The wood stairs rose up fast to meet Brynn. She snaked out an arm, tangling it around the rail and catching herself before she lost her footing entirely. Her body jerked hard against the thick wood. Dull pain bloomed in her ribs and along the back of her arm.
Low, snuffling breaths drifted through the darkness, growing louder. That thing was following her.
Panic squeezed her throat. She forced her feet forward, down the stairs again, holding tight to the rail. As soon as she hit the foyer, she bolted to the front doors, yanked them open and staggered out into the night. Collapsing to her knees on the cold gravel, her body shook with gasping sobs.
She was out. Thank God, she was out.
“Brynn?” At the sound of a man’s voice, Brynn’s pulse jumped. She looked up at Reece standing over her. “Are you all right?”
He squatted beside her, features harsh under the silvery moonlight. Was she? She wasn’t sure. She glanced back at the dark house looming above her, deceivingly quiet against a black sky filled with glittery stars. Her heart slammed against her chest like it might burst free. Her knee throbbed, and so did her shoulder. Not that she could articulate any of that through her ragged breathing.
What was he doing out here in the middle of the night, anyway? Could it have something to do with what had been going on inside? Maybe trying to make her think she was crazy.
“Is…is it you?” She squeaked. “Are you the one doing this?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“The shadows, the voices, are you doing it?” With her adrenaline dissipating, she finally noticed the icy sea air whipping at her bare legs and arms. Frigid chills raced over her aching body. Her teeth chattered.
“Brynn, I swear I don’t know what you mean, but we need to get you inside before you freeze.”
Gingerly, he gripped her elbow and helped her to her feet. Fresh agony screamed from her knee and she bit her lip to hold back a whimper. She must have twisted it when she fell. She grabbed hold of his jacket to steady herself.
“I…I fell…twice, actually. Can we sit, and I’ll explai—”
He didn’t give her a chance to finish. With a muttered curse, he scooped her up in his arms and strode back inside the manor.
“Wait.” Brynn wrapped her arms tight around his neck, every muscle in her body going rigid. “There’s something in there.”
“You’re choking me,” he croaked, walking into the hall. She loosened her hold, but the tension gripping her remained.
Uneasy silence wrapped around them as if the house were holding its breath, drawing them in, refusing to utter even the slightest creak in case it chased them away. The laughter, voices, footsteps and shadows had all gone, but something lingered. Malignant energy itched along her skin.
A slumbering monster, waiting to swallow you.
“Do you feel anything?” she whispered, and winced. Even her soft words were too loud in the eerie quiet.
“We’ll talk in your room,” Reece murmured. He carried her upstairs and down the hall. She wanted to argue, beg him to take her back to his apartment, but some perverse side of her wanted him to see the shadow man. Validation to prove she wasn’t losing her mind.
Her bedroom door was still open, just as she’d left it. The room was dark except for the flickering glow from the fireplace. Brynn’s gaze darted from one wall to the next, searching for strange shadows. She inhaled deeply, for the telltale stink of rot, but only the faint scent of wood smoke hung in the air.
Reece carefully deposited her on the bed. She tried to straighten her sore knee, but quick pain bolted up her leg.
“Wait.” He grabbed one of her pillows and tucked it under her knee. “This will support it.”
She relaxed her leg. No pain, this time.
“Better?” he asked.
She nodded. “Thanks.”
He reached for the lamp next to her bed and a soft click filled the quiet, but the light remained dark. With a muttered curse, his hand slid under the shade. “The bulb’s gone.”
Her heart stuttered in her chest. “It can’t be. I fell asleep with it on.”
He walked away from the bed; Brynn sat up straight ready to scurry after him—sore knee or not—but he jerked around and pointed at her, his frame little more than a shadow in the dim room. “Don’t move. Stay off your knee.”
“Don’t leave me alone in here.” She cringed at the pathetic pleading in her voice.
“I won’t.” His tone softened. “What did you see, Brynn?”
“You said the place isn’t haunted, but I keep seeing things. Does that mean I’m crazy?”
He clicked one of the lamps next to the sofa, but it remained dark. “You don’t believe me, anyway. Why should what I say matter?”
Guilt twisted inside her. “There’s no such thing as ghosts. How can you—or anyone—see something that’s not real? But I keep seeing things, hearing things, and they seem pretty damn real.”
He moved on to another lamp. “Just tell me what you saw.”
