Beware the Wicked Heir

by Mara McQueen

  “But you can just feel the victims’ presence on the estate. There’s a very...” Sarah looked at the ceiling and licked her lips. “...remorseful energy in the air. If we’re lucky, we might feel the Butcher's spirit too, honey.”

  “Wouldn’t that be something.” Martin sighed wistfully.

  There wasn’t enough wine in the world to make Olivia forget this conversation.

  Silence engulfed the room again.

  She tapped her nails on the side of the chair, fighting the urge to check behind her, a thin sheen of cold sweat dampening the hairs on the back of her neck.

  She'd never been a fan of ghost stories, killings, and anything involving death. She’d have a hell of a time falling asleep tonight.

  “You are, of course, free to search in every nook and cranny for this Butcher of yours. I know how much you like a good conspiracy theory.” Kieran smiled and his eyes flickered to Sarah for a second. “Although, you should take into account the possibility that his spirit might be shy and wary of strangers. Don’t let that stop you from trying to find him. Especially in the forest.”

  Olivia snorted into her drink. She reached for a napkin to wipe off her wine-stained shirt, under Kieran’s careful gaze. He looked at her from behind the brim of his glass, taking a small sip of brandy, the muscles in his long neck taut and the corner of his lips quirking upward.

  “Is there anything else we need to know about the property?” Olivia met his amused eyes. “Any other murders? Neo-Celtic rituals? Witch persecutions?”

  “My great-grandfather had a propensity for hunting and accidentally shot himself in the leg, but I’m afraid that’s the most exciting event that’s happened on this property in the past century. If general ineptness is what you’re looking for, you’ve come to the right place.”

  Olivia laughed, more gracefully, and away from any substances that could spill.

  “Hunting grounds?” Milo asked, trying to move his chair away from a glaring Darryl as inconspicuously as possible.

  “We share them with the Hendersons’ down the lake,” Mrs. Bolton piped in, a sour look on her face. “Most of the grounds are theirs anyway. If they keep expanding their property, we might just have to sue them. Not very neighborly of them. Though I hear they're thinking of selling too, what with no grandkids and that idiot son of theirs traipsing all over the world.”

  “So you share a border with an estate much larger than yours?” Milo asked. Olivia swore she saw pound signs light up in his eyes. “That wasn’t mentioned in our documents.”

  Kieran flicked his knife onto his plate. “It wouldn’t. You’ll only need the bare minimum to make the sale.”

  Milo shook his head. “I disagree. It’d make my job easier to know everything about the property and surrounding area.”

  “There are files in the attic,” Mrs. Bolton said.

  “Which are strictly off-limits. I’m sure my grandmother will be more than willing to give you the details you need,” Kieran countered with a mock-smile.

  “Yes, of course.” Milo’s own smile turned calculating.

  “So what are your plans after I sell your estate?” Olivia asked to fill the lull.

  “Nan said she wants to ride the London Eye,” Kieran said with a hint of a smile. He always softened when he talked to or about his grandmother.

  “At least once a week.” Mrs. Bolton inclined her head, her cheeks filled with food like a gerbil. She went in for more mashed potatoes, but her fork slipped on the plate, sending a few drops of food onto her lap.

  “I’ll take care of it,” Emma said quickly when Kieran moved to help.

  “And what about you Emma? Any plans?” Olivia asked, willing the conversation to flow away from anything related to Martin and Sarah's hobby.

  “I’m staying with Mrs. Bolton, of course,” Emma said as if Olivia had just cussed out her mother.

  Olivia took a sip from her own glass. She’d just assumed Emma had plans that didn’t involve traipsing all over the country. “Oh....that’s grea—”

  “Who are you people?” Mrs. Bolton put her fork down slowly, eyes ping-ponging between Olivia and Milo unnervingly. “What are you doing in my house?”

  “They're friends of mine, Nan. Don’t worry.”

  "Why did you call them here without telling me? I raised you better than this," Mrs. Bolton said, voice turning vicious and unnerving.

