A Secret In The Garden (The Dark Manor Chronicles #1)

Chapter 1

Eliza

Needing to beg a murderer for a favor was hard enough without worrying about a lack of guardrails.

No one thought about guardrails or salmonella until it was too late; they were merely an afterthought.

I was thinking about them both now, mainly the guardrails, though the mystique of salmonella poisoning was never far from my thoughts as a tightly budgeted woman in STEM who liked to push the boundaries of expiration dates, and they were intermingling with thoughts of him—especially as I looked over the cliffside.

The road I had been driving coiled round the mountainside like an asphalt serpent, twisting and turning, snaking through the dark forest of looming pines, hazy with smoky-gray fog.

I shifted, my spine so rigid I feared it would slice itself from my overwhelmed skin and fall back on the charcoal gray upholstery of my Nissan Leaf.

I made a mental note to write a scathing letter to the state’s department of transportation about their glaring disregard for safety and lack of foresight in addressing basic infrastructure needs—such as the installation of guardrails.

Better yet, I’d have my mother call them. She loved yelling at people.

As a child, I had never been allowed to go to amusement parks because of their energy consumption of nonrenewable sources and water use, so maybe it was lucky for me I was driving on what may as well have been a roller coaster.

I wondered if my screams would sound the same as those from people on the big drops of Millennium Force or Steel Vengeance when I plummeted to my untimely death as I took the next curve with no fucking guardrails!

My stomach growled and twisted. I considered grabbing my water bottle, but my tightened fingers were currently locked onto the steering wheel in a way that caused me to believe they were now permanent fixtures.

My phone rang in the open leather fanny pack on the passenger seat, and I screamed.

A real daredevil, I risked a half-second glance at my phone, recoiling slightly when my mother’s name appeared.

She was probably tracking me again—or she knew I had contraband on me.

I looked longingly at the bottle of Dasani water in the cupholder.

If I didn’t call her in the next twenty minutes, she would start calling me repeatedly.

And then things would get bad—another quick glance at the phone.

You need both hands on the wheel. You can’t call her right now.

My eyes snagged on the headline of the newspaper under my phone: “Hester Blackwood Spotted Alive in Florida Outside Local Psychiatrist’s Office.”

I shook my head; they would do anything they could to keep Hester and Darius Blackwood in the papers—tabloids, more like. But I hadn’t been able to resist buying it since I was headed to see their infamous son.

The anxious thrum in my body doubled as my car crawled around the edge of another tight curve, my stomach twisting again as I looked at the clock.

I had eight minutes to answer my mother’s now continuous calls before she would call Andrew, the owner of my tiny apartment as well as my neighbor.

He worked with my mother and was all too happy to report when I left the house outside of my normal work hours.

The urge to get off this winding mountain was outweighed for the briefest of seconds by the thought of my mom waiting at my apartment when I got home—if I got home. How many ridiculous things were going to ramp up my anxiety today?

As if in response, I saw that the rain from earlier in the day had dampened the asphalt, creating a slick sheen that caused my tires to slide a bit on the narrow path and make a soft whirring noise as the residual water splashed the undercarriage of my car.

I cracked the window and took a deep breath as my car filled with the scent of hot asphalt, rain, and crisp mountain air.

I wasn’t used to this kind of driving—narrow, treacherous roads where the cliff on one side seemed to stretch down endlessly, threatening to plummet me to the bottom with a single misstep—but there was no choice now. There was no turning back.

Politics and issues over the new mayor of Pinehurst had caused several of the botanical garden’s biggest benefactors to stop their donations.

And being that I was the newest on the team—last one in meant first one out—I was holding on to this final thread of hope that I could save my job.

I had only been there a few short years, and though I was competent and did my job well, I was far from being so good that they wouldn’t let me go if push came to shove.

I needed to bring something to the gardens that made it impossible to fire me—and hopefully make up for the funds we had lost.

The road tightened into one lane. I doubted it mattered, since no one else but the Blackwoods lived this high up, but still, it sent a current of fear through my already taut and frayed nerves.

My hands shook through their death grip on the steering wheel, my onyx ring digging into my middle finger; it was supposed to bring the wearer protection.

I had the feeling an onyx suit couldn’t protect me from the man I was about to see.

Afraid to blink for too long, my dry eyes were locked on the road ahead in the hopes of seeing any other cars before it would be too late. Though, where was I going to go if I saw another car up here? There was no pulling over unless I planned to nosedive over the ledge and rain down on Pinehurst.

As if angry mothers, cliffs, and slick one-lane mountain roads weren’t enough, the fog rolled in from the valley below, thickening the air around me like ghoulish clouds until it swallowed everything in view outside of the car windows.

My fog lights barely pierced the mist, their pale beams illuminating only a few feet ahead.

Seeing around the large, choppy stone wall of the mountain as the car climbed the road was difficult enough, but this fog was unforgiving and doom-laden.

Like a shadow rising from the depths of the earth, Blackwood Manor appeared. My stomach suddenly threatened to empty its contents onto my lap.

Dear God, please let my stomach settle before I have to get out of this car and act like I know what I’m doing.

The manor’s silhouette loomed through the mist, a collection of towers and spires crowned with dark rooftops. It gave the appearance of another world risen from some ancient, forgotten age. And I suppose it had.

The outer walls of the giant estate stood tall, made of a dark charcoal and slate stone that shimmered lightly in the damp air as if the house were alive, pulsing with a hostile energy all its own.

The wail of the wind pushed at my car like a veiled threat; the high-pitched howl was an unsettling reminder of the isolation that clung to the antiquated castle-like estate.

The manor was an architectural phenomenon built against the mountain’s side, but the Gothic structure itself appeared preternatural and unyielding, as if it were usurping the mountain instead of the other way around.

It was a proud beast of a mansion with its rear facade suspended over the abyss, latched onto the stone cliff like an unrelenting barnacle on a giant humpback whale.

The majority of it was out of my view, shielded by the fog, but the dark, jagged outline of spires peeking through was enough to make goose bumps rise and prickle on my skin.

Everything about the place felt wrong; even the air in my car seemed to turn thick, tinged in warning.

The myriad rumors about the Blackwood family echoed in my mind, each more worrisome than the last.

The phone finally stopped ringing, but my relief was short-lived.

With a sinking feeling, I saw it was because I had lost service.

I struggled to swallow, my throat too dry and gritty to allow the trespass of saliva.

I shouldn’t be here. No one from town comes here.

Not to visit Jasper Blackwood—the murderer.