He has his eye on the girl. Even now. Especially now she’s of age. I begged Edward not to bring her back but he has never believed. She carries Kilfayne in her as much as de Wilde. Chambers will use her, and tear the barriers down. He will manipulate her desires and her dreams, make her think that his wishes are her wishes. And heaven help her if that happens.
Alex sighed and closed her eyes, wishing she had never come here. She could still leave. She ought to leave. It was the sensible thing to do. Anyone would tell her so. Her online stalkers knewshe was here and they’d soon be bombarding her again. And Nick still wanted his wife. The house was manipulating them both or the sex last night wouldn’t have happened.
But she would be leaving all those ghosts trapped here.
Theo. She’d be leaving Theo. Trapped or not, something was drawing him back here.
She’d be leaving Nick trapped here too. In a living hell. Forever trying to hold the line against a force that had grown too strong, a reality that was tearing him apart.
And he said Sally had called him. That he didn’t know why he’d come here in the first place and clearly Sally wouldn’t let him go.
Nick didn’t talk about his past, about where he came from. Nothing before he met Sally. Like he barely remembered it.
‘Damn it, Sally Neary,’ Alex hissed under her breath. ‘Why did you have to embroil him in all this? Why did it have to be him?’
A thud came from upstairs. Of course it did. Who wanted her attention now?
Nick still hadn’t come back, not to Alex’s knowledge anyway. There was no one else here.
And she had just invoked the spirit of the last of the wise women of Kilfayne. Sally Walker who still had her claws so deeply in her widower that he called out her name during sex with someone else.
‘Right,’ she said and pushed herself up from her seat, the diary forgotten. ‘Right, enough. You want to have it out with me, Sally, let’s have it out. Because I have some things to say to you.’
Another thump. Like a dare.
Alex stormed up the stairs, only pausing to grab one of the recorders which she thumbed on as she followed the increasing noises from a room at the far end of the main corridor. Shedidn’t know this part of the house but it didn’t matter. It was hers. All of it. Just like Nick had said and she had had enough.
She threw open the door to reveal a narrow corridor with a slanted ceiling. It must have been servants’ quarters once upon a time but now it was heavy with dust and dimly lit by light coming through a dirty window at the far end.
Bells hung on metal coils along the wall to her left.
Another thud, this time from behind another door, further down the narrow corridor. There was something in there. Someone.
No. Something.
‘Who is it?’ she called out, her voice sounding much louder than she would have thought. ‘Who’s there?’
There was another noise, a guttural cackle, and then a shush, followed by a giggle. Then a scuffling and something else fell, a great clatter of noise.
Alex grabbed the door and flung it open.
The room beyond was filled with boxes and cases, and a jumble of lifetimes. Books turned almost white with dust spread across the floor, in between half a dozen chairs.
And in the middle of it all sat Maeve Walker, a battered tin tea set straight out of the 1960s laid out in front of her – three cups, three saucers – as if she had been playing with friends.
Perhaps she had.
Alex stared at her and Maeve stared back, open-mouthed, as if she had not expected any interruption, and certainly not from Alex.
‘Maeve?What are you doing here?’
Maeve looked one way and then the other, and again, Alex got the distinct impression she was making eye contact with people Alex couldn’t see.
‘I didn’t go into your office. Daddy said not to disturb you. So, I just came up here.’
‘But how did you get here? To the house, I mean. Why aren’t you with your grandmother?’
Maeve scrunched up her face. ‘Iwaswith her. I was with her all morning and it wasboring. We just went to people’s houses and I had to sit quiet and behave. I wanted to see Daisy and Rose.’
