Elena Vale arrived at Blackmere House on a Wednesday afternoon beneath a sky the colour of old pewter.
It had not rained.
That was the first thing she noticed.
The second was that she knew exactly how many steps led from the front gate to the house.
Thirty-seven.
She knew this before she counted them.
Elena stood with one hand resting on the iron gate while the taxi that had brought her from the station disappeared around the bend behind her.
The driver had been relieved to leave.
He had not attempted to disguise it.
When she gave him the address in the village, he had looked at her through the rear-view mirror for several seconds before asking whether she meant the Vale house by the lake.
Elena had said yes.
He had stopped speaking after that.
Now the silence he left behind seemed larger than the road.
Blackmere House waited at the end of a long gravel path between two rows of beech trees.
Elena had spent much of her professional life inside buildings people described as haunted.
Not literally.
Clients preferred phrases such as historically sensitive, atmospherically complex, or possessing an unusual emotional character.
Architectural conservators developed their own vocabulary for superstition.
A staircase that creaked without weight was timber contraction.
A wall that smelled of roses in winter was due to residual organic material in the old plaster.
A locked room that appeared colder than the rest of a house suggested air leakage.
Ghosts, in Elena's experience, were usually damp.
Blackmere House looked as if damp had acquired aristocratic ambitions.
The building rose three storeys above the eastern bank of the lake, constructed of grey local stone, darkened almost black with age. Ivy covered the western side. Twelve tall windows faced the front garden. Two chimneys emerged from the steep slate roof.
The right-hand chimney leaned.
Elena noticed that immediately.
She also noticed the cracked cornice above the eastern bay, the bowing guttering, and a vertical fissure running from the sill of the third window down toward the foundation.
Professional reflex.
Damage was reassuring.
Damage had reasons.
And reasons could be repaired.
What unsettled her was the familiarity.
She had not seen the house in twenty-four years.
Not properly.
She had been eight the last summer Adelaide allowed her to stay.
There should have been childhood fragments—sunlit lawns, grandmotherly perfume, rooms remembered as enormous because she had been small.
Instead, Elena looked at the house and experienced the unnerving certainty that she had left it yesterday.
The brass lion knocker would be cold.
The fifth stair in the entrance hall would complain beneath the left foot but not the right.
The downstairs lavatory would have a blue-and-white porcelain basin cracked near the plughole.
There would be a niche behind the statue of Saint Agnes in the chapel where someone had hidden a key.
She blinked.
Chapel?
Elena frowned at the house.
She did not remember a chapel.
She certainly did not remember a statue of Saint Agnes.
She reached for her suitcase.
Its wheels caught in the gravel.
"Perfect."
Her voice sounded too loud.
A rook lifted from one of the beeches.
Elena watched it disappear toward the lake.
Then she pushed open the gate.
It screamed on its hinges.
Thirty-seven steps, she thought.
She began walking.
One.
Two.
Three.
The air smelled of leaves and stone.
Eleven.
Twelve.
The garden was overgrown but not abandoned. Someone had cut the grass recently. The rose beds had been weeded. Dead hydrangeas rattled beside the path.
Twenty.
Twenty-one.
She could see the lake now between the trees.
Black water.
Mist lay over it despite the hour.
Elena stopped counting.
A sensation touched the back of her neck.
Not fear.
Recognition.
The lake.
She had forgotten how much she hated it.
The feeling was so sudden that her hand tightened around the suitcase handle.
There was no reason for it.
She remembered swimming there once as a child.
Or perhaps she remembered being told she had.
The distinction had become strangely important since Adelaide's death.
Elena had always distrusted childhood memory.
It was one reason she had built her adult life around objects.
Stone could lie, but only if someone altered it.
Wood retained evidence.
Paint accumulated layers.
Buildings confessed under patient examination.
People rewrote themselves constantly.
She looked away from the lake.
Thirty-six.
Thirty-seven.
Her foot landed on the first stone of the front step.
Elena went still.
Exactly thirty-seven.
She laughed, but the sound contained no amusement.
"Coincidence."
The front door opened.
Elena nearly dropped the suitcase.
A man stood inside.
He appeared to be in his late sixties, perhaps older, with a narrow, weather-cut face and sparse white hair combed flat across his scalp. He wore a brown cardigan over a checked shirt and held a ring of keys large enough for a prison warden.
"Miss Vale."
It was not a question.
"Elena."
"Yes."
He stared at her.
Long enough to become rude.
