A grin winked at her from the edges of his mouth, quickly cleared, suggesting he found something in her answer amusing. Maybe he enjoyed her fear. “They’re harmless, you know.”
She ground her teeth together. “So everyone keeps saying.”
But he hadn’t just seen them like she had, crazed and frenzied, gathered atop one another. She burned with humiliation and the feeling of being targeted, as if the bats were a message meant just for her. It was paranoid to think so, but it gnawed at her sanity, fraying the edges. She felt an intense longing for her old bedroom, now sick with mold, and the white fortress she’d left behind where she’d once felt nothing could hurt her. Her skin smoldered under the groundskeeper’s enigmatic gaze as if she were naked.
“Sleep somewhere else tonight,” he said, forcing his eyes to meet hers. “I’ll come by tomorrow to chase them out of there, make sure they can’t get in again.”
“Thank you.” Relief flooded her, cool and fluid, nearly causing her eyes to water. If she never stepped foot in that room again, it would be too soon. “Could you direct us toward accommodations in town? I don’t intend to spend another night on the property.”
He clucked the corner of his mouth. “Well then, you’ll have to drive back to Hartford, I’m afraid. The Bellwick Inn closed its doors a decade ago. No one’s taken up the mantle of restoring and reopening it.”
Cordelia swallowed. “You mean there’s nowhere? Not an Airbnb or a drive-in motel or anything?”
He shrugged. “We don’t see a lot of tourism here. Most people head for the coastline or the better-known towns like Greenwich.”
She stood awkwardly for a moment, processing her predicament. Even one more night was too high a price. But Busy Mazzello’s thick voice, like glue being poured into her ear, taunted her; she figured the man must have a tongue like a beaver tail. She couldn’t go back without his money. With all he was putting her through, she hoped John choked on a scallop in Key West.
“I should get back, try and catch some sleep before the sun rises,” Gordon said, attempting to extricate himself.
“How did she die?” Cordelia blurted, drawing herself up, refusing to let another person get away without at least one solid answer. “Aunt Augusta?” The scratches from the room were emblazoned in her memory. He might know more, since he lived here.
He paused, confusion knitting his brow, before relenting. “In her sleep, or so I’m told.”
Cordelia breathed in. It sounded innocuous enough, but how did they explain what they found? “She wasn’t sick then? Or demented?”
Gordon squinted at her. “She kept to her room toward the end. But she was sharp as a tack. Not the sort to go soft—you know, up here.” He tapped his temple.
“Oh.” Cordelia mulled that over. It dashed at the flimsy explanations she’d erected to dispel their fears. “You’re the one who found her?”
He shook his head, hair tousling in shiny, black waves. “That was the Togers boy. The nephew.”
“Arkin?” What was the driver doing in her aunt’s bedroom?
“He came to take care of the house most days after my mother…” He let this last bit fall off, a look of regret paining him.
“Your mother?” Cordelia asked, a little shocked.
“She worked here in the big house,” he clarified. “Briefly. A maid and a cook.”
Cordelia noted the past tense. Her eyes met his, searching.
“She passed,” he said without emotion. “Not long after getting on here. She suffered from an autoimmune disease but…”
Cordelia waited for him to finish.
“She talked about being afraid of someone before she died.” He eyed her quizzically. “Someone on the property. She never told me who. You should be careful is all.”
She flailed for the right thing to say, half-dressed in the middle of the night. She felt bad for him. “I’m so sorry,” she finally responded. “We lost our mother almost six years ago. It was…sudden.You don’t really get over it.”
Gordon eyed her strangely, as if he didn’t trust this gush of empathy, big arms tightening over his broad chest. “Try and get some sleep,” he said finally, signaling their conversation was at an end, before turning and heading back down the stairs.
Cordelia shivered alone in the great hallway, the door behind her gone quiet but no less threatening. He’d told her to sleep somewhere else, but she couldn’t imagine trusting another room now, especially after his shadow story, even if it was just a deer, which she doubted. Turning, she spied the room her sister had chosen and scurried past her own door toward it, inching inside.
In the dark—her sister’s light had apparently not been on when the power failed—she made her way to the bed, carefully pulling the blankets back and slipping inside.
Beside her, Eustace groaned and rolled over. “Cordy?”
“Shhh. Go back to sleep.”
