Page 29 of Tall, Dark and Haunted

Chapter Thirteen

Davy

AssoonasJuniper leaves, Castalia practically drags us out of the library, promising the librarian that she’ll keep us out of trouble. The look on the young librarian’s face is a dead giveaway that she thinks Castalia will probably get us into more trouble instead.

I’m pretty sure we should be worried when she leads us to a truck that sells food. Shanna, the owner, suggests we get Silver Springs Specials. We each pick three items off the menu and eat out of boxes with plastic forks as Castalia hands over some money. We walk right out of town and into the woods. I don’t recognize these woods from the Margam estate, so I’m guessing it came to Wales with Silver Springs.

A large manor house seems to appear in front of us, as if out of nowhere, and I stare up at it with admiration. It’s truly beautiful: old and gothic and obscenely big.

“Welcome to the Tilbury Manor Hotel,” Castalia says as she leads us up the front steps and into the lobby.

There are dragons carved into the banisters on the staircase and on the massive wooden desk in the center of the room.

“Oh God! What are you doing here, Castalia?” the hotel employee behind the desk asks, his eyes wide with what I believe is actual panic. Remind me not to get on the teenage witch’s bad side.

“Don’t worry, Leon. I’m not planning on turning you into a pig. At least not today.”

His shoulders sag with relief. “That’s all right, then. What can I do for you?”

“Is Lupine or Enzo here?”

“The bosses are in the dining room.”

Castalia strides away from the desk, instructing us to follow her. She leads us through the hotel until we find ourselves in a large, old-fashioned dining room. Everything looks expensive and ornate, and for a second, I wonder if we’ve gone back in time. Kind of makes me nostalgic for home, if I’m telling the truth—just not nostalgic enough to spend an eternity as a ghost.

There’s a group of people sitting at one of the tables, and Castalia does the introductions. There’s Enzo Rossi, who she claims is in the mafia. No one denies it. Lupine and Kit, who I remember being at the castle when we first arrived. Ember, a redhead with bright green eyes. And Dominick, who owns the local brewery with his brothers. All of them look our age—or at least, the age we were when we died.

“Did you hear what happened to Stefano and Vaughan?” Lupine, who gave Rhi the awful unicorn t-shirt, asks. “Someone attacked them!” She says this without waiting for anyone to answer. “Came up behind them in the park.”

“Are they okay?” Kit asks.

“Luckily, they’re both pretty good with their fists,” Enzo Rossi answers. I’m tempted to ask him if he managed to explore Wales, the way he said he wanted to back at the castle, but I’m not sure I want to tease him if he really is in the mafia.

“I guess there have to be some perks to being in the mafia, huh, Enzo?” Dominick asks sardonically.

“I’d invite you to join us, Dominick, but we all know you’re better at brewing beer than fighting.”

“Besides, it wasn’t their fists so much as their teeth,” Lupine says. “They shifted and bit the man before making a run for it.”

“It’s funny you say that,” Dominick says. “One of our servers at the brewery was attacked earlier today too.”

“LUPINE! Can I get you to—”

I struggle to pay attention to what Castalia is saying. My mind is still reeling at the news that someone is attacking people.

“Dominick, was your server a shifter, too?” I struggle to keep the panic out of my voice.

“Yeah, he’s a monkey shifter.”

For a second, I panic. But Jones is locked up in the castle, and Robert is guarding him. There is no way he could have escaped—we’d made sure of it—and if that had changed, the groundskeeper would have let us know.

“You want a room?” Enzo asks us.

“I want to give them makeovers, and I can’t do that here in the dining room.” Castalia rolls her eyes at the well-dressed man.

“Are you sure you want to trust Castalia?” Enzo raises his eyebrow at us before turning back to the teenage witch. “It wasn’t that long ago that you turned me, Wren, Camden, Kalen, and Rehan into dick pigs.”

“Dick pigs?” Rhi snorts.