Using her thumb against the edges, Abby flipped pages ahead skimming quickly then she found another passage and started reading, “I’m frightened. She’s watching all the time. Everywhere I turn, if I’m alone, she’s there. Hovering. And anytime Richard is out of the house, she screams. And screams and screams and screams. We’ve lost three servants this week alone. They can’t bear it. I don’t know how long I can bear it either. I keep telling Richard about Vivianna but he just won’t listen. He thinks I’m being silly, he finds me amusing. He tells me it’s a legend, a myth, that I shouldn’t believe the servants’ gossip and let them make me anxious. I can’t get him to understand that she’s real. It’s getting worse, it feels different now. I think she means to harm me.”
Abby’s eyes went to Cash’s face again and Cash remarked, “My grandmother Lorna died of a stroke when I was seven years old. She wasn’t murdered by a ghost.”
“She stopped being a target,” Abby told him.
“And why is that?” Cash asked.
Abby stared at him, not wanting to get into the “love of their lives” business, not again and definitely not with Cash.
Therefore, she said, “She just did.”
Cash looked into her eyes and stated quietly, “Darling, do you have any idea how preposterous this sounds? Vivianna Wainwright is a ghost story handed down generation to generation. She isn’t real.”
Abby stared at him all of a sudden wondering why she’d told him. Of course he wouldn’t believe her. If she was him, she wouldn’t believe her either. It did sound preposterous, even though it was true.
Abby closed the diary and set it on his desk. She looked to the side to avoid his eyes then lifted her hand to pull her hair off her face. Bunching it at the back of her head for a moment, she decided to give up and maybe lie and say she got a little crazy when she was on her period. Men bought that kind of excuse all the time.
She sighed, looked back at him, dropped her hand and he watched it fall as she said, “You’re right, I –”
But Cash interrupted her. “What’s happened to your hand?”
Abby’s chin dipped, she lifted her hands, palms up and studied them. They were dirty, smudged with black and there were angry red scrapes along the heels of her palms. She hadn’t noticed it before, considering her Layering of Freak Outs, but she knew how it happened. She’d fallen hard on the stairs, landed on her hands then she’d used them to crawl back up.
Her head lifted.
“Cash –” she began but his eyes were doing a sweep of her body and landed on her legs.
He went on. “And your knees.”
Abby looked down at her legs and saw her jeans from knees to ankles were covered in dust likely gathered from scrambling up the stairs.
She tilted her head to look at him and went back to deciding to tell him the truth.
Therefore, she whispered, “I was running away from her. She formed in front of me and we collided on the stairs. I fell back on my hands. Then she attacked and I was scrambling on my hands and feet back up the stairs –”
“Stop,” he demanded and Abby stopped.
He kept staring at her legs then his eyes moved to her sweater and he took a step forward, getting close. His hand came up and he touched the dark purple-black burn mark on her sweater.
His hand dropped but his fingers wrapped around her wrists and he lifted her hands, palms up, between them. He looked down at them and his thumbs slid gently along the angry red marks and smudges.
“Fucking hell, it’s true,” he muttered and relief shot through her that he believed her.
“Yes,” she replied softly.
His fingers closed around her hands, pressing them together and he pulled them against his chest, also pulling Abby closer.
His eyes locked on hers and he ordered, “Tell me everything.”
Abby drew a breath in through her nose. Then she bit the side of her lip.
Then she told him everything.
Vivianna and the bathroom. Telling Jenny and Mrs. Truman. Fenella, Cassandra and the séance. Angus, the kilt-wearing, Scottish ghost hunter. Details about Vivianna’s spell, her abilities and her targeting Abby. Abby going to Penmort to be bait. Vivianna forming in the gallery, then attacking. The amulet that rocked. The mad dash to town surrounded by the protective purple mist.
Everything.
Everything except the true love part that was.
When she was finished, she realised Cash got stuck on an earlier point when he said in a dangerous voice with equally dangerous eyes, “You went to Penmort to be bait?”
“I had to draw her out,” Abby explained.
“You had to draw her out,” Cash repeated but he was looking like he was only just stopping himself from shaking some sense into her.
“Yes,” Abby said.
“Why?” he asked.
“Pardon?” Abby asked in return.
“Why did you have to draw her out?” Cash enquired.
Abby looked at him, confused. “So Angus could take her down, of course.”
“What does this have to do with you?” he pressed.
Abby was even more confused.
“It doesn’t have to do with me. It has to do with you.” She watched Cash’s face change but she misinterpreted it as puzzlement and carried on. “At first, Jenny and Mrs. Truman and I started this whole thing because I knew I’d have to go to the castle during the anniversary celebration. I couldn’t not go. I mean, obviously, for whatever reason, you wanted me there so I had to go. Since I didn’t want to, you know, die while I was there, I had to do something.” Cash kept staring at her with that strange look on his face so Abby persevered. “Then I got to know Fenella and she’s really nice. She’s a bit strange but she’s nice. And she’s lived with Vivianna her whole life and Vivianna scares her, so then I was kind of doing it for Fenella as well. Then I got to know Honor so I’m doing it for her too. And now I know Penmort’s yours so, well, as you can see, something has to be done. And I’m kind of the only person who can do it. With Angus and Cassandra, of course.”
Cash kept staring at her with his hands holding hers against his chest, the heat of his body close.
Abby thought maybe he wasn’t taking it all in. It was, she knew, a lot to wrap your head around.
She continued. “Anyway, it’s all good. Angus got a good look at her tonight so he knows what he’s up against and Cassandra says she’s got more stuff she can throw at her. So next time, it’ll go better.”
Cash’s hands tightened on hers before he asked, “Next time?”
“Yes,” Abby said, “probably tomorrow night.”
Cash moved forward very slightly but enough to bring him closer to Abby.
“Abby, there isn’t going to be a next time. You aren’t going back there.”
Abby blinked then reminded him, “Yes I am. We’re spending the weekend there.”
“No. We’re not. Our weekend plans have changed. I’m going to the party Saturday night only. You’re staying home.”
Abby felt her eyes grow wide and she said, “But we have to go. Nicola is expecting us and something has to be done about Vivianna.”
“We’re not going,” Cash replied firmly.
“We have to go,” Abby returned.
One of Cash’s hands released hers, the other curled around her palm and he turned, pulling her from the room saying, “We’re not discussing this.”
He flicked off the light switch and kept walking to the stairs and down to the garden level while Abby babbled, “You can’t be serious. We have to discuss it. You don’t understand. Angus and Cassandra know what they’re doing. I’m not kidding. They seriously know what they’re doing. You should have seen them. Things didn’t go great tonight but no one got hurt.”