  A shadow clouded Kieran's eyes, but he blinked and it was gone. But his chiseled face had gotten more angular, full lips pulling at the corners. He got up and kissed his grandmother’s hair gently. “I think it’s time we retire. Emma, please take Nan to her room. Good night to you all.”

  He swiftly left the room, closely followed by Emma, who pushed Mrs. Bolton’s wheelchair slowly.

  “Are we going to see the fireworks like you promised?” Mrs. Bolton asked excitedly.

  Olivia sighed. This family's dynamic was a minefield.

  She tried to make a quick escape back to her room, but Darryl ruined her plan.

  While Addie pestered Milo with inane questions, twirling a dark lock of hair between her fingers, Darryl sped up and almost cut Olivia’s path under the archway.

  He tried to squeeze between the walls at the same time as her, the dolt. Olivia huffed and shimmied her way out of the tight space.

  If the brute wanted to intimidate her with his size as he had tried to with Milo, he was sorely mistaken. She scowled at him as she climbed up the stairs, slowly and safely.

  The banister was fixed, a plank of sturdy new wood in place. Weird. She hadn’t even heard Kieran working on it.

  She couldn’t help a shiver from rolling down her spine as she looked at the banister.

  Imagine it splintering again. Falling. Her with a broken neck on the floor below.

  Olivia gritted her teeth and stomped to her door, determined to put the day behind her. But just as she opened the door, her open windows hissed.

  She was sure she had closed them. What the hell was going on in Bolton Manor?

  Midnight Dash

  Olivia rushed to snap the windows shut, fighting the wind and rain which had already soaked the drapes.

  She remembered fighting them closed before she'd left the room. Either Bolton Manor was playing tricks with her mind or the windows had just popped open after she left. They weren't in the best condition, were they?

  Olivia locked the door as if that could somehow shield her from the social mess outside. The shabby light sconce above flickered alarmingly.

  She gulped.

  God, this day had been horrendous. Milo surprising her at Bolton Manor. The fall. This weird dinner.

  She wouldn’t admit it out loud, but the Greshams’ story had unnerved her.

  Olivia wasn’t the bravest person when it came to ghosts. Until now, she'd successfully avoided all the haunted places Britain had to offer, and there were too many to count.

  She had to do some digging into this Butcher. In Leeds, because her phone still had no signal, let alone data.

  Damn house, in the middle of damn nowhere.

  Lord, she was tired. She slinked out of her clothes and freed the bed from the filthy, moth-eaten duvet. That dusty rag was not touching her body.

  Grimacing, she huddled in a corner of the lumpy mattress, dressed in her rumpled shirt and using her trench coat to cover herself.

  Perfect. Fucking perfect.

  She had half a mind to walk back to Leeds. Right now.

  But she couldn’t afford to do that, could she? Because she’d been stupid enough to trust her parents.

  Right after high school, when her head was filled with dreams and not much else, she decided to go against her their wishes of joining some soulless Wall Street firm—just like they had—to study Art History.

  It didn’t matter that she got into her dream college in the States or that her parents had promised to foot the bill for her education.

  Right before she was supposed to start classes, they’d told her, in no uncer
tain terms, that it was either study finance with their money or follow her useless dream on her own dime.

  That was the last time Olivia had spoken to them. She'd packed her things, crashed on a friend's couch, and made the biggest mistake of her life—she took out student loans, way more than she could ever hope to pay back.

  All she’d wanted to do was study something she was passionate about. That wasn’t so bad, was it? No, in her case, it became disastrous.

  Her teenage dream had turned into an adult nightmare, and she’d been struggling ever since. Her first job out of college, at the museum, had put an even bigger dent in her finances instead of helping her pay her debt.

  Between the monthly payments and having to, you know, live, Olivia had barely scraped by.

  Then she got the idea to move to England, turn to real estate, and try to fix everything while getting to see fabulous houses every day.

  Oh, how naive she'd been.

