Chapter 3 #3
“Ow!” Waverly tossed the rebellious thing to the floor, where Foo landed on his four feet.
He didn’t bother to scamper away but sat there on his haunches, cleaning his fur with broad strokes of his tongue.
Waverly’s unwelcome attention had apparently left Foo quite filthy according to his standards.
Even now, Waverly noted his narrow-eyed glint of censure.
It wouldn’t be until later, when she curled up in her bed, that Foo would forgive her and position himself on top of her, his purring resuming and their friendship restored.
“Come with me, Foo,” Waverly said. The heat from the fireplace had become almost oppressive. She paused, her hand poised on the knob of the bedroom door. She eyed the cat, who obviously had no intention of following her. “So I must go alone? There will be milk, and I shall share with you.”
The cat blinked at her before flopping onto his side on the rug in refusal.
Waverly craved a glass of milk from the kitchen to settle her nerves.
But with no one to ring for, she would have to get it herself.
And the idea of walking from her second-floor room to the kitchen frightened her.
She would need to traverse the broad staircase, pray that phantoms weren’t waiting to claw at her, and then—the horrors—she would need to make her way through the back hallways that were typically left to the help to maneuver.
Kitchens weren’t normally thought of as fearsome places, but any room in Traeger Hall tonight was potentially frightening.
She would need to be careful to slip past the parlor and her aunt and uncle’s remains and hope their eyes were still closed, not open and staring lifelessly at the ceiling.
The undertaker, Mr. Fitzgerald, would have made sure they stayed shut, wouldn’t he? With glue perhaps? How did one shut a dead person’s eyes and make sure they didn’t pop open by accident? Could a dead person’s eyes spring open by reflex?
Already halfway down the staircase, Waverly shivered.
The grand entryway rose from the ground floor to the roof in a curved, elegant fashion that should have boasted a chandelier with hundreds of candles, if Traeger Hall were a castle.
But it wasn’t a castle. It was a manor. Therefore, the house was graced with a more modest light with carved wooden arms that held lamps that were rarely lit.
Usually, gaslights illuminated the hallways.
But it was midnight, so the house was dark.
She should have brought a lantern or a torch with a gigantic flame that she could jab at any wraiths who dared lunge at her from the parlor just off to her left.
The parlor doors stood open, a cavern of shadows inside.
Through the doorway she spotted her uncle’s feet pointing toward heaven and his trouser-clad leg. The rest of his corpse was out of view.
The doors should have been closed. Who had left them open?
A hand closed on Waverly’s upper arm, and she released every pent-up bit of terror that had collected inside her stomach, her chest, and even some stored in her toes—she was sure of it. Her scream pierced the night and rattled the glass somewhere in the parlor.
“Great Scott, woman!”
The hand let go of her, but the very male, very alive voice held enough force in it to pin Waverly to the wall.
She palmed its green-striped wallpaper as though there would be something to hold on to.
There wasn’t. Waverly crumpled to the floor, bending her knees into her chest, exposing her bare shins and feet to the invader who had returned to Traeger Hall to thrust his knife in her as surely as he had in her guardians.
“Miss Pembrooke!” A wool coat flew through the air and draped over her body. “Cover yourself!”
Waverly grabbed the coat, catching a whiff of sandalwood and vinegar. Vinegar? No. Ether?
She squinted through the darkness at the looming figure standing over her. “Titus Fitzgerald!” Waverly’s cry was one of relief, of stunned surprise, and of anger.
She preferred to address Newton Creek’s undertaker as Mr. Fitzgerald, but tonight? His full name slipped from her mouth with indignation. Waverly clutched the wool coat, drawing it over her legs and up to her neck to hide her décolletage, exposed due to the scooped neckline of her nightgown.
“W-what are you doing here?” she stammered, bewilderment muddying her thoughts.
The man shook his head in disapproval. But this was her home—for now—and he was an intruder.
He had broken into her home in the middle of the night!
“You fiend!” Waverly stared up at him accusingly. “You . . . did you murder my uncle?”
He stared down at her, expressionless. “You’re speaking nonsense, Miss Pembrooke. I am here to do what you obviously are not doing. I’m keeping watch over your uncle’s remains,” he explained in his baritone voice. “And keeping watch over you,” he added under his breath.
The undertaker extended his hand to Waverly to assist her to her feet. “You will be pleased to know your dead uncle has not moved. Not a millimeter. He is still definitively dead.”