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ChapterOne
Brea
The morning fog was still clinging to the ground as a soft drizzle rained down. For a brief moment, I saw a flash of a ghostly figure just inside the treeline that circled our property.
It was something that seemed to happen a lot more often lately. The witches had suggested that the stress of my encounter with Mack had my abilities amping up and my mental walls falling slightly.
Either way, I was avoiding it like the plague. Before they could notice me tense, I focused on something else.
“If I don’t see a snowflake soon, I’m going to buy a snow machine,” I protested as I stared through the kitchen window at the rain pouring down.
It had been several days of straight rain and gloom without a hint of snow and I was losing my mind.
It felt ridiculous to complain about the lack of winter weather, but as the supposed cold months stretched on, I was getting tired of the lack of snow.
“We could go on vacation somewhere,” Ryker suggested as he brought me a fresh cup of coffee. My sweet boyfriend brushed a kiss over my forehead before taking a seat.
I took a sip and hummed in agreement, though I had no idea where we would go. That was part of the problem with having a business that required travel. We’d been to so many places that sometimes it felt like there was nowhere left to go.
Onyx ran through the kitchen then, a streak of black fluff that came to a halt in front of her food bowl. She took a few bites then ran off at top speed like a little psycho.
“Even she’s getting stir-crazy,” Ethan joked as he sat down at the kitchen table with his own mug of coffee. “What we need is a good hunt.”
Investigations always slowed down around winter, partially because everyone was too busy with the holidays to deal with anything.
We always had a lull in requests this time of year, even though it wasn’t exactly like ghosts took a winter hiatus. People were just too busy to notice them as much.
“Speaking of hunts,” Ben said as he walked into the room, his dimples on full display and his brown eyes sparkling. He definitely had something for us. “How do we feel about castles in winter?”
“That sounds more than a little drafty and miserable,” Lincoln countered. “An abandoned castle isn’t exactly going to have any form of insulation or heat.”
His lips twisted into a grimace, and I held back my laughter. Leave it to Lincoln to find the negative side of a real-life castle.
“I never said it was abandoned,” Ben said with a laugh.
He had his laptop in his hand and sat right down next to me at the table, opening it to a web page for Bellmore, Washington.
“I’ve literally never heard of this town,” Ethan mused as Ben scrolled through the pictures of the little town. It was idyllic in every way from the mountain backdrop to the fluffy coating of snow dusting the rooftops and grass. The view in person would be amazing.
They even took it over the top by decorating everything with sparkling lights. It looked like something out of a Christmas card but they boasted it was like that for most of the winter, not just the holidays.
I could get on board with that. This might be exactly what I needed to get out of my own head. It was getting exhausting trying to pretend I was just fine when I definitely wasn’t.
“So, this town isn’tjusta town. It was built and kept afloat by the Bellmore family. This is their castle here,” he said, scrolling up and showing a gorgeous castle.
It was everything I expected when he suggested we investigate a castle. The dark stone was perfect and well-maintained. There wasn’t even a hint of moss or vines dotting the stone façade.
The landscaping was precise, not a shrub or limb out of place, and even in the winter, they had greenery giving the grounds life.
If this was how well they took care of the outside, I had a feeling the inside would look just as beautiful.
“So, where’s the ghostly catch?” I demanded with a raised eyebrow and a bit of sass. There was always a catch. I wasn’t exactly antsy to throw our group in danger again. “Is this family as crazy as they are rich or something?”
“There’s only one Bellmore heir alive, the daughter Elizabeth. Her father died at the beginning of the year,” Ben explained as he pulled a tin of cookies his way and started nibbling on one and passing a second my way without question.
I bit into the chocolatey goodness and waited for him to give us more details.
“And the haunting?” Ethan prompted, done waiting for him to sort his thoughts.
