The Wish Collector
Page 70

Help me help you, Angelina.
Clara had come to Windisle to solve a mystery for two dead people who were supposedly trapped. Jonah wasn't sure if he believed in that. But what if there was a way to bring that magic back to Clara in a very real way? To grant her wish? What if there was a way to find the note?
Jonah lived on the same grounds where Angelina had lived and died. She'd been read the note inside of Windisle Manor, perhaps in the very same room where he now sat.
Jonah had a sudden inexplicably clear picture in his head of Angelina squeezing the paper tightly in her fist as she wept. Maybe it hadn't been destroyed long ago. Maybe she'd hidden it somewhere. Maybe it'd been moved to the attic in one of the dusty boxes or trunks that littered the space.
He’d told Clara he’d look for it, meaning to, but only to appease her, but then he never had. He had some making up to do with Clara and searching for the note was as good a place to start as any. Maybe it was under a floorboard in this very room. Jesus, where do I even start?
Jonah stood. He’d at least try. For Clara, he'd try. If it came to nothing, that was okay. At least he’d have his own effort to give to her when he left this house and sought her out. At least he'd have something small to present—a tiny gift for all of the things she'd given him. But he didn’t want to think about that just yet—the seeking out. He was still working up to that part.
Okay then, where to begin?
Jonah turned his thoughts to the riddle of John and Angelina. The first question was, if they did linger, why? What did they want? Was it the curse that somehow kept them both there? A drop of Angelina's blood being brought to the light. The words the old priestess had said would break the curse. But what did it mean?
"All right, Justin, you want to prove to me you're still the same busybody I always knew? You always did love the story of John and Angelina. And you always loved a good mystery. So help me—"
The breeze gusted in, lifting the curtain and whipping it against the edge of the fireplace mantel where a knickknack rabbit rested. It fell to the floor with a sharp crack, but didn't break.
Jonah huffed out a breath, bending down and retrieving it, replacing it on the mantel. As he rose to his full height, his eyes met his own, his face inches from the mirror that hung over the fireplace. He stared at himself for the first time in a long while, but this time, he tried his hardest to see himself not through the lens of his own self-hatred, not through the stares of those who’d turned away, but from Clara’s perspective. From Myrtle’s and Cecil’s and hell, even from the men who’d been to Windisle several days before, the men who’d become his friends, his brothers, and accepted him easily and without judgment.
You give those people too much importance and not enough to the ones who matter.
Jonah turned his face left, then right, then looked at himself full on. This was him now, and he needed to accept it. He’d never be the man he was before, but would he want to be? Yes and no, and he didn’t get to have both.
He sighed, smoothing his fingers over the scars, remembering the look in Clara’s eyes as she’d touched him with love. With love. Jonah blew out a breath, missing her so desperately it made his skin break out in goosebumps. He ran a hand through his thick, dark hair, staring into his own eyes, the left one pulled tight, the color cloudier than the other.
"God, I'm almost too handsome," he whispered, the way he used to do for his brother’s benefit as he got ready for high school in the morning. It had annoyed Justin, and as his brother, it was Jonah’s duty to do it regularly.
Humble too.
Jonah smiled, hearing in his head what had always been the exchange between the brothers. A private joke.
Jonah turned his face, looking at his profile from both sides, re-learning himself maybe. The thing he’d refused to do all of these years. Instead he’d used strangers’ long-ago reactions as his mirror, as the thing that spoke of his worth. Or more precisely, the lack thereof.
Since the day his brother had died and Jonah’s world ended, he hadn't wanted to look himself in the eyes, had avoided mirrors altogether. Only now . . . looking at himself didn't feel painful. In fact, he not only saw himself in the mirror—scars and all—but he saw his brother too. They’d looked so much alike.
"You both got those Chamberlain good looks," their mother had always said. And suddenly it seemed like something to be treasured that Jonah got to see a piece of his brother in himself—even if only on one side—every time he looked in the mirror.
And things . . . shifted. Jonah felt it inside, something clicking into place, and clearing some path that had been previously blocked.
He brought his fingertips to his jaw, his cheekbone, brushing his hair back, seeing the Chamberlain widow's peak.
Chamberlain.
Chamberlain.
A drop of her blood . . .
Jonah froze. No, it couldn't . . . Holy shit. He was a drop of her blood. Angelina’s.
Her father, Robert Chamberlain, had been Jonah’s sixth great-grandfather. They’d called her a Loreaux, but really, she’d been a Chamberlain. He had the same blood as Angelina running through his veins. In fact, he was the only one left who did. His father was dead, his brother was gone, his aunt Lynette hadn't had children. He was the last of the Chamberlain blood.
I’m the answer, he thought, shock and wonder crashing through him. At least in part.
That vague ticking feeling he’d shared with Clara intensified inside of him, but no, it wasn’t ticking. It was pounding. Just like the pounding of hooves in that nightmare he couldn’t seem to shake. Hurry, hurry. Don’t let it be too late. He spun around, running his fingers through his hair, gripping his head.
A drop of her blood being brought to the light. It seemed to chant in Jonah’s head along with the pounding of hooves on hard-packed earth, rising suddenly to overwhelm him, voices echoing somewhere in the recesses of his mind.
A drop of her blood being brought to the light.
A drop of her blood being brought to the light.
The light. What was the light? He’d always pictured it as some cosmic glow . . . a description of the afterlife. But what if . . . what if Clara had been right? What if the light was . . . the truth? What if John's family had lied to Angelina just as Clara surmised? And what if exposing that by finding the note was what would break the curse?
A drop of her blood being brought to the light.
Me finding the truth.
Oh God, that's why they had both stayed. John, cursed never to find true love—his true love, Angelina unless the curse was broken. And it could only be broken there, at Windisle. And Angelina, knowing the truth once she'd passed on, had waited for John until they could be together again.
God, did he believe in the legend of John and Angelina? He didn't know. He wasn't sure. But he very suddenly couldn't let the idea go. It took hold, gripping Jonah, making him desperate to figure it out. He felt an energy that didn't seem to belong to him coursing through his blood, an urgency that spurred him on.
We’re magic. Us.
Keep going, yes. The light . . . the light. The truth.
The wind had kicked up, the curtains whipping around the window, the wind chimes peeling as if with glee in the near distance. The light, the truth, the light, the truth.
The same knickknack rabbit fell off of the mantel again, this time shattering and propelling Jonah’s body forward, out of the room.
She had gone to the garden and that's where his feet took him, through the front door, around the house and down the path to the fountain, long since broken and out of use. He walked around it, considering it from all angles, feeling frustrated and very suddenly silly. He sat against its base. Mist swirled in the air, painting the untended surroundings with a dreamy brush. What had overcome him? What had that been?
He closed his eyes and lifted his face to the sky. This was . . . no, this was for Clara. He’d gotten carried away because he wanted so badly to please her, to beg her forgiveness. Help me help you.
The wind had grown softer, ruffling Jonah’s hair as if it were someone's soft touch. A hush descended and he felt a feather-light tickle against his hand and opened his eyes. An errant petal from a distant flower brushed over his knuckle before being picked up by the wind once more and landing on a stone rosette on the side of the fountain. Jonah stared at it, the crimson petal reminding him of a drop of blood against the sun-bleached stone.