by Kelly Creagh
I sighed. Because I couldn’t argue with that logic.
So far, I’d been able to talk myself out of going into Moldavia and facing whatever dark figure I’d glimpsed behind that door alone. With the house under investigation, I couldn’t have approached the grounds anyway. Today, though, marked the first day since Stephanie’s now six-day disappearance that Moldavia wasn’t crawling with cops. We knew this because, after Stephanie’s father had been arrested, we’d set up one of Patrick’s trail cameras on a tree beside the entrance. That was the main reason behind why I’d called us all here. Because tonight, the house would officially be empty.
Well. One side of it would be.
It was true I hadn’t believed Stephanie about there being another house inside of hers. But now that she was missing, it stood to reason that perhaps there really was another side to Moldavia.
“Let’s just say you actually have it right this time,” Patrick added. “Say there is an alternate side of the house in which something or some things physically dwell, like Stephanie said. Before we go barging back into a situation like that—one that has obviously been out of our league from the start—shouldn’t we at least consider other options?”
“That’s what I’m saying,” said Charlotte.
“Like what?” I challenged.
“Like we could approach the church,” said Wes predictably.
“Or bring in one of the local clairvoyants we know,” offered Patrick. “Someone who can give us something solid to go on.”
I pulled my glasses off to rub at eyes that had gotten virtually no sleep since Stephanie’s vanishing. “If I can’t get any of you to believe me that she’s been taken by this . . . thing, then how am I supposed to get anyone else to?”
I certainly hadn’t dared to tell the police my suspicions when they’d questioned me. The last thing I wanted was for them to think me unstable. I’d admitted to the truth, that I’d been in Stephanie’s house that morning, though I’d left out the precise reasons why. When they’d asked me if I was her boyfriend, knowing they would have read my last text exchange with Stephanie, I gave the only answer I could.
Yeah, I was.
“You tell me, then,” said Patrick. “What are we supposed to do when we get in there? Start knocking on doors hoping Steph’s behind one of them? I don’t think I need to remind anyone how the sage—which is still all we’ve got—didn’t work.”
“Regretfully,” added Wes, “the Saint Michael prayer didn’t seem to have the desired effect either.”
Silence returned to the table, making me think they were all waiting for me to lay out my master plan. Which, of course, I didn’t have.
I put my glasses back on, certain for the first time that I’d have done better to go to Moldavia by myself instead of requesting this meeting. Truth was, I could still go. Sure, the whole estate was now a crime scene, and I’d be breaking about twenty laws just by stepping foot inside. But if I could somehow reach Stephanie, she could be back as soon as tonight. If, in the process of trying to rescue her, I didn’t get us both killed. Or myself arrested and put officially under suspicion.
Except Wes was the one equipped with the prayers and talismans and the jokes that, though more annoying than not, sometimes helped to keep us all sane. And Patrick was the levelheaded one who always asked the right questions and kept us all from doing stupid crap. Like running into any situation solo—regardless of what it was.
And Charlotte. Charlotte had always been our best debunker and sounding board. The second half to my mastermind. Not just for SPOoKy, either. She was my best friend. Which was why we hadn’t worked as a couple.
Sometimes I thought the only reason we’d tried to be together was because everyone already assumed we were. But, romantically, Charlotte and I had mixed as well as a bulldog and a chicken.
We’d come out of it all right. We still had our awkward moments, and maybe a few lingering hard feelings. Some confused feelings, too.
When it had come to Stephanie, though, there’d been nothing to be confused about.
I’d had it for her from day one and wanted to bet that I always would.
Word had gotten around at school about someone moving into Moldavia. Stephanie was the only new student at Langdon. So, two and two had amounted to one breathtaking girl.
From that slow-motion moment when she’d first passed me in the hall, Moldavia became, for me, a house inhabited not by a monster but by a walking dream. Yet, all along, there had been a monster inside, too. And perhaps, despite my previous misgivings, a ghost as well.
Erik Draper. Perhaps he wasn’t my enemy after all.
Could it be that he was the key to reaching Stephanie?
And so, was that my plan? To go in and appeal to the figure Stephanie had been convinced was a walking dead man? Was it possible he had any power to combat this monster who had terrorized and killed?
And that threat of death. It made me get why my paranormal team was so reluctant to go after Stephanie. At the same time, though, Stephanie had become one of us. She’d become ingrained into the group—part of its heart. She was certainly part of mine.
So I had to believe there was still some way to reach her.
I had to because I was in love with her.
And for that reason alone, I would go back to Moldavia. With or without backup.
“Kind of quiet back here tonight,” said Sam, our usual waiter, as he sidled up to our table. “I’d ask if somebody died, but that’s typically why y’all are here.”
None of us looked up or even cracked a smile.
“Wow,” laughed Sam. “Okay. Anybody want a slice of Death by Chocolate to go with their Doom and Gloom?”
“I’ll take some more ketchup,” Patrick said, even though he’d killed off most of his fries already.
“Well,” said Sam as he pivoted. “At last one of y’all’s acting normal.”
I scanned the table after Sam left but sighed when, again, no one would meet my gaze.
