Illusion Read online

  “Waldo, no!” Kate hauled Eight’s yellow Lab back by the collar. “Bad dog. Sorry,” she said to Barrie. “Waldo’s an escape artist without any manners, and Eight’s been so distracted, he hasn’t been playing with her the way he usually does. She doesn’t know what to do with herself.”

  Eight had been playing catch with the dog the second time Barrie had ever seen him. She’d hidden behind the curtain in her bedroom to watch him throw, every inch of him perfectly balanced and intent on sending the ball to the exact spot where he meant it to go, demanding perfection of himself the way he demanded perfection of himself in everything.

  Barrie had thought he was graceful then, and beautiful. But he’d been unreal, because real attraction shouldn’t come five minutes after you meet someone. She’d been fighting what she felt for him ever since, questioning what he felt.

  Did it really matter why they had been drawn to each other at first? Whether it had been her gift pushing her to find him, or his gift letting him know the perfect things to say or do, or a more purely Eight kind of magic?

  Barrie couldn’t doubt anymore. She knew a thousand and one individual things about him now: the way his shoulders curved in apology at even the idea of making someone unhappy; the callused roughness of his hands from gripping a baseball bat; the stubborn way he researched things at night in the privacy of his room, where no one could see him struggling to read; the way his quick, warm smile would slip back into something more vulnerable when he thought no one was watching.

  Barrie couldn’t bear the thought that she—that anyone—had hurt him.

  Emerging through the opening in the tall boxwood, she found herself in an elaborate swirl of paths and rosebushes fully enclosed by the house and three tall walls of hedge. Neatly labeled rows of flowers formed a spiral pattern, their impressionist colors shifting from white to apricot to pink to red and redder still, until the red was so deep that it was very nearly purple.

  There was no traditional fountain. Kate pulled her toward a low pool in the center of the garden, where water bubbled over a nearly invisible lip inches from the ground and vanished in a trench cut around the pool’s circumference. The effect was like a drop of water gleaming on a table.

  “So this is it. Now what?” Kate asked, coming to a halt beside it.

  “Nothing, most likely. Maybe there isn’t a water spirit here at all. I don’t even know what I was thinking, except that I needed something to hope for. That’s crazy, right? Did your dad say anything else about how your grandfather died?”

  “Just what we already knew. His father dying shook him pretty bad, and Lula had just left. Everyone around here was probably devastated.”

  Barrie searched the path for something sharp enough to cut her skin, but there were no oyster shells mixed with the smooth, tumbled river gravel. “Run and get me a knife, will you?” she asked. “A sharp one.”

  Kate sprinted toward the house and up the steps, and Barrie inspected the fountain while she was gone. Smooth marble bricks of the same pale color as the stones in the trench made up the basin. The water bubbled softly, more a hiss than a splash.

  Beneath the sound, the hum of energy was nearly as powerful as what Barrie had felt in the Watson woods. Where that had felt warm and pleasant, though, the energy here stung repellently. She didn’t dare reach out for it, and her finding sense could not get past it. Stooping beside the fountain, she plunged her hand in the icy water and groped along the bricks.

  “What are you doing?” Kate asked, returning with the knife. “You promised you wouldn’t take the lodestone.”

  “I’m not. I won’t.” Barrie poised the edge of the blade above her hand. Then, scraping it across her palm, she tore off the scabs that had formed there overnight.

  Blood pricked sluggishly to the surface. After switching the knife to her other hand, she repeated the process, then returned the knife to Kate. Red warmth slicked her skin, and the scent of iron curled her nose. She dipped her hands back into the fountain.

  The water was too cold for the heat of summer, as if it came from deep beneath the ground. Barrie shivered again, waiting, hoping against hope, willing it to bubble, to gather and coalesce. Her hands grew numb.

  “You going to sit there all day before you give up?” Kate asked. “Maybe it’s not working because you’re not a Beaufort.” Before Barrie could process what she was doing, Kate plunged her own hands into the fountain.

  Ribbons of blood swirled out from Kate’s palms, and dimly Barrie registered that Kate must have cut herself. She lunged to pull Kate away, but it was too late already.

