Page 71 of If I Stopped Haunting You

Pen turned to the others, smiling weakly as she forked in another bite past her lips. “Just creepy,” she agreed around the mouthful. The food turned to ash on her tongue, and she reached for Neil’s beer, forcing it down.

She shivered, thinking of that creeping feeling in the stairwell. The darkness had been pressed to their backs, desperately reaching for them past the circle of light. And as they sat, examiningthe room, pretending like things between them hadn’t changed, the door had been slammed shut and locked by some unseen force.

The woman from the window, presumably.

“Well, could you tell us a bit more about the next partner exercise?” Neil asked, turning back to Laszlo.

“This one is a bit more catered to the horror or paranormal writers here, but each pair will be sent to a specific part of the castle to describe it aloud to each other using your five senses.” Holding up a finger for each one, he counted, “Sight, sound, smell, taste, and touch. What do you see? What do you hear? Taste and smell, and,” he said with a smile, “if you’re daring enough, what do youfeel?”

“Not that kind of feeling,” Daniela murmured.

Pen smacked her on the arm. “Will you stop it, please? It’s embarrassing enough that you walked in on us, I don’t need you rubbing salt in the wound.”

“Ouch,” Neil muttered. “Didn’t know I was awound.”

“You’re not a wound. That’s not what I meant.”

“I mean,” Laszlo piped up, “you did use that metaphor.”

She ran her hands down her face, groaning.

Laszlo and Daniela had strolled in casually and watched as Pen wrapped herself around Neil like a koala and practicallywrithedagainst him. Pen and Neil would never live it down, but her especially. And now she was saying all the wrong things. Couldn’t she be normal for once?

“Okay, so, same pairings,” Laszlo said, changing topics as Neil glared down at the table. “Do you want me to draw places, or do you want to choose?”

“Maybe we could choose? The study has nothing,” Daniela drawled.

Neil turned to Pen, his expression carefully blank. Pen pressed her lips together, clearing her throat. It wasn’t the place; it was the people. Whoever Georgina was, she did not want to communicate with this lot. For whatever reason, she had chosen Pen and Neil.

“I guess we could try the tower,” Laszlo said. “I mean, Pen and Neil didn’t see anything up there, but it could be different for us.”

Daniela nodded as she drank the last of the beer. “Yeah, that’s a good idea.”

Pen swiveled to Neil. They knew where they needed to go; there was only one place in this castle with the answers.

“We’ll head upstairs, check out the east wing,” Neil lied.

“But not the west wing,” Laszlo reminded as he and Daniela stood to go.

Pen wrung her hands as Neil stood. “Are you sure this is a good idea?” she hissed, following him out.

They abandoned their laptops and turned to the left, down the hall to the staircase. Pen paused on the bottom stair, glancing from the chandelier hanging in the foyer to the sconces and finally, to the portrait of the woman.

Georgina.

The tear she’d seen in it when they’d first arrived was even worse, the upper right of the canvas shredded. Georgina’s eyes seemed even fiercer, and there was now a line between her brows like she was growing angry. It was weird to see a legend, a story passed down and whispered in the dark as children nuzzled in for bed, come to life. But Georgina was real, and here they were, planning to seek her out.

“We’ve got some Dorian Gray–level shit going on here,” Pen murmured.

“I don’t like that,” Neil said.

“Me neither.”

He grunted in confirmation but said nothing more. Pen pulled him to a stop next to her, searching his expression. “I’m sorry about earlier. I didn’t mean what I said.”

He raised a brow. “Which part? That I’m a wound, or that you’re embarrassed to be seen with me?”

“Neil.”