Page 115 of A Time of Witches

While strange, she couldn’t focus on that now. Not when she needed to get to the clearing.

She rushed from the secret room and came to an abrupt halt at the figure standing in the middle of the library.

Asher.

Asher, who had not told her early on that the magistrate had been his ancestor. No wonder he had been so cagey about the manor, so evasive with her questions.

The rush of anger was instantaneous and blistering.

His eyes widened when he saw her. “Lilith, what—?”

“You lied to me,” Lilith snapped.

Asher frowned, blinking.

“Don’t you dare ignore me.” She stomped over to him, her feet somehow muted on the wood floors.

She stopped in front of him, and he put his hands out. “Lilith? What is the matter with you?”

“What’s the matter with me?” she repeated. “I’m angry that you failed to tell me that the magistrate’s last name was Walsingham, the same as yours. Your ancestor murdered Sybil Brantham.”

He shook his head. “You didn’t know that? But can we talk about—”

“Is this why you’ve been so cagey about coming here?”

He pulled his head back in surprise. “No, I didn’t think it was of any consequence. Lilith, it happened nearly four hundred years ago… But why are you—”

“Then why do you act all weird about the manor?” She softened. “Asher, did you live here?”

He rubbed the back of his neck and exhaled a defeated sigh. “I did. For most of my childhood. I was the creepy kid who lived in the old haunted manor.” He looked away, shamefaced.

“I went on the third floor,” she confessed. “And the attic.”

His gaze snapped back to her.

She held his stare. “I saw the paintings.”

“I’m sorry you saw those.” He rubbed a hand over his face.

“Wait—you painted those?” Lilith asked in shock.

He sighed. “I wasn’t honest before about the house. I…I didn’t want you to leave.” He offered a helpless shrug. “I didn’t want to lose you.”

Lilith pulled in a quiet breath and the heat of her anger cooled into something that twisted in her chest. “Why would you lose me?”

“My father obsessed over the legacy of Brackenmere Manor. When he died, the manor became everything to me.”

“You obsessed over it too?” Lilith asked in a whisper.

Asher nodded. “Aunt Jacqueline had the other house built and moved me out. But there was this draw, this need to be there. Until you.”

Lilith swallowed. “Me?”

“Since you arrived, the house has let me go. I don’t feel its pull and I don’t have that dream anymore.”

Her heartbeat quickened. “What dream?”

“The one where a woman fades into the house.” He gave her an odd look. “It’s why I painted the canvases. But now…looking at you…”