Date: 2012-04-10 04:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Gothic; Paranormal; Horror; Historical
Description: Alternate cover edition of ASIN B007WGRXO6 Tonight will be a howling night, when the wolves will not be still... You’ve heard of the Woman in White and the Woman in Black, now meet The Lady in Yellow From an early age, Veronica Everly has had a hard life. After the deaths of her actor parents, left at age five with an alcoholic aunt, she ends up in a the Catholic orphanage of Saint Mary's to be cared for by the nuns. Now, approaching her nineteenth birthday, she is a hired as governess to two motherless children living in a stately home in the wilds of Yorkshire. Identical twins, Jacques and J
Publisher: House of Winterspells

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The Lady in Yellow
by

Alyne de Winter

The Lady in Yellow

© 2011 by Alyne de Winter

Smashwords Edition

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means – electronic, mechanical, photographic (photocopying), recording, or otherwise – without prior permission in writing from the author.

Cover Image: Lillie Langtry by Edward Poynter

Printed in the United States of America

ISBN Enter number here

For news, updates and more information at: www.alynedewinter.com

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I hope you enjoy this e-book of Victorian Gothic Romance.

When young Veronica Everly takes a position as governess to a pair of identical twins, she did not expect them to be a family of werewolves, or to fall in love with her handsome employer, Rafe de Grimston. She is faced with an agonizing choice when Rafe makes her promise to redeem them all.

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Table of Contents

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Table of Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 4

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 12

Chapter 1

The spindly agent stood behind his shining Chippendale desk reading Veronica's reference letter. The stack of papers neatly squared on his blotter was much higher than the mere covering letter and two references she had sent him. Veronica shifted her gaze to the classical sculptures, the enormous paintings, the imposing floor-to-ceiling bookshelves. He'd said he had the perfect position for her: governess to a pair of twins. The bonnet ribbon tied at her throat felt much too tight. When the agent cleared his throat, so did her smile.

"Miss Everly?"

"Yes, Sir?"

The agent leveled an assessing gaze at Veronica through a pince nez perched on the end of his long, elevated nose. She straightened her shoulders, grateful for the support of her stays, and tucked the scuffed toes of her shoes under her hem.

He set the letter down on top of the stack of papers, squared them, and tapped them with the tip of his boney finger. Then he picked it up again and, pacing away from the desk, perused the missive one more time. He sighed as if he carried a great weight.

“You must understand, the twins are a bit difficult. Am I correct in seeing in your covering letter that you have had experience with a mad child?”

"Yes. By God’s grace I was able to help her to live an almost normal life. Sequestered but normal.”

He sniffed, nodded.

“The twins are merely unusual. They are identical. White enough to be albinos, but their eyes are pale green. They are also, well, androgynous. Have you ever met a person about whom is was impossible to tell whether they were male or female? That is the case with the twins. So the family decided to name them one for a girl and one for a boy. The boy is called Jacques, and the girl is Jacqueline.”

“Are they French?”

“On their mother’s side. They actually own a chateau in the Auvergne but Mr. de Grimston spends all of his time trying to sell it. The family fortune is in a terrible shambles since the tragic loss of his wife. She had all the money, you see.”

“So, I shall not see much of him.”

“Indeed. Mr. de Grimston is rarely at home. This position requires a great deal of responsibility and endurance, Miss Everly. You will have to make many decisions on your own.”

The agent looked Veronica up and down, squinted as if he were scrutinizing her for cracks. Veronica rearranged the folds of her skirt, smoothed them down, then re-folded her gloved hands in her lap.

The agent raised his eyebrows and went on.

“Mrs. de Grimston was a very elegant, very beautiful woman. Her children adored her and have refused to accept a governess in her place. But you, Miss Everly, pretty as you are….. Forgive me, but why would such an attractive girl as you are choose to work when you could have your pick of gentlemen?”

“Well, Sir, my parents are dead so I must support myself. And I do thoroughly enjoy teaching. I got used to all types of children growing up at Saint Mary’s.”

“Are you a religious girl, Miss Everly?’

“But of course. Saint Mary’s is a religious institution. We attended Mass every day, though I'm afraid I am not as conscientious about it as I used to be.”

Frowning and biting his lip, the agent flipped through Veronica’s paperwork, scrutinizing it again. Then he looked up at her.

“Very well then.” He sighed. “Though you are young….What is it? Twenty-one? Your references are impeccable. Especially the report of your success with the mad child. I will give you the position. Just be aware that the journey to Belden House takes three days and nights by train. You will be far from all you know, and those who know you.”

“I’m sure I shall make new friends,” Veronica said brightly. “I am so looking forward to this.”

The contract signed, Veronica’s curiosity got the better of her.

“May I ask, Sir, what happened to Mrs. de Grimston?”

The agent cleared his throat. “That is a mystery Miss Everly. No one knows for sure.”

****

It was a very long journey to Belden House. Veronica felt as if she was travelling to some far off country. Who would have thought the land could be so empty, that she could feel so alone? As the train carried her between meadows and rolling, green hills, the sky darkened, and she began to wonder if she’d made a mistake choosing to accept the job at Belden House. A tall, brooding mansion came to mind, poised on the edge of a cliff overlooking the sea. A lonely, sinister place like the one in the novel she was reading.

It was dawn when Veronica arrived at her stop. She was grateful to find the chauffeur of a large black carriage with the de Grimston crest on the door, waiting for her. The drive seemed to go on forever across fields of wild flowers and then the woods where the heavy leaf-cover made it almost as dark as night. They emerged into broad daylight on the grounds of a stately home. The sunlight glinted on the many faceted windows so that the whole graceful façade sparkled. There was a wide lawn with trees sloping down to a lake. At least three walled gardens. The only flaw was a rather grim looking tower sticking up at the back that seemed like an intruder from a distant time.

Two cheerful maids came out onto the steps followed by a cook, a butler, a groom, two working boys, and a tall, auburn-haired lady in widow’s weeds whose face visibly brightened at the sight of Veronica.

“Good afternoon.” She grasped Veronica’s hand. “I’m the housekeeper, Mrs. Twig. We shall see quite a lot of each other.”

“Pleased to meet you, Mrs. Twig,” Veronica said. “I’m Veronica Everly. My, this is a beautiful house.”

“Yes. The newest bits are Georgian. The tower at the back is tenth century I believe.”

“Oh my. That’s very old, isn’t it? Is it possible to meet the children right away?”

“Of course. Come this way, please.”

Mrs. Twig led Veronica through the elegant high-ceilinged rooms, all so light and airy, and tastefully done. At the back of the house was a large open garden, including a stand of white birches. Two white-haired children of about eight years old were hanging a doll over a wishing well at the base of a mossy hummock shrouded in white lilies. They were singing an old folksong in soft, light voices.

Green grow the lilies oh, bright among the bushes oh...

Mrs. Twig called to them.

“Jack! Come along and meet Miss Everly.”

Both children looked up. Veronica’s scalp tingled at the eerie duplication of their faces and the intense gaze of their pale green eyes.

“Hello, children!” Veronica waved at them as they walked slowly towards her.

They both wore white, one a simple frock and the other trousers and a shirt. Their skin was glowing and slightly tanned, setting off their chin-length white hair and pale eyes like photographic negatives. Veronica had never seen identical twins before, but she’d heard a superstitious belief that they were magical. In that moment she was sure that superstition was founded on truth.

“Are you our new governess?” the one in trousers asked.

“Yes. I’m Miss Everly. And you’re Jacques aren’t you?”

“Yes. And this is my other half, Jacqueline. Together we are called Jack.”

“Well, Jack. I’m happy to meet you both. I think we shall be very good friends.”

“She looks like a deer,” said Jacques to Jacqueline. “A pretty doe.”

The children smiled in a sudden, shy way. When the sun broke through the clouds, they seemed to vanish in its rays.

****

Tea was in a lovely nook that looked out on the garden. A vase of roses, lilies and ferns graced the table, sunlight sparkled on the silverware.

“Mrs. Twig, the children are delightful. I wonder why they have a reputation for being difficult,” said Veronica as she dropped sugar into her tea.

“They aren’t bad children. They’re just different. All the other governesses complained that they were secretive. Elusive,” Mrs. Twig said. Veronica noticed a slight resistance in her voice.

“Elusive?”

“Yes. They disappear sometimes. No one can find them.”

“Like they did in the garden just now?”

“What do you mean?”

“In the sunlight. Didn’t you see them vanish in the sunlight?”

“No…. It must have been an optical effect of some kind. Your eyes are playing tricks on you, Miss Everly. I mean, they hide.”

“Where?”

Mrs. Twig sipped her tea.

“They always come home. Safe and sound,” she said.

****

Veronica made sure the children were in their rooms that night. Their rooms were directly across the hall from each other and looked so alike in their brocade pallor that, standing in one and looking through the doorway at the other, she had the brief sensation that she was looking into a mirror in which her reflection did not appear. Unsettled by the effect, Veronica pulled the twins into her room and had them sit on the sofa by the fire while she took her place in the cozy wing chair. A large blue book of fairy tales lay on the table beside her.

“Sometimes, we swap rooms,” said Jacques. He was wearing white pajamas.

“Just like we swap clothes,” said Jacqueline in her white nightgown.

“Then how can anyone tell you apart?” Veronica asked.

“They can’t!” They both fell over with laughter.

“Well, as long as you’re both here. There are two of you. Of that I am sure.” Veronica was determined not to be disturbed by anything they said or did. They were just children after all. “What is your favorite fairy tale, Jacqueline?”

“Oh, Little Red Riding Hood,” she said.

“Mine as well,” said Jacques. “Though I prefer the true version.”

“And what is that?” asked Veronica.

“The one where Grandma is a werewolf.”

Veronica read them the version she had in which, to their delight, the woodcutter had to cut Red Riding Hood out of Grandma Wolf’s stomach. Soon the twins were asleep. One by one she carried them to their beds and tucked them in. She gazed down at their pale heads on each of their pillows, the white eyelashes just grazing their cheeks, the straight, narrow noses, the beautiful mouths.

“Neither male nor female, they are spirits of pure light. Dreams from the mind of God,” she whispered.

She smiled with contentment and went to her room. The French windows were open to the night, inviting her to step out onto the balcony. Stars streamed across the sky. The moon was just edging towards fullness. She leaned over the railing and inhaled the fragrances of grass, trees, and the late summer roses blooming just below. Frogs sang from the wishing well. Everything was lovely and cozy and just right.

Veronica was about to go in when she was startled by a movement over the lawn just below. A young lady with long pale hair stepped out of the shadow of the house into the moonlight. She slowly turned to look back with eyes so tragic they took Veronica’s breath away. In a plain white dress with a long, twisting train and a peaked hat that appeared to be made of white bark, she seemed like creature from a dream. A bell began to toll, slow and out of tune. The lady let out a terrible wail, and was blown backwards as if carried by the wind, but there was no wind. In a moment she was gone.

CHAPTER 2

*

“Mrs. Twig, was there a visitor last night? A lady in a white dress?” Veronica asked. Her china teacup rattled slightly on the saucer. She wanted an answer before the twins came downstairs for breakfast.

Mrs. Twig was ticking off items on her to-do list. She looked startled by Veronica’s question.

Veronica went on. “She came out into the garden. I don’t remember anyone arriving. Was it a friend of yours?”

“No. It’s just someone who knows Mr. Rafe.”

“What does she want?”

Mrs. Twig pressed her lips together and fell silent.

Veronica walked to the windows. The twins were in the garden petting a large dog, a kind of Alsatian with long, white fur. When they looked up at her with their identical faces, and bright eyes, she fell in love.

Veronica turned to Mrs. Twig. “Where did that dog come from? It is very beautiful.”

“I’m glad you think so. It’s their guardian. Let me show you the classroom, Miss Everly. Come.”

Veronica tore herself away from the sight of the enigmatic twins and followed Mrs. Twig up the stairs.

On the third floor, they stopped at a door that seemed to have been closed forever. Mrs. Twig unlocked it and ushered Veronica into a cold, stale smelling classroom. There was a chalkboard, a teacher’s desk, and three students’ desks. A pair of bookshelves flanked a small cast-iron fireplace. The windows looked out on a dark hedge of lofty Irish yews.

“It can be cozy with a fire,” said Mrs. Twig. “For some reason, the former governess had the carpet pulled up. Then she left. If you want, we can lay another.”

“That would be lovely,” said Veronica. She quickly perused the textbooks. “These look quite good. I’ve brought some of my own as well.”

“Why don’t I order the carpet while you get acquainted with the room. The children should be up in an hour. Shall I have your books brought up as well?”

“Yes, of course. Thank you.” Veronica said. “Oh, Mrs. Twig? Why are there three desks? Is there another child?”

Mrs. Twig stopped short but did not turn around. “It’s just an extra desk.”

The housekeeper hurried out of the room before Veronica could question her again.

There wasn’t much to see. Veronica’s desk was quite barren of teaching supplies. A strange little notebook was in the side drawer that looked like it had been left by her predecessor. It didn’t feel right to open it. Veronica shut the drawer and looked out at the yews. About ten yards away, very tall and close-knit, they loomed up like a wall, casting the room into shadow.

She shivered, went back out to the landing and looked down the stairs. The house was so quiet. Veronica found a hallway to the left. She followed it around a corner and came upon three doors; two facing one another across the hall, and one at the end. On instinct, she hurried to the end door and turned the knob. It opened. Her heart pounding, she trespassed into a most elegant sitting room she’d ever seen. An ornate marble fireplace, with two portraits above the mantel, dominated the far wall. Fine artwork, sculptures, potted trees, silken furniture of ivory, dark green, and gold spoke of wealth and status and education far beyond her own, but also something uncivilized, if not wild.

She spun around to see, through French doors on either side of the entrance, a pair of bedrooms that corresponded to the two doors that faced each other across the hallway.

“This must be the Master Suite,” she said.

She couldn't help admiring the feminine décor of Mrs. de Grimston’s bedroom with its damask canopied bed, mirrors, and tall windows. A wooden statue of Mary Magdalene with her perfume jar stood on the dressing table beside silver combs and brushes and bottles of scent. His bedroom was on the other side, all leather, raw silk, and wood, ornamented with the peculiar acquisitions of the world traveler.

Vases of fresh lilies bloomed on every table. The rooms were kept in readiness, perhaps, for Mr. de Grimston’s return.

Veronica sank down on the sofa and was instantly mesmerized by the two portraits above the fireplace. They were a matched pair. One was of a man, who must have been Rafe de Grimston, and the other of a lady, who was surely his wife, Sovay de Grimston. Veronica wasn’t exactly sure, but it seemed that Mrs. de Grimston looked very much like the lady she’d seen in the garden. Veronica had assumed that Mrs. de Grimston was dead, but perhaps that was not the case. She was a sylphlike creature. Her small, perfect features had the same eerie cast as the twins, but the green eyes, and blonde hair, were a shade darker, as if seen through smoked glass. Rafe de Grimston was handsome in a dusky, dark blonde sort of way. His eyes were large and blue, framed by thick eyebrows and lashes, the line of his jaw was exquisite. His whole aspect suggested physicality and strength.

“I can’t wait to see him,” Veronica said to herself.

She went through French doors into his bedroom. The door to the hallway was in a little arched chamber to her right with oil lamps on either side. The room felt foreign with its heavy silks and leather chairs. The dresser was glossy mahogany. A large mirror hung on the wall above it. The glass was very good. Veronica pulled a stray lock of her unruly chestnut hair out of her eyes and tucked it behind her ear. She rubbed her frown away. She was always doing that, wrinkling her brow, worrying. A piece of red raw silk went along the top of the dresser and, lying there as if they’d been casually cast aside, was a pistol, a box of bullets, and an invoice for a large amount of sheet silver at a price that made her gasp.

It was none of her business of course.

“I’m snooping, aren’t I?” She chastised herself.

Veronica drew away and went back into the sitting room to take another look at Rafe de Grimston and his wife. She didn’t want to speculate about them. It wasn’t her job. Sunlight was pouring through an open door in an alcove to her right. Veronica moved towards it like a cat seeking warmth and found a stone floor curving towards a bay of open stonework and a stairway curving steeply upwards towards the roof.

Excited at the prospect of a magnificent view, Veronica pinched up her skirts and went up the stairs. Halfway up, she came to a wide landing with a door at the end, hinged and locked with iron. It looked like it went into the old tower. She paused, wondering if it was safe to keep going up the stairs that curved up the side of the tower. What if the upper steps were broken, the roof weakened by the elements? Still, the fresh air enticed her to risk it. She climbed higher. Finally arriving on the solid stone pavement of the roof, she hurried to the battlements, and leaned out to look over the land.

The grounds of Belden House were vast. A green lawn sweeping up between the birch wood and a juniper hedge created the effect of a wild mountainside. At the top of the lawn, backed by a row of hemlocks, was a ruined chapel of white stone with a crumbling bell tower. It was a folly perhaps, a conceit. Beyond the hemlocks were woods, rolling hills, and a green meadow dotted with sheep. The walled gardens on the far sides of the yard were likewise green and dark. The air was fresh, the sky blue and so clear that the moon was still visible.

