Angel Manor (Lucifer Falls Book 1) (23 page)

“Bam’s dead.”

Oliver let go of her arms and gave her the most heartbreaking of looks. A second later, his knees buckled and he sagged to the ground. He placed his hands in front of his eyes and a low wail escaped from his mouth, slow and dark, like the howl of a wolf. Freya bent over and wrapped her arms around him, soothing him, his grief giving her the strength she lacked before. His wail grew louder, mingling with sobs and tears.

“Hush, Ollie, hush. It’s going to be okay.” It wasn’t going to be okay, and she knew it, but Freya couldn’t think of anything else to say. “It’s okay, it’s okay,” she repeated over and over, her hands raking through his dark brown curls, her own tears joining his. Bam appeared behind Oliver, a wavering vision, distorted by salt water. Freya blinked. She had to be mistaken… she just had to be. As she wiped the tears from her eyes, the figure disappeared and Freya felt an emptiness in her heart.

Chapter 19

The smell of meat and tomato sauce spread through the kitchen, a hint of paint lingering underneath. The paint buckets were still stacked next to the counter, waiting for Freya to finish turning the kitchen into a sunny yellow and bright white modern dining experience. The dark wood, hospital green wallpaper, and loud blue and green tiles that greeted them every morning were too unpleasant. She didn’t feel much like fixing or changing anything at the moment, and Freya knew that if she had the luxury of leaving, she would have packed her bags there and then. But the thought of getting one of those terrible headaches was even less appealing than staying. Especially when she considered what had happened to Bam.

Oliver set the Mr Men placemats, one of the many treasures they’d inherited from Bam, on the table. As he was about to set the third one down, he froze.

“I keep forgetting… we only need two now.”

“No, not tonight. Put down three. I invited Logan to come and eat with us.”

He blinked at her. His movements had been slow the past three days, and Freya was worried about him. Oliver’s reaction to Bam’s death had been weird: one moment he was grieving, and the next he seemed to be obsessing about the house. She didn’t know how to respond to him anymore, and he’d begun to make her feel uncomfortable.

“Something smells nice.” Logan stood in the door opening, and Freya felt a surge of gratitude for his presence.

“Thanks for coming, Logan. We’re having pasta.” Freya put plates of her homemade spaghetti in front of Logan and Oliver. “I thought it would be a good time to talk.” She had just taken one of the pans to the others in the East Wing dining hall. It had surprised her how nicely the room had cleaned up, and with a bit of wallpaper and some new furniture, it could be a very comfortable lounge area for the guests. Only Freya wasn’t so sure she wanted to turn the house into a hotel anymore. In fact… she wasn’t sure what she wanted to do with it at all.

“I feel we need to talk about the house. About what’s happening, but also about our futures.”

“What do you mean, about our futures? We have to finish this house. Bam’s death shouldn’t stop us from doing that. She wouldn’t have wanted that.” Oliver dropped his fork in the bowl of food and glared at her. His body language was tense, his voice high-pitched with nerves, and something about the way he moved reminded her of a junkie in need of his next fix.

“Everything has changed since Bam died. Not just emotionally, but practically. We’re down one person, and that will make running the hotel more difficult. And we don’t have Bam’s share of the money anymore, which means the first few months of start-up that we planned are almost impossible.”

Oliver raised his hand and opened his mouth to reply, but Freya lifted her finger and shot him a stern look. “No Ollie, let me finish. This is about more than money. We need to face it… there is something wrong with this house. I… I don’t believe in ghosts, or at least I didn’t, but I’m worried. There are things going on that I can’t explain. And we need to take them seriously.”

Oliver slammed his hand on the table and got up from his seat. “Don’t you start with this haunted house shit. Bam…” He swallowed his sentence and sank back down again.

“Yes, Bam felt it too, and she left… and now she’s dead.”

“Bam slipped in the bath and drowned. In
Glasgow
. Don’t blame the house for her death. There was nothing supernatural about it.”

