The Keep (The Secret of Spellshadow Manor #4)(29)

In the vision, she was sitting, curled up on the sofa with a tartan blanket draped across her legs, laughing at a terrible gameshow answer on the television. There was a mug of steaming hot chocolate on the coffee table, a mountain of marshmallows bobbing on the surface—too many to melt, just the way she liked it. The memory stung him with a bittersweet barb. He must have been sitting in the armchair opposite, because his view of her was perfect. It was a simple, domestic scene between the two of them, no doubt identical to a million others he could find in his library of remembrances, but it was everything Alex had wanted and needed to see. He didn’t even remember it, or how old he must have been, but it didn’t matter; it was enough just to see her, to refresh the picture he held of her within his mind.

It was tricky to pull away from her. He knew he could have spent a week there, watching only her, but the draw of his past soon overcame his desire to linger in the realm of his old life.

Moving farther back, things began to speed up, like a fast-forwarded version of This is Your Life, until there was no more of him to see. Reaching the edges of the next person in his spiritual timeline, he came to a standstill, pressing the metaphorical pause button. However, the images that rushed into his mind were foggy, swirling around his vision like a black mist. He wondered if it was just this small section of memory that was distorted, but, as he pushed farther and farther back, the visions grew even worse; they were barely discernible, as if someone had tied a blindfold around his eyes, blocking the images from sight.

Frustrated, he flitted back to the gleaming spool of recent times and childhood memories, just to check that it wasn’t him losing strength, causing the images to blur. To his utter vexation, the images of his own life were crystal clear, but as soon as he moved back along the line, to delve into the ancestry of his father and beyond, everything went dark. It was like a curtain being dragged across the scenes that were playing out, keeping him from seeing. The shapes and images weren’t discernible at all, but he could feel things and hear muffled words and conversations—he just couldn’t see them or touch anything, in the way that he had been able to in his own, personal memories.

Trying to push away his annoyance, he honed in on the emotions he was vicariously feeling, through the person whose life he was viewing, and the sounds that rushed all around him, drowning his senses in a cacophony of noise. Without warning, grief and fear shot through him like a lightning bolt, driven by the experiences of someone else and a scene he couldn’t see. It coursed through every cell with an intensity he had never felt before. His body was in shock, his anti-magic faltering in defense against the pain, until the sensation was so overwhelming it drove Alex to pull away from the hidden memory.

He tore back into reality, his chest heaving, tears pouring from his eyes. Inside his ribcage, his heart thundered against the bone so hard he felt it might explode. Once again, the adventure had taken a vast amount of energy from him, but he was relieved to feel that it had not touched the edge of his essence, even though he felt utterly broken. It had taken nothing important, but this excursion had drained him as physically as it had emotionally.

“You must be careful!” said Vincent, worry furrowing his veined brow. “Rushing from a spirit line as fast as you did is never advisable. It takes time to unpick your consciousness from the spirit world—do you feel well? Do you feel strange? Are you in one piece, do you think? Is there any chance you may have left a piece of yourself behind?”

Alex couldn’t deal with the bombardment of questions while his mind was still reeling, and it was everything he could do not to yell at Vincent. The memory he had dwelled upon had made him feel exhausted and bitter, opening him up to a world of accumulated pain and torment within his own past, so intense he didn’t even need to see the faces of those who had suffered through it to feel the agony and persecution they had felt. It lingered inside him, haunting him. He wasn’t sure what he had expected, but he could never have anticipated the wave of pure terror and searing pain that had coursed through him, leaking through from some unseen point in his ancestry.

I shouldn’t have delved into my own past. I should have just followed Epstein and left this room while I still felt rested and calm.

A panic attack began to claw through Alex’s body, but Vincent was quick to step in, trying to calm Alex by helping him up and moving him over to the window at the far side of the room. The stale air washed over Alex’s face, soothing the livid red of his flushed cheeks. Moments later, as Alex leaned heavily against the sill, Vincent began to speak of other matters, probably in an attempt to distract Alex from the panic that threatened to tip him over the edge.

“Caius often disappears into a forest that lies just beyond this fog,” the necromancer said, pointing toward the blurry shape of trees. “It seems to be his favorite spot. I often see the vague silhouette of him, darting about out there.”

To Alex’s surprise, Vincent’s tactic worked. The light outside was growing dim, making Alex wonder just how long he had been in Vincent’s cell, dabbling in the spirit world. The idea that he had wasted a great chunk of time made him feel suddenly guilty, but this new information about the forest was somehow managing to shift his focus from his inner turmoil.

“Why does he go there?” Alex asked quietly, his voice thick with emotion.

“Who can say? He never brings anything out and he never takes anything in, though there have been rumors from time to time of him stealing away the odd prisoner to torture, to punish and play with at his leisure. No doubt a test subject for his latest batch of horrors,” Vincent mused. “He’s not the worst of them, mind you—the royals. His brother holds that title, more monster than man.” He shuddered, the movement causing the darkest veins in his head to pulsate in a somewhat nauseating fashion. Alex could barely look at them, though it was harder still to look away.