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  He smiled, his eyes mischievous. “Good to see you too. When Briar called I grabbed my bag, jumped in the car, and drove like the clappers. I don’t like the thought of her being alone with a vampire on the loose.”

  “How long you staying?”

  “At least until the New Year.” His gaze followed Briar’s retreating back. “Maybe longer.”

  Avery grinned. “What about work?”

  “Josh and the girls can handle it for a while.”

  Reuben was close, listening to their conversation, and he lowered his voice. “Staking your claim?”

  “Something like that,” he murmured, watching her as she chatted with Eve. Briar definitely had a glow that morning, Avery decided. Briar looked up and saw Hunter watching, their eyes locking for a moment as something unspoken passed between them.

  “Come on, guys, time for the tower room,” Ben called from the first floor landing. Alex was standing next to him, looking distracted.

  “Hold on,” Avery replied. “Can I ask you about this painting?”

  She led the way to the left reception room, the rest of the group following, and pointed to the picture above the fireplace. “Is that Madame Charron?”

  “Wow,” Eve said, softly. “She’s impressive.”

  Ben laughed. “Yes, glad you reminded me about this. It is her. Charlotte found it in an upstairs room and decided it belonged here instead. She’s imposing, isn’t she?”

  “She’s in her full regalia, too,” Genevieve observed. “It’s good to see her in colour. Many of the photos from that era are in black and white.”

  “I like her,” El declared. “She’s got a lot of style. The whole room has. It’s so dark and mysterious. Do you think that knowing what she looks like will help you find her spirit, Alex?”

  “Let’s hope so,” he said, continuing to examine the picture minutely. “She’s holding a card in her hands. You can just see the edge of it. Is that The Moon card?”

  Avery stepped closer. “I think it is. How amazing.”

  “Will you tell Rupert what you’ve found?” Caspian asked Avery.

  She squirmed. “Eventually.”

  Ben turned away, ever the tour guide. “Come on. Upstairs is more atmospheric.”

  The group trailed behind him as he showed them the other rooms, many of which Avery and Reuben had seen before.

  They lingered in the master bedroom for a few minutes. “This is where we’ve been filming,” Dylan said, heading to one of the windows. “And this is the window Charlotte opens, letting her blood-sucking visitor in.”

  Briar looked down to the garden. “He’d have to scale the wall. But I guess we know that’s not a problem.”

  “What a stunning room, though,” Eve noted.

  Briar shuddered. “Beautiful or not, I wouldn’t be sleeping in here knowing that something was standing over me at night.”

  “Let’s have a look at the tower,” Alex said, already heading to the door.

  Cassie had been standing in the doorway watching, and she spun on her heel and led the way down the passage, stopping at a dead end. A panelled wall was in front of them, a series of carvings around the edge. She reached to the side, pressing an ornate moulding of the moon, and the panel popped open, revealing a door. She turned to look at them, a wry smile hovering on her lips. “It’s only just registered that it’s the moon carving that releases the door.” She headed through, leading them up a long narrow staircase. She called back over her shoulder, “There’s a third floor for servants and storage. The rooms are much smaller and quite bare, as you can imagine. We’ll show you them later. But this set of stairs bypasses that floor and leads you to the square tower you can see from outside.”

  The stairs turned on to a small landing, and Cassie pushed the door open into the tower, lit from above by a dusty sky light. They all crowded in, hot on each other’s heels, and Avery gasped and shivered. She was not the only one.

  “Holy crap. This is creepy,” Reuben exclaimed.

  The room was lined with long, dark wooden panels, making the room circular in design. Nothing could be seen of the square brick bones of the tower. The ceiling was vaulted with an ornate, circular glass pane at the apex. But it was the decoration on the wooden panels that was so chilling. Paintings of demons filled some of the panels, with glowing eyes, horns, and hooves. Spectres and ghouls also jostled for space, and there were several depictions of Major Arcana cards, including The High Priestess, The Moon, The Tower, Death, The Devil, and The Hermit. The floor was decorated with a large pentagram, and surrounded by various runes and sigils, the edges crowded with candles. A small, round table covered with a long, black velvet cloth that reached the floor sat in the middle of the space, a chair on either side.

