Chapter 31

Someone—or something—was approaching.

The scraping sound of footsteps slogging through debris shattered Ivy's rest, and she sat up, rubbing the sleep from her eyes. Why was she in the library of all places? Rolling her stiff neck, she tried to gather her bearings until the footsteps were almost upon her.

Instinct told her to hide, and no sooner had she crept behind a shelf, than voices accompanied the steps, becoming clearer as they approached. "...and the library, it will still know to feed from her, and her only?" the first voice asked.

"Yes, I am sure of it," answered the second voice. It was a man, coolly confident and very familiar. "I've read through her notes extensively. Once I enter my name in the ledger I will be in control, but it will still feed off of her. It will always revert to Hayworth blood, given the chance."

Ivy peered around the shelf. The man with his back to her smelled of cheap tobacco, his big arms strapped with unforgiving muscles. Beside him, she could just make out the profile of another man. He looked familiar with his dark hair and handsome features. He might have been a film star if not for the hard set to his mouth, the frenzied glint in his eyes.

"Christ, this will be a fortune to clean," he muttered as he kicked at a fallen beam.

The world was saturated with the smell of heavy smoke and damp wood. A fire. There had been a fire.

"My father will need to have all the staff from Mabry House come here and work round the clock. Everything will be run out of Blackwood from now on."

Arthur Mabry. His name came back to Ivy in a nauseating flash. The handsome young man from the bookshop who had befriended her and taken her under his wing in Yorkshire. But why would he be here, and what did he mean that everything would be run out of Blackwood?

Someone else was coming, and the men broke off in their conversation at the sound of footsteps. Ivy craned her head around the shelf, trying to catch a glimpse of the newcomer, but they had all moved just out of view.

"You! What are you doing here?" Arthur demanded, his voice suddenly pitched shrill.

The response was too low for Ivy to catch, but judging from Arthur's response, he was not on friendly terms with the interloper.

"Would have been a good deal more convenient if you had not survived the fire," Arthur said.

Another low response tickled at the back of Ivy's mind.

"No, stay your hand, Mercer," Arthur instructed. "He may be useful yet. Ivy slipped her guard when the fire broke out. I am most anxious to retrieve my wife, and he may be able to help."

A palpable tension filled the ensuing silence. There was a clatter and a new voice joined the group. "My lord? You're needed, your father said they are ready for the girl."

There was some low conferring, and then the hasty retreat of footsteps. But a heaviness, a vital presence still hung in the air, and Ivy knew that she was not alone.

She groped at the debris until she found a heavy piece of wood. Slowly uncurling herself from her hiding place, she took a deep breath and sprang out into the open prepared to meet one of Arthur's men head-on.

But the face that looked back at her was all perfect angles, cut jaw, and deeply concerned gray eyes.

"Ralph." The wood clattered to the ground and she stumbled toward him, stopping short when she saw his stormy expression.

"What are you doing here? You're supposed to be back at the cottage."

"I couldn't just sit there waiting. You didn't find the notes, did you," she said.

Ralph confirmed what she already knew with a shake of his head. "You're safe. That's the only thing that matters."

"Come on," he said, finally closing the distance between them and taking her by the hand. It was not the gentle, reassuring touch that she had expected, but rather a demanding invitation that brokered no argument.

"Where are we going?"

"I don't know. Away from here, anywhere." For a moment she was carried away on a wave of romance, and she envisioned running far from Blackwood and starting a new life with Ralph. But then she realized he was looking at her not with the same longing that sat heavy in her chest, but simply with concern and determination.

Ivy dug her heels in, bringing Ralph up short. "What are you doing?"

"I'm not leaving," Ivy protested.

"Oh yes you are."

She yanked her hand out of his grasp with a force that surprised them both.

Ralph ran his hand through his hair, then kicked at a shattered piece of the wooden railing. "Ivy, don't be daft. There's nothing for you here." A stricken look crossed his face. "Don't tell me you—you have feelings for Sir Arthur."

"What? No, of course not. How could you think such a thing?"

His body relaxed a little. "Then what?"

The library was quiet, eerily so, as if waiting for her answer. "I—I just can't." Something tugged deep within her, something unpleasant. "It was something Mrs. Hewitt said. I can't remember it exactly. But I think if I leave, something terrible could happen."

