Page 189 of Love at First Fright

Nothing.

It was like trying to grasp smoke. The harder I reached for it, the more it dissipated. I could feel the shape of it—the terrible weight of that night—but the details remained frustratingly out of reach.

“Did Michael die too?” I braced myself for the answer, though I barely remembered the man. Only the faintest impression of deep loss. Of caring about someone. Of mattering to them.

“No.” Lady Grimthorne shook her head. “He lived. The family moved out the following week. I never saw them again.”

I frowned. Something about the whole thing didn’t make sense. “I remember him down there with me. Screaming. But…” I trailed off, confusion clouding my thoughts. “Michael used a wheelchair. After his climbing accident. He couldn’t have walked down all those stairs to the bottom of the basement.”

Conflictedness flashed across Lady Grimthorne’s face. As if she was weighing whether I truly wanted to hear what happened. What I’d forgotten or chosen not to remember.

I was conflicted too.

Part of me needed to know. Needed to understand how I’d ended up with a hole in my chest, trapped between life and death in this godforsaken manor.

But another part—the cowardly part—wanted to leave it buried. Keep the not-knowing as a buffer against whatever horror waited in those lost memories.

I looked at Charlie.

His blue eyes caught the grey light from the window, transforming them into something luminous. Concerned. Beautiful in a way that made me want to weep.

“Maybe it’s better if you don’t—”

The roar of an electric saw suddenly exploded through the manor, cutting off Charlie’s words.

And every ghost in the house screamed.

And somewhere below us, deep in the foundations of Grimthorne Manor, I heard it.

A laugh.

Low. Cruel. Triumphant.

twenty-seven

Bat

No time to think.

Only time to move.

I disappeared from the library, pulling myself through the fabric of the house. The manor blurred around me—walls, floors, centuries all compressed into a single breath. I reformed in the piano room.

Correct guess.

Molly huddled there with Edmund, the twins clutched against her skirts, and Thomas hovering near the window. All of them flickered and faded, terror bleeding their forms translucent.

“Molly!” I closed the distance between us, and she jerked, one hand flying to her chest. “I need your help. Charlie. I need to keep him safe. Now.”

Her one visible eye widened behind the bloodstained cloth. Then she straightened, but not with a servant’s posture.

With a mother’s.

“Of course, love.” Fierce. Immediate. No questions asked.

I vanished again, pulling myself back to the library. Lady Grimthorne pressed her palms against the window, her form flickering like a candle in the wind.

“Charlie!” I shouted.