Umbra shrugged. "Perhaps that is the truth, but the spirits keep their secrets."
"That's one interview I don't want to have," Quill quipped. He stood and looked around. "You mentioned something about food?"
Umbra smiled. "I did mention something about that, didn't I? Would you first like a tour of the house, or-"
"What's that?" Bram spoke up.
We turned and saw that he pointed at the rug that lay beneath the living room furniture. A rust-colored stain ruined one corner of the floor covering.
"Good eyes, Pipsqueak. You could be a reporter if you weren't so short," Quill complimented him.
Bram glared at him. "Like I want to be something that lame."
Quill folded his arms and shrugged. "Then you'll be using my articles as a house in some alley."
"If you don't mind our asking, what is that stain?" Vincent spoke up. "It looks like blood."
Umbra stared at the stain and a shadow passed over his face. "A reminder of a grave mistake." He shook himself and swept his eyes over our small group. The shadow vanished. His smile returned.. "But I'm sure you're all tired from the hike. Let me show you to your rooms and while you settle yourselves in I'll prepare dinner."
CHAPTER 7
Umbra took up an oil lamp from the coffee table among the living room furniture and led us up the wide wooden steps. The boards groaned beneath our feet, and the straight stairs meant there was a long drop over the banister to the ground floor below.
We reached the second floor and crowded onto the small landing above the last step. The upstairs, blocked off as it was from the lower level by the floor, was shut off from the warm, flickering oil lamps and fire. There were no lamps on the higher floor, but two windows to my left and right allowed me to glimpse the outlines of the single hall that stretched the entire length of the building. To our right and right were four doors, two on either side of the hall. The walls were as bare as those beneath us and a damp chill invaded the air.
Umbra turned to us and gestured down the hall to our left. "These are the guest rooms. Each room contains an oil lamp you may use, but I must warn you to blow them out before you retire. In an old structure as this fire is a grave concern."
"We understand," Vincent agreed.
"How am I supposed to charge my tablet with oil. . ." Quill muttered.
"Will you all have separate rooms?" Umbra wondered.
"Like hell I'm sharing with anybody," Bram commented.
"For once I agree with Pipsqueak," Quill joined in.
Umbra bowed his head. "Then allow me to show you to each of your rooms." His eyes fell on me and he swept his hand down the right-hand hall. "Miss Leila, if you follow me."
I followed him, but glanced at Vincent as I passed by the werewolf. His eyes never left me as I proceeded down the hall with our host as guide. Umbra led me to the very end of the hall and opened the right-hand door. He stepped back and swept his hand towards the entrance.
"I hope you will be comfortable here," he told me.
I peeked inside. The room abutted the other chimney and a great hearth stretched from the stone. The floor was bare but for a bear rug in front of the fire, and a large, four-post bed stood against the wall to my right. A dresser and vanity with a large mirror above it completed the furniture. A large jewelry case sat atop the vanity. The walls on the right and opposite the door had long, wide windows that looked out on the lake and trees.
"It's very nice," I complimented him.
Umbra smiled and bowed his head. "Excellent. I'll show the gentlemen to their rooms."
"Wait a minute. The light," I reminded him as I pointed at the oil lamp in his hand.
He blinked at me for a moment but his eyes widened. "Oh, yes. I apologize. I don't often carry lights. My eyes-that is, I have my own home quite memorized. Let me light your lamp." He stepped inside the room and walked over to a nightstand beside the bed. A lamp sat on the top, and he lit the oil with a match. The dim light created a small circle that spread onto the floor and bed. "There." He turned to me and handed me the oil lamp. "Are you needing anything else?"
I shook my head. "No, this will work."
"Then if you will excuse me."
He bowed his head and left, shutting the door behind him. With the door shut there wasn't a sound to be heard but my own breathing. My eyes swept over the room. The silhouette of the trees in the side windows cast shadows along the floor. A light breeze swayed their branches to and fro and stretched their lithe bodies toward me.
