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She looked back at the device in her hand. “I’m trying to check the electricity usage in here. This may not work because the outlets in here don’t have anything drawing from them currently, but I still want to see. I’m all buzzy, and the EMF readings just keep getting more erratic.”
The hairs on the back of my neck and arms were standing at attention, too, so I knew what she meant bybuzzy. I wasn’t so sure it had to do with electricity, though. Or even static. There was something going on in here—and not just this room. The entire house.
She used the probes on the device to test three different outlets in separate areas and then just shook her head. “That’s all completely normal, and they’re all powered. Doesn’t seem to be a short or a disturbance in the grounding or flow anywhere.”
She walked over to the copper tub and went to put her hand on it. My breath hitched. I wasn’t sure why. Maybe because we had just been talking about electricity, and she was about to touch a big conductor.
Just as she placed her hand on the lip of the tub, she bent at the waist, gasping. I nearly dropped the Handycam in an effort to get to her, knowing I needed to keep rolling in some capacity. When I reached her and put a hand on her neck, she straightened a little, her hands on her knees, her back flat. “Are you okay?” I asked.
She panted a bit. “Yeah. Yeah. Just . . . not sure.”
“You didn’t get electrocuted, did you?”
“What? No, no,” she said, straightening, causing my hand to drop away. “Nothing like that. I just . . . got a little lightheaded. My vision started to close in for a minute, and it was a bit hard to breathe. I’m okay. Really. Probably should have had more than sugar for breakfast.” She looked me in the eyes, her dark pools full of sincerity but her pupils a little blown. I knew she was all right, but I also saw the fatigue on her face. She’d tried to hide it with makeup, but like our first day here when it was just the two of us, I saw the dark circles under her eyes and the pallor of her skin.
I put a hand on her shoulder and saw her relax a little more. “You’re really okay?”
“Yeah, I’m good.” She nodded. “We should probably get back to Dakota.”
She was right, but I hated what I’d just witnessed. My gut was telling me that something was going on here. Something that would only get worse as the sun sank into the horizon.
Something I wasn’t sure any of us were prepared for.
CHAPTER5
~Schuyler~
It was night one of filming, and I was excited to dive in, but also beyond exhausted. The two energy shots I’d taken earlier already felt as if they were wearing off, and we had a very long night ahead. I just couldn’t seem to get a good night’s sleep lately. I’d always been one that didn’t remember my dreams, but I’d been recalling more and more of the ones I’d had recently. They were dark, full of blood, and downright terrifying. Which was saying something since I loved all things horror and immersed myself in anything creepy as often as I could.
But these . . . scenes of people in hooded cloaks surrounding an altar, chanting in a language I didn’t understand. There was always a male figure at the head of the group, holding something that looked a lot like Birdie’s athame—the ceremonial dagger that she used to set the magical, energetic circle before each of our investigations. There was always a chalice nearby, too, something big and ornate and ominous, and it only brought back bad memories of what’d happened at Arborwood and all the hell the team had experienced there.
Two nights ago, I’d even had visions of children. Blood and shadows and freaking Hell gates. Flashes of creatures with reptilian skin. Ghostly apparitions with pits for eyes. It was disturbing, and I had no idea where it was all coming from.
I really hoped that I wasn’t losing it. Between feeling so crappy lately and these dreams, I was starting to worry that I had something seriously wrong. Perhaps there really was something environmentally toxic at Lamour. Maybe it was just burnout. I should think about talking to Harper. She wasn’t only a kickass psychologist, she was also my friend, and I knew she’d be all too happy to listen and give me some advice.
Thinking of Harper had my mind shifting to the things she had uncovered about the house. After the actress and her husband had bought the place and lived out their lives there in the twenties, it had been owned by at least four different families who’d all seemingly left suddenly until it had been purchased by a guy who’d turned it into a sort of commune. From Harper’s research, and what Dev said Burke had been able to uncover, thirteen people had called the mansion home from nearly the first day under his ownership, and at one point, eighteen people had lived there. When the guy died, he’d passed it on to his son, and the tradition had continued.
People had reported incidences of black masses, and on a fateful night thirty or so years ago, all twelve members of the so-called Moon Call Coven that currently lived in the house had died suspiciously, nearly taking the mansion with them in a fire. The place had sat empty ever since, only maintained enough for sustainability by the local historical society, with numerous business transactions falling through until the real estate mogul Roch worked for purchased the place twelve years ago.
They’d been trying to renovate the house for the last decade to turn it into a bed and breakfast with issue after issue, which had eventually led to Roch calling Dev for help. And so . . . here we were.
I pulled up to the curb and saw the team vans and Dev’s and Pax’s vehicles. It looked as if I was the last one to arrive. I glanced at the clock and saw that I was still early and breathed a sigh of relief. Given how out of it I’d been recently, I was afraid I had really screwed up.
The front door opened, and Pax stepped out onto the porch. “There she is.” He smiled.
“Hey,” I said and then grabbed my gear, making my way through the gate. Pax rushed down the porch steps to help me, taking some of the stuff from my hands and giving me a long look.
“What?” I said, feeling a little prickly.
“You all right?” he asked.
“Yeah. Fine. Just haven’t been sleeping well is all. Everybody here?”
“Yep, they’re all inside, getting ready. We’ll head back out here so Birdie and Dev can do their thing and then dive in. Harper’s not here tonight. Dev has her looking into more on the Moon Call Coven, seeing as it’s been hard to glean information on what exactly happened with all of that. It’s almost as if someone ordered a gag order or something. Anyway, she said she’d ring if she found anything useful.”
“Good. That’s good,” I said and kept walking, feeling like I was moving through molasses. I knew Lark would probably give me hell. She’d take one look at me and know how beat I was. Something about the aura, or so she claimed. She’d warned me before about making myself vulnerable before an investigation, but given that I didn’t give any of that much stock and had done official forensics investigations on much less sleep before, I consistently told her that I was okay and would be fine.
Pax held the door for me, and we entered the house to a cacophony of noise as the cast and crew all did their thing.
