But keeping the estate was a ridiculous idea. Even Eustace would know better. Living here would be like stepping back in time. She would show respect in how she dismantled it, though, locate an appraiser and a reputable auction house. It was the least she could do for the family she’d never known.
Beneath her, the bed suddenly moaned. Cordelia jumped up and spun around, threw the covers back and ducked to look beneath the solid frame, but she couldn’t make out anything in the stifling black. Feeling like a schoolgirl, she opened her bag and was greeted by the pills she used to manage her headaches. She set them on the bedside table, that little brown bottle all thatstood between her and her mother’s deterioration. Her head felt fine at the moment, but her symptoms had been erratic all day—dull and foreboding in the morning, the way her headaches so often started, only to recede on the drive up, return in a flash of pain with the apparition on the stairs, then ebb once again as she neared the crypt.
The unpredictability was new, and she worried what it might mean. Their mother had suffered a decline steady enough to plot on a chart for years, but in her final weeks, she began to complain of a mercurial shift in her symptoms—unexpected increases and decreases in pain, abrupt onset and random triggers, even waking her from a dead sleep. Then came her sudden turn for the worse one unforeseen night. Maggie was made of sterner stuff than either of them, and Cordelia secretly feared she had less time than her mother.
She closed the door and changed, assuming she and the room had agreed to a truce for the night, leaning gingerly on the bed as if she might anger it again, the kerosene lamp her only consolation, the stag’s head casting beastly shadows up the wall. She was loath to twist that knob, watch the fire shrink and die, feel the darkness press in on her, a living thing writhing with foul intentions. But the room was still, and at last she breathed deep and nestled into the embroidered sheets, killing the light in one swift motion.
She wondered if John was sleeping alone somewhere tonight. She tried to imagine him in a hotel room like the one she’d left behind, surrounded by so much beige, sad and bored. But it was impossible to see John that way—regretful, lonely. If she pictured him at all, it was laid out next to another woman, lithe and spent. And she marveled that it had never occurred to her before how striking that was.
Irritated, Cordelia wondered brazenly what kind of bed the groundskeeper slept in. She envisioned something with blackleather and studs, maybe flame stitching or a giant pentagram. Or perhaps he slept in a coffin like a vampire. It was all so ludicrous she practically giggled. Until she imagined him pulling his too-tight shirt over his head and tugging the band from his long, jet hair. And then she felt herself blush acutely, as if the dark itself were scandalized by her secret imaginings.
On the edge of sleep, Cordelia had the distinct sense Bone Hill could take care of itself,hadtaken care of itself for decades, like something possessed, a place with its own heartbeat. And then the feeling faded, and she dreamt of dark shutters and parquet flooring, trees that bristled without wind, her mother’s laugh, and the satiny white of her aunt Augusta’s hair and eyes and bones. Above all else, the bones, smooth as polished driftwood and rattling in their sockets.
It must have been hours later when the sound of a creaking door finally stirred her, sleep holding on stubbornly, sucking her down, suffused with repetitive dreams. She thought she saw a soft light spill into her room through the open crack, but just as quickly it went out. And that couldn’t be right, because the house had lost power hours ago, even without a storm to justify it. Too frightened to move, she whispered into the darkness. “Eustace?”
But her sister didn’t respond.
Her fingers tightened around the bedcover. A floorboard cried out softly, mewing under the weight of some invisible stranger just outside her door, followed by a scuffle as if someone had hurried away. Cordelia swallowed. And then she heard the high-pitched chitter above her, like mice on the ceiling.
In a whoosh of blinding illumination, a flash as sudden and unexpected as dry lightning, the lights in the house flared back to life, bathing her room in a jaundiced glow as a shadow swooped low over her head. Cordelia screamed and leapt from the bed as another glided across the room. She looked up. The air above her was writhing with small, furry bodies and black wings. Here andthere, a gruesome face could be seen, nose-less and fanged with tiny, pinprick eyes and bald ears. They seemed confused, crawling all over one another, flying into the windows and the walls, leaving speckles of blood before they hit the floor. Some stayed down, but others darted up again, tearing at her hair and gown, driving her from one end of the room to the other as if she had invaded their space and not the other way around.
Cordelia raced for the door, slamming it behind her. She tore into the hall and, for the second time in twenty-four hours, ran straight into Gordon, who was barreling in her direction from the stairs. He caught her in his giant arms, wrapping them around her before she could pull away, holding her against him. She started to scream, and he flattened a hand over her mouth.
“It’s okay. I’m not here to hurt you,” he said into her hair, his breath warm against her ear and neck.
When she stilled, he slowly peeled his fingers away from her face and let her go.
Cordelia spun on him, shoving him back a step, angry at being manhandled and flustered by his nearness. “What are you doing here?” she pressed, wrapping her arms across her chest, aware now of the paper-thin cotton of her nightshirt, the pants she wasn’t wearing. He towered over her in a dark sweatshirt, flannel pajama pants, and boots, long hair left to fall over his shoulders. “You shouldn’t be in the house this late.”
The creaking door that had woken her, the sound of someone just outside her room before the power snapped back on, sparked questions in her mind, blanks that he seemed to fill. It was too suspect to be a coincidence, his presence at just this hour, unwanted, unannounced. Cordelia didn’t like the idea of him sneaking around the property, continually turning up in her path like a dead end, this brick wall of a man.
“I was out walking when I saw the house light up. I was worried. Thought there might be a fire or—” He looked over hisshoulder at the closed door, the chaos of fluttering within. “Is everything okay in there?”
She put herself between him and her room. “Don’t go in there. Don’t open that door.”
His eyes met hers, and for a split second she thought she registered a slice of fear in them.
“We lost power,” she said, explaining the lights he claimed to have seen. “Earlier this afternoon. It just came back on. The carriage house didn’t?”
He shook his head. “No, but they’re on separate circuits. A breaker must have tripped.”
How convenient.“What were you doing out walking this late?” Her eyebrow cranked skeptically. “In the dark?”
He sighed, massive shoulders drooping. “I couldn’t sleep. It’s a thing I do to clear my head. And then I saw the shadow.”
She drew her arms tighter around herself, a new twinge of anxiety triggered by his words. “What shadow?”
“A silhouette passed in front of the first-story windows. Looked like someone running away from the house. I would have gone after them, but I was more worried about you and your sister. Wanted to be sure you were both okay first.”
Cordelia stared up at him, weighing the possibilities. What were the odds he was lying, maybe covering his own tracks? The odds that he was telling the truth and two people had been skulking around this behemoth of a house in the middle of the night? He leaned an arm against the wall, eyes continually flicking to the door behind her, where muted thuds sounded. She supposed if he’d wanted to hurt her, he had every opportunity to right now. She didn’t trust him exactly—that would be foolish—but she begrudged him the benefit of the doubt, at least for the moment.
“Could have been a mistake,” he offered quietly. “It’s late. It’s dark. Maybe it was just a deer or something. Anyway, are youall right?” he asked now, concern skating the dark corners of his eyes.
“They’re in my room,” she whispered, that scuffling she’d heard playing up and down her spine.
“The shadow?” He pushed off the wall, tensing.
“The bats,” Cordelia replied. “Allof them.”
