Keeping his hands in his pockets as he walked over to her, Rhys raised his eyebrows. “What?”
Placing one hand on his shoulder, she lightly pushed him a few steps to her right, and then looked up at him with that sunshine smile.
“I forgot to tell you. Aunt Elaine figured something out. The curse? It only exists within the town limits. Probably because the magic only fuels Graves Glen.”
“Gryffud was a very specific bastard from all accounts, so that makes sense,” he acknowledged.
“Right,” Vivienne said. “And as of right now, we are officially two . . . no, three steps outside the town of Graves Glen.”
With that, she lifted the hand on his shoulder and wiggled her fingers.
That little ball of light she’d conjured up his first night back in town sprung to life, and hovered there. It didn’t immediately explode into a ball of flame that took his eyebrows off, so Rhys assumed she was right. The curse didn’t extend this far.
That was a relief at least.
“Now, come on. We have a ghost to catch.”
Aaaaand moment of relief over.
They continued up the road for a few more minutes, the trees getting thicker, the path narrower, and while Rhys didn’t have the same sense of foreboding he’d felt in the library, he still wished he were anywhere but here.
And then, as the path narrowed even further, Vivienne’s shoulder brushed his, and suddenly being on a road through the woods, headed to a haunted house, was not really that bad. Maybe he didn’t want to be back on his sofa alone. Maybe he—
“Oh, fuck me running.”
Rhys came to a sudden stop, staring up at the house that suddenly rose up in front of him.
If you looked up “haunted house” online, he thought, this was the picture you’d get. It looked like something out of every bad horror movie he’d ever seen, and he was less afraid of ghosts than he was catching tetanus as he took in the crooked steps, the shutter slumping from one window, the front door hanging drunkenly on its hinges.
“Maybe the library needs a ghost,” Rhys said, studying the house. “Maybe we just leave it there. Bit of character, you know?”
Next to him, Vivienne sucked in a deep breath. “We just have to go in and light a candle. I bet we can be in and out in, like, three minutes.”
“That is about four minutes longer than I want to be in that house,” Rhys replied, but then he looked at her, saw her tug her lower lip between her teeth, and knew they weren’t leaving until this was done.
So, taking a deep breath of his own, Rhys held out his hand to her. “Let’s go catch a ghost.”
Chapter 21
Vivi had told herself that the inside of the cabin could not possibly be any creepier than the outside. It was probably going to be one of those things where all the creep was there on the outside, and inside, it would just be an empty, old house. Nothing all that sinister.
In the few moments she had before Rhys pushed open the front door, Vivi let herself really believe that.
And then they stepped into the front room, and—
“I grew up in an actual haunted house, and this is worse,” Rhys said.
“Way worse. I mean, I haven’t seen your house, but I believe it.”
The inside of the cabin had been wallpapered at one point in what had probably been a pretty charming damask, but now it was falling from the walls in sheets, revealing stained and warped boards beneath. Mildew and mold crept along the ceiling, and in the corner, there was a velvet settee that appeared to be rotting, one leg missing, a hole in the middle cushion.
The other furniture was in a similar state of disrepair, most of it covered in a thick coating of dust, but the floor was surprisingly clean, and Vivi glanced around, wondering if other people had been here before.