Nightfall Gardens (15 page)

“I might have to start reevaluating my opinion of you, lad,” Ezekiel said chuckling.

“As long as I don’t have to reevaluate my opinion of your cooking,” Arfast said.

Silas brought the hot water over to Arfast, who let it cool for a minute before pouring the powder and water into a cup.

“If anything can stop Eldritch’s poison, it’s this,” Arfast said. “Go ahead and give it to him, boy.”

Silas took a deep breath and parted his uncle’s dry lips. He tilted Jonquil’s head and poured the steaming liquid down his throat, slowly at first.
‘Come on, wake up,’
he thought. The cup was almost empty now. He gave the last of it to Jonquil.

The three of them sat and waited. Minutes passed. Outside, the sounds in the Gardens continued as loud as ever. The candle burned lower on the table. Ezekiel was the first to stand. “Well lads, it was worth a try,” he said.

At that moment, Jonquil stirred. Silas bent closer and saw the color was flushing back to his cheeks. He touched Jonquil’s skin and felt his temperature returning to normal.

“I think its working,” Silas said.

As if he’d heard, Jonquil opened his eyes and stared straight at them. In a ragged voice, he asked. “Where am I?”

13

The Emissaries

Lily finished clasping the amethyst necklace that had belonged to Deiva and all of the other Blackwood women going back to Pandora and examined herself in the bedroom mirror. What she saw would have made most girls her age (as well as adults) flee in terror. Maggots writhed in the decomposing flesh of her face and hands. Pieces of skin rotted away on her cheeks. Two holes stared from where her nose should have been and her upper lip was stripped away to reveal exposed teeth. “It’s a projection mirror, my lady,” Ursula told her one morning as she dusted and sang a song about rain clouds. “Thrives off fear. Can’t hurt you none, though.” Once she realized that, Lily began to use the mirror, just to show she
wasn’t
afraid. What the mirror couldn’t distort was the beautiful green dress made especially for this occasion, the shimmering purple necklace that she wore or the fact that her white blond hair was pinned to the sides and fell in curls around her face. She straightened her dress and turned the mirror around. Her guests should have arrived by now and there was no way she could avoid them any longer. It was time for her to meet the emissaries from the three gardens.

“Polly,” she called and the door opened almost immediately.

“Yes, my lady,” the housemaid said. Even the gigantic slug looked as though she’d spruced up for the event. Her skin glistened with an extra milky white sheen and her maid’s uniform was newly washed.

“Are my guests here?” Lily asked.

“They are waiting in the dining room for you, just now, miss.”

“Well, let’s not keep them waiting longer,” Lily said, a slight tremble to her voice. She didn’t know what to expect. She hadn’t been close to any of the beings living in the gardens, other than her glimpses into the
Shadow Garden from the upstairs windows. Lily thought of the executioner beheading her in the macabre play that had been put on for her.
‘Everything in the Gardens wants me dead,’
Lily thought shuddering
. ‘I must remember that.’

As if Polly could read her mind, the housemaid said “Don’t be a-scared, my lady. This pact was made longer ago than you or I can comprehend. A promise was made that on this night, the evil here can do no harm. The house would turn against them if they tried anything.”

Lily nodded and followed the maid down to the dining room. She heard chairs scraping, silverware clattering and voices whispering as she entered the stadium-sized room. Three figures were sitting at the mammoth table intensely immersed in conversation. Ozy poured red wine into crystal glasses. The mummy seemed to have recovered from being broken in half. The telltale signs of wrapping were hanging from his jacket sleeves and he moved at his usual glacially slow shuffle. Lily couldn’t take her eyes off the three figures that bowed as she approached the table. She had expected the representatives to be monsters and look anything but human: two of the three, though, could have passed for people — very ill people, but humanoid nonetheless. The third’s top half was human and the bottom was reptilian. Scales glittered in the candlelight and Lily saw the swish of a tail under the table.   

As Lily approached, her heart leapt into her throat. She was so nervous that she was frightened her legs might buckle. Cold rushed to greet her the closer she came to them, until frost exhaled from her mouth in wisps. The first who rose to greet her was a teenage boy who couldn’t have been much older than she was. He bowed and reached for her hand. Lily had never seen anyone like him before. His hair was obsidian black, and sad sea-green eyes rode above his chiseled cheekbones. There was a pallor about him that bespoke sickness and days spent indoors. The boy’s lips formed a pout as she yanked her hand back. Lily had already decided that none of them were going to touch her, even if it was rude. The air grew colder around her.

