On the step, in front of the enormous black door, Mateo took a deep breath before swinging the brass knocker heavily, twice, three times. After way too long, the door opened and the butler stood there, blinking. “Young Mr. Perez,” he said, his voice creaky. “To what do we owe the pleasure?”
“Just wanted to drop by and see Grandma.” Mateo stepped inside without waiting to be told whether or not he could. The butler hesitated, but no doubt he didn’t want to offend the so-called Cabot heir.
“She is in the music room,” the butler said. “Follow me.”
It had to suck to be him, Mateo figured as he walked behind him. Musty suit, Grandma for a boss, almost nothing to actually do; he was less a butler and more somebody paid to stand around being stiff all day until Grandma finally died, when he’d be the one to phone the undertaker. Probably he was hoping to inherit something in the will. Mateo had half a mind to sign Cabot House over to the guy when the time came. That way, he’d never have to live here himself.
The music room was as dry and joyless as the rest of the house. Ceilings stretched up twenty feet, hung with chandeliers gone cloudy, layered with dust. The heavy black woodwork scrolled and curled along every wall and column, like some kind of mold run amok. An enormous grand piano was even dustier than the chandeliers, and a few brass music stands clustered together in one corner, forgotten. No music had been made in this room for a very long time.
Seated by the far window, staring out at her own back garden, was Grandma.
“Your grandson, Mrs. Cabot,” the butler said. Without turning her head, she glared in their direction, and the room seemed to become ten degrees colder instantly. Right away the butler backed out, leaving Mateo to face her alone. Maybe Mateo wouldn’t give him the house after all.
“Mateo.” Her voice was hoarse with disuse. “To what do I owe this visit? It can’t be your birthday again already. I don’t have a savings bond for you.”
“That’s not till January,” Mateo said. She usually inspected him once a year, on his birthday, and they left it at that. “I, um—I wanted to talk.”
“To me?” That seemed to amuse her, for all the wrong reasons. Though she didn’t turn her head, showing him only her perfect white cameo profile, she smiled coolly. “That would be a first. Don’t tell me your father’s restaurant has failed to be profitable enough to build up a college fund for you.”
Mateo balled his fists in the pockets of his letter jacket. Later. He could let his temper out later. “We’re doing great.” Great was overstating it—Captive’s Sound never had anything like the kind of summer business it should have had—but they more than paid the bills. Mateo had been helping with the books since last year.
“Then why are you here? The pleasure of my company?” The acid in her voice made it clear she knew precisely how unpleasant she was, and liked it.
This was harder to get out than Mateo had expected. He swallowed hard, shifted his weight from foot to foot, swallowed again. “I—I wanted to talk to you about—about the curse.”
Grandma sat up very straight in her chair. “Has it come upon you, then?”
“No!” Mateo lied. She’d throw him out of here if he said anything else. “No way. I don’t even believe in it. You know I don’t.”
Until he’d seen Nadia that stormy night, he hadn’t.
“Then why talk about it? If it’s just a story, like you pretend.”
“Because I want to understand. Because every kid in school acts like I’ve got AIDS or something.” Only Elizabeth and Gage treated him like a human being, and in Gage’s case, that was only because he’d moved to Captive’s Sound too late to grow up with all the stories about the mad, dangerous Cabots.
“The children have heard the stories from their parents. Who heard them from their parents. It’s always the same.” She laughed mirthlessly. “They are frightened of the Cabots. Then they get older, decide the stories are only folklore. Tales to scare the foolish. Then the next Cabot goes insane, and they see the truth for themselves. Just as they saw when your mother degenerated so abruptly, and drowned herself in the sea. Just as they saw when your grandfather did this to me.”
She turned toward him then, showing him her full face, not only the profile. While the left side of her face remained pale and normal—smooth for a woman of her age, maybe because she never went outside—the right side was a ruin. Deep red slashes ran through her skin like fault lines; crinkles of scar tissue surrounded gouges in flesh that had never healed. Her blind right eye showed milky white, with one twitching red spot of blood that never, ever went away.
“You look pale.” Grandma smiled. It was a terrible smile. “I should think you’d be used to it by now. But I’m still not used to it myself, so how can I blame you?”
“What happened?” Mateo tried to plow on. “What made Grandpa do this?” He’d never known his grandfather, who’d been institutionalized long before Mateo was born. But Mom had always said he was a loving dad … at least, until that final year.
“The curse is what happened. Scoff all you like. I used to. Franklin Cabot was handsome, wealthy, kind, courteous—all the things a young man should be. So I ignored the stories I’d grown up with, the warnings of my own parents, and married him. Had his child. For the first decade, all was as it should be.” Her voice softened for a moment, like she was remembering what it had been like to be happy. “Then the dreams began.”
Mateo wished the butler had brought in another chair for him to sit on. “Dreams?”
“He thought they showed him the future. Or so he claimed. I noticed he never mentioned these predictions until after they’d come to pass. At first I thought it was no more than a mania—a terror of becoming what his mother had been before him—and that he would get over it. I told him all would be well. But he became more and more fixated on the dreams. Stayed up for days on end in an effort to keep himself from dreaming.”
He remembered that—the way Mom would pace for hours at night, and how he’d laid awake, pretending he didn’t hear her, that everything was actually okay.
Grandma, oblivious to Mateo’s unease, kept talking. “Your grandfather’s frenzies became worse and worse. Then came that day when he was up in the attic with the old oil lantern, and I dared to interrupt his ranting and pacing. That was the day he did this and set the rafters on fire.” She put two fingers to her ravaged cheek. “They acted faster to save the house than to save my face.”