He didn’t say anything else, and I didn’t volunteer a response. Instead, he whirled around and hurried away from the closed doors, as though he wanted to get away from the library and all the memories that it raised. I followed him, giving him the space he needed.
Eventually, Sebastian led me through another door, down a set of stairs, and out onto the south lawn. His pace slowed back down to a more normal level, as though he’d left his father’s ghost behind inside the mansion.
The estate grounds were just as immaculate as the mansion. Acres of grass rolled out like a thick, lush carpet before giving way to patches of brown woods in the distance. Clusters of trees dotted the lawn, their limbs arching out like canopies and providing shade for the bright summer flowers blooming in the rich beds of black earth below.
Tennis courts, an Olympic-size swimming pool, an outdoor hot tub with its own stone deck. We passed all that and more. And just like inside the house, everything was perfect, from the freshly painted lines on the courts to the crystal-blue surface of the water in the pool to the crisp white towels arranged in deck chairs by the hot tub.
We kept walking, finally reaching a round, domed marble building perched on a small rise above a large pond. I recognized the structure—it had been one of the models that Vaughn had in his office.
Sebastian pointed at the building. “My father’s mausoleum,” he said. “He built it himself, just like he did the mansion. We put him in there the day of the funeral, right next to my mother. She died in a car accident several years ago.”
I’d put Vaughn in there—nobody else. But I couldn’t tell Sebastian that, so I simply nodded instead, despite the guilt that flared up in me.
Sebastian stared at the structure, his face tight, his shoulders tense, his eyes dark and unreadable. He shook his head, then pulled me forward again. “Come on.”
He led me past the mausoleum and over to a stone path that wrapped all the way around to the far side of the pond. Trees had been planted along either side of the walkway, creating a beautiful arch of leaves and limbs above our heads. We stepped past the last of the trees, and I gasped at the sight before me.
“And this,” Sebastian said, throwing his hand out wide, “is the greenhouse.”
The structure had the same solid gray granite foundation as the mansion, but the sides were made entirely of glass, each panel gleaming in the soft rays of the setting sun. The panes shimmered so brightly that it took me a moment to realize that they were arranged in specific patterns that looked like flowers, vines, and petals, like a garden made out of glass. The sides of the structure rose some fifty feet into the air before veering up to a sharp point, making the whole structure resemble an enormous diamond sticking up out of the ground, just waiting for someone to come along and pluck it out of the earth.
“It’s beautiful,” I whispered.
Sebastian grinned. “Just wait until you see the inside.”
He opened the door, and I stepped through to the other side. The August evening had been muggy enough, but the inside of the greenhouse was almost stifling, and condensation slid down the glass panels in slick, steady drops. Orchids, lilies, and other, more exotic tropical flowers that I didn’t recognize bloomed from one side of the greenhouse to the other, their petals as bright and shiny as jewels. I even spotted a few palmetto trees, clustered together here and there, their thick trunks stretching up toward the ceiling.
No matter their shape or size, all of the flowers were set in long, wide white marble planters that perched on waist-high tables. The tables themselves had been arranged into several neat rows running from the front to the back of the building. The clusters of trees stood at the ends of the tables, marking various walkways through the greenhouse.
I listened, but the stone planters only whispered of their pride in housing the gorgeous flowers, along with a few grumbles about all the moisture that constantly dripped off the ceiling and windows and spattered onto them.
Sebastian pointed out several rows of flowers starting in the middle of the greenhouse and going all the way over to one of the walls—roses. The ones closest to the door were a pale, delicate sky blue with forest-green stems, but the farther down the rows you went, the darker the petals and the lighter the stems became. Several rows of flowers close to one of the walls had the same deep, dark, vibrant blue shade and milky stems as the ones that Sebastian had brought me earlier.
“More of my father’s work,” he said, seeing my curious gaze. “He wanted to see how dark and light he could get the petals and stems on the same plant. It was a hobby of his, along with building models.”
Well, I supposed this answered my question about why Vaughn had chosen two thorns for the letter V in his business rune. I made a mental note to tell Fletcher about the greenhouse. Despite all of his digging, he hadn’t known that Vaughn was into flowers. I didn’t know that it really mattered at this point, but Fletcher always said that the smallest piece of information could be the key to figuring out a job. Maybe knowing about the greenhouse would give him some more insight into Vaughn.
“My father always seemed to be happiest here,” Sebastian said, walking over and fingering a petal on one of the sky-blue roses. “Charlotte used to come out here and spend hours with him too.”
As soon as Sebastian touched the flower, a murmur rippled through the stone planter that housed it, the same dark murmur that I’d sensed in the mansion earlier. Curious, I reached out with my magic, trying to figure out exactly what the marble was muttering about. But I couldn’t understand what the stones were trying to tell me, like a song that you couldn’t quite decipher the lyrics to.
“Come on,” Sebastian said, dropping his hand from the rose. “There’s one more thing I want to show you.”
He held out his hand, which I took. Once again, the dark mutters in the marble intensified, but this time, I ignored them. I’d killed Vaughn. There was no danger here now. Perhaps the stones simply realized what I’d done to their master and didn’t like my presence. Either way, I was focused on Sebastian now, not them.
He led me out the far side of the greenhouse and down to another, smaller pond that lay at the bottom of a hill. I gasped in surprise again. A romantic table for two was set up at the water’s edge. Lit candles the same deep, dark blue as my roses flickered in the summer breeze, while covered silver platters on the table reflected the wavering lights. Fine china sat on top of the white tablecloth, and I could see the letter V with its thorn rune pattern shimmering in gold thread in the fabric.