But ignoring them never made them vanish. Ignoring them had never stopped their burning eyes from watching her, their icy breath from chilling her skin, their whispers from curling around her like gossamer webs.
The rasping scrape carried through the stillness, closer now, louder, nothing like the whispers she had grown accustomed to all these years. This felt different. Frightening.
She squeezed her eyes shut. She should crawl back into bed, pull the sheets over her head and shut out the world until morning light bled pale gold across the room.
But she could not.
She knew that Papa had meant the very best for her, but he had been wrong. Acknowledging the wraiths didn’t make them appear and ignoring them didn’t keep them away. They came whether she wanted them or not. And if she ignored them, they only grew bolder.
Heart pounding, she relit her candle and crossed to the door. The corridor stretched before her, lit only by a streak of silver moonlight slicing through a high window at the far end.
She hesitated, her breath coming in shaky rasps. If you follow them, Isabella, they will only take you deeper into the dark.
But the sound, deep, grating, impossible to ignore, pulled at her. She thought of an iron poker dragged against the stone of a hearth but could not say why that particular image came to her.
Breath fogging in the cold air, footsteps barely a whisper against the carpet, she stepped forward.
Then the house fell still, silence descending, heavy and watchful.
Almost did she turn back. Almost.
But that would mean hearing the sound again tomorrow night, or the night after, until she finally answered the summons. Better to choose to pass the threshold now than be dragged across it against her will.
And so, she walked on.
She turned a corner, then another. She let her fingertips drift along the wall, guiding her, the rise and dip of doorframes marking entryways to locked rooms. Each knob held fast.
The corridor grew narrower, the walls closing in, leaning toward her.
It is not real, she told herself. But it felt real.
Icy breath drifted across her nape. A whisper of laughter, high and childish, danced at the edges of hearing. She smelled roses, sweetly floral with just a hint of honey.
Isabella turned and froze.
A girl stood at the far end of the hallway, her slight frame swallowed by an oversized nightgown tied with thin, pink satin ribbons. Pale hair hung in damp, tangled strands, spilling over her narrow shoulders. Her eyes, too large for her delicate face, fixed on Isabella with unblinking intensity.
The girl did not move. Not even the hem of her nightgown stirred in the draft that sighed along the floor.
She was no wraith, for her form was as solid as Isabella’s own.
Isabella took a cautious step forward, her pulse thrumming like the wings of a moth caught in a spider’s web. “Hello?”
The question was greeted by silence.
She was no servant; Isabella was fairly certain of that. The gown was fine, the fabric delicate and expensive, yet…wrong somehow.
The girl’s pale face gleamed in the moonlight, her expression vacant, eyes dark and endless as she stared at Isabella with an eerie intensity, her head tipped to one side.
“Do you need help?” Isabella asked, taking another step forward, an uncomfortable wariness crawling through her. “Are you lost?”
The girl’s head twitched sharply, a convulsive movement, the angle unnatural, like a doll’s head knocked loose. Isabella’s pulse stuttered. A small, thin sound escaped the girl’s lips, not a word or even a moan, just…breath.
“Who are you?” Isabella whispered, every instinct screaming that something was terribly wrong.
The girl blinked slowly and took a single step forward, the movement odd and stiff, disjointed, as though her limbs argued the command of her mind.
Isabella’s breath caught. The cold deepened, sharp as thorns against her skin.