The guilt on Ralph's face passed quickly, so quickly that she almost missed it. "You know," she said. "Tell me. What happens if I leave?"

"The library will find someone else to feed from."

Her eyes fluttered closed as the weight of her situation came round her like iron manacles. "I can't do that to someone."

"For God's sake, look around you, Ivy. It would be Sir Arthur or one of his men. Leave them to their bloodthirsty schemes and save yourself."

But she stood fast, her feet rooted on the charred rug, as if she was as much a part of the library as the shattered marble busts and burnt books. "I can't," she repeated, quieter, but with just as much conviction. "I can't explain it, but I can't leave."

"I could put you over my shoulder and toss you in the auto, drive far away."

"You could, but you won't," she said absently. "I just need time. I solved the cipher to the manuscript, and I can do it again."

Ralph glanced at the door through which only moments ago Arthur and his men had disappeared. "Time is something we don't have right now."

Ivy picked at the lace collar of her nightgown, trying to reach whatever was inside of her calling her to stay. Whatever it was, it was deeper than the library, older and more insistent.

"Come with me," he said suddenly.

She shook her head. "I already told you, I'm not leaving."

"I know you're not. But I'm not going to let you sit here like a lame duck either." When she still hesitated, he extended his hand. "You can trust me."

Ivy's mind told her that she was not supposed to trust Ralph, that she'd been explicitly told as much. Yet her heart was in vehement disagreement. Swallowing the last of her misgivings, she placed her hand in his. His fingers closed around hers, gentle and warm.

He was leading her up and down a shelf, looking for something, when a voice echoed in from the hallway.

"I left him in here," Arthur was calling to someone. "He can't have gotten far."

Ralph stopped short, Ivy nearly toppling into him. "It's Arthur—he's come back," she whispered, as if it weren't obvious.

But Ralph was already tugging her along, urgency in his step as he began pulling books down one after the other.

"What are you doing? We don't have time for reading, we—"

Ralph shot her a withering look as he pulled another book down, and suddenly there was the creaking mechanism of a door swinging open. Standing back, he gestured to the passage that had appeared. "After you."

Throwing one last glance back at the library doors, she stepped into the dark passage. Immediately the air changed, a stale, dusty smell replacing the smoke and damp wood. "They already took the manuscript," he told her as the passage spilled them out into a small chamber. "This is the last place they'll look."

The ceiling was high, but the corners were probably only two arms' lengths from each other, the air cool and musty. It was dull and inhospitable, but something tickled the back of Ivy's mind; she'd been in this room before. There were no windows, and save for a slot in the door, nothing that suggested the existence of a world beyond the tiny room. An empty lectern, a desk, and a chair comprised the furnishings.

But no sooner had the door closed behind them and Ralph pushed the chair against it, than Ivy realized her mistake; she was alone with Ralph. His closeness was intoxicating, and she was so very tired, so very weak. Sitting on the floor, he draped his arms over his knees, leaving the chair for her. For all of her forgetfulness, she was unable to shake free of the dream she'd read in her book, and it clung to her like a stubborn cobweb.

Silence settled heavy around them. The details of her day-to-day life and past were foggy at best, but memories of the library as it had been before the fire stood out clear as day in her mind. She could picture the grand crenelated window at the far end, the way the lazy Yorkshire light filtered in on sunny days, the comfortable chair upholstered in worn purple velvet. She wanted her library back, her life back.

"It happens overnight, when I sleep," she said, more to break the silence than anything else. "That's when I seem to lose everything." She stifled a yawn, as if reminded of the fact that she hadn't slept more than a few hours in the past two days, then slumped against the stone wall, the coldness a welcome discomfort to keep her awake. "What am I doing?" she murmured into her hands. She couldn't leave the abbey, but she couldn't stay, either. She couldn't remember anything of importance, and Arthur and his men had the manuscript anyway. She was in purgatory, without the hope of release.

"Ivy. Look at me."

Her eyes had drifted closed, but now she opened them again to find Ralph crouching before her, the intensity of his gray eyes stealing the breath right out of her lungs. He took her hands in his, squeezed them. "It will be all right. I don't know what will happen, but I promise you, it will be all right. The abbey can burn, Arthur can have his library, but I will die before I let anything happen to you."

