Maybe she did need a crib sheet after all. She couldn’t half-ass this. There was too much at stake.
‘Oh Alexandra.’Gabe’s voice sounded weird, twisted and wrong. Not like himself. The phone signal stuttered, broke up and then surged back to life, louder than ever.‘You don’t.’
‘What?’
‘You don’t, Alexandra. You don’t get rid of me. You surrender. You give in. You become the creature you were always meant to be. You’re a de Wilde, the last of the de Wildes. You belong here, with me. Oh, the things we will do in honour of our dark master…’
It wasn’t Gabe’s voice. Not anymore. She didn’t know what it was. Pulling back the phone, she stared at the screen. It was still connected, still showing Gabe’s name. But she wasn’t talking to Gabe. She knew that now.
‘Who are you?’ she whispered. Her voice shook far more than she would have liked but she couldn’t help that.
‘You know who I am, Alexandra,’he purred.‘I’m yours. I always have been. And you are mine. Why fight it?’
The voice was still coming out of the phone but even as she watched it the battery icon drained of power and the whole screen went dark.
Another face was reflected in the screen. A face she knew far too well. The face from the portrait in the hall upstairs.
Blaise Chambers smiled at her. A horrible, knowing smile.
Nick. She needed Nick. She needed to find him now.
‘He can’t help you, Alexandra. He can’t even help himself. Not when I have everything and everyone he ever held dear in the palm of my hand. He’ll give in. Just as you will. It is inevitable. You both belong to me now.’
‘No.’ The words sounded so small. But at least she could still say it.
Everything and everyone he ever held dear…
Sally. Theo. And Maeve…
I will set all of them against all of those they have loved, and I will make them mine, body and soul.
Oh God, where was Maeve? She had left with Patricia, hadn’t she?
Somewhere beyond the study, a door slammed as if caught by the wind and Alex jumped, dropping the phone. It thudded onto the carpet, entirely drained of power.
Ghosts did that. Drained batteries. She accepted that they did now. Just before they did something a lot worse.
Shit. Shit. Shit.
Alex turned back to the desk and grabbed the wreath-like charm Maeve had made for her, the twigs digging into her palm. That brought a bit more clarity to her.
She still had this, and it still worked. Whatever the little girl had tapped into with it, still worked.
She turned around and Sally Walker lunged towards her, eyes wide, mouth distended, screaming silently.
Alex threw herself back and half fell into the chair, clinging to the charm as if her life depended on it. Perhaps it did. The ghosts here were powerful and completely out of control.
Wind whipped through the study, tearing at every surface. Papers went up in a maelstrom, and books thudded off the shelves, slamming into the ground as if hurled by unseen hands. Sally was wild. If there was any of Sally actually left in this creature of rage and despair. Dark hair moved like ink in water, and her eyes were hollow and empty, filled with darkness which bled into her pale skin like an infection.
‘Enough!’ Alex yelled. ‘Talk to me.’
Talk to me. Like that was normal. Like any of this was normal.
She tried to focus, made herself sit still in the midst of Sally’s fury, and breathe in and out, just like Daphne had once taught her. It had been on one of those cases she still couldn’t explain. Not entirely. And it had been awful.
Like this.
She clung to Maeve’s charm.
