Page 32 of Wolfsbane Hall
10
Saturday, November 11, 1939
The North Wing
Flames licked up Celestine’s spine, and the air filled with thick black smoke. She coughed, drawing the top of her dress up to filter the air, but she couldn’t leave just yet. She had to scour the floor for the articles. They were important. She knew it in her bones, and if she were to save Frances’s life and hers, Celestine needed to get them.
So she fell to her knees, frantically trying to gather the lost ones. A letter burst into flames as her fingers touched it. Intentionally destroying itself. The house? Or the Specter? Or the Phantom?
It had to be the Specter, because the house was actively impeding all her efforts to discover more about the Ashbrooks. The Specter impedingher…her specter…hurtingher.
It shouldn’t have been surprising, yet it was. A part of her believed the Specter wanted to aid her—the part of him that cared for her. And if she were being honest, she wanted him to love her enough to save her.
But it was all foolishness.
No one would ever love her that much.
Embers popped as she managed to read the beginning of another letter before it, too, burned away in her hands, thepaper flaking into charred pieces.Brother, I really must protest your plan…
Brother.
The word triggered a memory.It was after a show, and Celestine was tucked into bed, her covers up to her chin. She was always cold, due to the unreasonable slowness of her heartbeat at rest.
“It’s more complicated than simply getting along with her. Babette is confrontational and often adversarial, but she—”
“She reminds you of your sister?” the Specter asked. He knew Celestine far too well, and she barely knew him. It was utterly frustrating. But it was life.
“Yes.”
“Understandable. My brother can be quite adversarial as well. Sometimes I want to kill him, but he’s family.”
Brother. The Specter had a brother! So the Specter was one of the twins. James didn’t have a brother—only a sister. Unless…the cloaked owner of Wolfsbane was one of the Ashbrooks’ other male relations. Their fathers?
It was the only other option. The Ashbrooks were infamous, and their antics were published in all the San Francisco gossip rags. So everyone in the city knew that the twins’ father was also a twin. Walter and Archibald. The only other male member of the Ashbrook clan was James’s maternal uncle Jon, but he didn’t have a brother.
So the Specter was a twin. But which generation, and which man?
And more importantly, which one did she want it to be? Everett? Dean? Her gaze tracked to the handsome devil, his muscular body silhouetted against the flames.
Celestine swallowed smoke and coughed.
It was a riddle made just for her. No one else would have that level of personal information about the Specter. PerhapsJames was right, and would she be the first person to uncover the Specter’s identity in over 100 years?
Doubtful.
But possible?
Celestine coughed, the world coming back into focus. How had she wholly forgotten she was in a burning room? Her hands drew up to her forehead, and she clutched her face. Her eyes stung, watering. Heat clung to her face, and smoke filled all her pores.
Yet even knowing she was seconds away from passing out from the smoke inhalation, Celestine wouldn’t leave the room.
I can’t leave yet.
She needed answers. It was the only thing that might keep her alive for one more day.
Shewastruly a fool.
But the fire meant she was getting close.
