For a paralyzing moment, Jasper couldn’t see. He couldn’t move. He could only hear the horrible howling, like the souls of the damned climbing into his ear canals and refusing to leave. They were inexplicable sounds, hissing and shrieking and moaning; sounds of the wounded and the abandoned. Sounds of death.

Jasper could still feel his limbs – a sign that he hadn’t been disembodied yet ­– and as he stumbled around in the dark, he bumped into what he thought was the bed, and maybe the dresser, and called out for Aurora. Either she didn’t hear him, or she no longer there, because no one answered.

There was only the agonized screaming, and the darkness, pressing in at all sides.

Jasper was not easily frightened by the dark. His abilities had always afforded him better vision in the dark than his companions. At this moment, however, he couldn’t see a thing. He called for his shadows and they didn’t answer. He tried to disperse the darkness and it wouldn’t come to heel. He was completely helpless, and, if Aurora had truly left him here, completely alone.

He still had the diary, though. With his last shred of good sense, he tucked it into his coat and tried to remember where he’d seen the stairs. If he could get back to the bottom, back to Isabella and her lantern –

Then another sound pierced through the darkness – this one a screech that rent his ears in two. It sounded like a large bird, diving in for a kill.

White-hot pain interrupted any sense of rational thought as something gripped into his upper left arm. Talons, claws, or something of that nature wrapped around him and pierced into the muscle. Hot blood soaked into his sleeve and ran down his arm in rivulets as the taloned thing began to pull.

Jasper resisted, despite the pain, but the attacker was strong. He lost his footing and fell, and it continued to drag him. The air shifted, and in a moment it became cold and damp, and at the first, agonizing thud, he realized something: it was dragging him down the stairs.

Jasper fought it. He couldn’t form words, and his shadows had abandoned him, but he reached up with his free hand and tore away fistfuls of feathers. The thing let out another cry – this one deep and agitated – and its sharp beak snapped at his fingers. It didn’t slow, however; and Jasper felt each step as he half-fell, half walked down the stairs at the behest of this creature. It continued to grunt and snarl and cry, making sounds he’d never heard before in his life, until it released him.

Jasper crashed in a heap onto a crushed velvet rug. Pain washed over him in waves, followed by an aching sensation in his ears, but the assailant had disappeared, and the screaming had stopped.

And he could see.

Jasper sat up. Blood dribbled down his left arm and his coat was badly torn. There were four puncture wounds – three on the top of his arm, one in the back, which only supported his suspicion that the thing which had dragged him down the stairs was avian. He cradled it, his mind slowing at the sight of the blood, and looked around.

Isabella was gone. So were Orion and Zephyra. Here he was, at the base of the southern tower, and they were nowhere to be seen.

The silence around him was almost worse than the screaming. He tore his shirt, stuffing pieces of it down his coat sleeve to staunch the bleeding, all the while listening for sounds of life in the house. There was nothing – not the wind rattling the panes, or the rain battering the roof; not the fires in the hearths below, not the sound of feet rushing up and down stairs. Even Orion and Zephyra’s irritating chatter had ceased.

The grandfather clock chimed, deep in the house.

One. Two. Three. 

Jasper’s heart shuddered as his pulse began to speed. It had been a quarter past nine when he’d ascended the tower – yet the clocked chimed three. How long had he been up there?

Frozen where he was, listening for the chimes that didn’t come, Jasper realized that though he was in the hall below the southern tower, it was not at all the same as when he’d left it. There was a strange quality of light about the place, as though he was looking at it through gauze. It was still dark outside, but as he rose unsteadily and looked out the window, he saw deep shadows cast on the grounds. He twitched his fingers but the shadows didn’t answer.

Powerless. The thought echoed through him like the chimes of the clock in the empty house. Fear followed, and then a crippling confusion made only worse by the aching in his arm. It would have been a fatal wound if he’d been human – he was losing blood rapidly, and it was pouring into the carpet – but Fae were known to heal quickly, and short of cutting off his head he wasn’t sure what would kill him. He cast his gaze back down the hall and listened.