Elena waited.
The man's expression changed almost imperceptibly.
Something tightened around his mouth.
"You look like her."
"My grandmother?"
"No."
The answer came too quickly.
He glanced over his shoulder into the house.
Then back at Elena.
"Your grandmother as a young woman," he amended.
Elena studied him.
"You must be Mr Mercer."
"Elias Mercer."
"Adelaide's caretaker."
"Among other things."
That sounded promising.
Elena extended her hand.
Mercer looked at it.
For one odd second she thought he might refuse.
Then he shook it.
His palm was dry and cold.
"Come inside," he said.
The entrance hall smelled exactly as Elena remembered.
Wax.
Old paper.
Lavender.
And something faintly mineral beneath all three.
Lake water, she thought.
Ridiculous.
Mercer closed the door.
The house absorbed the sound.
Elena stood beneath the high ceiling.
Dust motes moved through shafts of grey light. The black-and-white marble floor remained unchanged. A broad staircase rose ahead before dividing at the landing.
There.
The fifth stair.
She stared at it.
Mercer noticed.
"Something wrong?"
"No."
He picked up one end of her suitcase.
"I can manage."
"I know."
He lifted it anyway.
Elena smiled faintly.
"Do all people in Saint Orison answer questions with unnecessary hostility, or have I received special treatment?"
Mercer looked at her.
Then, unexpectedly, one corner of his mouth twitched.
"Your grandmother said you were difficult."
"That sounds like her."
"She was fond of you."
The humour disappeared.
Elena looked toward the staircase.
"She had an unusual method of expressing it."
Mercer said nothing.
That irritated her more than disagreement would have.
Adelaide had not been cruel.
That would have been easier.
Cruelty at least gave grief an object.
Instead her grandmother had been attentive one year and remote the next. Warm during Elena's earliest childhood, then increasingly unwilling to allow visits to Blackmere House.
When Elena was eight, Adelaide had sent her home in the middle of summer.
No explanation.
After that came Christmas cards.
Birthday cheques.
Occasional telephone calls during which her grandmother seemed frightened of silence.
Elena had spent years deciding not to care.
Then Adelaide had died.
And left her the house.
Mercer started up the stairs.
The fifth step creaked beneath his left foot.
Elena stopped.
Mercer turned.
"What is it?"
"Nothing."
He continued.
Elena followed more slowly.
The fifth stair did not creak beneath her.
For no sensible reason, this felt worse.
________________________________________
Her bedroom was at the eastern end of the second floor.
Of course it was.
Elena recognised the corridor.
She knew before reaching the room that the wallpaper inside would be faded green.
She knew the fireplace surround was white marble.
She knew there would be three shallow scratches on the right bedpost.
She knew the wardrobe door would resist before opening.
All of these things could have belonged to childhood memory.
The window could not.
Mercer opened the door.
Elena stopped on the threshold.
There it was.
Tall.
Narrow.
Facing the lake.
A window set into the eastern wall beside the bed.
Something moved inside her.
Not memory.
Something beneath memory.
A physical response.
Her chest tightened.
Her palms went cold.
Mercer watched her.
"Is this still all right?"
"Yes."
"You can use another room."
"Why would I?"
"No reason."
"You seem to have many of those."
He placed the suitcase beside the wardrobe.
Elena walked toward the window.
The glass was old.
Cylinder glass, most likely late nineteenth century, imperfect enough to distort the lake beyond it into wavering black lines.
She touched the brass latch.
Mercer said sharply, "Don't."
Elena turned.
He looked startled by his own voice.
"Don't what?"
"Force it."
"I wasn't."
"The frame swells."
"It's dry."
"Old wood moves."
"Yes. I work with old buildings."
"I remember."
Of course he did.
Elena had sent Adelaide photographs of several restoration projects over the years.
She had never received comments beyond brief notes.
Beautiful.
You always liked damaged things.
Be careful what you restore.
Elena had assumed the last remark referred to a seventeenth-century manor house in Kent.
Standing now beside the eastern window, she was less certain.
"Has this been replaced?" she asked.
"No."
"Repaired?"
"Many times."
"By whom?"
Mercer hesitated.
"Your grandmother."
Elena raised an eyebrow.
"Adelaide repaired nineteenth-century timber casements?"
"She had help."
"From you?"
"No."
"Who?"
Mercer looked toward the window.
His discomfort became visible.
Not enough for Elena to call it fear.
Almost.
"A man from the village."
"Name?"
