Yes, the woods needed to be preserved, and protected from the world outside. But in turn, they were a protection. They held the line against Wildewood Hall. And sometimes they did that in violent ways.
He couldn’t tell her that. She’d never believe him for starters.
‘Please,’ he said, trying to weigh his words carefully this time. He couldn’t alarm her any more than he already had. ‘Please take more care in future.’
She could have fallen, he’d said, in the woods. But Theo hadn’t fallen. Not really. She could have been lying there, where he found Theo. She could have been as dead as her brother.
That was what he’d been afraid of. That something had happened to her, that the woods had done something. That was why he had brought the axe.
It was little more than a threat. He couldn’t have done much with it.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I didn’t think.’
Well, that was obvious. But why would she? Who had to think about things like this?
Who apart from him?
Nick swallowed hard and felt the tension in the back of his shoulder unwind just a little. She was trying. She was being magnanimous. He had to meet her halfway.
‘I’m sorry too. I was rude. It was uncalled for.’
Alex smiled at him, brightly, as if she hadn’t a care in the world. ‘Apology accepted. Can we start again, Nick?’
‘I – of course.’
And then she stepped in through the doors of Wildewood Hall. She passed so close to him he could catch her scent, and he inhaled, perhaps more deeply than he intended to. It was warm and delicate, that fragrance, intoxicating.
And then the house seemed to enfold her in its cold hands, drawing her out of the light and into the shadows.
Nick shuddered and forced himself to follow her. Alex did not believe in ghosts. Theo had told him that time and again. Even though she made her living making TV shows about them, writing about them, investigating them. Even though she had grown up as part of a family with a house where they were a fact of everyday life.
Except she hadn’t grown up here, had she? Once their father died, her mother would have nothing to do with the de Wildes. Patricia had said once, ‘Nothing good ever came to a woman in this house.’
He thought of Sally and flinched inwardly. He should have made her leave. He should have insisted. Not that she would have listened to him but he could have tried.
Nick believed now. He had learned far too much. To his eternal grief.
He wasn’t going to say any of that to Alex of course.
He wanted her. Ached for her. But he had no idea how much of that was real and how much was…well, whatever the house did. He couldn’t stop thinking about her.
Sally said that something old and terrible stalked the house. That the house itself had become subsumed in evil and it had taken all the wise women of Kilfayne to bring it under control.
But they couldn’t get rid of it.
Old stories. Legends. Things to frighten children. Or so he’d believed once. Right up until he lost Sally.
Wildewood Hall was no place for a woman. It was no place for the living at all.
CHAPTER 14
ALEX
The nagging sense of being watched followed Alex wherever she went, waking and sleeping. The house whispered around her, especially in the later afternoon, as the shadows lengthened and the branches of the trees seemed to reach towards her across the lawns and the gravel drive. Nick wandered in and out of the periphery of her world and the only other person she saw was the postman. Once. Now that she didn’t have a car, she was pretty much trapped here in Wildewood Hall, though she didn’t like to admit it. The car hire people weren’t helping. They accused her of doing something to the engine. Alex was furious.
Gabe or Daphne called her most evenings, which she appreciated. Mostly it was to discuss work and new cases, to bounce ideas off her, or, in Daphne’s case, to mutter ominous things about dark shadows over Alex’s life. Which was not really helpful.
Because, despite the improved weather outside, the house was freezing cold, and made strange noises. She felt like she was being watched. Worse, she felt like she was being laughed at.
