“Nor would I, but he isn’t there,” Zeb said. “Who would know where he is? Who’s in charge of caring for him?”
“I don’t know. I have not seen him since he was taken ill.” Her brows came together. “Is something wrong?”
“He’s not in his room, that’s all. What is it?”
Jessamine’s hand had gone to her mouth. She stared at Zebwith stricken eyes. “Do you think—do you think something has happened to him?”
In another house, that would have seemed something of an overreaction. As it was, Zeb was deeply grateful that someone else seemed to be noticing. “Why? Doyouthink something’s wrong?”
Jessamine bit her lip. “Do you know how old he is?”
“Late forties? Oh Lord, you’re not going to talk about the Wyckham curse, are you? I just want to know where he is.”
“But it might matter,” Jessamine said. “Will you come with me?”
“Where?”
“Just come. I can’t explain. Please?”
“Is this important?” Zeb said. “Because I have things to do, and if it’s about curses and ghosts—”
“Cousin Zeb.” Jessamine dropped her voice low. “There is nobody else I can speak to. Wynn doesn’t want to know. If you don’t think it’s anything once you’ve seen, you may decide never to listen to me again. But come now,please.”
“All right,” Zeb said reluctantly. “But can we make it quick?”
It was not quick. It was a trudge outside, through the clinging mists. Cold, damp tendrils brushed Zeb’s face and he batted them away.
“It’s sticky, isn’t it? I always think the mist is like cobwebs,” Jessamine said. “As if a great spider was crouched over the house, spinning and spinning.”
Zeb had not needed that mental image. He slapped at a fingerof mist that twined in his hair. “Could you tell me what we’re doing?”
“I will tell you, but you have to promise me to listen to me without interrupting and saying it’s nonsense. Do you promise?”
“No,” Zeb said. “I’ll do my best to hear you out, though.”
“Then listen. You know the Wyckham curse: that Walter sold the lives of his wives and children, exchanging their futures for his—”
“I’m interrupting, and this is nonsense. I don’t want to hear it.” He needed to find Gideon and go home, not be wandering in the fog, listening to doom-laden gibbering. And they weren’t even wandering, he realised. Jessamine was leading them purposefully through the mist; Zeb recognised the path.
“Very well,” Jessamine said. “Then you may just hear what I saw.”
Zeb sighed. “What was that?”
“You know my room is on the west side of the house. I heard a sound last night, very faint. It was awfully eerie, and I thought it might be the wind or someone singing in the house. It was all on one note, and then it went up and down.” She sang a few notes, justla la, that resembled plainsong. She had an excellent voice. “And I looked out of the window and I saw light. Flames. As if a line of people were carrying torches.”
“Good heavens. What did you do?”
“I shut the curtains at once, went to bed, and pulled the covers over my head,” Jessamine said, which struck Zeb as the most sensible thing he’d heard from her in some time. “But I gotup early this morning and came out, and…well.” She gestured ahead, to where the stone circle loomed out of the mist, every bit as ominous as Walter could have hoped. “Look,” she said, heading up to the altar stone. “Come.”
Zeb approached cautiously. The stones loomed out of the drifts of mist, grey and ancient and forbidding. The altar stone—
“What the devil?” he yelped. “What?”
“It’s been like this before,” Jessamine said, with terrible simplicity. “I have seen it several times. But I’ve never seen so much.”
There was blood, pints of it, pooling on the top of the altar stone, in the dip where Zeb had put his hand what felt like months ago. It was dripping over the top, spilling down the sides, droplets splashing darkly on the grass. He stared, speechless.
“I thought—I don’t know what I thought,” she said, voice sounding rather fuzzy through the ringing in his ears. “I have seen blood on the stone before, but I told myself it was foxes, or a hawk killing a pigeon, or some such thing. It was never so much. But now, this—and the chanting—and you say Colonel Dash is missing.”
