Hellbound Hearts by Marie O'Regan, Paul Kane Page B

better you keep away from the thing after all.”
    Befuddled, Colin watched her go. The old woman had never treated him with the kind of warmth many associated with the role of grandmother, nor did she exhibit the witchlike sort of behavior often portrayed in stories. Neither kindly matron nor wizened crone, Abigail Radford kept mostly to herself and had a fondness for coffee over tea and biscuits rather than scones. When not knitting or strolling the grounds on watch for “pests,” she had forever seemed to lurk just over young Colin’s shoulder, ready to tut-tut at any seemingly imminent infraction. If he attempted to slip into the kitchen for an early taste of dinner or to snatch a cooling scone from a baking sheet, she would be there. If he jumped on his father’s bed, slid on the banister, or tried to climb up onto the roof of the house, Grandmother Abigail seemed ever present, and able to dissuade him with a clucking of her tongue and the knitting of her brow.
    A gray, joyless woman. And yet he knew she believed her efforts were all to keep him safe, and that in her way she loved him, a vital bit of knowledge for a boy who had grown to manhood without the benefit of a mother.
    As a child, he had been told that his mother had gone off with the fairies and that one day she might return. A million fantasies had been born of this lie, and he had often imagined himself wandering into the woods in pursuit of his beautiful mother, joining her in the kingdom of the fairies, living with sprites and brownies and other creatures of magic and mischief. By the age of eight, he had begun to realize that this was mere fancy, but it was not until he turned twelve that his father told him of his mother’s drowning.
    Now, with his father having also “vanished,” he could not help but remember the lies about his mother’s death. Had Edgar Radford also gone off with the fairies? Had the old man wandered off in thegrip of some dementia, been killed by brigands, or suffered some fatal misadventure?
    Colin meant to find him, no matter the answer. The idea that his father’s behavior had altered so radically over the past year with Colin completely unaware of the changes unnerved him. He would join in the search. If necessary, he would begin it again and conduct it himself.

    Yet even as he made this silent vow, climbing the stairs and striding down the corridor toward his childhood bedroom, he realized just how impossible a task he had set for himself. Norwich was no tiny hamlet, but a city, with thousands of dark nooks and shadowed corners, not to mention the woods and hills, and the ocean that had claimed Colin’s mother. And if Sir Edgar had left Norwich somehow . . . well, he would be found only if he wished to be found, or if some unfortunate happened upon his corpse.
    The quiet emptiness of the house—despite the presence of his grandmother and the servants—closed around him, suffocating, as he stepped into the bedroom. A fire had been laid in the fireplace, and logs crackled and popped, low flames dancing. The room had been decorated in shades of blue and rich cream and it ought to have been filled with the warmth—if not of the fire, then at least of memory.
    Yet it was cold.

    He did take a look that afternoon at what his grandmother had called “Edgar’s mechanism,” once he had searched his father’s study and found no note or journal or other document that might indicate the man’s state of mind prior to his vanishing.
    Sir Edgar had left behind only the mechanism.
    Though its intended use confounded him, Colin did not find himself unsettled by the machine the way the old woman seemed to be. Concerned, yes, even troubled—its seeming lack of purpose made him worry for the state of his father’s mind—but nothing more than that. If anything, the madness inherent in the contraption’s design made him hopeful that his father remained alive