Free Belmary House Book Three by Cassidy Cayman

in emergencies,” she said, and though she’d been acting the calmest of all of them up to that point, Tilly could see how rattled she was.
    She wondered if Evie had drawn the same conclusion, that their interference had caused everything to be in such a mess. Lachlan waited in the back courtyard, to help carry Emma in when they arrived, and Tilly and Evie made tea with the boiling water, trying to get Ashford, Piper, and Liam to drink some to restore themselves. They declined. Piper and Liam continued their harried planning, and Ashford drifted closer to the door, obviously wanting to escape upstairs to their room.
    “You need to stay,” Piper said without looking up, as if she sensed his objective. “We might need you.”
    “I don’t think that’s wise,” he said, edging out the door.
    “I’ll go get him,” Tilly said, putting her teacup down. It tasted bitter, but the heat had been comforting after the freezing cold of the library.
    “It doesn’t matter,” Piper said, her voice bordering on cruelty, but Tilly knew she was just concentrating. “He’s probably right, anyway.”
    She didn’t want Ashford to be alone in the bedroom, knowing he’d just sit on the edge of the bed and stare off into space, blaming himself and thinking of ways to keep her at a distance. She told them to call her if they needed her to come back down, but they looked past her as if she wasn’t there, lost in their own magical problem.
    Tilly cared about what happened to Emma, but she knew there was nothing she could do, save pace and worry and get in the way. Evie and Lachlan were there to do grunt work if necessary, and right now, Ashford needed her. Whether he thought he did or not.

    ***  

    Dexter held onto Emma, laid out in the backseat of Shane’s old beat up car. The kid turned out to be an impressive driver, maneuvering the winding, hilly roads with ease. The young nurse, Mellie, had finally lost her professional sense of calm when Emma started seizing, and demanded shrilly that they head out, either for the hospital or the castle, she couldn’t say, but they couldn’t stay at the inn doing nothing.
    She tried to call Piper on her own phone when they reached the point in the road where they’d have to decide which way to turn. When Piper didn’t answer, he tried to call Tilly, tossing the phone to the front seat when she answered, all the while trying to keep Emma from rolling to the floor, which was littered with sandwich wrappers.
    Once they were instructed to go to the castle, the iron band around his chest eased a little. If they were allowed to head up that way, that meant everything was settled. They’d found a way to reason with Wodge, that fiendish, lying monster, and now they’d get Emma the help she needed. He’d do whatever it took to get her better. He stroked the hair off her pale, clammy forehead, silently promising that everything would be fine, and wishing the kid would drive faster.
    “Almost there,” Shane said, glancing in the rearview mirror. “Just up this driveway now.”
    Dex forced a grateful smile, readying himself to jump out of the car the second it stopped, but the driveway turned out to be at least a mile long and he found himself tensing up again, longing to punch something, throw something, anything but sit there helplessly.
    After winding around several gardens, they pulled into a large gravel courtyard, leading in one direction to a barn further down a hill, and in the other to the back entrance of a giant stone castle. He hadn’t noticed it at all driving up, so engrossed in keeping his eyes glued to Emma, afraid she’d stop breathing if he looked away too long. He gaped up at the mad compilation of brick and stone, towers and turrets.
    A tall, burly man with long black hair grunted at him as he got out of the car, reaching to help carry Emma. He gathered her up like she weighed no more than a kitten and raced for the door, Shane fast on his heels, leaving him standing with