The Witch of Stonecliff

by Dawn Brown

  Despite having his offer of tea shot down, Kyle wasn’t ready to give up. She was his best link to what had happened to him two years ago. His only link. She didn’t seem to recognize him. Did that mean she was as innocent as she claimed, or just a brilliant actress? He needed for them to be friends, for her to trust him so she would let her guard down and give him the answers he wanted. “Let me drive you back, at least.”

  “It’s faster for me to walk through the woods.”

  So much for that. He followed her outside as she hurried across the drive toward the edge of the trees.

  “I’ll see you tomorrow at dinner, then,” he called out.

  This time she stopped and faced him. “You’re making a mistake staying here, but if you refuse to leave, you should at least make every effort to avoid Stonecliff.”

  She hurried away, disappearing between the trees and leaving him alone. He used to have a way with women. While he’d only considered himself average looking, there’d been something about him that attracted the opposite sex. Charm. Persuasion. The gift of the gab, his mother would say.

  Whatever it was, it had no influence on Eleri James—that was for sure. These days, his way with women had abandoned him. They were uneasy around him, uncomfortable.

  Absently, his finger traced the scar on his throat.

  Wind rustled through the trees, carrying with it the rush of the surf against the shore. The sea mustn’t be far off. Tomorrow he’d walk and explore the grounds. Revisit the places he’d been the last time he’d come here.

  Memories washed in blood and pain rose up inside him. He shook his head as if to physically force the images from his mind.

  Maybe he wasn’t ready yet. Besides, he had things to do before worrying about all of that. He jogged down to his car, hauled his computer bag and suitcase from the boot and carried them back to the house before returning for the box of groceries. He hadn’t bought a lot, just enough to get him through the next few days.

  He carried the box through to the kitchen—which looked like it hadn’t been updated since the 1950s—and set it on the table. After putting his few supplies away in the cupboards and fridge, he toyed with the idea of making something to eat, but apprehension had killed his appetite.

  Instead, he moved to the back door and peered out the window. Oily smears circled the glass—evidence of a hasty clean—distorting the dull green forest closing in around the house and his own pallid reflection.

  What in the hell was he doing back here? The last time he’d barely escaped with his life. But he already knew the answer. The endless ache that something was missing inside, something left unfinished, forgotten.

  The feeling haunted his days, left him tossing and turning through the night. And despite the terror he’d survived, there was an undeniable pull, an inevitability that he would come back here to face his demons.

  For too long, he’d simply been existing. He needed answers, justice, and, live or die, he would find them both.

  * * *

  “Did you know?” Eleri asked, storming into the kitchen. Satisfaction lit inside her when the housekeeper jumped.

  Mrs. Voyle turned away from the bubbling pot on the stove, pressed a hand to her narrow chest and glared. “Did I know what?”

  “About our new tenant.” Eleri flopped onto one of the kitchen chairs. “Of course you did. Someone’s been in to give the lodge a tidy. You didn’t say a word?”

  The woman jerked a shoulder and tuned back to the stove. “Not my place. I do as I’m told.”

  “And was keeping me in the dark among your instructions?”

  “Take the matter up with Mr. Warlow. It’s nothing to do with me.”

  What would be the point? Since Brynn left, Eleri had no allies. A lonely pang squeezed her chest. Her sister promised to come back, but what if she changed her mind? What if Reece convinced her to stay in Chicago?

  Brynn believed she was innocent, but Reece was far from convinced. He might not say the words aloud, but Eleri could read it in his suspicious stares, the way he tensed anytime she went near Brynn.

  Eleri couldn’t fault him, really. If she were in his shoes, presented with the same evidence, she’d probably believe she was a killer too.

  She shoved away her dark thoughts. She had more pressing matters at hand.

  She needed Kyle Peirs to leave Cragera Bay, preferably with a large audience and an easy to find forwarding address. She probably should have pressed harder to convince him she was all the things people said. But when push came to shove, she couldn’t do it. She didn’t like the idea of him looking at her the way the rest of the village did. The way most of the people under her own roof did.

