“What else was said?”
He pushed his fingers through his hair, trying to remember. “That her soul had not found its mate and that she needed to be careful where she wandered.”
“What does that mean?” Malcolm demanded.
“It was Iza’s sight. She was no clearer.”
Ajax rose. “I will go ask Iza myself and if she cannot tell me, maybe she can look in the crystal and locate Samantha.”
“The music room!” Petra announced. “Is she in there?”
“We did not look,” her father said and hurried from the dining room. He was not gone long when he returned. “No.”
“Everyone, search the whole of Nightshade Manor. Choose an area and return here after it has been searched. Let each other know where you are going.”
Cassian stood and marched out of the dining room.
“Where are you searching?”
“Near the vault. It was the last place that she was. Maybe…” He did not know why but he hoped that something was left behind that would lead him to her.
He practically ran through the corridor until he reached the stone stairs. He lifted one of the lamps then hurried down them, heart racing and sweat breaking out on his brow with each step. Something was wrong; he felt it to the depths of his soul and prayed that he was only overreacting.
When he reached the bottom, he lit the lamp from one of the already burning torches and stepped further into the cellar and stopped at the vault. It was closed, locked against him.
Cassian turned when he heard footsteps behind him.
“I am going to search the vault,” Petra announced.
“I will search everywhere else.”
He first walked through the vast wine cellar afraid that she had fallen in there, but it was vacant of anything but dusty bottles that dated back decades. He then looked around the cupboard where the crystals were stored but there were no signs that she had been there.
If he knew which crystals she had come to return, then he could see if they were missing, a question he would ask if she was not found.
Except, he knew that she kept a Black Tourmaline. What had been the other?
He then wandered down the corridor, wondering if she had gone into the cell in the back and got locked in, but it too was vacant.
Where else could she be?
Why couldn’t anyone hear her?
Samantha had yelled and screamed when her parents and Lady St. Alban had come down and were wondering where she might have gone, but then they left not having heard her.
Now it was Cassian and Petra.
“I am in here!” she screamed. “Can you hear me?” She waited. “Help me! Please!”
But nobody answered back.
Tears filled her eyes and she could no longer hold back the sobs as she sank onto the settee. She was going to be stuck in here forever, or until she died and nobody would ever know and she would never be able to warn them not to play the piano.
Chapter 25
If she had gone to the opposite end, where some of the servants lived, they would have…let her stay, kicked her out? It did not matter, but Cassian had to at least ask and walked further into the cellar, to the opposite side where he knew stairs led up into the kitchens. There was storage down there, some sleeping chambers, and a parlor for the servants.
Except, as he passed another dark corridor he paused when he thought he heard something.