As if guided by that harbinger of darkness, Veronica’s gaze fell down along the white spines of the birches to rest upon a tomb standing alone in a clearing. It was a lonely sight and seeing it made the whole world go silent and still. Crows flew up from the treetops into the pure, bright sky. A kind of longing tugged at Veronica’s heart. She looked down the side of the tower at the ivy, and then out over the lawn.

A bell was tolling, slow and out of tune. It seemed to be coming from the ruined bell tower, but who could possibly be ringing it? A hare flew out of the woods followed by the twins who, laughing with glee, chased it on all fours and at a remarkable speed. Veronica shook herself. Their arms could not be that long! She blinked and saw them gaining on the hare and in another blink, they had it. Her stomach rolled as Jacques lifted the hare’s neck to his mouth and bit it until it’s feet stopped thrusting and it hung limply in his hands. Then the twins stood up normally, and, sweet as angels, carried their victim ceremoniously towards the house as if they were bearing a great gift.

Veronica steadied herself. Somewhere in the house, a clock gonged nine. It was time for class. She was quite breathless when she hurried in. They were already sitting at their desks, clean, dressed in white, serene. They turned around to look at her, smiling their identical smiles, emitting the same curious green gaze. Veronica was aware that she had to struggle not to stare at them. They were so beautiful, so bright. But there was something else now, an uncanny element that she would have to forget about. Her job was not to speculate, but to teach.

“Well, children, tell me where you left off in your lessons with your last governess?”

“History,” said Jacqueline. “We were studying the kings and queens of England.”

“We left off at Anne Boleyn,” said Jacques. “Did you know that she was a witch?”

“An enchantress,” said Jacqueline. “She had an extra little finger on her left hand that she used to cast spells.”

“And she went about in six-fingered gloves,” aid Jacques.

They laughed as if it was a hugely funny joke.

“And where did you learn that?” Veronica asked.

“From Miss Blaylock,” said Jacqueline.

It seemed history was their pet subject. They were both able to rattle off the names of all of the kings and queens of Britain and France, with jovial asides about the mad ones.

****

Veronica couldn’t go to bed. She sat up on the balcony in her dressing gown, her forefinger pressed tightly between the pages of a romance novel while she studied the moonlight washing over the trees. The imaginings of the novelist were no match for her own. What was the hare for? Dinner? She hated to admit her sudden superstitious belief that it was wrong to consume hare’s meat. Hares were witches after all. Hares and queens….She kept seeing in her mind’s eye the children running like four-legged animals over the lawn. She bit her lip and crossed herself. And who was buried in that tomb?

The out-of-tune bell was slowly tolling. It was unearthly. Veronica tore herself out of her reverie with a shudder, and went in to bed. Her mind continued re-playing what she’d seen in the garden until she dropped off to sleep with her garnet rosary wrapped around her hand to ward off nightmares.

Her sleep was disrupted by a dog howling in the garden. Was it that white dog? she wondered. It howled again, more urgently. Her heart pounding, Veronica sat up, hurried into her warm dressing gown, and ran out to her balcony. The full moon cast long shadows over the grass. The only sound was the high-pitched organ grinding of frogs. She hurried to the children’s rooms. They were gone.

She looked around, hoping to see them among the shadows on the walls.

“Jacques! Jacqueline! Where are you?”

She looked through both of their rooms, and could not find them.

“This isn’t funny Jack, whatever you’re doing, you’d better not be outside.”

The howling was long and drawn out. There was a chorus of howls. Veronica froze in her tracks to listen. Those unhallowed sounds were not coming from the garden below, but from high above.

There was shouting downstairs. Mrs. Twig’s husky voice rose up to her.

“I’m not letting you in!”

“But you must, Cherie. I must see my children.”

Was that a French accent? Veronica swept silently down the stairs in the direction of the voices and saw Mrs. Twig at the front door. It was open a crack, and she was pushing it against someone on the other side. Trying to keep them out.

“If you do not let me in I shall go to the police!”

“It won’t do you any good. Go away.”

“What a cruel woman you are, Madam Twig, to keep a mother from her children. A woman who was foully murdered and buried alive. You see me, Madam. I was not killed. I am just as alive as you.”

The wind was whistling around the door when Mrs. Twig finally got it shut, and locked it. There was a scream and a howl as of a soul in agony. Mrs. Twig leaned against the door with her eyes closed and put her fists over her ears.

She is cruel, Veronica thought. How can she refuse a mother’s right to see her own children?

Veronica hurried back up to her room and went onto her balcony. The same white-clad lady as before stood in the garden wearing that strange birch bark hat. She was bent over screaming into a wind that swirled around her alone. As if in answer, melancholy, childlike howls echoed out from high above, from the tower. The lady reached towards the sounds and, with a mournful wail, vanished with the wind.

There were lights around the wishing well. Then, out onto the lawn, three children came, all wearing luminous hats of white bark that left their faces in shadow. A boy carried a rowan branch, a white-haired girl, who looked very much like the twins, held a doll, the other girl held a bunch of lilies. They stood together in a halo of golden light and looked up at the tower. Veronica couldn’t see them, but she sensed that there were other children present in that light, behind the others, like a troop of sentient shadows.

Eerie cries, howls of sorrow, wafted down from on high. The white dog crossed the garden. Chimes tinkled on the wind, but nothing stirred.

The grandfather clock in the gallery gonged three times.

****

It was dawn when Veronica woke on the balcony, dampish and freezing in her dressing gown. The garden looked deserted in the steel-gray gloom. She ran to the twins’ bedchambers. They were still gone. Veronica put her hands over her face, tried to relax.

“Wait a minute. Wait a minute.” She steadied herself. “Mrs. Twig told me they did this. I should have expected it. Just not so soon.”

Veronica washed and dressed and went downstairs to find Mrs. Twig.

She was in the kitchen standing over a whistling tea kettle, looking as haggard as Veronica felt.

“Mrs. Twig?”

“Oh, good morning, Miss Everly. I’m just making tea. Janet, bring the tray will you?”

The young, dark-haired maid, Janet, came around a corner with a tea tray.

“Take it out to the dining room please, for Miss Everly.”

“Mrs. Twig? I should like to have you join me for tea. Please,” Veronica said.

Mrs. Twig looked tense and relieved at the same time.

“Of course,” she said.

They sat silently for a moment drinking the hot tea. Revived, Veronica reached for a warm scone and slathered it with butter.

“Were you able to sleep last night?” Veronica asked.

“No, Miss Everly. Not well.”

“The children are gone.”

“As I told you.”

“For how long?”

“Only a day or so. Don’t worry. Take the morning off. I am having a fresh carpet laid in the classroom.”

Veronica stared at Mrs. Twig. She had so many questions, but she sensed she would have to move cautiously. Mrs. Twig drank her tea slowly, looking as if she’d never revive.

“Mrs. Twig…I saw three children at the well. A boy carrying rowan branch and a girl with a sheaf of lilies. A second girl had a doll. There were howling sounds coming from high above. From the tower.”

Mrs. Twig looked up, alarmed for a second. “What did you do?”

“Why, nothing. The three children—“

“What about them?”

“Who are they?”

“I don’t know, Miss.”

“But the girl with the doll had same hair and eyes as the twins.”

Mrs. Twig stared at Veronica and bit her lower lip.

“Are you sure it wasn’t one of the Jacks? They do love to play games and tricks,” she said.

“No. Oh, no. She was too tall. Older. And very obviously a girl. Her hair was very long,” Veronica said. “She looked to be about thirteen or fourteen years old.”

“Perhaps you were dreaming, Miss. You were curious about the extra desk, and so you dreamt of another child.”

“Perhaps. But the other two were different. They wore the most peculiar hats. Made of birch bark. Like that lady. I saw her again as well….”

Mrs. Twig stood up and cleared her tea things from the table.

“Lady de Grimston…Is she?”

“That woman’s a stranger. Enjoy your day off, Miss Everly. Good morning.”

Mrs. Twig went out of the room, leaving Veronica alone.

CHAPTER 3

*

Veronica needed to walk off her frustration. She had been anxious to explore the grounds of Belden House, so she slipped on her brown traveling cloak and headed out over the lawn. She steered clear of the wishing well, and headed towards one of the walled gardens. The door in the stone wall opened into a tranquil grove of lilac trees, a few young fruit trees, moss roses, and a marble fish pond.

Veronica looked in but didn’t enter. Rather, she hung in the doorframe, restless and burning to know where the twins were. As if someone had tapped her on the shoulder, Veronica swiftly turned round. She looked up at the tower. The mossy, ivy-covered masonry was rough, heavy, the window slits clogged with red leaves. She ran to stand in its shadow and, blinking from the brilliant rays of the sun streaming between the battlements, searched the windows for signs of life.

“Jack!” Veronica shouted. She expected one of them to lean out smiling, their pale hair gleaming against the dark stones. But the windows gaped empty.

Veronica looked down through the woods. Just visible in its little clearing, was the tomb. She hurried over a carpet of fallen leaves, broke through a fine mesh of birch twigs and softly entered the site.

The lintel bore the name de Grimston in large, hooked letters. Strangely for a tomb, the door was ajar.

Veronica called in. “Jacques? Jacqueline? Are you in there? Come on out now.”

Only an owl answered.

Veronica paused, uncertain about entering a house of the dead. She peered into the musty darkness. Stairs ran down to a tiled vestibule. Just beyond, an iron grille stood open on a chamber of flashing candlelight.

“Jacques? Jacqueline?” Her voice echoed back from the chamber. Nothing stirred.

Veronica held her breath, and went slowly down the stairs. Dead leaves, dried animal bones, feathers, bits of fur lay in heaps over the floor. Fresh lilies bloomed in vases flanking the grille, their spicy scent overpowering the nose-tingling odor of decay.

Veronica grimaced and looked into the crypt.

There were two marble coffins inside, raised on biers. Veronica approached the larger one. Across the top, in neo-Gothic script, was simply the name:

Sovay

Beloved wife of Rafe de Grimston

1837-1862

I hardly knew her…

So she was dead. But hadn’t she, or the lady that looked so like her, told Mrs. Twig she’d been buried alive and escaped from her tomb?

“How horrible!” Veronica breathed. “How horrible to shut her out after such an awful experience! It makes me wonder if Mrs. Twig colluded in the murder.”

There was the chance to find out, to prove Mrs. Twig’s story true or false. If the tomb was empty, then Mrs. Twig would be wrong to shut Sovay out of her own house. She would have to relent. But if the body was there, then….

Veronica pushed on the lid of the sarcophagus. It was very heavy, but she was able to jar it a little bit. Another shove, and it scraped open a crack. Something glittered up from the darkness inside. Veronica’s mouth went dry. She glanced over her shoulder at the other, smaller, coffin, then back at the palpable presence hidden in the darkness under the stone. Stricken by a terrible anxiety, she picked up her skirts and ran. Though the fresh air and sunshine cleared her head, she did not stop running until she was at the house, and safely in through the back door.

There were voices. One was Mrs. Twig, the other the rich, baritone cadences of a man.

Veronica patted her hair down, composed herself. It’s him. It’s Mr. de Grimston.

She crossed the drawing room to the reception hall. Still dressed in traveling clothes, tipping the man who had brought in his baggage, was indeed, Rafe de Grimston.

“Where are the twins? How do they like their new governess?” he asked Mrs. Twig who was looking straight at Veronica.

“Well, here she is Mr. Rafe. Come,” Mrs. Twig said and crooked her finger at Veronica.

Flushed and unable to control her pounding heart, Veronica stepped forward,.

“This is Miss Veronica Everly. This is Mr. de Grimston, Miss Everly.”

Mrs. Twig brought them together. Veronica gave him her hand, but couldn’t bring herself to look at him.

“I’m pleased to meet you, Miss Everly. If you don’t look at me, I will be afraid you’re hiding something. I’m no ogre, you know.”

“I’m sure you’re not,” said Veronica. She looked up at him and felt a warm blush spread over face. “I’m very sorry, Sir. I am afflicted with shyness meeting people for the first time.”

He was his portrait in the flesh, but twice as handsome and he smelled of trees and meadows and foreign soils. He was also laughing at her.

“I think we shall get along fine. A girl who blushes like that can never lie. Am I right, Mrs. Twig?”

“Right you are. Sir.”

“So where are the children? I’ve brought those dolls they were so desirous of, and a few other treasures.”

Rafe began opening a satchel and pulled out two white china dolls with pale blond hair.

“I found them in the house. In one of the old rooms." Rafe turned to Veronica. "The children are fond of dragging things where they’re forbidden to go. And leaving them there.” He winked.

"I'll keep in mind, Sir," Veronica said.

“How is the chateau?” Mrs. Twig asked.

Veronica sensed Mrs. Twig was rather fond of the old property, and would regret the sale of it.

“It still hasn’t sold. The folk around there don’t think it ever will. Bloody place is cursed or something, they say. There are too many staircases. Had me cursing, I’ll tell you.”

He and Mrs. Twig exchanged glances.

“The children are away, Sir. As you know,” Mrs. Twig said.

“Oh, confound it, that’s right. The moon followed me here while I was on the train. I regretted packing the telescope." Rafe looked at the floor, then at Veronica. "So what have you been doing to while away the time, Miss Everly? Do you draw or something?”

“I’ve been exploring a bit. I only just arrived myself and wanted to see the gardens.”

“They are beautiful, aren’t they?"

"Lovely."

Rafe's smiled softly at Veronica, then held the dolls out to Mrs. Twig. "These dolls, Mrs. Twig. Make sure Jack doesn’t put them in the well. They were copied after something in Le Grande Albert. So I’m told.”

Mrs. Twig nodded sharply.

“Those dolls look like the twins,” said Veronica. “What is Le Grande Albert?”

Mrs. Twig gave Veronica a funny look. “Le Grande Albert is a grammar book, Miss. For learning how to speak properly.”

Veronica frowned. “What?”

“Grimoire,” said Rafe. “It’s a grimoire.”

Mrs. Twig's eyes shot wide, but she stayed silent.

Veronica shook her head and smiled. Good as her French was, she’d never heard that word before.

“I’m sure the children will love them,” she said. “It’s remarkable….”

“Mrs. Twig, just to be safe,” Rafe said. He pulled an ancient oversized folio out of the satchel. “I brought the book.”

“I’ll see to it, sir,” said Mrs. Twig. She took the dolls and the book from Rafe. “Are you…?”

“I’ve had some bad dreams,” he said. “That’s why I had to leave----to hurry back.”

"Oh!" Mrs. Twig' s hand flew to her heart. "How did you sneak up so quietly?"

Veronica spun around.

The twins were standing in the doorway.

“Papa! Papa!” They shouted with one voice and ran to their father.

He lunged towards them for an embrace.

“My two dear Jacks,” Rafe said, and kissed the tops of their heads. “I’ve brought lots of presents. Some things you’ll remember from the chateau.”

“Those books and things?” Jacques asked.

"With the pictures?” asked Jacqueline. “We do love old books, Miss Everly. And dolls.”

“Well, I’ve brought a troop of tin soldiers,” said Rafe. “And that telescope you so adore. Those little birds…and other things.”

“Oh, yes! Thank you Papa,” they both said.

Mrs. Twig held the dolls up so the children could see them. “Come now children, for luncheon. Give your father a rest.”

Eyes fixated on the dolls, the twins followed Mrs. Twig out towards the kitchen.

“Well, Miss Everly, I’m so glad you’re a gentle, attentive girl. The twins need someone like that after their mother….”

He held Veronica’s eyes as he spoke, eyes so large and blue she swore she heard surf breaking on a shore.

****

Veronica could not settle down that night. She paced her bedroom, periodically looking in on the twins who slept clutching their dolls. The dolls smelled of wild flowers, mostly lavender. The bodies must have been stuffed with flowers from the French countryside, a nice, rather nostalgic touch, she thought, to remind the children of their mother and her house in France.

“Their mother....” Veronica suddenly felt superfluous, essentially homeless, an outsider, orphaned and destined always to be alone. She wondered if she would ever really bond with the twins, or know them.

Sighing, she went out to her balcony to look at the full moon. Could it be, in that same moment, that Rafe de Grimston was standing on the tower with the telescope trained to his eye, gazing at the same bright moon, only able to see more deeply into its craters and seas, to penetrate more profoundly their mysteries?

Moonlight washed the shadows of the branches over the grass like long leggity beasties. A darkness crouched in the lilies around the well, and growled.

Chapter 4

*

October came in quietly. Veronica took long walks over the grounds, admiring the autumn colors, stopping to pick up the reddest of the fallen leaves. Her heart was on fire, and she could do nothing to control it except to avoid an encounter with Rafe de Grimston. When she saw him watching her from a downstairs window, her face burned hotter still. She was afraid to go back into the house where he might see her in such a state.

Luckily, she'd found a side door and a back stairway she could take to the classroom.

With a Persian carpet on the floor the color of spilled wine, a fire in the grate, and her own books on the shelves, the classroom was transformed into a cozy den that robbed the looming wall of yews in the windows of their oppressive influence. Veronica and the twins had established a routine of finishing their lessons before tea. They were very quick and always amusing. Their love of history extended to cultural oddities. One morning she’d walked into the classroom to find a blue, coffin-shaped jewel box sitting on her desk. Inside was a dead nightingale wrapped in a shroud of sheer silk, lying in a nest of rose petals. The twins looked at her with blank, unknowing stares, waiting for her response.

“What is this?” was all she could think of to say.

