I wasn’t sure they’d be all that motivated to race out here on a call like that.
I didn’t want to call Prue or Chassie. They’d be sleeping.
I didn’t want to wake Fitzy and Patsy either.
Especially if this was probably nothing but my fatigued but always overactive imagination.
Sadly, I didn’t have Harry’s or Scotty’s numbers in my phone.
“Just go to the house,” I started my peptalk, my attention fixed on those lights glowing and shifting color. “You’re tired. You just made a huge discovery. The cats aren’t fond of your mood. You need to chill out and sleep.”
I got up, went to the door, and when I opened it, all three cats darted out.
“Fuck,” I snapped and moved out after them.
Just get in the house, get in the house, get in the house.
I charged quickly toward The Downs, following after the three scampering shapes of the kitties.
“Sss,” I heard from behind me.
Not the wind.
It was a person.
Out after midnight with me, hissing at me while I was alone in the dark.
Oh fuck.
I took off running.
When the house came into view, particularly the ballroom, I lost the rest of the little shit I had hold of because I could see the ghostly apparitions drinking punch, gossiping and dancing.
I never went in that way.
Fitzy kept the doors to the terrace off the ladies’ lounge open for me.
I rounded the north wing, skidding on the wet flagstone. The rain, still coming down, was now only a drizzle, but it’d been falling all day so everything was drenched.
I nearly took a header into some shrubbery but kept my feet for once, raced up the steps to the terrace at the ladies’ lounge and moved to throw open the door.
It didn’t open.
“Sss,” the sound came again.
Closer.
Fuck!
I rattled the door.
Locked.
And nowhere near anyone who could hear me pounding on it.
I was not going back from where I came, either the studio or the ballroom.
And it was hell to the no on the ballroom, and not only because that was the direction the noise was coming from. The people in it were still dancing and the lights coming from it were now almost blinding.