  Eleri stood and started out of the kitchen.

  “Six, sharp,” Mrs. Voyle called after her. “I won’t be staying later.”

  As if Eleri could forget. And if that greasy smell wafting from the pot on the stove were any indication, Eleri would be better off skipping dinner altogether.

  God, she missed her sister’s cooking. She missed Brynn more than she realized she would. After more than twenty-five years apart, she was surprised how close they’d become over the past six weeks.

  But facing down a deranged killer bent on revenge was just the sort of thing that cemented sisterly bonds, she supposed. Unearthing family secrets, too, and sharing in ghostly shadows that few people at Stonecliff acknowledged. For the first time in her life, Eleri had felt like she had someone on her side.

  With Brynn back in Chicago, she was alone again. She took some comfort in Brynn not wanting to leave, especially while Eleri was under investigation, but there were things Brynn needed to do since deciding to stay in Wales: sell her house, ship over the things she planned bring with her, dispose of the rest. Naturally, Reece had gone with her. Since they’d both nearly been killed a month ago, he hated for her to be out of his sight. Of course, that he still thought Eleri might kill the woman he loved probably sharpened those protective instincts.

  Maybe he wasn’t like that in Chicago. Maybe he was laid-back and easygoing away from Stonecliff. Maybe he smiled and the chill left his icy gaze.

  She didn’t know what her sister saw in him. Broad, sharp features, hard stares and scowls, topped off with shaggy black hair, Reece looked too scruffy to suit her stylish, pretty sister.

  No, if anything Eleri pictured Brynn with a man like Kyle Peirs—all fine features and smooth charm. Minus the scar, of course. She tried to picture Brynn with Kyle, but the image irritated her and she couldn’t say why.

  As soon as Eleri stepped into the foyer her gaze landed on Warlow and Dr. Howard by the door speaking in hushed tones. Her stomach sank and she stopped in her tracks.

  Had something happened while she’d been with Peirs? Could her father be…? Numbness tingled into her limbs.

  “What’s he doing here?” Eleri asked.

  “Nothing to be alarmed about,” Dr. Howard said, pushing back his round, silver-framed glasses. The man had always reminded her a little of a younger Father Christmas, but without the jolliness. He was squat with a round belly. His reddish brown hair, curly and laced with strands of white, had receded to create a horseshoe around the back of his head. A wiry beard, the same color as his hair, covered his cheeks and chin and neck. But unlike Santa Claus, his round features were usually impatient or annoyed. “My visits will be more frequent without Ruth to look after your father.”

  Had she actually heard reproach in his tone? “I suppose you will, now that he’s no longer under the care of a murderess. How is he?”

  Dr. Howard scowled. He’d always been suspicious of her, believing her stepmother’s stories that she was dangerous even as a child, that she had tried to drown her own sister. Even after Brynn had remembered Meris had in fact been the one who’d tried to drown her as a child, the man still hadn’t warmed to her. Likely because of the twelve dead men found in the bog.

  “I won’t sugarcoat the situation. His health is deteriorating quickly.”

&nbs
p; “Is there anything we can do?”

  The doctor glanced at Warlow briefly. “He needs to be kept comfortable, stress to a minimum.”

  He shot her a meaningful stare, and her spine stiffened.

  “I’m sure in future, Hugh will be far more careful about who he hires.” If not his tenants. A grim sort of satisfaction welled inside her at the sight of Warlow’s mouth tightening.

  “Be that as it may,” Dr. Howard continued, “there are some…alternative treatments we can explore. I’m going to do a little research and get back to you. I’ll be back in a few days, but if you need me sooner, ring. Day or night, I’ll come.”

  Dr. Howard said his goodbyes to Warlow, barely sparing Eleri a glance before he left.

  The minute the front door closed, the butler turned to Eleri. “Mr. Peirs settled, then?”

  “Letting him stay is a mistake,” Eleri said, apprehension like an icy ball in her stomach. “You heard what the doctor said about unnecessary stress. What if Peirs vanishes like the others?”