“They were given as love tokens in medieval France,” said Jacques. “We present one to you, fair lady.” He stood up and bowed in a courtly manner.

“Oh, thank you.” Veronica couldn't help blushing. “I’m certainly glad you’re as fond of me as I am of you. It’s… lovely.

“Mama collected them,” Jacqueline said. “Some are as old as our chateau. “There is also a lady’s hand that, when the moon is full, turns into a wolf’s paw. And toads with jewels in their foreheads.”

It sounded like some sort of witchcraft.

“Oh, yes,” said Jacques. “Those are the best, though I suppose they are too much part of our chateau to be taken away.”

“Well, I should like to see your chateau some day. It sounds very intriguing,” Veronica said. There was something strangely romantic about the nightingale. As if it had materialized out of a fairy tale. “I suppose the toads will be changed into Princes if you love them enough.”

The twins fell silent and glanced at each other grimly.

****

Since Rafe was home, Veronica no longer had easy access to the rooftop, and had to take a dank stairway inside the bottom of the tower. The stairs led up to the familiar landing with the large, murky, iron-bound door. From there it was only a few steps to the bay of open stonework that led to Rafe's rooms. Veronica lingered there, wondering if he might come out to take the air, but he never did.

A month after his arrival, Rafe left again. Veronica was shocked at his departure. How could he abandon them so soon? She put her head in her hands to calm herself. What was wrong with her?

She was on the roof of the tower feeding a flock of doves the day a hearse, drawn by two black horses, pulled into the forecourt. Mrs. Twig screamed and ran out to meet it, calling “Mr. Rafe! Mr. Rafe!” The maids followed. Veronica’s heart stumbled. He couldn’t possibly be coming home in the back of a hearse, could he?

As she watched from the battlements, tears started in Veronica’s eyes. Just as she was about to head downstairs, she saw Rafe de Grimston leap down from the cab of the hearse and hurry into the house. The groom, Mr. Cobb, was at the back of the carriage pulling the rear doors open. Veronica stared in a kind of aftershock as he slid a coffin out into the sunshine where it shone like a sheet of pure, bright silver. Two workmen came up behind Mr. Cobb. After a what sounded like a heated conversation, they lifted the coffin onto their shoulders, and marched like pall bearers down the lawn toward the tomb in the woods.

“Where is Miss Everly?”

Rafe’s voice boomed up from below the stairs. Veronica tore herself away from the sight of the silver coffin gleaming through the birch trees, and hurried down to the drawing room. There he was, waiting beside the fire, looking impatiently at her.

“And where have you been?” he asked.

“I was….class was over…I was in my room. I didn’t know you’d returned, Mr. de Grimston. I’m sorry,” Veronica said.

“So. You didn’t miss me at all or you would have been watching out for me.”

“Well, Sir, I….”

“Never mind. I brought you something. A book.” Rafe pulled a large, wrapped parcel out of his satchel and handed it to her.

It was rather musty smelling and so heavy that Veronica had to hold in both arms.

"Why, thank you, Sir."

Rafe looked her up and down and squinted. “Where did you get that dress?”

“Sir?” Veronica was wearing her favorite day dress of clear, bright yellow muslin. The voluminous skirts were soft and the bodice perfectly cut to enhance her tiny waist and long neck. “Is something wrong with it?”

“It’s yellow,” he said. “Are you sure that color suits you? Why not wear blue or green or something?”

“Well, I…”

“Never mind. That book-----I had it appraised in London. It’s quite authentic. I brought from our house in France especially for you.”

“Why, thank you, Sir, but I can’t possibly accept it.”

“Please do. I insist. Come on. Open up.”

He leaned on the mantel, smiling, his blue eyes commanding but kind.

It was indeed a very old book. A Bestiary.

“Inscribed and illuminated by monks in the twelfth century,” Rafe said. “It is filled with tales of strange creatures no longer thought to exist on earth.”

Veronica flipped to a page with a picture of a mermaid in a sea of lapis blue and gold leaf. “How beautiful!” she said.

On another page was horrible creature, a lion with a man’s head.

“Manticore. Oh, that is alarming!”

“Is it? I’m glad you like it. I want you to read it. The text is in Latin, but I’ve had it translated. Here.”

Rafe handed Veronica a bundle of papers bound only by a leather strap.

“The folklore and ancient songs of our ancestors should be known to all of us,” said Rafe. “They are all that we have left to help us to understand ourselves. Our origins.”

“Well, thank you, Sir.”

Rafe looked Veronica up and down. His face fell. He glanced away and seemed to struggle over something.

“I shall certainly do as you ask, Sir,” Veronica said. “I shall pass the lore on to the children…”

“Oh, there’s no need of that. They could talk circles around anyone on those subjects. And please, Miss Everly. Call me Rafe.”

They were interrupted by the loud voices of the workmen in the foyer.

“The tomb is locked,” said one.

“We’ve left the coffin there, but we need the key,” said the other.

Mrs. Twig’s voice cut in. “Oh, yes, I forgot. We have to lock it against the children or they’d be in there all the time.” She seemed to catch herself and laughed. “They miss their mother so terribly, you see. Please wait here while I fetch the key.”

“Please hurry up Ma’am. We don’t want to be meddling with the dead after sunset.”

****

Veronica was reading on her balcony when a cold, thin rain began. She stood up and looked out at the garden just in time to see the workmen carrying another silver coffin into the woods. She watched them disappear into the misty birches, then went inside.

She poked up the fire, sat in the wing chair and opened the Bestiary again. A swath of red silk that seemed to have been torn from something, marked the page bearing a depiction of a wolf-like creature. Lupus. On the facing page was an illuminated painting of a lady in a striking yellow gown in the jaws of a ravening wolf. Veronica looked at the English translation.

“Lupus means Loup Garou in French, or Wolf Man. He certainly looks like one. Lycanthrope. A man that is cursed. When the moon is full, he transforms into a wolf. In such guise he goes forth to rape and kill for his Master.”

Regarding the dreadful image of the lady in yellow was a note that seemed to be addressed to Veronica personally: This is a copy of a mural at my wife’s house, Chateau Villenueve. It shows the event that is the seed of all of our troubles.

“A lady being carried away by a wolf, or a wolf-man… Wearing a yellow dress.”

She plucked at the yellow folds of her skirt. Surely Rafe couldn’t connect her beautiful dress with that horror in the Bestiary!

Veronica had to wonder what Rafe was thinking to give her such a gift. What interest would she have in such a catalog of abominations? She was reminded of Jacqueline’s talk of the lady’s hand…. All of it smacked of pure, devilish witchery. It had not occurred to Veronica that her solitary Sundays at the local Catholic church meant that the twins did not attend services at all. Mrs. Twig said they had their own church, and took them there every Sunday. Church of England, surely. The twins must have been baptized in full knowledge of Christ. They had to be. Everyone was. So how could they give any credence to all of these…superstitions, these heresies?

She smoothed the frown away from her brow, turned the page, and saw the comforting image of a pure white unicorn.

Unicorn. A creature that symbolizes Our Savior that is also a demon found in the Goetia of King Solomon.

Suddenly agitated, Veronica slammed the book shut. What kind of man was Rafe de Grimston? What was he trying to tell her?

Screams rang out. Men! Veronica leapt to the window expecting some strange creature to come crashing out of the woods, but saw only the two workmen stumbling over the lawn, shouting and cursing as they hurried towards the house.

“What’s wrong?” It was Mrs. Twig’s voice echoing up from below.

“We won’t say Ma’am. We don’t want to say.”

“Did you put the child in the silver coffin as you were hired to do?

“Yes, ma’am. Indeed we did. Just hurry now and find a Catholic priest.”

“Yes. Those are the chaps’ll take care of it.”

Veronica peered down through the trees, where the door of the tomb yawned open. Rain pattered down through the leaves. Rafe came out of the house and raced towards the woods. She shook herself. She did not want to notice that he was carrying a gun.

The wind picked up. A dog howled. She waited for the sound of shots being fired but there were none. Rafe came walking back over the wet leaves back to the house, looking disheveled and distressed.

“Mrs. Twig! Mrs. Twig!” She heard his voice just inside the door.

“Yes, Mr. Rafe.”

“Lock me into the tower tonight. We haven’t much time.”

“What about the children?”

“We’ll have to take our chances. Now hurry.”

"I’ll put them in their rooms. Miss Everly will see to it that the doors stay locked.”

There was a knock on her open door. Veronica turned to see Mrs. Twig standing there with the keys.

“We shall be keeping the twins in their rooms tonight, Miss Everly. Once they’re in, lock the doors and, under no circumstances, unlock them. Even if you think all hell is breaking loose. Especially then.”

“Of course. May I ask why?”

“I wouldn’t,” said Mrs. Twig.

****

The twins were still out playing. Anxious to find them before the dreadful twilight settled in, Veronica pulled up the hood of her brown cloak, and slipped out into the wet garden.

The door to one of the walled gardens was open. She heard the twins’ shouting inside and hurried in. Both of them were running around with that strange four-legged gait, so disturbingly, so horrifyingly un-human. A small deer trembled behind an apple tree, obviously cornered. The twins were snarling, laughing. One of them lunged at the deer. Veronica’s gorge rose, and she ran.

****

Veronica paced up and down, up and down in front of her fireplace. Her thoughts whirled around the one central issue she could not face. The long twilight deepened to violet, and the grandfather clock gonged six times. The rain stopped. Veronica stepped out onto her balcony in time to see the twins walking upright and carrying the dead deer, hung by its hooves to a long branch, between them. With stately, ceremonial steps, the disappeared into the house.

By the time the twins came up the stairs, Veronica was very much on edge. They wouldn’t look at her, nor at each other, but moved like automatons into their rooms and lay down on their beds. The dog followed them in, wagging its tail. There was blood on their clothes. Deer’s blood. Veronica locked them in without a word, then withdrew into the silence.

She felt oppressed by a great melancholy. Fingering her keys, she went out onto her balcony and stood very still watching the night close in. Soon the sky was as clear and black as if the rain had never fallen; yet the damp lingered. Behind the ruined bell tower, two tall cypress trees rose up like horns above the woods. The white moon shone between them, large with mist, and cast a spell over the land. The old bell was tolling, slow and out of tune. A sense of longing filled her and of dread.

From the tower, far above, an anguished roar rent the air followed by pitiful howls and curses.

CHAPTER 5

*

Veronica was startled by shouts and something knocking hard against a wall. It was in the twins’ rooms. The dog was barking, snarling, scrabbling over the floor. Veronica grabbed her keys and hurried out to the corridor. She knocked on Jacqueline's door.

"Jack!"

Something banged against the door so hard, it threw her back.

“What’s going on in there?” she shouted. “I’m coming in Jack. Just a second.”

Veronica fumbled the keys, dropped them.

“Don’t, Miss Everly! Stop!” It was Mrs. Twig shouting up from below the stairs.

The sounds of shutters banging against the outside walls told Veronica that Jacqueline's balcony windows had flown open.

“Mrs. Twig, the balcony windows are open to the twins’ rooms. What’s the use of locking the doors?”

“Oh my God,” said Mrs. Twig. “Come down! Please!”

Just then a terrible noise, a pack of wolves howling, went up inside the house.

“What is that? Mrs. Twig!”

The howls grew ear-splittingly high, then trailed off to helpless wails. Throaty growls and scratching sounds, the creak of hinges, came from the children’s rooms.

“The dog is trying to get out,” Veronica called. “It sounds mad.”

“It’s perfectly safe, Miss Everly. Quickly now. Come down!”

Veronica was suddenly freezing. She hurried back to her room to grab her cloak. The moon had risen higher between the cypress horns and in the light she saw a white dog run into the woods with long, loping strides. Its body was rather narrower and longer than the twins' dog. And it sniffed the air like a wild thing.

“Wolves no longer exist in Britain,” she said to herself. “They’ve been eradicated long ago.”

The Bestiary flashed up to her from the chair with its red silk tongue hanging out of the page scrawled Lupus.

“There are no such things,” she shouted. “Not here. Not now.”

A chorus of howls rose up again, one floating eerily out of the woods.

Someone was pounding on the door downstairs.

“Stay out! Stay out! You cannot come in!” Mrs. Twig was shouting.

“But please, Madam Twig. I must see my children. You cannot stop me.”

“Stay out! Miss Everly!”

“Miss Everly?” the lady cried. “Who is she? Another woman is in my house? Who is it, Madam Twig? Ahhhh!!!!” The cry was heart-wrenching.

The lady beat the door with the force of thunder that reverberated all the way up to Veronica’s room.

“You shall not enter here Sovay Lembron de la Flamme. I will block you if it’s the last thing I do.”

“I’m here,” said Veronica from the stairs. She stared at the crack in the door as it closed hard against Sovay, but not fast enough to prevent one green eye making contact with Veronica’s.

Mrs. Twig pushed the door shut, turned several locks securely, then spun about to face Veronica. Her face was set hard.

“You must help me with something. I want you to get the groom, Mr. Cobb, to lock the children’s windows from the outside.”

The wind seemed to cyclone around the house, smashing branches down from the trees.

“Where is he?”

“He should be in the cottage beyond the stables. Go through the house and find the service door at the far end of the servants’ quarters. You’ll see the lane to Pitchfork Cottage. Hurry.”

Veronica hurried down the hallway to the back of the house. She’d never been to the servants’ quarters. Two stately drawing rooms away, she came to a flight of stairs going down to a narrow corridor with closed doors on either side. Its austerity was a shock to her system after the luxurious glamour of the rest of the house. A door at the end opened into the servants’ kitchen. Veronica put up her hood expecting to be blown by the wind, but when she stepped outside, the air was warm and perfectly still. She hurried down the lane to a row of tiny cottages until she found the one marked Pitchfork Cottage.

Mr. and Mrs. Cobb were shouting at each other. A baby was crying. Veronica knocked timidly on the door. It burst open and out wafted the strong smell of whiskey and the burly frame of Mr. Cobb.

“Well?”

“We need you to lock the twin’s balcony windows on the outside,” Veronica said. “There are some very dramatic things going on at the house.”

Mr. Cobb called back to his wife. “Hold that thought, darling. I’ll be back shortly.”

“I’ll be here,” a woman’s rasping voice answered.

Veronica had all she could do to keep up with the groom as he strode down the lane toward the front of Belden House. Then he turned a corner, and headed in the direction of the tower. Veronica slowed her pace to a standstill under the moon struck tower, and looked up at the window slits. She was compelled to cross herself and pray, for mournful snarls and howls echoed around inside the stones, melting her very bones with dread. Some giant beast was captured there, growling and thrusting itself against iron bars hidden in the ivy that shrouded the window. Its strength was such that the stones of the window ledge began crumbling to dust.

A wild, banshee-like howling went up, full of rage against the world.

The agony in that sound took Veronica’s breath away. What wild creature sent those cries out on the wind? Why did Rafe want to be locked in there with it?

“Surely he’s been torn apart by now. Mr. Cobb!”

There was a cry as of a man falling. Veronica hurried towards the sound and saw Mr. Cobb lying on the ground below a long ladder. She looked up at the twins balcony and saw Sovay de Grimston standing at the top of the ladder, staring down at her with such malevolence that Veronica fell to her knees. Sovay’s face did not look human. So pale, so bright it was, that her eyes looked black. When Veronica crossed herself, Sovay turned and passed through the open French windows into the children’s bedchambers.

Veronica leaned over gently slapped the groom’s face. “Mr. Cobb, are you all right?” He didn’t revive. “Mr. Cobb…Mr. Cobb… Please!”

She laid her ear on his heart, felt for his pulse, and found nothing. Even his whiskey breath was gone. She glanced around, wishing there was someone who could help, and instead saw the slim white dog leap across the path of moonlight to be joined by another and another. Soon more white canines were howling and running down the lawn to join the pack.

“They’re wolves. They look like wolves. Come on Mr. Cobb. Wake up. We’ve got to get out of here.”

She tried to drag him, but he was too heavy for her.

“Oh, please wake up. What do I do? Mrs. Twig!”

Veronica gave up and ran for the house. She dashed up to her rooms. Passing the children’s doors, she wanted to go in, but was afraid of what she might unleash. The dog was growling softly behind the door. Sovay was in there, singing to it.

“Mrs. Twig! Mrs. Twig!” Veronica ran down the stairs.

There were weird sounds and noxious smells coming from the kitchen, black smoke seeping out of the crack between the closed double doors. Veronica barged through them and found Mrs. Twig half naked, her red hair all unfurled, sweating and reeling over a brazier of smoldering coals. The entire room was cloaked in heavy clouds of smoke that reeked of wolfbane. The housekeeper was rubbing oil all over a doll of yellow wax, and muttering in French some freakish, incantatory rhyme. In the lurid haze of the fire and wavering shadows, she looked savage, mad, possessed. Her eyes rolled up in her head as if she was seeing things that weren’t meant to be seen As she held the doll in the smoke, green flames licked out from it, prompting Mrs. Twig to raise the doll up and shout, “It is finished!” Then she cast it into the flames.

On the table was a large open book and the two white dolls of the twins’ lying side by side like miniature corpses. The smoke wafted poisonously around Veronica. She began coughing, but half out of her mind, lost in the world of spirits, Mrs. Twig didn’t seem to hear her.

