“You were saying?” Aaiden laughs.
“Kids made those I bet.”
Aaiden shrugs and I wonder if he had anything to do with the signs.
“Uh, Vi, when was the last time you saw your great uncle’s place?” Fiona purses her lips.
“Before I left seven years ago,” I say.
“Do you remember how big it is?” Aaiden asks.
“Yes? I guess, but everything’s big when you’re nine.”
“Oh Violet, you’re about to learn a lot today. Like how us being your best friends is going to make us one thousand percent cooler at school even if no one knows about the magic and the gargoyles.” Blythe whistles and points to an open iron gate way up ahead; before it, the road smooths out completely with a new shiny black road that Aunt Irene must have had put in. We drive onto the smooth pavement and the closer we get to the gates, the bigger they are; they tower over us.
“Last Halloween these were broken, rusted, and covered in ivy,” Fiona gushes.
The road crests over a hill and before us is a circular driveway. Aunt Irene definitely ordered landscapers because ornate bushes and perfectly manicured grass surround the house. The Kai estate rises high into the sky; the most notable aspect is the huge glass tower shooting straight up into the sky like the tip of a star, with an iron beast at the top. Around it is the rest of the estate, large and expanding. I remember signing the estate papers; the money, the differing accounts, the land and houses in other countries and other languages. In the back of my mind I know I’m rich. This though, this seals it.
“Oookay, so maybe castle is closer than house.” I watch as all of the workers Irene has hired scurry around like ants in an anthill. How can anyone even live in a place like this? It’s too big.
“So, what’s the plan once we get past these guards and get inside the castle?” Blythe snickers.
Chapter Eight
Violet
“I can’t believe we are inside Kai castle!” Blythe squeals to Aaiden.
“If I didn’t know better, I’d say you guys only like me for my house.”
“Call it a castle and I’ll admit I like you more because of it.” Blythe winks at me.
“Ignore her,” Fiona tells me. “We would have probably liked you anyways.”
“Don’t worry about it, I plan to ignore all of you,” I say.
Around us workers and groundskeepers wander in and out. There’s plastic covering some of the room doors. We are standing in a large foyer, directly under the glass steeple. It towers above us letting in the light of the bright sunny day. To look up is almost blinding. Below us painted into the wood flooring is a giant hourglass that dwarfs our bodies into grains of sand. In the middle of the hourglass a compass is painted with vines and leaves throughout all of it. I stare at the hourglass. I remember more sand in the bottom for some reason, but it only has a few grains. I must have remembered it upside down. In front of us lies a double staircase, the posts at the bottom have plaster gargoyles on them. The staircase leads to an open landing above. Hallways packed with open doorways seem to surround us in a labyrinth. All of the doorways are wide and tall, just tall enough to fit those gargoyles through them. I remember this house. I remember the hourglass and compass in the floor, so I know Irene didn’t do that, although a lot has changed. Hazy memories flood me, running through these halls, laying on the floor and watching the sky through the steeple, playing hide and go seek and hiding in my great uncle’s office from - I don’t remember who I was hiding from. The memory leaves me as suddenly as it came.
“Are you okay, Vi?” Fiona asks me.
I nod. “Yeah, I think so. We should find my aunt.”
“I always imagined it darker in here,” Aaiden said.
“Has your aunt changed a lot?” Blythe asks me.
“Some,” I say, distracted by more memories. In the upstairs hallway there used to be a dark blue wallpaper with black velvet designs on it. I always ran my fingers along it when I walked the hallway. I liked how it felt as my fingers skipped between the soft black velvet and the plain hard dark blue paper in between. I run up the stairs feeling a sudden need to see it. I reach the west wing hallway. The wallpaper is still there. I touch it. A bit worn, but still soft as I remember. I walk, my fingers following the velvet pattern as I do. Soft, hard, soft, hard. I smile. A memory hits me again like a freight train this time. It’s all I see. Walking this hallway at night. Soft, hard, soft, hard. All of the iron hallway candelabras are lit. In the memory, my mother’s laughter comes from a room down the hall. I follow the laughter knowing who she is probably with. I walk farther down, the doorway is cracked leaving a shaft of bright blue light into the hallway like a beacon. “It worked!” my mother’s voice squeals in delight, “I can’t believe I finally did it!” The blue light pulses. I walk faster wanting to know what she did. A deeper voice says something I can’t distinguish. More laughter. I reach the light. Through a crack in the door I can see swirls of feathers floating around the room on bright blue lights. My mother’s dark hair is shining as she holds a large book against her chest. I can’t see who else is in the room from the crack. I push on the door, it opens.
The memory dissipates. Before me lies an empty roundish room. Nothing in here but six walls, three windows, and a door. There’s plastic over the floor. The smell of fresh stain floating off of the window treatments.
“When do you think she’ll come out of it?” Aaiden asks someone behind me.
I turn to my friends. “Come out of what?”
“Oh good, you’re back!” Blythe hugs me. “You were like in a trance or something!”
“I was?” I say trying to breathe through Blythe’s vice-like embrace.
“Uh yeah! We’ve been talking to you the entire time. You were like feeling up a wall, then just came into this room.” Fiona nods at me as if I’m slow.
“Right,” I say realizing the memory was very real. “I think I was remembering something. I think I saw my mother doing magic.” I frown at the memory trying to make it come back. Why was I not surprised seeing the feathers, and how come I didn’t remember the magic until now?
“What kind of magic?” Fiona asks.
“I saw feathers floating and blue lights. I don’t understand how I didn’t remember this...” I sigh frustrated.
“Well, I know sometimes with trauma the mind forgets things to protect itself. But those lost moments can be triggered by almost anything. Maybe coming back to this house has triggered yours.” Aaiden puts a hand on my shoulder.
“Hey, since when do you know about trauma and memories?” Fiona asks him.
Facing me, Aaiden’s eyes widen in panic for a split second before something covers his face like a mask, then he turns back to Fiona.
“I took Psych last year.” He shrugs.
“I don’t remember...” Blythe starts to say then fades off when Aaiden gives her the slightest shake of his head where Fiona can’t see. She looks from me to Aaiden, I shrug. There’s something he’s not telling them and now Blythe knows it. She mouths the word “later” at him.
I quickly change the subject; whatever he doesn’t want to share is his business. “Well, we should go find my aunt now before any more residual memories pop up. Maybe the book will explain. They said there’s notes from my ancestors in there.” I remember the gargoyles telling me that, because my first thought was to wonder if my mother wrote in it. Now that I know she performed magic, there is a possibility she did write in it. I grab Aaiden’s shirt sleeve and pull him out of the room with me before the girls get a chance to get him alone and start questioning him over whether or not he took a psych class. As we reach the hallway, I hear the tiniest “thanks” whispered at me from him. I just nod leading the way back to the foyer. The girls follow.