Nothing.

Where had the others gone? And why had he lost his vision on the stairs?

Jasper already knew the answer to the second question. He’d known it when he’d heard the screaming, and when those talons had clawed into him. He knew it now, staring into the hallway that was familiar and yet not.

It was the witching hour, whether his senses agreed with him or not.

That meant that the Shadow Man was bound to show himself.

Umbraxis. That was what Aurora had called it – and the name somehow felt right. Do you know my name? it had asked him, when they’d fought the first time. As if the name was somehow important. As if Jasper should have known what it was.

Jasper started back down the hallway. The strange light played tricks on his eyes, these shadows hostile and unfamiliar. Every few steps he tried to call them; every few steps they refused to answer. He could have sworn he heard them whispering, laughing at him, mocking his sudden inability to command them. Jasper wanted to rage – but what would that do? He needed his senses. He needed his cleverness. He needed to find the others and make sure that when Umbraxis showed himself, they weren’t in the way. Shadows or not – he was the only thing that stood a chance of keeping this enemy at bay.

He made it to the end of the hall, and that was when the pandemonium began again.

The ghosts had awoken, crawling out of whatever dark crevices they’d been hiding in during the day. There were hundreds of them, swarming the stairs and the halls and creeping along ceilings and floors. Jasper stood in the hall, hot blood dripping down his arm into a pool in the carpet, and watched as they passed him. They either didn’t notice or didn’t mind that he was there – none of them stopped to look at him. They simply moved, mouths working as though chewing, each making a horrifying sound.

It was like a cacophony of badly-tuned string instruments, working its way through his bones in a manner Jasper knew he’d never escape. Wherever he went in the house, or the marshes, or if he retreated back into the woods and hid in the mustang, i would follow him wherever he went. This was the sound of tortured souls, too lost in their own misery to even realize another being could be watching. He’d never seen anything like it before.

True, there were ghosts everywhere, each haunting for their own reasons. Some liked to stay because their family had not yet passed on and they still cared about the living. Some had unfinished business, and stayed because they wanted it to be complete before they crossed into whatever afterlife humans had waiting for them. Some stayed simply because they had not yet realized they were dead.

But these…

Jasper walked back through the halls, trying to retrace the steps he’d taken with Isabella earlier that day. The sound was deafening, disorientating, sending his head spinning so that he traced a hand along the wall to keep him upright. In the austere light, he made out all manner of strange beings from all throughout time. These souls were angry and sad and scared. The could make no sound other than to moan and scream and sigh. Jasper realized, too, that many of them went for the windows and tried all the doors, flinging them open and reeling when it led to another room in the house or, even worse, if it refused to open at all.

Locked doors. Locked windows.

The house was sealed.

The thought came to him slowly, through the muddled haze of noise and pain, but, reliably as ever, his mind found the answer.

They were trapped.

Something had trapped these poor beings here. Something wasn’t letting them go.

Umbraxis. The memory came to him as he turned a corner and found, to his relief, the grand foyer. He didn’t remember climbing any stairs when he’d been taken to the southern tower, but here he stood, looking out from the top landing.

Looking out – where Jonathan must have been when he’d been pushed (fallen) to the stone floor below.

Shadows swirled at Jasper’s feet but ignored him as they tumbled down the stairs in a dark haze. Jasper watched them go. He recalled that petrifying dark, the red-gaze through the shadows, as the Shadow Man pulled him into oblivion when they’d faced each other in California. The fear, so unfamiliar to him, as it answered the Shadow Man’s call. As though the other was listening for it, wanting to go to it, waiting for it to arrive.

Jasper looked out over the banister and saw Jonathan Ravenscroft looking up at him.

The only ghost to acknowledge Jasper, Jonathan’s head dripped with dark blood, staining his clothes. He didn’t seem to notice, but narrowed his gaze at Jasper.

He said, in a smoothly cultured English accent, “excuse me, sir, but what are you doing in my house?”

He doesn’t know he’s dead. Jasper sighed. These were the hardest spirits to help, simply because they didn’t understand what being dead meant.

