“You worried about me, Jablonski?” she asked, and it was his turn to blush.
“I won’t let anyone hurt you,” he said before walking away.
She stood there a very long time watching him recede, his words like a bandage around her heart.
Her phone vibrated in her pocket, and she checked it. It was Molly saying the estate attorney in Hartford needed copies of the paperwork on the trust, paperwork they mysteriously no longer had. But Cordelia, being the vigilant professional she’d always been, had been smart enough to take pictures of each sheet with her phone. It wouldn’t be as good as a fax or even an email, but she could at least text those images over and get the ball rolling.That would be one tiny step forward. Every other step she’d tried to take had resulted only in failure or a near-death experience. Fighting back suddenly felt riskier than it had a day ago.
Bone Hill, it seemed, would decide what was to be done with it.
And what was not.
CHAPTER EIGHTEENTHENURSERY
THE HOUSE WASquiet the next day.Tooquiet. All Cordelia could hear was the infernal ticking of that clock.
When she woke up, Gordon was already gone. She couldn’t hear the birds outside through the windows or the gusts beating against the siding. If she was upstairs, she couldn’t hear her sister cooing over the fox downstairs. If she was downstairs, she couldn’t hear Eustace tromping down the hall upstairs. She had enough experience to know how vocal old houses could be, protesting every tread, every stiff wind, every opened door. Boards creaked. Hinges whined. Windows rattled in their panes like kettles set to boil.
But no matter where she was in the house, she continued only to hear thetick,tick,ticklike a persistent insect and nothing else.
She’d left the clock on the hall tree the night before and gone to bed. But it woke her sometime after the witching hour, calling like a mewling babe—tick,tick,tick…as if it were counting down the time she had left.
She’d stomped down the stairs in her pajamas and glared at it darkly, not wanting to wake Gordon, finally stooping to pick it up and return it to the turret room before going back to bed.
It woke her again promptly after seven.
Annoyed, she’d done her best to ignore it all morning, moving from room to room to get out of earshot. She’d never noticed it before, which made her certain it was only her guilt amplifying the sound. But then she became aware of how quiet therestof the house was, as if every brick and board were playing a practical joke on her.
Unnerved, Cordelia found her sister feeding blackberries to the fox under a potted tree in the solarium. She watched her. Eustace kept a string of pets in her adult life, always taking in strays and treating them like children. But Cordelia saw a preternatural bond growing between her and this wild animal. Her sister was besotted beyond reason.
“Something’s wrong,” she said, stepping out from behind a plumeria.
Eustace grinned as the fox nipped at her finger. “How so?”
“The house doesn’t sound right.”
Eustace glanced at her. “I don’t hear anything.”
“Exactly,” Cordelia said. “It’s too quiet. Except the clock.”
“What clock?” her sister asked.
“You don’t hear it?”
“I think you’re just keyed up after all the excitement yesterday.” Eustace was barely able to tear her eyes away from the creature. “I’m calling her Marvel,” she said as an aside.
“I’m scared, Eustace,” Cordelia told her, crossing her arms. “All that blood… What if whoever did that is still on the property? I never told you, but our first night, when the bats went crazy in my room, Gordon said he thought he saw someone leaving the house. And then this happens, and the papers for the trust disappear. We’re not wanted here. Clearly, someone wants us to leave, to forfeit our inheritance.”
“Whoever has been messing with us is not coming back,” Eustace told her confidently. “Not with that tank we’ve got crashing in the parlor. He’s the biggest man around for a hundred miles.”
“What if they’re not a man—not a person—at all?”
Eustace gave her a quizzical look. “I am very high on life—and a little bit of Acapulco Gold—so you’re going to have to spell this out for me, Cordy, because I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“The article, remember?Morna,” Cordelia hissed. “The animals… The blood…”
Eustace sucked her teeth, the connections dawning. “Can they…dothat?”
Cordelia remembered the taut lines in her mother’s face behind the shed that day. Maggie certainly thought they could. “Remember the seance? The curtains—the vase?”
