Chapter 7
CHAPTER SEVEN
Creeeeak.
The sound pulled her from sleep before her mind could make sense of it.
A slow, drawn-out creak... the kind that came from a door being pushed open by someone who was either trying very hard to be quiet, or trying very hard not to be.
Euphemia’s eyes snapped open. She lay entirely paralyzed beneath her heavy quilts, her heart hammering frantically against her ribs as she stared at the door of her bedchamber.
Sure enough, the door had swung open just an inch, and a faint, flickering light was bleeding through the gap, casting long, dancing shadows across her ceiling.
She shut her eyes tightly.
Everything is fine, Effie. Don’t overthink this.
She was in a large house, and large houses had staff… and staff sometimes moved through corridors at odd hours for perfectly reasonable reasons. She was a rational woman. She was not going to panic.
But then again, the house was too vast, with far too many empty corridors, for it not to be haunted.
It was simply a mathematical impossibility for a place this old and grand to be free of spirits.
Because the thing was Greymoor was old. Extremely old.
Mrs. Gable had said so herself, three hundred years at minimum, possibly more, and three hundred years was a significant amount of time for a place to accumulate…
things. Unresolved things. Unhappy things.
It was well documented, she had read enough to know that houses which had stood long enough, and witnessed enough grief, did not always let it go quietly. The energy of generations had to go somewhere.
But what did I do to anger it?
Was the house itself rejecting her presence?
Had the phantom come to punish her for her shortcomings?
Her brain reminded her that it was now past midnight.
She had read about that. The hours between twelve and three were not, historically, considered the safe ones.
There was a reason every account she had ever come across placed these things firmly in the small hours and not, say, at eleven in the morning over breakfast.
The door creaked open an inch further, a long, agonizing whine of old hinges, and beneath it she could swear she heard the faint deliberate scuffle of footsteps.
The Cock Lane Ghost?
Euphemia sighed and shut her eyes even tighter.
She wished she had not just thought of the Cock Lane Ghost. That particular case had begun with nothing more than a scratching sound in the night in a perfectly ordinary London house, and it had terrified half the city for the better part of a year before anyone had worked out what it actually was.
A perfectly ordinary house. In London. Which was not three hundred years old, was not called Greymoor and did not have corridors that seemed specifically designed to be unsettling.
Just sleep, Effie. It would go away.
She told herself firmly that there were no such things as spirits.
Her eyes shot open as her brain pointed out that this was exactly the sort of thing a person said right before they encountered one.
What if the spirit knew she was failing at her role? What if it was angry that she still couldn’t remember the names of half the footmen, or that she was struggling so thoroughly to do her best to blend into this strict, intimidating family?
‘I am trying my best,’ she thought fiercely, a sudden burst of panicked adrenaline replacing her terror. She would not be driven out of her own home by a specter without a fight. If she had to battle an ancient Duchess-hating phantom to prove she belonged here, she would do it.
Steeling her courage, Euphemia flung back the covers and swung her legs out of bed. She grabbed the nearest weapon available, a heavy silver candlestick from her nightstand, and turned toward the door.
The breath caught in her throat. Standing just a few feet inside the threshold of her room, illuminated from below by the ghostly glow of a small lantern, was a small, pale figure.
Even though the entity was clearly the size of a child, the sheer shock of the sight made Euphemia unleash a loud but short scream that echoed off the high walls of the bedchamber.
In the dim light, the child’s skin looked terrifyingly translucent, and her face was cast in deep, eerie shadows that looked entirely otherworldly.
Euphemia yelled again, lifting the candlestick in a defensive posture, until her eyes finally adjusted to the gloom. The tight knot of supernatural terror in her chest suddenly shifted into profound confusion and worry.
As she stared at the intruder, the phantom features resolved themselves into a strikingly familiar face. It was the distinct set of the jaw and the sharp brow that had the exact, undeniable resemblance to Cordelia, the other child she had already met and spoken with in the conservatory.
“Georgianna?” she asked, noting that it wasn’t Cordelia. She knew what Cordelia looked like.
