Page 37

Sully woke with a start, the faint strains of music still trickling from the speaker. For a moment, he didn’t know where he was. The warmth on his shoulders lingered like a memory, soft and heavy, and the ache that had throbbed through his skull all day was… gone.

He blinked at the dim light. Amy must have turned the lamp low while he slept. He couldn’t remember the last time he had slept that hard, that deeply. Not in weeks. Maybe not in years.

Swinging his legs over the side of the table, he tugged the sheet from around his middle, then pulled on his clothes in quiet disbelief. His shoulders were loose, his arms strangely light, as though the knots had been hollowed out of him. Maybe there was something to Amy’s nonsense after all.

By the time he prowled through the corridors again, checking scaffolding bolts, ensuring floor lamps were out of harm’s way, he felt like a man who had downed three mugs of strong coffee.

With dusk sliding across the gardens, the air hummed with cables being run and the Dead Reckoning crew’s voices calling as their lights sparked alive. The command center was again set up on the main floor. He found Amy near the staircase cradling a box of spare bulbs. Her hair was pinned up again, but some wisps rebelliously escaped.

“Sully! You don’t have to stay for all this,” she told him, a little surprised. “I know you’ve been working since morning. Go home, get some proper rest.”

Sully shook his head and to his own bemusement, smiled. “I had a rest. Better than I’ve had in years. Don’t know what you did back there, but… damn, Amy.” His hand lifted reflexively to his shoulder, testing its ease. “I thought all this spa business was fluff, but maybe I was wrong.”

Her eyebrows rose, a spark of surprise in her eyes at words she clearly hadn’t expected from him. For half a heartbeat he thought about saying more, about telling her how everything she’d done in that little room shifted something tight inside him.

But the bang of a clapperboard, a shout for “quiet on set,” and Mason’s laughter as he swept into view yanked the moment short. Crew hurried by with cameras and cords, tugging the mansion into focus for its nightly performance.

Amy turned reluctantly toward them, box still in her arms. Sully fell into step beside her. Whatever conversation they might have had would have to wait.

Chapter 15

Amy hugged the box of spare bulbs closer to her chest, Sully’s words still echoing. But maybe I was wrong.

The admission warmed her more than she expected. After months of clashing with him over permits, projections, even the color of the front shutters, this small scrap of approval felt like sunlight on cold skin. Worse yet, she realized, she wanted more of it.

Dropping the box out of the way, she turned toward him. A faint smile pulled before she could check it.

But Mason’s voice boomed across the hall, scattering the fragile moment like startled birds.

“Tonight, ladies and gentlemen,” he proclaimed, flanked by his crew, “we step into the mystery of Blackwell Mansion. Murder, betrayal, restless souls… this house has known it all!” His tone swelled, riding drama the way a sailor rides a storm.

Amy’s stomach tightened. She could hear her words in his pattered paragraphs clipped down to fragments, twisted out of sequence, most of the truth carved away so the tragedy glittered sharper. Sensationalism, bait on a hook.

Mason led them up the sweeping staircase, lanterns and camera lights bobbing against the shadows. Sully beside her, their small group filed onto the second floor and into the room where so many witch marks scarred the beams and windowsills. They looked different in the dim light tonight.

They looked old. Desperate. Superstitious. Carved right into the bones of the house.

“Our tests tonight will explore why this chamber bears the heaviest concentration of marks,” Mason said, pitching his voice low. “Who cut them? And what exactly were they keeping out?”

The crew unpacked equipment in a well-practiced ritual. Small boxes with glowing lights were set up along the walls and windowsills. Mason gestured to one such instrument.

“This is an EMF sensor,” he explained. “If unseen energy passes nearby, it will trigger.” He swept an arm dramatically to another device. This one bore two lights, red and green. “Here, our spirit visitors can answer yes or no. Red light for no. Green light for yes.” His gaze lifted, solemn. “Now… we’ll ask our questions.”

The room held its breath.

“Are you Dr. Whitaker, the man who murdered women here?” Mason asked.

The machine stayed dark.

“Are you one of his victims?”

Silence. The red and green eyes were blind.

Mason shifted his stance, angling for tension. “Are you a member of the Blackwell family?”

A breathless half-minute stretched. Then… the green light flickered, soft as a heartbeat.

“Ohhh,” one of the crew hissed, excitement crackling.