No complaints from him. He was humouring me, clearly curious about what the human could possibly be doing. When he relaxed against the headboard to watch, I picked up the main duvet from the bed. Focusing my attention on the fabric, I spoke a few words of Etuinais and the blanket warmed in my hand. Then I climbed up onto the bed and tucked it around his torso to warm his chest.
He gasped, snuggling instinctually into the warmth. Trying to cover as much of his body as possible with the blanket, he pulled the blanket taut. I laughed, and his awed gaze followed me back to the pile. Going through every blanket, I cast the warming spell and draped them over him, leaving the curtains to cover the end of his tail.
His contented hum made a smile twitch up the corners of my lips, my trauma forgotten for the moment. “Good?” I asked, perching on the edge of the bed.
“This is the closest I’ve felt to sunning on a hot rock since I moved in here,” he said.
I had to assume that was good. When he snuck his arm out from under the layers of blankets and gestured me in, I shook my head. “I’ve got to finish what I was doing. The ghost was blocking a passageway to a basement, and I think I might find a hint downstairs.”
“There’s no hint,” he said, bringing his arm back to his chest.
How could he be so sure?
“I’ve got to check.”
For a moment he looked conflicted, before he relaxed further into his blankets. “I hope there are no more ghosts to attack you.”
I shuddered. “Please don’t mention that.”
“I was simply wishing you well.”
My chuckle trailed back to him as I left Uncle Felix’s bedroom and stepped back into the office.
***
Getting down into the basement? Easier said than done.
My body got chills the second I stepped into the office, gaze focusing on where the spirit box had been. It was gone, a note written in large letters sitting in its place.
#
I didn’t think you would want the ghost as company. The box is in my room.
#
Only Zan could have written it, and I was touched he’d thought of something so small. Having the spirit box in his space couldn’t be comfortable, either. Those things were built to trap souls like his for eternity. Stories of ghosts who had been trapped and then escaped were the most horrific, because spending hundreds of years in a tiny space was enough to drive anyone insane. And murderous.
Knowing the ghost wasn’t in my space helped, but didn’t calm me completely. Every step I took toward the half-broken wood wall was slow and small, my body half-expecting another one to roar up from the depths. When I reached it, I picked up my hammer, which I’d dropped during the chaos. I didn’t remember. The details of what my body had been doing were hazy, at best.
I peered through the hole and down into the dark, sensing no hint of another being, living or dead. Then I used the hammer to peel off more wood, creating a gap big enough for me to slide my body through. I grabbed a portable lamp from a shelf and tapped the rune, shoving it through the hole to light up the stairwell.
Everything was dusty and covered in spiderwebs, critters hanging from the low, sloping ceiling. If I hadn’t been short, I would have had to crouch to descend. No bottom was visible, but the stairs extended in darkness beyond the reach of the small, yellow glow. Straight down. We could be going to Halsyn, for all I knew.
Hopefully, there weren’t any more ghosts.
Convinced the coast was as clear as it was going to be, I stuffed myself through the drywall and picked up the lamp, starting my descent. Breathing was hard, every inhale bringing a lungful of dust and the scent of age. It got harder as I continued downward on solid clay stairs, going and going until I couldn’t imagine I was still underneath the house. The stairs should have been winding down instead of straight down.
When I finally spotted a solid wood door at the bottom, a puddle in front of it, I sighed in relief. The air was cold and humid, age warping the door and rusting the lock. My hammer, which I’d brought with me, made quick work of the padlock, but my hand hesitated on the handle.
Deep breaths.
You can do it, Hadley. If there’s a ghost inside… well, you got this far. You’re capable.
I repeated my mantras in my head and not aloud, scared of alerting any ghosts of my presence early. Not that I felt anything coming from inside the room, but there was an ominous discomfort settling over me. Something about this basement waswrong. Wrong in a deep and fundamental way, nothing I could put a name to.
My fingers pushed the door handle down, shoving the door open fast as I hastily scanned every inch of the room on the other side.
No ghost rushed out at me, and no living being tried to tackle me to the ground, either. The room was silent, as covered in webs as the staircase had been, not a single window or vent to air it out. I had to hope I didn’t die from inhaling something down here, because as the grey haze cleared from my vision, I noted the surroundings.