The howling of wolves grew louder and more fierce. Groans thundered down from the tower, filling the kitchen. Fire and candles flared and juddered dangerously high. Still Mrs. Twig continued her incantations, holding Jack’s dolls over the brazier. Soon, both dolls were writhing in her hands like souls in torment. Veronica couldn’t take it any more. She backed out, shut the kitchen doors, and leaned against them until they stopped rattling.

What about the children? Sovay! And Mr. Cobb? He was lying out there with a pack of wolves on the rampage. Was there a doctor somewhere? Anywhere? Veronica put her hands over her face, and contemplated the long walk to the village. They'd all be dead by the time she got there. the chorus of the wolves, went up high and clear as a entire pack of banshees in the night. The clock gonged the hour of four.

She raced through moving shadows up to her room and looked out at the sky. The moon was down. Soon, the old bell in the ruin began its slow, tuneless tolling. The very earth seemed to shiver.

Somehow she knew she had only to wait until dawn.

Chapter 6

*

Of course the twins did not show up for class the next day. Wanting to avoid to Mrs. Twig after what she’d seen, Veronica stayed alone in the classroom and prayed she would not be disturbed.

There was that book in the desk drawer still. The one she didn’t feel right about opening. Had her predecessor been witness such goings on? Veronica drew open the drawer and groped underneath her black velvet missal and her ledger book, for the journal.

She drew it out and opened it to an early page.

She’s so jealous of me, but for no reason. Mr. Rafe could never prefer a plain girl like I am to one such as Lady de Grimston, but I don’t know how much longer I can stand her barbarous attempts to hurt me.

Was Sovay so jealous then?

Veronica turned to a further page. A newspaper cutting was stuck into the binding: an engraving of a wolf standing in a field. Below it was the headline: Farmer’s Lad Found Dead in Field. It seemed his throat had been torn out. The governess had written with a trembling hand:

A child from the village was found ravaged by a wolf during the night. But there are no wolves left in Britain. So they say. Yet, Janet told me that this is not an unusual occurrence. It has happened off and on for years……

She turned the page again.

I should not write of this, but I must get it off my chest somehow.

I caught Sylvie crouching over a dead hare in the classroom today. It was bleeding all over the carpet. When I shouted at her, she turned around and ------ I can’t say it. I thought, for a brief moment, that she had the face of a white wolf. But it’s not possible. Anyway she jumped up and slammed the door shut in my face before I could get a really good look at her. Perhaps the tension in this house is just getting to me. I can only pray I am not going mad.

Then below:

I had to take the carpet up today. I had Mr. Cobb take it to the stables. It should be burned. I have an unspoken agreement with Sylvie that we shall never speak of the incident with the hare. Her mother is on verge of sacking me anyway. I can tell.

Veronica flipped a few pages and found:

The moon is full tonight. They shall be all be gone, except for Mr. Rafe and Mrs. Twig, I will have some time to myself to decide what to do.

Next:

I know I should not commit this to paper, but I have discovered where the children get off to every full moon. Mrs. Twig locks them in the tower. I heard them howling like right lunatics. Such is the legacy of aristocratic inbreeding. They can’t help it, poor things.

Swallowing hard, Veronica flipped to the very last page that had any writing on it.

Sylvie was shot by a farmer last night who swore he was aiming at a wolf. I can no longer stay here.

Veronica shut the book and hid it back in the drawer. She was shaking. The classroom wasn’t cozy any more. The yews seemed to scream at her. She hurried out and stood on the landing, then crept out to the hallway. The door to Rafe’s bed chamber was ajar.

He called out to her. “Come in Miss Everly.”

Veronica peered through the crack in the door. He was clad only in his dressing gown, his thick bronze-gold hair standing up, his hairy chest exposed.

“How did you know I was here?” she asked.

“I heard you. I felt your presence. Haven’t you noticed how sounds carry in this house? And smells. Come all the way in, Miss Everly. You’re such a timid lass.”

Rafe beckoned Veronica forward. When she stepped into the room, she saw he was polishing the gun. She stared at it and could not stop shaking.

“What is that for, Sir?”

“Rafe.”

“I mean, what is that for Rafe?”

“Have you been reading your Bestiary?”

“A little. Things went a bit haywire around here last night and I didn’t have much of a chance.”

“Did you look on the page I had marked for you?”

“Lupus?”

“Yes. Do you see these bullets? They are made of silver. I want you to have this gun. I aim to teach you to shoot. If you ever see a wolf on my property, I want you to kill it. Shoot it only with these silver bullets.”

“But, Sir----I mean, Rafe, I’ve never killed anything before. I’m only a school mistress.”

“I don’t want to hear it. Here. Hold the gun.”

Rafe handed the pistol to Veronica. It was solid and very heavy. She grasped the handle with both hands and aimed it at the mirror, surprised at the dramatic change it made in her appearance. Rafe grabbed her wrist.

“You’re damned small-boned. We’ll try you firing it with two hands, but if it kicks too hard, I’ll have to find a smaller gun for you. A ladies pistol. This one could break your arm.”

“What are those wolves, Rafe? What have they got to do with you and the children? What about Sovay? Did you know Mr. Cobb died trying to shut the children’s windows? You must tell me what’s going on,” Veronica said.

“Cobb? Was he responsible for that blood in the grass?”

“His body---“

“Is gone.”

“There was a pack of white wolves...”

Rafe looked at Veronica intently, gazed into her eyes, then looked away. He closed his dressing gown, tightened the sash.

“Miss Everly. I have to make myself decent. Came back to my rooms in an hour. It seems I shall have to explain some things to you.”

****

Veronica avoided the kitchen and went outside. As much as the very thought was distasteful to her, she had to see for herself about Mr. Cobb. She went around the tower and looked down the lawn to the place she’d left him lying and saw, indeed, that his body was gone and the grass in that area was dark. Perhaps he’d only been injured. Perhaps he’d just gotten up and gone home. Why did everything have to be so dire?

Veronica turned around in time to see Jacqueline marching towards the woods. She checked the impulse to call out, and walked nonchalantly behind the curve of the tower to see where the child went. She hooked her fingers in the ivy for support and looked up the side of the tower. Directly above her, the window of the beast spilled over with darkness. Rafe had been in there. With that monster. She swallowed hard. Her stomach felt like lead. How had he managed to come out alive? Unable to put two thoughts together, she turned away. Some ideas were just not allowed. Rafe would explain. He said he would.

A snatch of song floated over the air from the woods.

Green grow the lilies, oh, bright among the bushes, oh…

Veronica crept towards the woods and entered the trees. Jacqueline was sitting beside the wishing well hanging one of the white china dolls by its feet from a birch branch that stretched out over the water. Veronica glided closer and hid behind a tall bush above the mossy hummock so she could see down into the well. The doll was reflected in the surface of the water, but below that, in the murky depths, were other dolls floating face up like little drowned corpses. They looked as if they’d been weighed down with stones heavy enough to sink them but not out of sight.

Jacqueline leaned over the well and stared into her own reflection.

“Sylvie, and Nelly and Tom. Jack is to join you. He’s hidden in a leafy fort. I covered it with juniper limbs and rose briars. That way they can’t fetch him out and lock him away forever in a silver coffin like they’ve done to Sylvie.”

Jacqueline stroked the dangling china doll with her finger, and then lowered it below the rim of the well stones. She bent towards the water and blew a kiss.

“That’s for you, Jack. The waters of the magic wellspring will wash your soul clean.” She began singing again. One is buried under the stones, Three are buried beneath the tree….

Slowly, Jacqueline lowered the doll into the water, until it was completely immersed.

Four are buried in the well, the well below the valley, oh….Green grow the lilies oh, Bright among the bushes oh…

The eerie tune of the old folksong followed Veronica all the way back to the house, verse after verse, after verse.

She had to find Jacques. As she approached the door she saw a big-boned, tearful woman with a baby in her arms standing in the forecourt, staring at the door as if it had been slammed in her face. Veronica paused, unable to cope with Mrs. Cobb’s grief. She waited until the woman walked away, carrying her sobbing child towards the cottages.

Coming in the door, she ran straight into Mrs. Twig.

“Did you find Mr. Cobb?” she asked.

“No. Miss Everly. I must explain last night to you,” Mrs. Twig said.

Veronica tried to brush past her, but Mrs. Twig grabbed her arm.

“You look rather tidy and well rested considering the night you’ve had.” Veronica was surprised at her own bluntness. “I have to find Jacques.”

Mrs. Twig looked at the floor. “I am sorry, Miss Everly. I’m sure you had no idea what awaited you at Belden House.’

“That’s an understatement. I saw Mrs. de Grimston go into the children’s rooms last night,” Veronica said. “After she knocked Mr. Cobb off the ladder to get in. I must hurry. She may be there still.”

“Miss….Sovay de Grimston could not get in. The children have strict instructions…”

“Well, they must have disobeyed, because she did get in.”

“It’s not possible.”

“It is!”

“She is not a living woman,” said Mrs. Twig.

“What?”

“She’s dead. She’s been dead for three years,” said Mrs. Twig.

Veronica stared, remembering the coffin, the almost palpable presence glittering up from the darkness. But she’d seen Sovay alive! Perhaps the body in the coffin was someone else….

“That’s impossible. You can see her, “ Veronica stammered. “And so can I.”

“Yes, but only in a certain light. At twilight, or in moonlight.”

“But she has strength. I’ve heard her pounding on the door.” Veronica shouted. “I’ve seen you struggle to keep her out. I’ve heard you talking to her. I heard her say she’d been buried alive, and escaped.”

Mrs. Twig looked embarrassed. “She must never be allowed in, Miss. Must never be. The twins know that. They know better than to disobey that particular order.”

“I’m sorry to lose my temper, but I am extremely upset after last night,” said Veronica. “What is she? What is this house?”

“Lady de Grimston is…dead, Miss Everly. Did you not see the birch bark hat that she wears?”

Veronica remembered the children at the well with the same peculiar hats on.

“What about it?”

“It’s a sign of the dead, Miss. Worn by they that have come from beyond the grave.”

Mrs. Twig was trying Veronica’s patience. Always speaking in riddles!

“Then why is she still walking around, Mrs. Twig?”

“That is why Mr. Rafe ordered the silver coffins. Once the body is sealed in there, she will stop.”

“I don’t understand….I just know I’m very frightened for the twins.”

“Have you seen them this morning?”

“I just saw Jacqueline at the well. She was hanging one of those dolls from a branch. Lowering it into the water----singing and saying cryptic things about her brother. I must find him.”

“Putting a doll in the well? The little scamp must have gotten hold of it early this morning, I must go upstairs with you, Miss Everly.”

Veronica stormed up the stairs, unlocked the door to Jacques's room, and barged in. Jacques was there, jumping up and down on the bed, accompanied by the thumping tail of the white dog.

Veronica rushed over to him and held him tight.

“Thank God you’re here! Thank God you’re here,” she said. “ I was frightened your mother had taken you away.”

“Mother’s dead,” he said, pulling back. “Isn’t she Mrs. Twig?”

“Of course she is Jack. And we’ve never let her in, have we?”

“Of course not,” said Jacques.

“You never would, would you, Jacques? You know that would be a very bad thing to do, don’t you?” Mrs. Twig seemed to be hammering the issue.

Jacques sauntered over to Veronica and gazed up at her with those light green eyes, so innocent and fair. Veronica refused to be disarmed.

“But you did let her in, Jacques,” said Veronica. “I saw her get in last night. Right through the balcony windows.”

Mrs. Twig looked alarmed and hurried to the windows. She shook the latch. The windows creaked open, letting the breeze blow in.

“Miss Everly has an over-active imagination, doesn’t she, Mrs. Twig?” said Jacques.

“You must be kind to Miss Everly. She worries a great deal about you,” the housekeeper said.

“Oh!” Jacques gave Veronica a warm embrace, then leapt off the bed to hug the dog.

“I may have an imagination,” Veronica said. “But I also know that your mother entered this room last night.”

Jacques looked over at Mrs. Twig with a questioning look in his eyes. Mrs. Twig merely returned his gaze and said nothing.

The clock gonged eleven.

Veronica remembered the time. “Mrs. Twig, will you see to Jack for an hour or so? I have an appointment with Mr. de Grimston.”

“Of course,” sad Mrs. Twig, casting her eyes down. “Come Jack. Let’s find your other half and have some breakfast. Come along.”

They rushed out leaving Veronica alone. She went to the French windows and checked the latch. Broken. She went out onto the balcony and looked down at the spot where Mr. Cobb had fallen; at the blood-spattered grass. She clutched her stomach, and turned away.

Chapter 7

*

Veronica knocked on the door of the master suite. Rafe opened it quite suddenly, as if he’d been waiting behind the door for her arrival. He looked so handsome dressed in a white shirt, a dark patterned waistcoat and black trousers. A red jewel in his cravat shone like a drop of blood. Veronica felt suddenly frumpy in her simple day dress of off-white gabardine.

“Come in, Miss Everly,” he said opening the door wide.

The fragrance of fresh lilies escaped from the room.

“Call me Veronica,” she said rather tentatively. She’d never imagined being on first name terms with an employer before. It seemed improper somehow, even if expected.

As if he too were uncomfortable with the situation, Rafe just nodded and smiled. He led her to the sofa near the fire. A bottle of golden brandy and two glasses gleamed on a red enameled tray that had been placed on the low table in front of her.

“Do you drink brandy?” Rafe poised the decanter over one of the glasses.

“I don’t drink. But, perhaps a tiny bit. I’ll try,” she said.

He grinned, poured two glasses, handed one to Veronica.

“Cheers!” Rafe touched his glass to hers.

“Cheers,” Veronica said.

The brandy was sweet and burning. Like the way she felt in Rafe’s presence, she thought. She pulled back on the sofa with her glass. Rafe sat beside her, a bit too close. His body gave off waves of heat and scent.

“Well, Veronica, I must apologize for last night. I’m sure you were very distressed by our madness around here.”

“I’m not used to such goings-on, if you don’t mind my saying.”

“There’s no way I can mind. Even I had a surprise in store. When I was in France----have you ever been to the Auvergne?”

“No. I’ve never been outside of Britain.”

“It’s a land of volcanoes. Some of them are extinct, nothing more than green craters filled with lakes. Sometimes there are islands in the lakes and some brave souls have built castles on them. Right in the mouths of the volcanoes….”

“Proves great courage, I suppose,” said Veronica. “If not great faith.”

“Yes, faith. You’d expect some Faery Queen to live there. Alas, my late wife’s chateau is not so dramatically situated. It’s in a wooded glen. A haunted place. In the midst of a circular garden surrounded by yews. You did see the page I had marked for you in the book?”

“Yes. I also read your translation. The lady in the yellow dress. Who was she?”

“It started with her. In the twelfth century. The eldest daughter was a great beauty and, to put it politely, a libertine. One of the many men she entertained was under a curse. Every night, when the moon was full, he turned into a wolf, and in that guise, one night, he carried her off.”

“That’s that picture….”

“Yes.”

“So….”

“After a night being lost in the forest, she was picked up by a coachman driving towards the chateau.”

“Alive, then.”

“Quiet alive. But changed. From then on, Veronica,” Rafe leaned towards Veronica and looked deeply into her eyes. “She was a werewolf.” Rafe let his words stay in the air for a moment. “I’m not prone to nightmares, Veronica, but I had them in that house. Especially on the night of the full moon.”

“What kind of nightmares?” Veronica asked. She remembered the twins talking about the lady’s hand….Was it her hand?

“I dreamed that I was the same. There was a bell ringing, very slowly and off pitch. And then the howling began. I dreamed I was a soul tormented, roving the forests at night, killing any poor creature who crossed my path.”

“Only dreams….”

“So I’d hoped. The lady in the yellow dress----it was she that led me along a path into my dreams, first as a seductive girl, then as a ravening beast.”

Veronica backed away. “You’re frightening me, Sir!”

“I mean to frighten you. That’s why I am going to teach you how to shoot. So fear won’t get the better of you. So when you pull that trigger, you’ll have a will of iron.”

“Is she connected to that white wolf I saw last night? Coming out of the woods?”

Rafe stood up and looked at the fire. He stood there for a long time with the light of the flames dancing over his face.

“There was entire pack of white wolves in the garden,” Veronica said. “I think it was they that dragged Mr. Cobb away.”

“A pack of white wolves. Their numbers have grown,” Rafe said. He turned back to Veronica and fell into the chair facing her. “Veronica----I brought my wife back here from France over ten years ago. The only wild animals we’d ever seen were hedgehogs, hares, foxes, deer. The usual English fauna. Never any wolves. We used her money to restore this place----it was on the edge of ruin. It was she who built that folly at the top of the garden. That bell tower. Planted it with flowers from the gardens of her chateau. Soon after we’d settled in, there was a report of a lad being attacked and killed by a wild animal out on the moors. The villagers were reluctant to say it was a wolf. Perhaps a rabid dog, they said. They killed every stray mutt they could find. But the next month, it happened again. Another attack.”

Veronica listened to the fire crackling in the grate, noticed the lowering light. Her brandy glass was inexplicably empty.

“Would you like more?” Rafe said. “Allow me.”

He sat beside her again. Veronica let him refill her glass. “That’s quite a story,” she said. “What did Lady de Grimston have to do with it?”

“Nothing that I knew of. By the time the twins were toddlers, I had developed a business that required long stays overseas. India mostly. Sometimes I’d be gone for many, many months. Once I began making a decent profit, I was set up, and lost my shirt. I came home only to find out that my eldest daughter was dead. Murdered.”

