Itried to turn the latch cleverly inlaid into a hollow in the door—so that the tapestry would lie flat against it. It wouldn’t budge. I tried again.
Roughly pushing aside my hand, Ash twisted with his own. “It’s locked.” A grim line to his jaw, he told me to hold back the tapestry, then he put his shoulder to the door and banged into it.
Once.
Twice.
A cracking sound on the third.
The fourth broke it away from the jam and sent him tumbling inside.
Motes of dust danced in the beam of my flashlight as I began to search the secret space. I was moving slowly but still almost missed her. She looked like nothing, a discarded piece of clothing in a corner behind an old chaise longue with a curved back and once-golden arm dull with dust.
It was the glint of pale blond that alerted my subconscious, the shine of her hair the most brilliant thing in the room. My light hitched, returned to her, and then I was running over. “Darcie!”
“Jesus, baby! Darceline!” Ash fell onto his knees beside her, cradling her in his arms while I checked desperately for a pulse in her wrist, then in her neck. My own was so loud in my ears that it took me multiple attempts.
“She’s got a pulse,” I said, not adding that it felt sluggish to me. I was no expert. “We should get her to V and Nix.”
Ash rose shakily, Darcie in his arms.
I went ahead to make sure the broken door didn’t get in his way, and the two of us made our way to the lounge as quickly as possible. I called out as I went, yelling that we’d found her and needed Vansi or Phoenix. Even if they couldn’t make out what I was saying, the fact that I was shouting should sound the alert.
I heard Kaea yell from the living room even as the sound of running feet vibrated through the house from various directions. A winded Vansi made it to us just as we reached the living area. Ash immediately placed Darcie on a sofa, and Vansi got to work checking her vitals.
It was only when I turned to look at Ash, say something, that I saw the blood on the pale blue of his shirt. Against the edge of one side of his chest and over one of his biceps. He looked down when I gasped, saw what I already had. “She’s bleeding.”
Thinking of how he’d held her, I said, “Her head, it has to be her head.”
Phoenix ran in just as Vansi began to examine the back of Darcie’s head. “Head wound,” she said in a clipped, professional tone. “Vitals are steady. Bleeding seems to have stopped.”
Phoenix came down beside her, the two of them speaking quietly to each other as they checked Darcie over. Not knowing what else to do, I went and found a clean towel to place under Darcie’s head, while Grace went upstairs to bring down a blanket.
“It doesn’t look too serious,” Vansi said after she got to her feet, Darcie now resting under the blanket. “Hopefully, she’s just stunned and will come out of it soon.”
“You sure?” Ash’s voice was sandpaper, his face white. “We don’t know how long she was in there. If it was since she left Luna . . .”
Phoenix, his hands on his hips, glanced between us. “Where exactly did you locate her?”
After we laid it out, he frowned. “Could she have locked herself in there by accident?”
“And what?” Ash demanded. “Knocked herself on the head, too?”
Phoenix was unflustered, his tone that of the doctor who dealt with countless injured patients and stressed relatives day after day. “The site of the injury suggests it could’ve been sustained if she fell against the wall or onto the floor at the wrong angle.”
“I think I saw another door in the room.” I wasn’t sure I trusted my vision, but I couldn’t hide something that might offer an insight into what Darcie had been doing there. “What if that door leads to a shortcut through the house?” It’d explain why she’d told me to wait; she hadn’t wanted to share the route outside the family.
“A secret passageway!” Grace’s eyes rounded. “We should go check it out, answer the question so we can stop thinking one of us tried to hurt Darcie on purpose—because if she decided to go in there, the accident theory makes the most sense.”
Stomach churning, I nodded. “Yes, that’s a good idea.”
Aaron and Grace came with me, the others staying put in the living area—though Kaea caught my gaze as I exited. He mouthed, Be careful. His hair was mussed up, five-o’clock shadow heavy on his face, and his whiskey abandoned on the table beside him.
I promised myself I’d give him a full update once we were back.
“It’s not the fun reunion we all expected, huh?” Aaron said softly after we were out of earshot of the others. “Sorry, Gracie. I promised you a great time.”
“Oh, sweetheart,” she murmured, squeezing his arm as she leaned against him.
It struck me then that Grace was the unknown here, the one person whose motives we couldn’t hope to guess at—we didn’t know her well enough. Wouldn’t that be easy? Just blame the newcomer in our midst like we were in some incestuous backwoods settlement that went around kidnapping hitchhikers.
I rolled my eyes at myself, because the truth of it was that poor Grace had no horse in this race. She was just an innocent bystander caught in the currents that tied the seven of us together.
“It’s not your fault,” she continued now. “It’s this house. Bad juju all around.”
“I’m beginning to agree with you.” All the tiny hairs on my body were standing up, taut and alert. “It’s as if it’s holding on to all the bad energy from the past.” I thought of Clara’s tight script, the painstaking work she’d done to hide the ugly reality of her life.
I knew deep in my gut that she’d shared none of that with her family back in England. It would’ve only hurt them—they were helpless to do anything for her. And so she’d dealt alone with this life of whispering madness that could well have led to murder.
A glimpse of the eerie family portrait up ahead.
“This is it.” Turning consciously away from that unnerving piece of art, I pointed out the tapestry that covered the now broken door.
Pulling it aside, Aaron turned on his flashlight. “Wow, apologies, Lu, but I almost didn’t believe you on the secret room.”
