Molly Harper - Better Homes and Hauntings

She backed away, nearly toppling over the steps up to the widow’s walk.

“Ah-ah-ah.” He chuckled, catching her free arm. “Not scampering away, my frightened little kitten. You owe me. You don’t get to leave until I say so. You left me before, didn’t you?” His lips quirked even higher, making her duck her head. “And we both know how that turned out.”

Nina didn’t know if Rick was referring to her leaving his company or if Jack was referring to Catherine rejecting him on the roof, but something in the man’s smug assurance made her jaw clench. He was enjoying her fear. He was enjoying toying with her. Her head snapped up, staring Rick right in the eyes. “Not this time.”

Nina cupped her hands and clapped them as hard as she could over Rick’s ears. Roaring, he threw her against the stairwell. Despite the dull pop she heard in her left shoulder, Nina kicked out as hard as she could, aiming for his crotch. His indignant scream echoed after her as she scrambled up to the widow’s walk and slammed the door.

She tried to shove one of the large tree planters in front of the door, but it was too heavy. The best she could do was wedge a wrought-iron chair underneath the knob. “Good plan, Nina,” she grumbled to herself. “Make the crazy possessed guy angry and then run up to high ground without an escape route. Excellent work.”

She ran for the railing, screaming “Help!” and waving her arms frantically. For the first time, she smelled the acrid bitterness of smoke on the air. A billowing gray plume stretched across the sky, hovering over her. She coughed, covering her mouth as the smoke danced around her head. The staff quarters. The staff quarters were on fire and fully engulfed. She could see her friends on the ground, scrambling around with hoses from her gardening shed and trying to extinguish the flames. Deacon was on his phone, apparently calling for his backup security and fire crew.

Rick had set the quarters on fire. Just as Jack had set the children’s wing on fire. He was following the same plan that had led to Catherine being strangled and dumped into the ocean.

“Help!” Nina screamed, but no one heard her over the wind and the roar of the fire. Rick’s battering at the widow’s walk door sent the iron chair scraping against the roof tiles. She ran for the only shelter available as Rick shoved the door open and threw the chair aside with a loud clang .

In the far west corner of the widow’s walk, she made herself as small as possible behind the ornamental pear tree she’d planted just a few weeks before. Slumping against the cement planter, she snagged an abandoned trowel from the soil. Her shoulder throbbed mercilessly. She clutched the trowel in her good hand, wondering if she could really do any damage with it once he made it to the end of the walk.

“Catherine,” he whispered. His voice was too low, roughened by the force of the murderous spirit lurking inside him like an infection. “Why are you hiding from me? I love you. I just want to talk to you, to make you see. Please, Kitty, don’t make me beg.”

The voice was so familiar, the words so soothing, that she struggled to remember that she wasn’t dealing with the man she’d trusted. He was a killer, an insane, possessive monster who had strangled the woman he’d supposedly loved on this very spot.

Nina could hear his footsteps coming closer. No one was coming to help her, she knew that much. The others had run to the servants’ quarters to put out the fire. She was cornered and alone, as Catherine had been.

Nina leaned her forehead against the smooth, curved surface of the planter. She was more exasperated with herself than afraid. She should have known this would happen. Her life was not a fairy tale. She wouldn’t end up with the prince. She was cannon fodder, the servant girl who got kicked in the head by the knight’s horse as he rode away with the fair damsel. She winced as she gripped the trowel, scraping her finger against the sharp bottom edge.

No.

She wasn’t that weak, injured woman anymore. She wasn’t Catherine.

“Hey.” She stood, ignoring the pain in her shoulder as she planted her feet. “If I come out, will you stop the insane chatter?”

He grinned at her, a cocky smile that could have been mistaken for flirtatious. “Catherine.”

“No,” she said, brandishing the trowel like a blade.

His dark eyes radiated mad glee as he swayed, a cobra hovering in front his prey. “I’ve missed you.” His hands shot up as if to embrace her. Nina swung the trowel upward, nearly catching him across the throat, but he ducked out of the way. As her weight shifted, she threw her good shoulder against his chest. He caught her arms, dragging her down with him and slamming her injured shoulder against the marble tiles. “Really, darling,” he sighed, pinning her against the cold, unyielding surface. “Why do you have to make things so difficult for yourself?”

“I’m not Catherine,” Nina growled.

“Maybe not,” he whispered, trailing cold lips along her cheek. “But you’re going to die like her.”

With a final kiss at the corner of her mouth, his hands closed around her throat. Nina clawed at his hands, kicking viciously at his shins. She threw her head forward as hard as she could with his hands around her neck, catching his chin between her teeth and sinking them into his flesh until he bled. Rick howled and shoved her away, slamming her head against the marble. Rick’s enraged scowl swam before her eyes, and for a second, his features shifted into another face—Jack’s face.

She’d wondered what Catherine had thought of in those last moments on the roof, and now she knew. Catherine had thought of Gerald and the children. Because all Nina could think of was Deacon. His face. His smile. His last words to her. She could almost hear his voice.

Oh, wait, that was his voice. The pressure around her throat eased just enough that she could focus on the image of Deacon standing over Rick with a shovel in his hands. Rick dropped to Nina’s side, gripping his head in both hands as Deacon ordered, “Get your hands off my girl.”

It would have been such a resounding badass moment, had Rick not used his position on the ground to knock Deacon’s legs out from him and make Deacon whack his head against a planter.

Deacon landed with a thump on the tiles. “Ow.”

“She was mine first, you know,” Rick snarled, his voice weakened by what was no doubt a wicked concussion. His dark eyes drifted lazily, but the angry intelligence inhabiting him kept him talking. “She always belonged to me. No matter what you gave her. She was always mine.”

Deacon slowly sat up, wiping at the blood dripping down his face. “I’m not a broken man, haunted by the wife he lost. And I’m not a little boy you can scare anymore. Nice try, setting my house on fire. You think I wouldn’t see the pattern? I’m a math nerd. I live for patterns.”

Rick’s voice changed, doubling, slithering along the ground like fog. “Everything your family built I destroyed. Every failure, every wasted coin, every heartbreak for the last century. I touched it all. I ruined you all through sheer will. Do you really think you can send me away, boy? I will take everything you have. I—”

Rick’s tirade was cut short when a tiny mote of light between them grew into a pulsing white star. The light whirled and blurred, taking on a human shape, a woman in a long pale blue dress, her blond hair mussed and falling around her shoulders. She glared down at Rick, whose eyes rolled up into his head as he fell back to the floor. In his place stood the ephemeral form of Jack Donovan, his face twisted into alternating expressions of anger, awe, and feral aggression. It finally settled into a smug grin as he whispered, “Catherine, I’ve waited for you, for so long. All of these years, you wouldn’t let me see you. I’ve missed you so.”