Chapter 29
Bethany was wrong. The man standing before us was a master, not ours. Though, to be fair, they looked exactly alike. This version of Voss, however, was wearing a fancy suit that had an enormous rip in the right knee. He looked disheveled, lost, and deeply frightened.
“Is this your No-Face Man?” I whispered to Bethany. Because he sure looked like he had a face to me.
“No,” Bethany whispered.
“Charles Voss,” I called out, heart racing.
He flinched and cowered. “Who are you? This is my home,” he said, trying to sound firm, despite his fear. “I don’t understand what you want!”
Charles thought we were the home invaders that Agnes had described. “We’re here to help, Charles. Your sister, Agnes, sent me to find out if you’re okay.”
“Agi sent you?” Charles said in a voice that sounded similar to the Voss I knew yet also somehow different. Less confident. “Oh, thank the stars above! Where is she? Is she safe?”
I cleared my throat. “Um, she’s safe.” Dead was safe, wasn’t it? “She’s hiding. But she asked me to check on you. Can you tell me what happened?”
The ghost hesitated.
“Please,” I begged. “Agnes said you’d be helpful.”
He blinked rapidly. “I don’t understand what’s happening…”
“You’re under attack, are you not? Please, Charles. Any information you have may help to save your sister.” I hated lying, even to a dead man, but what could I do?
The ghost considered for a moment, then anxiously nodded to himself.
“Yes, of course. Of course I can tell you… Let’s see, I was taking tea in my room when I looked outside my balcony doors and saw something fall out of the sky.
I couldn’t tell what it was, exactly, but it was big.
And I knew that Agnes was riding, so I became worried for her and decided to go outside and check. But…”
“What happened?” I asked desperately, glancing over my shoulder.
“Invaders,” he mumbled, hugging himself. “We were being robbed, but they didn’t wear masks. What kind of thieves go peacocking around, showing their faces? I mean, even those gangs in New York City wear masks.”
“What did they look like?”
He shook his head. “That’s just it. They were an elderly couple, and I’m almost positive now that they were speaking Dutch. My parents are Dutch. Were Dutch. They died late last year, while they were in Amsterdam, visiting distant relatives. So once I realized this, I became confused.”
An elderly Dutch couple? Didn’t much sound like occultists to me. I desperately wished Nin were here to help me question this man. How long would it take the master to succumb to sleep?
I shook that thought away to focus on Charles. “Tell me exactly what happened next.”
He sighed. “The elderly Dutch man chased me through the servants’ wing, shooting at me with a rifle. I…”
He glanced down at the ripped fabric on the knee of his trousers.
“What happened?” I prompted again.
“He shot me in the leg, just above my knee. I’d never felt such pain,” he moaned, face miserable. “I fell, but I managed to get into the secret door to the western wing.”
“Agnes’s portrait,” I mumbled.
“Yes,” he said, nodding as he scrubbed the back of his neck. “I closed the door behind me, but he must’ve figured it out. I could hear him cursing, so I stumbled to Agi’s rooms and hid.”
“Then what?”
He closed his eyes and shook his head. “I don’t remember. They were here, and then they left… I think? I’m not sure. Have you seen them? Should I be worried?”
I assured Charles that he was safe and tried to push him to remember more, but he clammed up the same way all ghosts do when questioned about their own deaths.
And that was twice as frustrating as it normally was because it was starting to look like the ghost of Charles knew…
nothing, really. Sure, he validated what Agnes had already told us, but he hadn’t given any new information, apart from the fact that the invaders were Dutch, and that they were man and woman, which was a little interesting. Just not a lot interesting.
“Can you take me to Agi? I really need to see her,” he said.
“Hold on,” I said to the ghost. “There’s one thing that might be able to save all of us, you and your sister included. It’s very important. Have you seen an hourglass around here?”
His face scrunched up. Just for a moment. Then he brightened.
“Why, yes, I have. It’s with the couple’s things that they brought with them from the Netherlands.”
Excitement rushed over me. “And where would those things be?”
He gestured. “This way.”
I stayed where I was, Bethany cowering behind me, and watched the ghost walk back into the shadows where he’d been when we’d first seen him. Was something there? I held up the hurricane lamp and cautiously followed him, catching sight of him as he turned and stepped out of view.
My lamp shone upon a doorframe. A door there stood shut. I guessed that Charles had just walked on through. I reached for the handle, and Bethany gasped.
