Total pages in book: 128
Estimated words: 120230 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 601(@200wpm)___ 481(@250wpm)___ 401(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 120230 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 601(@200wpm)___ 481(@250wpm)___ 401(@300wpm)
She was moving again two seconds later, pushing open doors as she yelled Ash’s name.
Silence. Over and over again.
Until Darcie was shivering so hard that her teeth clattered, and my ungloved fingers had gone cold enough to hurt. I managed to take her hands in mine nonetheless. “Could he have stumbled onto a secret room or passage and decided to explore it?” Maybe he’d had the same thought as Grace and I about a hidden stalker, but hadn’t wanted to worry Darcie.
“He doesn’t know any of the others,” she said in a very small voice.
“He could’ve accidentally found one,” Aaron suggested.
“Aaron is right. We should check—and we can clear the rest of the house as we do it.”
“We have to be organized.” Aaron tapped something on the screen of his phone. “Tell me the areas we’ve been through already. I’ll add to that list as we check more parts of the house.”
Pupils huge against the blue of her irises, Darcie began a dull recitation that named “the back salon” and “the mahogany gallery” among multiple other specific names, alongside more generic descriptions of various hallways or shut-up rooms whose original purpose had long since been forgotten.
I had the gut-deep sensation that the nursery had been in the ruined wing.
Darcie’s energy was lower, her replies monosyllabic when we restarted the search, but she didn’t falter. A few of the hidden doors proved to be stuck as a result of long disuse, while cobwebs crawled across every inch of the entrance for two more.
Aaron and I decided it was safe to discard those—but only after we checked both ends to ensure Ash hadn’t gone in one side and become stuck or incapacitated in the middle.
One thing became rapidly clear: this house had far more secrets than I would’ve ever guessed.
Some passages were short. Others longer and more twisted, but all in all, there proved to be ten—that Darcie knew of, at least. “My father showed them to me, and he thought he’d forgotten a couple. Three of the keys I have don’t fit into any door in the place, so he did probably forget.”
As for the number of rooms, I had no idea. A few of those rooms were narrow and stifling—quarters for the servants, I assumed—the rest relatively large and impressively flush with windows for the time period in which this place had been built. But the vast majority of the rooms held air musty and stagnant, the furniture draped in dustcloths and the bed frames naked.
Our search yet incomplete, we nonetheless eventually circled back around to the living area.
Darcie’s face collapsed when we entered to find no sign of Ash.
I wrapped an arm around her, wasn’t sure she was even aware of me.
“Grace, you go help them finish searching,” Vansi said after we’d updated them on the current situation. “It’ll go faster with an extra pair of eyes. I’ll stay with Kaea.”
“Are you sure?” Grace touched her fingers lightly to Vansi’s shoulder.
My friend, her heart full of empathy and her face worn, nodded. “Just swing by every so often to let me know how things are going.”
I folded my arms. “I don’t like any of us being alone in this house.”
“I’m not alone.” She wiped a damp rag over Kaea’s sweating forehead.
“Vansi.”
“I’ll be fine, Luna.” A tired smile. “There’s no one here but us and the worst luck in the world.” She held up a hand before I could open my mouth. “But, in case we do have a secret bogeyman creeping around—no one can approach me in this massive space without me spotting them a mile away. And if it makes you feel better, I’ll keep a heavy skillet handy.”
Even though I could see she was humoring me, I went and got her that skillet—a cast-iron one that would work better than any baseball bat—and put it right by where she was sitting as she watched over Kaea.
The faintest smile. “You goof.”
“You’ll be careful?”
“I promise.” Smile fading away to nothing, she followed us to the hallway door.
When I turned back several seconds later, she was still watching after us as we headed off to search another part of the house.
And we did.
We searched.
Every level—including the attic and the cellars, as well as the upstairs bedrooms I’d initially asked that no one touch. In an effort to keep the area as undisturbed as possible, Darcie and I were the only ones to climb the stairs this time.
“Maybe he decided to take a nap,” she said with sudden brightness halfway up. “God, I’d feel so dumb getting worked up if that’s all it is.”
Only, there was no sign of life upstairs, their room so cold that frost had begun to form on the inside of the windows.
He wasn’t anywhere on that floor of the house.
Darcie went silent. Didn’t speak again in the time that followed.