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Phineas shot to his feet and reached toward Bridget as though to throw himself between her and a weapon destined to hurt her. But he stopped himself before he touched her.

Bridget still stared at the piece of ivory in her palm, and he didn’t miss the tremble in her hand. Finally, she blinked and dropped the pointer, and it clattered across the wooden board, the sound haunting in the eerily silent parlor.

Thunder boomed, shaking the stone walls around them, and the bubble of quiet burst.

“What was that?” he blurted, his attention not wavering from where Bridget stood as though frozen.

“‘Twas ghosts, obviously.” Mr. Bunton-Talmadge looked rather pleased with his contribution.

His wife scoffed. “Not my Aunt Euphemia. She was a gentle soul⁠—”

“Enough!” Phineas barked, and the older woman jumped. Bridget still had not moved, had not stopped staring at the ivory piece. “Madame Bridgette, what was that?”

She didn’t seem to hear his question, because the Bunton-Talmadges were bickering, and she still stared vacantly at the table while wringing her hands, her mouth working but no sound coming out.

He may not know Bridget well—he didn’t know her at all, and didn’t intend to, other than exposing her to the world as a fake. But if she was this rattled by what had occurred, it might be the thread he needed to pull to watch her entire charade unravel.

He took her arm and tugged. In perhaps the most significant indication that something was wrong, she did not resist as he guided her away from the couple. “Tell me what just happened,” he commanded.

She didn’t meet his gaze directly. “A—a spirit, I think.”

“You’ve been speaking to spirits since I arrived,” he fired back. “How is this different?”

“This was…” She rolled her lips between her teeth and released them with a gust of breath. “This was real.”

His heart pitched, soaring at the admission and tumbling at what it meant. This was real. “Are you admitting to faking the others? Was it you moving the pointer?”

She jolted as though touched by an electric wire and returned to life. “No, that’s not what I said.”

“You did. You admitted⁠—”

The parlor door swung open, and he almost—almost—expected a corporeal spirit to be standing on the threshold, but it was merely the housekeeper, her brows knit in concern. “Bridget—Madame Bridgette,” she corrected herself. “The river is rising—what’s happened, dear girl?”

“Um, nothing. It was…” She trailed off, her voice so hoarse her words were difficult to decipher.

The housekeeper gave him a sideways glance before making her way between them and pulling Bridget aside. He strained his ears to hear, but the Bunton-Talmadges had taken their argument over Great-Aunt Euphemia’s demeanor to a searing assessment of her entire branch of the family.

Dangerous, the housekeeper said. Should leave… The west wall…

“I beg your pardon,” he interrupted, not begging his pardon in the least, “but if something is amiss, we deserve to know.”

The bottle-green of her eyes scraped over him like a knife. Whatever worry he’d glimpsed before, she’d hidden away. “The stream is rising, and soon it may cover the bridge to the main road.”

“Are we in danger?” Mr. Bunton-Talmadge asked.

Bridget gave him a tight smile that didn’t come close to reaching her eyes. “Only if you fear being in Ashveil Manor for more than one night.”

She’s lying, and this time, she lied about more than the ghosts.

“But if you wish to depart,” Bridget continued, “Mr. and Mrs. Keenan will gladly transport you to the Amity Inn for the night.”

Mrs. Bunton-Talmadge yanked her husband’s sleeve and dropped her voice to a harsh whisper. “I can’t risk being stuck here,” she hissed. “I didn’t pack enough underthings.”

Her husband lifted his head. “We’ll return to the village with them.”

Bridget’s jaw twitched, and she gave a stilted nod. “Of course.” Slowly, reluctantly, she turned to Phineas. “And you, Valebrook? Are you leaving us as well?”

A logical man would leave. He didn’t yet possess definitive proof of her duplicity, nor enough to declare himself the winner of their wager. But Bridget’s admission was sufficient to warrant further investigation. She’d made a critical error, and if he stayed, who knew what she might do? Whatever happened at the table had rattled her, pushed her towards some invisible edge. Perhaps he could push her further and draw more confessions from her, even if her words might tear the skin from his face in the process.