“No, no, no…,” she said, backing away. “I don’t like it in there.”
My pulse increased. If she didn’t like it, that couldn’t be good. But I couldn’t just ignore it. Not after I’d found all this.
Steadying myself, I turned the doorknob and cautiously opened the door, looking inside before I dared enter.
It was a sitting room. A small, feminine one.
I took a hesitant step inside and shone the lamp around the room.
Painted chinoiserie silk wallpaper covered the walls in swirls of birds and flowers.
Sofas, chairs, bookshelves were neatly arranged around a pretty pink rug—which Charles was now crossing, heading toward an open doorway that led to another room.
“Where are we?” I asked Charles.
“Agi’s suite,” he said. “Back here, come…”
These rooms belonged to Agnes! Oh, how I wished Nin were here to see this. I guessed I could come back later with him if he didn’t show up soon.
Charles walked through the open doorway at the back of the room, and I followed.
It was a spacious room with a big bed in the center—though, not quite as big as the master’s bed upstairs.
And where his rooms were filled with books and tapestries and incense, hers were decorated with imported wallpaper that cost more than I’d ever earn in a lifetime.
Fine China birds collected dust in a display cabinet next to an enormous wooden wardrobe. A vanity. A desk.
But Charles passed all this and headed to the far side of the room, where a rather large built-in wall cabinet waited. Below it, piled in the corner, were several beautiful bows surrounded by feather arrows, scattered everywhere.
“These are Agnes’s?” I asked, referring to the pile of bows.
“She’s going to be furious. They tossed them aside like used matchsticks,” he complained, and gestured toward the built-in wall cabinet. “This is where I’ve seen them putting the hourglass.”
I took a deep, unsteady breath and set the hurricane lamp down on a nearby table as Bethany whined.
“No, no! Don’t do it, Molly. He’s close—No-Face Man is close!”
Goddammit. Now she’d scared me, and I didn’t have the luxury of being a coward right now. If that hourglass was in here, the one Kesh had requested, then I was taking it. I’d find Nin, and we’d escape.
“Please, Molly, don’t!” Bethany shouted.
I had to. I just did.
“Sorry,” I mumbled.
And before I could change my mind, I clasped the handles of the built-in cabinet and swung the wide doors open.
There was no man without a face. Nothing spooky at all, in fact.
Several shelves lined the cabinet below a large, open space near the top where the bows had once hung, judging by the empty pegs.
And on the shelves below were a bunch of random things that had been stored in here hurriedly. A few boxes, some old tools, junk…
And two enormous goat skulls.
“That’s it, right there,” Charles said, pointing frantically at the skull. “That’s what they were riding. Witchcraft. I don’t care if you don’t believe me; that’s what I saw, falling out of the sky!”
What the…
The skulls were covered in strange symbols that had been carved into the bone. Empty eye sockets stared back at me, causing chills to skitter down my spine when I thought of the goat pasture outside.
“Devils,” Bethany said. “Witchcraft and devils and demons! We are all cursed!”
“Calm down,” I told her, but Charles thought I was talking to him.
“Don’t tell me to calm down—we’re under attack! I need medical care, and Agnes is…” He seemed to forget himself, and then scrubbed his face with both hands. “Help me.”
If I could have, I would have. I just tried to stay calm as my gaze raced over the contents of the cabinet. One of the boxes was ornate—not luxuriously so, but it was domed on the top like a small trunk and covered with folk-art painting, pears and flowers. It looked very old.
“I wouldn’t, if I were you,” Charles said. “I don’t think they’ll like people poking around their business.”
And I didn’t like being trapped in a house in upstate New York, but here we all were. I pulled the box off the shelf and opened it while Bethany moaned behind me.
The hinges protested, squeaking loudly as I held my breath, hoping to lay my eyes on the hourglass. But that wasn’t what was inside. It was…
“Paperwork?” I said, pulling some out to leaf through it.
It was legal documents. Very old parchment ones, in Dutch.
I couldn’t read it. I could only make educated guesses based on context.
But it appeared to be deeds to property, and they weren’t modern.
They were inked in fine calligraphy and bore official scrolling signatures and fancy wax seals.
One of them had been inked on vellum, a land deed… from 1753.
“These are all different properties under different surnames? Vermeer, van den Berg, de Jong…” I checked as many dates as I could. 1781. 1809. 1852. All the property was in Holland. “Why do they have all these? What is all this?”