  “Wow,” Jasper exclaimed. “This room radiates power.”

  “I agree,” Genevieve said, her hand stroking one of the panels. “This suggests she had real ability. Look, that’s her image again as the High Priestess.”

  Caspian grunted. “I’m not so sure. She seems to be trying very hard to impress.”

  “But you’d need to surely, for your customers,” El reasoned, her eyes narrowed.

  If some of them were baffled, Eve was pleased, grinning with delight. “These paintings are stunning. Look at the detail, and the light. I admit, some of the subjects are gruesome, but they’re good! Someone spent a lot of time on them.”

  “Can you imagine seeking a private audience with Madame Charron?” Briar said, turning slowly. “You’re probably paying good money, and you’re brought here! I’ve got chills just looking at the pictures, and I’m a witch. I know magic and power. But if you didn’t—”

  “You’d be overawed and seriously impressed,” Hunter finished, moving next to Briar, his hand resting on her lower back.

  “And impressionable!” Caspian added. “You’d believe anything.”

  Cassie was staring up at the glass roof, grinning broadly. “Has anyone noticed what the inscription on the glass says?”

  “What inscription?” Dylan asked, looking up.

  “There, all around the edge. It’s hard to make out because of the italics.”

  Avery’s mouth fell open as she deciphered the writing. “Bloody Hell. It says ‘The Centre of the Mysteries.’”

  Alex laughed. “The runic script!”

  Avery swivelled towards the panel with the moon on it. “And a full moon panel.”

  “Another hidden doorway?” El asked. “The door release mechanism downstairs was a moon.”

  “And one of the symbols on the paper found with that witch-bottle was a moon, too,” Reuben added.

  “So,” Genevieve said, hand on hips. “Time is marching on. What first? I suggest that Alex, you try to reach Madame Charron, or Felicity, or whoever else may want to say hello, and that we try to find out if there really is a hidden door in here.”

  “I wonder if Rupert thinks there is?” Briar mused.

  “I guarantee you,” Ben said, starting to test the panels for release catches, “that Rupert and Charlotte will have tested every single panel in this room, because they did the same all over the house. That’s how they found this attic room in the first place.”

  “Jean didn’t tell them, then?” El asked.

  “Nope.”

  “It would explain why he wants to find the books,” Avery said, placing her hand on one of the panels. “I bet he thinks there are instructions somewhere.”

  “Well, there is, just not the type he probably expected,” El answered.

  “I have a feeling this may be the best space to try to connect to a spirit,” Alex said, “but I agree, you should focus on that door. I’ll use the séance room on the first floor.”

  “Can we film you?” Ben asked.

  “Sure,” Alex nodded. “But at this stage, I’ll work better without any other witches. If something starts to happen, I trust you to get someone, sound good?”

  “Perfect,” he and Dylan said together, both looking excited.r />
  “I’d like to explore the house a bit more, if that’s okay,” El said, shouldering her bag. “I would hate to think we’d missed something.”

  “Good idea,” Genevieve said, already looking weary at the task ahead of them.

  “I’ll come with you, El,” Reuben said.

  Eve nodded. “Me, too. This place is fascinating. It’s like a time capsule. Nothing seems to have changed—not obviously, anyway.”

  “Rupert has been very keen to preserve it,” Ben told them. “At least until he unlocks its secrets. I’d love to talk to Jean, the cleaner who inherited it.”

  “Remind me to ask Newton about that later,” Avery said. “I’ll stop here and help with the door. And call me if anything happens to Alex!” She said this specifically to Ben and Dylan. “Anything!”

  “We will, don’t worry,” Dylan reassured her.

  Alex kissed the top of her head. “Be careful.”

  “You, too.” She leaned into him affectionately.