“I saw it and I still hardly believe it.” I entered with him, while Grace hovered outside.
“You can wait there, Gracie,” Aaron said with his customary gentleness, then mouthed “afraid of the dark” to me.
Bile burned my throat, but I just nodded. If only I could stand outside the dark, too, but the dark was coming for me.
There would never be any escape.
“No.” Grace’s shoulders rose, her face set. “I’m more frightened standing out here by myself. Especially if we do think someone did that to Darcie. Do we?”
“It was an accident.” Aaron took her hand with a smile of encouragement. “It’s only us eight in the house, remember?”
That was exactly the problem, though, wasn’t it? It was only the eight of us in this house. And unlike Aaron, I wasn’t so sure that I could trust all of my friends. Poor Grace. She didn’t even know most of us that well, and she was now stuck with us in a house straight out of a gothic novel.
Wanting to hurry this up for her and for myself, I flashed the beam of my light at the spot I thought I’d seen a door. Air rushed out of me. “There it is.”
“Did you see these bookshelves?” Grace said from my right at the same time. She pulled out a slim volume as Aaron went to check the door handle.
“It’s in Latin,” she muttered, sliding it back while I was still digesting the fact that she could make out anything in this light. “I think I recognized the word ‘demon’ from school.”
I wanted to ask what kind of school taught Latin in this day and age, then remembered that she’d been educated at boarding schools in Europe. Answer had to be rich people schools.
I wondered idly if that meant Grace was rich. Be nice for Aaron if she was; if anyone deserved a break in life, it was him. He’d worked all through high school and university, and was currently doing a ton to support his younger siblings through higher education.
“It’s open.” Aaron pushed the door into empty space on the other side.
The smooth transition made me frown. “The door to this room was locked.” I glanced back at the splintered edges that were a silent testament to what it had taken to get in. Ash was going to be paying the price for that in a few hours.
“Darcie must’ve locked it after she came inside.” Grace slid back another book. “Did you check her pockets for a key?”
I shook my head.
Though Grace’s words made sense, I couldn’t understand why Darcie would’ve locked up when she was the only one who knew about the secret passage in the first place.
“This one is in English,” Grace muttered, shifting to catch more of the glow from my flashlight.
The pages blazed a painful white to my eyes.
“It’s a book of spells. Dark stuff. Cursing-your-neighbor kind of thing.” Shuddering, she shoved it back onto the shelf. “Luna, do you mind if I go after Aaron into the passage?”
The weight of the dark at my back was suffocating. “No problem.” I fell in behind her.
“Gah!” Aaron made a jerking motion, paused. “Uh, sorry. Cobwebs.” He sounded so sheepish that it broke the tension, had us giggling. “At exactly the height of my face.”
“It doesn’t count unless a spider sets up home in your hair,” I said.
“I hate you,” he muttered without force, while Grace patted his back and said, “It’s okay, sweetie. Spiders prefer other nesting places.”
Not listening to Aaron’s rumbled response, I ran the beam of my flashlight on either side of me. “Narrow.” Not enough to be uncomfortable, but meant for single file.
“Yeah.” Aaron coughed into the crook of his elbow. “I’ll stay up front—unless you want to swap? You did find this place.”
“No, go on.” A few steps in, I couldn’t help glancing back at the door through which we’d entered, my neck prickling.
“What if it isn’t just us eight?” Grace whispered. “I mean, if there’s one secret room, there could be others, right?”
My entire face went cold, her words giving shape to the primal fear in my gut.
I snapped my attention back to the other two.
“We’d have noticed,” Aaron argued. “We’ve been all over the house. I’d have noticed if a ton of food went missing. Ash and Darcie might’ve stocked it, but they asked me to make the shopping list.”
I hadn’t known the latter, though it made sense. “Place is huge,” I said, wondering why the hell I was adding fuel to the fire when it was the stuff of nightmares. “And one person wouldn’t need a lot of food.”
“How would they even have got here?” Aaron said, his voice a whisper, too.
As if the walls were listening in.
Stomach lurching, I remembered the rustling I’d put down to rats—then later to Darcie. But what if it hadn’t been either of those two? What if the walls were listening?
“Could be a squatter,” Grace said. “Like that case in America where that person lived in someone’s attic for years and only came out at night.”
“That’s an urban legend,” I said, though I wasn’t so sure.
“I’m saying the estate sits empty most of the time, right? Perfect place to stay if you don’t care that you’re in the middle of nowhere. Plus, there’s a pantry stocked with nonperishables.”
“But they’d have to go out sometime,” Aaron said, his tone firm. “I’m not buying that the squatter’s happy to sit in isolation forever. They couldn’t eat out the pantry, for one. The caretaker would notice.”
I didn’t want to say what I did next. “Easy enough to hide a vehicle in the bush at the foot of the mountains. Jim’s got no reason to go out there. He’s only responsible for the house and making sure any fallen fruit is cleaned up.”
“That’s it,” Aaron muttered, “I’m separating you and Gracie the minute we’re out of here. You’re dangerous together.”
“Sorry, sweetie.” Grace patted his shoulder again. “It’s this house. It’s getting to us.”
I allowed the topic to drift away, but I wondered if part of the reason Grace and I had clung to it was that it’d be less of a horror to have it be a stranger behind the odd occurrences. Because if there was no squatter . . . then it had to be one of us.