“It appears it isn’t yours anymore,” Jasper answered. “Do you happen to see it’s rather…occupied?”

He gestured around, but the sounds had diminished and the spirits had filed out of the foyer, leaving he and Jonathan alone. Jasper began a careful descent down the staircase, wary of recreating Jonathan’s dramatic entrance to the afterlife.

Jonathan had a brave demeanor, but by the way his shoulders arched forward, Jasper could see very easily that the young man was afraid. He didn’t flinch as Jasper approached, although his expression warned Jasper that he would run if he felt threatened. These were often the saddest, too – the young never could fully grasp the concept of death, and that was why he often found them in this state.

He didn’t look like a ghost, either – but was still fully present, not yet translucent like the other, older ghosts. He responded to the physical world still, to the words of those still alive, and looked to be in pain from the wound at the back of his head.

“Mind telling me what happened?” Jasper asked him.

“Not sure I should,” Jonathan replied. “My father may think ill of me.”

“Your father hired me. I’m the exorcist.”

Not entirely true, but truth didn’t matter quite as much when the patient was already dead.

Jonathan said, “I was pushed. Fell quite a long way. I landed there – it’s strange, isn’t it? Those funny letters.”

He pointed to the stone floor. There was, Jasper realized, not yet a carpet to cover the area, and there was still quite a large pool of blood on the floor. There were the runes, as well, freshly carved and glistening.

“Did you do that?” Jasper asked him.

Jonathan scoffed. “Me? No. I don’t have the slightest idea what that means.”

“What happened when you fell?” Jasper turned to look at him again, studying the movements of this strange ghost, searching for any clues.

“Well…I fell. That was about it.” Jonathan shrugged, scratching the back of his head.

As though he doesn’t notice the gaping hole, Jasper noted, and the thought left his knees weak.

“Then I picked myself up again. Everyone’s gone, though. I can’t find my father or my sister, and my fiancé was supposed to be here days ago – and, well, to be honest, mate, you’re the first person I’ve seen in days.”

“Are you hungry at all?” Jasper asked. He began circling the youth, inspecting him with a frown. “Thirsty? Sleepy?”

“Why would I…what’s the matter with you? Do I have something on my shirt?” Jonathan turned, trying to follow Jasper’s inspection. He stamped his foot in annoyance, a sound that echoed deeply in the house.

“How long have you stood here, Jonathan?” Jasper asked. He came to a stop in front of the youth.

Jonathan had gone pale. “How long…why?”

But the wheels had begun to turn, and any moment now, Jasper knew he would realize the truth. He would know that he hadn’t simply gotten up off the floor, and his sister and father were nowhere to be seen because they were still alive.

Jasper’s expression softened. He waited for what felt like a millennia.

“You don’t mean…” Jonathan’s eyes fell to the pool of blood on the floor. “You can’t mean…you said you’re who, again?”

Jasper held out his hand. “Jasper Nightingale. Master of Shadows. Or, for your purposes, the exorcist.”

Jonathan hesitantly shook it, and that confirmed Jasper’s suspicions. No reaction. No nausea, no fear, no reeling dizziness. Simply a cold handshake. Like taking the hand of a corpse.

“You’ve died, Jonathan,” Jasper said, as gently as he could. “And I think that whatever killed you is going to kill again – possibly your father or sister. If you could tell me about it, as much as you can remember, it may help me keep them out of harm’s way.”

A speculation, but the best one he had.

Jonathan’s eyes fell on the pool of blood again. They welled with tears, but he stood his ground, hands trembling as they fell onto the stone floor with an echoing plink.

“It was made of shadow.” His words came out in a rasp. “It…spoke to me. Wanted to know where I put the diary.”

“The diary?”

“Yes. There was a diary in the southern tower. I told it that I put it back, that I was sorry. I told it I wouldn’t ever go there again, and then…I was standing here.”

“This diary?” Jasper took it out of his coat, and the flicker of recognition in Jonathan’s eyes gave him the answer he needed.