“Murdered! Who would do such a thing? And why?” said Veronica. She was feeling slightly tipsy. What had she read about Sylvie?

“A farmer shot her. Declared he’d shot the ravening wolf they were always looking for and could never find. A wolf that appeared only once a month, when the moon was full.”

Rafe held Veronica’s eyes, giving time for his words to sink in.

“As you can imagine, the mistake----well, farmers are superstitious folk,” he said.

“So they stayed clear of your family,” said Veronica. “Right clear away.”

Rafe nodded. Then he rose and went back to stare at the flames, leaning on the mantelpiece below his picture, and hers. Sovay was so lovely and blonde and fashionable.... Veronica frowned, had another sip of brandy.

Rafe went on. “Sovay was distraught to the point of madness. She clung to the twins. Suffocated them with her constant attention and safety rules. Jealous of every maid in the house. Accusing them of all sorts of ridiculous things. I supposed it was my fault for being away so much, leaving her to imagine all sorts of scenarios. And then…that.”

Despite the tragedy, Veronica smiled to herself. The firelight created a glow around Rafe’s dark gold head like a the nimbus of a saint, but she was painfully aware that he was not a saintly man, but indeed was somewhat wicked inside.

“I suppose she thought, if you really loved her, that you wouldn’t have been able to stay away for so long,” Veronica said.

Rafe rolled his eyes and sighed. “I’m not sure I did really love her. She was beautiful, charming, aristocratic. She had lots of money. I needed money.”

“Isn’t a lady with those qualities worthy of love?” Veronica blurted out. Rafe glanced sharply at her.

“I thought I loved her. I was young. I didn’t really know what love was. How deep it could go. With the right person.”

The way Rafe looked at her, Veronica couldn’t help but feel self-conscious. She couldn’t let herself even think….

“She’d been in the garden with the children looking up at the full moon between those two tall cypress trees that rise like horns above the woods. ‘They look like the crown of Isis,’ she’d always said.”

“They do,” Veronica said. Rafe’s eyes were the shade of blue tiles from ancient Greek mosaics. His skin and hair were burnished, like some Greek god.

“I went out onto the lawn to join them in their fun. When they began dancing in a ring in the moonlight, I came back inside for a drink. I was looking at the newspaper when I heard that blasted bell tolling. There was howling in the yard, high and wild. Naturally, I was extremely vigilant. I grabbed my pistol and hurried downstairs to find a large, slavering white wolf circling the twins.”

“My God!” Veronica cried.

“I fired. Oh, Veronica. I pray you can forgive me.”

“For what?”

“I thought the beast was down, but I was wrong. It was infuriated by its wound and flew at me, tearing through my shirt sleeve and grazing my arm with its teeth. With an oozing, bloody arm, I fired straight into its heart. It fell to earth. I kept my gun pointed at it until it lay completely still. I shouted to the twins to get inside, but they were already gone. The next thing I knew….was that it was not a wolf that I’d shot. It was my wife.”

The golden glow shattered. Veronica’s head was suddenly clear again.

“It can’t be,” she said. “You were drunk and terrified for the twins.”

“That’s what I’ve told myself for three long years. But after what happened last night, I can no longer deny anything. To avoid a police investigation, I held a private funeral for my wife and buried her in that tomb in the woods. Then I fled to France.”

Veronica stood up. “I’ve got to go now.”

Rafe looked at her with eyes like vast blue seas. “Of course.”

When she got to the door, Veronica paused. Rafe was close behind her, almost embracing her as she turned towards him.

“Why did you tell me all of this?” she asked. “You know things will never be the same now. I mean, I can’t just be your employee any more when you confide in me, such, such things.”

“I know,” he said. “I had to tell you. I am compelled to tell you, of all people, the truth.”

****

Veronica wanted nothing more than to go to her room and be alone for a while. She couldn’t face teaching at the moment, but she had to check the classroom to see if the children were there. She also wanted to take another peek into Miss Blaylock’s journal.

Jacqueline was sitting at her desk.

“Oh, Jacqueline! Where’s your other half?” she asked, flustered at seeing the child alone.

“We’ve had a fight. I never want to see him again,” said Jacqueline.

“Don’t be silly. It will blow over by tomorrow.”

“No it won’t. It never will.”

“But your lessons. You must both be here for lessons.”

“We shall switch days.”

“That can’t last long. Of course you’ll forgive each other. Why don’t we forget about class today? You go and make up with Jacques and we’ll begin again tomorrow.”

Jacqueline gave Veronica a hard stare. “We shall never make up, Miss Everly. Never again. Never.”

Veronica stroked Jacqueline’s hair, then knelt down and looked into the child’s face. Close to tears, Jacqueline pushed Veronica away, got up, and stomped out of the room.

CHAPTER 8

*

An ivory box lay on Veronica’s bed. Inside was a small pistol with an ivory handle and three silver bullets nestled in a lining of scarlet silk. Veronica picked it up. What wolf was she expected to shoot? Were there three? One bullet for each?

Veronica took the gun to the mirror, held it up and aimed at her reflection. There was a wildness in her looks holding the gun. Her own wickedness appearing in the glass.

“Thou shalt not kill,” said to herself. Yet her finger longed to pull the trigger, to feel the impact of the explosion, to watch the glass shatter. She opened the bullet chamber, relieved that it was empty.

The Bestiary lay on the chair next to the fire, along with its stack of translations. She put the gun away, sank down upon the footrest, and opened the book upon its river of red silk to the page inscribed: Lupus. There was the lady in yellow and the wolf carrying her off, not killing her, but transforming her, damning Beauty to possession by the Beast forever.

Veronica turned the page. There was a lot of Latin writing bordered by a fanciful row of racing hares. No strange beast stalked the page, but rather a vision of fire and slant yellow eyes staring through the flames. Veronica rifled through the translation until she found the corresponding page.

There is only one way to save the soul of the Wolf Man. He must be shot with a silver bullet and the body thrown into the fire. If one attempts to slay the Wolf Man by any other means, he will not die, for his soul will not be at rest and will burn ever hotter for revenge. He will return from the grave to harass the living as a ghost and a Soul Stealer.

A Soul Stealer is damned and therefore seeks to take the souls of others. For those Christened in God’s Grace, this never works. Those who are not baptized are vulnerable to attack by the Soul Stealer. Thereby is his appetite, in Christendom, insatiable, for it is so difficult to fulfill. The Soul Stealer leaves the bodies of its victims intact, but the soul he devours. Yet are the victims like empty shells that in time fade away, or become Soul Stealers themselves.

Thus is the insidious contamination of the Devil’s work.

Veronica’s heart pulsed weakly. She stood up, went out onto the balcony, and looked down at the tomb. It was increasingly visible through the autumn trees. There lay Sovay de Grimston, sealed in a silver coffin but still roaming free.

The clock chimed nine. It was time for class. Veronica tore herself away from her thoughts and hurried to the classroom. She was anxious to see the twins, their two identical faces and their pale green eyes looking up to her again with trust and love.

Again, only one of them was there, wearing a dress the color of the sky at night. A mourning dress. Jacqueline had her head down as if she were asleep. Veronica entered quietly and leaned over the child. A large picture book was opened on the desk, hidden under her arms and head.

“Good morning, Jacqueline,” said Veronica.

Veronica wondered how such an attractive, innocent child could transform into a four-legged beast as she had done the day before. She must have been mistaken somehow….

“Jacqueline, where is your brother?”

Jacqueline lifted her head. Her face was wet with tears.

“He’s still fighting with me. He’ll never stop. He’ll have to come by himself for lessons tomorrow, while I hide far away from him,” she said.

Veronica looked down at the book. There was the picture of a poor, stricken lion in fancy dress, with a young girl bending over him.

“What are you reading?” Veronica asked.

“Only Beauty and the Beast,” said Jacqueline. “It’s one of our favorites.”

“Why don’t you come to my room? We’ll read it together near the nice, warm fire. I’m not sure you’re in the right frame of mind for lessons.”

The child went along to Veronica’s room.

“Don’t you think Jacques would like to join us?” Veronica asked.

“No!” Jacqueline shouted. Then she said softly. “I want to spend some time alone with you, Miss Everly. I’m always with him.”

“Very well then. Let’s sit together in the big wing chair.”

Snug in the wing chair, Veronica read Jacqueline the story of Beauty and the Beast.

“And so the Beast was really a Prince, suffering under enchantment until he found true love with a pure and beautiful virgin. The end.”

Veronica closed the book. Jacqueline was staring at the flames in the fireplace as if she were lost in a dream.

“Why do you like this story?” Veronica asked.

“Because it tells us how to break curses.”

“What of your mother? Did you see her last night?”

“Her? No. Of course not. We must never let her in, Miss Everly. If we ever let her in, it would be very bad.” The child gazed at Veronica with a look of terror and slid off her lap.

“Why?”

“She’s dead. Can I go now?’

She was at the door, and out of it before Veronica could speak.

Veronica was about to follow Jacqueline into her bedroom, when she heard a dog barking in the garden. She went out onto the balcony and saw the white Alsatian crossing the lawn towards one of the walled gardens. A little while later, Jacques ran out after him. Veronica sighed with relief at the sight of him, and went back inside.

There was a knock on the open door. It was Mrs. Twig.

“Mr. Rafe would like you to meet with him in the Rock Garden after lessons, Miss. Luncheon is ready now, in the dining room.”

The housekeeper avoided looking at Veronica, rather she looked at the carpet as if she’d spotted a stain.

“I’ll take it in here, if you don’t mind, Mrs. Twig.”

Veronica still couldn’t face the woman after the scene in the kitchen that dreadful night. Mrs. Twig obviously felt their estrangement. She just bowed her head.

“I’ll send a tray up. Just make sure you meet with Mr. Rafe. He says it’s urgent.”

When she left, Veronica sped across the hallway to look in on Jacqueline. She opened the door slowly. The bed was as disheveled and strewn with white fur as if the dog had been sleeping in it. A small black dress was lying on the floor; the one Jacqueline had been wearing. Where was the maid? Veronica hurried quickly to the other twin’s room. The bed was smooth and un-rumpled as if it had not been slept in at all.

Perhaps Janet was called away before she finished cleaning the rooms, Veronica thought.

She flung on her cloak and hurried down the stairs. Flashing past Mrs. Twig in the hallway, she hurried across the drawing room and went out into the back garden. In her leaf brown cloak, she became one with the woods. Goaded by some dire intuition, she was compelled towards the tomb.

It was there, carved of white marble, its scrollwork softened by the elements. The angels on the four corners of the roof raised their eyes to Heaven with looks of utter astonishment, as if they'd never seen death before. The iron door was closed. Veronica pushed on it. As the door opened inward, dead leaves rustled and blew across the floor. Beyond the iron grille, candles guttered low. Veronica pulled the grille aside and stepped in.

The two original marble sarcophagi had been removed and set inside another chamber just visible beyond the fluttering dark of an archway. Raised on the plinths in their places were the two silver coffins. On their lids were raised crosses entwined with rose briars and the scrolled command: Peace. Swallowing hard, Veronica went first to the smaller coffin and raised the lid.

Inside was a young girl who looked quite alive, but sleeping. Her white blonde hair was very long, her skin smooth, her lips and cheeks rosy with life. She wore a fine gown of embroidered batiste ornamented with an encrustation of tiny gold sequins over the bodice. The only hint of decay was in the dress; the were sequins tarnished, the fabric yellow with age. Over the girl’s heart, in her crossed hands, was a sheaf of fresh, white lilies.

Veronica moved away. “Sylvie!’ she whispered. She quickly shut the lid.

After reading in the Bestiary about the need for silver bullets, the logic of the silver coffin was plain. Silver was the only element on earth that could stop the werewolves, or perhaps, failing that, contain them.

Veronica had to see if Sovay was likewise imprisoned. She found herself sinking almost to the ground as she approached that Pandora’s box. Slowly, from below as if she sought to hide from its occupant, Veronica lifted the lid and slowly rose with it until she was able to see inside. It was empty.

Her stomach rising like a basket of butterflies, she let the lid fall and ran out of the tomb. The daylight streaming through the trees was too bright for her eyes. She heard branches breaking and whirled around, all thought erased by the sound of her own blood thudding in her ears. Crashing through bracken, crisping over the dead leaves, Veronica raced towards the house until, through a screen of trees, she saw the tower looming up dark against the hazy silver sky.

Veronica stopped and looked around. Who was watching her? She snuck out of the woods at the side, and came out onto the wide lawn. The old bell tower at the top of the rise, above ruined chapel silently called to her. What was in there? She slunk back into the fringe of the woods and hastened along a path up to the ruin.

It was indeed no more than a shell, but very spacious inside. Walls hung with ivy and wisteria, a flurry of white azaleas, blue brunnera, and lavender wafted around a circular fish pond that shone still as a mirror and full of clouds. Lying beside the pool, as if she’d fallen down in a faint, was Sovay. Up close, the birch bark hat was translucent and oddly fixed to her head, the long blonde hair freely strewn in the brunnera glistened, and in pale, glowing hands, clutched over her breast, was a white china doll that smelled of the wild flowers of France.

“She’s not dead. She can’t be dead and look so fresh and young. There has to be a logical explanation for all of this.” Veronica glanced about breathlessly. Nothing stirred in the utter silence.

An exposed stair went up inside the bell tower to the very top, where the bell hung like a dark and heavy heart. Strange symbols were incised around the rim, but from where she stood, Veronica could not decipher them. Perhaps taking the clapper out of the bell would stop the transformations, she thought. Or better yet, removing the doll might disarm Sovay.

Veronica reached down, grasped the doll’s Parian head, and tugged. Sovay’s eyes flew open. Veronica shrieked and fell back.

How dare you try to take from me my native soil….

The mouth did not move, rather the voice came like wind in the trees. The eyes were the color of blue and green mixed together. They fixed on Veronica and burned.

Slowly the body dissolved and was gone.

Dizzy and nauseous, Veronica fled. She was halfway down the slope when she saw Rafe de Grimston coming towards her carrying two pistols in his hands.

“There you are,” he shouted. “We’ll be going into the Rock Garden. It’s just over there. It’s time for your shooting lessons.’

“What? Oh, is that what this meeting is for?” Veronica breathlessly replied.

“Didn’t Mrs. Twig tell you we had a meeting today?”

“Yes, she did. She just didn’t say what it was for.”

“Come on then.”

Rafe beckoned her by waving a pistol in the direction of a walled garden she’d not seen yet. The door opened into a primeval landscape. Cypress trees tapered up like dark flames around a circle of tall, narrow rocks as mysterious and portentous as an ancient megalith. Inside the circle, facing out, was a life-sized painting of a white wolf.

“Those standing stones are why we call this the Rock Garden. It’s most likely another folly of some kind, though some say it was here ages before the house was built,” Rafe said. “And that’s our target. I hope it frightens you because if it doesn’t, you might not shoot fast enough when the real thing comes at you. A large living beast like that can tear your throat out in seconds.”

Veronica exhaled sharply. Her hand went, involuntarily, to her throat. There was a bench near the wall that looked extremely inviting. “May I sit down for a moment, Sir? I feel a bit faint.”

“Of course. What’s the matter? Did you skip luncheon or something?”

Veronica sat on the bench and Rafe sat beside her. He set both guns on the ground, and then turned towards her.

“I hope you’re not ill,” he said, reaching for her hand.

“I don’t think so.…”

Veronica wanted to tell him about Sovay being in the ruin but she couldn’t find the words. She was overwhelmed. It was all too uncanny. She just wanted to go to sleep and forget. The ring of rocks was as bright as the moon. It shimmered and seemed to open, to turn, to dance. Veronica felt confused all of a sudden.

“That bell….” It was clanging in her head.

“What bell? What is it, Veronica?” Rafe’s eyes burned towards her. His mouth was set, yet his face was soft, opening like a flower.

“I’m sorry. Can we do this another day? Tomorrow? I just need to lie down. I feel a trifle light-headed. I was so worried about the twins, I forgot to eat. The air is so fresh this time of year.” Her voice sounded strangely hollow, as if it came from outside of herself.

“You’re so delicate, so slim and graceful, such large, doe eyes. You’re like a deer you know. Has anyone ever told you that?”

“Yes, actually. The twins.”

“Well, they would notice something like that. You’re timid like a deer as well.”

Veronica straightened up.

“Only under certain circumstances. When I’m meeting people for the first time, maybe, or utterly mystified by something. Otherwise, I am quite competent. As a teacher….”

“Shhh. No need to defend yourself. Let me accompany you back to the house. Come on. We’ll do this tomorrow. Shooting takes strength so you must promise me never to skip meals.”

“Oh, thank you. Of course I promise.”

When Rafe took Veronica's hand, an electric shock went through her. Its power brought her to the edge of tears. She glanced up and saw Rafe’s eyes drinking her in, as if he too felt more alive in her presence. As if his heart, too, had flown open.

CHAPTER 9

*

Veronica played the scene over and over in her mind as she stood on her balcony looking out at the green garden where she’d fallen in love with Rafe de Grimston. She was terribly embarrassed by her lack of self control, the blushing, the hot sweat of her hand, the meeting of their eyes that revealed everything. Of course he would know what it meant.

