Lacybourne Manor (Ghosts and Reincarnation #3)(38)
She took a quick step back but her pride would not allow more. She was not going to let him know how terrified she was. Nor how devastated.
“My jewellery,” she held out her hand, palm up. This position was familiar and it seemed, now, Colin Morgan would always be holding something of hers she wanted back.
She had to gulp down her tears again as he deposited the jewellery into her hand.
Her fingers curled over it slightly and she dropped her head and poked at the precious pendant with her finger, cursing, for the millionth time, her absentmindedness that caused her to forget it in the first place.
This action also served to hide her face from his view.
She didn’t want to look at him. She didn’t know what she’d do if she looked at him. Probably run from the house and never stop running.
And how was that going to get a minibus?
She could taste the vile disappointment in her mouth that Rescuer Colin was not the real Colin.
And in that moment, Sibyl Godwin let go all of her wondrous dreams of finding her fated one, true, beautiful love. They flew away from her and she felt the acute pain as if they’d been torn from her physically.
His hand came out and he used the side of crooked finger to lift her chin so he could look into her eyes.
His were completely and utterly blank.
And that scared her most of all.
“I’ll be here with the money tomorrow night at seven,” he told her in a surprisingly soft voice.
She jerked her chin away from his hand.
Then Sibyl replied, “I’ll be ready.”
Chapter Eight
Consummation
“Oh dear,” Marian Byrne said as she looked in her crystal ball.
It was milky but she could still see the shadows of two forms in its depths.
Years ago, when she first saw it, Marian had been drawn to the clairvoyant orb, even though the crystal was flawed (which often made it difficult to see), but she bought it anyway. It never gave her a hint of trouble. It lay on its pillow of royal blue velvet atop the spindly legged, tri-footed round table in her magic room.
That night, it showed her something she did not like to see.
She turned and carefully touched the precious book, her hands wearing clean, white, cloth gloves. She, nor her mother, nor her mother’s mother (and so on) ever touched Granny Esmeralda’s Book of Shadows without using the greatest care.
The book was nearly five hundred years old and it was precious.
She read the ingredients of the potion Granny Esmeralda used on Royce and Beatrice (even though she’d read it hundreds of times before and had it memorised).
The protection charm was fierce, half of the ingredients you couldn’t get anymore unless you visited the darkest shops.
Marian saw, however, that using the flesh and blood of the dark soul and the death blood of the lovers may now be causing a bit of havoc for Beatrice and Royce’s descendants.
She knew (as every witch did) that bad things came from bad blood, violence, mayhem or simply (as was the case for Sibyl and Colin) misunderstanding and distrust.
Nevertheless, to make the potion as strong as it needed to be, Marian knew Granny Esmeralda needed all the magic she could get.
It should have been strong enough, the residual love of the wedded Morgans that lasted in the atmosphere for five hundred years. Everything was perfect, Colin and Sibyl were both direct descendants (of this Marian was certain intuitively rather than with any real knowledge). Colin lived in Lacybourne. Sibyl, for some deliciously fateful reason, lived in Granny Esmeralda’s old cottage. Then there was the dog, named for Royce’s horse. Marian didn’t know why the lovers had exchanged hair, but she found it very touching.
But something, obviously, was wrong and it was likely that potion.
“Well, Granny Esmeralda, there’s nothing for it. I’m just going to have to keep my eye on them,” Marian told the book. “And maybe meddle, just a wee bit,” she finished.
She knew it was dangerous to meddle but if she didn’t it would likely be another five hundred years before their descendants could start again.
The book, not unusually, said nothing in return.
Marian stood and felt some pain in her knees.
“I’m too old for this,” she complained to one of her cats.
The feline blinked at her.
Without further hesitation, Marian went to her vials and drawers.
She had work to do.
* * * * *
What did a woman wear when she became a whore?
Sibyl would have never thought in a million years, with ignorant bliss at her own eventual stupidity, that she would be asking herself that question.
Now, for fifty thousand pounds and peace of mind for the well-being of several dozen old people she really didn’t know all that well, she was asking herself that question.
At least, she told herself, she hadn’t sold her body to the devil, better-known-as Colin Morgan, for, say, just the price of petrol.
However, she found herself obsessing about whether she should have asked him for twice that, they needed work done on the stage too. And rewiring. And decent heating. And new furniture.
Of course, that may have meant four months of anything he wanted which was an idea not to be borne (not that her current predicament was easily tolerated, it was just a bargain she’d made and, regrettably, had to keep).
That might be the worst part of it all (in a situation where it was very difficult to assess what exactly was the worst part). Considering that he was a raving lunatic with a multiple personality disorder, “whatever he wanted” could be very much not worth getting paid fifty thousand pounds.