“Adequate.”
“Just adequate?”
I think of how amazing it must be to be able to fly.
“The weather deteriorated once I reached the coast,” he says. “Rain and wind made the final approach challenging.”
I look up at the sky. It’s the same dull gray it always is here, heavy with the promise of more rain. Right now, it’s drizzling, fine, cold droplets that stick to my hair and face.
“It rains a lot here,” I say. “I’m so tired of it. I just want to go home.”
He doesn’t respond to that.
I pull my jacket tighter around me and nod toward the castle.
“Come on. Let me show you around. You probably want to see what we’re dealing with.”
He follows me without a word.
The grounds are a disaster. The gardens that were once beautiful are now overgrown with weeds and tangled shrubs. The outer wall has gaps where stones have fallen and never been replaced. We pass a small graveyard with weathered headstones, most of them so old the names have worn away. Beyond that, the cliffs drop two hundred feet straight down to the Atlantic. The sound of waves crashing against the rocks is constant and violent, a roar that never stops.
“The castle was built in 1347,” I say as we walk. “By Lord Edmund Holloway. He expanded it over the next century. The family made their fortune from tin mining and shipping. By the 1800s, it was already falling apart. When the last of the Holloways emigrated to America, they left the castle behind but kept the deed. It’s been in decline ever since.”
Castien says nothing. He just walks beside me, his eyes scanning the ruins.
We reach the main entrance. The door is heavy wood, partially rotted at the bottom, but it still swings open when I push it. The entry hall is grim. High vaulted ceiling, stone floor cracked and uneven, narrow arrow slits for windows that let in almost no light. The space is cold, damp, and smells like decay.
“Whole sections have collapsed,” I say. “The east wing is completely gone. Just empty archways and rubble.”
“Is the structure safe?” Castien asks.
“Safe enough if you stick to the ground floor and basement. Mr. Tremaine knows which areas to avoid.”
We walk through to the great hall. It’s massive, the kind of space designed to hold feasts and impress guests, but now the roof has partially caved in. Sections are open to the sky. When it rains, water pools on the stone floor. Ivy grows through gaps in the walls, and the old timber beams overhead sag dangerously.
“This is where the Holloways entertained,” I say. “Back when they had money and power.”
We move on to the dining room. It’s in slightly better shape. The long table is still intact, though covered in dust and debris. High-backed chairs are scattered around it, most of them broken or toppled. There’s a massive fireplace at one end, and the walls are lined with tapestries so faded and rotted they’re barely recognizable as anything.
“I’m not going to show you the entire castle,” I say. “Most of it is irrelevant anyway. What we’re interested in is under it.”
Castien’s glowing eyes turn to me.
“There’s a vault down there,” I continue. “Deep in the cave system. It contains the Holloway fortune. That’s what we’re here for. That’s the mission. Every Holloway heir before me has tried to reach it and failed. Some died trying, others came back broken. But I’m going to succeed where they didn’t.”
“How many heirs have attempted the vault?” Castien asks.
“At least a dozen that I know of from family records,” I say. “Possibly more. Not all of them made it back to tell the story.”
His glowing silver eyes stay on me for a moment, then he looks away.
We leave the dining room and go down a corridor to the library. The doorway has a partially collapsed frame that I have to duck under. Inside, the walls are lined with built-in shelves. The books are still here, almost completely rotten. Pages have disintegrated into pulp, leather bindings are crumbling, and the smell of mold is overwhelming. I sneeze twice and wipe my nose.
“There might have been useful information here once,” I say. “But it’s all gone now. I had to rely on family documents that were kept in America and passed down through generations.”
Castien looks at the shelves, at the ruined books, and says nothing.
We leave the library and find the stairs leading down to the basement. The stone steps are worn smooth in the center from centuries of use. The air grows colder as we descend, and there’s no natural light down here. I flip the switch at the bottom of the stairs, and the lightbulbs Garrick strung along the corridor flicker on.