She let out a shaky breath then described the shadows and voices. “There’s a smell that comes with them, mossy, sour. My grandmother used to have a container garden on her patio. In spring she changed the soil and the old earth had a horrible, sour stink. Every time I’ve seen those shadows that stench comes first.”
“All the bulbs have been taken out of these,” Reece told her, and started for the bathroom. “How many times have you seen these shadows?”
“I’ve seen the man twice in my room, smaller shadows once.” Absently, she rubbed her forehead with the heel of her hand. “God, I sound crazy.”
“I speak to the dead. I’m the last one to say who’s mad.” He flipped the switch and the bathroom filled with light. “That’s a start.”
“I should have gone in there. I might have saved myself a fall down the stairs.”
Even in the soft bathroom light, Brynn could see his brows pull together in a frown.
“They go away when I turn on the lights,” she explained.
Reece crossed over to the switch for the chandelier. Angling his head so he could use the bathroom light to see, he inspected the buttons. “Do you have a paperclip, or pen, or something long and thin? There’s something jammed in here.”
“A nail file in my makeup bag on the bathroom counter.”
He disappeared into the bathroom, emerged with her file and picked at the switch. “Got it.”
Electric light filled her room. Relief trickled over her and some of the tension gripping her eased.
Reece returned to her bed and held out a tiny piece of black plastic in the palm of his hand. “Someone wedged this in the switch.”
“And took out all the lightbulbs from my lamps while I slept.” A shudder crawled over her skin. Whoever had been in her room could have done anything to her.
“Someone flesh and blood and very much alive, who knows enough about your shadows to make sure you couldn’t chase them away.”
Brynn wrapped her arms around her middle. Why? To scare her off, or something worse? She frowned. “Why were you outside in the middle of the night?”
“I was coming into the house to sleep on your settee again.” He shot her a humorless grin. “You might not take warnings about your life seriously, but I do. I had to wait for the house to go dark first.”
“What time is it?”
“Past midnight now, but it was half-past eleven when I left my flat.”
She hadn’t been asleep for long, and if Reece waited a few minutes after the house went dark to start inside, those shadows had come out as soon has her lights had been tampered with. “Do you know what these things are? What they could do to me?”
Reece shook his head. “I’ve never dealt with anything like what you’ve described. Usually when the dead sense someone like me, they can’t wait to make contact.”
Despite the nerves twisting inside her, she smirked. “You sound slighted.”
“Maybe I am. I need to see it.”
“What?” She tensed, and stabbing pain shot up her leg.
“You’re knee’s still bothering you?” he asked, and sat next to her on the edge of her bed.
“Only when I move.” She waved her hand dismissively, her knee the least of her concerns. “When you say you need to see it, what exactly did you have in mind?”
“Let’s have a look at you, then we’ll worry about ghost hunting.”
Oh, she did not like the sound of that. She started to tell him so, but he gingerly gripped her calf and a low charge hummed along her skin.
How could she react to him with everything going on? She wished she knew. Those deft fingers trailing her skin lit a slow pulse at her core.
“It’s okay. I just twisted it.” She tried to tug her leg from his touch, but sharp pain twinged under her kneecap. She winced.
He shot her a doubtful look. “It needs ice.”
Carefully, he set her leg back on the pillow, and started for the door. Panic welled inside her, chasing away all those warm tingly feelings. “Where are you going?”
“Down to the kitchen. I’ll just be a few minutes. You’ll be fine.” He shot a quick grin at her over his shoulder before he slipped into the hall.
With Reece gone, Brynn released a slow breath and shook her head. God, she’d become clingy over the past twelve hours. She needed to get herself under control.
What if something happened to him? Or whoever had tampered with her lights came back? Or that ghost boy’s warning came true?
Did this mean she believed Reece could see ghosts? Well, she was definitely seeing things, so why not him, too?
The door clicked open and Reece slipped inside with a bag of frozen peas in one hand.
“Hungry?” she asked.
“This will fit better against your knee than ice, and it’s just as cold.” He wrapped the bag in a towel from the bathroom and carefully placed the bundle on her knee.
“Thanks.” She couldn’t remember anyone taking care of her like this, not since she was small, not even Zack. To be fair, she’d never been pushed down the stairs by a ghost while they’d been dating.
She tried to imagine his reaction if she’d told him this story. He’d have checked her into a mental ward by now.
“How come you believe me?” Brynn asked.
Reece sat on the edge of the bed next to her, his thigh brushing hers. A light flutter tickled low inside her. “Why wouldn’t I? I’ve seen things no one else can all my life.”
