I yank my head back, startled. “Help me with what?”
My brother’s blue eyes are guarded. “I don’t know. Do you?”
I shake my head adamantly. “No. I have no idea. I don’t need help.”
I don’t say anything else for the rest of the flight, and finally, finally, we arrive in London. My mother awakes easily, freshened from her nap. I’m exhausted, and it’s on weary legs that I trudge through the busy airport.
A driver in a dark suit and cap is waiting for us and he leads us to a long sleek limousine.
“My name is Jones,” he tells me seriously, and he has a giant nose. “I’ll be helping with you while you are here at Whitley.”
Helping with me?
Finn and I exchange looks as we pile into the fancy car.
My mother doesn’t seem to notice. Instead, she seems nostalgic as she chats while we drive through town and into the countryside. She points out the window.
“See over there? I learned to swim in that pond.”
I follow her finger and find a dismal little body of water, murky and black. Nothing like the Pacific Ocean, the water that I learned to swim in. I feel sorry for her for that, but she doesn’t seem sad.
Now that we’re here, her accent is sharpened, cutting the air like a scalpel, like the British person she is. She says bean instead of been, and pronounces schedule like shhedule. Why haven’t I ever noticed it before?
Finn reaches over and grabs my hand, squeezing it. “I think we’re almost there,” he says quietly, and I follow his gaze.
Towers erupt through the trees on the horizon, spires of stone, and a cobbled roof. I’m mesmerized as we pull through gates, gliding along a stone driveway and pulling to a stop in front of a giant house. A mansion, actually.
“Kids, this is Whitley,” my mother says, already opening her door, her foot on the stones. I stare around her at the house that looms over her shoulder.
It’s imposing and grand, ominous and beautiful, dark and bright.
All at once.
It’s many things, but mostly, it’s intimidating.
As is the tiny woman waiting to embrace my mother.
She stands in the front doorway, like a little bird. She’s got dark skin and a bright scarf wrapped around her hair, and dark eyes that gleam, eyes that seem to see right through me. I shiver from her gaze, and she smiles crookedly, like she knows. Like she knows all about me, like she knows everything about everything.
She’s introduced as Sabine, although my mother calls her Sabby. Like mom knows her oh-so-well, even though I’ve never heard her name before today. All of this makes no sense at all, and I wonder if Finn is as confused and overwhelmed as I am.
He doesn’t seem to be as he shakes Sabine’s hand. He smiles seriously at her, saying politely, “It’s nice to meet you.”
It’s my turn next and Sabine stares through me, like she’s reading my thoughts, her dark eyes drilling into mine.
“It’s nice to meet you,” I murmur obligatorily, like I’ve been taught.
Her mouth turns up at the corners, her wrinkled hand curled like a claw around my own. Her skin is cold, like ice, and I shiver again. She smiles in response and something puts me on edge, the hair standing up at my neck, and every vertebra in my spine straightens.
“The die has been cast, I see,” she says quietly, almost to herself, and I’m the only one who can hear.
“What?” I ask in confusion, because her words make no sense. But she shakes her scarf-clad head.
“Don’t trouble yourself, child,” she tells me firmly. “It should be of no worry to you right now.”
But it is, because her words stay with me.
She leads us to our bedrooms and on the way, she turns to me.