"He's dead."
"I didn't ask whether I could invite him to supper."
Mercer sighed.
"You have Adelaide's patience."
"I'm told I resemble her."
He looked at Elena again.
This time she noticed something.
He was not comparing her to Adelaide.
Not really.
His gaze went to her mouth.
Her eyes.
The line of her jaw.
Like someone checking a photograph against a face.
"Mr Mercer."
He looked away.
"Yes."
"Who did you mean downstairs?"
"When?"
"When you said I looked like her."
"I told you."
"You corrected yourself."
"Did I?"
"You're not a convincing liar."
"No."
He picked up the empty suitcase stand and unfolded it.
"Your grandmother was better."
"Apparently I inherited the house but not the useful talents."
Mercer moved toward the door.
"Dinner things are in the kitchen. Mrs Bell comes Monday and Thursday mornings. Groceries were delivered yesterday."
"You arranged that?"
"Adelaide did."
Elena stared.
"She died three weeks ago."
"Yes."
"And arranged my groceries yesterday?"
Mercer stopped.
For the first time, Elena saw him genuinely wrong-footed.
Then he frowned.
"I meant she left instructions."
"Specific instructions?"
"Yes."
"For what food?"
"I don't know."
"You bought it."
"Mrs Bell did."
"Because Adelaide instructed her before she died?"
"Yes."
Elena considered him.
He disliked questions.
Unfortunate.
She liked unanswered ones.
"What else did she instruct you to do?"
Mercer looked toward the window again.
"Make certain you had everything you needed."
Something in his tone shifted.
"Except answers?"
His face softened.
"You won't thank me for those."
"Try me."
"No."
Elena almost laughed.
"Very well."
He put his hand on the door.
"One thing."
She waited.
"If you hear anything outside at night, leave it outside."
Elena stared at him.
"Foxes?"
"No."
"Burglars?"
"No."
"What exactly should I expect?"
"Nothing."
"You've just instructed me how to behave if nothing happens."
Mercer's jaw tightened.
"Old houses make noises."
"You are talking to someone who spent six months restoring a Georgian rectory with a colony of bats in the roof."
"This house is different."
"How?"
He looked at her for a long moment.
Then said, "Your grandmother should have sold it."
He left.
Elena listened to his footsteps fade down the corridor.
At the far end, the floorboards creaked.
Then the staircase.
A few minutes later, the front door opened.
She went to the window.
Mercer crossed the garden quickly.
He did not look back.
At the gate he paused.
Turned toward the house.
Not toward Elena's window.
Higher.
The roof.
Then he crossed himself.
Elena watched him leave.
"Well," she murmured. "That was reassuring."
Behind her, the wardrobe door opened by itself.
Elena spun around.
It moved perhaps two inches.
Then stopped.
Silence.
She walked toward it.
Old hinges, she told herself.
Uneven floor.
Changes in air pressure after Mercer closed the front door.
Her hand settled on the brass handle.
The wardrobe resisted exactly as she had known it would.
Elena pulled harder.
The door opened.
Inside hung three garment bags.
She frowned.
Her grandmother's things?
No.
Adelaide had been shorter.
These were long.
Elena unzipped the first.
A dress.
Dark blue silk.
Old.
Very old.
She took it from the wardrobe.
The fabric had been preserved remarkably well. Hand-finished seams. Narrow waist. High neckline altered at some later date.
Late nineteenth or early twentieth century, Elena guessed.
She held it against herself.
The hem touched the floor.
The shoulders aligned.
Her size.
She checked the second bag.
Another dress.
Cream.
The third contained a velvet evening gown the colour of red wine.
Elena stared at them.
Perhaps they belonged to her mother.
Except her mother had never mentioned old dresses at Blackmere.
And these were older than her mother.
Much older.
She examined the blue dress more carefully.
There was something sewn into the inner collar.
Initials.
C.V.
Elena frowned.
She searched her memory.
Vale genealogy had never interested her.
Adelaide had kept photographs.
Family Bibles.
Painted miniatures of dead relations no one discussed.
C.V.
Caroline?
Catherine?
Charlotte?
A cold thought came without invitation.
Clara.
Elena did not know anyone named Clara Vale.
She was certain of that.
And yet the name arrived complete.
Clara.
Not Katherine.
Not Cecilia.
Clara.
Her hand began to tremble.
She dropped the dress.
It landed softly on the rug.
"Enough."
Elena looked at herself in the mirror attached to the wardrobe door.
