Another creak, another singsong murmur.
Okay.
Rapidly becoming less Famous Five, more The Haunting of Bly Manor.
“For God’s sake,” she muttered, flicking on the flashlight app on her phone. She took several steps forward and flooded the cramped interior with light.
Her eyes adjusting rapidly, she looked around a musty hallway that led to a door, about fifteen feet away, and to her side, a few rickety-looking shelves containing the odd unloved book and a bowl of the most disgusting, desiccated potpourri.
Potpourri that appeared to be . . . undulating.
With the feeling she was seriously going to regret this, Sylvie reached out and poked the bowl. Just as a hairy twig-like leg nudged aside a shriveled petal and delicately waved at her, she caught sight of the pale blur of a face in the darkness.
By time her brain had caught up to the facts of mirror and own reflection, her poor heart was doing its best to wrench out of her chest.
For all Sylvie’s love of everything whimsical and extraordinary, she actually considered herself quite a straightforward person, not prone to panic. She could have handled the horror of whatever was living in the potpourri. The fright over her reflection was a passing blip.
But what was written on that mirror, smudged very, very clearly into the dust, wrenched a sound from her that she’d never made in her life.
Her left foot skidded on the floor and she almost fell. Something moved behind her, and on instinct, she fought back with the ultimate weapon: a direct shot of infested potpourri to the face.
The unknown presence in the dark screamed loud enough to wake every gargoyle on-site.
As he or she thrashed about and a piece of potpourri rebounded into Sylvie’s chin, she turned back down the passage, almost hurling herself into the comparative brightness of the gallery.
Her breath was coming in small, squeaky hitches, and her legs were shaking.
All she saw then was Dominic, standing alone in front of an ugly metal sculpture of a tractor, a heavy scowl on his face—and she acted on sheer, driving instinct.
“What the fuck is going on up here—?” He didn’t have a chance to finish the incredulous snap of words before she was at his side, only just catching herself seconds before she could follow through on the immediate plan announced by her brain.
Basically, to throw herself into his arms, burrow into his body, and stay there for a while. Five minutes. An hour. A decade.
Her chest was rising and falling rapidly. One of her hands still hovered in the air millimeters from his chest.
She had hesitated; he did not.
As he’d done once before, Dominic took her hand in his, this time drawing it around his neck and pulling her into him. Her hot cheek coming to press against the cool silkiness of his shirt, Sylvie exhaled through her mouth and felt the first tension wash out of her muscles, as if her body were melting into his.
His fingers stroked her hair, gentle, unbelievably soothing, and then his hand moved to cup her cheek, holding her head as she nestled into the curve of his neck. She could feel the steady movement of his pulse beneath her fingertips.
“Sylvie,” he said in a low voice. His arms tightened on her as she struggled to stop the residual trembling right down through her wrists and ankles. “What the hell happened?”
Her eyes were squeezed closed. All she was aware of in that moment, as she forced her breathing out of that asthmatic wheeze and into long, juddering inhalations, was his scent and his warmth wrapping around her. “Dom.”
It was nothing more than a whisper, but he heard her. His hold, already tight, drew her in even closer to the long planes of his body. She felt the abrasion of his jaw against her temple, and the weight as he rested his cheek on her head.
The fingers entwined in her hair played gently with the fine strands.
“I know all this place is missing is a young David Bowie before it goes full Labyrinth,” Dominic said against her temple, the words light, the underlying tone anything but, “but I don’t think there’s much danger beyond appallingly bad taste.”
His thumb ran lightly down her nose, before his fingertips touched under her eyes. Sylvie hadn’t realized that she was crying a bit until he made another low sound, and was so horrified that she immediately stopped.
He was just pulling her back to look into her face when the panel door banged back open behind them, and she almost jumped out of her skin yet again.
With complete and total outrage, a high-pitched voice roared, “You threw a spider in my face.”
She twisted, Dominic’s hand falling to hold the curve of her waist, and saw a small, furious-faced boy with violently red curls, extremely round freckled cheeks, and waving fists. He shook one at her, like a crabby policeman in an old-fashioned children’s book. She half expected his next words to be Look ’ere!
“It ran down my neck,” screamed the very loud child. “It had legs!”
Dominic was running his fingers up and down Sylvie’s back. She thought he probably wasn’t even aware he was doing it. Normally, that would provoke a renewed rush of sensation, but the initial shock of that experience with the mirror was creeping back.
“Friend of yours?” he inquired mildly, eyeing the child with a distinct lack of enthusiasm.
Even in the light of day, holding on to Dominic’s body, her heart was starting to beat too fast again, throwing another little catch into her breath.
His hand came up to cup her cheek again, but that typically shrewd gaze swung back to the child.
The little boy clearly had some brain cells to go with the lung power, because he’d stopped hollering at her and was giving Dominic a slightly wary look.
One small foot edged back.
“Don’t move.” It was Dominic’s most grim sergeant-major tone, usually reserved for the absolute worst offenders on Operation Cake, and the kid’s hair almost stood on end.
Amazingly, for a child who looked as if he’d never heard the word “no” in his life, he did not move. Even when Dominic squeezed Sylvie’s hand and crossed the distance to the panel door in long strides, both she and her erstwhile spook-in-the-dark stood in silence.
Dominic activated his own phone light and disappeared into the corridor. He was back in less than ten seconds, and when he closed the door behind him with a slow, deliberate click, Sylvie wasn’t surprised the little boy quailed.
In all these years of icy words and withering looks, she’d never seen Dominic so angry. There was nothing cold and restrained about the expression on his face now; it was intense, burning fury.
The kid reanimated with a vengeance. Scooting behind a metal statue of a soldier, much taller than his own four-foot-nothing, he peeked out at the Angel of Death descending upon him. “You can’t do nothing to me,” he said, chin jutting. “My daddy owns this place and he can have you killed.”
“Your daddy and I,” Dominic said, his eyes lethal, “are shortly going to have a chat. You cruel little brat.”
The freckled chin lifted higher. “I’m a Middlethorpe,” he retorted, as if that should say it all.
Actually, having met his daddy, it probably did say it all.
Middlethorpe Junior shot her a quick look. “It was a joke.” A sullen note was creeping in.
“It was a disgusting thing to do. And I’m betting it’s not the first time you’ve tried out your ‘joke’ on unsuspecting visitors.” Dominic’s hard stare hadn’t wavered, but he looked at Sylvie now, and she swallowed hard at the immediate change in the depths of his eyes. Very gently, incredibly gently, he said, “Did you mention your aunt’s name at some point this morning?”