“You were in the tower,” Jonathan breathed. “You were in the tower – it’s going to get you too, Master of Whoever-you are. It’s going to kill anyone in the tower – ”

Jasper felt the presence before he saw it. Jonathan’s eyes flicked beyond Jasper’s shoulder and he turned on his heel, meeting with the rising figure of the Shadow Man behind him.

It filled the foyer, absorbing all light and sound. It’s gaping mouth was a wicked grin made of fire; its eyes burning as they focused first on Jasper and then the diary.

Hello, Jasper.

The voice was in his head. It felt like icy fingers were scratching against the walls of his mind and his entire body trembled with cold. The shadows wrapped around him, lifting him from the ground, his feet dangling as the Shadow Man brought him up to eye-level.

Do you know who I am?

Despite the thunderous heartbeat in this chest, Jasper exhaled slowly. “Hello again, monster,” he said cooly. “I’ve been told your name is Umbraxis.”

The wicked grin grew, spreading through the room like a rip in space itself. There was no longer anything else but he and the creature; nothing but this void and its burning eyes, staring into him.

You have something that is mine.

“I don’t think it is,” Jasper returned. “The name inside said Elysande – and unless I’m mistaken, that isn’t you.”

His head spun. He wanted to panic but forced himself into stillness. Never mind that his only strength – the darkness – ignored his calls in the presence of this thing. He would find a way through, with or without his shadows.

Umbraxis recoiled at the name, a shrill squealing sound echoing around them.

“Right,” Jasper continued, though his breath was now coming short as his diaphragm – restricted by fear – refused to expand. “Since that’s the case, I’d like to know why you’re killing these poor people, and why you’re haunting this manor. And then I’ll have to ask you to leave.”

As politely as he could.

Umbraxis began to laugh. At least, Jasper thought it was a laugh – it was a faint rumbling sound, like a rusty gate in a windstorm. And it was horrible.

Stupid human.

“I’m not – “

Jasper had no answer. That was the moment the other decided to rear its ugly head, and any sense of control he had slipped away.

It was like the moment he’d heard Delia-Catherine-Aurora screaming in the amphitheater. The part that Barty hated, the part that always got him into trouble, answered Umbraxis’ remark with an ear-splitting screech and his body threw itself forward on its own. He didn’t register the pain in his arm or the ache in the back of his head, only the razor-sharp focus that pinned his power (what remained of it, at least) on the creature’s wicked smile.

The smile faltered, the crack in the world looking more like a startled grimace, and then Jasper began to fall.

This time, his feet landed back on the stone floor of Ravenscroft. The shock of it rang up through his shins, and for a moment, he was alone in the foyer, ears ringing.

Then Umbraxis shot out of the dark with a howl, claws outstretched, in the closest thing to a human form Jasper had yet seen.

He had only a moment to make his decision.

Jasper ran.

Back through the house, back through the dark, winding corridors, back through the hordes of whining ghosts who fled when the Shadow Man appeared. Jasper recognized nothing as he pushed himself onward. The house was eerie and unfamiliar. He ran through patches of that strange, other-worldly light; then through complete and utter darkness. Doors upon doors upon doors opened before him, the corridors twisting and turning, as though the house was alive, trying to confuse him, to keep him away from the exit.

Where were the others? Aurora, Zephyra, Orion, Isabella – where were they? Even if he couldn’t keep the monster at bay, maybe Orion – with his command of the daylight – could somehow send it back? But his companions were long gone, no sign of them anywhere in the house.

Jasper could run for a while. Physical fitness was required of all the Knights of the Order, but the constant changing directions kept him from hitting his stride, and Umbraxis was close behind. The creature clawed at his clothes, at his hair, screaming, filling his ears with a howling sound –

Hands gripped his coat and pulled.

Hard.

Jasper fought it, ready to leave the coat behind, but he was off of his feet before he could regain control of himself. A moment later, the grandfather clock, which had still yet to see, chimed.

One. Two. Three. Four.

Jasper landed with a stomach-churning crack.