Thirty-two.
Tired.
Pale from weeks of legal paperwork and funeral arrangements.
Dark brown hair twisted into an untidy knot.
A small scar beneath her chin from falling off a bicycle at twelve.
Perfectly ordinary.
Except the woman in the mirror seemed, for half a second, to be wearing the blue dress.
Elena stepped back.
The image corrected itself.
Black trousers.
Grey jumper.
Travel-worn coat.
She shut the wardrobe.
Hard.
The window rattled.
Elena turned.
Nothing.
Outside, the lake disappeared beneath mist.
________________________________________
She spent the next four hours doing what she always did when unsettled.
She worked.
Blackmere House needed more than sentimental ownership.
It needed structural assessment.
The roof had several probable water ingress points. The western elevation showed signs of chronic damp. Two window lintels required examination. Electrical rewiring had been carried out in the 1980s and appeared to have stopped halfway through the job.
Adelaide, judging by the fuse box, had lived one electrical fault away from legend.
Elena filled twelve pages of her notebook.
Measurements calmed her.
She examined the drawing room, library, dining room, kitchen, morning room, and a peculiar octagonal chamber that appeared on no floor plan Mercer had left.
She photographed cornices.
Tested plaster.
Made notes about timber decay.
The house became material.
Manageable.
At seven, she found the kitchen.
Mrs Bell had filled the refrigerator with enough food for several people.
Eggs.
Butter.
Milk.
Vegetables.
A whole chicken.
Fresh bread wrapped in linen.
Three bottles of white wine.
And pears.
A ridiculous quantity of pears.
Elena stared at them.
There were at least thirty.
She remembered something.
A summer afternoon.
Adelaide slicing a pear.
A child's hand reaching across a kitchen table.
Not yet, Nell. They need another day.
Nell.
Elena leaned against the counter.
Her grandmother had called her Nell.
No one else had.
Not Elena.
Not Ellie.
Nell.
The name existed nowhere outside Blackmere House.
Elena had forgotten it until that moment.
She picked up one of the pears.
Hard.
Unripe.
"They need another day," she whispered.
A spoon fell from the drying rack behind her.
Elena turned.
It spun once on the floor.
Stopped.
She stared at it.
Then laughed quietly.
"You're an old house."
The kitchen offered no opinion.
She made toast.
Poured wine.
Ate standing at the counter.
At eight-fifteen she called Mara.
Her closest friend answered on the third ring.
"Elena?"
"You sound disappointed."
"I'm surprised. I assumed you'dthe ancestral wallpaper had murdered you."
"Not yet."
"How is Dracula Manor?"
"Structurally irresponsible."
"So, home."
Elena smiled.
Mara Sen had been her friend for eleven years and possessed the useful quality of finding Elena's worst moods entertaining.
"It's worse than the photographs."
"Haunted?"
"Damp."
"Same thing in England."
Elena carried the wine through the hall.
"I found three antique dresses in my wardrobe."
"Did you put one on?"
"No."
"Then why are we friends?"
"They're my size."
"So?"
"They're over a century old."
"That is more interesting."
"One has initials sewn into the collar."
"What initials?"
"C.V."
A pause.
"Relative?"
"Presumably."
"You sound strange."
"I'm tired."
"Elena."
"What?"
"You do that."
"Do what?"
"Say you're tired when what you mean is something upset you."
Elena walked into the drawing room.
Firelight would improve it.
She crouched beside the grate.
"Mercer is odd."
"Mercer?"
"Caretaker."
"How odd?"
"Village-horror-film odd."
"Excellent."
"He told me not to answer anything I hear outside at night."
Mara went silent.
Elena smiled.
"Finally."
"What?"
"I frightened you."
"No. I'm deciding how quickly I can drive there and physically drag you back to London."
"I'm staying."
"Of course you are."
"I have probate work. Inventory. Structural survey. Adelaide's papers."
"You could hire people."
"I am people."
"Elena."
She struck a match.
The flame caught.
"This house is valuable."
"That is not why you're staying."
Elena watched the fire move through kindling.
Mara knew too much.
"Why am I staying?"
"You want to know why she left it to you."
Elena said nothing.
"And," Mara continued, "you want to know why she spent half your childhood making you feel as though you'd done something wrong."
"That is an interpretation."
"It is the interpretation you've spent fifteen years pretending not to have."
"Remind me why I speak to you."
"I have excellent hair."
"That must be it."
A sound came from upstairs.