  The fountain gurgled. Water bubbled and erupted into a column that rose from the center of the pool to form a shape, a woman with legs that were cascades of water, arms and streaming fingers, a face surrounded by waterfalls of hair that held an expression so exquisitely wistful and regretful as she studied Kate that it was clear she wished things could be other than how they were.

  Barrie shook her head to dismiss the thought.

  This was wrong. So wrong. It couldn’t be allowed to happen.

  “It was me, not Kate. I’m the one who did it,” she said, trying desperately to stop what was coming next.

  The water spirit looked straight past Barrie, and a voice like a babble of liquid over rock spoke inside her head.

  We accept the binding.

  “No!” Barrie shoved Kate toward the steps. “Run back to the house, Kate. Right now. Go inside. Go!”

  “Stop pushing me!” Kate gazed back at the water spirit in fascination, completely calm. “I know what I’m doing. If Dad or Eight figure out how to break the binding, they will, and we won’t be able to stay here. Beaufort Hall will become just another subdivision. This whole place means something to the fabric of the world. Losing one more piece of land might not seem like a big thing, but how many more subdivisions can the river support before it chokes to death? In three hundred years, this is the only home my family has ever known. The fountain is still here because there have always been Beauforts here. I may not know why, but I’m positive that’s important, too. I can’t save the rest of river, but I can save this place. Me. I can save it.”

  Barrie was running out of time to argue. She turned back to the spirit to ask the question she had come to ask, but the column was already collapsing back into the fountain. With a final gurgle it subsided, and the pool lay calm and still.

  “Dammit,” she said. “Dammit, dammit, dammit. Kate, I can’t believe you did that.”

  “Daddy and Eight never wanted to have to stay here,” Kate said quietly. “Now they don’t have to. They can go anywhere they want.”

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  The implications of what Kate had done rang like bells in Barrie’s head, a new peal striking before the last had even finished. Not only had Kate bound herself, but neither of them had asked the water spirit a single question. Not about the whereabouts of the lodestone, or who the water spirit was, or why she had appeared. They didn’t know what would happen to Beaufort Hall and Watson’s Landing if they let the gifts slip through their fingers. They didn’t know what the bindings meant.

  They knew nothing more than they’d known before.

  And the binding itself . . . It shouldn’t have—couldn’t have—transferred to Kate. How could it? Not while Seven and Eight were still alive.

  Why hadn’t it occurred to Barrie that the binding could be transferred—or that Kate would do what she had done?

  She wanted to shake herself. She wanted to shake Kate. Most of all, she wanted to shake up time like an Etch A Sketch, make the lines of her mistakes disappear into dust.

  Kate swayed on her feet and stumbled, turning to Barrie with her eyes white-rimmed and her face faded to the color of the marble in the fountain. She pressed her hands to her ears, as if shutting out some sound that Barrie couldn’t hear—as if the more that Barrie heard through her own binding with Watson’s Landing was affecting Kate as well.

  “What’s happening?” Kate
asked.

  “It’s all right. It’s normal—part of the binding.” Catching Kate, Barrie steadied her, resisting the urge to scold her again. “Don’t be scared. You’re all right,” she repeated, as though the repetition—and wishing hard enough—could make it true.

  “I’m not the least bit scared.” Kate pulled one hand away. Holding it three inches from her ear, she tilted her head to the side, and then a smile tugged at the corners of her lips as if she had tumbled across a marvelous secret. “Is this what it’s like for you?” She spun around, peering at the roses in the garden and at the house behind her. “Like seeing everything in high definition and hearing it in stereo? I can feel the ground breathing. What is that?”

  “Connection,” Barrie said, thinking about all the things Kate needed to know.

  Kate jumped as a door slammed behind her, and winced when heavy footsteps pounded toward the stairs. Barrie turned with a tremor of dread.

  “What the hell did you do?” Seven’s expression promised fire and damnation. He glanced from Barrie to Kate and back, as if of course whatever had happened were Barrie’s fault.

