Problem was, orgies were probably the least of it, if the stories were to be believed. Devil worship. Human sacrifice. Rituals and abominations.
It hadn’t stopped with the death of Blaise Chambers either. Two hundred years later, his spirit lingered on, and when he targeted someone, went to work on their mind and their soul…
Nick still remembered the look in Theo’s eyes. The guilt, the shame, the horror.
He couldn’t tell her that. Not about her own brother. About what he’d done…
‘But there had to be a logical explanation,’ Alex went on. ‘There is always a logical explanation.’
‘Ninety-nine times,’ he said. ‘What was the other one then?’
This time she outright scowled, caught by her own phrasing. ‘It’s a figure of speech.’
He had a feeling that was a lie.
Alex cursed softly to herself and then relented. ‘All right, I’ll talk to them. I’ll get the equipment. And get them on research help. But they arenotcoming here. You said Sally knew about the ghosts here. Can you tell me what she said?’
There was a hesitancy in her question, that natural urge to avoid bringing up a lost loved one. Nick knew it well. But he owed her this.
And if he didn’t come clean now he never would.
CHAPTER 25
NICK
‘Sally was…’ Nick paused, trying to find the words for everything Sally had been. Laughing, dancing, smiling Sally. He had found her in the wild wood, like something out of an ancient legend, her long dark hair loose, her feet bare. Because that was Sally. There was a time before Sally but it was like a sketch in pencil compared to the technicolour world he’d found with her, and with Theo. ‘Long ago they would have called her a witch,’ he said with a softer smile. ‘Or fairy-touched or something. But she was just…Sally saw the world in a different way. I had no idea what that was until I met her. She called me here, she said. Just reached out on the wind through the trees and I came. I don’t even remember why I ended up here, but I did. Her explanation is as good as any.’
Alex wore a tiny frown. ‘She sounds like Daphne.’
Nick shrugged. He didn’t know Daphne but he didn’t doubt what Sally had been able to do. How could he when he’d seen it and felt it and known the truth of it?
‘She was sensitive to the house and the land. The women of her family were the ones in the legends, the wise women of Kilfayne. You’ve heard of them, haven’t you?’
Alex nodded, a smile spreading over her expressive mouth. ‘My gran was full of stories about them. Said we were related, I think. Some of them married de Wildes. Sally told you the same folklore then?’
She did more than that.Understand, she’d whispered to him on their wedding night, as they lay together naked in the wild wood, entwined on moss and leaves,that this binds us. The wild protects us and, in turn, we protect the land, Nick. It’s a solemn duty. But you have to enter into it willingly. It’s a sacred vow. Lay claim to this land and it will lay claim to you as well.
And he had. He had thought he had understood the implications. But he had thought they would be together forever, just the two of them. That whatever they faced, they would do it together.
He’d been a fool. And now he was as trapped as any of the ghosts here.
When Theo came, and the ghosts just got worse and worse…and Sally and Theo…and then Theo had been all he had left and…
No way he was about to tell Alex any of that.
‘What do you know about the house?’ he asked.
Alex lifted her hands. As much as anyone else probably. It was her family history, even if she didn’t want it. ‘When we came here as kids our grandfather told us all about the various generations. He would have had us believe that the land here had been some of the earliest inhabited on the island.’
‘And he was right. He researched it, conducted archaeological excavations. You get your scientific mind from him, I think,’ Nick said. She made a face, which he chose to ignore. Not the time to get into her animosity to her grandfather. He could understand it given what Theo had told him about the way the old man had treated her.Like he wanted to drive her away even when we were little, Theo had said. And maybe hewasn’t wrong either. ‘He changed, over the years, or so Patricia says. She knew him when they were younger. He became bitter after his wife died. The influence of the house, or so she thinks. He was isolated here and the hall…it works on people, like I said… You see the problem.’
Alex barely suppressed a laugh this time. ‘You think I’ll get stuck here and become a miserable shut-in spinster? Or a sex addict?’ He knew better than to answer that. She must have read the hesitation too because she sobered instantly. It wasn’t a laughing matter. ‘Well…anyway, moving on. What did his research show?’
‘There was a prehistorical settlement here. A ritual landscape of forest and stone. What little remains of that is?—’
‘The stone circle.’ She was quick. Or she knew the stories. Not quite in the same way he did perhaps. She thought it was all made up, but he knew better. He knew the forest, knew the stones…
Where her father died. Where he had found Theo.
