Page 25 of Where The Devil Kneels

I spend the morning narrating to nobody, rambling about blueprints, secret passages, and Garrow. Room to room, I leave little tests—a pencil balanced on a ledge, my phone recording the hallway, a line of salt at what I think is a hidden door. It’s not to catch him. It’s just to say: I see you. And I’m not losing it.

Twice I catch something — a shape, a shadow — and when I spin around, there’s nothing. But that feeling in my gut, like I’ve just missed a highway exit, doesn’t go away. The house keeps running hot and cold, too; rooms go from freezing to stuffy for no apparent reason. Like it has opinions about my whole little “I know you’re in here” performance.

Back in the kitchen, the teapot has moved—spout pointing north. My heart jumps, but I don’t whip around like a horror movie victim. Instead, I feel my lips curl into a smile. “So you can hear me. Good to know.”

In the library, the bookmarks have moved to a new page — a diagram of walls fitted with peepholes. I run my finger along the illustration. “Sneaky bastard,” I whisper, and I can’t help smiling. “Real sneaky.”

By late afternoon, the sky’s gone this ugly bruised purple, clouds stacking up on the horizon. The air has that charged, prickly feeling that raises the hairs on myarms. I stand at the parlour window counting one-Mississippi, two-Mississippi between lightning and thunder, just like my dad used to make me do. This storm means business.

“Looks like we’re in for a rough night,” I say to the seemingly empty room. “Hope the roof holds.”

A wicked bolt cracks the sky. Thunder rattles the windows. The lights flicker, then die. I blink, disoriented by sudden darkness.

“Oh, perfect,” I mutter, digging around in my pocket for my phone. “Absolutely what I needed right now.”

Before I turn on my phone light, a faint golden glow spills from the hallway. I move toward it, breath caught.

Candles. A whole path glowing down the hallway. They don’t flicker, not even in the drafts that usually toss my hair into my face. They pull me from familiar rooms into the musty east wing I almost never enter. I definitely didn’t put these here. I’m a “stumble in the dark, swearing at stubbed toes" person, but these burn bright and new, casting warm golden pools across the floorboards.

The wind slams the windows, making flames wobble but not die. Rain hammers the roof. Lightning shows the candles leading deeper into the part of the house I never visit.

My grip hardens on the note in my pocket as I pat it for reassurance. “They will come for you soon. Trust no one who fears this house.”

I stop dead at the line between light and dark. The part of my brain that’s kept me alive through some genuinely terrible situations is screaming at me: this is literally how people die in movies. Following candles. In a storm. Are you serious right now? That voice is begging me to go lock my door and sit on my hands until morning like a sensible human being.

But another part of me—the one convinced this house was different, safe from the start—shoves me toward those candles.

I breathe in the sweet wax smell and that electric, before-the-rain scent. “Okay then,” I whisper, stepping forward. “I’ll take it.”

The storm’s raging outside, thunder crashing like it can’t decide if it’s a threat or an invitation. I follow the candles into the dark, each one spaced just far enough apart to keep me moving, as if someone’s unrolled the world’s creepiest welcome mat and I’m walking right down it.

I follow the candles deeper in. Each flame is just far enough from the last that I can see where to put my feet, and not much else. The floorboards groan beneath me as I step into the east wing. The air changes—becoming heavier, not just from the storm. Lightning flashes through the windows. For a moment, everything warps: the moulding on the ceiling seems to form faces, and the coat rack in the corner resembles a person. Darkness returns. I blink, rooted in place, while thunder shakes the house.

My footsteps echo against the floors, especially in the gaps between thunder when silence presses in. And still, the candles refuse to flicker, which is unnerving—this house usually exhales cold from every crack. I drag my hand along the wallpaper as I walk. Some spots are soft, some rough, peeling just enough to reveal the seams. How many hands have touched these walls? How many were afraid?

“Hello?” I call out, my voice swallowed by the vastness of the dark hallway. No answer comes, not that I fully expected one, except the howling wind and another crash of thunder that shakes the house to its foundation.

The candles veer sharply toward the glasshouse. I’ve avoided that room since moving in—the windows alone would cost a fortune. Lightning freezes everything for a heartbeat.

There, silhouetted against the storm-dark sky, a man stands in the glasshouse. My body freezes, undecided between rushing toward him or fleeing, torn between the relief of finally seeing his form and the terror of what that means.

Not a shadow. An actual, flesh-and-blood man. He’s perched on a stepladder, securing that loose shutter I’ve ignored for weeks. He moves with quick precision, as if he’s done this a thousand times. Lightning flashes again—oh. Broad shoulders strain his dark t-shirt tight across his back. His hands grip the latch, strong and sure. His hair’s cropped short; men wore it that way before undercuts became everyone’s whole personality. That heat pools low in my belly—one I’ve done a bad job ignoring since I first felt eyes on me.

My Guardian. My Watcher. My Merrick.

I press myself flat against the wall, heart going absolutely haywire in my chest like it's trying to out-thunder the storm. I should say something. Announce myself like a normal person. I don't. For once, I get to be the one doing the watching. I bite my lip and stay completely still, holding my breath until my lungs start to complain, and I just watch. The way his hands click the last latch into place. The way he climbs down the ladder with this weird fluid ease, like gravity is more of a loose guideline for him.

He glides through the glasshouse like he owns it—and maybe he does—shifting potted plants under a drip I never noticed, retrieving a wooden brace from behind a loose panel I swear wasn’t there yesterday. I can’t stop watching his hands. They move with certainty and skill, no hesitation, no wasted motion. Who notices a drip like that? Who cares so deeply about a house that technically isn’t theirs?

When he’s done with the glasshouse, he grabs his tools and moves on. I follow, keeping to the shadows just outside where the candles reach, my socked feet silent on the old floors. This is completely insane, I think. I am literally stalking the guy who has been stalking me. In the music room, he fuses over the grand piano, tucking a cloth around it like he’s putting a child to bed.

Then he does something to a brass vent in the wall, the same vent that I had always thought was just for show. His fingers twist and adjust something hidden. Something clicks, then whooshes, and I can suddenly feel air moving through the walls.

The climate control system. He’s fixing the air, going room to room and tweaking those little brass vents to stop the storm’s dampness from warping all the old wood and paper.

He spends longer in the library, moving shelf to shelf like a man on a mission. I assume he’s checking for leaks, but no — he’s putting away all the stuff I left out during my research spiral. He’s got some system I can’t quite decode, sliding each book back into place with those long fingers, nudging and adjusting until everything lines up exactly right.

I can’t stop staring from the doorway. The way he touches each book, like he knows exactly where it belongs. His fingers trail over the spines with this gentleness that does something weird to my throat. It doesn’t look like someone doing chores. It looks like someone taking care of something they love.