More pain – this in his shoulder - rippled through him. Jasper lay on the floor, registering the plushness of crushed velvet carpeting, and looked up to see Isabella hovering over him.

Her face was pale and splattered with blood.

“Is he alright?”

Zephyra.

The ringing in his ears made it difficult to hear her, but he registered his companion’s voice and had never been gladder to hear it.

“I think so,” Isabella said, eyes wide. “Jasper? Can you hear us? Goodness, you’re covered in blood – what’s happened to you?”

She reached out a delicate hand to help him sit up, but Zephyra pulled her back. “Don’t,” she said. “He’ll manage.”

“Do you know where you are, bub?” Orion’s voice felt like sandpaper in his ears, but for once, Jasper was glad to see him, too. As he sat up, Jasper registered the pain in his shoulder and had the sneaking suspicion that he’d broken it in…

He looked up. He was in the foyer, at the exact spot Jonathan had been when he’d died. He’d fallen, and broken a shoulder doing it.

Jasper let out a string of unholy curses as his senses came back to him, one at a time. Orion, Zephyra, Isabella…they were all here, watching him. There was Aurora, the farthest away. She sat on her knees, palms up in her lap, coated in slowly drying blood.

“I could hear you, in the walls,” Isabella said, as though that explained anything.

He turned to look at her, his vision swimming as he moved. Concussed. Damn.

“Catherine…pulled you out.”

When Jasper looked back at Aurora, she was staring at her hands, unsmiling, her face draped in shadows. She was too far away for him to see, but he thought he saw tears streaming down her face.

“Give him some space, you two,” Zephyra said, pulling both Orion and Isabella away. Gratitude filled him, if only for a moment.

Jasper kept his gaze on Aurora. “The tower is a riftgate,” he said to her, the thoughts aligning. Oh, reliable brain. Even concussed you’re a wonder. “I found Jonathan, on the other side. I think…he passed through, unknowingly.”

And if Jasper himself had passed through, that explained where everyone had gone. It explained why Umbraxis was there, waiting for him. The riftgate took them…where? Some other realm, likely – one that overlapped with this house. Umbraxis had likely killed Jonathan, at least in part, for trespassing.

That wasn’t, though, why he said this to Aurora. As she looked up at him again, he knew she understood what he was saying. She could somehow pass between realms whenever she wanted, and still refused to tell him how. When they’d found the diary and the lights had gone out, somehow she had crossed back into their world and left him behind.

To die, likely.

The blood on her hands, though – that perplexed him.

“You saw my brother?” Isabella whispered. “But he’s – “

“Dead,” Jasper confirmed. “He just doesn’t believe it yet. He’s haunting this place, like the other ghosts. I tried to help him.”

Jasper dragged himself to his feet, each movement a struggle against the pain that warred for his consciousness. He faced Isabella. “At some point he’ll realize he’s a ghost and pass on. It just takes time.”

She covered her mouth with her hands as tears began to glisten in her blood-shot eyes. No one had slept in days in this house – Jasper was beginning to understand why.

He reached into the pocket of his coat and took out the diary.

“This is what it wants,” he said, showing it to the group, who were all watching him as though he’d suddenly grown an extra limb. “Jonathan found it and it killed him.”

“So give it back,” Orion suggested. “Why are we playing around, Jazz?”

“Because it’s going to keep killing,” Jasper replied through his teeth. “It’s going to keep killing until we stop it – and I think this – " he waved the diary in the air – “may just tell us how. Why else would it not want us to have it?”

Rapid footsteps broke the reverie, and Hawthorne’s exhausted face appeared from the opposite hallway.

“Pardon the interruption, ladies and gentlemen,” he said. Jasper knew immediately from his tone that something was terribly wrong.

“What is it, Hawthorne?” Isabella asked.

“It’s your father, Miss,” Hawthorne said. “He’s…well, you’ll have to come see.”

---

Lord Ravenscroft was most definitely dead. He lay spreadeagle on his impressive four-poster, dressed in his nightclothes. His corpse stared blankly up at the ceiling, his mouth ajar, as though he’d been interrupted while screaming.