“Well, I do.” Her hand shot in front of her mouth. It was the first time Freya had said or even thought the words and suddenly, all her feelings came in to focus. “I do blame this house. It makes us sick when we leave, Oliver. I didn’t want to believe it, but it does. I’ve tested it out too many times. Everyone who has had a nosebleed here is stuck in this house. And I’m sure Bam slipped because the house made her so sick. When I le… when I… left her she was very ill. I shouldn’t have left her there, but I wasn’t thinking straight myself. She didn’t get better, but I did… as soon as I set foot back in Angel Manor.”

“This is ridiculous. You’re full of shit.”

“Logan?” Freya’s eyes pleaded with the tall man.

“It’s not. She’s right. I’ve tested it out the last few days since we got back. I get sick every time I so much as set foot off the grounds. And the further I go, the worse it gets.” He scratched his chin. “Duration works too, but less drastic. If you stay near Angel Manor, you’re fine except for a small headache. Go further away, the pain grows more rapidly. Though it doesn’t lessen when you come back to the area, it only goes away when you step back on Angel Manor property.”

“You’ve been testing it out?”

“Yeah, I wanted to see if it was real.”

“You’re both nuts.” Oliver threw his fork onto the table. It skidded with a loud noise across the surface before jangling against the tiled floor.

“Go and try it yourself. You had a nosebleed, didn’t you?”

A silent stalemate played out, the two men staring at each other with daggers in their eyes. Freya sighed. Anger gripped her stomach, but she fought to stay level-headed.

“If the house has that effect on us, we need to get the other people out of here. They don’t seem to be bound yet. Let’s not wait until they are.”

“No.” It sounded more like a whine than a word and Oliver slammed both palms on the table this time. “We can’t build the hotel on our own. We need their help.”

“We’re not going to build the hotel. I can’t risk having more people tied to this place.”

“Do you realise how insane this is?” Ugly red blotches appeared on Oliver’s face, and his curls bounced wildly as he spoke. “You want to call off the building project… No, you want to call off our
future
because you think this house is haunted?” He shook his head and stared at her as if she were crazy. Freya began to lose the battle with anger.

“Explain to me why we can’t leave the house then? Huh? Give me a good scientific reason? Because Lord knows, I would love to hear one. I don’t believe in ghosts either, Ollie, but since I’ve been here I have seen some weird shit. And I can’t deny it anymore. We ignored it before, and now Bam’s dead. Dead! And it’s our fucking fault.” Her hands slammed on the table, palms down, mimicking Oliver’s earlier behaviour.

“Fucking hell, Freya…” He threw up his arms in exasperation. “Have you even called a doctor about this? I mean, what you’re claiming is outrageous. You could just have some sort of flu.”

“That magically stops when we get back to Angel Manor?”

“I don’t know. Have you seen a doctor? Wouldn’t that be the first logical step?”

She glared at him, his words making her feel sheepish. Freya wasn’t a fan of going to the doctor’s office, and Oliver knew it. Here, in this strange place where she didn’t have her own doctor, she was even less likely to go. There was a good point to what he was saying, if only her instinct wasn’t screaming that she was right. Flu wouldn’t explain the spirits she’d seen, and it wouldn’t explain why Bam had been so frightened, yet she knew she couldn’t win this argument with Ollie if she didn’t at least get herself checked out.

“I’ll go see a doctor, but I still want to stop the work. We can’t take any chances.”

“We can’t stop building. This is our dream.” He begged her now, his voice soft and nasal.

“
Your
dream. This was never my dream. I never wanted to come to this fucking house. You and Bam… you wanted this.”

Ollie half rose to his feet again, one hand resting on the table while he thrust the other towards her in sharp jagged motions. “You said you were on board. You promised me you were okay with this. Remember? Back before we spent all this time and money? Before Bam died…”

“You’re being unreasonable. Don’t you think that things have changed?” Their angry voices filled the kitchen and Freya wondered if the young men could hear them.

“Unreasonable? Freya, you’re asking me to abandon a project and go home just because you think you might have seen ghosts.”

