Chapter 12 Remy
REMY
The castle was spooky. It wasn’t just the massive rooms, the stone floors, and the mildew that was visible on some of the walls. It was fucking desolate, made even more creepy by the fact that most of the rooms were cold and dark, furniture shrouded in white cloths scattered around like ghosts.
I thought we’d made a mistake at first. Thought maybe Ethan Todd wasn’t here at all, but then I remembered the Rover parked outside and knew someone was here somewhere.
And Maeve was here too. I didn’t need evidence of her to know that: I could feel her.
I had to force myself to check the frustration that filled my body like a rising tide while we moved through the unoccupied rooms. The place was huge, and we were burning time, but we needed to make sure the place was clear, make sure we wouldn’t be ambushed from behind as we moved deeper into the old castle.
“Who would want to own a place like this anyway,” I said as we moved toward the back of the ground floor. It was cold and smelled like mold.
“Someone who might need a place to hide.” Bram’s masked face was as familiar to me as his unmasked one, but it occurred to me that he would make a terrifying image to anyone else who came across him.
“It’s warmer here,” Poe said as we moved down a long hall.
Doors were open on either side, giving us glimpses into cavernous rooms — all of them empty — with more shrouded furniture.
“I think you’re right,” I said, as the frigid cold eased.
We found the source of the warmth in a room at the end of the hall. It was wood paneled and well furnished, two old sofas and several upholstered wood-framed chairs with high backs scattered throughout the room.
But it wasn’t just the exposed furniture that told us the room had been recently occupied: a fire licked lazily from a stone hearth as tall as Bram.
“I guess this is where they set up shop,” I said, taking it all in.
Romanian beer and plates containing the remnants of a meal were scattered on the surface of the old wood tables like modern relics.
“Where are they?” Bram’s voice coursed with frustration. “And where is Maeve?”
It was the question that had run like blood through our veins since the minute we realized she’d been taken.
Where is Maeve?
“Let’s keep going,” Poe said, moving back toward the hall. “We’re close.”
I knew what he was getting at: almost every room in the castle had a fireplace: they’d chosen this one for a reason.
We figured out why when we reached the room next door.
It was a kind of chapel, an actual altar at one end, several wood pews lined up in front of it. A gold cross hung behind the altar, ornate candlesticks — absent the candles — on either side of the carved wood mantel.
There was a fireplace here too, but no fire.
Bram stopped in his tracks and looked around. “What the fuck?”
“It’s a chapel,” I said.
Bram scowled. “No shit. Why is there a church inside of the castle?”
“Religion was an important part of daily life in the thirteenth century,” I said. “It wasn’t uncommon for complexes like this one to have a chapel, although I’ve always read that they were separate buildings. I’ve never heard of one inside the main castle.”
Not that I was an expert on thirteenth-century Romania.
“It gives me the fucking creeps,” Bram said.
Poe moved deeper into the room, toward the altar. “This was more than a chapel.”
I didn’t know what he meant until I joined him behind the altar, which was when I saw an open door cut into the wood paneling.
Cold air wafted from the darkness inside, but otherwise, I couldn’t see a thing beyond the opening.
Poe took a step inside. “There are stairs. Going down.”
“Tunnels?” There was something dark and complicated in Bram’s voice that I understood.
Our story with Maeve had started in the tunnels under Blackwell Falls.
Now a dark voice in my head wondered if this was where it would end.