The little girl did not answer. She stood frozen just inside the doorway, her small fingers locked tightly around the brass handle of the lantern. Her wide, pale eyes were fixed on Euphemia, but they carried an unsettlingly vacant stare, as if she were looking right through her.
Euphemia swallowed and lowered the silver candlestick a fraction of an inch, though her knuckles remained white. The adrenaline was still pumping furiously through her veins, making the room tilt slightly.
On one hand, she was relieved that it wasn’t a ghost trying to pry her door open in the middle of the night.
But on the other hand, she was not so sure she should be relieved.
Georgianna looked so small, so remarkably still, and yet there was something intensely unnerving about the way she stood there.
She had a cracked porcelain doll clutched to her chest that felt less like a toy and more like an extension of the girl’s own silent, unbreakable armor.
She took a slow breath, trying to smooth the tremble out of her voice as she took a cautious step forward.
“Georgianna, sweetheart,” Euphemia murmured, keeping her tone as gentle as humanly possible. “What are you doing out of bed? Are you lost?”
The child didn’t blink. The silence stretched between them, punctuated only by the faint hiss of the lantern flame. Then, with an abruptness that made Euphemia flinch, Georgianna finally moved. She took a single step back toward the dark hallway.
“Georgianna, wait,” Euphemia said softly, carefully easing her legs out from under the quilts. “You shouldn’t be wandering the corridors alone at this hour. Let me help you back to your room.”
Euphemia climbed out of bed and crossed toward the door, her bare feet pressing against the cold floorboards. When she got close enough that the lantern light caught her face properly, Georgianna flinched, taking a small, involuntary step backward, which caused Euphemia to stop dead in her tracks.
“I’m sorry,” she said quietly, trying to project as much warmth as possible. “I didn’t mean to frighten you.”
She stayed exactly where she was so she could look at the child properly, noting her bare feet on the cold stone, her loose, tangled hair. Behind the little girl, the cavernous corridor stretched out dark and completely empty.
There was no sign of a governess, no hurried footsteps of a nursemaid, and absolutely no one else in sight.
Euphemia looked past her in both directions, but she encountered nothing but shadows. Whoever was supposed to be watching the girls at night was either fast asleep or entirely unaware that one of them was currently standing in her doorway at what had to be close to two in the morning.
She brought her eyes back to Georgianna. “What are you doing up so late?”
The child offered nothing in response.
“Are you hungry, or do you need something?” Euphemia tried again.
Still, the little girl remained entirely silent.
“Is your sister —” She stopped herself, rephrasing the question more carefully. “Is Cordelia all right?”
“Stay away from my sister.”
Euphemia blinked in surprise at the sudden venom in the child’s tone.
“Cordelia,” Georgianna repeated as she stared ahead. “Stay away from her because she is mine.”
Euphemia studied her closely, noting how hard her jaw was set, the small arms locked tightly around the doll, and the wide eyes doing their best to appear fierce. Yet, she was not entirely managing to look intimidating because beneath all of that armor, the little girl was trembling just slightly.
The poor girl was absolutely terrified.
In that moment, the entire situation finally made sense to Euphemia as she considered the bare feet, the dark corridor, the ungodly hour, and the way the child was gripping that doll as though it were the only solid thing left available to her in the world.
She had clearly had a terrible nightmare, and in that nightmare, Euphemia suspected, she herself had featured rather prominently as the monster.
Euphemia’s first instinct was to fix it.
That was always her first instinct... find the problem, smooth it over, make it better. But the problem here was a frightened ten-year-old and she wasn’t sure if the same routine would work.
She took a small step forward, keeping her voice gentle. “Georgianna. I think you had a bad dream.”
The girl’s eyes narrowed.
“Whatever you saw, whatever happened in it... it was not real. I promise you.” She took another small step.
“I am not your enemy. I would very much like for us to be friends, actually. You and Cordelia and I. I think we could get along rather well, if you gave it a chance. I mean, Cordelia and I already share a love of —”
Georgianna threw the doll before Euphemia could finish her sentence.
It was not a gentle throw. It left her hand fast and hard and caught Euphemia directly on the wrist. She pulled back with a sharp inhale, and then the doll hit the stone floor. The sound it made was not a good one. A clean, flat crack, shattering all over the floor.