Upon entering the room, Isabella let out a ghastly cry and gripped the bedpost for support. It took Jasper only a few moments to find the cause of death – heart attack, likely, as well as the giant “U” dug into his chest with what looked to be a trowel.

Or, perhaps, the claw of the shadow creature that went by the name Umbraxis.

The “U” was written in that strange runic language – the same as the runes on the floor of the foyer, as well as Elysande’s diary. It proved to Jasper two things: the first being that Umbraxis knew the language of the runes; the second being that their time to solve this mystery and banish the ghost was quickly running out.

The next logical thing was to read the diary and see if indeed it contained the answers they were hoping for. Although Jasper hadn’t the slightest idea who Elysande was, or how they related to Umbraxis, he had a feeling that the creature wouldn’t guard this object so fiercely if it wasn’t important somehow – and that was their only lead.

Isabella was now most certainly in danger. Jasper guessed that after Umbraxis had lost its hold on him, it had gone for the next easiest target – Lord Ravenscroft – in retaliation for taking the diary. As long as Jasper had it in his possession, someone in the house would die with each passing night. That meant that he had until the next night to decode and solve this puzzle, as well as banish the ghost.

Or creature.

Or whatever this thing was that kept haunting his tracks.

With that in mind, and with the storm outside to remind them just how trapped inside this house they were, they trekked back to the study, closed the door, and locked it – for what good that would do.

Jasper did his best to compartmentalize the pain now threatening to take over his sensibilities. On top of the wound in his upper arm, he’d most certainly broken his shoulder, and the way it hung at his side confirmed that suspicion. The wound didn’t worry him much, but it hurt, shattering his focus. Orion made him a sling from his scarf, but it helped very little as far as the pain went. Instead, he drank deeply of his flask, ignored the incredulous looks of his companions, and sat down at a table in the study to read.

Isabella, now in substantial shock from the sight in her father’s bedroom, was sitting on the sofa with Aurora, now shaking so badly it made the furniture rattle. Zephyra sank down onto the cushions beside her and held her why she sobbed. Jasper put his nose in the diary and tried to read, while Orion paced, and Hawthorne took in the scene from a large chair in the corner of the room.

The storm raged, and the grandfather clock chimed each passing hour. The diary was simple – it seemed to be the account of a young woman from hundreds of years before, distraught about the idea of marrying a suitor her father had chosen for her, angry at her role in society and desiring deeply to marry for love. It read more like a cheap paperback he’d found in North America in the 2000s than something full of secrets that could kill a murderous monster.

As the time passed and his thoughts began to spin with exhaustion, pain, and drink, Jasper found nothing – nothing – that would help. Nothing that so much as hinted at a shadow creature, or its weakness, or even to connect it to the southern tower, or the Ravenscrofts at all.

When the grandfather clock chimed seven, he had fallen asleep on top of it.

---

The room had settled into something like silence when Zephyra lifted her head from the sofa. She’d fallen asleep comforting the strange human girl and lost track of the time. Her heart shuddered in momentary panic as she took in the stillness of the room, but she quickly recovered herself when she located the other two members of her team: Orion, curled up on the rug in front of the hearth, and Jasper, sitting at a table near the window, his head resting on his uninjured arm.

She felt the eyes burning into the back of her head and turned to look at Aurora, sitting on the other side of the sleeping Isabella. The strange female was splattered with blood, her hands a shade of blackish-red. Aurora was wide awake, watching her with an unreadable look that made Zephyra’s skin crawl.

There was something wrong with this female. Something unusual. And something that allowed her to create a rift out of nowhere and pull a person through a realm and into theirs.

For the moment, she was glad – otherwise, how would they have saved Jasper? Isabella had heard the commotion through the walls – without her intuition and sense, they would never had known that he was in danger. But Aurora had been the one to split the fabric of space and time, grab him by the coat, and pull him back through. That alone should have been impossible; but no – she went the next step and stitched it back together, as though it was easy.

