Chapter 8

I nearly lost my footing in surprise, my hand gripping the banister hard enough to hurt as I steadied myself against the wall. "You—how did you get up here?" I managed to ask, my voice coming out higher than I would have liked. I'd left her outside less than two minutes ago. There was no way she could have climbed that wall and gotten inside faster than I had, not in those clothes and definitely not without making any noise.

She gave me that same soft smile, as if my shock was somehow endearing. "I was worried you might have trouble finding your way in the dark," she said, her voice calm and unbothered by my obvious confusion. "I got a bit anxious and climbed up after you. I hope that's okay."

I opened my mouth, then closed it again, unsure what to say. She'd climbed that wall? In silk pajamas? Without me hearing a single sound? I thought about the way I'd struggled with every handhold, the way my arms had burned and my lungs had screamed for air, and tried to reconcile that with the idea of this seemingly delicate woman making the same climb with apparent ease. It didn't make sense, but then again, nothing about tonight made sense.

"I... yeah, okay," I said finally, slowly continuing down the stairs toward her. "It is pretty dark in here. Since you're inside now, do we still need to open the front door?"

She held the candle out toward me, and I took it automatically, our fingers brushing briefly in the exchange. Her skin was cool to the touch, and I found myself wondering if she was cold in those thin pajamas. "Here, you take this," she said. "I'm going to go check if I can get the door open from the inside. You can sleep in my room—the one you climbed into. I'll take one of the guest rooms."

Before I could protest or suggest any alternative arrangement, she was already moving away, disappearing down the hallway with that same uncanny speed and silence. I blinked, raising the candle higher as if the extra light would somehow help me understand what had just happened. How did she move so fast? Was it just the darkness playing tricks on me, making everything seem stranger than it actually was?

I pushed the thoughts aside, suddenly aware of a more pressing concern. I really needed to use the bathroom. I'd been holding it since the party, since before I'd wandered into the forest, and the combination of all the drinks I'd had and the adrenaline and physical exertion was making the need urgent. The woman was busy with the door, and I didn't want to bother her with something so mundane, so I decided to try to find a bathroom on my own.

I made my way back down the stairs, moving slowly and carefully with the candle held out in front of me. The castle was a maze of hallways and doors, most of them closed, and I had no idea which way to go. I tried a few doors at random, finding what looked like a library, a formal dining room, and several rooms that were completely empty, their furniture covered in dusty white sheets. I was about to give up and just ask for directions when I noticed a door standing slightly ajar at the end of a hallway, a faint light visible through the crack.

Curious, I approached and pushed the door open wider, raising my candle to see inside. What I found made me freeze in place, my breath catching in my throat. The room was filled with scientific equipment—beakers and test tubes, a centrifuge, what looked like a high-end microscope, temperature-controlled storage units that hummed softly in the silence. It was a full laboratory, as modern and well-equipped as anything I'd seen at work, completely at odds with the medieval atmosphere of the rest of the castle.

My mind raced as I tried to make sense of what I was seeing. She was a scientist? A researcher? I'd graduated just two months ago with a degree in biology and had landed a job at a pharmaceutical company, so I recognized most of the equipment. Maybe we did have something in common after all. Maybe this was a sign that I'd been right to trust her, that she was just an eccentric but ultimately harmless woman who happened to live in a castle and conduct experiments in her spare time.

I stepped further into the room, drawn by professional curiosity and the hope that maybe this whole strange night would end up making sense after all. But as I moved closer to the central workstation, a smell hit me that drove every other thought from my mind. It was thick and metallic and unmistakable, making my stomach turn and my head swim with sudden nausea. Blood. The smell of blood, strong enough to make my eyes water.

I looked down at the equipment on the table and saw a beaker sitting on a magnetic stirrer, its contents slowly rotating in a dark red swirl that caught the candlelight and threw crimson shadows across the white walls. It was blood—there was no mistaking it—and there was so much of it, easily a liter or more, just sitting there like some kind of macabre science experiment. The sight made me dizzy, made my vision blur and my hands shake, and I felt the candle slip from my suddenly nerveless fingers.

Everything happened too fast after that. The candle fell, tumbling end over end in what felt like slow motion, and landed directly in the beaker of blood with a soft hiss and a puff of steam. I stumbled backward in panic, my shoulder slamming into a shelf behind me, and suddenly the air was filled with the sound of breaking glass. Beakers and test tubes and graduated cylinders crashed to the floor around me, shattering into thousands of pieces that scattered across the tile like deadly confetti.

I didn't think. I just ran. My feet carried me out of that horrible room and down the hallway, my heart pounding so hard I thought it might burst from my chest. What kind of person kept that much blood in their house? What kind of experiments required that much human blood? Every horror movie I'd ever seen, every true crime documentary I'd ever watched, came flooding back in a wave of pure terror that threatened to swallow me whole.

I could see the front door now, could see the woman standing beside it with her hand on the heavy wood, apparently still trying to get it open. She hadn't heard me yet, was completely focused on whatever she was doing with the lock, and I knew this was my only chance. I put on a burst of speed, running faster than I'd ever run in my life, driven by a primal fear that overrode every other consideration.

I was maybe ten feet from the door when I saw her push against it, saw her put what should have been a delicate hand against that massive wooden barrier and shove. The sound of splintering wood filled the air as the lock broke completely, the metal mechanism tearing free from the doorframe and clattering to the floor. The door swung open with a force that made it slam against the interior wall, and I saw the woman step back slightly, looking down at the broken lock with what appeared to be annoyance rather than surprise.

That image—of her casually destroying what must have been a lock strong enough to secure a castle, of her treating that display of impossible strength as nothing more than a minor inconvenience—burned itself into my brain even as my legs continued to carry me forward. I didn't stop to think about what it meant, didn't pause to consider the implications. I just ran, bursting through that open door and out into the night, my only thought to put as much distance between myself and that castle as humanly possible.