” Grace promised.

Frank looked like he wanted to say something else, maybe to offer some help or comfort, but years of silence still held his tongue. He closed up the boat, returned to the wheelhouse, and fired the engines once more. The tug pulled away from the jetty.

Grace faced inland. She did not want to see Frank leave her.

Fortunately, the snow and ice on the stairs was mostly melted. Still, Grace mounted the steep flight carefully. At the top waited a sea of mud and last year’s grass with a few brave, green shoots peeking up to look for the sun. The forest loomed at the lighthouse’s back, still winter dark and forbidding. Grace lowered her eyes. On the other side of that forest her older brother Leo raised his family and lived his life, and never spoke her name. It would serve him right if after this she turned up on his doorstep and told him point-blank all that had happened. Let his wife and children know what sort of madness they inherited.

Madness. The idea sent an unexpected chill through her. Was that what brought her here after all? The mad heard voices, had nightmares. She had told herself repeatedly through all the long months of winter that she was not, could not be insane. But then, that was what all the mad told themselves.

Grace clutched her shawl and looked back down the muddy path marked by her own boot prints. She could go back down the stairs. She didn’t have to do this. The boathouse would shelter her until Frank came back again. This was nothing to do with her. It might not even be real.

Why did I even come?

Because someone told me I was afraid to. Because someone else told me I was uncaring. If I leave now, which of them will I prove right?

Grace squared her shoulders and mounted the three snow-speckled steps to the front door. She put a hand on the knob. Part of her hoped to find it locked, but no, it turned easily under her touch.

The door swung open silently on well-tended hinges. As she stepped inside, Grace noted that whoever was the last here they had not bothered to sweep up. Several pairs of boots had tracked in mud and left it to dry where it fell.

No sound issued from within. Whoever had left these traces was no longer here.

She repeated that fact to herself firmly, several times, but Grace still hesitated. It was wrong for her to be here, she felt that keenly. This was no business of hers.

It’s what the living are up to you need to find out
. Who had told her that? Why had she believed them?

The front room was sparsely furnished. She could gain no appreciation of the quality of those furnishings, because they were all hidden by the pale drapes of dust cloths. Incongruously, pieces of hemp rope lay beside the sofa. The wall beside the square, iron stove was stained with black, as if it had been scorched. It even seemed to Grace the scent of smoke still lingered in the air.

She drifted to the heap of rope and picked up one of the fragments. The hemp pricked at her fingers. A red ribbon had been twisted into it. Apart from that, it looked like any other length of rope, but it felt wrong, not to her skin, but to her mind. Grace let it fall.

What happened here? Bridget, what have you done?

She thought again about retreating to the boathouse, to wait for Frank. Why should she care what anyone thought of her? She had her life and it kept her warm and fed, and safe from such strange things. That was surely all she required.

No. It’s already gone too far for that. I must at least try to see. If I do not, it will start gnawing at me, and who knows when that voice will come back. I cannot live with that voice in my head
.

Grace turned to face the room and drew herself up to her full height. Mrs. Hausman and her other clients would all be stunned if they could see what was coming next. There was no chanting, no pleading, no dim light or gazing crystal.

“All right,” said Grace flatly. “I’m here. Show yourself.”

The air around Grace curdled. The room grew colder. A female figure took shape in front of her, but Grace could not see her clearly. She was an old woman and she was a young girl. She was a proud queen and a frightened child wringing her hands. She was certain and she was confused. She was brave, and she was cringing back, terrified.

You came
.

Grace’s mouth had gone dry. “You’re not Ingrid,” she said stupidly. “Or Bridget.”

No. I am sorry
. Regret wrapped around Grace like a cool wind.

Grace felt panic rise inside her. “Who are you?”

Memories that were not her own flooded Grace’s mind; visions of a man in white and gold holding a golden crown over her head, of sitting in a high throne, looking down on a host of fantastically dressed people who all bowed to her, of running across a broad stretch of grass at the edge of a canal, of watching a young man she knew was her son and thinking desperately that she must save him from his wife.

With the strange visions came a strange name. Medeoan. The ghost who haunted this place was Medeoan.

This was wrong, wrong. Grace felt it in her bones and in her blood. This strange, shifting ghost should not be here. Something bad had happened. “Where is my niece? What happened to her?”