Protected by Stone (A Paranormal Romance Novel) (6 page)

I didn't like that.

“Grault, stop. I admit this place is weird, this situation is strange, but what you're trying to convince me of is... it's just ridiculous.”

Standing tall, he cracked his neck loudly. The crunching pops made me flinch. “It's time you saw. Come, Miss Blooms.”

I had the oddest thought that he expected me to take his hand. He, instead, began wandering down the dim hall to our right. “Where are we going?”

“You wanted to see the house.”

“I—I wanted to understand what you meant when you said Tessa was a witch.”

He nodded, leading us through a long, high hall. “You want facts. This will explain both things.”

As we walked, I gazed upwards at the ceiling. It was good to be in such a big place (he and I could walk side by side) but I was left wondering, again, why it was so dark. “Why are there no lights on in here?”

“It was Tessa's job to do that.”

“You can't turn on a light?” I scoffed, folding my arms into a tight knot. “It doesn't take much.”

Grault slowed, and in the shadows, I almost bumped into him. We were close enough to touch, his charcoal eyes fixed down on me like I'd said something entirely stupid. “Normally, you'd be correct. However, that isn't the case here.”

Squirming under his cold gaze, I hugged myself tighter. “Why is that?”

He tilted his head, returning to guiding us towards the end of the hall. It felt like we'd walked for some time, when I thought about it. “The house only ever listened to Tessa. Without her, there's been no way to get the lights back on.”

I saw him getting further away, realized I'd stopped walking entirely. He noticed, too, pausing to eye me with clear exasperation.

But I didn't care.

“I'm sorry,” I said, my lips dry no matter how I licked them. “Did you just say the house
listened
?”

“I did, yes.”

“
The house?
”

Grault shut his eyes, white lashes almost vanishing on his pallid cheeks. “The house. Miss Blooms, if I have to keep stopping to explain every little thing it will be quite draining.”

“How am I supposed to react when 'every little thing' sounds completely insane!” I blurted, wincing at how my voice echoed around us.

He moved his arms, gesturing around himself towards the exit. Beyond him, I could vaguely see greenish light. “I'm doing my best to explain things to you. Come along so you can grasp it better.”

Is he mocking me?
I couldn't tell, he was always so flat.
Or angry.
Around me, I had the oddest sensation that the halls were shifting. It was easy to blame on my fear of small spaces, though the feeling that the walls were somehow
breathing
in and out was not. Tensing my jaw, I scurried forward as calmly as possible. When Grault and I exited the hallway, my nerves reluctantly settled.

We stood in a wide room, stairs extending upwards from all directions around us. It reminded me of being in the center of a compass. “What is all of this?”

“This is the main room,” he said, waving over his head. “The tenants stay in rooms above here, up these stairs.”

“Are we going to meet them now?”

Grault peered down at me, seeming to consider the option. “Not yet. I want you to see something else first.”

There was another hallway across from the last one. I followed him down it, amazed by how people could choose to stay in a place so dark and quiet.
Musty, too. It smells like dirt, I hope there isn't deadly mold hiding around here.

We didn't go far before Grault stopped. To our left was a door, basic in every sense. I thought he was getting his bearings, until he reached out to touch the brass knob. Grunting, he gave it a hard twist.

Nothing happened.

“Is it stuck? Do you need a key?” I asked, expecting him to look embarrassed. Instead, he tipped his head at me and gestured at the door.

“Miss Blooms, after you.”

My face fell, eyebrows scrunching. “What do you mean 'after me?'”

“I can't open this door, I need you to do it.” As if to make a point, he gripped the handle with one wide hand again. I saw the exertion on his face, his teeth revealed for a scant second as he struggled to twist the knob. In the dark, I thought they looked sharp, his eyes blacker.

He released it, dusting his palms on the front of his grey jacket. His expectant look sent a nervous chill to the back of my neck. “You're joking with me again.”

“Again?” he balked, looking offended. “I never joked with you, Miss Blooms. Not once.”

I didn't like the implication of that. “So you can't open this door, but you're saying I can?”

