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Between the warmth of the fire and Lincoln’s body, and the exhaustion that wouldn’t let me go, I drifted off to sleep.
“Wake up!” The loud, booming voice jolted me from my sleep. My body jerked awake suddenly, and I sat up, glancing around the now-dark Library.
It looked different than it had when I’d fallen asleep. There was no warmth at all, not even embers in the fireplace. The lights were out, and there was a thick fog hanging in the room. It wasn’t the black fog that was in the basement but a gray fog that obscured the room around it.
“Lincoln? Ben? Ethan? Ryker?” I called out their names one by one, my voice smaller than I meant for it to be, but something about this moment felt too ominous to shout.
“You need to leave this Castle. It’s not meant for you.”
The man speaking walked into the room. There was a purpose to his stride, heavy steps that echoed in the quiet. His face was set in a grim mask and his arm swung with each step until he stopped a few feet in front of me.
“You are not a Bellmore.”
“No, I’m not,” I agreed. “However, I was hired to be here by a Bellmore.”
The man lifted his face slightly so his nose was in the air, making his already sharp features even more angular. His silver hair was combed back, and he had on a tailored suit. He’d have been handsome if he wasn’t such an asshole.
“So, you’re the help,” he clarified. That had me laughing and shaking my head.
“It’s wild to me that you refer to anybody that is hired to do a job as the help. I’m fairly certain that your money didn’t just appear out of thin air. It was brought about by someone somewhere along your family line working and earning that wealth. Was the business that gained your status simply ‘the help’?” I demanded.
He let out a condescending laugh.
“You stupid girl. You dare to insinuate someone of my status could be the help? We arenotlowly servants. We’re the bosses, the ones who run this world. Our money counts for more than yours ever will, and our wealth far exceeds yours.”
“The way I’m tempted to buy this castle from Elizabeth and take it out of the Bellmore family just so you know that you’re not the only one in the world that has influence.”
“You could never afford this castle,” he scoffed. “Plus, it’s willed to stay in the family. The heir couldn’t sell it to you if they wanted to.”
“I have a feeling there’re loopholes for everything. After all, isn’t that what bosses like you do, look for loopholes to exploit?”
His eyes narrowed as his anger rose, dark waves of fog rolling off of him, filling the library and surrounding us until all I could see was his angry face.
“Are you telling me that you plan to exploit my family to take our castle from us, to use whatever dirty money you have to try to sweep my entire legacy under the rug?”
With each word, his voice deepened until it was a feral roar that filled the space around us, reverberating in my ears and shaking me to the core.
Maybe taunting the angry, rich ghost was a bad plan.
I’d been in plenty of scary situations as an investigator. Some I’d barely survived.
But this moment was by far one of the most terrifying.
“You can’t hurt me and you can’t scare us out of this house. We were hired to do a job and part of that job is getting you out of here. Go ahead and accuse me of running your family out of here, but you’re doing that yourself. You’ve terrified Elizabeth so badly that she’s ready to abandon this castle and run. All you’re accomplishing is creating an abandoned castle that will turn to ruins and this entire town will go down with it.”
There were no words this time. His answer was a deafening screech. I clutched my ears and crouched down, folding in on myself as I tried to ward off the sound that was shaking the entire room around me like an earthquake.
“Brea!”
Ethan’s voice was desperate and loud, breaking through the roaring storm. I let go of my ears and looked up. The noise had dropped to normal levels and I was somehow stretched across Lincoln on the couch still. He was shaking me, only stopping when I opened my eyes.
They were all staring down at me in horror.
“Do you want to tell me what just happened?” Lincoln begged. “I’ve never seen you act like that. I know it wasn’t just a nightmare.”
“No, whatever Blackwell ghost is haunting this place… he’s angry and escalating and he wants us out. There’s no reasoning with him, but I think we first need to find out who he is.”
“I’ll start working on a family tree,” Ben said. He gave my hand a squeeze and hurried back to his laptop.
