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“Sorry to intrude on your little date,” Katherine says, “but I thought you should know that Mariah’s boss told Edward about yesterday’s episode in the garden.”
I turn my head in the direction of Katherine’s voice. My night vision isn’t as good as it should be, so I can only discern her faint outline through the bars.
“You put those visions in my head,” I croak.
“I showed you what you already know,” she says. “The conclusions you’ve drawn are your own.”
“If you weren’t already dead, I’d fucking kill you.”
“You were never going to go through with it, William. You know why you can’t.” She whirls around and exits through the exterior door.
Alone in the darkness, I open my mouth to roar, but all that comes out of my dry, cracked throat is another hacking cough.
Chapter Twelve
Mariah
I slide to my knees in front of the place where Will disappeared, my sweat gone cold and clammy from fear. He told me once that I look like incense burning when I leave him, and that’s how he looked to me. I didn’t think ghosts had anywhere to disappear to. Maybe there’s a deeper level to this plane I don’t know about. One that I can’t reach.
I refuse to believe Will’s a demon. My mom thought she met a demon once. He tried talking to her from inside her head, and it scared her so much she was afraid to be alone in a room for weeks.
Will doesn’t scare me. He’s more like my guardian angel, watching over me. I hope he’s okay, wherever he’s gone. As far as I know, there isn’t anything that can permanently harm a spirit. Still, before he vanished, he looked like he was in a lot of pain.
I keep an eye out for Will on the property the next day, hoping I might spot him in the bleed-through. In my dreams, I search the house and the grounds and come up empty. I try to get down to the basement, but the door is locked, and I can’t find a key.
A week passes, and I still can’t find him.
It’s like he’s disappeared without a trace, not that Will has ever left much of a mark on the landscape. But on the map of my memory, he’s a bright, shining beacon guiding me through the darkness.
Now his light is missing, and I don’t know which way is north.
Where did you go, Will? Why won’t you come back to me?
Edward stops me on my way out the door one morning to invite me to join the family for breakfast. It’s Saturday, one of our busier days at the winery, and I’m finally running on time for a change, but he insists.
“I already told Keema I’d be keeping you this morning,” he says. “I promise, you’re going to want to see this.”
I’ve been successfully avoiding Chastity and her mystery cocktails for a few days now. Whatever she has for me this morning, I’m not sure I can stomach it.
Swallowing a sigh, I say, “Okay, just for a minute,” and follow Edward into the dining room where Chastity and Christopher are already seated.
“Look what I caught in the hall,” Edward says.
Chastity bares her teeth. “How good of you to join us, Miss Greyson.”
“Morning,” I say.
Christopher fills his mouth with soggy-looking Grape-Nuts and says nothing. He’s once again taken to glaring at me when he thinks Edward won’t notice.
I take a seat, upturn my coffee mug, and reach for the pot of coffee at the center of the table. Chastity plops a glass of something deep purple in front of me.
“It’s a blood-orange blueberry smoothie,” she says.
“Thanks,” I tell her. “But I’ll just have coffee.”
She squints. “But you need your vitamin C.”
I grab an orange from the bowl of fruit on the table.
