Page 19 of Mortdale

“Do you want my entire schedule?”

“Yes, that would be nice, actually.”

There was a grand pause of many, many minutes before he decided on, “Good night, witch.”

“The best of nights to you, too, my blood-sucking lord-husband,” I said, waving at him.

He stopped at the bottom of the stairs.

When he turned to look at me over his shoulder, I said, “Please do not come up here again, or I will scream.”

He took a small metallic tin case from his pocket and brought a cigarette to his lips. “Scream all you like, no one can hear you here.”

Lovely. “Does my room lock from the inside?”

“Yes,” he said, keeping his eyes levelled on mine as he brought the lighter to his cigarette. “From the outside, too.”

A warm shiver travelled down my spine. “How fast can you run?”

“Faster than you.”

“And the stake to the heart thing—”

“Absolute bullshit, but I can find one if it makes my wife sleep better at night.”

“Well,” I said, awkwardly patting my palms to the side of my thighs, “since that’s all settled.”

“We won’t be sharing a room, Willow,” was all he said before he left.

The floorboards shifted under my feet, and I glanced down the depth of the dim corridor where they had slightly bowed under phantom weight. A few seconds later, the bow of the steps moved farther away, a ghastly hand beckoning me into the abyss. And then they shifted again, vanishing deeper into the dark vacuum of the corridor.

Chills spiked down my neck and a thrill sat at my fingertips as I ran them back and forth across my bottom lip.

Well, there was definitely something lingering in this house, breeding dread in the quiet shadows. And I wasn’t entirely sure it was a ghost.

My new bedroom was almost the size of the entire covenstead, and my eyes were struggling to find a spot to land on. Between the grandiose canopy bed blending seamlessly into the grain of the dark wooden floors, the burgundy brocade wallpaper woven with golden threads, the empty library next to the gilded seating arrangement at the far corner of the dark windows, and the many mirrors and the many candelabra mounted on all walls, I was spoilt for choice. But the exploring had to wait after contemplating on how soon I wanted to drop dead in my husband’s arms.

Grabbing the blanket and a pillow neatly laid on top of the plush mattress, I crawled under the bed and closed my eyes.

Someone knocked on my door, and I jumped upright, hitting my head hard against the bed slats. “Mother of Hell,” I groaned, rolling my way out from under the bed, cradling the bump on my head.

No one had ever knocked on my bedroom door before. “Yes?” I asked, still splayed out on the floor and groggy from the deep slumber I’d been dragged from and wondering why anyone would be knocking at my door in the middle of the night.

“My lady, lunch is being served downstairs,” Christof said from the other side of the door.

Lunch?

What lunch?

I did some jumbled mental calculations.

Vampires had their lunch at night? I knew they were nocturnal, but they’d screwed up the times of day to fit their schedule?

Rubbing my eyes hard, I blinked at the dark room, pushing to my wobbly feet to find a curtain. There were no curtains. Papers were stuck to the glass window panes instead, and I almost blinded myself near death when I pulled a piece back.

I crumbled into a ball on the floor when light assaulted my vision. “Blessed be the moon, I’m burning. Withering!”

“My lady?” Christof asked again.