The Keep (The Secret of Spellshadow Manor #4)(56)

Good name for an English pub, he thought as he approached it. Stepping carefully over the rotten floorboards at the entrance, he found himself in a damp, moldering room with a bar at one end that had all but fallen away, and a few festering chairs and tables that he imagined would disintegrate if sat on. A great tear in the ceiling revealed the floor above, but the stairs up there looked as if they had given in to dereliction a long time ago.

Where are you, Ellabell?

He returned to the street. As he scoured the tumbledown houses in the wreckage of a town, he came to wonder what this place used to be, and how it had found its way into the magical realm that held Kingstone Keep in its palm. There was something decidedly ordinary about it. It did not look or feel like it belonged to the magical world, yet here it was.

Who lived here? Normal people? Spellbreakers, perhaps? He wasn’t sure. He couldn’t get a sense of what this place had once been from the ruins, and yet his mind flitted toward his own kind, picturing them walking among a living version of this place.

A movement up ahead snatched his attention, his eyes snapping toward it. At the very end of the street was a building, marginally less derelict than the rest. It looked like it had once been a town hall, and it was still mostly in one piece. The cracked white walls gleamed as a sliver of sunlight pierced the dense cloud for a moment, making Alex wonder if that was all he’d seen—the flash of the sun’s glare against the few remaining windowpanes.

Not wanting to chance it, he made a beeline for the grand building. Walking with purpose, he strode toward it, realizing that if someone was watching from within, there was no point in hiding. The windows on the upper floor remained vacant, staring out at him as he approached. Reaching the steps leading up to the battered front door, he paused a moment to glance in at the broken windows of the lower floor, checking for any evidence that Ellabell had been there. The interior was dim, a musty smell wafting toward him from the holes in the shattered pane, but he couldn’t make out much. A desk. Some chairs. Empty bookshelves. A rug, furry with decades of mold.

No Ellabell.

He’d have to go in, but something about the old building creeped him out. It looked like the kind of house adults warned children to stay away from, though he could see how it might once have been beautiful. A lick of paint, some new windows, a sash or something hanging from the balcony above, and it’d be good as new.

Alex jumped as a voice pierced the air above him. Instinctively, he ducked, not quite knowing how it would help him.

“Admiring the view?” the voice called from the balcony.

How he hadn’t seen the man standing there or heard his cane on the floor, Alex didn’t know, but he sensed trickery at work—some kind of illusion or camouflage. The man was certainly pale enough to match the fa?ade. Alex felt bile rise up his throat as he examined the figure more closely. The man was old, his hair white, though not the kind of white brought on by old age. It was a particular kind of white, one Alex instantly recognized. Keen golden eyes glanced down from their vantage point, clearly scrutinizing Alex, trying to assess the threat he presented.

Caius, at long last.

“You needn’t be afraid. I’m no danger to you,” the man said, the softness in his clear, almost musical voice taking Alex by surprise. “I believe you must be looking for the girl, yes?”

Mention of Ellabell brought Alex back to his senses, and he braced himself, trying to prepare for the fight ahead. Above him, the man he knew to be Caius had disappeared from the balcony, but he could hear the scuffle of feet within the town hall, growing gradually closer. Caius was almost upon him. Alex raised his hands, ready to battle to the death.

Only, the fight did not come.

“Put your hands down, my boy. There’s no fight in this old dog.” Caius smiled, the expression utterly confusing to Alex, who had been expecting something far more dramatic. “Come on in. You’ll see I mean you no harm.”

Tentatively, his hands still raised, Alex followed Caius as he limped into the town hall’s foyer and up the remnants of a grand stairwell, which had what looked like brass pineapples sticking up at the bottom of each curving banister. Old paintings hung on the walls, but they were so rotten, the canvases so moth-eaten, that Alex couldn’t make out many of the images upon them. He thought he saw the mountain in one, a flash of lightning jolting down in a jagged scar across the paintwork, though it could just as easily have been a tear. Still, it left him pondering whether the storm ever went away, and what mad feat of weather kept it there—perhaps it was the magic of the realm, drawing it in, keeping it brewing.

At the top of the stairs, Caius led Alex across the landing toward a room at the front of the building, where he must have accessed the balcony, Alex realized. Inside, there was a study of sorts, a fire roaring in the grate to keep out the mountain chill. Curled up beside the flames was Ellabell, fast asleep on a thick, clean rug, smothered in intricately woven blankets with various vivid patterns that reminded Alex of Native American textiles he’d seen when he was younger. As far as he could tell, she looked unharmed, her slumber a peaceful one.

Alex’s heart felt as if it were about to burst with relief. There she was, seemingly safe and sound. He wanted to run over to her and check that she was okay, but Caius’s voice distracted him.

“Don’t wake the poor girl. She’s had a tough time,” he said, sitting in one of the armchairs that stood a short distance away from the fire and the sleeping Ellabell. Caius set his cane against the chair, and Alex noticed that the cane’s silver top seemed to be in the shape of a falcon’s head. “May I offer you a drink?”