Chapter 36
ALEX
Patricia was no sooner out the door when Alex’s phone started to ring like there was no tomorrow.
Gabe. Of course it was Gabe.
‘Are you freaking kidding me?’ he yelled the moment she answered.
‘How are you awake?’ she asked.
‘How could I be asleep when you send that? Incredible, Alex. Just incredible. Eduardo’s already analysing it. And Arnold says he’s cross-checking pictures in that online database thing to identify—’
‘Margaret and Rosalind de Wilde,’ she said calmly. ‘I don’t know their exact dates but I’ll get them. Margaret died in 1806, and Rose in… the twenties maybe. They’re friends with Nick’s daughter. Although I’m not sure friends is the right word. More like parasitic little—’
‘Wait, you know all of this already?’
She sank down into the chair, staring at the bookshelves and praying for patience. ‘It all still has to be cross-checked and confirmed. And it’s a very blurry picture. They knocked me over before—’
‘They what? Physical contact? Are you okay?’
Damn, she should have explained better than this. ‘Yes. No, just… a pile of boxes and magazines fell on me. Nothing serious. I think they were just warning me off.’
At least she hoped that was all. Had she been standing somewhere else, like at the top of a staircase, it could have been a very different story.
They’d tried that already. Had they killed Sally as well?
Her breath caught in her throat. There were too many coincidences all of a sudden.
She thought of the exploding recorder. Not to mention the attack on Daphne.
The sooner Patricia took Maeve home the better.
‘Do you think the little kid is a catalyst for poltergeist activity?’ Gabe asked.
‘Maeve? Yeah, maybe. She’s very young though. Or maybe the ghosts just didn’t want to have their photos taken. I didn’t ask permission or anything. Do I need their consent?’
She said it before she thought better, her smart mouth landing her in it yet again. But there she was, admitting to Gabe that ghosts were real. That she might need to ask permission from them. Was data protection still a thing in the afterlife?
Gabe sucked in a breath. ‘Are you… are you sure you’re okay, Alex?’
‘Yes, why?’
‘Because Daphne’s right. You really do sound like a believer all of a sudden.’
Did she? Maybe. It was kind of hard to keep up the denial here. Mostly she was just tired. Sick and tired.
‘I know,’ she murmured, really wishing she didn’t have to admit it. ‘Look, I need some advice. From you or from Daphne, I don’t know. But I don’t want to pull her in any further, not after – well, you know.’
‘What do you need?’ He wasn’t arguing. Or crowing in triumph. That was probably a bad sign. Or at least a glimmer of how serious this really was.
‘I have to find a way to lay a dark spirit to rest. Like, really dark.’ God, even as she said it, it sounded ridiculous.
How often had she scoffed at people talking just like this?
No wonder so many people online called her a bitch.
‘There was a man, Blaise Chambers. He lived here in the late 1700s, early 1800s.’
‘Yeah, I remember. Same time as the dead kid?’
Shit, yes, probably. She hadn’t thought of that.
‘I guess so. He was the land agent or steward or something. Would have worked for her dad but basically ran the whole place. Arnold has all the details. But he’s key to the darkness in this house, Gabe.
He ran the Hellfire Club here. He was a terrible person, by all accounts. And he probably still is. You get me?’
‘Yeah.’ It came out like a sigh, a long breath of understanding.
‘So how do I cut him off? How do I lay him to rest? Or exorcise him? How do I get rid of him?’
Maybe she did need a crib sheet after all. She couldn’t half-ass this. There was too much at stake.
‘Oh Alexandra.’ Gabe’s voice sounded weird, twisted and wrong. Not like himself. The phone signal stuttered, broke up and then surged back to life, louder than ever. ‘You don’t.’
‘What?’
‘You don’t, Alexandra. You don’t get rid of me. You surrender. You give in. You become the creature you were always meant to be. You’re a de Wilde, the last of the de Wildes. You belong here, with me. Oh, the things we will do in honour of our dark master…’
It wasn’t Gabe’s voice. Not anymore. She didn’t know what it was. Pulling back the phone, she stared at the screen. It was still connected, still showing Gabe’s name. But she wasn’t talking to Gabe. She knew that now.
‘Who are you?’ she whispered. Her voice shook far more than she would have liked but she couldn’t help that.
‘You know who I am, Alexandra,’ he purred. ‘I’m yours. I always have been. And you are mine. Why fight it?’
The voice was still coming out of the phone but even as she watched it the battery icon drained of power and the whole screen went dark.
Another face was reflected in the screen. A face she knew far too well. The face from the portrait in the hall upstairs.
Blaise Chambers smiled at her. A horrible, knowing smile.
Nick. She needed Nick. She needed to find him now.
‘He can’t help you, Alexandra. He can’t even help himself. Not when I have everything and everyone he ever held dear in the palm of my hand. He’ll give in. Just as you will. It is inevitable. You both belong to me now.’
‘No.’ The words sounded so small. But at least she could still say it.
Everything and everyone he ever held dear…
Sally. Theo. And Maeve…
I will set all of them against all of those they have loved, and I will make them mine, body and soul.
Oh God, where was Maeve? She had left with Patricia, hadn’t she?
Somewhere beyond the study, a door slammed as if caught by the wind and Alex jumped, dropping the phone. It thudded onto the carpet, entirely drained of power.
Ghosts did that. Drained batteries. She accepted that they did now. Just before they did something a lot worse.
Shit. Shit. Shit.
Alex turned back to the desk and grabbed the wreath-like charm Maeve had made for her, the twigs digging into her palm. That brought a bit more clarity to her.