A little thrill ran through her at his heady pledge. He was a knight kneeling before his lady, giving her an oath, and she didn't for one moment doubt that she would be safe with Ralph nearby. He took his job of protecting the abbey seriously, and she supposed that included her as one of its tenants. If only he wanted to protect her for different reasons.

All the same, she was mesmerized by the fervency in his eyes. The room was small, and he was so, so close. It would only take the smallest leaning, the merest hint of movement to bring them together. If she was sound of mind, she would have pulled further away, but her mind was decidedly not sound, leaving only a body quavering with raw desire.

Ralph was the first to take the leap, his finger gently tracing the line of Ivy's jaw, bringing her lips just shy of his. But just as her eyes drifted closed in anticipation, he pulled back suddenly, breaking the spell.

She bit down on her lip, hard, but not before an involuntary cry escaped her. She'd almost given in to a desire she didn't even understand. Had she misinterpreted his intentions? She stared at the spot at his collar where his throat met his chest, blood still pounding hot in her head. "I—I'm sorry. I don't know what came over me."

There was no answer. When she chanced a look up, Ralph was looking intently at her—no, not at her exactly, but her arm. "Ralph? What is it?"

"Your shoulder," he said, still entranced by whatever he was seeing. "What's that under your sleeve?"

"What are you talking about—Ralph!"

He slipped the loose nightgown sleeve from her shoulder. "You have a tattoo," he said, his eyes sweeping over her upper arm.

"I don't have a tattoo. Don't be ridiculous."

But Ralph didn't seem to hear her. "What is it?"

"Oh for goodness sake. I don't—" But her words died in her throat. As she inspected her arm, a dark smudge against her skin caught her eye. Tenderly touching her finger to the raised skin, she sucked in her breath. The light was poor, but Ralph brought the solitary lamp close and she twisted her shoulder to get a better look. It was a tattoo, fresh and still a little pink around the edges.

Even with its crude lines and uneven application of ink, it was obviously some sort of flower, with five petals unfurling to reveal a swirling center spangled with dots.

Ivy stared at it until her neck cramped and her eyes began to cross. What could be important enough that she would have defaced her skin, and in such a crude manner? And that was assuming that she had been the one to do it. What if someone else had done it? Held her down and forcibly tattooed her for some reason?

"It's new," Ralph said, confirming her suspicion. His fingers traced around the edges, featherlight. "It looks medieval, like a rosette on a church pew. Except..." He tilted his head to get a better look at it. "Except there are stars inside of it."

At his words, a floodgate opened, and it all came back. Weeks, days, hours, minutes, seconds of her life, that had been spent in isolation. Holding a sharpened pen nib to her flesh, etching in the key to the manuscript, so that it would not be lost, no matter what.

"It was the flower," she said, shivering from his touch as much as from the cold air on her exposed skin. "The key was in the flowers, the stars. But I needed an astronomy book to put the cipher into action. We have to go," she said, stumbling to her feet.

A wave of dizziness overcame her, and Ralph jumped up to steady her. "You haven't slept in days, and who knows the last time you ate. Sit down, rest. The manuscript can wait."

"I can't—I'll forget..." But even as her words turned into a yawn, she knew that she was in no state to walk, let alone spend hours hunched over and concentrating on a code.

"Here." Ralph took her by the waist and gently brought her to the cold floor. "Sleep. I won't let you forget when you wake up."

"What about you?" Ivy asked. Her eyelids were heavy as her head fell against his shoulder.

The only answer she got was Ralph murmuring something into her hair, and soon she was drifting off to sleep.

A rustle, and a shimmer of light on the wall.

Ivy sat up. She was still in the cell, yet it wasn't the cell. She stood stock-still and watched, breath held, as the light rippled across the stone walls. It was the same light born of the embers in the library that had guided her before. Not the monk, but a benevolent anomaly in a sea of dark powers.

"You," she said on a breath. "Who are you?"

The light didn't answer; Ivy hadn't expected that it would. But it did float toward the desk, growing brighter and brighter until the room was bathed in white light.