  Everyone had warned her the first year of this career would be tough. Nobody had mentioned she would be struggling to survive.

  She owed more than two-hundred-thousand dollars and had nobody to help her out of this pit she'd dug for herself.

  And she didn't want anyone. Her parents had taught her that once you started trusting people, they disappointed you in the most horrid ways. Olivia wasn't about to start depending on someone and then live in fear they'd vanish on her. If her own parents didn't care whether she lived or died, then how could anyone else?

  So no, she couldn’t leave Bolton Manor. The commission on it would buy her some time to keep her life on track. Pay more of her loans. Get out of her crappy apartment. Maybe even—

  The doorknob rattled. Olivia shot up, clutching onto her trench for dear life. Maybe she’d just imagined it. That dinner had left her a bit on edge.

  But it rattled again, more forcefully.

  Olivia covered her mouth with her palm, in case her body betrayed her and let out the scream she so desperately held in. The shivering was inescapable, though.

  She got up slowly, soundlessly, and grabbed her purse, taking out her collapsible baton. She extended it with a snap and clenched her jaw.

  Only one person in this house would be so crass as to take advantage of her fear.

  “Underwood, I swear to God, I’m going to smack some sense into you.” Olivia walked to the door, holding up her weapon.

  The rattling stopped. Olivia forgot how to breathe.

  If it had been Milo, he would’ve laughed, so proud of his childish prank.

  The person on the other side of the door ran.

  Olivia jumped back, her heart beating out of her chest.

  She had to calm down. There was a logical explanation for this. Maybe there were other people in the house—someone had to take care of that lawn. Possibly a child—yes, children did these sorts of things all the time, didn't they?

  A door slammed down the hall. That gave her courage.

  So whoever had wanted to scare the shit out of her was afraid of retaliation, huh?

  One name popped into her mind.

  Darryl wanted to make sure the panicked little woman in the house knew her place, did he?

  Olivia was going to enjoy slamming her baton against those bulging arms, again and again and again.

  She wrenched her door open, baton raised.

  Nobody waited for her on the other side.

  She peeked into the corridor, thankful for the dim light. It meant the fucker couldn’t jump her from the shadows.

  Taking slow, calculated steps, and keeping her baton raised like her self-defense instructor had instructed, Olivia made her way to the closest door.

  She grasped the handle and jerked it open—a simple laundry cabinet, filled with spider webs that hadn’t been disturbed in ages.

  She tried the next doors, finding only deserted, cluttered, dark rooms. One of them had been locked, but judging from the layer of dust on it, Darryl hadn’t gone through there.

  The adrenaline pumping in her veins slowed down, but she kept peeking behind her.

  This house was a nightmare.

  Maybe she'd imagined the rattling? But she'd seen the doorknob move with her own eyes.

  Just as she was about to call it quits and run back to her room, Olivia spotted a light coming out from one of the doors.

  The son of a bitch was indeed as stupid as he looked.

  If she had been thinking straight, she maybe would’ve screamed her throat dry for help. Or ran to the nearest phone and called the police.

  But no. She planned on going against a man twice her size.

  But he’d be a fool to harm her—everyone knew she was staying at the manor and she could yell like the best of them. Which she planned to do once she got a good hit in.

  The floor beneath her feet squeaked as she approached the door. Olivia stopped, paralyzed. Darryl had surely heard that. Any second now, he’d be barging toward her.

  She clenched her jaw and raised her baton higher, preparing for the attack.

  It never came.

  Good. She still had the element of surprise.

  Olivia grasped the doorknob, careful to not make any other sound. She wrenched the door open, leaping through with a triumphant yell.

  Oh, shit.

  Oh, no.

  She’d been wrong. So, so, so wrong.

  “Tell me, Miss Abbate, is threatening part of your usual sales pitch, or could you simply not wait until the week was up?”

  Gracious Host

  Olivia’s entire career flashed before her eyes.

  When she decided her art history degree was useless in this shitty economy and had to make some drastic changes.

  Her first sale—a crappy apartment outside of London, three doors down from where she lived.

