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Sully reached out instinctively, finding Amy’s hand in the thick black. She startled but held on quickly, her grip firm despite the way her fingers trembled. He shifted closer and steadied her against his side. He had the house mapped in his bones—every landing, every turn—and he wasn’t about to let her stumble blind on this floor.

He fished in his pocket and closed around the small flashlight he always carried. The pale-yellow beam sputtered to life across the carved plaster walls.

The crew erupted in a tangle of voices, half panicked, half thrilled.

Sully tuned them out, suspicion already needling: This had to be staged. Maybe timed breakers, maybe a rig with locks on the doors. A good show for cameras, sure—but slamming every door in the house? That’s taking a joke too far. And if they cracked wood or busted glass, Mason was going to pay for it.

“Back to the command center,” Sully ordered above the chatter. He tightened his hand on Amy’s, guiding her firmly down the corridor and the sweeping stair where cables still snaked along the floor. Behind them, camera lights bobbed like marsh fire as the crew stumbled after.

When they pushed through to the makeshift command hub in the parlor, monitors winked uselessly dark. A knot of technicians were bent over switch boxes, muttering about fuses and surges.

“Wasn’t your backup generator supposed to cover this?” Sully asked them sharply.

“It should have,” one technician snapped, sweat shining on his forehead. “Something tripped hard. Whole system’s dead.”

Sully set his jaw. “I’ll check the panel.”

Amy gave him a worried look but let go of his hand as he headed for the basement stairs. The wood groaned under his boots, and the smell hit halfway down: thick brine and rotting kelp, sour enough to gag. He paused, heart thudding once, sharp. The sea was three hundred yards off—no reason for the basement to stink like wreckage washed onshore.

He shook it off, forcing a growl under his breath. “Damp, old pipes.”

At the bottom, his flashlight beam caught the electrical panel. The breakers had snapped clean. He braced an arm to steady and threw each switch back into place. The house gave a shiver, then lights blinked on above him one by one.

Back upstairs, the crew cheered, monitors blipping alive again in a rainbow of feeds. Mason was hunched over with the others, replaying a video. Amy stood stiffly at his shoulder.

“There—look there!” One tech jabbed a finger at the terrace camera. “Crossing the stonework. See that shadow figure?”

Sully leaned in, squinting. The screen showed only a smear of motion, gray on gray. He rubbed his eyes, shaking his head. “Could be cloud. Could be your focus slipping.”

But the crew was buzzing, replaying clips of doors slamming, mics catching bangs like rifle fire. They were eating it up, feeding off their own panic.

Sully had had enough. “If you want a real mystery,” he muttered, “go sniff that basement. The whole thing reeks of seaweed. Might be where your spook’s hiding.”

Two of the production assistants exchanged nervous glances. One grabbed a flashlight; the other followed. Sully smirked as they disappeared, already imagining how they’d jump at the smell.

He gave Amy a nod, half reassurance–half farewell, and slipped out the back door. The night was sharp with salt air, the cloud-scattered moon climbing in the star-studded sky. He strode across the gravel toward the carriage barn, boots crunching like bones underfoot. The banshee chorus of the crew, the hum of monitors—none of it followed him here.

What he wanted was wood to cut, rails to shape, something solid under his hands. The new banister for the staircase waited, and for once, thanks to Amy and her strange warm stones, he damn near had the energy for it.

Chapter 16

When the lights flickered back on, the entire foyer exhaled at once—crew voices rose, monitors came to life in a chorus of overlapping feed noise. Amy stood near the command center, blinking through the afterimage of darkness. Her pulse still hadn’t slowed.

Sully’s broad back disappeared through the front door, his flashlight cutting a clean, steady path into the night. For a heartbeat, she wished he hadn’t gone—his presence, frustrating as it was, had been the only solid thing in that storm of panic.

Now, left with the flickering glow of the monitors and the babble of excited techs, Amy’s nerves twisted. On screen, the terrace camera fed a jerky loop of night vision footage—grainy gray blur, a sweep of stone, and then… a faint distortion.

“There—there!” someone shouted. “Replay. Frame forty-six—see it?”

Amy leaned over Mason’s shoulder, her throat tight. The shadow figure glided across the patio, strange in shape and pace, almost liquid, then melted into the darkness.

Amy pressed her eyes shut. It was nothing, she told herself—static, artifact, cloud shadow. But the house itself felt different now. Every beam and floorboard seemed to hum faintly underfoot, a resonance that wasn’t tied to plumbing or wires. Amy tried to reach out to that calming presence that had been calling to her for years now, but she couldn’t feel it. It was either gone or occupied.

From across the room, Shannon’s voice cut through the hum. “The team found something odd downstairs—the smell Sully mentioned. They’re taking cameras.”

“Wait, what smell?” Amy asked, torn from the screen.

“Like sea brine,” said one assistant, wrinkling his nose. “You can smell it through the vents. Come see.”