Alexia's nightmares become reality: a dead baron, red-eyed wraiths, and forbidden love with a man hunted by these creatures. After an attack close to home, Alexia realizes she cannot keep one foot in her old life and one in this new world. To protec...
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Five
The Weeping House
A whisper of sound pulled Alexia reluctantly from the looking glass. She strained to interpret the noise. Crying?
Yes, weeping.
Desperate and broken, the sound was young and barely audible, echoing from some forlorn corner of the estate. She shook her head and turned away, but the whimper filled her heart with guilty pinpricks, beautiful in its defeat. She ached for the child.
One of the little ones in the nursery must have awoken after a nightmare. Normally that would have been her.
Or Rupert could be right about the Weeping House.
No.
It was a prank. That had to be it. Ru had stashed Abby somewhere to imitate the trapped spirit. Their parents would be so heavy from the festivities and alcohol they'd sleep solid until morning roused them to hunt. If she didn't investigate and it was Rupert, he'd tease her relentlessly for being lily-livered.
Oh, Ru, you win.
She'd let him have his hoax, and then she'd give him a good scare in return. No point prolonging Abby's misery.
She pulled on a dressing gown, tucked her hair back, and retrieved the candle. With one wary glance at the mirror, she slipped out.
Hundreds of empty portraits bid her unwelcome in the hall of the second floor. A man stood at his wife's side holding her hand, but in the dark Alexia could see he squeezed mercilessly at the back of her neck. Another canvas flaunted two sisters on a set of swings, the cool glint of their flat eyes, smiles malicious. Empty things. She hated empty things: pictures without a soul, statues wrought in tragedy.
Alexia shuddered.
Starlight glazed the parlor as she descended to the first floor, and passed through the hall to the blackened kitchens. The cry strengthened to a wail, broken and wretched. How could the rest of the house sleep through such a desperate overture?
She turned down a servant's hall and halted at an alcove. The howl echoed around her, as if the child stood invisibly before her.
A window glimmered against her candle. An empty chair sat beside crumbling mortar and exposed brick. A crimson tapestry hung opposite, depicting a knight driving his lance through the heart of a whitened maiden. She reached for the fabric.
It rippled.
Wind?
She slid a hand around the edges and cool air tickled her palm. She pulled back the thick material, uncovering a door that came to her chest. No handle. Only a keyhole. Crouching forward, she pressed against the barrier. It moved and the sobs stopped.
She froze.
An intake of breath resonated from the chamber. Silence.
She shoved the door wide. Whitewashed walls closed off a narrow space that reached far above her head into darkness, no windows. Straw glimmered in the candlelight, covering the circular floor.
Alexia filled her lungs and forced her thundering heart to slow. There were no such things as restless spirits. Someone had been crying, and she was determined to discover who.
With steady hands, she pressed the walls, searching for an alternate exit. A draft lifted the ends of her hair.
She knelt in the straw, slowly brushing a hand from left to right until a cool breeze hit her palm. She cleared away the straw to reveal a handleless trapdoor.
This went well beyond Rupert's ability to devise. She could return to bed now and pretend she'd not heard the frantic summons...but that cry would taint her slumber. She exhaled, closing her eyes. There was a sensible explanation for all this.
Alexia returned to the kitchen, seeking a lever to pry up the door and found a ladle. She paused, looking at it. For one brief moment she was staring at Baron Galedrew's death instrument.
"But only in my dreams," she reminded herself, and returned to the circular chamber, ladle in hand. It slipped easily between the floorboard and trapdoor, bending slightly when she pressed down. Hinges squealed. She threw the door open and jumped back.
Alexia couldn't explain why she expected something to leap out—perhaps because of Rupert's story? It was just that. A story. She blew out a breath, retrieved her candle, and leaned forward.
Wooden stairs waited below. Cool air washed up from the darkness, sending gooseflesh across her arms. The slatted steps welcomed her trembling candle's glow.
She set the candle down, gathered up her thin skirts, and stepped through.
The stairs were cold and raw beneath her bare feet. Cobwebs swayed vindictively to either side.
