I looked at his mother and lifted an eyebrow. If that was the rule, she’d already broken it.
“James wouldn’t fire you for something like that. Besides, I’m family.”
“Your uncle didn’t make any exceptions,” Sam said.
“Then how about Grace? Can you talk about her?” I was growing frustrated.
Sam opened his mouth, but before he could speak, his mother laid a hand on his forearm. She had something she wanted to say. “The manor is not cursed, if that’s what you’re wondering,” she told me.
Sam shot her a side-eye.
“How can you be sure?” I asked, interested to hear what she’d say.
“Members of my family have worked in this house from the day it was built to the day it was abandoned over a hundred years later. No one ever saw any evidence of a curse.”
I figured I’d play devil’s advocate. “You were the one who demanded I come to you if I ever saw anything unusual. Now you’re telling me this place isn’t cursed or haunted?”
“A house doesn’t need ghosts to be haunted,” Sam said.
That caught me off guard. I wasn’t sure what he meant.
“Can we please find something a little more uplifting to discuss?” Miriam sounded frazzled. “I think I’ve had more than enough death for one lifetime.”
The good subjects were always the ones no one wanted to discuss, of course. I could tell by the look on Miriam’s face that I was definitely onto something. If the Reinharts didn’t believe in curses or ghosts, what did they think had happened to Lark? I knew I wasn’t going to find out anything more that night. We tried a few other topics, but none of them seemed to stick. A half hour later, dinner was over and cleanup began. I cleared the table while Miriam loaded the dishwasher and Sam put the leftovers away. No one spoke a single word.
While Miriam and Sam stayed behind in the kitchen, I took a nighttime tour of the top three floors of the manor. I couldn’t bring myself to explore the basement. I had a deep-seated fear of underground spaces, and the thought of what might lie beneath the old house repelled me. I knew I couldn’t avoid the basement forever, but I planned to save that adventure for daytime. After leaving the Reinharts, I started on the first floor and worked my way up. I explored thirty-six rooms in all—from the formal dining room to the servants’ quarters on the third floor.
The south wing of the manor wouldn’t have looked out of place in a palace. The wooden floors featured intricate inlays. James had chosen the finest carpets and papered the walls with richly colored prints. No expense had been spared when he’d purchased the furnishings. The rooms were as lush and luxurious as they must have been in Frederick Louth’s day. I imagined young Grace twirling under the chandeliers and racing down the grand hallways. It was hard to believe the entire mansion had been home to a family of three. I’m sure from the outside, Grace Louth looked like a princess. But I knew just how empty a big house can feel to a little girl.
As I moved through the mansion, I kept count of the rooms that were locked. There were four, including my uncle James’s bedroom. Inside the chambers I was able to visit, I opened wardrobes and peeked into closets. The only sound was that of my footsteps on the floorboards. Some of the rooms were only dimly lit, and when I reached the north wing, there were no lights at all. I’ll admit I was a little bit frightened—though not of curses or ghosts. There were times when I was sure I wasn’t alone. I felt a presence in the manor, but I kept on going. The house knew the truth about the girls who’d lived there, and I was determined to make the manor share its secrets with me.
Eventually I ended my tour in the conservatory on the ground floor. The walls and ceiling were composed of thousands of perfectly cut pieces of antique glass set in a cast-iron frame so delicate that it looked like it could have been spun by a spider. The décor was vaguely Indian, with teak furniture and raw-silk upholstery that had faded a bit in the light. It seemed like no one had visited in the months since the fire. The plants in the boxes along the glass walls had all shriveled up and expired. The tall palm in the center of the room was as brown as a paper bag. Only a cactus in a concrete planter was thriving. Red flowers were bursting out of its prickly pads like little baby aliens.
Outside, the darkness pressed against the conservatory on three sides, and snow climbed its glass walls. The moon was out, and I could see the grounds behind the manor and the outline of the trees at the edge of the woods. The view couldn’t have been lovelier. Then I noticed a line of strange holes that led across the snow-covered lawn from the woods to the manor. They were footprints—and they looked fresh.
A pinpoint of light drew my eyes to the forest. As I watched, it seemed to brighten and dim like a star or a flickering flame. Someone had recently come to the manor. And someone—or something—was still out there in the woods.
The next morning, before I’d even had breakfast, I set out to discover the source of the light I’d seen the night before. As soon as I slipped into the forest behind the manor, I realized it wasn’t as wild as the woods on the way to town. The trees all appeared perfectly pruned, as if they were part of the manor’s gardens. In the summer, I thought, this must be a magical place.
I shuffled through the snow until I reached a clearing. In the center, a stone mausoleum sat at the end of an ice-covered pool. Planters on either side of a grand wooden door held bouquets of frozen flowers that looked ready to shatter with a single touch. The snow surrounding the building had been shoveled aside, forming a tall white wall around it. As I watched, Sam emerged from the woods to my left with a bundle of twigs under his arm. He opened the door, and I saw that hidden windows lit the interior. I watched him arrange the twigs on a pyre and set them ablaze. The mausoleum’s fire was the source of the light I’d seen the previous night.
I was planning to slip away unseen. I knew I hadn’t made much of an impression on Sam, and the feeling was mutual. Then he emerged from the mausoleum and caught sight of me standing there. I saw him flinch—and watched the relief wash over his face when he realized who I was.
“I spotted the fire from the conservatory last night,” I said before he had time to wonder if I’d been stalking him. “I thought I’d come find out what it was. Do you always keep it lit?”
“Twenty-four hours a day. You can see the light from town. Your uncle obviously wants everyone to know how much he loved his wife.”
“How romantic,” I said.
“Isn’t it?” Sam replied flatly. “Want to have a look around?”
“Sure. Let’s see if James’s taste in graves has changed over the years.” I glanced back over my shoulder at the sullen superhero. He didn’t appreciate my dark sense of humor. “By the way, I consider myself an expert on mausoleums. Have you ever been to Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn?”