She went back inside, sat down, and stared at the fire. Why hadn’t she been able to tell him about Sovay sleeping in the ruin? About her possession of the doll?

Strangely alarmed, she stood up and swept into the twins’ rooms. Both beds were made. Everything was tidy. But no one was there. A low growl erupted at her back. Veronica spun around. It was only the white dog. It rose from its bed in the corner, wagged its tail and went to her, nuzzling her skirts. She patted the dog, which sent its tail wagging harder, then ordered it back to its corner. When the dog refused, she let it follow her out, and shut the door.

She needed to be alone that evening to collect her thoughts, to rest, but the dog sank down before her fire and gazed at her like an old flame. How had she forgotten to ask the twins what its name was? Perhaps she just wasn't used to pets.

Her dinner was in a covered dish on the side table. She'd had it sent up for, as much as she wanted to see Rafe, she couldn’t face him. Looking at it, she realized she couldn't eat. Her stomach was too turbulent. She tried to read her prayer book but the words just swarmed around on the page. Next she went back to her novel, but had forgotten where she’d left off. It seemed so long ago since she'd read it last. The Bestiary was there, under Jacqueline’s picture book, next to the journal of the former governess, Miss Blaylock.

Veronica opened a page of the journal.

I found a strange book in the library the other day called Dracula. It was marked with a red ribbon and bit scuffed on the cover. Clearly it had been read and carried about. It was a horrible, sensational story about a vampire and the poor girls he preyed upon. I thought the atmosphere was strangely like this house. Aspects of Count Dracula’s character were based on actual superstition, such as the need of the vampire to sleep in boxes of his native soil. And the fact that he cannot get into a house unless he is invited. That he may change into a bat or a wolf.

****

Veronica could not sleep. She sat up watching the candles gutter down, the flames growing long and bending sideways in the drafts, the wax spilling noisily down the candle branches. The sky in the windows went from lucent blue to black. Frogs croaked from the well, a cricket chirruped, the fire crackled in the hearth. The Bestiary on her lap was opened to the page of the wolf and the lady in yellow.

At one point, Veronica must have nodded off because she was startled by a knocking sound at the balcony windows. She looked up and saw a haze of brilliant white light. Sovay was looking in. The birch bark hat was so transparent that moonlight shone through it like fire through a lampshade. Also lamp-like, her white face glowed in the dark; her dress, her hands on the window pane, were white flames. Her eyes were black hollows that beamed straight into Veronica’s eyes, and held her.

A soft voice, barely audible, spoke as if from her own mind.

Do not tell my husband you saw me. He thinks he can hold me in that silver box, but he has to get me into it first. If you tell him you saw me, I will take the other child.

Veronica leapt to her feet. “You won’t. You won’t.”

Grabbing her shawl, she ran downstairs and out of the house. The last quarter moon cast long, rustling shadows over the grass. She ran around to the back garden, and looked up at her balcony. There was no one there, yet a slight whiff of lilies hung in the air.

She hurried up the lawn towards the bell tower. Stopping at the archway of the chapel, she looked in at the shadows of the leaves playing over a dim, moonlit wall.

“Sovay….Sovay….,” she whispered.

She stepped inside. No Sovay.

Why was she doing this? Hadn’t Miss Blaylock warned that one should not invite the vampire in? Veronica rubbed the furrow out of her brow. She was trying to prove, to herself at least, that she was sane. Not just seeing things. And not timid. Not a coward.

A snatch of song wafted up no louder than the night breeze.

Green grow the lilies, oh, Bright among the bushes, oh…

Veronica walked woodenly down towards the birches, then stopped. She thought she saw Jacques through the trees, standing in the lilies beside the well, but when she got there, there was only a white china doll hanging by its feet from a birch branch over the water.

****

Veronica was at her desk reading from her Book of Psalms when Jacques came alone to the classroom, dressed in deepest black.

“Good morning, Miss Everly,” he said. “I hope you liked my poem. I wrote it for you.”

“Good morning, Jack. I’m sorry, but haven’t found your poem,” Veronica said.

She swiftly put the journal into a drawer, then shuffled a few papers around on her desk as if a sheet of good writing paper bearing six lines of verse written in a decorative hand was not directly under her nose. A drawing of a deer in the garden reminded her of the last time she’d seen the twins together.

“Oh, I’m sorry, Jacques. I’ve been a bit preoccupied. I shall read it now.”

Despite the exhaustion that circled his eyes and shadowed the corners of his mouth, the child held himself with great dignity.

“That’s all right, Miss Everly. I shall tell it to you.

The Hart

My lady, like a wild hart, flees from me in the garden.

She hides among the white lilies, throwing me off her scent.

How can she love me, a ravening beast, or redeem my
heart-sore burden?

How can she love me in the least, how bear the dark descent

Toward the embrace of one a-cursed, in whose jaws she
might be rent?

How can she love me?”

The poem was awkward, but astonishing for one so young. Veronica was speechless at first. Then she said, “Very impressive, Jacques. It sounds like that fairy tale you like so much. Beauty and the Beast.”

“It is rather like that. But more personal.”

“One would think you had known the pains of unrequited love yourself to have been able to write it.”

“I have.”

“But who?”

Jacques looked away, his face flushed pink under its pallor.

“Why, Mama, and Sylvie. And of course, Jacqueline. But she won’t speak to me any more.”

The vulnerability in the child’s voice moved Veronica deeply. He was too young to suffer so much loss, so much sorrow. She answered softly.

“Why won’t Jacqueline speak to you? She told me you were fighting but she never said what it was about. Perhaps you can tell me. That way I can help you.”

“I can’t tell you. Now can we study our lesson for this hour? I say we open our maths book to page 36.”

Veronica knew there was no point in pushing the conversation further. She opened her teaching manual to the Arithmetic section. “All right, Jacques. But this cannot continue. You must both come to class together by the end of the week. Perhaps I can help you to resolve whatever this conflict is. There is a great lesson in that.”

“In what?”

“Forgiveness. As Our Lord instructs us in all relationships. We must learn to forgive, or we sink to the level of brute beasts indeed.” Veronica tried to keep the lecture out of her voice, but knew she'd failed. She went on in a softer tone. “The fact that you are both in mourning attire shows how much grief you are giving yourselves. There is no need. None at all. Now----on page 36, we have our Multiplication Tables.”

****

By the end of the week, the twins were still apart. Veronica decided it was best not to interfere. The trouble had to blow over soon. It saddened her to see them playing apart. They even kept the communicating door between their bedrooms shut.

Shooting with Rafe was a challenge indeed. Not the shooting part, for Veronica discovered that she had a talent for it, her aim was so good, her excitement so great when she hit the wolf target between the eyes time and after time, that she had to check her longing to prove herself in the field. She did not really want to kill anything, but some primitive instinct had awoken, thrilling her into vivid life at the very idea that she could. No, the difficulty was with Rafe. Standing behind her, reaching around her shoulders to grasp her hands and show her how to raise the gun, how to aim, pull the trigger, buffering the impact of the explosion as she rocked back against his body. She’d never felt such warmth from anyone. In all of her orphaned life, no one had ever embraced her, had ever let her be so close. Now here was her handsome employer----she must not lose her head. It could be nothing but an illusion, a girlish fancy blown out of proportion by her inexperience and need. He did not press her. She was glad of that, for it proved him honorable, unlike the gentlemen in novels who forced themselves on their servant girls and sent them away pregnant and ruined forever.

“Never let that gun out of your sight, Veronica,” Rafe said. “The minute the full moon rises, I want you to load it with those three silver bullets. And the moon will be full very soon.”

****

Veronica was on her balcony gazing off into the twilight, going over in her mind all of the little things that went on between Rafe and she, picking through them for evidence that he shared her feelings, without question, without a doubt. She was well aware of her position. She had no one to answer to, she was free, but on the other hand, there was no one to care, no one to help her, if he should merely take advantage of her and throw her in the street.

She held the pistol, looked into the chamber at the butt end of a silver bullet. The whole saga disturbed her, for clearly she was meant to destroy human beings who only appeared to be wolves. How could she do that? Rafe had said it was for the sake of their souls, but what of her soul? Was she to be forced to murder another human being? Perhaps someone she dearly loved?

Crows flew over, so black among the autumn birches standing like ghosts in the mist that rose from the warm, wet ground, and collected like a cloud in the well. Veronica shivered as the old bell in the tower slowly tolled.

CHAPTER 10

*

There was shriek. A hare shot out of the woods and began swiftly zigzagging up the lawn towards the chapel. A loud barking sound followed as one of the twins shot out of the trees, and chased it with that horrible four-legged gait. Veronica leaned over the balcony looking for the other. Surely this game of theirs had brought them back together. But no. One Jack alone bore down on the hare. It leapt into the air as if to escape over the hedge, but with one sweep of his long arm, Jack clawed it back and pulled it to the ground. Veronica held her breath and forced her eyes not to blink as the child stood up and, with the dead hare lying across both hands held out as if presenting a gift, stepped ceremoniously towards the house.

“Where is the other one? Where? I’ve had enough of this.” Veronica was surprised at how annoyed she was. She threw on her brown cloak. There was deep pocket inside. She put the pistol into it, allowing her hand to linger on its ivory handle for a moment as if she could absorb its power. Then she dashed down the stairs, and out into the garden.

It was windy. The moon was coming up between the cypress horns amid waves of rolling clouds. The stars began winking out, cold and sharp. Veronica pulled up her hood, but the wind blew it down again and swirled her cloak around her as if to carry her off. The bell was tolling off-key and somber. That sound seemed to turn the entire world askew.

She hurried to the shelter of the woods. The wind died down among the trees. There was a shimmer of golden light around the well. She crept close enough to see three children standing among the lilies. They were looking down into the water, their faces bright white under the brims of their birch bark hats. She gasped. Among them was, not Sylvie, but one of the Jacks holding a china doll and a sheaf of sheer, white lilies.

She watched them leave the well and drift, in their fog of light, through the trees as if they were looking for someone. Veronica followed them to the fringe of the woods and watched in astonishment as Sovay, glowing in a nimbus of golden light, took shape under the branches of a pomegranate tree bent before the empty doorway of the chapel. Her face glowed white; her gown began to glitter like yellow sequins as she called the children to her. They moved up the lawn and, as children gather around their mother seeking her loving and benevolent smile, encircled Sovay. They handed her their lilies, one by one, until her arms were filled with them. Her smile was the fanged grimace of a wolf.

Count the souls, so many souls…one, two, three…,The wind took the rest as she counted the lilies.

“Where is Sylvie?” The words lisped out of Veronica’s mouth unbidden.

Veronica plunged down the pathway, headed for the tomb. She was almost at the mouth of the door when she heard the snap of branches breaking behind her, the sound of a heavy tread over the dead leaves. Her scalp tingled, her mouth went dry, and she froze. Its gruff, hot breath was on the back of her neck. Cold sweat poured down her sides. She almost spun around, but a strong, rough arm wrapped around her and squeezed her hard. Hot breath dampened her ear.

“Get back into the house. Do not turn around. Just go back into the house and lock all of the doors. Now!”

He let her go. Veronica ran blindly through the trees, crashing through low branches, hurtling out of the woods and not stopping until she saw the dark tower looming above. Then she grabbed her pistol and looked back. A large, dark shape was lumbering through the shadows of the woods towards the tomb.

With a sharp burst of agony, Veronica cried, “Don’t make me shoot you. Don’t. If you do, I shall turn the gun on myself.”

Shrieks and cries poured down from the tower. Veronica ran as fast as she could, barged into the tower door and pounded up the stairs.

“No! No!” Jack’s voice echoed down. “Let me go!”

“You must do as I tell you. You must!” Mrs. Twig shot back.

Veronica burst onto the landing in time to see Jack screaming and snarling in the vice grip of Mrs. Twig as she tried to force the child through the grim door into the keep. Janet stood by, holding a large platter with the dead hare lying on it. A branch of candles stood on the floor throwing wild shadows over the wall, making the open doorway appear as black as the mouth of Hell.

“Please! I don’t want to go in there!”

“You know you have to. Just for tonight. There is a nice hare for your supper. Please now Jack. You know we have to do this.”

“Not alone. Not alone. I’ve never been locked in there alone,” Jack cried.

Mrs. Twig looked around. Veronica stayed back to see what would happen. Her heart was torn by the child’s cries, but she knew Mrs. Twig was doing what she had to do.

“I’ll go in with you. How is that? You must just promise me that you won’t forget who I am. You won’t have to be alone Jack. I’ll be with you.”

Mrs. Twig pushed Jack through the door and followed. Janet set the platter inside the door, and then picked up the candle branch and gave it to Mrs. Twig.

“Please stand guard, Janet,” Mrs. Twig said. “If you hear anything. Anything at all. Let me out.”

Janet nodded in agreement, and then closed the door on whatever was to happen in the tower that night.

Veronica was astonished by the housekeeper’s courage. She would never have been able to be locked in with that child on a full moon night. Once all of the doors of the house were locked, she would be up all night praying for her, praying for Jack, praying for Rafe de Grimston whose roaring and screaming, even at that moment, reverberated through the woods. Veronica turned the corner silently, careful not to alert Janet who was staring at the locked door as if in shock, and tripped up the curve of the tower stairs. Up on the roof, the entire night sky, with its floating castles of clouds, moved over her. The moon was very large and close, filling the dark between the horns of the cypress trees as if it was about to pass through a gateway to earth.

A terrible despair welled up in Veronica's heart. She sat down on the stone bench for a moment and listened to the to the high, clear howls echoing up from below. The woman’s screams. She put her face in her hands, but could not weep. She wanted to tear her hair. She stood up to gaze down at the woods, and finding the telescope lying on the bench, picked it up and trained it on the moon. After adjusting the focus on its marvelous craters and seas, she aimed the lens down at the birch wood, and searched the shadows for that hunched and howling creature that she loved. Moonlight spilled down into the clearing around the tomb, and there she saw an enormous wolf with the aspect of a man, raging at a girl in a yellow dress who stood in a mist of light with a lily in her hand.

Was it Sylvie? Or had that other one come from across the sea?

Veronica trained the telescope on the girl’s face, saw the beauty, the long white-blonde hair. Then she focused on the face of the Wolf Man whose eyes were filled with sadness. He shrieked, tore away, and leaped gracefully out of the woods and over the grass towards the meadows, no longer a man at all, but a large silvery wolf.

“I’m expected to shoot him. That’s what he wants. Well, I won’t,” Veronica said. “I’ll leave before I’ll do that.”

She hurried down the tower stairs to the landing and the tower door. Janet was gone. There was blood all over the floor, tracks going down into the house. Veronica stopped and listened for a sign that Jack the wolf was still locked in, but heard nothing.

Mrs. Twig was hurt. She knew it.

Veronica took the short cut through Rafe’s rooms, groping her way in the dark until she got out into the hallway. Mrs. Twig’s room was one floor down. There she found Janet coming out with bloody rags in her hands. The maid looked utterly distressed and shocked at the sight of Veronica.

“What happened?” Veronica asked.

“Mrs. Twig is ill. I’m not sure she’ll last the night.”

“What’s wrong? Have you called the doctor?”

“No Miss. We can’t have a doctor here. Not now. Me and Peggy will do the best we can to help her.” Janet stared at Veronica, silently pleading with her to stop asking questions.

“Janet, I know what’s going on. It’s not a secret any more. She’s lost a lot of blood.”

“Yes she has, Miss. But you don’t want to go in there. Like I said, she might not last the night.”

Suddenly exhausted, Veronica dragged herself up the stairs to her rooms. She paused and looked into the twin’s rooms, so cold and empty and dark except for the moonlight streaming through the balcony windows. A sudden memory of Sovay looking through the windows like some wild predator enraged her so, she slammed the door shut.

In her room, she poked up the fire, and then went out onto the balcony. The wind was high in the trees, full of the singing of the wolves. Yet, close to the ground, where the air was quiet and very still, Sovay and the children were floating in their sphere of golden light, all of one mind like a troupe of fairies, towards the tower.

"She wants the other twin!"

Veronica shouted down at the apparitions, screamed at them to stop. Then she ran downstairs, through the house, and out to the garden again. A roar erupted from somewhere too close by. Her hand flying into the pocket of her cloak, for the gun, she spun around.

“What am I doing? I’m supposed to lock the doors,” she said.

Veronica raced back inside and locked the door behind her. Then she ran around locking everything on the bottom floor, running through the servants’ quarters and locking the back kitchen door, checking the windows, locking them.

“I hope I got everything,” she muttered as she ran up to her bedroom. Once inside she locked the door, and backed away from it, staring.

****

Despite the excited state of her nerves, Veronica passed out in her chair by the fire. The haunting sound of an off-key bell invaded her mind. She began dreaming of a pack of small white wolves dancing in a circle below the tower. Veronica rose, still dreaming, and went out onto the balcony. She watched in astonishment as Jack emerged from the tower, turned into a small white wolf, and ran over the yard to join the pack. Several more white wolves dashed down the slope to join them. They all leapt about in a circle. Out of thin air, Sovay appeared, glittering and glowing in the dark center.

The wolf pack vanished leaving Jack alone with his mother, a human child again.