“So that’s it,” I said. “That settles it. I’m on my own.”
“Now, wait just a second.” Wes raised a pale palm to me. Like I was one of the entities he liked to rebuke. “Might I take this moment to remind you that, despite your surly sea captain attitude toward us, none of us has said no. We’re just trying to be sure there is, in fact, a plan. One that we’re all in on this time.”
“Because, you know,” said Patrick, cutting me off before I could say a word, “we do all have things like permanent records, reputations, and major arteries that will suffer the consequences.”
“And if we roll up into this house,” added Wes, “break in, and start trying to find Stephanie in the walls? At best we stand to get arrested.”
“Yeah. And at worst we stand to get killed,” added Patrick, pulling out his phone after it buzzed with an alert. “Which, by the way, is why you need to give us a solid heads-up before you omit any more vital information or Leeroy Jenkins into any more crazy shit. I do not have time to be dead.”
“You mistake our apprehension for doubt,” said Wes, raising a finger. “And how can we help it when, if what you’re saying is true, and Stephanie was taken by—”
“Zedok has her,” I said, not caring anymore if I sounded crazy.
Wes cringed at my use of the entity’s name, but I didn’t care about that, either. Whatever I needed to do or say to get through to them, I would.
“Yeah,” said Wes. “That guy. It’s just that . . . if what you’re telling us is true, then that means that the whole ‘Phantom Fury’ episode wasn’t a hoax. And if what happened to Rastin was real, that also means this thing really did kill Joe Boq. And—”
“Car,” said Patrick suddenly, prompting the three of us to glance his way. He held his cell phone closer to his face, eyes scanning its screen. “Black Beamer. Just now, on the trail cam. I saw it pull
onto the lot.”
“Another cop,” Wes said, which was what I’d been thinking, too.
“No,” Patrick said quickly. “I don’t think so.”
“Who, then?” asked Charlotte.
“I . . .” Patrick said. “The windows were tinted, but the driver’s side was rolled down halfway. Dude had sunglasses on, and I can’t be sure, but I . . . I think . . .” He stopped himself, shaking his head before stuffing his phone into his pocket and nudging Charlotte.
“Move,” he commanded. “Everyone move. We have to go there. Now.”
Patrick had seen something. Someone. Though he wasn’t telling us who. I personally didn’t need an explanation if it meant we were going back to Moldavia. Wordlessly, we all dug cash out of our pockets, leaving it on the table for Sam just as he arrived with Patrick’s Heinz 57.
“Y’all are off in a hurry,” he said.
“Sorry, Sam,” said Patrick. “We gotta bounce.”
“It’s cool,” Sam said, wiggling the bottle at us as we filed past him. “We can ketchup later.”
FIFTY-THREE
Zedok
Despite his delay, he came, as I’d known he would.
The medium. Rastin.
And while I could not say his arrival was unexpected, his choice to approach me in corporeal form was. Because, by now, Rastin must have learned of Stephanie’s disappearance and the ensuing investigation. Could he have deluded himself into believing I might still be complicit to carry out the plan the two of us had made?
Bypassing the yellow tape, he entered through the front door I had left unlocked for him. And now the medium stood in the center of the foyer, where he turned slowly in place, his glasses catching a glint from the weakening sunlight as he searched the gloom-filled archways and murky hall.
Stationed within a corner of shadows, I observed him from the balcony overlooking the foyer, the grand staircase, and the chandelier that still lay shattered in its hole.
If he were only to glance up, he would see me. But he was Rastin, a man as oblivious as he was intuitive. So, he did not.
Like me, Rastin never learned from his mistakes.
And his hopeless optimism—it looked as though it would be the death of him after all.
“Erik,” said the medium, aware of how, even at a whisper, he would be heard.
I did not answer. Of course, I would. But . . . not yet.
In truth, I had hoped not to have to dispatch him. But then, I had warned him. And by returning here, was not Rastin making it clear that his plan was to stop at nothing to undo me?
“Erik, there’s no use hiding,” said Rastin. “Show yourself. Whatever form you’ve taken, I wish to speak. That is all I want. For today.”
I smirked under my mask at that final amendment—before entering Charlie’s vacated bedroom, where I passed through her closet door into my Moldavia.
Exiting Erik’s opulent and emerald-adorned chamber, I strode over the balcony landing once more. Pausing at the first step, I spared a glance to Myriam’s shuttered door, behind which Stephanie had remained for the majority of the time she had been in my world, emerging only when her appetite got the better of her. I had so far stayed away, waiting for the moment when she would approach me. Though my patience was wearing thin, and so I had resolved to end our stalemate tonight.
With his timing, though—impeccable as usual—Shirazi now presented another delay.
I descended the grand staircase, crossing through the very space Rastin occupied on the other side. I then drew back the parlor’s closed pocket doors in silence, once again exiting the splendor of my Moldavia for the ruin of the current-day one. Turning, I glanced to where Rastin stood with his back to me at the base of the steps, his gaze fixated on the landing I had vacated mere moments ago.
Ah, Rastin. Always rushing at me headlong. And always one step behind . . .
