But instead of the satisfying sound of a lock being turned, the bloody thing emits another warning chirp, before declaring:
One attempt left.
Cate stands there, frustrated, stunned.
And then she hears another sound. Beyond the office. The shuffle of feet in the foyer, and the unmistakable creak of a wooden door.
Hide. That’s her first thought. But her second is that she’s already been spotted. The question is, by who? She’s halfway to the office door when she remembers the tea on the desk and ducks back for it, dumping the contents in the nearest empty pot as she rushes into the hall.
She reaches the foyer, half expecting to see one of the others racing up the stairs.
But the foyer is empty. Just the table with its grim antler sculpture. And the gong on the landing. And Cate.
And a draft.
A gust of cold air that has her turning toward the front door just in time to see a flash of red vanishing through the gap, the heavy door groaning shut before closing with an audible thunk.
Cate stares, trying to convince herself that it was nothing, and no one, and definitely not a ghost. But nonetheless a bad feeling is crawling over her, and she’s seen enough films to know that you don’t follow the bad feeling out into the dark.
She hurries up the stairs and back into the safety of her too-green room, locking the door before slumping back against it, heart hammering in her chest. Relieved, but painfully awake.
It was nothing, she tells herself. Her mind playing tricks in a spooky old house. This is real life, not some shitty horror film.
She’s almost convinced herself.
When someone screams.
Part Two
Main Character Energy
Sienna
Chapter One
THE SOUND PIERCES THE NIGHT.
One moment Sienna’s wrapped in sleep, and the next, she’s upright, looking for Edgar, grasping in the darkness for the lamp on the table beside her bed and finding only air, before remembering this isn’t her bed, her room, her house.
Somewhere, a door slams open, footsteps pound down the hall, voices shouting, and somehow Malcolm is still asleep. She shoves him, saying, “Get up, get up,” until he finally groans and rolls over, lets out a groggy blur of expletives as Sienna lurches through the pitch-black room, hissing in pain as her hip collides with the corner of the desk before she finds the door.
She plunges out into the hall, trading the heady darkness for the thin light of moonlit glass and a handful of lamps left on below. Jaxon is stumbling out of his room, too, wearing nothing but boxers and an open robe, clutching a closed umbrella as if it were a sword. Which is ironic, considering there are weapons everywhere.
Malcolm shuffles up behind Sienna. “What the devil is going on?” he growls.
“Someone screamed.” Sienna is sure the sound was coming from their wing, which means—
“Millie.”
They round the corner and find Millie sitting on the runner, her back against her door and her knees to her chest, looking shaken.
“Who did it?” she whimpers.
Sienna sinks to her knees beside the girl as Priscilla arrives, hair in a pink bonnet, followed by Kenzo, who looks like he never went to bed. Cate appears last, wide-eyed and worried, a green tartan throw around her shoulders.
Concern ripples through the gathering.
“What’s going on?”
