Chapter 11
Eliza
I rubbed the soft fabric between my fingers methodically in soothing repetition.
I sat on the edge of my bed and stared over the top of the chair, out across the endless expanse of sky, looking through the nearly translucent safety of the sheers that blurred the terrifying image.
I was terrified by the lack of anything but sky when I looked out, but this morning I was too exhausted to fear it—as long as it stayed on its side of the chair.
I glanced at my laundry basket of clothes, grateful that I had never unpacked them from their makeshift suitcases.
The other one, filled with books and random things, sat next to it, ready to go in a second if needed.
Even in my own apartment, most of my things were kept this way—in baskets or boxes that would be easy to carry out should something happen.
I didn’t know why I did this, but I always had.
Even in my childhood home, I had never taken up too much space, hoping I could fly under my mom’s radar and leave in a flash—if I was ever allowed. It never worked, but the habit stuck.
Tears threatened the back of my eyelids as my eyes fell closed. My palms were red and swollen with blisters from the wooden handle of my hoe; it burned every time my fingers moved. The simple act of letting the weight of my head drop sent searing pain down my spine and across my back.
I hadn’t even stood up yet.
If I quit and left now, I’d have nowhere to go.
Not really. My mother had a key to my apartment—the apartment I would no longer be able to afford after I lost my job.
And I couldn’t face my mother right now.
This would be my last straw—if she laid into me about how much I’d fucked everything up, if she got angry enough to get physical, my body couldn’t handle it right now.
Nothing strange had happened last night—at least, not after I’d gone to bed.
No see-through ladies in red had appeared, no odd creaks, not even a weird scurrying in my peripheral vision.
I almost wished it had. Then maybe I could analyze it, ask her something…
make sure I wasn’t just seeing things. When I was a kid, I’d always thought I saw things in my room, just at the edges of my sight, where the lines of certainty blurred enough to keep me guessing.
I wasn’t just going to take Jasper’s word and believe his parents were still alive, but it definitely made me more nervous and opened a million more questions.
The number to the Clearview Psychiatric Clinic was still on my phone’s screen from when I had pulled it up last night, after briefly convincing myself that the ghost was probably a result of some sort of psychotic break I was having.
But again, the locket quickly squashed that worry—she had not been a figment of my imagination.
I shouldn’t have believed a word he said, but I just didn’t get the feeling that Jasper was lying about his parents still being alive.
Alive people couldn’t appear see-through at the end of your bed and communicate with you through magical lockets, but I had no guarantee the ghost was Hester.
Every time I started to think that the trauma and stress had finally gotten to me and made me snap, my logic was caught on the locket.
I was grateful for the grounding reminder, even if it was less than comforting.
I’d taken it off last night, but it was still there, on my bedside table, real and tangible.
I was afraid to open it, unsure of what I wanted to find inside.
Even though there was this tug telling me I wasn’t mentally unwell and that it was all real, the exhaustion was not making it easy to think.
The thought of going into the conservatory this morning felt like I was preparing to walk into a losing war.
The only reason I hadn’t gotten in my car and driven off was the woman in red.
No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t seem to get past the look in her eyes when I’d followed her and went into the conservatory to find the locket.
She needed me, like her life—her death?—depended on it.
I could tell, and even if it wasn’t Hester, she still needed me.
I didn’t know what to think about how I felt about Jasper either.
Sometimes I hated him and wanted to kick him in the shin or tell him how arrogant he was, and then other times I wished he’d notice me as more than just the botanist fixing his garden—and then sometimes I thought he had, and my stomach got all tingly at the idea of it—and sometimes, that all happened in one conversation with the man.
It really did take a certain kind of man to make you blush when they talked to a bird.
I couldn’t deny how attracted I was to him, which made the whole situation even worse now.
I was getting all hot and tingly over a fucking murderer—and not just any murderer, a millionaire, weapons-dealing murderer.
The memory of the woman as she stood at the end of my bed flashed in my head, and suddenly the blood drained from my head down to the soles of my feet.
