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Karissa broke into a cathartic laugh, one that was long and loud.
“Considering I can fit everything I’m taking with me under
one arm?” she grinned. “Thanks for the offer, but that would be a ‘no’.”
Four
KARISSA
I took the third room on the left, counting back from the end of the hall. It was a huge room. They all were. But this one had a tremendous four-poster bed, as well as its very own fireplace. It was somehow large and cozy, and welcoming too.
A hundred years ago, someone had painted the walls and ceiling a lovely powder blue. Between all the fading and peeling, it resembled a serene sky filled with fluffy white clouds. I lay across my new mattress and bedding, that the guys had insisted on purchasing for me, and stared up into some fresco I couldn’t quite make out. I saw angels, or cherubs maybe. A pair of trumpets, aimed at the sky. The tip of a spear…
This is incredible.
The manor was impressive enough while I was working on it, but I’d always been busy. Now that I was living here, I had time to really soak it in. I walked the halls slowly, touching everything, realizing just how much work and effort went in to every tiny detail. Everything was carpeted, or paneled, or gold-gilded to perfection. Anything made of wood wasn’t merely molded or manufactured, it had been ornately carved by dozens of pairs of talented hands.
I’d checked all the rooms of course, before making my decision. All of them except one.
Because the room directly across from mine had been locked.
“You can have any room you like,” said Roderick, noticing I was struggling with the knob, “but that one stays locked.” He paused for a moment, perhaps realizing he was coming off kind of dickish. “You wouldn’t want that room anyway,” he added. “Trust me.”
Trust. It was something I wasn’t ready to give, even to my three jovial bosses. Well, two anyway. Roderick wasn’t exactly jovial, but I meant to figure him out when I got the chance.
Either way, I trusted this place a lot more than the last. I was safe and secure here. Surrounded not only by a century and a half of rich, silent history, but by three strapping construction workers walking around in shorts and T-shirts. I’d been here three nights already, and still hadn’t seen any one of the guys in their underwear. But not for lack of trying.
Easy, killer.
It was funny, how their presence in the house was made known even when they weren’t here. The guys owned a contracting company with a remote office in Fall River and two satellite sites. Most times they left before I even woke up, and came back long after the last of the crews here had left. It was the main reason they needed someone here with eyes. Someone to keep things rolling on the one construction project they weren’t directly involved in: their own.
But in the house, they’d taken their own three rooms back from history. They’d painted the walls in modern colors, and put up all new LED lighting fixtures that looked outright silly against the Victorian-era decor. They’d turned a spacious parlor into a comfortable living room. And one of them had hung a monster, high-definition television on the wall… right over the mantle of a fireplace engraved with a keystone dated 1867.
It was both funny and tragic.
Still, nothing compared to their more flagrant affront at the end of the west wing. There, they’d turned a sprawling, beautiful library — complete with thousands of books built into richly carved shelves — into their own combined version of a home gym.
There were whole racks of iron plates. Standing arrays of dumbbells, in every size, weight and shape. One of the walls had been refinished and completely mirrored, with three adjustable benches spaced equidistantly in front of it. Behind that were two treadmills and two stationary bikes. An elliptical glider for low-impact workouts, and a standing Smith machine that could be used for a variety of exercises — anything from bench pressing to squats.
I knew all this because I’d once been a gym rat. In another place, in another life, I’d spent six mornings a week in a place like this, honing and toning my body. The sweat had felt good, even if the cardio hadn’t. Yet it kept me in shape. The adrenaline became an addiction, and it kept me coming back.
If the guys worked out in the morning, I didn’t know. But they certainly worked out at night, each of them taking turns at cooking meals while the others did their thing. Bryce and Camden had invited me to work out with them, but I was still getting settled. It wouldn’t be long however, before I took them up on it. Especially since I’d gotten a glimpse at how beautifully pumped they were afterwards, their muscles all swollen and glistening on their way to the shower.
God, I needed to get laid.
“The ghosts of this place are going to haunt you,” I’d told Bryce earlier, leaning against the doorway as he finished his last set.
“Oh yeah?” The big blond teddy bear had dropped his towel over one massive shoulder and smiled. “And why’s that?”
“Because you shoved all the books aside to make way for your weights,” I smirked back at him. “You blocked the fireplace and took out the chairs. You covered the oak floors with rubber mats.”
“So?”
“So a ghost comes in here to read up on a little Stephen King?” I chided. “He’s assed out. He’s stuck watching you animals primp and preen and flex, in front of that mirror.”
I pointed, and Bryce laughed. He blew hard at a lock of errant hair, sending it flopping back over his forehead.
“Ghosts enjoy Stephen King, huh?”
