“Would you wear silk?” he demanded. “If you could afford it?”
Edwina threw up her hands in exasperation. “Of course I’d wear silk. What woman wouldn’t? But unless there is a demon here in Bletsoe, and the capture fee is ten times what it usually is, I think the point is moot.”
“Hmm.” He looked like he was plotting something.
“There isn’t a demon here,” she said swiftly, because she didn’t want to manifest such a possibility. “There absolutely isn’t.”
“No. Not a demon.”
Edwina ran through all the possibilities. “Some sort of shadow-creature perhaps? One that can physically manifest if what Lady Willoughby was saying about its eyes and hands is to be believed? Though I’ve never heard of its like.”
He hesitated. “Shadow… no. But… something that can manifest at will? Within a locked vault? And then vanish into nothingness?”
Her good mood slipped off her like a shroud from Lady Willoughby. “I don’t like those possibilities very much.”
“Ghost? Phantom? Grey Lady?”
“The problem is that none of the above could perform such a feat in a church,” she pointed out. “Hallowed ground and all that. There’s power in prayer, and I honestly don’t know what sort of creature could cross a churchyard and not be stripped of etheric force. And it would be a very powerful, very dangerous ghost if Lady Willoughby could actually feel its touch.”
“Mmm.” Sterling stared at the crossroads ahead. “Whatever it is, it has to have its own form of protection, or you’re quite right. It would have been stripped of power.”
“Could it be riding Lady Willoughby? Her aura might be strong enough to protect some sort of foreign entity from the effects of hallowed ground.”
Another troubling thought.
“A possession? You said you didn’t sense anything,” he said.
“No, but then, I never got a chance to get near to her. And as I said, there was too much of Willoughby bleeding through.”
“You would have sensed it.” Sterling sighed. “Whatever this is, it’s quite perplexing.”
“So where next?”
“Where else?” He set a hand in the small of her back as they reached the crossroads and then nudged her gently toward the town. “The scene of the crime.”
The next stop was the vault.
The priest very kindly unlocked it, answered all of their questions, and then hesitated at the edge of the vault’s door, his face paling.
“We should be fine to continue our investigation ourselves,” Edwina said kindly.
“Ah, yes, yes.” The priest’s smile was fleeting. “I do have to prepare for congregation. You’ll call me when you need me to lock the door?”
“Of course.”
And then he was gone.
“I think he just set a new world record for covering one hundred feet in half a second,” Sterling mused.
“He’s frightened. Lady Willoughby woke from the dead last week and now all he can see is ghosts. And this is a dark vault.”
“It’s not bothering me.”
“Yes, but you’ve spent half your life battling shadow demons and succubae…. Any nerves you once owned are long gone.”
He prowled into the darkness, his square shoulders disappearing into shadows. “I’ve never been afraid of the dark. Not like my brother, Hart. The dark is where mischief happens. And I like mischief.”
Edwina rolled her eyes. “I think nearly every lady in London knows that.”