  Which it was. If Kate was bound, Seven must have been unbound. Pru had felt lighter—freer—once the spirit had accepted Barrie’s binding, and Pru’d barely had the gift at all.

  Kate’s eyes held Barrie’s with a silent plea.

  But they couldn’t deny what they had done. Blood-tinted water still dripped from Kate’s hands. The knife lay on the ground.

  “What did you do?” Seven repeated. He didn’t shout, but he didn’t need to—his voice rumbled so deeply that it felt like he was yelling. He towered above Kate, making her seem very small and frail. “Jesus, Katherine Shelby Beaufort. What were you thinking? Tell me exactly what you did.”

  “I accepted the binding.” Kate glared up at him defiantly. “It’s the perfect solution. Now you and Eight won’t be stuck here, and I’ve never seen it as being stuck.”

  “What about college? Having the chance to find out what matters to you? Your dreams?” He shook his head. “Undo it. Whatever you did, reverse it. How does it work?”

  “There’s nothing to undo.” Kate straightened her shoulders and swallowed, looking around the garden. “I want this. My dreams have always been about this place.”

  “You’re too young to know what matters.”

  “Only someone who forgot what it means to be young would ever say that.” Kate stared at him, neither cowed nor out of words, but it wasn’t Kate who deserved his anger, and after glowering at his daughter another moment, Seven realized that. He turned to Barrie, his hand raised as if he wanted to slap her, or shake her. Fighting the urge, he covered his mouth instead, his expression filled with such rage and horror that Barrie couldn’t stay silent.

  “Kate didn’t know what was going to happen. You’re right to blame me,” she said.

  Seven’s body clenched up like a spring coiling. “Haven’t you done enough to this family?” he thundered. “Every time I turn around, your meddling tears us apart!”

  “If you’d only told Eight the truth . . . or told either of them what you knew about the binding . . . We’ve been begging you—”

  “It’s not up to you to decide what’s best for my children.”

  “You think bullying them and lying to them is what’s best for them? And you asked me to keep the secret from Eight—that hurt him even worse.”

  “I asked for your help! I explained that you couldn’t be together anyway, so all you had to do was walk away from him.” Seven stepped even closer, and he was near enough, tall enough, enough like Eight, that tears welled in Barrie’s eyes. “That’s all you had to do,” he said, “and Eight wouldn’t have been hurt at all.”

  “Walk away? That’s your answer? Because telling him I didn’t want to see him, not returning his calls and texts, and never telling him why—none of that would have hurt him at all? Walking away is your go-to solution, though, isn’t it?” Barrie had jerked back involuntarily, but now rage propped her up, egged her on. “Walking away is exactly what you did to Pru when you thought my mother was dead and Pru was going to be bound to Watson’s Landing. You didn’t have the courage to tell her the truth then, either! How’d that work out for you? For Pru?”

  “You think it takes courage to tell the truth?” Seven’s voice was barely leashed. “It takes courage to do the right thing. To deny your children when you know what they want isn’t good for them. Sometimes it takes courage to go to bed at night knowing you have to get up in the morning and face your life.”

  “The life you made for yourself.”

  “The life,” Seven said, “that was chosen for me three hundred years ago.”

  Barrie gaped at him, and her anger vaporized. Not because Seven didn’t deserve it, but because he was pitiable even more than he was infuriating. Because he didn’t begin to understand what he had done. She thought of her mother and all the pain that Lula had lived with. But her mother had never blamed the gift.

  “We don’t get to use the bargain and the gifts as excuses for everything,” she said. “Kate getting bound was my mistake—I admit it. I own it. This wouldn’t have happened if I’d thought things through, and if I hadn’t asked her to show me the fountain. At least I’m trying to figure things out! I’m not giving up. You stopped trying to leave, and you gave up on Pru. You talk about not having your own identity, but you never gave Eight a chance to make his own.”

  “That has nothing to do with the binding. With Kate—”

  “It has everything to do with it. This is Kate’s home! That’s why she did this. And you made Eight want to run away because he hated the idea of being what you tried to make him—another Charles Beaufort. Another number intended to be a carbon copy of yourself. Then you wonder why he’s upset when he feels like he can’t measure up.”

