The Keep (The Secret of Spellshadow Manor #4)(32)

Alexei turned, wandering toward the edge of the lake that gleamed in the center of the park, the murky water looking oddly tempting in the close heat of the evening. Where Alexei went, Alex had to follow. Stepping as near as he dared to the lake’s edge, Alexei looked down into the shifting surface, giving Alex his first proper sight of his father, in the flesh. The reflection was wobbly, small waves distorting the image, but it was definitely the same man Alex half-remembered from the grainy photograph he had found in the shoebox beneath his mother’s bed—the one that had made her cry such painful tears. Alexei was handsome and youthful, bearing a strong resemblance to Alex himself, making him wonder how his mother could bear to look at him, when the similarity was so clear.

Suddenly, Alexei looked up.

There was a man standing on the opposite side of the lake, watching Alex’s father intently, a smirk upon his face. Alex didn’t recognize the man, nor did he have the chance to get a better look. Alexei broke into a sprint, running away from the lake and his dearest love, who was standing obliviously beside the ice cream truck, ordering a cone of mint chocolate chip.

Alex wanted to scream at his father to turn back, but he had no control over his father’s actions—he could only watch and wish things were different.

It took a while for Alex’s focus to move away from his mother, but once he understood he could not go back to her, Alex realized his father was running down a familiar route. He ran across the main road that skirted the town, ducking into the dark, cool shade of the forest that ran alongside the highway, then moving down toward the train tracks and the railway bridge that crossed the ravine. It was the spot Alex had liked to run to when he was a kid, eagerly awaiting the arrival of a train so he could watch it clatter across the rails above him, the sound of it thundering in his ears, the vibrations shaking his whole body.

Alexei climbed past the place between the wooden beams where Alex had liked to hide, clambering up onto the train tracks themselves, not pausing for a moment as he took off across the bridge. Alex could hear the sound of footsteps behind his father. Alexei flashed a look back over his shoulder for any oncoming trains. Instead of a train, Alex saw the same man from across the lake, gaining ground, chasing his father down with a determined, cruel look upon his unkempt face.

The man was impossibly fast, and Alex realized with a sinking feeling that the pursuer was now too close to his father. He was almost within arm’s reach.

Alexei turned back, Alex’s vision following, just in time to see a shadow swoop from the darkness beneath the tracks and cut straight through the body of Alexei’s would-be attacker. For the briefest moment, Alex felt a wave of relief, but it was not to last. Seconds later, he felt his father’s body buckle. Alexei froze, turning back to see his pursuer evaporate into a black mist, blown away on the wind, disappearing into nothing.

In the shifting shadows below, Alex could see the flash of teeth and the ripple of a vaporous form. It was unmistakable—a sight Alex had come to associate with relief, now filling him with horror.

Something caught Alexei’s eye in the tree-line on the right-hand side of the tracks, distracting Alex for a moment. A hooded figure stood between the mossy trunks, smiling coldly from beneath the overhanging branches. Alex was certain he knew who that was too, making him wonder if the two had been in cahoots all along. He wanted to watch the figure for longer, to try to get a clearer image of the mostly shrouded face, but Alexei’s focus had turned to the sluggish river trickling away at the bottom of the ravine, far below where he stood.

The shadow swooped again. Alex looked down at his father’s hands, only to see that they were beginning to disappear into the same dark mist. Alex guessed, with a heavy heart, that what had happened to the pursuer was now happening to his father, as everything went black.

He wanted to travel back to the park, to see what his mother had done, but he couldn’t. It was no longer in his father’s timeline. His father was dead. Alex didn’t need to see a funeral or a headstone; he understood what the abrupt, black ending meant. But he realized, with a pang of heartache, that his mother did not. The thought of her being oblivious to the truth frustrated him more than he thought possible, as he imagined her turning with two ice cream cones in her hands, only to find her lover gone, never to be heard from again. Worst of all, he knew she would have agonized over it, wondering if it was something she had done that made her love leave without a word. Alex couldn’t even begin to imagine how that must have felt, but he found he now had a greater understanding of her tears whenever he had brought his father up in conversation. She must have thought he had up and left her pregnant self, since there was no body to find, and she would never know why he had run or where he had gone.

Slowly, he unfurled from the vision, feeling utterly overwhelmed and vengeful toward the evil, shadowy sprite who was responsible for all this mess—the creature who had killed his father. He wanted answers. He wanted to know why. He wanted to know everything.

“Are you well?” Vincent asked, reminding Alex that he was still in the room.

Alex turned to the eerie necromancer. “I will be,” he said quietly. “Thank you for all you have shown me. It’s time for me to leave.”

“Certainly, young Spellbreaker. We have much work to be getting on with,” Vincent said, though there was a flash in his black eyes that made Alex wonder how much the necromancer really knew of what he had just seen. There wasn’t time to ask now.