  Eve was already heading out the door. “And call us when you find something!”

  20

  Caspian, Genevieve, Briar, Avery, and Jasper stared at the panels, and started to discuss their options. Hunter and Cassie stood back, watching.

  “We should try some opening spells,” Caspian suggested.

  “But that would suggest that Madame Charron was a witch,” Briar pointed out. “We’re pretty sure she’s a legitimate psychic, but that doesn’t mean she’s a witch. Those are two very different things.”

  Jasper shook his head, frustrated. “This house was constructed long before Madame Charron took up residence. She is not responsible for these panels. She may have painted them, she may have found out this room’s secrets, and she may have left clues to find them, but she didn’t make them or conceal the room.” Jasper’s eyes now burned with excitement. “The tower is separate from the rest of the house, the access hidden behind a panel. And there are more panels, one of which must be a door. Grigore did this to hide Lupescu. This has to be the way to his hiding place. Grigore would have wanted to protect him from being hunted, and his family from Lupescu’s blood lust. As he grew older, he would have grown stronger.”

  Caspian frowned. “Good point, Jasper.” He spun on his heels, looking around the room. “And if I wasn’t a witch, I wouldn’t want a door to be sealed with magic so that I could never access it. I’d want a mechanism. Where would I choose?”

  Avery’s head hurt with the layers of time and complexity. “But there was a spell at some point—the disappearances stopped.”

  “True.” Briar stared at the panels intently, as if they would reveal their secrets under scrutiny. “But somehow we think the spell, or whatever you want to call it, was broken, because of the deaths in the late 1930s, the 1970s, and the ones that have started now.”

  “Deaths that coincide with the homeowner dying,” Genevieve reminded them.

  “Maybe a binding spell of some sort, something to bind the vampire to the owner?” Cassie suggested. “Is that how they work?”

  “A binding spell can work however you want it to,” Caspian said, looking at Avery. “As we know only too well.”

  She met his eyes briefly and looked back at the panels, puzzled. “We’re missing something. Grigore dies, his wife, Sofia, takes over the house, the deaths stop. And when she dies, nothing happens. No resurrection of the vampire until Madame Charron disturbed it in the 1930s.”

  Genevieve sat on one of the chairs next to the table in the middle of the room, her fingers drumming the surface. “We think she broke the spell that trapped the vampire using Verrine, the demon spirit guide, and then had to trap the vampire again.”

  Briar nodded. “Two different spells, then. One cast by Sofia, or the witch she employed, and whatever means Madame Charron and her daughter used. A binding spell of sorts, linked to their lives, broken by death.”

  Cassie frowned, marched over to the panel, and started feeling the edges again. “So, in theory, we’re back to square one. If one of these panels is a door, it should just pop open with a mechanism.”

  “In theory,” Jasper echoed, joining her in the search. He ran his hands over the surface, his palms flat, moving in an orderly manner, left to right, right to left, as he moved downwards.

  Caspian brushed his fingertips across his lips. “Maybe we need a full moon to see it? Or it could be a play on words.” He looked around the room again, scanning the other panels. “There are a least three other panels with moons on them. The High Priestess, The Tower, and The Hermit. The verse could refer to those.” He strode across to the closest one, The High Priestess, and started to examine it.

  Avery became excited as an idea began to form. “The Major Arcana representations here aren’t typical of any particular style of deck. They’re rich in symbolism, of course, but look at what’s at the feet of The Devil. Normally, there’s a male and female figure at its feet, but on this one, there’s only a man.”

  Genevieve frowned as she stared at the painting. “You’re right. A man dressed in black and wrapped in chains, with blood on his face.” She turned to Avery, a smile spreading across her face. “Well spotted. What else?”

  “The Tower is normally depicted with flames coming from the roof, and lightning striking it. That one is set against a night sky with a full moon above it, and there’s a cave of some sort, a dark hollow beneath it.”

