Isabelle looks horrified.
“And when he was finished with her, he sent her back barefoot and pregnant. He waited until her stomach swelled with his bastard to do it. I imagine he took some sick pride in it. In impregnating the wife of another. A man he deemed lesser.”
I don’t realize I’ve grown quiet until she speaks. “What happened then?”
“Draca took her back. He loved her. And he was the one to discover her hanging in that cellar not one week later.”
She gasps, covers her mouth with her hand.
“Is she what I felt? The ghost?”
I study her but don’t tell her there is more than one. We have a history with rope, my family. An obsession with it.
“She couldn’t stand the thought of bringing another Bishop into the world,” I say instead, ignoring her question altogether. “She felt shame. Shame at what he’d done to her. Shame at being raped.”
“What did Draca do?”
“He initiated The Rite.” I watch her as I say it. Her face blanches and she hugs her arms tightly around herself. “He took Nellie Bishop, Reginald’s daughter. And he married her. They never had children, thank goodness. He wouldn’t pollute our bloodline.”
“But The Rite safeguards against an abuse of power. And marriage is an abuse of power in a case like that,” she says, and I get the feeling she’s arguing her own case.
“IVI supported it. Just like they supported my initiation of The Rite.”
“But—”
“See, Bishop did make a mistake. It’s always an error to think yourself above the law. He was an arrogant man. And not well-liked within The Society. He’d made enemies. Like your brother has,” I add. “And when it came to The Rite, The Tribunal sided with St. James. It was to punish Reginald Bishop as much as anything else. And at that point, our family’s fortunes far exceeded those of the Bishops. Similar to today, actually.”
She shakes her head. “Did he hurt Nellie?”
I remain wordless, studying her.
She shudders. “I want to go back.”
“When your history lesson is over.” I turn back to the grave. “Nellie died two years after the marriage. Threw herself into the well and drowned. Or so it’s said. Draca married again but only to continue the family line. His one true love was Mary.” I pause, look at Isabelle who is studying the inscription on Nellie’s grave. “There’s space for one more beside hers,” I tell her. She looks at me, confused. “Another Bishop to keep Nellie company.”
Any remaining color drains from her face.
I take her arm and walk her to the Mausoleum to point out the names of my ancestors, uncles, aunts, and cousins. I see Zoë’s marker. I take a moment to read the dates. Sixteen. Even younger than Mary St. James. I see Isabelle’s eyes on that marker. It’s the only one with a bunch of rotting roses that were probably laid here a week or so ago. I turn her away before she can comment.
“And we come to why you’re here. Why I initiated The Rite.”
I hear her swallow and, as if on cue, the rain picks up suddenly and gloriously. It soaks us both through, but I walk at the same pace to Kimberly’s grave marker. I’m not in a rush. She’s not in the mausoleum. We weren’t married. Only those who carry the St. James name can be laid to rest in the mausoleum.
I stand before the stone, see the roses about the same age as those on Zoë’s laid in front of it. But thinking of Zeke out there picking roses and walking them to the cemetery is too lonely an image so I shove it aside.
“This is Angelique’s mother,” I say flatly. “Kimberly Anders.”
I watch her take in the dates and when she looks up at me it’s with something strange in her eyes. Something like pity. I want to wipe that pity off her face.
“How did she die?”
“She was murdered.”
She winces and I’m not sure she’s aware that her hand has just moved up to that scar on her collarbone. Her parents and brother were killed. Parents in a car accident. Brother in a break-in. Does that count as murder? I guess so. Even if it’s not the intent of the robbery. I realize that’s when she must have gotten her scars. They’re not from a fall. But they could be from a push.
A gust of wind blows so cold that it breaks into my thoughts. I blink, look at Kimberly’s name on the stone. Too young to be dead. Too young to be bones in the earth. And I harden myself. Because my mother is wrong. Kimberly would want this. She’d want revenge.
“Carlton?” she asks, then shakes her head. “He’s not capable of something that like. It’s not in his DNA.”
My eyebrows rise to the top of my forehead. “No? I think you may be surprised what your brother is capable of. What’s in your DNA.”
She stares up at me and when she doesn’t argue, I wonder what she truly believes.
“But that doesn’t matter for you. It makes no difference. We have other business tonight.”
“What business?”
“Come, Isabelle. It’s time to spill the first drops of Bishop blood.”
16
Isabelle
Another cold gust accompanies his words. I’m not sure if it’s that or his words that turn my blood to ice. When he faces me, the look in his eyes sends a shiver down my spine.
It’s time to spill the first drops of Bishop blood.
I take a step backward. My feet hurt. These shoes weren’t made for a stroll in the woods much less what we’re doing tonight.
“We’re going to play a game, Isabelle Bishop.”
“I don’t want to play any game, Jericho St. James.”
He grins at that. “You’re going to run. And I’m going to chase you.”
“I said I don’t want to.”
“You need to find the well where Nellie’s body was found.”
“What?” God. I feel sick.
“If you get to it before I catch up with you, you’ll be safe from me tonight. But if I catch you or get to the well before you,” he continues, stepping toward me. “I will bleed you.”
He shifts his gaze to his watch, turns the knob on it casually like we aren’t standing in the middle of a cemetery while rain pours down on us in the middle of the night talking about an idiotic game. About bleeding me.
“I don’t want to play this game! I want to go home.”
“Home?”
I shake my head. “My house. Away from you!”
He shrugs a shoulder. “I’m even going to give you a five-minute head start,” he says, turning his wrist so I see the face of his watch. See the timer counting down.
“That’s not… I won’t play.”
He shrugs his shoulders and moves to pick up the dead roses on Kimberly’s grave making a show of consulting his watch. “Four minutes and thirty seconds.”
I look at his broad back, his muscular shoulders. The rain makes his sweater stick to him soaking his dark hair, turning it black. I take a step back, look around this haunted place with its grave markers, its eerie chapel. To Nellie Bishop’s grave separated from the others by a rusted, rotting fence and grass so high you almost don’t see the stone. She’s all but forgotten. Although I don’t think forgetting is the point. I think remembering is.