“In the wardrobe,” the other maid said. “Or under the bed?”
“Fine,” he said. “You may go.”
He gave a little sigh of relief as he turned and found Hattie in entirely the wrong portion of the suite, peeking under armchairs. He noted that she had taken up a fire poker, though he was unclear on if she intended to use it as a weapon or a probe.
Perhaps he could just lock the entire house up and put everyone in a nearby inn. Surely, no one would argue with that.
“Willa?” she called, making him freeze with his foot halfway through a step. “Is it you?”
“Harriet,” he said, exasperated. “It is not Willa.”
She frowned, turning to shoot him a look. “You don’t know that.”
Despite himself, it did put a chill up his back. “It isn’t,” he repeated as firmly as he could muster. “And you’re in the wrong place. Give me that poker before you harm yourself.”
“No,” she said, hugging it to her body as she came up to standing and gave a sniff. “All the windows are open. What if someone came in through one?”
“Scaled up the painted brickwork with their fingernails, did they?” he said flatly. “Hattie.”
“Harriet?” she repeated, mocking him.
He paused, taking a long, slow inhale through his nostrils and closing his eyes against the spark of impulse that rang through his hands at that. He gave his head a little shake and sighed, blinking his vision back into place and nodding toward the bedchamber. “Come on,” he said. “The maids said it was over here.”
She nodded, scooting across the floor with shuffling steps until she was standing in his shadow, following him to the place where the wraiths had sounded.
The bed had been stripped down to its tufted, eiderdown mattress, he saw, and a polish rag was hanging over the footboard, dust half removed along the heavy cedar bevels. He held his arm back to stop Hattie from coming any further and bent at the knees, attempting to peer under the bed to see if anything was lurking down there in the dark.
The light from the windows was casting a harsh shadow, unfortunately, and he couldn’t make much out. Though he did note that it smelled much better in here with the surf in the air than it did with the must of seven years of sealed air.
“Well?” she whispered, huffing when he only shook his head.
He turned and looked at her, reaching out to take the poker from her hands, slowly, so as not to make her grip it harder.Mercifully, she relented, letting it slip free with nothing more than a frown and whimper in protest.
He reached the poker in his hand out toward the wardrobe towering over the corner, aiming the tip of the thing at the door, and then gave two quick taps to the wood.
The sound responded immediately.
Rustling, like naughty children hiding in a corner, whispering and panicking at being caught.
“Oh, Christ!” Hattie squeaked, slapping her hands over her mouth.
He frowned.
“Is someone there?” he asked, attempting to sound stern.
More rustling. More whispers.
He glanced back at Hattie and handed her the poker, which she snatched with more enthusiasm than Elias felt strictly necessary. “Go stand by the door,” he instructed.
He waited for her to retreat, Hattie standing between the foot of the bed and the door with the poker held like a bludgeon, before he put his hands on the wardrobe handles. He counted to three. Mint jelly three. And then he swung them open.
Bats.
She screamed.
He might have too, ducking his head down as no fewer than half a dozen of them exploded out of the tattered remains of Willa’s clothing, screeching and flapping about the room in just as much of a panic as Elias and Hattie.
“Get down!” he boomed at Hattie as she attempted to swing the poker wildly in the air. “On the floor!”