When the flash had subsided and Ivy had uncovered her eyes, she found the dark stones had fallen away, bright, white-washed walls in their place. A window looked out over the courtyard garden, sun spilling in and catching the light of a gleaming wood crucifix hanging over the desk. Birdsong drifted in on a gentle breeze, the smell of lavender and other herbs hanging in the air.

And in this strange waking dream or hallucination—whatever it was—Ivy was not alone. A woman dressed in a dark robe of coarse linen and a white scarf gathered over her head and around her neck sat at the desk, gaze trained faraway through the window. She didn't look scared or surprised like Ivy, rather, her face was a mask of serenity, the smallest furrow between her straight brows as if in deep thought. Dipping a brush into a small dish of ink, she began writing, her hand moving slowly but surely across a piece of stretched vellum.

"Who are you?" Ivy asked again.

The woman didn't answer, and Ivy would have thought that she had not heard her if she had not inclined her head the smallest bit toward the page, inviting Ivy to look.

With shaking legs, Ivy got up and approached the desk. The woman had no smell, no heat, just a gentle, residual glow of light about her. Leaning the slightest bit over her shoulder, Ivy watched the brush leave a stream of script in its wake.

Ivy had seen that handwriting before. It was neat and flowing, soft juxtaposed against the scratchy scrawl of the other hand. This was the author, the person who had penned the manuscript. The woman dipped a brush into a pot of vermillion and began painting graceful arcs, a flower slowly taking shape in the margins.

Drawing back, Ivy continued to watch, fear subsiding into intense curiosity. There was nothing dark or untoward in the woman's countenance; could she have truly produced something so powerful, so evil as the manuscript? She seemed to be a wise woman who had chosen isolation in which to complete her work.

Turning in her seat, the woman leveled a serene smile on Ivy, as if sensing her thoughts.

"I have waited these six hundred years for a woman to inherit the abbey," she said. Her voice was inside Ivy's head, musical and sweet, and Ivy stood transfixed, never wanting it to end. "There is that which is not meant for the eyes of men. These words, this knowledge..." Her face broke into a beatific smile, and she spread her hands. "They are seeds that have been germinating these past centuries, waiting for the right gardener to help them bloom."

She didn't know what made her the right person, or what sort of fruit the nun's knowledge would bear, but a drowsy sort of peacefulness came over Ivy. She had a purpose, she was an important piece of a larger puzzle. This was the pull she had felt to the abbey, the inexplicable tug that told her she was meant to be here. But then the nun was fading away, taking the sunlight and birdsong with her.

"Wait!" Ivy threw herself at the chair, but her hands only clasped empty air. She sat with the revelation of the nun who had lived centuries ago and written a compendium of sacred and mystical knowledge. What good did knowing any of this do her now? She would awaken, forgetful of the nun, the manuscript, and why she was here. Ralph had sworn he would help her remember, but even he could not know the essence of her dreams. And so it would go until her weary body could no longer support a mind made of dust.

Tears welled up and overflowed, hot and cathartic. Ivy had not given way to tears and rage when her family had died, each death marked only by a solemn and internal grief. She had not mourned the academic life of which she had always dreamed but would never be possible. But she raged and cried now, against the injustice of it all. Her body would give way to exhaustion and soon whatever memories had sown and bloomed would be lost to the unforgiving reaping of the library once again.

The room grew colder, darker. Ralph was still nowhere to be seen. Any comfort the nun had brought was gone, replaced instead with a palpable disquiet. Small spaces had never bothered Ivy before, but now the four walls threatened to close in on her, crush her like one of the spiders that spun their webs in the shadowed corners.

No gentle light preceded the monk, no soft birdsong or scent of aromatic herbs. It took Ivy a moment to notice that the room had changed at all, since much was the same. The same dark walls, the same dismal lack of light, the same cold, hard paving-stone floor. Only the occupant was different.

He sat at the same desk as the nun had, the manuscript laid out before him. The window that had let in light and birdsong was now boarded and covered. The air smelled of stale incense tinged with something like burnt hair. Smoke stained the wall behind the lamp, as if many hours had been spent working beside a dwindling flame. Any moment he would turn around and this time there would be no human face, no recognizable emotion except for death. But he did not turn, did not show any acknowledgment of Ivy's presence; this was a tableau, set for her benefit.

