The Blackthorn Key by Kevin Sands

Author:Kevin Sands
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
Publisher: Aladdin

CHAPTER

19

I STOPPED SHORT WHEN I rounded the corner. I stared at the brick wall that blocked our way. Again.

“We should’ve turned left,” Tom said.

I looked back the way we came, seeing nothing but more brick. “Left would take us to the street.”

“No, right is the street. Left is the houses.”

“This place is a maze,” I said.

“I think that’s the point.”

It sure seemed to be. We’d left Hugh’s house and made our way to the alley that led to the statues of the lions. We should have been in a nice straight path to the private garden. Instead, someone had laid a confounding pattern of walls between the houses, fifteen feet high, complete with sharp turns and dead ends. There were iron spikes set in the top of the walls, to stop anyone from climbing over. “This thing has more twists than a pretzel.”

“What’s a pretzel?” Tom said.

“It’s a kind of dough the cook at the orphanage made. You dip it in butter and—it doesn’t matter. We go right.”

“It’s left,” Tom said.

“It’s right.”

Bridget flapped by overhead, going left. Tom glared at me.

“All right, fine,” I said. “It’s left.”

Tom folded his arms. “We should put the bird in charge.”

• • •

The bird was right. Going left led us along a path through the maze that exited directly in front of the pillars. Behind the wrought-iron fence was the private garden, which looked a lot like the one where Lord Ashcombe had found the buried body on Oak Apple Day. The gate here was closed, too, but not padlocked. At the top of each pillar that flanked it, the stone lions faced the mansion beyond, one paw raised.

“What now?” Tom said.

I held out the ledger page.

below the lions the gates of paradise

He looked at me. “And that means . . . ?”

There was a gate between the statues. Were these the gates of paradise? I couldn’t see anything special about them. The pillars looked like large gray slabs stuck together with mortar. I ran my hands along them. They remained large gray slabs stuck together with mortar.

Beyond the fence, a path of cracked slate led from the gate and forked around a boxy granite structure, eight feet high and twelve feet across, ivy crawling up its walls. A plain stone cross adorned the top. Bridget waited for us there, preening an outstretched wing.

The path ended at the rear door of the mansion. On either side of the slate, the grass grew unkempt. The once-cared-for bushes had lost their trimming, their branches sticking out in misshapen lumps.

I unlatched the gate. “Let’s check it out.”

“We’re not allowed in there,” Tom said. “It’s private.”

The house’s windows were dark. The only sound in the garden was Bridget, cooing at us from atop the cross. “I don’t think anyone’s lived here for weeks.”

We walked along the path to the other side of the stone structure, which turned out to be a mausoleum. The front, facing the house, had a wooden door with an iron latch. Vines crawled upward around the sides, sprouting bright white flowers that flared out like horns.

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