Grault parted his lips, a flicker of irritation dancing in his features. His hesitation, next, startled the both of us. “To be fair, I can't say for sure you
can
open it. I've been running on the assumption that, as Tessa's blood, you can.”

“That's your reasoning?”

“Open the door, Miss Blooms.”

I threw my hands up, though I whispered instead of shouted. “You're messing with my head.”

“Just open it, please,” he huffed, squeezing the bridge of his nose.

“Stop playing games with me!”

He made a noise, a
growl
, before glaring at me so hotly it cracked my composure. “We're wasting so much time here, Miss Blooms! Why won't you open it?”

We stared at each other, my face blank, hands damp and shaking. And then he noticed it, perhaps before I did. “You're
scared
, aren't you?” he asked, lowering his tone in a way that made me blush with shame. “You're actually scared to do it. Why?”

“I'm—I'm not scared,” I said, hearing the lie on my tongue. Turning, my own brown eyes fixed on the brassy knob. “It's just a door, that's all it is.”
A door that he can't open, in a house that he says can listen. A house owned by my grandmother who might have been a witch.

I'm not scared at all, no.

Swallowing, blood pounding in my ears, I watched my fingers hover over the handle.
Just turn it, it'll be locked like it was for him. Just watch and see. Just watch... just...

We both heard the metallic sound as I opened the door. It set my skin on fire, my shock so solid I almost missed Grault's amazed gasp. “It actually worked,” he said in awe.

Standing in the doorway, I had no response. I was too busy gazing inside at the room with its wide shelves of books, its bits and bobs, all lit up by the first bright lantern I'd seen inside.

And there, hanging on the wall in front of me, was a painting of a young woman with messy dark hair, kind chocolate eyes, leaning contently against a huge golden retriever.

Someone who looked just like me.

“H
ow?” I breathed out, standing on the very edge of the open doorway. I didn't look at Grault, I couldn't tear my eyes from that smiling painting. That peek into my past. “How does she look just like me?”

“That's what bothers you? No 'how did the door open?' Just how do you look alike?” He stepped around me, letting me catch a glimpse of his profile. He, too, was watching the painting with reverence. “You're her granddaughter, it only makes sense.”

It only makes sense.
My knees wobbled, threatening to throw me as I stepped forward. The floor inside was soft and gold. I didn't know what I was going to do, not until I touched the lantern. It sat on the desk below the painting, lighting up the heavy books that lay around like lazy cats. “When was the last time you were in this room, Grault?”

He didn't answer. Twisting, I watched him curiously. There was a sadness in his face, a look I understood. When you lose someone close to you, it leaves a mark that only others with such an experience can recognize. “Grault?” I asked again, gentler.

The tall man focused on me, blinking sluggishly. “Forgive me. Tessa spent so much time here, it still feels like she...” Trailing off, he gave his head a hard shake. “Never mind. I was last in here two weeks ago. She sat at her desk, asking me to get her a book from the shelf. When I turned around, she was—” He cleared his throat. “After she died, her body removed, I was never able to get back inside.”

“Two weeks,” I said, turning back to gawk at the lantern.
There's no way this should have lasted so long.
It seemed so impossible, but... would Grault go to so much trouble to trick me with such a ruse? What would be the point? “Can I ask how she died so suddenly?”

“I'm unsure. She was very ill. She acted like she knew her time was coming. It felt like her life simply ended.”

I wonder if it was a heart attack. I don't know how old she was, but what else kills so fast?
“How is this lantern still burning?” I finally blurted.

He came to stand beside me, that long shadow falling over everything. Reaching down for the lantern, the tips of his elegant fingers touched mine. It was a brief touch, nothing more than a graze, but it made me yank my hands to my sides nervously. Grault didn't act like he'd noticed. “Do you want the real answer, or will you think I'm lying again?”

I knew the answer he would give me. With the eyes of the painting on us, old books and a single light illuminating that room, the answer actually felt... possible. “Magic,” I hushed, the word alien on my tongue.

