9. Glimpses in Shadow
Chapter nine
Glimpses in Shadow
The front door slams. The sound lingers in the empty house.
Maeve’s gone while the whole argument sits in my chest like a bruise.
I’m still in the entryway, gripping the note so tight its edge cuts my palm.
“They will come for you soon.” Those words won’t leave me alone.
They crowd in with everything else I’ve learned these last twenty-four hours: Maeve’s betrayal, Garrow’s scheming, and the fact that someone has been living in these walls, watching, for God knows how long.
“Well,” I announce to the foyer, my voice both defiant and ridiculous, “it’s just you and me now.”
I wait, hoping for a response—a creak, a footstep, anything to prove I’m not just talking to an empty room. The house does its usual thing — settling, sighing — but the silence feels different somehow. Loaded, almost. Or maybe that’s just what sleep deprivation does to you.
Screw it. If my silent guardian won’t come to me, I’ll create a situation he can’t ignore.
I move through the house, throwing open windows that haven’t budged in decades and leaving doors hanging open that I’d normally triple-check.
“Consider this an invitation,” I say, wrestling the French doors open.
Cold morning air floods in, all rain and wet earth.
“No more hiding. No more watching from behind walls.”
In the kitchen, I flip open one of the watchtower journals and clear my throat.
“Did you know your great-great-grandfather rewired these air ducts in 1887? The original blueprints are way simpler than what’s actually up there.
” I tap the page. “Guy was seriously talented. Clearly runs in the family.”
Something creaks upstairs — either the house doing its thing, or maybe him. I smile to myself, grab Grandma’s old silver teapot, and set it dead centre on the kitchen table with the spout pointing at the window. A tiny, stupid little trap. But if it moves, I’ll know.
“I found the room in the basement,” I call out, heading toward the library.
“The one with all the things people left behind. Quite the family business you’ve got going — helping people vanish.
” I stop at the doorway and scan the bookshelves, looking for any sign of movement.
“I think it’s pretty remarkable, honestly. Brave as hell.”
In the library, I pull three Victorian estate histories and line them up on my desk. I open the middle to a dog-eared page of hidden passages, marking the three-quarter point. Another test.
“Maeve was working with Garrow,” I say, dropping into the window seat with my journal.
“They want this place badly enough to blow up a family over it. Makes you wonder what they’re actually after.
” I leave the journal open to my sketches of the estate’s foundation and deliberately turn my back on it as I drift toward the window.
If he’s half as curious about me as I am about him, he won’t be able to help himself.
I spend the morning narrating to nobody, rambling about blueprints, secret passages, and Garrow.
Room to room, I leave little tests—a pencil balanced on a ledge, my phone recording the hallway, a line of salt at what I think is a hidden door.
It’s not to catch him. It’s just to say: I see you. And I’m not losing it.
Twice I catch something — a shape, a shadow — and when I spin around, there’s nothing.
But that feeling in my gut, like I’ve just missed a highway exit, doesn’t go away.
The house keeps running hot and cold, too; rooms go from freezing to stuffy for no apparent reason.
Like it has opinions about my whole little “I know you’re in here” performance.
Back in the kitchen, the teapot has moved—spout pointing north. My heart jumps, but I don’t whip around like a horror movie victim. Instead, I feel my lips curl into a smile. “So you can hear me. Good to know.”
In the library, the bookmarks have moved to a new page — a diagram of walls fitted with peepholes. I run my finger along the illustration. “Sneaky bastard,” I whisper, and I can’t help smiling. “Real sneaky.”
By late afternoon, the sky’s gone this ugly bruised purple, clouds stacking up on the horizon.
The air has that charged, prickly feeling that raises the hairs on my arms. I stand at the parlour window counting one-Mississippi, two-Mississippi between lightning and thunder, just like my dad used to make me do. This storm means business.
“Looks like we’re in for a rough night,” I say to the seemingly empty room. “Hope the roof holds.”
A wicked bolt cracks the sky. Thunder rattles the windows. The lights flicker, then die. I blink, disoriented by sudden darkness.