I raised the lamp. The light dimmed their terrible shadows and illuminated the stone chimney. I walked over to the hearth and knelt before its gaping mouth. A few sorry pieces of wood, aged in years, sat on a curved tray. I removed the glass top from the oil lamp and touched the flame to the wood. The flames caught and spread over the wood. In a few moments I had a comfortable fire.
I set the oil lamp on the ground and settled myself onto the rug. The crackling of the fire invaded the room and created a sort of companion for me. I placed my palms behind me and leaned back. My chin rested on my cheek as I soaked in the warmth. The heat battled the chill that lay on my bones. Much of the dampness left me, but some little part would not be extinguished.
A knock on the door startled me from my reverie. "Leila?" called Vincent.
I sat up and shook myself. "Yeah?"
"Can I come in?"
"What? Oh, sure."
Vincent slipped inside and shut the door behind him. He strode over to me. His lips were pursed as he looked down at me.
I raised an eyebrow. "What?"
"I'd like to stay in your room tonight with you," he requested.
I frowned and my eyes narrowed. "Why?"
He jerked his head over his shoulder in the direction of the hall. "Umbra put the rest of us at the other end of the house. He said the damp in the other rooms around yours wasn't healthy."
I took up my lamp and climbed to my feet. "There's one way to find out. Where is Umbra?"
"Downstairs fixing dinner. Bram and Quill are with him," Vincent told me.
"Then let's go." I brushed past him and to the door.
Vincent half-turned to follow me with his eyes. "Go where?"
I paused at the entrance and glanced over my shoulder. "We'll check the rooms and see if there's any damp. It should be easy to tell."
I stepped into the hallway. Vincent caught up and shut the door behind us. The hallway was covered in darkness but for the small pool of light around my lamp. I held up the light and the glow fell on the door that lay across the hall. Downstairs I heard the faint sound of three sets of voices. Two of them were very loud.
"Keep out of it, Pipsqueak!" Quill barked.
"Make me!" Bram snapped.
"It's a good thing Bram can't transform. . ." I murmured as I tiptoed over to the opposite door.
I paused and furrowed my brow. Vincent collided with my back. He caught my arms to save me from a fall, but the lamp slipped from my grasp. The glass light crashed onto the floor. The noise echoed down the hall. The deafening silence was followed by footsteps from below.
A light climbed the stairs. I shoved Vincent closer to my doorway. The glow of a lamp arrived at the landing. It was Umbra who held the light. Behind him came Bram and Quill. "Is everyone okay?" Umbra called to us.
"We're fine. The lamp slipped from my hand, that's all," I told him.
Umbra walked down the hall and stopped at the ruined lamp. His eyes flickered from the lamp to the doorway opposite mine. "There's a spare downstairs along with some cleaning towels. And supper is almost ready."
"That sounds great," I replied.
I grabbed Vincent's hand and Umbra led us to the stairs. Quill glanced between me and the remains of the lamp. "He must have really knocked into you," he commented.
I glared at him. "He's a lot bigger than I am."
Quill smiled and held up his hands. "I get it, I get it."
Umbra guided our little group downstairs and to the dining
room. The large room held a long, wide table meant to fit thirty guests in one sitting. We occupied but a corner of the space, and a candelabra with a dozen candles cast glistening light off the fine white china placed before four chairs. A doorway beyond the room led into the kitchen. I caught a glimpse of a clawed-foot wood stove and a pump at a large sink.
My eyes flickered to Umbra. "Only four?" I asked him.
"Yes. I dined just before my walk, so you'll have to excuse me if I don't eat with you," he explained. We took our seats and Umbra slipped into the kitchen. He returned with a platter of meats and an ice bucket with two bottles of wine. "I hope this will serve you. I'll go clean up the accident upstairs before the oil soaks into the floor."
He slipped away. Bram dug into the food and slopped a mess of sauce over his part of the table. Quill, who sat beside him, grimaced and pushed his plate away. He took up the wine bottle and popped one of them.
"What do you make of our host?" he asked Vincent and me.
"He seems friendly enough," I commented.
Quill smiled as he poured himself a glass. "Seems friendly, but is he? I must admit I don't know much about this area, but something smacks of mystery here. And creepiness."
