Page 26 of The Last Heir to Blackwood Library

Agnes looked down at her tangled fingers in her lap. “You already asked me to tell you about the ghost stories here. Twice.”

Ivy frowned. Had she? Agnes had mentioned the rumors the first time they met, but she was certain she would have remembered actually hearing the stories for herself; she loved ghost stories.

“That can’t be true. I would have remembered.”

“That’s what you said last time. Said you would have remembered if I told thee, but when I did, it was like you were hearing it all for the first time.”

A sudden slant in the room, and Ivy put her fingers to her forehead. Something tickled at the back of her mind, but it was slippery and she couldn’t quite grasp it. Swallowing back a dry lump in her throat she forced a smile. “Well, tell me again,” she said. “Maybe it will come back to me.”

Agnes drummed her fingers on her knees, looking torn. But then she nodded, and said, “Well, I was telling thee the story of the Mad Monk. Everyone in Blackwood has grown up hearing it.”

The familiar feeling grew stronger, but it was still fuzzy, and indistinct. Ivy nodded that Agnes should go on.

Outside the rain pelted against the windows in unforgiving sheets, the wind groaning. “It was in the days when Blackwood Abbey was a real abbey, a monastery, with monks and priests and the like living here. There was a monk—no one knows what his name was—that was obsessed with...what is it called? When metal turns into gold?”

“Alchemy,” Ivy murmured.

“—that’s it. Anyway, he began to take up darker interests. Things like life and death, and how it was that dead things could come back again. Said there was a fountain of youth, but instead of water springing from it, it was the blood of virgins. He did experiments, terrible experiments, and recorded everything in a great big book. There was girls that went missing from the town, and even though there was lots of accusations brought against him, nothing was ever proved. Some of the things that were said of him, well, I don’t like to repeat.”

Her imagination filled in the blank spaces in the story. Ivy could almost see the book, graphic illustrations documenting every horrible thing he had done, full of hellmouths and writhing piles of bodies. Flesh torn from bones, bodies drained of blood.

“When King Henry came ’round to burn all the monasteries, the monk disappeared. Some people say he was bricked up alive in the walls somewhere, but most people think that he ran off to Italy. The one thing everyone agrees on is that he hid the book somewhere in the abbey, and that his spirit haunts Blackwood, guarding his book and its power, hoping for someone to find it and release him from the bonds of death.”

Ivy digested this. Agnes was a good storyteller, and the vivid details made it feel familiar. But it would have been quite a stretch to say that she’d heard this story before—twice.

“You really don’t remember?” Agnes asked, looking at her askance.

Ivy shook her head. “Not a word of it.”

Agnes was fidgeting in her seat, and Ivy realized she’d kept the girl there for some time. “Well, it’s getting late. I suppose we both ought to be getting to bed. Do you have somewhere to sleep? All the things you need?”

“Yes, m’lady. Mrs. Hewitt prepared one of the old servants’ rooms for me.”

Nodding absently, Ivy bid her good-night. Back in her room, she scrounged about in her desk for a notebook. Hastily, she recorded everything Agnes had told her. The girl was unassuming and eager to please, yet was it possible she was playing some malicious trick on Ivy? Convincing her that her mind was slipping? But what had Agnes to gain from that? Worse than that would be that Ivy’s memory really was sliding into decline, and if that were the case, then what else might she be forgetting? The late lord Hayworth had died from dementia—what if it was hereditary? But something told her that there was something else at play here, something darker and unexplainable by a simple diagnosis.

13

Ivy watched as the first crimson blood drop forged a slow, steady path down the white porcelain sink.

Soon it was followed by a second, then a third, all converging like crooked streets on a London city map. It was the first nosebleed she’d had since coming here, yet she hadn’t been surprised when she’d woken up to the metallic smell and the warm trickle of liquid. The air was cold here, sharp, and if there was indeed mold in the library, then it was little wonder nosebleeds would accompany the headaches. Pressing a cloth against her nose, she let the water run until the blood turned pink and thin, then disappeared down the drain completely.

It was still raining when Ivy ventured downstairs, and from the look of the soggy fields and battered trees, it had rained all night. What was there to do on a stormy day such as this with no company and nowhere to go? She had explored the house several times over, but some of the darker hallways and more remote rooms left her with an uneasy feeling, imagining footsteps following and eyes watching her.

She puttered about the house, inventorying previously unexplored rooms and marveling at the art tucked into every corner. As the home of generations of Hayworths, she kept expecting to find something, well, homey. But the abbey was more museum than anything else, everything more for display than for function.

Wind howled outside, rain smattering against the great arched windows. If ever there was a day meant to be spent in losing oneself in books, this was it. She made her way to the library and leisurely perused the shelves until she found something familiar and comforting to read. There was an edge of uneasiness in the air, but she couldn’t think why, so with a contented sigh, she settled into her favorite plush upholstered chair with a beautifully illustrated edition ofOliver Twist.

She must have drifted off to sleep at some point, because she was awakened by the sound of voices and activity in the hall. Setting aside her book, Ivy cautiously padded out to see what was happening.

Ralph was stomping out his boots as Mrs. Hewitt hurried to take his wet coat and hat.

“How are the roads?” Mrs. Hewitt was asking.

“Terrible, as you might expect,” he said, with a grunt. Water dripped from his dark hair, plastering it to his forehead. Another man might have looked like a drowned cat, but Ralph was irritatingly captivating with his shirt stuck to his chest, a rain droplet blazing a trail down the strong angle of his jaw. He caught Ivy’s eye and quickly looked away.

Mrs. Hewitt clucked, shaking her head. “I told you we could fare without coal for a little longer until our delivery. You shouldn’t have risked going into town.”

“It’s not just the rain and wind, it’s unlike any storm I’ve ever seen. I...” Ralph looked lost for words, and a chill ran down Ivy’s spine. Ralph didn’t strike her as someone who feared much in the world, or had time for hyperbole of any kind. But he looked genuinely unsettled.

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