  Seven’s throat corded as he swallowed, his face combustible and red. “Get out. Christ. Just leave, and don’t come back. Leave my children the hell alone.”

  Barrie glanced at Kate, but she didn’t know what to say. Everything she wanted to tell Kate began with “Don’t.”

  Don’t let Seven bully you.

  Don’t let him hurt Eight anymore.

  Don’t let him convince you that you have to get rid of the binding.

  Don’t tell him about Obadiah.

  There was so much to say that she couldn’t say any of it. Then a shoe scuffed on the steps behind them, and Eight rushed down the steps. His eyes locked on hers, and she felt the recognition she always felt when she saw him, the sense of foundness. Of not-lostness. She wanted to run to him and apologize again and have everything somehow be all right—

  How long had he been there?

  How much had he heard?

  His eyes slid past her to Kate, to Kate’s hands, and then down to the bloody knife that lay beside her where she had dropped it. “What did you do, Kate?”

  “I bound myself. Like Barrie’s bound to Watson’s Landing.” Kate lifted her stubborn chin.

  “You’re sixteen,” Seven said. “Barrie was an accident. But you? You haven’t even lived yet. You don’t know anything about love or life. What about summer camp, and sleepovers? College? Or Europe? Or Savannah, for Christ’s sake?”

  Eight flicked Barrie another glance, then looked down, as if he couldn’t bear to see her. She hurt worse than if he’d slapped her, and then he was suddenly in motion, running to pick up the knife.

  “Eight, don’t!” Barrie and Kate both yelled, and Seven shouted, “No!”

  Barrie dove to reach him, but he had already sliced his palms and plunged his hands into the water. “Take me instead of Kate,” he shouted at the fountain. “Whatever I’m supposed to say, consider it said. I’ll accept the binding. I’ll take care of Beaufort Hall, and I’ll guard whatever I’m supposed to guard. I won’t fight it anymore. Just tell me what you want!”

  Panic fisted around Barrie’s heart, crushing her until her vision went black around the edges. She didn�
�t even know what to hope for—that the water spirit would appear again, releasing Kate, or that she wouldn’t appear and Eight would be free of the obligation, free to go anywhere, to be whatever he wanted.

  They all watched the fountain. Kate’s whole body was rigid, as if she felt what Barrie felt at the thought of losing the binding—that desperate sense of wanting to hold on to something that wasn’t definable in words. Water trickled down the nearly invisible groove around the rim and seeped away into hidden drains. Seconds dragged themselves into a minute . . . and nothing happened. Ribbons of blood were still spilling from Eight’s palms into the fountain, tumbling over the side and staining the water pink across the pale marble stones. He had cut himself too deeply.

  “What do I have to do?” Sounding desperate, he looked at Kate. “Tell me, and I’ll do it.”

  Barrie bent beside him and tried to pull him away. “If it were going to work for you, it would have already. Come back into the house. You need to stop the bleeding.”

  “It can’t be Kate. I won’t accept it,” Seven said, and he sliced his palms, too—fraught, shallow slashes that trailed wide pink threads in the fountain but left the water still. “No!” he yelled. “You can’t do this. Do you hear me? It can’t be Kate.”

  Eight flinched away from Barrie, his hands still bleeding too hard and dripping onto the gravel.

  Kate put her arms around her father’s shoulders, leaning against his back, holding him the way that Barrie wished she could hold Eight. “Dad, stop. I wanted this. I chose it. The fountain chose—or this isn’t how it works. I don’t know. But I’m fine. I’m glad.”

  Seven raised his hands, held them up to examine the palms as if he couldn’t believe that the cuts were still bleeding and order hadn’t been restored. Finally, he shook himself and took one of Eight’s elbows to draw his son away.

  “Come on, Eight. Barrie’s right about one thing. You need bandaging. Or stitches.”

  “Kate, too. She’s cold and probably in shock.” Barrie said, nudging Kate toward the house.