“Oh, perfect,” I mutter, digging around in my pocket for my phone. “Absolutely what I needed right now.”
Before I turn on my phone light, a faint golden glow spills from the hallway. I move toward it, breath caught.
Candles. A whole path glowing down the hallway.
They don’t flicker, not even in the drafts that usually toss my hair into my face.
They pull me from familiar rooms into the musty east wing I almost never enter.
I definitely didn’t put these here. I’m a “stumble in the dark, swearing at stubbed toes" person, but these burn bright and new, casting warm golden pools across the floorboards.
The wind slams the windows, making flames wobble but not die. Rain hammers the roof. Lightning shows the candles leading deeper into the part of the house I never visit.
My grip hardens on the note in my pocket as I pat it for reassurance. “They will come for you soon. Trust no one who fears this house.”
I stop dead at the line between light and dark.
The part of my brain that’s kept me alive through some genuinely terrible situations is screaming at me: this is literally how people die in movies.
Following candles. In a storm. Are you serious right now?
That voice is begging me to go lock my door and sit on my hands until morning like a sensible human being.
But another part of me—the one convinced this house was different, safe from the start—shoves me toward those candles.
I breathe in the sweet wax smell and that electric, before-the-rain scent. “Okay then,” I whisper, stepping forward. “I’ll take it.”
The storm’s raging outside, thunder crashing like it can’t decide if it’s a threat or an invitation. I follow the candles into the dark, each one spaced just far enough apart to keep me moving, as if someone’s unrolled the world’s creepiest welcome mat and I’m walking right down it.
I follow the candles deeper in. Each flame is just far enough from the last that I can see where to put my feet, and not much else.
The floorboards groan beneath me as I step into the east wing.
The air changes—becoming heavier, not just from the storm.
Lightning flashes through the windows. For a moment, everything warps: the moulding on the ceiling seems to form faces, and the coat rack in the corner resembles a person.
Darkness returns. I blink, rooted in place, while thunder shakes the house.
My footsteps echo against the floors, especially in the gaps between thunder when silence presses in.
And still, the candles refuse to flicker, which is unnerving—this house usually exhales cold from every crack.
I drag my hand along the wallpaper as I walk.
Some spots are soft, some rough, peeling just enough to reveal the seams. How many hands have touched these walls? How many were afraid?
“Hello?” I call out, my voice swallowed by the vastness of the dark hallway. No answer comes, not that I fully expected one, except the howling wind and another crash of thunder that shakes the house to its foundation.
The candles veer sharply toward the glasshouse. I’ve avoided that room since moving in—the windows alone would cost a fortune. Lightning freezes everything for a heartbeat.
There, silhouetted against the storm-dark sky, a man stands in the glasshouse. My body freezes, undecided between rushing toward him or fleeing, torn between the relief of finally seeing his form and the terror of what that means.
Not a shadow. An actual, flesh-and-blood man.
He’s perched on a stepladder, securing that loose shutter I’ve ignored for weeks.
He moves with quick precision, as if he’s done this a thousand times.
Lightning flashes again—oh. Broad shoulders strain his dark t-shirt tight across his back.
His hands grip the latch, strong and sure.
His hair’s cropped short; men wore it that way before undercuts became everyone’s whole personality.
That heat pools low in my belly—one I’ve done a bad job ignoring since I first felt eyes on me.
My Guardian. My Watcher. My Merrick.
I press myself flat against the wall, heart going absolutely haywire in my chest like it's trying to out-thunder the storm.
I should say something. Announce myself like a normal person.
I don't. For once, I get to be the one doing the watching.
I bite my lip and stay completely still, holding my breath until my lungs start to complain, and I just watch.
The way his hands click the last latch into place.
The way he climbs down the ladder with this weird fluid ease, like gravity is more of a loose guideline for him.
He glides through the glasshouse like he owns it—and maybe he does—shifting potted plants under a drip I never noticed, retrieving a wooden brace from behind a loose panel I swear wasn’t there yesterday.
I can’t stop watching his hands. They move with certainty and skill, no hesitation, no wasted motion.
Who notices a drip like that? Who cares so deeply about a house that technically isn’t theirs?