"Did you really see a ghost?" Bram asked me. Every word was punctuated by a splattering of food from his mouth.
I shrugged. "I don't know what I saw. Maybe it was just fog." My mind reminded me that fog didn't leave a cold breath on necks.
"It's not fog."
We all turned our heads to stare at Vincent. His head was tilted up and his narrowed eyes glared at the ceiling.
"You sound confident in that statement. Care to explain why?" Quill questioned him.
Vincent shook his head. "I can't. I just know something's not quite right here."
"You said that before, and you said it was different than the feeling you got in Celatum," I reminded him.
He looked down at his empty plate and nodded. "Yeah. There's. . .I can't quite describe it. There's something sad here. It's like that feeling you get when you learned someone passed away that you hardly knew."
"Maybe it's that spook story he told us," Quill suggested. His eyes swept over the room. "This place with its lamps and stuff gives it a pretty good atmosphere for-"
"Aaaah!"
The sound cut through me like a cold knife. It was the call of a woman in the throes of mortal danger, a signal of desperation as a life struggled against fate.
All four of us jumped to our feet and our chairs clattered to the floor. Bram choked on a piece of meat and spit it on the floor.
"What the hell was that?" he snapped.
"That sounded like a woman," Quill commented.
I grabbed a candle and lit the oil lamp. "Let's go see."
CHAPTER 8
I led the way into the living room. Nothing stirred in that space, and there was no sign of our host.
"Umbra?" Quill called.
Our host walked silently down the stairs and paused halfway down the steps. In one hand was a wet rag.
"Is something the matter?" he asked us.
"Aaaah!"
The terrible sound reverberated through the living room, but there was a muffled quality to the noise. Umbra whipped his head to the wall to our right. His face paled and the rag in his hand fell onto the stairs.
Vincent pointed at the closed deck doors. "It came from the deck!"
We rushed to the doors and I swung them open.
Umbra reached out to us. "Wait!"
I flung open the doors and we hurried onto the deck. Our feet pounded across the boards. We stopped halfway to the front railing and looked around.
The dense fog surrounded us on three sides. Its cold, pale features climbed up the exterior steps and slithered over the boards and bottom of the railing uprights. I held up the lamp and squinted. Nothing moved in the fog. There wasn't a soul around but us.
A shadow fell over us. We turned to the doorway. Umbra stood on the edge of the deck.
"You mustn't rush out into the fog. It isn't safe," he scolded us.
"We couldn't exact ignore a woman screaming for her life," Quill retorted.
Umbra frowned and shook his head. "No, but I wasn't meant to hear it."
Quill raised an eyebrow. "What's that supposed to mean?"
"It means the woman you heard was one of the poor souls who haunts the lake," he explained. "She contacted only those she wished to contact. That is why I heard nothing."
"Are you seriously giving us that ghost bullshit?" Quill questioned him.
"Hey, if there's werewolves then why can't there be ghosts?" Bram shot back.
"Because you're all crazy for believing that shit, and I haven't seen any evidence you can grow enough hair to shave, Pipsqueak, much less become a wolf," Quill returned.
"Stop calling me that!"
I ignored their bantering and walked to the edge of the deck. I leaned on the railing and looked into the abyss. The fog was so thick I couldn't see the ground.
That's when I felt the push. A hand shoved against the center of my back and pushed with a strength that forced me head-long over the railing. The railing gave a little and rocked me over its top.
"Leila!" Vincent yelled.
My feet tumbled over my head and pointed at the ground. I flailed wildly for something to grab and one of my hands caught the edge of the deck floor. The lamp crashed onto the hard ground below me. A faint glimmer of light shimmered before it was swallowed by the impenetrable fog.
I clapped my other hand onto the deck and gasped. My own weight and lack of strength threatened to pull me into the endless whiteness below me. I knew there was only five feet from my feet to the earth, but a foreboding feeling sank into me.
I didn't want to drop.
I couldn't quite explain why, but falling into the fog would have meant trouble. Terrible trouble.
"Leila!" Vincent's face appeared between the railing uprights. He grabbed my hands, but my fingers wouldn't slip from the deck. "You have to let go so I can pull you up."
