Sarah shivered. “He must be totally desperate.”
“Or insane.”
“Did she come?”
“No one came. But they heard him. All the birds of the Wood rose up, starlings and crows and jackdaws, karking and laughing and flapping around the trees. They all streamed off westward. Then Piers came out with an umbrella and he and Venn had one great unholy row. I got out the car and left to find you at once. I just pray we’re in . . .”
His voice faded into dismayed silence. The car stopped.
“. . . time,” he said.
The gates were wide open. Over the familiar lions on the pillars, ivy had grown. Sarah felt the seed of dread inside her grow to certainty.
Wharton blasted the horn, twice. “Hang on!”
The drive had always been overgrown. Now, Sarah thought, it was if the trees had taken a step forward, threatening, closing in. Beneath the faint light from the stars, the Wood seemed darker and denser than before, all shadow and gnarled, silent thickets.
An owl hooted, somewhere close.
She shivered. It was like coming back into a trap waiting to spring and catch her, the snare of Venn’s obsession. And it scared her, because if she fell into it—if just for a moment she allowed herself to feel sorry for him, allowed her resolution to waver—the world she had known, far in the future, would be destroyed, and all her life with it.
The car struggled up the drive, jolted around the fallen tree, slurred swiftly over the gravel, and stopped. She looked up at the gray mullioned façade of the Abbey. It was in darkness. No lights showed.
“We’re too late.” Wharton was already out and racing toward the building. Sarah ran after him; she overtook him and leaped up the steps. The front door was solidly locked.
She rang the bell, then banged furiously with her fists. “Piers! Venn!”
The house stood as dark and silent as a mansion in a dream.
Wharton scowled. “Kitchen door.”
They fled around the dark building, through shrubbery and toward the stables; then she stopped so suddenly he cannoned into her.
“Listen!”
A soft creaking sound drifted in the dark breeze. It made the hairs on his neck stir, because it was so alien. He had no idea what it was. A body hanging from a twisting rope? The wheels of a ghostly carriage passing in the night?
“The lake.” Sarah was already running, so fast he couldn’t keep up.
“Sarah! Wait!” He hurried after her. The Wood was black; he stumbled over briars and brambles, almost pitched into a sudden ditch. Then he shoved his way through bracken out into a dark path tangled with sprouting fungi, the smell foul.
“Sarah!”
Hurtling after her, he came out on the lakeside.
Quite suddenly, as if they had all been lit at that moment, he was blinded by lanterns. They hung from the trees, floated on the water. Some seemed to be carried in the air like small moving stars. And their colors were the most gorgeous he had ever seen—turquoise and orange and emerald, each jewel-bright flame blurring and blending into another. Underfoot, as he hurried down to where Sarah was, he sank ankle-deep in a soft drift that he realized was petals; the heaped petals of a million roses, scattered with the abandon of a wedding. The scent of their clotted richness was so overwhelming that it made him gasp in a stifled breath—the perfume of summer in the coldest of spring nights.
He stopped beside Sarah. “This is trouble.”
“Yes.” Her voice was hard. “Look.”
Venn stood at the edge of the lake, where the bank crumbled. He stood tall, his spare figure silhouetted against the moon. Coming toward him over the dark water was a small boat rowed by four of the Shee, canopied with silk, hung with lanterns, the oars creaking. Seated in it was a young woman, her hair short and black, crowned with flowers. She wore a long white dress, simple as a nightgown, that trailed out behind her in the dark water. Her face was Summer’s and her red-lipped smile was sweetly triumphant.
The boat touched the bank. The faery woman stood, rocking slightly, and gathered up her dress. She held out one long white hand. Venn seemed to hesitate.
Then he stepped forward. Their fingers reached for each other.
“NO!”
The yell of fury broke from Sarah before she could think; she ran down and grabbed Venn’s arm, forcing it down, physically pulling him away. “What are you thinking? Are you mad? Have you forgotten about Leah? About Leah, Venn!”
Astonished, he stared at her. “Sarah. You came back.”
“And only just in time. How could you betray—”
“I don’t betray her. I do this to save her.”
He had lost weight. His face was gaunt, his eyes colder and bluer in their pain. There was a terrible blindness in them. His hand was a weight in hers.
She dropped it, stood back.
“That’s not what she thinks.”
Summer stood smiling, unmoving. And then in a bewildering instant she was on the bank between them, close to him, and her voice was girlish as she laughed.
“Since when do you listen to children, Venn?”
“I don’t.” But his gaze was dark.
“You will!” Sarah wanted to push Summer aside but dared not touch her. Instead she walked around her and faced Venn again. “Yes, I’m back. I’m back to work with you on the mirror. To find Jake, get the bracelet, bring back Leah. That’s what you want, and that’s what we’ll do.”
“Sarah, you can’t . . .”
“You have no idea what I can do! What I know. Maybe I have ways, Venn. Maybe I know things from the future you can’t even guess at.”
“Such as?”
“I’m saying nothing in front of her. Get rid of her. Do you seriously think you can ever trust her? You told me yourself . . .”
“I have no choice.” It was a whisper of defeat. It infuriated her.
“You do! I’ve been busy, researching. I’ve found Mortimer Dee’s page—it may tell us how he built the mirror, all the secrets he knew about it. You can have it! Use it. You don’t need this dark magic. This danger.”
Summer sighed. A breath of breeze rippled the trees. The Wood seemed to stir with hidden unease.
“Oberon . . .” she said.
He ignored her. “How can I believe you, Sarah? You want the mirror broken.”
“Yes. But not yet. That’s why I’m back. To get Leah. Remember what I told you. She’s my great-grandmother. If we fail, I’ll never have been born.”
For a moment he stared at her with those ice-blue eyes, a shared intensity, an instant of consideration. Wind lifted his blond hair, flapped the collar of her coat.
Summer snapped the silence like a twig. “She’s quite obviously lying. She’ll do anything to get her way. Come with me, Oberon. I’ll send my people through the Summerland to find Jake. It will be too easy.”
He was silent.
“Don’t ignore me.” Her voice had the tiniest edge of frost.
Sarah’s gaze was steady.
Venn looked down. Then, abruptly, he turned away. “I’ve changed my mind, Summer. You always ask too much. She’s right. I’ll do it without you.”
The faery woman’s pretty face did not flicker; her red lips made no pout. But at once, and from all sides, a gust of wind lifted the petals and scattered them high into the darkness like clouds of dark ash.
Sarah backed off. Wharton, close behind her, felt the sudden slanting chill of rain on his face.
Summer stood barefoot on the soaking grass. Behind her the boat shriveled. Its flags became cobwebs, its canopy shredded to rags; the four boatmen lifted their arms and flew away, starling-dark, into the stormy sky.
“Oh Venn,” she whispered. “I will destroy your house for this.”