Chapter 11

*

The loud gonging of the grandfather clock woke Veronica. Cramped in her chair beside a cold, dead fire, she was staring absently at the embers when someone began knocking on the downstairs door. Ringing the doorbell. Calling out for Rafe. She finally got up, threw on her dressing gown and, grumbling a curse to herself, went downstairs to answer it.

“We’ve found the remains of a child. We think he’s one of yours.”

Officer Simms’s flat face was grim, his chin sunk into its double as he waited on the doorstep for a response. There was a farmer at the officer’s elbow, turning his hat in his hands, fretting.

“What?” she asked. “What have you found?”

The farmer broke in. “I didn’t know what it was. I mean…you know how it’s been the last few years. Wolves and all. That’s what it was, I swear. A white wolf heading for the sheep pens. A second didn’t pass before I had a shot off. I saw it limp away into the bushes. Left a lot of blood behind. Finished, I thought. But I wasn’t about to chase it further seeing as how it was wounded.”

The farmer hung his head like a small child trying to hold back tears. “I swear it was a wolf, Miss. I swear.”

Veronica eyes felt like cold mountainsides as she stared at the man.

“The corpse is buried under a pile of dead leaves,” the policeman said. “Seems it’s been there a while. There were another death last night. A woman out calling her dogs in from the storm. Attacked by a big wolf. Worse than any of the others.”

“It’s all over the papers, Miss.” It was Janet. She’d just come in with the newspaper and stood in the half light holding it up.

Marauding Wolf Kills Farmer’s Wife.

Veronica looked wildly at Janet whose face was like stone, staring at the policeman and the farmer.

“Is Mr. de Grimston in? We need him to come down and identify the body. Strangely it’s not decayed. Animals haven’t gotten at it. Not even ants. You can see who it is----a small tow-headed child, about eight years old.”

“It can't be!” Veronica glanced at Janet.

Simms went on, “I wonder if that wolf survived the shot. Maybe Mr. Hodges here didn’t kill it after all. Crazed by its wound it was and attacked your boy.”

“Mr. Rafe is still a-bed,” said Janet. “As is Mrs. Twig, the housekeeper.”

“Haven’t you been missing a child?” asked the policeman.

“Well, Jacques was away visiting. Wasn’t he, Janet?” Veronica looked to the maid as if she could save her from drowning.

“Yes. We saw him off to France about a month ago. Mrs. Twig kept in contact through letters,” Janet said.

Officer Simms looked at Mr. Hodges who looked warily at Veronica.

“Its hard to mistake a child like that. I’m real sorry about what happened." Mr. Hodges tipped his hat. “I’ll be going. Tell Mr. de Grimston to come round to mine when he’s ready.”

“Yes,” said Veronica. “I must wait for Mr. de Grimston. I am utterly unqualified to handle this.”

“Will you give Mr. de Grimston my card?” Simms asked. He handed Veronica his calling card. “I expect to hear from him before the day is out.”

“Will do, Officer. I’m sorry I couldn’t be of more help. I pray it’s not one of the twins,” Veronica said.

“Good day, Miss.”

Officer Simms looked askance at the two women, nodded, and left.

Once the door was closed, Janet rushed over to Veronica. “Mrs. Twig wants to speak with you. You must hurry.”

Veronica followed the maid up to the housekeeper’s rooms. Only one candle burned in the dark. The smell was awful. Mrs. Twig lay in her large, curtained bed, breathing heavily. Her neck and head were bandaged, the hands on the coverlet thick with bunting. She opened her eyes and looked at Veronica. Her attempt at a smile was a grimace.

Veronica fell into the chair beside the bed.

“Mrs. Twig, I saw you go in there last night. I am amazed at your courage. But now…”

The housekeeper’s voice was a hoarse whisper. Veronica had to lean close to hear her.

“I shall die of this wound. But I shall come back. As one of them….”

Veronica swallowed hard and thought of the task Rafe had given her. The purpose she didn’t want.

“I am not sure what Mr. Rafe told you…. Sovay….was a skin turner from the start. I knew it long before Mr. Rafe did. Every month, another death…. She used to sneak back in at dawn to wash the blood off. I could see her from the kitchen window, for I was up preparing breakfast at that hour….. She came into the kitchen... swore me to secrecy. I had to obey or she’d kill me. Like this.” Tears sprang up in Mrs. Twig’s eyes.

Veronica, understanding all, filled in the blanks to spare Mrs. Twig the effort. “Rafe told me he saw wolves come into the yard. That he had to shoot one in self defense. But it wasn’t a wolf at all. It was Sovay.”

“Yes…But he shot it with only an ordinary bullet. Not silver. So she comes back. She also bit him. I tended his wound. We had to cover up her death…. For the sake of the children. Held the funeral at home. Placed her in that tomb…with Sylvie….”

“Did Rafe know about Sylvie?”

“No. He was in India when that happened. I took care of her…Saw to her burial. Told Mr. Rafe… it was an accident.” Mrs. Twig stopped to lick her parched lips. “After Sovay was buried, I insisted Mr. Rafe go to France. Get away from here until the dust settled. Sovay was well known... in society…would be missed. No one would believe she was what she was.”

“But he started having nightmares there, in France. He told me. A lady in a yellow dress calling to him, leading him on. He dreamed he was one of them. A wolf man,” Veronica whispered. She continued, faltering. “After he told me, I thought he was just being delusional with guilt over murdering his wife. Even if it was in self defense. I also believed Sovay when she said she wasn’t really dead. I’m sorry, but I blamed you for keeping she and the twins apart. I even thought that, if Rafe could only see Sovay alive, as you saw her, that he might be relieved of his guilt. But I was wrong.”

“He is one of them. As I will be.”

The housekeeper labored to breathe. She raised a hand as if to clutch Veronica’s arm, but it fell back weakly.

“Miss. He never loved Sovay. Not like he loves you.”

Her heart fluttering like wind-tossed leaves, Veronica stood up and paced away.

“Me?” she said, breathlessly.

“Sovay will never forgive him for denying her that love. And leaving her in her doom.” Mrs. Twig’s eyes suddenly flew open and blazed. “She won’t forgive you either.”

Veronica looked wildly for Janet who lunged out of the shadows towards the bed. Mrs. Twig exhaled loudly, shouted for God, and died.

****

Veronica put the pistol into its box, threw it on the bed, and began packing her bags. She couldn’t bear to stay at Belden House for one more minute. Never had so much darkness invaded her soul. She was expected to shoot Mrs. Twig now? Jack? Rafe? No.

Janet and Peggy could take care of Mrs. Twig. Veronica, leaving the gun and the Bestiary conspicuously behind, stepped silently down the stairs carrying all of her things in two bags. The vicar from the de Grimston’s private family church had already pulled up in a black coach with red doors, giving Veronica just enough cover to slip down the lane unnoticed. It was just over three miles to the coach station, then on to the train. Her only problem was where to go. Back to Saint Mary’s? The thought of going backwards sickened her, but there was no place else.

Chapter 12

*

The Mother Superior leaned back in her chair with a sour smile. Above a vase of Easter lilies, the Crucifix hanging on the wall behind her burned dark gold. The image of Saint Veronica displaying her veil marked with the face of Christ, gazed down from one of the, mostly blue, stained glass windows. Veronica sat with her hands folded prayerfully before her lips, comforted and humbled by the divine atmosphere of the place, fearful of what truth would come out of her mouth when Holy Mother began asking questions.

“Girls don’t usually return to Saint Mary’s unless they have been called to join our order. To take the veil. You understand that don’t that don’t you, Miss Everly?”

“Yes. I should like to take the veil,” Veronica stammered.

She glanced at the round, placid face of Mother Superior, at her sharp, agate eyes that saw through everything, unsure of how to explain her situation. She was deeply in love with Rafe de Grimston. He was a monster. Already, at the age of twenty-one, she felt her future was defined. There was no other path for her except to become a nun.

“I’m not entirely convinced that you have a calling. Rather you want to run away from something.”

“To take refuge in Christ,” Veronica said. “For I have seen the Evil One.”

Mother Superior raised an eyebrow at that. “Where?”

“In the house of my last employer. Witchcraft I saw.”

Veronica hoped she would not have to go further than to reveal what she saw Mrs. Twig doing in the kitchen that night. If she spoke of werewolves they would think her mad and the asylum was too close by.

Mother Superior stood up. She was surprisingly short for a woman who loomed so large. She came close to Veronica and looked into her eyes.

“You have had a fright, haven’t you? Something has struck at your very soul. You didn’t participate in that witchcraft, did you? Answer me truthfully, my child. You know I can’t be deceived.”

“No. Of course I did not. But I was affected by it long before I discovered it.”

Mother Superior went to the stained glass image of Saint Veronica and gazed at it, leaving wretched, pathetic, un-saintly, all too human Veronica to ponder how she would explain her love for a man who was possessed by the Devil. Did it show? Would loving him make her seem complicit in something ungodly?

“You’re a deep one, Miss Everly. As you know there is a trial period for novices. I’ll give you three months to contemplate your decision. If you decide that your vocation is with us, then you will serve for a period of three years before you will be allowed to take your vows.” She turned to Veronica with one eyebrow raised. “Is that agreeable to you?”

“Yes. Oh thank you Holy Mother. Shall I teach in the school?”

“No. I want you scrubbing floors, washing dishes, cooking meals. We need help in the kitchen.”

“Penance, then.”

“Yes. I don’t know how or why, but you have acquired a stain upon your soul.”

****

Veronica wondered if Holy Mother thought she was a fallen woman. She was not dressed in the usual white habit of novices, but in robes of burnished autumnal brown. Her working clothes were made of blue ticking, her unruly chestnut hair held back in a dull blue head scarf. She worked hard, imagining with every scrub of the sponge on the flagstones or tiles, that she was erasing her love for Rafe de Grimston, with every sluice of rinse water that she was washing away the horrors that haunted her soul.

When she was not laboring in the kitchen, Veronica wandered the large park-like grounds carrying her missal and the journal of Miss Blaylock that she had taken from Belden House. She had every intention of sending it back, but she needed it for a while. The writing in the journal was the only proof she had that what she’d experienced was real. That she was not mad. There was a garden in the Italian style with low walls, urns of autumn-yellowed flowers, myrtles, rows of cypress tress and a long reflecting pool. She often sat on one of the marble benches to meditate. She meant to focus solely on Christ and His protection, but she kept seeing the face of Rafe de Grimston instead, looking at her with eyes of such sorrow that her heart was wrenched away from Salvation. The forbidden desires she sought to exorcize welled up and flooded her every atom. She could only pray for it to stop. When it did not, she would remove her wimple and let her hair tumble down her back and walk among the scarlet trees, inhaling the scents of fallen leaves, bark and soil, startled by nothing more than squirrels, migrating birds, and the occasional black-robed nun from whom she fled.

“Surely if Christ means to call me, he would not allow this haunting,” she mused. “I must indeed be lost.”

Once a deer entered the park. It froze and held Veronica’s gaze for a long time. Perhaps they were alike, she thought, at the mercy of wolves and other predators.

Soon the convent was swathed in heavy mists, and one day snow began to fall. Veronica was forced to stay in her tiny bedchamber where, exhausted by her work, she often fell asleep by the coal fire. With the approach of Advent, she was allowed to join the choir, and began singing Matins at dawn in a chapel heated by hundreds of candles and the melodic breaths of the nuns. Her voice was appraised beautiful enough to warrant special attention by the musical director, beautiful enough to perhaps, redeem her in the eyes of God.

It was a day of bleak skies and ice when Mother Superior summoned Veronica to her office.

“I have received a letter from your former employer, Mr. Rafe de Grimston. It seems he tracked you down through the governess agency who forwarded it on to us. He doesn’t know where you are. It is up to you whether or not to answer this letter. It will soon be time for you to decide your future, Sister Veronica.”

Holy Mother’s gaze was steady, calm, as she handed the letter to Veronica. She was relieved to find that it had not been opened. It had been addressed to her by Rafe himself. At the sight of his handwriting, tears fell uncontrollably down her face. She bowed her head as if she could hide them.

“He has a fine hand. Strong. Open. Go and read it and come back to me before Vespers,” Mother Superior said. “You are dismissed.”

Veronica teetered to her feet. “I’m sorry, Holy Mother. I’m very confused. I’m so sorry.”

“Don’t be. God has His ways. Give your struggle over to Him and don’t try to force the outcome. That is the only way.”

With a racing heart, Veronica hurried out the door and opened the letter. The smell of the sealing wax as it broke; the whiff of good paper and ink reminded her painful of Belden House. Her hands shook so that she had to sit down in the rosewood-paneled hallway to steady herself.

Dear Miss Everly,

I thought you might like news of us here at Belden House. Jack quite misses you. I miss you. Together we are two old fools reminiscing about the good old days. Mrs. Twig has recovered from her injuries and bustles about enough for both of you. Sadly we have lost one of the twins. He lies in a silver casket beside his older sister. Their mother is still at large. If only one could be freed of this evil! There is a remedy, but that I cannot disclose.

I wish you well in your new post. I am sure it is happier than here.

All the Best,

Rafe de Grimston

Veronica stood up, and looked around helplessly. They wanted her back. But how could she go when, in the end, she might be called upon to destroy them all, or choose to become like them and lose her soul entirely?

She went out into the cold garden. Snow was falling in heavy, wet flakes. The vista of white earth and bare trees was lonely. The crows hawking in the bare branches were like fragments of her personal darkness besmirching the purity of God’s Grace. The bells were ringing brightly the Third Hour, reminding her of that slow, out-of-tune tolling at Belden House that set the world askew, and of the high, clear howling of the wolves.

Just before bed, she wrote back. It was not an easy decision, for though everything within her wanted to let Rafe know how to find her, she dreaded having to face the man she loved, especially after she abandoned him like a thief in the night.

Dear Mr. de Grimston,

Thank you for thinking of me and sending your news from Belden House, both happy and sad. I miss you as well, and the twins. Both of them. I can barely stand knowing that they are no longer a pair. I have news to share with you. I have decided to become a nun. To join the Order of Saint Mary’s where I can continue in my teaching profession. I shall keep you always in my prayers.

Sincerely Yours,

Sister Veronica

There! she thought as she sealed the envelope. It was decided. From that day forth she would be Sister Veronica-Whatever. She would clear her name with Holy Mother and wear the white habit and the heavy rosary beads and sing and teach. Not such a bad life. Tears spilled on the envelope where it lay on her table. She tore the wimple from her head, tore at the neckline of her habit that strangled her, stood up, pulled her hair and stamped her feet. If she hadn’t gotten so used to silence, she would have screamed.

****

She spent the winter praying in the Chapel of Our Lady, comforted by the stillness, warmed by the hundreds of candles that glowed wetly in the underwater light of the stained glass windows. The kind face of the Holy Virgin with her little Christ Child looked down. Why had she been denied the promise implied in that image? Why did God allow Satan to contaminate His Creation; to destroy it from within?

It was a bright sunny day when Veronica stepped out of the chapel door to find Janet sitting under a dripping yew tree in the graveyard as if she’d been there forever.

“Janet? What are you doing here?” Veronica asked. “How did you know I was in the chapel?

“The head nun told me,” said Janet. She was flustered and kept looking at her wet shoes. “I came on behalf of Mr. Rafe.”

“You must be freezing. Come on. Let’s go inside. There’s a small sitting room where we won’t be disturbed.”

Veronica hurried Janet through the side door of the abbey and down the hallway to a cozy little room with a fire. They sat in opposite wing chairs. Veronica was amazingly happy to see Janet who kept smiling and finally laughing.

“It’s so good to see you Miss. You do make a lovely nun, I must say, though Mr. Rafe was very upset that you’d done it.”

“It’s not quite done yet,” Veronica said. “I still have a week before I commit to anything, and even then…” What was she saying? “What’s the latest news at Belden House?”

Janet grew flustered again. “Miss, I…Could you?…Well. Mr. Rafe. I know it was wrong of me, but I read your letter. Though I don’t let on, I can read well enough. I found it blowing over the lawn where Mr. Rafe had dropped it, you see, before he stalked off into the woods like the doom was upon him. I was afraid of what he might do with that pistol of his. He doesn’t know I’ve come looking for you, Miss.”

Veronica shifted in her seat, drew her shawl close around her shoulders. “Go on,” she said.

“Mrs. Twig, well, she recovered quick enough, but…It were up to me, Miss, to lock them in the tower. Her and poor little Jack. I never know which one it is….I can’t bear it when they start howling. And Mr. Rafe, well, he’ll roam free. They can’t help what they do. Lady de Grimston, well…did you know that before she came to us, she lived in France and those same things were going on there? Children being attacked and such? Then she brought it here, to England. And those books----those Grand Alberts----very old they are Miss. That family of hers worshipped the Devil and that’s how it came to them, Miss. The curse now falls on us.” Janet looked around at the paintings of the saints on the walls. “I can see why you came here. To get away from it. But…Miss….there is a cure and I thought, if you don’t mind my saying, in that letter….well, when a woman tries to act so cold, you know there’s a burning heart underneath.”

“What do you mean, Janet?”

“If you could come back to us and speak your heart….”

Veronica stood and walked to the window, squeezing the rosary beads between her sweaty fingers.

“If I were to do such a thing, to leave Saint Mary’s now, I could never come back again. I will not shoot Mrs. Twig and especially not a child. No, I will not. And I will not shoot Rafe de Grimston, even if he tears the entire world apart,” Veronica said. “Do you understand?”