Elena looked toward the ceiling.
Three quiet knocks.
She straightened.
"Elena?"
"Hold on."
She listened.
Nothing.
"What?"
"I heard something."
"Inside or outside?"
"Inside."
"Your creepy caretaker only warned you about outside, so apparently you're safe."
Another knock.
This time from farther away.
Elena set down her wine.
"Mara."
The humour left her friend's voice.
"Yes?"
"I'll call you tomorrow."
"Don't hang up."
"I'm going to check."
"That sentence is how women die in horror films."
"I restore old buildings for a living."
"Yes, and apparently none of that education covered basic survival."
"Mara."
"Fine. But if a Victorian child appears at the end of the corridor, leave."
"I'll add it to my risk assessment."
"Elena."
"I'm fine."
She hung up.
The house was silent.
Elena picked up the fireplace poker.
Then put it down.
Ridiculous.
She went upstairs.
One.
Two.
Three.
The staircase seemed darker than before.
She switched on the wall light.
Nothing happened.
"Excellent."
She used her phone torch.
At the landing, she listened.
Silence.
Then—
three soft knocks.
From Adelaide's study.
Elena followed the sound.
The door stood at the western end of the corridor.
She remembered it locked.
Always locked.
Even when she was a child.
Adelaide had once caught Elena touching the handle and reacted with such violence that the memory had survived even when others had faded.
Never go into that room.
Elena stood before it now.
The handle was brass.
Tarnished.
She tried it.
Locked.
The knocking stopped.
She pressed her ear against the wood.
Nothing.
"Mice."
A very disciplined mouse, apparently.
She stepped back.
Something gleamed on the carpet.
A key.
Elena stared.
It was old.
Iron.
She had walked this corridor several times that afternoon.
There had been no key.
She bent to pick it up.
The metal felt warm.
An image struck her.
Not a memory.
Too brief.
A woman running.
Wet hair.
A candle falling.
Someone shouting behind a locked door.
Then gone.
Elena dropped the key.
It hit the carpet without sound.
She stared at her hand.
"Jet lag."
She had travelled forty miles, not crossed an ocean.
"Stress."
Better.
She picked the key up again.
No vision.
No sensation.
Just iron.
She inserted it into Adelaide's study door.
It did not fit.
Elena frowned.
Tried again.
Wrong key.
She removed it.
Turned it over.
A tiny symbol had been engraved into the bow.
A rose.
She knew where it belonged.
The thought arrived so completely that she did not question it until her feet were already moving.
Downstairs.
Across the entrance hall.
Through the narrow passage beside the library.
A door waited at the end.
Elena stopped.
She had not opened it earlier.
She had assumed it led to storage.
Now her hand settled on the knob.
Cold.
She turned it.
The smell reached her first.
Wax.
Stone.
Old incense.
The room beyond was small.
Rectangular.
A private chapel.
Elena did not move.
Moonlight entered through narrow stained glass.
There were four wooden pews.
A stone altar.
A brass crucifix.
And in the corner—
Saint Agnes.
A pale statue holding a lamb.
Elena's breathing changed.
No.
She had invented that earlier.
She had thought it before entering the house.
A niche behind the statue.
A key.
She crossed the chapel.
Her hands had gone numb.
"This is memory."
It had to be.
She must have played here as a child.
Adelaide may have shown her the niche.
She placed one hand against the statue.
It shifted slightly.
Behind it was a recess.
Inside lay a small brass key.
Elena stepped back.
The iron key slipped from her hand and struck the floor.
This time the sound echoed.
She stared at the brass key.
Her pulse beat at the base of her throat.
She did not want to touch it.
So she did.
The instant her fingers closed around the metal, every candle in the chapel lit.
Elena screamed.
She stumbled backwards.
Five candles burned on the altar.
Three beside the statue.
Two near the door.
No matches.
No electricity.
Flames.
Real flames.
She stared.
One by one, they went out.
The smell of smoke remained.
Elena stood frozen.
Then she heard a woman laugh.
Softly.
Right beside her ear.
She spun.
Nobody.
Her phone fell from her hand.
The screen cracked against the stone.
The chapel went dark.
Elena ran.
She did not stop until she reached the drawing room.
She closed the door behind her.
Locked it.
Then leaned against the wood, breathing hard.
The fire had gone out.
It should not have.
She had laid enough wood for an hour.
Darkness filled the room.
Elena switched on the lamp.
Nothing.
Power cut.
Outside, the lake reflected a thin moon.