She still had this, and it still worked. Whatever the little girl had tapped into with it, still worked.
She turned around and Sally Walker lunged towards her, eyes wide, mouth distended, screaming silently.
Alex threw herself back and half fell into the chair, clinging to the charm as if her life depended on it. Perhaps it did. The ghosts here were powerful and completely out of control.
Wind whipped through the study, tearing at every surface.
Papers went up in a maelstrom, and books thudded off the shelves, slamming into the ground as if hurled by unseen hands.
Sally was wild. If there was any of Sally actually left in this creature of rage and despair.
Dark hair moved like ink in water, and her eyes were hollow and empty, filled with darkness which bled into her pale skin like an infection.
‘Enough!’ Alex yelled. ‘Talk to me.’
Talk to me. Like that was normal. Like any of this was normal.
She tried to focus, made herself sit still in the midst of Sally’s fury, and breathe in and out, just like Daphne had once taught her. It had been on one of those cases she still couldn’t explain. Not entirely. And it had been awful.
Like this.
She clung to Maeve’s charm.
‘Sally Walker, talk to me. Calm down and talk to me. I can’t help you otherwise.’
Walker, that was the thing that did it. Calling her Sally Walker. Reminding her of Nick, of Maeve, of who she was. The wind changed direction and Sally appeared again, stalking towards her with it, her face still a snarl of pain.
‘My daughter! My little girl! My Maeve! You have to do something!’
‘She’s with Nick and your mother. She’s safe.’
‘No, she isn’t. She wandered off again. They have her. He’ll kill her. Please. I’ll do anything. I’ll give you whatever you want, de Wilde. Please!’
‘What do you mean, she wandered off? Where is she?’
The wind started up again. More books came off the shelves, flying through the air, and all around the Hall, Alex heard the sound of doors slamming.
‘This isn’t helping! Show me the way. You have to know.’
The room shook, the floor, the ceiling. The walls…
And then a panel in the wall to the of the desk, one of the few areas of wall not covered with bookcases, opened with a long slow creak. A secret door. Of course, there was a secret door.
The wind died down and all was quiet.
‘Go,’ said Sally. It was no more than a whisper, a sigh. All the strength she had garnered together was gone with the effort she’d needed to do that.
The passage beyond was unlit, impossibly dark and heavy with cobwebs. Because of course it was. Of course, the stupid haunted house had a lightless secret passageway leading down as if descending to the pits of hell itself.
Gabe would wet himself in delight.
Gabe! She’d been talking to him and the phone had died. She grabbed the laptop, which was thankfully still plugged in, and fired off an email.
Tell me how to lay it to rest.
Wind buffeted at her again and the door slammed back against the wall. Sally was getting impatient and Maeve was in danger. She didn’t have time to waste.
‘Nick!’ she yelled. No answer. Not from the house anyway.
She heard a faint shout and spun around. He was on the drive outside, waving at her, miming opening the window. Patricia stood beside him, pale with concern. Alex fumbled at the latch on the bay window of the study, but it was wedged closed as if the wood had warped.
‘I can’t open it. I have to go after Maeve. There’s a passageway.’
He shook his head, and lifted his hand to his ear. He couldn’t hear her. Damn it.
Maeve, she mouthed at him and pointed to the secret doorway and then down. It had to be down, didn’t it? Under the house.
Daphne had talked about something under the house reaching up out of the earth and the stones, out of the darkness. And Alex had felt it, when she fell, when she lay there half-conscious on the floor at the foot of the stairs. She had felt it reaching up for her.
And people had always said Blaise Chambers had done his most evil acts in a temple under the house….
A temple. A place of power. A broken god of lost places, waiting beneath her. Daphne had said that when she was attacked.
The cellar, surely. But the cellar was small and only occupied the space under the kitchen. It didn’t extend to this part of the building. And this looked older. A lot older. Where was this going to take her?
Alex fought to catch her breath. She was running out of time.
An email blinked at her on the laptop. Three words. Gabe must have typed them as quickly as he could and sent it back.
Prayer. Salt. Silver.
Great, she thought. Prayer. What did she know about prayer?
She didn’t believe in anything. But yes, salt had to work.
It was the oldest way to banish evil, in so many religions from Christianity to Buddhism, and older.
And silver… silver was a pure metal. It warded off evil spirits and protected against possession.
Daphne wore half a ton of the stuff on investigations. Where was she going to find…
The dining room was right next door. Nick had it furnished like a display, laid out like there was going to be a banquet as soon as they brought the plates out. There had to be salt in one of those ridiculous silver salt cellars, didn’t there? Shit, she hoped so.
She sprinted out into the hall and into the next room, grabbing the salt cellar from the middle of the table, tipping it over into her hand. Tiny white grains came out.
Thank you. She didn’t even know who or what she was thanking. It didn’t matter. She shoved it into her jeans pocket. Just for good measure she grabbed a candle and matches from the mantelpiece. Armed as best she could be, she headed back to the study.
Sally was waiting, a half-formed shape by the doorway to the darkness.
‘You’ve got to stop with the wind now,’ Alex said as she took a moment to light the candle and felt the whole room still, like the entire house was holding its breath. Her own chest was aching with anxiety but she had to get a hold of herself. Maeve was down there somewhere.
So was Blaise Chambers and whatever he had worshipped.
Maeve’s circlet lay on the table and she grabbed it, sliding it onto her wrist. Then, cupping her hand around the flame, Alex started down the stairs into the dark.