“Exactly.” She tilted her head and leaned closer, studying his features. “You see ghosts, but you’ve never seen the things I have, and you still believe me.”
He shrugged and tucked her hair behind her ear, a delicious shiver trailing his fingertip. “You don’t strike me as prone to telling tales. Does it show intelligence?”
She frowned. “I haven’t asked it to take an IQ test or anything.”
Reece smirked. “Does it interact with you, or does just do its own thing like you’re not even there?”
She remembered the thing crawling toward her on the bed, the wet snuffling noises as it drew closer. “It scares me. When it looks at me, it radiates evil, and it pushed me down the stairs.”
“You’re certain your ghost pushed you and not a living person?” Reece asked.
She nodded. “It was more like a force than a touch, if that makes sense.”
“I want to turn out the lights, see if it will come out again.”
Her pulse jumped. “Now?”
“I’m a shit for asking, but if this thing only manifests with you here, I need you with me. We’ve the lights working now, and I swear I won’t let anything happen to you.”
“Can you make it leave?”
He shrugged. “I won’t know until I’ve seen it.”
She sighed and shrugged. “Okay.”
“Right.” He stood and crossed the room to the switch on the wall. “Ready for lights out?”
Fear coiled tight in her belly. Not even close. But she nodded anyway. He hit the button and plunged them into darkness.
Every muscle in Brynn’s body tensed. Her gaze shot from one end of the black room to the other, waiting for the shadow man to burst from the darkness. Minutes ticked by and nothing happened. The room remained silent, only the dull sound of smoldering wood from the fireplace in cold air.
She wrapped her arms around her middle and leaned back against the pillows. “Reece?”
“I’m right here.” The mattress dipped and he settled beside her. “Try to relax. It could be a while—if at all.”
As if she could. “Have you done this kind of thing before?”
“This kind of thing?” Despite the dark, she could hear the smirk in his voice.
“Waited in the dark for a ghost to show up?”
He snorted. “I don’t usually have to wait.”
Something in his tone left her uneasy. “Can I ask you something?”
“Sure.”
“Why did Detective Harding go to see you at the other property?”
“I’m not at Stonecliff because I need the work. I did something stupid, and if I do what Harding wants, he’ll make sure the charges go away.”
Charges? As in a crime? “What did you do?”
“Fraud. God, it’s such a long bloody story. Most people are not trailed by a long line of dead relatives. Making a living as a medium, you can’t always rely on the right ghosts to show up when you need them to. I learned to improvise. Sometimes the right ghosts do turn up, but people don’t want to believe what I tell them. It’s easier to call me a liar than to face the truth.”
“Why did you do it?”
“I got caught up in something and didn’t know how to get out.” His voice rasped, and he cleared his throat.
Disquiet grew inside of her. This conversation had turned too personal, too intimate. She should change the subject to something benign—the weather, maybe. Instead, she asked, “How old were you when you first started seeing…ghosts?”
“I don’t remember a time when I didn’t see them. The affliction is hereditary. My mother, her brother, their mother, and on back.”
“That must have been scary when you were small.”
“Not for the reason you think,” he said, carefully. “My mother was terrified that people would think we were mad if they knew what we saw. She was convinced that I would be taken from her, institutionalized. She drilled it into me that I could never acknowledge the apparitions, the voices, and taught me to develop blocks. The strain and concentration was exhausting. She died when I was nine, and I went to live with my uncle. He didn’t share her fears and had been working as a medium for years.”
Did she really believe all this? An entire family visited by ghosts? Or was she merely desperate to grab on to the idea that he could help her? “Is that how you began?”
“Kendrick started me young.” His tone turned bitter. “He told me to stop using the blocks unless I had to. He had a theory that my mother’s brain tumor was a result of suppressing her ability.”
Cold swept through Brynn. She sat up and turned toward Reece. The bag of peas slid off her knee. “Is that true?”
“I don’t know. Kendrick’s an expert manipulator and he had his own motivations. All I can say for sure is I couldn’t function in the world without them.”
“Why would he want to manipulate you?” Brynn grabbed the frozen bag and tentatively flexed her leg. A little stiff, but the pain had gone. She dropped the peas onto the floor before shifting onto her side facing Reece.
“He wanted me to sit in with clients. I think he believed a child medium would give him credibility. In the beginning I liked it. For the first time in my life I didn’t feel like I had to hide what I was. I didn’t feel like there was something wrong with me. He taught me how to drag out a reading when I made contact, how to cold read when I couldn’t. It felt like a game, then it didn’t and I wanted to stop.”