“I’m not asking you to leave, you asshole. That’s exactly what I’m saying… we can’t fucking leave. This house makes us sick when we do, and I don’t know what’s going to happen if we stay too far away from it. We might end up like Bam.”

“You’re really blowing this up out of all proportion, Freya. This isn’t like you.”

“I just don’t know what we’re dealing with here. It’s starting to freak me out a little. I kept telling myself I was imagining things, but I’m just not so sure anymore. What if there is something going on?”

“See? You’re not even sure. You just changed your tone completely. You aren’t sure this place is haunted.”

“I’m sure enough. How can you deny that weird things are happening?”

“I haven’t seen anything weird yet. No furniture has mysteriously moved, and I haven’t seen any ghosts. All I have are you and your stories of nosebleeds.”

“How about the first day we got here? Remember the brown snot? It disappeared the day after. That’s pretty weird, right?”

“We saw it wrong.”

“No we didn’t, we all saw it.”

“Freya… I don’t know what to say to you anymore. I think Bam’s death is affecting you. You need to stop feeling guilty about it. You didn’t leave her to die.”

His words were like a punch in her stomach, and for a second, Freya fought for air.

“That’s not fair. What you’re saying… it’s not fair. I…”

“Listen, let’s make a deal, okay? Get a doctor to come out here, let him check everyone out, just in case. Please, do that much for me?”

“But what if the house claims more people?”

“Really? Come on. How is it going to claim more people? There haven’t been any accidents. Logan, have your boys mentioned anything weird?”

“No. I only know that one of my guys has been having nightmares about his brother’s ghost.”

Freya pointed at Logan but her eyes remained on Oliver. “See? What if it wasn’t a nightmare and he actually saw a ghost?”

“No.” Logan shook his head. “I don’t think so.”

“What do you mean?”

“Tyrell is still alive as far as I know. Unless he died recently, but then we would have heard something. I call in to the centre once a week, and no one has reported anything.”

“And without a dead guy, we can’t have a ghost.” Oliver folded his arms and shot her a smug smile, but Freya wasn’t convinced. “So, no one has actually seen a ghost, aside from you and Bam? The two people who have suffered from a fever twice, I believe? And you’re sure you’re not just sick?”

Freya frowned, the words stuck in her throat, and she fiddled with the nails of her left hand. Part of her wanted to believe Oliver. The world would make a lot more sense if there was no haunting, if Bam had just slipped and fallen in the bath, if her aunt in the car had just been a hallucination. But what of the woman she’d seen the first time they’d broken down the wall to the East Wing? How could she explain her? And the nosebleeds? Could it really be some sort of virus? Suddenly she wasn’t sure.

“If we are sick, then the people exposed to us need to be checked out.” Oliver took another bite of his food and looked at her over his bowl. There was something in his eyes that she didn’t like.
Do I see victory? Does he know he has me?
She turned to Logan, but she saw doubt in his face too. Oliver’s truth sounded more plausible than anything supernatural. Why wouldn’t he doubt?

“We can’t just stop building, not even because of Bam’s death. We’ll mourn her, and we’ll have to make do without her share of the money, I know. But come on, think about what you’re saying, think about what you want to throw this all away for? For a hunch? A superstition? You’re suggesting we stay behind in a house that’s unfinished… a builder’s project. It’s dangerous, and we can’t finish it ourselves.”

“He has a point.” Logan pulled on Freya’s arm, urging her to sit down, and she obeyed.

“We can’t risk the guys being here.”

“The boys have been here for several weeks now and they’re fine. Like Oliver said, there’s no real proof that anything is happening in this house. Could be that we really did get some weird virus, or maybe it’s the stress. Who knows?” He rubbed his chin and then placed two hands on her cheeks. “I’m not saying you’re not right, I’m saying… we just don’t know yet. And we need to do a bit more research before we make any decisions. It’s not fair on the guys either. This is a big chance for them. These guys come from abusive homes, have been involved with petty crime, and some have nowhere to go back to. Being here is good for them.”