Eustace shook her head. “Maybe the same thing that happened to Mom.”
“Mom had a brain aneurysm,” Cordelia corrected. “You heard the driver: Augusta was old.”
Eustace rolled her eyes. “So the coroner says, but I don’t think women with brain aneurysms get flayed in parking lots. And I don’t think old ladies who go peacefully in their sleep claw messages into the wall beside the bed first.”
Cordelia’s throat felt like it had been coated in sawdust. She was suddenly desperate for a glass of water.
“You don’t think”—Eustace looked at her sister, eyes flashing white and gray and blue—“we’ll be next?”
“Don’t be absurd,” Cordelia rasped, though she felt a wild streak of suspicion rise in her own breast. “She probably had dementia. I’m sure if we do a little asking, we’ll find there’s a perfectly reasonable explanation for this.”
“Right,” her sister agreed. But Eustace didn’t look reassured as she turned for the door. “Guess we better pick a different room for the night.”
Cordelia followed her to the hall. “Eustace, you can’t be serious. We can’t stay here.”
She spun around. “Why not?”
Cordelia’s mouth fell open. “Do I have to spell it out for you? Our auntdiedin this house. And no one has yet to tell us why or how.” She took a step toward her sister, pitching her voice low as if someone might overhear. “Not to mention that picture we found downstairs.”
It went without saying that she had no intention of sharing a roof with the ghastly woman on the stairs.
“You just said there was a perfectly reasonable explanation for it all,” Eustace threw back at her.
“And there probably is,” Cordelia backpedaled. “But until we find one, we should sleep somewhere else. I’m sure there’s an affordable hotel in town,” she suggested, though in truth, the only thing she could afford at the moment wasfree.
“There probably is,” Eustace told her. “And how exactly do you propose we get there? In case you didn’t notice, the attorney fled before sundown, taking the only car with him.”
“Then I’ll call and tell him we need suitable accommodations. What’s his number?” She pulled her phone from her pocket, prepared to dial.
Eustace sighed and began to rattle it off.
Punching it in, Cordelia waited, but instead of the customary ring, her phone shot back an error message. Cordelia checked her signal and frowned. “There’s no service.”
“Hold on,” her sister said, dragging her own phone out. “You can get away with one of those cheap providers because you’re in the city. I can’t cut corners like that in Colorado.”
Cordelia started to argue until she saw the smirk fade from Eustace’s face. “What? What is it?”
Eustace held out her phone. “I don’t have any either.”
The air rushed out of Cordelia, leaving her hollow. They were stranded.
“It’s just one night,” Eustace told her. “What’s the worst that could happen?”
But before Cordelia could answer that, the house shuddered like a dying engine, groaning as all the lights snapped out at once, plunging them into darkness.
CHAPTER FIVETHENIGHT
IF A ROOMcould scowl, she was certain this one was. It didn’t seem possible to sleep here. It didn’t seem safe. Cordelia reminded herself she only had to make it until morning. Then the gray-faced attorney would return, his insipid nephew, willow-thin, behind the wheel of that unsavory car, and she could sign whatever needed signing and insist on a ride out of here, find a comfortable queen at a nearby bed-and-breakfast, fly home the next morning, put the past behind her.
She gripped the collar of the lamp with sweaty fingers, flames flickering, kerosene sloshing as she held it high to peer inside. At least if they had to be trapped in a haunted house with no power, they were in one old enough to be littered with candlesticks and lanterns. The room stared back, watching her with Mona Lisa precision, unscrupulous and unapologetic.
It could have been the bedroom of the man in the library portrait, with its distinct masculine aesthetic and heaviness, a certain weight in the shape of the furniture, the fall of the drapes, the hang of the air. The overall disregard it seemed to hold for her, its only occupant in how many years? The bedroom reminded her of Christmas in a sinister kind of way, painted a rich forestgreen, dominated by a tall sleigh bed with a carved stag’s head emerging from it, a red-and-green coverlet more like a tapestry than a blanket. A huge ebony wardrobe brooded in one corner, the kind children could get lost inside, and the windows were hidden behind thick drapes the color of port wine.
At least there were no taxidermic animals to speak of.
She sat on the edge of the impressive bed, putting the lamp down on the bedside table, lifting her feet off the floor like she did when she was young. Children knew to be wary of the things that slid under beds. Cordelia felt like a child again in this house, trapped, powerless. Tomorrow, she’d call the Hartford agency and get a list of comparable properties and their selling prices, unload it on some unsuspecting buyer as quickly as possible. Though taking in the gloomy, overstated decor that surrounded her, she couldn’t imagine there were many comparable properties for them to go on.
Malevolent spinstermight not be her favorite aesthetic, but there was nothing mediocre about this house, and Cordelia could respect that. Bone Hill had a dark regard; it carried itself with formidable grace and an iron bearing, not unlike their late aunt. Despite her reservations, it filled her with an unexpected sense of pride.
