I squeezed my eyes shut. Given our conversation at dinner, I gathered that Montoni needed me alive, for now, if he wanted to see any of my money. He wouldn’t dispatch an assassin to murder me in my own bed in the middle of the night.
But who else would be in my room at such a late hour? A servant sent to check on me? Perhaps to ensure that I wasn’t trying to escape once more?
I heard another creaking, almost like a groan. The blood curdled in my veins.
Could it be a … ghost? Annette had warned me that the castle was haunted, but after all I’d seen … the peculiar behavior of the family had been explained, the moans I’d chalked up to the wind, or perhaps echoes from the dungeons. I couldn’t deal with ghosts on top of werewolves, but why not? What was one more unearthly being? And maybe it would help me. If it was the ghost of the late Count Morano, who’d died in this very room, perhaps he would be willing to assist me in my current predicament, for the sake of his children.
Opening my eyes, I slowly sat up, gaze sweeping the room.
I saw nothing.
The fire was still roaring, chasing back most of the shadows. I hadn’t imagined the figure, had I?
Tentatively, I rolled out of bed to check the doors. Both were locked. With a frown, I returned to my bed. It had to have been my wild imaginings. I’d had a shock, and the supernatural was on my mind. Or maybe I had simply drifted into a half sleep without realizing it. I was safe, I assured myself, locked in my room.
But sleep did not come easily.
I was beginning to wonder if I would have the chance to see Henri at all before the dreaded moment where I would bind myself to this family. Montoni seemed to be keeping his niece close, and whenever I did manage to exchange some words with her at meals, it was always to hear that she couldn’t manage it just yet. I wasn’t even sureshe’dbeen able to see Henri. It made me frantic. I reread the book on lunar goddesses from cover to cover multiple times, trying to discern any hint of a werewolf curse in its pages, but I found nothing. And for a family of werewolves, their library seemed short in supply of any books on the supernatural. I spent most of my days searching for secret passages I may have missed. I attempted to locate the passage to the dungeon in the west wing myself, but I’d been unable to find it, and it was far too busy in that wing to chance lingering. The servants’ master keys had been taken away, clearly as a precaution should they choose to aid me. Without Annette’s key, I no longer had access to the laboratory where my aunt would be held captive, so I utilized the one passage that I could, spying on Montoni and Schedoni through peepholes. Unfortunately, they were rarely in their rooms, and when they were, nothing of consequence occurred. I felt useless, knowing that Henri and my aunt were being held in cells somewhere, but there was nothing I could do.
The servants seemed to be under the impression that they had left the castle for a time, given what Ludovico had told me during his evening visits. They seemed to be divided into two camps: either under Montoni’s thumb like Bertolino, or ignorant of his crimes. Only Annette and Ludovico knew the truth.
I was pacing my room, as I found myself doing often these long days, when Ludovico arrived later than usual one evening, breathless, to escort me to Blanche’s bedchamber. “Lady Morano apologizes for the delay,” he said as he led me to the west wing. “She was indisposed for a majority of the week.”
“I know,” I sighed. “Thank goodness she’s found an opportune time. What of Montoni?”
Ludovico hesitated. “The lady was with her uncle in his study for a long while earlier tonight. I heard shouting but couldn’t make anything out.”
I bristled. “He really is an overbearing monster.”
Ludovico didn’t reply but continued to guide me in silence. We waited on the landing below Blanche’s room until Annette came out to look over the balcony railing to ensure we were there. Lady Morano came out a minute later wrapped in a black cloak.
“Ludovico, help Annette,” Blanche ordered the servant. “She has a job for you.”
Ludovico bowed, then disappeared up the stairwell.
Blanche turned to me and looked me over. “Well? Are you prepared to see him?”
“Should I have need to prepare myself?”
She smiled thinly. “I don’t think my uncle would hurt him any more than he already has.”
I nodded stiffly, not quite sure of that assessment, as she led me through a doorway with a short hall. There was a door at one end, but she ignored this, instead gesturing for me to help her remove a painting in a large gilt frame, covered with a black veil. Once removed, there was a large enough recess to stand in.
“It’s through here,” she said.
I nodded and, curious, lifted aside the veil from the painting. A gentle tug removed the entire cloth, leaving me to gaze upon one of the ugliest pictures I had ever beheld. It was the portrait of a man in a suit. Based on the fashion, I would have assumed him to be in his early twenties, but he looked much older, and wretched. His hair clung to his scalp in chunks, his teeth were rotted and mostly missing. His face seemed paralyzed in a grotesque grin that was ghoulish, matching the rotting flesh of his face.
“Don’t,” Blanche said, throwing the veil back over the picture. “It’ll give you nightmares if you gaze on it for long.”
“My whole life is a nightmare,” I muttered, following her into the recess. We pushed on the backing in unison, and the ensuing grinding sound made me wince. Was Montoni in his room? Would he hear us?
“It’s okay,” Blanche assured me. “I had to wait so long because I needed to make sure he would be out for a time.”
“Ludovico said you were fighting.”
Blanche shrugged as an opening appeared in the wall to our right, and we stepped through. A torch was lit just inside. “Obviously, the ultimatum he gave you was awful.”
“I’ve been trying not to think about it.”