“But there’s no need to shoot.”

“What of Lady de Grimston?”

“She’s still out there….”

“Making more like herself. Stealing souls. How can I do anything about it?”

“Only you can, Miss. Only you. Don’t you see? Listen to your heart.” Janet held her gaze with a look of such despair that Veronica felt selfish and mean.

“Oh, God in Heaven!” she cried.

“Miss Everly!”

Veronica crossed herself, “Please forgive me, Lord. Oh, God!”

“Just come for a day, Miss. One day will do it. I’m frightened what Mr. Rafe will do to himself. I think the only thing keeping him from topping himself with that silver bullet is his hope that he might see you again. He’s afraid of losing the remaining twin to her as well, since those dolls let her in. Stuffed with the flowers of France, you see. Her native soil. That wicked part that’s in the children----was why they wanted those dolls. To let their mother in. Mr. Rafe is always so kind. He didn’t know….. But there’s no need for him to even think about suicide if only you’d come back with me. For one day. Just one little day. Please, Miss. As an act of charity. You must.”

“All right. If I can obtain permission from Holy Mother, I’ll go back with you tomorrow. I’ll arrange for your stay tonight. But I’m returning before nightfall and that’s final.”

CHAPTER 13

*

Veronica watched the winter landscape slip past the window of the train and tried to keep her anxiety at bay. When they arrived at Belden House, it was still morning; too early to see that they’d been followed by a bright, full moon.

Belden House in the snow was a desolate sight. Icicles hung from the gargoyles and gutters, rooks hunched on the frost-encrusted rooftops, doves huddled in the windowsills. The wide garden was blasted hoar white, the bare trees frozen with every twig on end as the wind blustered against them.

It was strange going back inside the house. One wasn’t meant to go backwards, Veronica thought. Life was a series of births, leaving womb after womb behind until one left the womb of the earth for Heaven or that other place she could not bear to name.

“I think this may be bad timing, Janet. I think the moon will be full tonight,” Veronica said. “I shall be forced to shoot him, won’t I? You’ve tricked me.”

“No, Miss. No. It’s the perfect time to help Mr. Rafe and the others as well. If it’s any reassurance, I’ve hidden your gun. I had to hide all the guns.”

“Well, you’ve got enough faith for army, haven’t you? Too much in me, I’m afraid. Where is he?”

“Perhaps in his rooms, Miss. Do you want me to announce you?”

“No. I’ll go on my own,” Veronica said. Sighing she went up the stairs.

First she wanted to look in on Jack. The child’s bedroom was empty, so she went up to the schoolroom. Jacqueline was there, looking out at the yew hedge that was a wall of white tapers against a white sky. She was wearing a black dress; the white-blonde hair had grown long, to the middle of her back.

“Jacqueline, it’s me, Miss Everly.”

Jacqueline turned around. The pale green eyes were cold at first, then filled with tears at the sight of Veronica.

“Miss Everly. You’ve come back,” she said and ran into Veronica’s arms.

Veronica stroked the child’s hair. It was so soft. “I’ve missed you. All of you.”

“We miss you as well. Please stay with us, Miss Everly. Please don’t leave us again.”

Veronica thought it was best not tell Jacqueline her plans. “I must speak with your father, now. Go ahead and play and I shall see you later on. For tea.”

“I can’t play. Not alone. There’s nothing to do and Papa says we can’t have another governess.”

“Well, run along to the drawing room and I’ll read to you. Your pick. Beauty and the Beast or something. All right?” Veronica said brightly, trying to lighten the mood.

“Oh, yes, Miss Everly! I shall wait for you. But don’t leave it too late. The light fades fast in winter. It’s nighttime by four o’clock. Mrs. Twig says.”

“Don’t worry,” said Veronica rising to her feet. “I won’t be long.”

“It’s getting stronger every month, you know. Every year it will get stronger until I’m fourteen. Then there will be no going back.”

“What?” Veronica gasped, unsure at first what the child meant.

Jacqueline ran out the door, leaving her white china doll sitting on the window sill. Veronica picked it up. It looked grubby as if the child hadn’t let it out of her grasp for weeks. She couldn’t forget how it had writhed in Mrs. Twig's hand that night in the kitchen, and put it back down.

Then the realization struck her.

“The cycle of transformation grows stronger with age,” she whispered. “It is firmly established at puberty. Before age fourteen, she can be saved.”

Veronica steeled herself and knocked on Rafe de Grimston’s door. There was no answer.

“Rafe? Mr. de Grimston? It’s me, Veronica,” she said, knocking again.

Still, no answer. She pushed the door open and stepped inside. The room felt deserted. She checked Rafe’s bedchamber and found her pistol lying on the dresser, loaded with three silver bullets. How could Janet have missed it? Veronica picked the weapon up and aimed it at the mirror. The reflection looked like a stranger in another dimension, pointing the gun at her. With a pounding heart, she set it down.

Light was streaming in through the windows of the sitting room. Veronica gazed up at the two portraits, reminded of the first time she’d seen them, when Rafe and Sovay were still mysteries to her. She wandered out to the bay and looked down through the stonework at the gardens and the tomb nakedly visible through the bare trees. The masonry was white with frost, the angels on the rooftop furred with heaps of snow. Further away, up the slope, was the ruined chapel, veiled under the crystalline boughs of the yews. The lawn was a pure pane of whiteness. Veronica hurried up to the landing, and faced the tower door. Mrs. Twig’s blood had been cleaned from the floor, but a streak of darkness remained. Skirting the place, she took the rest of the stairs up to the roof of the tower.

She scanned the garden as far as she could see, but there was no sign of life, let alone of Rafe. Perhaps he was in one of the walled gardens. She thought she should go down and try to find him, but she stalled. It was painful to admit that she was frightened of him. The early twilight tinged the landscape blue and violet. A faint echo of the grandfather clock gonged the hour for tea, and she remembered her promise to Jacqueline. She was halfway down the stairs when a shriek went up in the birch wood. Veronica hurried back up to the roof and looked out in time to see Jacqueline fall upon a small animal and kill it with her teeth. Then the child stood up, gasped the white rabbit by its long ears, and carried it towards the house leaving a trail of blood behind her on the snow.

“It’s tonight,” Veronica muttered. “They change tonight.”

She clung to the battlements, her fingers digging into the stone, and waited for the moon to rise. Stars began winking out. There was noise near the Rock Garden. The door opened and a shadowy figure emerged, tall, bulky and hunched over as if under a terrible burden. Rafe!

Veronica could not wait for the moon to rise. She ran down the stairs. On the landing she saw Janet with the dead rabbit on a platter, holding the tower door open for Mrs. Twig and Jacqueline to enter. Though they still looked human enough, their eyes were focused in the way of beasts; both of them were raising their hackles, resisting their temporary imprisonment.

“Oh, Janet! Why did you wait until this night to send for me?” Veronica said.

Janet gave her a blank look and, using the rabbit as bait, lured Mrs. Twig into the tower.

Confused as ever, Veronica ran across the landing to the bay, and into Rafe’s rooms. Once inside, she paused again to look at his portrait. So handsome he was in the picture, so normal, so exactly as she wanted him to be. That wife of his, Sovay, what would she be up to tonight? The loaded gun was on the dresser. Did she dare to face the man she loved that night of all nights without it? She remembered the terrifying beast in the tower; the brutal death of the farm woman. No!

Far off in the distance as from another realm, the old bell began tolling slow and out of tune. Veronica grabbed the pistol and went downstairs.

She saw him through the window, standing in the garden in a shaft of moonlight, Rafe de Grimston shimmering from dark to very bright, from wolf to man. It seemed as if he wanted to come inside, but something stopped him. Veronica cocked her pistol and prayed she would have time to speak to him before complete savagery engulfed him. She opened the back door and went out into the garden to face him. The full moon was just edging above trees, casting his long shadow before him on the ground.

“Rafe?”

“Veronica. I see you’ve brought the gun. Use it then. Use it and put me and mine out of our misery forever.”

The look of utter despair in Rafe’s eyes brought Veronica’s heart into her throat. In the shadows it was difficult to tell if he were still wholly a man, or part beast, or in the midst of his transformation. The bell tolled again, even more out of tune than before. Just then high, sweet, despairing howls erupted from the tower. Curving slightly in on himself, confusion clouding his eyes, Rafe growled at Veronica.

“Stand back!” With a shaking hand, Veronica aimed the pistol at him. “Stand back!” she cried. “I don’t want to shoot you. I don’t!”

“Why not?” he said. His body was bending painfully towards the ground. His head was changing, his neck thickening, his jaws elongating, his face disappearing under a cloud of silver fur. “You’d better hurry, or you’re lost,” he snarled.

“No, Rafe!” she raised the gun again, and again let it fall as she too bent over, weeping. “Is this why you summoned me here? For this? Why me? Why do I have to do it? I can’t, Rafe de Grimston. I love you.”

Just before his claws hit the ground, he paused, and then let out a terrible roar.

Childish shrieks pierced the air. They were coming over the grass, a bright mist of children in birch bark hats.

“What did you say?” Rafe rasped out.

“I love you. I adore you. I….”

The children, sparkling like Roman candles, gathered in a wide half-circle around Rafe. Each holding a single lily, they sang in high, clear voices, moving ever closer to the werewolf to surround him.

“Stop it! You’re trying to confuse me!” Veronica shouted, squeezing the trigger of the gun.

The ring of children was closing around him. Suddenly Veronica forgot her fear. She rushed through the gap just before the circle completed and wrapped Rafe tightly in her arms. A flash of brilliant light instantly blinded her; a powerful force tore them apart. Rafe howled and flung Veronica to the ground. He thrashed about, ready to fall upon her when a high-pitched wail shot through the air and a foot was slammed on Veronica’s wrist. Someone wrenched the gun away, and then fell back. Scintillating in an enormous cloud of golden light, her eyes slit and blazing with hate, was Sovay.

“How dare you? Don’t believe her, Rafe. It’s me you love. It’s always been just we two. She’s just here to break us apart. Get out of our lives, you bitch!” In a mad frenzy, Sovay hurled herself at Veronica, baring her sharp white teeth.

Howling went up in the tower, barking and moans that slowly died out and returned again. Half wolf, half man, Rafe lurched around to menace Sovay. He took a swipe at her with his heavy paw, but she quickly vanished and re-appeared on the other side. Rafe rose into the air with a powerful leap. He twisted around, seemed about to fall upon Veronica who feinted, scrambled for the gun and pointed it at Rafe. Then, as if some other power had grabbed her arm, she swung the gun at Sovay and pulled the trigger. The explosion was so powerful, she fell over from the blast. Rafe fell in a heap on the snow not three feet away.

The ring of children vanished leaving a thick, viscous haze over the ground.

It was difficult to be sure what had happened.

“Rafe! Rafe! Oh my God! Oh my God! Rafe!” Veronica screamed.

Someone was sobbing as if their heart would break.

Veronica stumbled through the mist and found Sovay lying in the snow. The silver bullet had torn through her bodice, but there was no blood. Her face was wet with tears. She did not seem to see Veronica, for she was gazing up at the millions of stars twinkling across the black heavens.

Her lips did not move, but Veronica heard Sovay’s voice clearly. Why did you not love me, Rafe? If only you had loved me, we could have ended this curse long ago.

Veronica stood still, listening to her own heart beat, trembling with sorrow and the shock of what she’d done. Rafe was lying close by, moaning. Veronica ran to him.

“Oh, my darling!” she cried and lay over him, covering his face with kisses.

Rafe rose up on one elbow looking so much smaller and slimmer in his human shape. He glanced over at Sovay with an expression of terrible recognition and remorse. Smoky fumes rose from the body, gradually taking the shape of a white wolf that lay bleeding from its heart.

Rafe stood up and grabbed Veronica. Together they watched the wolf become a woman again. But this time it was not Sovay, but a girl with masses of curling, flaxen hair and wearing a medieval gown of yellow brocade. She glowed as if the moon lit her from within. Her face was rosy, smiling, wanton and alive. Veronica clung to Rafe, tugged at his shirt, coaxed him turn away. Suddenly the beautiful body imploded. Dust rose, black and smelling of sulfur, yellow as the decayed medieval gown that clung to the long, the fine bones of the libertine.

Veronica hid her face against Rafe’s chest. They stood together in a warm embrace. They were about to go into the house, when they turned to look back and saw Sovay’s body lying there, her white dress, her shroud, stained over the heart with blood.

“She was possessed,” said Veronica. “Poor thing.”

“I wasn’t sure how it was,” Rafe said. His eyes were fixed on Sovay, yet his fingers moved mindlessly through Veronica’s hair. She grabbed his hand and held it to her cheek.

“Please, Rafe. Don’t let Sovay’s death come between us. Not after all this.”

Rafe turned to Veronica and kissed her. Then he looked back at Sovay lying dead in the snow.

“She was beautiful. Tragic and beautiful,” he said.

“Do we have to burn her?” Veronica said. “I couldn’t bear to burn her.”

“I’ll put her in the silver coffin,” he said. “Where she’ll be safe.”

EPILOGUE

The enchantment was over for the living. Mrs. Twig enlisted Janet and Peggy to cook up a feast for them all. Jack chose to remain Jacqueline in honor of her other half who had died as Jacques and would go on, as the boy twin, to Heaven. He and Sylvie, lying in their marble coffins, reverted to a state of mortal decay. Sovay was locked in her silver coffin. Would it indeed hold her in? The only reassurance they had that the time of Werewolves and Soul Stealers was over, was that the children with birch bark hats haunted the well no more.

Rafe and Veronica were married at Saint Mary’s. Then they moved their entire household far, far away. No one knows where they went. The chateau in France was finally sold. The mural of the lady in the wolf’s jaws faded until nothing was left but a streak of yellow pigment on a snow-white wall.

The End

CURRENT E-BOOKS BY ALYNE DE WINTER

Short stories and novellas that stand on their own.

GOTHIC FAERY TALE COLLECTION

Roses, Briars and Blood: A Gothic Re-Telling of Grimms' Briar Rose or Sleeping Beauty

Reflection of Beauty: Inspired by Beauty and the Beast

BRIDES OF DARKNESS COLLECTION

Portrait of a Vampire

Thr Lady in Yellow

TAROT SERIES

The Priestess's Tale

COMING THIS OCTOBER:

The Roses of the Moon

Vol 1

Legacies of the Witch Blood

A novel of Gothic Fantasy set in 17th century Royal Hungary. Young Marcsa Virag grows up in a remote castle haunted by the evil rituals of her mother, Countess Orzsebet. When the Ottoman Turks threaten to attack, Marcsa Virag is thrust into the heart of the ancient secret world of her ancestresses, the Witch Queens of the Hidden Sun.

****

EXCERPT FROM PORTRIAT OF A VAMPIRE

Portrait of a Vampire

By

Alyne de Winter

Gina always dressed for the occasion: vintage evening dress of gleaming black satin, Czech crystal beads, magenta hair teased rock star high. A good bottle of Corvina always stood on a small table at her side, with two gold-leaf goblets, both filled, one for her and one for her “model”. The walls of her small studio were covered with black drapes that kept all natural light out. Only rings of candles flaring from two Baroque candelabra were permitted. In that spectral glow, Gina sat painting, with small, careful strokes, so as not to make a mess, the single image that obsessed her: the face of her beloved Laurence, whom she affectionately called Lorenzo.

Portraits of Lorenzo hung all over Gina’s apartment. She couldn’t bear to part with them. She set them like jewels in elaborate golden frames, hanging them sequentially on her slate-blue walls, like a gallery of ghostly ancestors. Lorenzo’s image changed subtly with the years, as if he were still alive rather than frozen in perpetual youth under the earth. At first, Gina preferred to think of him living, far away in some exotic country like Illyria or Bohemia, rather than where he really was.

She’d met him in a club, of course. Where else? That’s where she always was with Amylie (Emily really) of the sheer black hair (dyed of course) and ample bosom, and mousy, lisping Jen the Wren who didn’t really fit in with the glam-Goth scene, but liked to watch all the “creatures” as she called them. Laurence had approached Gina out of the darkness, a slim, blue and gold satin aristocrat with shimmering bleached blond hair. He came very close, surveying her face, penetrating her soul with the bright green eyes of a big cat. He didn’t ask her to dance, merely pulled her out onto the flickering dance floor. There, he began a sinuous tango, holding her so tightly against his pulsating body, twirling her, bending her, forcing her to his rhythm, dancing her as she’d never been danced before. It was an uneasy pleasure playing puppet to his mastery.

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About the Author

Alyne de Winter grew up in the woods in witchy old Massachusetts, so what choice did she have? She left the performing arts, moved into a haunted house in London and began writing speculative fiction. Her prize-winning poetry and short stories may be found in many print publications and online.

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Contact Information

Email me: alynedewinter@yahoo.com

Friend me on Facebook: Alyne de Winter

Tweet me on Twitter: Alyne de Winter

My Blogs:

Alyne de Winter: Gothic Fiction from the Dark Paradise
www.alynedewinter.com

Gothic Faery Tales: For the Darker Side of Faery Tales
www.gothicfaerytales.com

Winterspells: Life on the Magical Path
www.winterspells.com

Table of Contents

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- Table of Contents
- Chapter 1
- Chapter 4
- Chapter 6
- Chapter 7
- Chapter 12