I waited for him to notice me. For all his meddling, he deserved, if nothing else, to see me coming.
FIFTY-FOUR
Stephanie
I still wasn’t ready to believe there was no way out.
Not even when, no matter what door I tried, I never got through to my side.
Worse, I never woke up. In spite of everything, I kept hoping this was just another dream.
Just like I kept waiting for the sun to rise.
Dawn never came, though, and I never opened my eyes to turn off my alarm or to find Charlie’s small nose two inches from mine.
The night he, Zedok—Erik—had brought me here, I’d run away into the snowy woods. My goal had been to put as much distance between us as possible, wanting to escape what I couldn’t accept. That my abductor and the beautiful boy I’d tried to free were one and the same.
Without a coat or shoes, I’d barreled through the frozen forest only to have my path loop back to the house again and again, no matter which route I took.
Finally, unable to stand the cold, I’d barricaded myself inside the freezing conservatory, surrounded by the vines of all the roses that, like Erik, had once lived here but were now dead.
Curling up under the mountains of furs I’d found on the settee inside, I couldn’t be sure if they, along with the mug of hot tea on the nearby table, had been meant for me. Like the house had foreseen my taking refuge in the conservatory. Like he had.
Lucas. God. He’d been right to suspect Erik. Because, on that boat, everything about Erik had changed so drastically that I now suspected this shift in him was what he’d been trying to warn me about all along. And I hadn’t listened. Hadn’t read between the lines. But how could I have ever anticipated this?
“Music,” Erik had claimed as his reason for bringing me here. But there’d been something more lurking behind his words. Something deeper, darker—and far more frightening.
The memory of our almost-kiss surfaced in my mind for the hundredth time. Only now, when Erik drew nearer to me, the perfection of his face deteriorated, skin shriveling and cracking, sucking inward to hug the skull of a long-dead mummy.
I banished the image before I could picture those papery dead lips pressing mine. Sickened, wishing I was far away from here—safe somewhere in Lucas’s arms—I wrapped my own around myself and walked to the window. Every day its frame showed the same scene of white grounds and darkness. I put my back to it, having already learned that it was useless to wait for the snow to stop. Though on the other side of the house this room was mine, on this side, the powder pink walls and pillow-piled bed told me that I now occupied Myriam Draper’s room. If she was here along with Erik, though, she had yet to show up.
So far, I had not encountered any masked figure but the crimson-clad one that had brought me here. But there were more of them lurking about. Sometimes I’d hear whispering and once, a strange laugh. Doors would slam, too. Also, the masquerades had surrounded me that night I’d found myself on his side of the house, and Erik had fought them all off. Only now he was wearing the mask of the most frightening of them.
That night, it had also been Erik who’d possessed the lights-for-eyes that Charlie had told me were Zedok’s. I should have made the connection then. Because they were the same eyes of the figure who’d brought me here.
Over the past few days, I’d had plenty of time to contemplate the other clues that had surfaced in my mind. The red-masked figure referring to himself and Erik as “us,” and poor Charlie’s encounter with the figure that hadn’t resembled the Zedok she had known. Had I paid more attention, had I looked even just a little harder, maybe I would have come to the answer sooner.
That Erik was both figures and somehow, I was beginning to suspect, all figures . . .
How that was possible, there was no way to know. Not without asking. But facing him in his current state was not something I was prepared to do. Which was why I’d stayed in this room as much as possible, behind a locked door that I di
dn’t really believe would stay locked if he didn’t want it to.
His power scared me. His appearance scared me. What scared me even more, though, was the prospect that, in speaking to my captor, I would not find a trace of the boy I had come to know. Or maybe I was afraid that I would.
Daylight might have given me some bravery, but dawn never came, and it was the thought that I might never again see the sun that nearly broke me. Mostly because it also promised that I’d likely never again see my small and thoroughly shattered family. Or Lucas.
And reaching them again, getting back on my side of the house, was, at the very least, a goal. And as long as I had a goal, then I could still keep myself mentally okay.
Okay enough . . .
Until today, optimism had been easier to hold on to because I hadn’t seen him again. Zedok.
After catching sight of him through a window earlier, a crimson smear in the snow, I now couldn’t be sure of how much longer he’d leave me alone.
After just a moment of my staring, he’d turned to look back at me, making it clear he’d known the whole time I’d been watching him.
Maybe his appearance today had even been a signal. A warning that my adjustment period was about to end.
And now had arrived the part of the day I’d come to dread. This hour when my stomach complained loudly and painfully enough that its voice drowned out the questions, the doubts, the fears, and the rage. This hour when my choices ran out.
So far, each night I’d spent here had ended with my hunger driving me from the frilly, pink-adorned girl’s room. Drawn by the intoxicating smells that began to fill the mansion at this hour, I’d crept downstairs and into the empty dining room to find the table crammed with platters packed with freshly cut fruit, meat, cheeses, and bread. On a separate table lay a spread of coffee, tea, and delicate cakes.
Even though I always found a feast awaiting me—more than I could ever eat on my own—no other figure ever joined me.
