Chimera

2. Emmy

2

EMMY

“Hey, it looks as if we’re going on the ghost tour a day early,” Hallie said from the back seat. “Actually, it might be more of a monster tour.”

Precisely what I didn’t need to hear at nine p.m. while driving through the Scottish countryside in the dark. The rolling hills had been quite pretty when we made the journey in daylight two days ago, but at night when we were the only vehicle on the road for miles, the overhanging trees and long shadows made the landscape eerie as f**k.

An owl came out of nowhere, a winged wraith that buzzed the car before disappearing into the gloom again. A combination of experience and willpower meant I didn’t show any outward signs of my surprise, but my heart skipped half a beat as the bird nearly plastered itself across the windscreen.

“Monsters? Dare I ask?”

“According to local legend, the forest around Glendoon is home to a beast that’s half eagle, half wolf.”

Thanks, Nick. He’d conveniently forgotten to mention that part, and I didn’t even have a gun with me.

“Which half is which?” Sky asked. “Like, is it an eagle with a wolf’s head? Or a giant dog with a beak?”

“Uh, so I think it’s a wolf with wings. And talons. Oh, and its eyes glow red.”

“So basically a flying nightmare, then?”

“Yeah, that’s exactly it. Wait, this article says it also has a snake for a tail.”

“What kind of snake? A poisonous one? Or the sort that squeezes you to death?”

Good grief. “Guys, it’s not real. I bet the local tourist board made it up to boost visitor numbers.”

Because who would want to go to a cheese festival? I mean, I liked cheese, don’t get me wrong, but if I was going to devote a day to eating it, I’d do that in France with a good bottle of red and slightly more sunshine. A pool, a lounge chair, my husband at my side…

“Reports go back as far as the seventeenth century. Was tourism a thing back then?”

“The villagers probably borrowed an old story to add a layer of authenticity. Check out the gift shop—if they’re selling little clay models of the Glendoon Monster, then you know they did it for the money.”

Sky fiddled with the radio until she found a station playing old rock songs. Soon, Bryan Adams was belting out of the speakers, and I calculated we had six more tracks until we arrived at Paige’s “creepy as all get out” home. In the end, it hadn’t been that hard to find. We’d just taken a look at one of those “How much is my property worth?” websites and zeroed in on Glendoon. Only five properties had sold nearby in the past year, and of those, two were flats, one was a rather nice detached farmhouse with equestrian facilities, and a fourth included a small shopfront that had formerly been the village post office. The fifth had been purchased at auction four months ago, and the picture painted by the now-archived online catalogue was, in a word, grim. Glendoon Hall was crumbling on its foundations. And those foundations probably had subsidence. No wonder Paige had been in tears if that was where she was living.

The darkness wrapped around us as we drove down ever-narrower lanes. Three miles to go, two, one…

“Reckon that’s the place?” Sky asked.

There was no handy sign to confirm, but there didn’t seem to be any other properties around. And the iron gates hanging askew from ivy-covered pillars were open—practically an invitation. I nosed the SUV into the pitted driveway, slowly because some of the potholes deserved postcodes in their own right.

The house soon came into view, looming out of the trees beneath a clouded moon. Upon first glance, the place looked deserted—there wasn’t a single light on, and the only sound was the rustle of trees—but a closer inspection showed signs of life. The tarpaulins tacked over broken windows were clean, and footprints near the front door had been left since the earlier rainstorm. I tried knocking.

No answer, but I hadn’t been expecting one. The cobwebs around the door told me it hadn’t been opened in a long while. Hallie’s gaze strayed towards the surrounding forest, and she shivered. From the cold or from unease? Probably both.

“You think Paige is out?” she asked.

“If this was my home, then I would be.”

Sky knocked again. “Maybe the monster got her?”

Oh, for crying out loud, she actually sounded serious. “The only monsters on this earth are humans.”

Fresh tyre tracks in the dirt led around the side of the building, and I followed them with Sky and Hallie bringing up the rear. f**k, I’d always thought that Riverley Hall—the gothic monstrosity I shared with my husband in Virginia—was creepy, but this place was on a whole other level.

Okay, there was a car, a small red hatchback parked in the courtyard of an old stable block, the horses long gone, the top and bottom loose-box doors closed up. But where was the driver?

“Hello?” I called, and it was like shouting into the void. “Is anyone there?”

Nothing.

“Should we go back to the hotel?” Hallie asked.

“We can’t. This is a welfare check. If there’s anybody here, we have to find them.”

And Paige’s call with Fletcher had cut out suddenly. I didn’t believe for a moment that she’d stumbled across an eagle-wolf hybrid, whatever local lore said, but falling through a rotten floor in this place was a very real possibility. What if she was lying somewhere with a broken leg?