The rumors were that Jasper had strangled his mother before shoving her over the cliffside.
The ghost had kept a hand clenched to her throat. Even as she guided me to the locket, her hand had remained around her neck.
Oh my god. He did it.
Of course he was lying. The realization sparked a new wave of determination in me, and I was up and out of bed. I needed to talk to him, interrogate him. I needed to stop being so stupid and naive just because we had some sort of chemistry and find the hole in his story.
I grabbed the locket off the antique table next to the bed and clasped it in my hands with a renewed sense of wonder.
I was put here for a reason—to get to the bottom of all of this, and I wasn’t leaving here until I did.
But I needed to keep Jasper at a distance too.
I couldn’t seem to stop getting all silly around him, and the last thing I needed was to fall for a killer with an unlimited supply of money and power. If he killed me too—
The truth was, if he killed me, the thought of haunting my own mother gave me some sick sort of pleasure.
My curiosity sparked again, and I pushed my thumbnail between the locket and the clasp. As it clicked open, something fell to the floor with a clang. The inside was nothing but the red velvet lining the piece.
I looked at the floor in search of whatever it was that had fallen out of the locket. There was movement under the corner of the bed—something shiny. I dropped to the floor to get a better look. Whatever it was, it was moving, and quickly.
A glimmer, a golden gleam of something almost too bright to be real, crawled across the floor. At first, I thought it was a trick of the light, but when I looked again, there it was—a spider.
Not just any spider, mind you.
It was golden, glimmering with an antique sheen that could only be described as eerie, as though it had been crafted by someone who had forgotten the rules of nature.
Unlike the ordinary spiders in the corners of the manor, this one’s body was shaped like a skeleton key—long and delicate, tarnished gold that caught the faintest glimmer of light on its metallic-looking back as it moved.
The legs, long and spindly, seemed to stretch on forever as it crawled out from beneath the bed. Its movement wasn’t frantic, not like a regular spider racing to hide itself. Instead, this creature moved with the calm precision of knowing exactly where it was going.
And I—well, I had to follow it. I grabbed a pair of jeans, rumpled atop the nearby laundry basket, and stuffed my sore legs into them.
I buttoned my pants and crept forward, my breath quiet.
I took a few tentative steps after it, then another, a little faster this time.
I found myself in the hallway, eyes fixed on the golden arachnid as it scuttled silently beneath a door.
The door creaked slightly as it passed beneath, and I felt my pulse quicken.
I had no idea where this path would lead, but I had already crossed the threshold. I couldn’t turn back now.
In my haste, I practically fell as I turned into a new hallway just in time to see its body disappear under another door.
I reached the door and stood for a moment, listening.
It was futile; all I could hear was the sound of my heart hammering in my ears.
I couldn’t just walk into this room—what if someone was inside?
I couldn’t let the key—or the spider or whatever the thing was—get too far away or I’d lose sight of it, and it would be gone forever.
My fingers were already on the knob, twisting it open, and—nope. The door refused to budge.
I gave it a little more force, but still, no luck. Of course, it had to be one of those damn doors that only opened if you turned the knob just right. So, with a huff, I took a step back and stared at the door, fully prepared to hip-check it like a SWAT breacher.
Thankfully, I saw it then—the smallest latch, hidden beneath the knob—the sort of latch no one ever notices. I slid it open with a slight click, feeling a small rush of triumph—a small victory—and pushed the old, heavy door forward.
I expected to see a room, but instead, another hallway lay stretched before me, dark and winding. The spider was nowhere to be seen…but it couldn’t have gone far.
Fuck! I had to find it!
I hurried down the hall, glancing hurriedly to either side.
The lure of each door I passed felt like a potential detour, a trap.
I turned a corner, then another, caught in a labyrinth of my own making.
The spider was clever, leading me on some sort of chase, but why?
I rounded another corner. A long stretch of stone.
A door. But—no. Not there. I could feel it—the certainty that this wasn’t right, that this wasn’t the way.