She went to the window.
The mist had thickened.
Something stood on the shore.
A person.
Elena stopped breathing.
Too far away to distinguish.
A man, perhaps.
Tall.
Motionless.
Facing the house.
She moved closer to the glass.
The figure remained.
"Elena."
She jumped so violently that her shoulder struck the curtain frame.
The voice had not come from the room.
Her phone.
On the floor.
Mara was calling back.
Elena laughed shakily.
She answered.
"You nearly killed me."
"I told you not to investigate."
"I found a chapel."
"What?"
"There's a private chapel in the house."
"That doesn't sound surprising for an old estate."
"I knew it was there."
"You've been there before."
"I don't remember being there."
"That is not the same thing."
Elena looked through the window again.
The shore was empty.
Her throat tightened.
"Mara."
"Yes?"
"Did I ever tell you about someone called Clara?"
"No."
"Are you sure?"
"Yes."
"Elena, what is happening?"
"I don't know."
A faint patter touched the window.
Elena went still.
"Hold on."
She looked outside.
Nothing.
Another tap.
Then another.
Three.
Soft.
Precise.
Not rain.
Something had struck the glass.
Elena stepped closer.
"Is someone there?" Mara asked.
"No."
She pulled back the curtain.
Nothing stood outside.
Only the dark garden.
The lake.
Mist.
Elena released a breath.
Then she noticed something on the window.
A handprint.
On the outside of the glass.
Large.
Male.
Her entire body went cold.
The drawing room window was twelve feet above the ground.
"Elena?"
She did not answer.
The handprint slowly faded.
Not downward.
Not as condensation disappears.
It vanished finger by finger.
Little finger.
Ring finger.
Middle.
Index.
Thumb.
Gone.
Elena backed away.
"I'm leaving this room."
"Yes. Excellent. Finally."
She crossed the hall.
Power returned suddenly.
Every light switched on at once.
Elena stopped.
The grandfather clock began to chime.
Nine times.
Behind her, somewhere in the house, a door slammed.
Mara cursed through the phone.
"What was that?"
"Door."
"Get Mercer back."
"I don't have his number."
"Call the police."
"And tell them my historic glazing has developed hands?"
"Tell them you think someone is inside."
Elena looked toward the staircase.
Someone might be.
That possibility was almost comforting.
People could be arrested.
People had motives.
People obeyed architecture.
She found the heaviest umbrella in the stand.
"Stay on the phone."
"For once, an intelligent suggestion."
Elena checked the ground floor.
Library.
Empty.
Dining room.
Empty.
Kitchen.
Empty.
Morning room.
Empty.
She reached the corridor leading to the chapel.
The door was open.
Light spilt from inside.
"Elena," Mara whispered, as though lowering her voice could help from ninety miles away.
"I know."
Elena walked toward it.
The chapel candles were lit again.
All of them.
On the altar lay a piece of paper.
Elena approached.
Old cream stationery.
Adelaide's handwriting.
She knew it instantly.
Sharp.
Elegant.
Slanted slightly left.
Her name was written across the front.
ELENA.
Her knees weakened.
"Mara."
"What?"
"There's a letter."
"From whom?"
"My grandmother."
"Was it there before?"
"No."
"How do you know?"
"Because I was just here."
"Don't touch it."
Elena picked it up.
"Elena."
"I'm already touching it."
"I hate you."
"I know."
The envelope had not been sealed.
Inside was one sheet.
No date.
No greeting.
One sentence.
Elena read it twice.
"What does it say?" Mara asked.
She did not answer.
"Elena?"
Her grandmother's handwriting remained steady across the page.
If the rain begins at midnight, do not open the bedroom window.
Elena looked toward the dark chapel entrance.
Her mouth had gone dry.
"That's all?"
Mara asked.
Elena realised she had read the sentence aloud.
"Yes."
"That's all she wrote?"
"Yes."
"What rain?"
"I don't know."
"Is it raining now?"
Elena listened.
No.
Nothing.
The house stood silent around her.
She folded the note.
Then noticed writing on the back.
Not Adelaide's.
A different hand.
Dark ink.
One line.
She will open it. She always does.
Elena stared at the words.
Something tapped upstairs.
Three times.
She looked toward the ceiling.
The eastern bedroom.
Tap.
Tap.
Tap.
The brass key slipped from her fingers.
And somewhere beyond the walls of Blackmere House, the lake answered with a sound like a person taking a long, slow breath.