“Magic,” he agreed. Lifting the lantern, he studied it curiously. “Tessa could do many things. She had a natural talent. I take it, as her blood, that you must sense it all around us?”

Blinking, I gave a sheepish shrug. “Sense it?”

His face smoothed. “The energy, the magic. Isn't that why you believe me finally?”

My skin was slick from sweat where I rubbed the side of my neck. “Honestly, I don't know that I do believe it. Maybe that's dumb. I just thought... well,
you
would say magic, and
I
don't have a better answer than that.”

Grault's look of disbelief tugged at something, a part of me that I was all too familiar with. “You don't feel the power around you at all?”

I'm disappointing him. I can see it in his eyes.
“No, I... should I?”

Setting the lantern down, he studied Tessa's painting as he spoke. “Of course, you're her kin. It's natural for you to have a connection to the ethereal.” He saw my baffled look when he turned back, though the flicker of sympathy he gave me did little to help my guilt. “Ah, perhaps it's just too new. Tessa was around the mystical her whole life.”

“Right,” I murmured, amazed that I could be feeling bad.
Calm down, you don't even know what's going on, not really. It's too soon to feel like a failure.

He cleared his throat politely, motioning at the lantern. “Take it, let's go meet your guests.”

“My guests, right,” I laughed, lifting the lantern quickly. It was heavier than I expected, swinging into my hip and making me flinch. “Gah. Wait, why do I need this?”

Grault was already leaving the room, I hurried to tag after him. “Tessa always carried that with her, it never left her side. It may serve as a reminder to the guests of who you actually are,” he said, as if talking to himself. “I'm not sure how they'll react. The ones that expected you to come are mad at how long you waited, the others might not want you at all, and then there are those who doubt who you are altogether.”

“I didn't wait,” I argued, walking faster to keep pace. “I didn't know about any of this.”

“They don't get that, Miss Blooms.” We stood in the main room, surrounded by stairs again. He spun, eyeing me in a flash of... nervousness? “I'm simply warning you. I've told them the details, it's on you to assure them.”

“Assure them of what?” I asked, the lantern dangling from my fingers. I wanted to put it down, it was hurting my shoulders. The idea that it was somehow offering me protection, combined with Grault's cryptic words, made me clutch it harder.

Turning in place, my pale companion looked from one landing to the next. “Assure them you'll be able to take over and fix things here, that you can replace Tessa.”

“I—but I don't know that I can! Or,” I added softly, “that I even want to.”

He leveled a look at me, eyebrows rising high. “What?”

Speaking was hard, my throat was so tight. “I told you before, I don't know if I'm capable of being a caretaker. This place is a wreck, I wouldn't know where to begin, I—”

Above us, around us, the world groaned. It was a deep sound that curdled in my bones, made me stand straight as a rod. Grault was still, eyes hardly moving. “Shh. It's not the time. The house knows you're here. Going into Tessa's study must have drawn its attention. Now,
everyone
knows you're here.”

I wanted to say something, anything. My urge to understand what was going on around me was fighting my desire to lock up in fear. Standing in the center of that room, surrounded by the sounds of the very structure shaking, I had the idea I might be crushed any second. An earthquake, a landslide, the world opening up at my feet and sucking me in...

All of that made more sense than the moment the first of my—
my—
new tenants appeared on the stairs above.

In that moment, nothing made sense any longer.

The first thing (for it was surely a thing, what else could I call it?) was yellow as a sunflower. Shaped like a slug, ghost-like in transparency and movement, it floated down the stairs towards Grault and myself.

On its own, the creature would have scared me. But it
wasn't
on its own. From the halls above us, surrounding the stairs, the other guests began to show themselves.

There was a tall thing, almost human save for the thin, electric blue arms and the black bird-like face.

Three tiny beings, blobs that reminded me of living milk with child faces, peered around the top of one of the landings.

Everything glowed, or crawled, or floated, or walked. Not a single thing looked human.

And still, they kept coming.

I didn't notice I was squeezing Grault's hand. I didn't remember reaching for it. I only noticed when he clasped my fingers firmly, pulling me back into some semblance of sanity.