“Francois Villon,” the boy said and there was the slightest foreign accent to his words. He smiled and displayed a mouthful of perfect teeth. “I come from the White Garden. No one mentioned how beautiful you are.”

Lily felt her face flush. She was used to being complimented, but she wasn’t used to it coming from someone as good-looking as the boy blocking her way.
‘French,’
she thought.
‘I’ve never heard it spoken before but I’ve always imagined that’s what it must sound like.’
She stared into the fathom of his eyes.

“Thank you. You’re too gracious,” she said, bowing back at him.

“Merci, madam of Nightfall Gardens. I’m sorry to hear about the loss of your grandmother. She was a tenacious opponent.” He moved aside so she could greet her other guests.

“She was at that,” the second guest said. The woman standing in front of Villon was so pale she made him look as if he’d just come back from a holiday in the tropics. Alabaster was the only word to describe how absolutely white and bloodless her skin was. There wasn’t a touch of pigment upon her anywhere; even her gray eyes were leeched of their original color. Her raven hair fell to the small of her back and her shoulder bones jutted from the emaciated flesh of her frame. She was tall, taller than Silas, taller than Jonquil, and so thin she listed as if about to blow over in the wind. The almost smile ratcheted on her face resembled the painting of the Mona Lisa that Lily had seen once in a book. The puzzling smile never left her face. There was something eerie about the fact that no matter what was said, no matter how sad or disturbing, the grin never left her. It fell on Lily like a hammer blow that this was one of the “Smiling Ladies,” the three women she’d seen walking in the
Shadow Garden. She remembered Ursula’s terrified reaction to them. “It’s the Smiling Ladies, miss. Oh, terrible. Pray you never come face to face with them. Oh, pray, miss,” Ursula had said. Lily had to hold back from rubbing her arms to stave off the cold.

“I see by your face you recognize me,” the woman said. “My name’s Esmeret. I’m one of three sisters from the
Shadow Garden. You must come and visit us sometime. It would be a real — treat.” Her mouth opened far enough that Lily glimpsed a pair of gigantic pearl-colored fangs before Esmeret’s lips closed over them.

Lily nodded. The last place she would ever willingly go was into the Gardens. She could only imagine what would await her there.

The last guest slithered out from behind the dining table. The top half of the creature was woman while the bottom half was snake. Her tail was covered in multifaceted scales and ended in a rattle that shook with the sound of beads rolling inside a crackly paper bag. A forked tongue flicked out of her mouth and her body moved with slithering gyrations.

“Noooooooooo. You muuuuuusssst come to the Labyrinth. That’s where you belong, your grace,” the snake-woman said, her eyes flashing yellow and green. “There are wonders there that human eyes have not ssssssseeeeeeennnn in many yearssss.” The snake-woman came to a stop in front of her. The room grew abnormally quiet. Even the laughter and banging pots from the kitchen could not be heard. Lily saw Polly wringing her mucous hands. Ozy seemed extra alert, though what good they could do was doubtful.
‘I must have faith the house will protect me,’
Lily thought.
‘I can’t back down, because that’s what they want. They want me to be scared.’

“I’m afraid you’ll have to tell me all about them at dinner, as I won’t be able to visit the Labyrinth or any of the Gardens for the foreseeable future,” Lily said.

The snake-woman lowered her head. “As you wish. Sometimes trips do arise unexpectedly. You never know where you might end up one day.”

“Oh, quit with the theatrics, Kadru,” Francois Villon said, rolling his eyes. “This is our first time out of the Gardens in half a century and you want to waste it on veiled threats. I’d rather have good wine and conversation before being sent back to that abysmal hole.”

“Yoooooouuu would,” Kadru, the snake-woman said. “That’s why the White Garden hassss fallen into ssssuch sssssad dissssrepair in recent yearssss.”

“Please,” Villon said, scoffing. “If the
White Garden had been collapsing as long as you suggest it would be a vegetable patch by now.” The Frenchman grabbed a bottle of wine from the table and poured himself a large glass. “Enough of this fighting and dissention. We’re here to pay our respects to a worthy adversary, Deiva. We may have been on different sides, but she was smart enough never to walk into one of the traps we set for her.” With that, he tossed back the glass of wine and sighed. “Fa fait longtemps,” he muttered to himself.

