Bitter Demons

24. It's Yours, You know

Zara and I bundled up in our coats and headed outside under the gray sky. I kept glancing over toward Jackson's house to see if I could catch a glimpse of him, but his motorcycle wasn't out front. I wondered if Courtney got my note to him or not, and whether he'd had any kind of response.

"What are you thinking about so intently?" Zara asked. She walked out toward the old garden, and I followed.I shook my head. "Nothing in particular," I said. "Just thinking about a million different things at once."

"I do that, too, sometimes," she said. "It's like I'm trying to solve at least ten different problems all at once."

We'd reached the garden by now, and Zara sat down and peered into the waterless fountain. "It used to be really beautiful here," she said.

"Have you been here before?"

"No," she said. "But I've seen it in my mother's memories."

It seemed like every time Zara spoke, she made me think of another question I wanted to ask. I bit my tongue, not wanting to annoy her.

"She used to come here as a girl." She looked toward the house. "Everything was so different back then."

"It couldn't have been much worse," I said. "The whole place is a mess.

""It's yours, you know."

She said it so quietly, her words didn't completely sink in for a good three or four seconds. I slowly turned toward her, my mouth open. "What's mine?"

"This house." She gestured toward Shadowford Mansion. "This sad garden. This land. It's all yours."

I shook my head and laughed. "You're delusional," I said. "There's no way all this is mine. It's called Shadowford, right? So it belongs to Mrs. Shadowford."

"It wasn't always called that," she said. "It used to be Brighton Manor. They only changed the name to Shadowford after your mother died."

Zara stood and started weaving a path through the withered weeds. I followed close behind, not about to let her drop a bomb like that and just walk away.

"You realize I was brought here as an orphaned juvenile delinquent, right?" I said, breathless and trembling. "Are you telling me they brought me to my own house and then forced me to follow their rules like I was some degenerate?"

Zara stopped and placed her hand on a gnarled bush. Color sprang forth as the bare limbs turned into the most beautiful pink hydrangeas. I normally would have been extremely impressed by such an amazing display of magic, but there were more important issues on my mind at the moment.

"Please, I know this is all old news to you, but this is really important information you just dropped on me," I said. As I followed her, she turned the graying garden into a gorgeous collection of sunflowers, roses, and lilies.

She paused and stared at a dying tree at the far end of the lot. "Is that a magnolia?"

I wanted to scream. Wasn't she listening to me? Didn't she understand how important this was to me? But I knew that yelling at her wouldn't win her over, so instead, I acted interested in what she was saying.

"Yes," I said, pretty sure the tree was, in fact, a sorry excuse for a magnolia.

She turned and squinted her eyes at me, a twinkle of mischief hidden inside her gaze. "If you can heal the magnolia tree and make it bloom, I'll tell you the story of how Mrs. Shadowford came to own this house."

I stared up at the tree and grimaced. How the heck was I supposed to do that?

"Is it a glamour?" I asked.