“What changed?”
“Kendrick had me sit in with a woman whose son had died of cancer. He’d been young, six or seven. The kid wasn’t there, but Kendrick had been stringing her along for a while, telling her the boy was too shy to come forward. I was all set to launch into my performance, but she looked at me, and all I saw was desperate fear. I felt sick. I told her that her son had crossed over and he was at peace. She seemed comforted. Kendrick, however, was not happy.”
Brynn’s stomach churned. She reached out her hand, his fingers tangling with hers. “What did he do?”
“He made it clear if I wanted to stay with him and not wind up in foster care, I needed to fall in line. He was putting a roof over my head and food on the table. I had to earn my keep.”
Anger ignited low inside her. What kind of man manipulated a child like that? “What about your father?”
“Never met the man. He was married when I was conceived, and not to my mother.”
“Oh. Sorry.”
“Don’t be. Honestly, I rarely think of him.”
She probably should have taken a page from his book where her father was concerned, and she wouldn’t be here now. Though, the idea of never having met Reece left her with a strange hollowness.
“How did you wind up involved with Detective Harding? Are you still in that line of work?”
“No.” His voice turned flat and he let go of her hand. “I haven’t worked for Kendrick since I left at sixteen. I did something stupid.”
“You don’t want to tell me?” Though it was more statement than question.
“I can’t think of how to explain without coming across as a complete prat.”
She smiled in spite of herself. “Since we’ve met, you’ve seen me falling-down drunk and on the verge of a nervous breakdown—twice. This might even the score.”
“Right, well, when you put it like that.” She could hear the grin in his voice, could imagine his mouth pulling reluctantly at the corners. “Kendrick came to see me a few months back out of the blue. I wanted to tell him to go to hell. I’d built a life well away from the one I’d lived with him, and I didn’t want him anywhere near it. He said he needed my help—he was in trouble. If I did him this favor, a one-time thing, he’d go and I’d never see him again.”
Sure, he would. Men like that always came back if they thought there was something for them. “What did he want?”
“He needed my help with a client, some bullshit story that the client and ghost in question were being difficult. He thought I might be able to smooth things over. Back him up. Mrs. Reid believed her daughter’s drug-addict boyfriend killed her, and wanted confirmation. The boyfriend hadn’t. Her daughter had OD’d all on her own. Kendrick had been stringing the woman along for weeks. He wouldn’t blatantly lie to the woman, not with her daughter actually coming through. He does have some strange code of right and wrong, I suppose. So he’d tell her he was losing the connection whenever the conversation shifted to the cause of death. All he told her was her daughter didn’t die the way she thought. Anyway, I saw the chance to drop Kendrick in the shit.” He chuckled humorlessly. “Kendrick had warned me to tread carefully with the woman, but I wouldn’t listen.”
“I take it Mrs. Reid wasn’t overly receptive to your version of events.”
Reece snorted. “No, she wasn’t. When I told her the truth, she went right to Harding.”
“What does the detective want you to do?”
“He wants me to lure your sister into trying to kill me, then he’ll finally have the evidence he needs to put her away.”
Brynn wasn’t sure Eleri had murdered anyone, but someone had killed Matthew Langley, and three men had vanished. “Are you out of your mind? Tell Harding to go to hell and get away from here.”
“I’ve spent a long time moving on from Kendrick and all that bullshit. I have a different life and I don’t want anyone to know about what I am, what I used to do.”
“So you’re willing to be living bait for a serial killer?”
“There’s more than just me on the line. I have a business building boats, people I care about.”
A woman, maybe? Was he involved with someone? A distinct possibility. He was smart, attractive and damn hot.
“Are you married?” she blurted.
He chuckled and rolled onto his side to face her. “No.”
Again, she wished she could make out more than his outline in the dark. “Girlfriend?”
“I don’t do the long-term thing.”
Relief swept through her like a wave. “Good.”
The minute the word left her mouth, her eyes rounded. Oh God, she’d said that out loud. Despite the black closed in around them, she felt his frame stiffen.
“I don’t mean that it’s good…exactly…just…that…um…” Stop talking!
Reece shifted closer. His hand cupped the side of her face, his long fingers grazing her skin.
Shivery awareness slid through her and a wet ache beat slowly between her legs.
“What,” his mouth brushed hers and every nerve ending in her system sparked to life, “exactly did you mean, then?”
A thousand excuses played in her head, danced on the tip of her tongue. Instead, she pressed her mouth to his.