“You mean…go in there?” Hallie lifted her chin towards the main house.

“If necessary. We can look through the windows first.”

“Most of them are covered up.”

“Then let’s check the ones that aren’t. If you and Sky take the north side, then—”

“You mean split up?”

“It’ll be faster.”

“What about safety in numbers?”

“We all—” I’d been about to say that we all knew how to handle ourselves, but Hallie hadn’t had the easiest of times over the past month, so I relented. “Okay, we can go together.”

Or not.

The back door was secured by a hasp and padlock attached to the outside, and when we headed for the north of the house, a bramble thicket blocked our way. Unless somebody had lifted a tarpaulin and climbed through a window—unlikely when there was a door available—there was nobody in the main house. Which left the outbuildings.

“Let’s go back to the stable block. That’s where the car is.”

And I’d also spotted a Portaloo tucked into a corner beside the rusting remains of a tractor and a forest of weeds. I’d assumed it was there for contractors to use, but what if it was there for Paige? She wouldn’t be far away. Nobody wanted to walk half a mile if they needed to pee at midnight.

“Paige!” I yelled, making Hallie jump. Oops. “Are you there? My name is Emmy, and I work for Blackwood Security. We’ve just come to check you’re okay. Fletcher sent us.”

A long moment passed. I was about to yell again when one of the stable doors opened a crack and a pale face peered through the gap.

“Paige?”

She gave the briefest of nods. “Did Fletcher really ask you to come?”

“He’s very worried. Are you all right?”

Her answer came in the form of tears. Aw, hell. Sky looked at me, and I looked at Sky, and then Hallie pushed past both of us. Thank f**k.

“Hey, it’s okay. Are you here on your own?”

“Y-y-yes.”

“What happened earlier? Fletcher said your call cut out?”

“My phone battery died. I should’ve realised it was going to, but I wasn’t thinking straight, and…” Paige wiped her eyes with a sleeve. “This is all such a mess.”

“You couldn’t recharge the battery?”

“The generator won’t start. I can charge the phone tomorrow at college, and my laptop, but tonight…”

“You don’t have a car charger?”

“A mouse ate it. I don’t even know how it got into the freaking car.” She shrugged, helpless. “How do you know Fletcher?”

“We work with his brother.”

“Nick? His brother’s called Nick, right?”

“Yes, Nick Goldman. He’s still in the US, but he asked us to come and check you were okay.”

I peered past Paige into the old stable. A folding cot was positioned against one wall, a couple of camping chairs sat on either side of a table, and one corner had been set up as a cooking area. A stack of bottled water towered over a portable hotplate, and the only light came from a row of candles on a shelf. She was living in there? In freaking November?

“Forgive my bluntness here, but what the actual f**k?” Paige blanched a little, and yeah, I should have phrased that better, but it was ten p.m. and cold and dark and we’d just driven an hour across Scotland. “How long have you been camping in a stable?”

“Nearly three months.”

“I suppose the more appropriate question is why?”

“It all went wrong. Everything.”

“Could you elaborate?”

Hallie wrapped an arm around her shoulders. “Why don’t we sit in…there?”

She helped Paige into one of the chairs, and I motioned Hallie to take the other. In the flickering light, I got a better look at the girl Fletcher Braun cared for enough to ask Nick to pull strings. A dainty blonde waif with big blue wide-set eyes and an elfin jaw, pretty but tired. Worn around the edges. And she gave off a vibe that might have been innocent or naive, depending on the situation. Yeah, people would take advantage of Paige, and she probably wouldn’t even realise they were doing it. Tiny silver stars sparkled in her ears as a draft blew across the candles, and she wrapped her arms around herself as we stared at her. She didn’t like being the centre of attention. An introvert?

Sky perched on the edge of the cot while I mooched around the place. Plastic boxes contained textbooks and novels and clothes and a hell of a lot of ramen, and a fan heater sat silently beside them. Buckets had been positioned at strategic intervals, presumably to catch incoming water. Sheesh. No electricity meant no heat, and according to the weather forecast, it was meant to freeze tonight. She couldn’t stay here, not like this.

“How about you start from the beginning?”

Sky gave me a “this is gonna be good” look. We’d both grown up on the streets of London, and neither of us was a stranger to homelessness—I’d spent two years living in a storage closet, and she’d been squatting in a former pub when we first met—but winding up in a stable in Bumfuck, Scotland with no power in the middle of winter was…special.

“The beginning?” Paige gave a nervous laugh. “So I was dating this guy…”