The Magdalena Curse (37 page)
Read The Magdalena Curse Online
Authors: F.G. Cottam
‘You are a creature with no right to speak of mercy.’
Without a glance at Mark Hunter or his son, Mrs Mallory strode towards the cottage door. It closed on her with a cold soughing of breeze through falling snow. Elizabeth had for a moment to hold on to the back of her chair. She felt giddy with her gift, almost exultant in the thrill of her victory. Mrs Mallory had been right. Only one of them had enjoyed their encounter. In the end, and to her own astonishment, Elizabeth had enjoyed it very much. She would heal Hunter now. He was suffering greatly and it would only take a moment.
‘Don’t,’ he said. His voice was thick and sludgy with shock and pain. He had a tender hand on Adam’s throat. But the wound there was superficial, little more than a break in the skin. She would mend that in a moment too.
‘I could hear your game. I was praying for you. She’s gone?’
‘She’s gone.’
‘You beat her.’
‘And now I will make you better.’
‘There’ll be no more magic,’ Hunter said.
‘What?’
‘No more magic. Ever.’
‘Then how will you heal?’
He laughed. ‘Laboriously. That’s my penance for Magdalena, for what I did, for what I’ve put Adam through.’ He looked up at her. ‘There can be no more magic. Not if we’re to be together, Elizabeth. I very much want us to be together. But the magic has to cease here. It has to stop now. Do you understand why?’
She did understand. Of course she did. Her mother’s
caution lived with and within her too. But she also believed there was magic in the world beyond the scope of sorcery. She knelt and smiled and gently held the wounded man she loved.
caution lived with and within her too. But she also believed there was magic in the world beyond the scope of sorcery. She knelt and smiled and gently held the wounded man she loved.
It was a warm evening in late July and Elizabeth could feel the heat of the pebbles under their picnic blanket as she watched Mark and Adam skim stones at the edge of the sea. The sea was tranquil and the sun was descending and Mark’s arm was strong and true and moved smoothly in the execution of the hard, flat throw he used.
The remedial work had been done in Edinburgh. Most of the procedures had been carried out by two eminent surgeons of her mother’s acquaintance. Mark was naturally strong and had healed quickly and his high pain threshold had helped with the recovery because he had never shirked what the physiotherapist had asked him to undergo. He pushed and pushed himself and she was looking now at the result. And if her mother thought it an unnecessarily complicated way of returning him to health, she did not say so. In fact, Elizabeth suspected she was relieved and approving. The time for confounding nature, in both of their lives, was gone.
The sun had set by the time they stopped their game and Adam walked back to where they had earlier had their beach barbecue. His father stayed at the water’s edge, at the brink of the vast Atlantic, as gentle as a pond under the summer night. Adam sat down on the blanket next to her.
‘What do you think he’s thinking about?’
‘Oh, you know Dad. He’ll be reminiscing about jumping out of an aeroplane with a big gun. He’s a sentimental man.
He gets nostalgic about wasting enemies of the Crown on secret missions.’
He gets nostalgic about wasting enemies of the Crown on secret missions.’
Elizabeth laughed.
‘He’s probably thinking about a name for the baby.’
‘We don’t yet know if it’s going to be a boy or a girl.’
‘So he’s got plenty of names to choose from.’ Adam laughed himself. ‘He’ll likely be there all night.’
‘He’ll need to watch out for the tide if he is.’
‘I’ll bet he goes for Eve. If it’s a girl, I mean.’
‘Don’t worry. I’ll threaten to divorce him if he suggests that.’
Adam was quiet for a moment. Elizabeth knew what was coming next. He had never referred to it before, but she felt certain he was going to do so now. He looked up at the ascending moon, out at the glittering sea beyond the distant silhouette of his father.
‘Do you think she will ever come back?’
Elizabeth shivered. Warmth radiated through the blanket under her. It was a balmy evening, but she shivered just the same. ‘They do say never say never, Adam. But I think it extremely unlikely.’
‘Good.’
‘Why do you bring it up now?’
‘Brooke is on the curriculum in English at school. It reminded me.’ He shrugged. ‘I’m okay with it. It seems like a bad dream now, after all this time. Just a bad dream I woke up from and, like a dream, it’s fading.’
‘That’s a good way to think of it.’
He smiled at her and there was mischief in the smile. He glanced again up at the moon and out over the water. ‘Where did you send her?’
‘What makes you think I sent her anywhere?’
‘I just know you did. Where is she?’
‘She is somewhere very dark and very cold and very lonely.’
‘You’re not going to tell me, are you?’
Elizabeth reached for him and ruffled his hair. ‘A wicked stepmother needs to keep some things secret, Adam. Otherwise I wouldn’t be able to call myself wicked at all.’
The House of Lost Souls
Dark Echo
Dark Echo
‘A terrifying encounter with manifest evil … His adrenaline-charged prose is drawn tight with suspense.’
Financial Times
‘A riveting supernatural thriller. Rich in atmosphere, the book builds to a shattering finale.’
Publishers Weekly
‘Old-fashioned suspense combined with modern horror imagery to produce a fine example of the genre.’
The Times
‘Thrilling, addictive, dangerous, hypnotic and deadly … The book is a cross-genre treat. Beautifully written, with frighteningly invasive descriptions, literate, complex, conspiratorial and threatening … pervasively believable.’
The Times
, Johannesburg
, Johannesburg
F. G. Cottam is also the author of
Dark Echo
‘Beautifully written and highly engaging.’
Daily Mirror
‘F. G. Cottam has crafted a superb and tautly told tale of manifest evil. A perfect ghost story for this or any other season.’
The Times
‘A well-paced horror thriller.’
Canberra Times
‘F. G. Cottam’s complex, tautly atmospheric thriller delivers plenty of chills.’
Daily Mail
A drowned corpse, a glimpsed apparition and a discordant melody carried on the breeze. The evil is back. The house has been re-opened …
Just weeks after four students cross the threshold of the derelict Fischer House, one of them has committed suicide and the other three are descending into madness.
To save his sister, one of the three, ex-soldier Nick Mason must join ranks with Paul Seaton – who visited the house a decade earlier and survived. But Paul is a troubled man, haunted by visions of an ordeal that even now threaten his own sanity.
Desperate, Nick forces Paul to go back into the past, to the secret journal of beautiful photographer Pandora Gibson-Hoare, to a decadent gathering in the 1920s and to Klaus Fischer – master of the debauched proceedings and an unspeakable crime.
The Fischer house is beckoning, and some old friends have gathered to welcome Paul back …
Dark Echo
is an unlucky boat.
is an unlucky boat.
Despite this knowledge, Martin Stannard falls under her spell and prepares to sail her across the Atlantic with his father. But his lover Suzanne is uneasy and begins exploring the yacht’s past.
What she finds is terrifying.
Dark Echo
isn’t just unlucky, it’s evil. It was built for Harry Spalding, a soldier and sorcerer who committed suicide yet still casts his inexplicable spell nearly a century after his death.
Dark Echo
isn’t just unlucky, it’s evil. It was built for Harry Spalding, a soldier and sorcerer who committed suicide yet still casts his inexplicable spell nearly a century after his death.
Suzanne must uncover his last, terrible secret before Dark Echo destroys the man she loves …
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
THE MAGDALENA CURSE. Copyright © 2009 by F. G. Cottam. All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. For information, address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.
THOMAS DUNNE BOOKS.
An imprint of St. Martin’s Press.
An imprint of St. Martin’s Press.
First published in Great Britain by Hodder & Stoughton, an Hachette UK company
eISBN 9781429990370
First eBook Edition : June 2011
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
First U.S. Edition: August 2011
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