  When she had been offered the chance to move to Leeds after a horrible break-up and she finally had the chance to make a dent in her crippling loans.

  The moment she came to a hell hole in Nottinghamshire, hoping to land the sale of her life, only to end up terrorizing the owner’s grandson in the middle of the night.

  Kieran sat behind a large mahogany desk, the laptop in front of him casting an eerie glow onto his face, an unfinished game of chess waiting next to his half-filled glass.

  Olivia’s promotion slipped away with every second of silence.

  “If you were craving a spot of tea, the kitchen’s two floors down,” he said, smirking. “And a baton would only get in the way.”

  “I—I...” Olivia lowered her weapon and pulled at her now shapeless shirt which showed way too much thigh. Her cheeks reddened and her mouth went dry. Her impromptu midnight raid would get her kicked out in the middle of the night and sacked first thing come Monday.

  “Is something the matter? You look a bit pale. Has the soup upset your stomach? Because if that’s the case, Emma’s the person you’re looking for, not me.”

  Olivia shook her head and took a deep breath. She hadn’t been this mortified since sophomore year when she’d forgotten to put on pants for an eight AM class. “I’m sorry. I—I didn’t mean to scare you—”

  “I’m not scared.” Kieran reclined back in his lavish leather chair, clasping his hands in front of him. “I'm confused.”

  “I’ll have you know,” she said, finally finding her no-nonsense voice again, “the only reason I’m here is because someone tried to either break down my door or scare the living hell out of me.”

  Kieran lowered his head, piercing her with his gaze. “And you decided to go after them by yourself, instead of calling out for help?”

  “I can take care of myself.”

  “Oh, I can see that.” He stood in one fluid movement, rolling up the sleeves of his black shirt, showing off his forearms. Olivia licked her lips and glued her eyes to the windows behind him. Stupid grandson with stupid perfect skin. “What if it had been a burglar?”

  Yeah, because Olivia had totally taken that into account. “I doubt they would’ve come straig
ht to my room. After not tripping on anything downstairs, of course.”

  His lips quirked deliciously. “And you’re certain it wasn’t your coworker trying to tire you out of the competition?”

  “Yes.” Now that she was calm again, she realized Milo would’ve never stooped so low. “I’m thinking one of your guests might’ve been feeling a bit mischievous.”

  “Hmm.” He stalked toward her with slow, long strides. Every step he took in her direction made the hairs on her arms stand.

  Straightening her back, she took a deep breath once he was close enough to smell his intoxicating cologne.

  Kieran grasped the doorknob. “And what if,” he said, leaning closer to her and closing the door slowly, its hinges creaking, “it was me?”

  Olivia blinked a few times too many. Was it just her imagination or had his voice deepened?

  “Why would you ever do that?” she whispered, eyes traveling up his torso, a sliver of skin peeking from underneath his unbuttoned collar. Olivia fixed her gaze on his, away from any perfectly smooth and sculpted distractions. “You don’t strike me as a man who gets his midnight kicks out of scaring unsuspecting people. Plus, you looked kind of busy when I barged in.”

  Up close, he was even more handsome. A small white scar started from his top lip and ended right under his aquiline nose, which only made him that much more appealing.

  An image of her trailing her tongue down the scar popped into her mind. Olivia had to shake her head to dislodge that thought from her mind and actually focus on what he was saying.

  “I wouldn’t worry about it. It was probably Gresham looking for the bathroom. He’s stumbled into my office a few times as well. Bladder like a weasel, that one.”

  “No, it couldn’t have been him,” she argued. “Whoever was on the other side of the door ran away as soon as I said something.”

  Kieran raised one eyebrow. “Did Gresham strike you as a man with a deep understanding of social graces? The first time he came in here, he was so startled, he almost tripped on his own feet stumbling back. Didn’t stop him from coming again, though. He doesn’t really have much direction in him, does he? And from what I heard Bertha complaining, not much aim when he finds the bathroom, either.”