A Shade of Vampire 43: A House of Mysteries(47)

Jovi and Field got up to leave next.

“Coming?” Jovi asked. “We should get some rest.”

“Yeah,” I replied, “you use the showers first. See you up there.”

“Okay,” he replied, and both of them moved toward the doorway. I sat looking at the empty table. I didn’t feel like sleeping yet. I had found the tree from my vision earlier, out in the front garden. Its boughs had been heavy with blossom, and a stillness and serenity had pervaded it that I’d never encountered before. When I had touched the bark, it had been warm—but that wasn’t unusual, the sun was baking…it had just seemed as if the heat was coming from within the tree.

I had sat beneath it, as if I was in a trance. I hadn’t known how long I’d been there until the sun started to set. I’d somehow managed to spend the entire day there without noticing. The strangest thing was how content I’d felt, as if—out of every single place in the world’s dimensions—that was where I was meant to be. It had been even stranger considering that, a few moments before discovering the tree, Eritopia and this crumbling house had been the last place I’d ever wanted to be—I’d had a raging inner dialogue, longing to escape the confines of the house and its overgrown gardens. But when I’d found that tree, I’d felt more at peace with myself and the world around me than I ever had even in The Shade.

There was one thing that had occurred to me while I was sitting at the table.

I stood up, sure that the coast was clear, and made my way to the greenhouse. Draven and Bijarki were nowhere to be seen, and I could hear the sounds of my friends above me, getting ready for bed.

I didn’t know why I was so reluctant to tell them I’d found the tree. I knew Serena was desperate to know, but for now, it was something I wanted to keep to myself. Partly because it was all so strange, and I wouldn’t really know how to explain how a regular magnolia tree made me feel so much.

Walking swiftly across the gardens, I kept close to the house, hoping Field wouldn’t spy me from the rooftops. I strode round the side of the house, eventually reaching the tree. I exhaled in relief. My muscles relaxed—I hadn’t realized they had been tensed before this point. I leaned against the bark, closing my eyes briefly before beginning my next task.

It was so obvious, I couldn’t understand why it hadn’t occurred to me earlier. I looked down at the soil, using True Sight to see the roots of the tree. Slowly they came into vision, twisted and entwined around one another. I followed them down, deeper and deeper into the earth. Their depth wasn’t normal—the roots seemed to go on forever. Right at the bottom, I saw what I hoped I would. The roots grasped at a huge shell, the same one I had seen in my vision. It shone brightly, its pearly luminescence making it look like a jewel buried deep in the soil.

Taking a deep breath, and feeling the energy leaving my body as I fought to maintain my sight at such depths, I looked through the casing of the shell, almost blinding myself with the light that emanated from within it. As my eyes adjusted, I started to see the outline of a figure, lying curled up inside the chambers of the shell.

I crouched down lower, and the form started to become clearer. It was a girl, but more than that somehow—she was the most beautiful creature I’d ever beheld, as if she somehow surpassed being generalized by her gender. Her skin was alabaster white, her hair a flaming pinky red that seemed to become part of the shell as she nestled in it, the tips of it reaching down to her feet.

Why is she buried beneath the earth?

I suddenly felt a sharp pang of grief that anyone would cover her with so many layers of earth, that they would hide her from the world when she was so clearly meant to be part of it—to be seen, to let us hear her voice, to watch her walk and move. Her eyes were closed in sleep, and I desperately wanted to know what they would look like, but instead, I had to be content to see her chest rising gently, and the dark lashes on her lids throwing shadows on her cheekbones.

My fingers pressed into the earth. I was ready to dig her up myself then and there, to claw my way through the worm-infested soil that separated us.

“What are you doing?”

I jumped up at the sound of Field’s voice. I had been so preoccupied by her beauty that I hadn’t heard him approach.

“Just looking at the tree,” I replied stiffly. “It’s the one from my vision.”

“Are you sure?” Field asked, with instant interest.

“I’m sure.”

“Can you see anything beneath it? Like the shell you were talking about?”

“No,” I replied swiftly.