By his wrist sat a small piece of unrolled parchment, a familiar pattern of stars sketched on it; the cipher of the manuscript. He had cracked the code, centuries before Ivy. His quill scratched away, and though her fear would have rooted her to her seat, her curiosity was stronger, propelling her forward to glimpse his work over his shoulder. Where the nun had painted blissful pools of aquamarine, he colored over them in red, turning water into blood, flowers into twisted and thorny monstrosities. Young women with crimson slashes across their throats. Dissections performed in the darkest corners of the abbey. All in the name of not science nor God, but the perverted glory of one man.

What had started as a silent parade of images on the parchment was now an assault on Ivy's senses: the metallic scent of blood mingled with burnt hair. Rotten meat and fetid water. Despair.

"What—what do you want from me?" Ivy forced the words from her dry throat. "You already have everything, why come here and terrorize me just to—"

The monk turned in his seat, leveled malicious eyes on her. To witness him was chilling, but to be the object of his hateful attention was downright terrifying. "I always visit my guests toward the end of their tenure, pay my respects to the great family that has sustained me these five hundred years. You are no exception, though unremarkable girl that you are. I thought that you would last longer, but I suppose there have been some unusual circumstances."

Ivy didn't say anything. Maybe if she didn't move, didn't speak, he would grow bored and leave her.

Unperturbed, the monk continued. "Your life has been short and rather unexceptional, but it is your dreams that interest me. Such dark horrors that haunt your sleep! They have made a brilliant addition to the library, and keep me endlessly entertained."

He was not a man, and not yet a ghost. He was everything that was dark and twisted and wrong. Anger rose in Ivy's body, words spilling out of her despite her sense of self-preservation.

"Haven't you anything better to do? Why must you torment my family and the people of Blackwood? You take and take and take, and still it isn't enough." She must have been dreaming, because she would never be capable of having such a level conversation with the spirit of a monk who had lived and died centuries ago and was now stealing the very fibers of her being.

The monk moved about the small cell, his crimson robes trailing behind him as he ran his finger over the empty desk before turning his attention back to her. "The pursuit of knowledge is the pursuit of the divine. How can we profess to know God without understanding all that he knows? And how can we attain that knowledge in but the brief window of time we are given on this earth?"

"You didn't answer my question," she ground out.

"Didn't I?"

Her eyes were grainy and tired, her mind dizzy and unmoored. Wake up, Ivy. Why can't you wake up! "I wish you would just leave," she said, her voice coming out small and childish.

"I'm sure you do," he said with a smile that revealed sharp, uneven teeth. "But that is not how it works, not how the conditions are met."

"What conditions?" she asked warily.

"It always starts with a desperate plea, doesn't it? The first Lord Hayworth was granted Blackwood by King Henry for service in his army fighting against the Scots. He was a man haunted by his memories of the atrocities he had committed on the battlefield in the name of his king. Our needs dovetailed nicely, his memories and knowledge in exchange for a gentle decline, much more respectable than taking his own life. But he did not consider the long-term implications, or if he did, he simply did not care about the generations that were to come after him. For you see, the bargain was not just for him, but for all his family to come. I knew better than to bind myself to just one soul, a finite resource. Someday when the last of the Hayworth blood has run dry, when every book is complete, I will be reborn, infinite and immortal. You ask why I don't just leave you be? Because we are both of us bound to a pact drawn in blood and executed in flesh. Could I finish you now, drain you completely and move on to the next in line? Of course. I could do any number of things with the power I possess. But instead, I take what I want, and give back scraps and slivers, just to keep you a little longer. Fresh memories are always so much sweeter, so much more vivid on the page. In short, you exist at my leisure, remember what I want you to remember."

There was no rhyme or reason, no underlying logic. "What happens if I take my life into my own hands?" she asked. "What if I end it, and there are no more Radcliffes or Hayworths left?"

The monk turned a sharp gaze on her, a flicker of provocation deep within his dark eyes. "Why, your mortal body joins your decaying mind, of course," he said. "I will find someone else, I always do."

He was capable of being irritated, and irritation was a sign of a chink in his armor. She would follow the chink, prying until it opened and spilled out what she wanted to know. "And what became of your mortal body?" she asked.