  “There’s no way around it.” Warlow waved his hand as if swatting her words away. “The estate needs the money.”

  Eleri sighed and gripped the banister, but froze with one foot on the bottom step. The sconce at the top of the stairs was dark, casting long shadows up the wall. They rippled. Pulsed. Her breath lodged in her throat.

  She wasn’t the only one who saw them. She knew that now. Both Brynn and Reece had their own experiences with whatever presence dwelt within Stonecliff. And they were certain Warlow had, too.

  Eleri glanced at the man, but he merely watched her. A confused frown drew his thick, white brows together.She pointed to the top of the stairs. “Bulb’s burned out.”

  The swirling shadows had taken on humanoid shapes—three of them—writhing over the ancient floral wallpaper.

  “I’ll see it’s replaced.” If Warlow did see them, he gave no indication. His expression remained puzzled.

  Could Reece and Brynn have been wrong about the man? Someone had tampered with the lights in Brynn’s room, leaving her vulnerable to the dark mass. But maybe Ruth had been responsible for that, too.

  Eleri backed away from the stair, and Warlow’s frown deepened. No doubt she looked as mad as everyone suspected, but she didn’t care. There was no way she’d move closer to the shadows than she had to. Instead, she used the servants’ stairs off the kitchen.

  After closing herself in her room, she switched on every light to keep the shadows away, crossed to the window and looked out over the sea. White caps dotted the slate waves, black clouds rolling toward her. Wind whistled and moaned through unseen cracks and rattled the glass in its frame.

  A storm was blowing in.

  She turned her head to the left, her gaze almost magnetically drawn to the high roofline of the lodge peeking out between the branches. She sincerely hoped Kyle Peirs would be all right tonight. If anything happened to the man, Detective Harding would have her in cuffs before the sun set.

  Chapter Three

  He’d started for The Devil’s Eye, but changed his mind five minutes in. Instead, Kyle turned and walked the opposite way, seemingly without direction, but the farther away from The Devil’s Eye he went, the clearer it became that he was retracing his escape route.

  A phantom ache gripped his throat, and Kyle swallowed hard. Memories played in his head, turned his skin clammy and chilled him to his soul.

  His terrifying run through the trees, naked and bleeding. There’d been no pain, then. Not yet. Adrenaline had been pounding inside him. There’d been a vague sort of heat where his throat had been slashed. A sticky stream down his neck and chest. He had no idea how much damage had been done—not as much as there could have been had he not managed to free his hands and jerk forward as the blade pierced his skin. Later, he’d learn how much damage he’d done to his feet. Running barefoot through a forest had shredded them.

  Now the trees fell away and a field of tangled, yellow grass stretched out before him. Kyle spotted a stone cottage in the distance. It looked smaller in the day than it had that night—even as he drew closer—but his memories were blurred. The drugs pumping through his system then had distorted the world around him.

  At the time, he’d barely been able to make out more than a yellow glow from the window. For the first time since he’d regained consciousness next to The Devil’s Eye, Kyle had actually believed he could survive.

  He stopped walking, closed his eyes against the anxiety swelling inside him. The line between past and present was becoming more difficult to maintain.

  That night had changed everything. He thought of the man who only hours before had been drinking and doing his best to charm some tourist girl into going back to his room with him.

  Kyle might have survived that night, but that man had died, and only a few fleeting memories remained.

  “Good Christ, is that you?”

  Kyle opened his eyes. The squat farmer who had found him that night stood a few feet away, eyes rounded, face pale as though he’d just seen a ghost. But in a way, Mel Barber had.

  Kyle forced a smile. “In the flesh.”

  Barber didn’t return the smile. “What in God’s name could you be thinking coming back here? They’ll kill you this time. Mark my words. You got away once. They won’t let you escape twice.”

  Kyle held his grin in place, pretending the man’s predictions didn’t turn his insides to ice. “I’m counting on it, as a matter of fact.”

