Page 49 of Mortdale

“I didn’t say I’ve mailed it yet.”

He hummed, nodding. Clearly not the littlest bit convinced. “You’re free to write to her again. I will make sure the letters are delivered to her.”

“But you’ll read everything I send her.”

“Quite right. Let’s keep it under a page and nothing about the weather,” he said, grabbing his wet shirt off the floor and putting it back on.

“I am staying. You’re not locking me up in some far country house until I go mad from the voices. I’d very much like to go mad here first.”

“To be seen,” he said, picking me up from the table and carrying me out of his study, legs dangling and all.

“What happens if you lose your eyeballs overnight?” I asked, pushing away from him when he set me down.

“Of natural causes, I presume?”

“Of course, of course.”

“Go under your bed, Willow. And don’t let whatever fucking lays under there bite you.”

“Asshole.”

“Witch.”

I gasped.

He stopped at the door, “And Willow? Behave until I’m back.”

Christof had only watched and sighed as I’d unpacked everything. Gowns and garments were tossed all over the room while I laid sprawled on top of it all.

I was nowhere near close to figuring out what had happened to the Crimson Weaver red maidens. But I knew I’d find answers in this mansion. He couldn’t make me leave.

It was near the witching hour that I managed to crawl out of the mess and haunt the corridors since there was nothing else quite as pale and drained as I felt in the entirety of Mortdale.

I was painfully aware of my beloved husband’s presence at all hours of the day, so when the corridors filled with a haunting, cold air, I knew he wasn’t home. Even the shadows seemed to be terrified of him, and now they relished being left to haunt at peace.

Lady Cassandra's portrait stared back at me with so many secrets and all the answers to the questions I had. I could feel it. She knew why my coven sisters had died.

“I’m back,” I said, tapping my foot against the floor as I waited.

Even her death had not made it in the papers. I’d searched every corner of the archives, asked every spirit, evil and not so evil, lurking between the bookshelves, tried to pry it out of every vendor I’d stopped to buy from. But no. No one knew how the daughter of the old Duke of Darkheim had died.

“I’m not leaving him,” I whispered. “Not unless you come out and tell me why.” I knocked on the portrait’s frame, resting my ear against the painting. “Hello?”

The wooden floors creaked under phantom weight again, and I moved back from the painting, lifting the candle at the vacuum of darkness inviting me in.

I studied each and every painting and portrait the deeper into the well of family lineage I delved. His brothers had been nowhere near as pretty as my husband. Considering that his father was their copy, he must have taken after his mother. Like Cassandra.

But his mother was nowhere to be seen on any of the walls.

The wooden floor groaned a few feet away from me again, dipping with invisible footsteps towards a hidden corner farther down the corridor.

Wind stirred the candle flame I held up to the wall, forcing shadows to thicken and take shapes only of nightmares.

The last portrait was covered in a blood-red sheet. There was not a speck of dust on and it smelled like the laundry detergent Christof loved.

My fingers met something wet and cold when I reached for it. My hand remained frozen mid-air as the sheet pulled itself back to reveal a dark mass from under it.

Her pale yellow eyes were hanging out of their sockets, her burnt skin covered in a layer of puss and slimy soot, half of her head hairless while the other half was an ash-stained blond, singed and sparse.