Kadru’s rattle grew louder until it filled the room. The snake-woman’s eyes narrowed and for a moment it seemed as though she might attack Villon, but then the rattle quieted and she slithered back to her seat.

“You’ll have to forgive my friends. They aren’t used to being in polite company,” Esmeret said. Her voice was an icy purr.

“Speak for yourself,” Villon said, pouring another glass of wine. “There was a time when everyone knew me.”

“That helped you no more than it did the rest of uuusssss,” Kadru hissed.

The three bickered as Lily took a seat at the head of the table. What had Villon meant by saying Deiva had escaped every trap set for her? There was so much for her to learn. Who would teach her now that her grandmother was gone? Lily had never noticed such darkness in the dining room before. Not even the candles along the walls illuminated the black pitch that settled in the corners. As she stared, she thought she saw a little girl run in and out of candle light for a moment.
‘Abigail,’
she thought.
‘What’s she doing here?’
The air grew colder, until she once again saw the frosted breath from her mouth.
‘What’s happening? Why is it growing so cold?’

“You must be absolutely devastated. To meet your grandmother only to have her taken from you.” Esmeret stared at Lily with cold gray eyes. Ozy bent to pour her a glass of wine and the Smiling Lady waved him away. There was something about her that reminded Lily of the way a preying mantis creeps up on its victim

“And to be the lassssst of your kind, don’t forget that,” Kadru hissed.

Villon chuckled then, a sound that didn’t belong in the dining room of the big, creaking house. Something told Lily Nightfall Manor hadn’t heard much laughter in all the endless years of its existence.

“Forgive me,” he said to Lily. “I haven’t been in proper company in a long time and I’ve forgotten how to behave. It’s just that we knew your grandmother and I don’t think she would be one for romanticizing the relationships she had with those of us who wished her ill.”

“What do you mean?” Lily asked. Winter seemed to have crept into the room. The coldness increased around her again. How could the others pretend that they didn’t notice it?

“Your grandmother was the fly in our ointment, façon de parler, and the only thing that has held us here for many years,” Villon said. “You can imagine the temptation to escape from your cell, especially when you’ve been locked inside for eons.”

“Francois, let us not speak of such unpleasant things,” Esmeret said. Her bloodless lips pursed into a frown.  

“Why not? Do you think we’re deceiving this child by pretending we want to do anything but rip her throat from her body?” Villon said.

“There are rules that were established, promises made that we can’t unbind,” she said. Her voice was as quiet as a stream gurgling over a brook in deep woods.

“Rules that were made to ensure we’re never free of this cursed place,” Villon said. He turned to Lily. “Would you really like to know about your grandmother?”

Lily said nothing, but Villon continued as though she had given him her approval.

“Your grandmother was a tired old gasbag who lost her mind when her husband died, but even then we couldn’t get to her. She sniffed out the poisons we put in her food. She dodged the arrow an assassin loosened against her. Our blackest magic couldn’t penetrate Nightfall Manor. Deiva rarely left the house and never walked the Gardens after dark, so there was little chance to catch her unaware. The last of the Blackwoods and we still couldn’t get her!” The Frenchman pounded his fist on the table and jostled his wine glass, which slopped over the top.

“Thatssssss enough,” Kadru hissed. Her rattle grew louder under the table as though she were about to strike.

“More wine,” Villon said. He swallowed the last of his glass and set it on the table.

“You don’t need more,” Esmeret said.

“Don’t tell me what I need. I’m not some human you can suck dry like squeezing the juice from a peach,” Villon said.

Ozy poured another glass of wine for the Frenchman. When he was finished, Villon held his cup in the air. “All hail the last female Blackwood of Nightfall Gardens.” With that he tipped his glass back and drank it dry. Esmeret and Kadru scowled at him in response.

Lily felt fear and anger bubbling inside of her. This arrogant boy from the White Garden was acting as if her grandmother’s death should have happened sooner. Now he was mocking her with his salute. She opened her mouth to defend her family and that was when it happened. The intense cold grew so powerful that her teeth began chattering. Next, the candles flickered on the table before being snuffed out and the room was plunged into darkness. A glass shattered, followed by a chair being knocked over. Polly screamed, “Where are you, miss? Where are you?”