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Nothing.

I had no good reason to enter, except to fill the blanks in my mind, which seemed reason enough. If he was around, he could answer some questions because clearly we knew each other.

Intimately.

Although I could now remember showing the house, my interactions with Mordecai were muddled. Disconnected. I couldn’t fully draw his image on the inside of my eyelids. He was a series of impressions. Emotions. Feelings.

The stirring in my chest and burning need to reconnect these severed wires suggested he meant something to me, and not knowing why I couldn’t remember was infuriating… and mildly concerning.

The interior of the mansion felt familiar. With a heavy sense of déjà vu, I wandered to the parlor and fumbled for the light switch. With the room illuminated, I noted the arrangement of furniture. The painting of a man over the fireplace. The bookshelves and piano. Heavy drapes hung over the window, and I somehow knew without looking that all the windows were covered in the same fashion, holding the sunny fall day at bay.

The settee triggered a memory, and for an instant, I tasted fall rain and morning dew. A kiss so tender and invigorating, my lips tingled with the impression of a half-remembered moment.

Another memory stirred, but I couldn’t pin it down. Subconsciously, I fondled the St. Christopher pendant I wore around my neck.

In the kitchen, I discovered a map of Owen Sound sprawled on a worktop table, a bottle of water beside it. More of the fog cleared as bits and pieces of conversation came back to me. We were looking for something.

Someone.

Are you royalty?

In a manner of speaking.

I glanced around as though the answer might lie in the details of the room.

I’ll investigate after sundown.

Drawn to the fridge, I opened the door. Empty.

I opened the surrounding cupboards. Empty.

Another jolt of déjà vu. I’d done this before. Sought answers to…

“Restrictions. You have food restrictions. What does that mean?”

A steak restaurant. New York strip. Hot cocoa.

The basement door caught my attention. I stared at it for a long time. At the antique lock. When I tried to open it, I couldn’t. During the tour, I didn’t have a key that fit.

I wandered the rest of the house. The majority of the rooms were empty, unlived in. In the bathroom on the second floor, another memory slammed into me so violently, I had to lean on the doorframe to regain my balance.

The mirror. The missing mirror.

During the tour, I was convinced I’d witnessed a ghostly presence in that mirror. It had shaken me to the core, but no matter how hard I’d racked my brain, I could never quite figure out what I’d seen.

It was because I hadn’t seen anything, and that was the fucked-up part. Mordecai had crossed in front of the mirror, and I hadn’t seen anything. He’d cast no reflection. Like he wasn’t there at all.

Like he was a…

“No. Impossible. Grow the fuck up.”

But on the tail of one memory came another. The parlor. Mordecai had lit a fire. I’d admired the shadow cast by the grill but registered something was wrong about the impression on the floor and had been unable to put my thumb on it at the time.

Mordecai, who had stood before the flames, should have cast a shadow, but he didn’t.

Bordering hysteria, the breath exploded from my lungs in fits and starts. I squatted a moment and braced a hand on the floor as I suffered a bout of vertigo. The mansion felt both enormous and suffocating. The walls too close. The air too stale. The shadows too deep.

How many times had I listened to Mars and Ziggy talk about the Branvilla estate and how it was haunted? How many times had I laughed as they recounted tales of their childhood, of sneaking onto the property to explore, and swearing they’d encountered evil spirits?