  Hunter had been watching and listening, hands thrust into his jeans pockets as he leaned against the door frame, but now he came to life, stalking across the room. “Holy shit! You’re right. Does that mean there’s a cave beneath this one? Well, the house?”

  Avery raised her eyebrows. “Perhaps. It fits our theory.”

  They were all paying close attention now, glancing back and forth between Avery and the paintings.

  Avery continued, “The Hermit is numerologically linked to The Moon. He’s an old man, as commonly depicted, but his guiding light is the moon in his lantern, not the star as it normally is. The Hermit shows thought, introspection, isolation...like Madame Charron.” She turned to the High Priestess image. “The face is already Madame Charron, we can see that. She depicts wisdom of the world beyond the veil. But again, a full moon hangs above her, which isn’t normally represented in many standard decks, and this card is astrologically linked to the Moon, too.”

  “And Death?” Hunter asked.

  Avery exhaled heavily. “Death is normally depicted as a soldier, with a skull for a head. He charges into battle, usually on horseback, so the imagery is medieval, one of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. Sometimes people are at his feet, as he brings judgment to all. But the card doesn’t mean actual death; it represents a spiritual death and rebirth. There’s usually a setting sun in the background—the end of day, the end of life, or a time in life. In this panel, he stands on a bloodstained field, a tower in the background, but the sky is dark, and it’s a moon rising, not a sun setting.”

  “Wow!” Cassie said, looking at her in shock. “How do you remember all of that stuff?”

  “I read the cards,” Avery explained. “They are old friends that whisper to me, revealing past, present, and future. Not all witches use them, but I always have.”

  Genevieve watched her speculatively, and said, “I rarely use them.”

  Cassie frowned. “Do they predict things—like this?”

  Avery frowned, trying to explain. “It’s not that straightforward. They offer a personal reading, not broad predictions. In the summer, I certainly read there was a change coming to me, danger that threatened my life in some way, but it depends what you ask them. I certainly haven’t predicted this!” She spread her hands wide, encompassing the room and the house.

  Briar studied her for a moment, frowning. “Do these images match the ones in the deck you found?”

  “Shit! I don’t know.” Avery reached into her bag, pulled the book-box out, and rapidly thumbed through the pack. While she looked, there was a flurry of activity,
as Briar, Hunter, Cassie, and Genevieve started to examine the other panels, leaving Jasper to finish examining The Moon panel.

  Avery was annoyed with herself, because she knew when she found the pack that they weren’t a typical deck, but she hadn’t stopped to examine them properly. She’d assumed they were an old design, one she’d not seen before. She found the cards represented on the panels and laid them out in a line on the table. Damn it. They weren’t the same at all. Not even close. The pictures on the panels told a story, certainly, of a vampire bound in a cave beneath a tower, a High Priestess who navigated worlds beyond the veil, and who sat in lonely contemplation. But why paint them? A warning maybe, or perhaps a clue, in case things went wrong, as they have done now. A way to track the vampire. Bollocks! I’m missing something!

  Avery stared into space, watching shadows move across the room. It brought her back to the present. Time was passing. She looked up at the glass pane set into the roof. The light coming through was muted, filtered by a covering of snow, which earlier had given the room a weird, spectral light. Now it seemed darker, as if the clouds were once again gathering outside. She stared at the words painted on the glass, pondering their many meanings. The centre of the mysteries lies beneath the full moon, she repeated to herself. In this light, the circular glass roof looked like a full moon. The floor!

  Excited at her discovery, she examined the runes that circled the pentagram beneath her feet. The design was painted on, the paint now a faded white, almost yellow, but it was relatively undamaged, sealed beneath a layer of varnish. She couldn’t see images of moons, full or otherwise. And then she turned and stared at the table in the middle. What was that hiding? She removed the cards and candles, placing them on the floor by the door, and then pulled the heavy velvet cloth away, dust rising in clouds and making her cough.

  “What are you doing?” Caspian asked, turning to watch her. He funnelled the air away with a gesture, and it streamed out of the door and down the stairs.