"I can. . .I can do it," I argued.
I scrunched up my face and tried to lift myself. Pull-ups were never my strong-suit, and I fell back after a few inches. The pull from gravity meant my fingers slipped a little.
"Leila, let me pull you up!" Vincent insisted. His eyes caught mine. Those beautiful emerald-green pleaded with me. "Trust me."
I pursed my lips, but released my hands. Vincent smiled and lifted me up to the railing. There was a pause as his hands switches sides to pull me over the top. I felt something brush against my feet and looked down.
The fog twisted around my ankles. I felt a tug as the thick mist wrapped itself tight around my flesh. My eyes widened, and I whipped my head to Vincent.
"Faster!" I yelled.
He didn't ask any questions. The terror in my voice must have been enough. He leaned over the railing and grasped my arms below the elbows. A mighty tug and I flew over the top. Vincent caught me in his arms and wrapped me against his chest. I didn't even mind the patches of his bare chest. All I could think about was that fog curling around my legs.
"What happened?" he whispered.
I balled my hands into fists and shook my head. No words could describe the terror that threatened to force a blood-curdling scream from my lips.
Umbra stepped forward and bowed to us. "Please accept my apologies for the railing. I can't seem to keep the rot back as well as I used to."
Quill walked over to the railing and shook it. Those boards that I hadn't been near were firm. Quill turned to our host, and a frown graced his lips. "This is solid enough, and I'm not going to suggest Leila was too heavy for it. What's really going on?"
A smile slipped onto Umbra's lips and he shook his head. "If you won't believe me than I can tell you no more."
"That's really lame," Bram retorted. He gestured at the thick fog that lay off the end of the deck. "Those ghosts are trying to kill us, aren't they?"
"There aren't any gho
sts!" Quill argued.
Bram glared at Quill. "There are!"
"Aren't!"
"Are!"
"Aren't!"
Vincent tightened his hold on me. I tilted my head back and looked up into his smiling face.
"Let me take you to your room," Vincent offered.
I didn't trust myself to speak, so I closed my eyes and nodded my head. Vincent pushed us through our squabbling companions and inside. The house was silent but for the creaking of the steps beneath our feet. We reached my room and the warm fire that blazed in the hearth, and paused just inside the door. The normalcy of the room calmed my frayed nerves.
"I can stoke the fire if you'd like," he suggested.
I managed a small smile. "You don't like my job?"
"It needs some improvement," he teased.
I pushed off him and staggered over to the bed. I plopped myself on the edge and waved a hand at the hearth. "Go ahead. Maybe it'll keep the ghosts away."
Vincent pursed his lips. He strode over and took a seat beside me. "Leila, what did you see out there?"
I snorted. "I suppose a werewolf would believe I saw a ghost, wouldn't he?"
His eyes studied my face. "But that's not all, is it? You didn't just see a ghost, did you?"
I wrapped my arms around myself and shook my head. My eyes were riveted to the floor. "No. It. . .whatever this thing is, it's trying to get me. It tried to drag me into the fog, both here and at the campsite."
"Why didn't you tell me?" he wondered.
I shrugged. "I guess I wanted to believe I was hallucinating. Fog can play pranks on the mind, you know? Now, though-" I closed my eyes and shook my head. "Now I'm sure I haven't been hallucinating. There's something out there, and it wants me. And I'm-" I shuddered and bit my lip. "And I'm terrified. For the first time in my life I just want to run away."
I started and opened my eyes when Vincent wrapped his arm around me. He smiled down at me. "I promised I won't let anything happen to you, and I'm going to keep that promise."
I looked past him at the hearth. "You might want to keep your promise to stoke that fire. It's dying."
Vincent whipped his head to the fire. The dwindling flames flickered an inch above its blackened food. "Damn it. I'll be right back."
He hurried over to the hearth and knelt before the hot embers. I watched him for a long while as he worked away at his fire magic. Beneath his skilled hands a new fire emerged and brightened the room. A faint smile played across my lips. My eyes fell on his pale hands.