The monk's temper was shortening, a twitch pulling his lips downward. "I rest in glorious repose until one day my body can rise again, my mind alive and nourished with all the knowledge and dreams that the library has to offer. It would behoove you to put a stop to all these questions, lest you learn something you wish you hadn't. I am not here to entertain the questions of a silly girl."

She had gone too far, she knew she had, but she couldn't stop. Maybe she would forget it all tomorrow, but for now, she had to know, had to have every tool at her disposal if she had any chance of survival. "Why are you here, then? To terrify me? To gloat of your contract and your cleverness? Because if everything you say is true, then it doesn't matter. After all, I am just a silly girl."

In the time it took her to blink an eye, he was beside her, a flash of darkness blacker than any night, the smell of hellfire on his breath. And then just as quickly, he was gone, a book in his place.

The cell grew quiet, Ivy's heart beating furiously, her breath echoing in the dream space. A dark presence filled the air, growing by turns hot and cold, whispering against her skin. The book called to her, begging to be opened, to be released.

The Life and Dreams of Ivy Radcliffe, the Lady Hayworth. 1903—

She reached for the cover with shaking hands, but before she could even pick it up, the cover flipped open.

She jumped back as the pages of her life whipped past with supernatural speed, the nightmares spilling out, early ones first, the forgotten anxieties of a small child. Being left alone in a crowd with her mother nowhere in sight. Monsters lurking in the shadows under her bed. The coal man who always grinned at her with missing teeth and told her he had a special present for her if only she would follow him to his cart. Sounds of the neighbors upstairs fighting, a man's raised voice and then a woman's scream, a sickening thud and the fraught silence that followed. The walls crawled with bedbugs, the floor undulating with the bodies of rats.

"Please stop," she begged, dragging her nails down the door.

But still they came. A frantic nurse in a hospital, her white uniform painted in blood and vomit, too busy to spare a moment for a distraught young woman. Ivy at her mother's bedside, watching helplessly as the fever ravaged first her mind, then her body, until her beautiful mother was nothing but a rasping corpse.

Clambering to the chair, Ivy grabbed the book and began ripping out fistfuls of pages. If there were no words, no memories on the pages, then they couldn't haunt her. But no sooner had she torn out a page than it materialized again, ink appearing as if written by an unseen hand. Blood oozed from her fingers as they razed against the paper, her heart racing to unnatural speeds, slamming against her rib cage. Air. She couldn't get enough air—

"Ivy! IVY!"

The voice calling her name came from far away, an echo in a distant cave, but still she tore at the pages. Someone grabbed her wrists, and she flailed against them, certain it was the monk, his bony hands skittering across her flesh, in search of her heart. But when her vision cleared and her heart slowed, it was not a robe drenched in blood that her face was pressed into, but an ordinary shirt, covering an ordinary man.

"Ralph?"

At his name, he relaxed his grip on her. "You're safe, you're safe."

"Where were you? The monk, he was here, and you were gone." Her pitch rose as her sense of relief was replaced with betrayal. "You said you would be here, that I could trust you and you left."

"You were dreaming. You were thrashing about in your sleep." He ran his hand through her hair, leaving her scalp tingling in its wake. "I didn't leave. I would never leave."

Her breath slowed, and she glanced about the cell. No torn pages, no lingering stench of death. It was just as it had been when she'd laid her head on Ralph's shoulder and fallen asleep. "It was so real," she murmured. "He told me about the manuscript, about the pact that gave him his power." As she recounted the dream, more of the horrors came back to her, like pulling a thread that unraveled an entire blanket. "And the nun!" She told Ralph how the nun had been the original author of the manuscript, all the precious knowledge she had gathered in the hopes of preserving it for future generations. The monk was everything dark and evil, had perverted the nun's words, twisting them for his own vile purposes. Whatever mystical knowledge she had committed to the pages had been powerful perhaps, but not harmful. The manuscript as it was today was a corruption of the original. And now the monk held the library and the manuscript in thrall, living off the knowledge that it gave him.

Ralph listened, his fingers idly twining through Ivy's hair as she spoke. "So, what now?"

It took a long while for Ivy to answer. They had been dreams, yet the messages they had contained had been real.

"I think we can stop it," she said, finally.

"Stop what?"

"Everything. The monk, Arthur, the Sphinxes. And we don't even need the manuscript. We don't even need to leave this room."