  Barber lifted his worn gray cap from his scalp and scratched what little hair remained on his round head. “You’re out of your bloody mind, you are. D’ya remember nothing of what I said to you that night?”

  He remembered only too well the man’s furious instructions. The story he’d concocted and insisted Kyle memorize while driving him to the nearest hospital. Kyle had been leaning against the passenger seat of Barber’s truck, holding an old towel the man had given him to staunch the bleeding at his throat. A rough horse blanket wrapped around his lower half to shield his nudity.

  “If you say anything about where this happened, they’ll find you,” Barber had said, his words clipped. “If you’re a threat, they’ll finish what they started. But say you don’t remember anything from me finding you out here in the ditch, they might leave you be.”

  By then, Kyle’s throat had been white fire, he’d hovered on the brink of unconsciousness, but every word the gnome-like farmer had spoken stayed with him. Haunted him.

  He’d had questions, of course, despite the haze of agony spiking every time the truck, with its piss-poor shocks, hit a bump in the road. He’d wondered if this man had known who they were—these faceless monsters he feared still. But he couldn’t speak to ask; even breathing had turned into an alarming gurgle, the tinny taste of his own blood thick on his tongue.

  Looking back, Kyle still wasn’t certain how he’d survived. Only that he wouldn’t have if not for the scowling man facing him. “I remember everything.”

  “You’ll get us both killed.” Barber waddled closer, waving a chubby hand. “You need to go. Now!”

  “I owe you a thank you. I wouldn’t have survived that night, had it not been for you.”

  “If you want to thank me, leave and never come back.”

  Kyle snorted. “Believe me, I wish I could. You did a brilliant job, by the way. Moving my car from the pub so no one would think I was anywhere near Cragera Bay, and I suppose that’s why you took me to a hospital on the other side of the island.”

  The man’s careful attention to detail had been instrumental in the police not believing Kyle’s version of events.

  “I did that for you. The further away, the safer you were.”

  “I never doubted it. Was it her, Eleri, you were keeping me safe from?”

  The man’s round face paled so his sagging cheeks looked disturbingly like cottage cheese, and he took a step back. “Who else?”

  “That’s the question I’ve been asking myself. You said ‘them’ in
the car that night, and again just now.” Kyle held himself rigid, watching the man’s expression morph from surprise to irritation in a nearly single fluid motion.

  “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “While you were driving me to the hospital, you told me if I kept my mouth shut with the police, I might be safe from them—not her, them.”

  “Bah!” Barber waved a hand and stalked off toward a small barn, its brown planks weathered and sloped. The rickety structure looked ready to collapse at any moment. “You nearly bled to death in the cab of my truck. You can’t remember anything clearly.”

  Kyle fell into step behind him. “I doubt I’ll ever be able to close my eyes and not see that night in my head. You said them, and there was more than one. If you—like the rest of this village—believed I’d fallen prey to one small woman, why them?”

  “I’ve work to do,” Barber said, hauling open one rough weathered door. “I don’t know what happened to you before I found you. I saved your life, isn’t that enough?”

  “It should be.” Kyle wished it were. But he’d spent the better part of two years haunted by memories of that night, fear building to a crippling paranoia until he wondered if he wasn’t slowly going mad. “Who are they?”

  Barber took a pitchfork from the corner of the barn and started mucking out the nearest stall. “You know as much as I do, I’m afraid. They say it’s that woman, that she’s wicked.”

  “That may be, but she’s not alone.” There were at least three—two holding him down, a third binding his hands while his consciousness ebbed in and out. A shudder rippled over him. “Who are the others?”

  Barber tossed the pitchfork aside and stomped over until he was inches away. The top of the man’s head barely reached Kyle’s chin, and the farmer had to tip his head back to meet Kyle’s gaze. “If I knew for certain what in the hell went on at that place, I’d be as dead as you’re sure to be if you stay here. Maybe Eleri James acts alone, maybe she has a coven of minions carrying out her evil tasks, but I tell you this: death follows that girl like a shadow. Get away while you still can.”