As though she had done it a thousand times.

And the blood on her hands…

Zephyra clapped a wall of sound down between them, so they could speak without waking the others.

“Tell me how you did it,” she demanded of the strange female, staring at her unblinkingly.

Aurora’s eyebrow twitched. “Did what?”

“Don’t play games with me. Jasper may not have it in him to interrogate you, but I’m not as friendly as I look.”

That earned her half a smile. In response, Aurora stood, moving on dancer-light feet to where Jasper sat. Very carefully, she took the diary and dragged it out from under him; and though he stirred, he didn’t wake.

Zephyra’s stomach turned as she watched the scene, the gentleness with which the female moved, the almost loving way she looked at him. It was the strangest thing she’d ever seen, and it made her want to vomit.

Aurora returned to her seat on the sofa and opened the diary, gingerly turning each page with her bloody hands.

“You’ll answer my questions,” Zephyra demanded.

“Or what?” Aurora looked back up at her. “You’ll arrest me? Jasper tried that, too. I’m not afraid of you, Zephyra. Not you, not your Order. I’ll answer the questions I see fit to answer. Nothing more.”

Zephyra narrowed her eyes at her. “What do you expect to find in there? Only Jasper can read – "

“That’s false,” Aurora said, her voice clipped. “Just because the Order doesn’t know how to read it doesn’t qualify it to be a dead language. There’s more to the world than what they sanction.”

Bitterness rolled off of her like bile, and Zephyra noted each gesture, each tone. Perhaps Jasper was blindsided by this female’s beauty, but Zephyra wasn’t. This was just another cunning female – Fae, perhaps, although it was hard to tell – and if she didn’t cooperate, she could be arrested by the Order. Zephyra and Orion could see to that.

“How did you get blood on your hands?” Zephyra nodded to her stained fingers, almost blackened with blood.

Aurora looked down at them and sighed. “I was trying to help,” she said, almost to herself.

“Why?”

“Why what?”

“Why are you trying to help?” Zephyra shifted. The sofa was old and sitting on it for hours at a time had made her stiff. “We certainly don’t need it – "

“Then what would you have done without me, when your companion was trapped in the shadow realm?” Aurora snapped, clearly irritated.

Zephyra restrained the smile tugging at her lips. By Aurora’s expression, she had revealed something she hadn’t meant to. “The shadow realm?”

“The land-in-between,” Aurora said. “You should know about it – you pass through it almost every day.”

“Between realms, you mean.”

“Exactly.”

“How did you – “

“I won’t be spilling that on accident, Zephyra. Now are you going to let me read or not?”

“Not.” Zephyra straightened her spine. “I’m very interested in how you’re traveling in time, and why you’re ‘helping’ what is clearly a matter best left to the Order, and how you know Jasper, and what your intentions are – "

That earned her a laugh.

“My intentions?” Aurora nearly snorted. “What are you – his mother?”

Zephyra flushed. “That’s not what I meant – "

“I think you need to focus more on this shadow creature before it destroys what remains of this family,” Aurora advised. “I’m not the enemy here.”

Aurora looked back at the book, resuming her perusal of the ancient pages. Zephyra hid her scowl, instead looking back to the window. Jasper was a strange Fae – that was certain – and besides the occasional nap in the car, he was rarely trusting enough to sleep when others were around.

She and Orion were used to his foibles at this point. They’d been working with each other for nearly ten human years. Jasper was a loner – never one to attend their parties or gatherings, preferring his own company to theirs. They regularly lost him on missions, and outside of their work they never saw him. He was an attractive male, with striking looks and fine, dark hair, and should have been swarmed with admirers; except there was something about him that was innately repulsive. Perhaps it could be explained by his never ending everyone-but-me-is-an-idiot demeanor. Only she and Orion had been with him long enough to see past that, which left her completely puzzled at the Aurora’s appearance.

Unless...she was from before.

Though Barty had assured Zephyra a thousand times that anyone from before was nothing to worry about, here was this strange female who acted with a familiarity towards Jasper neither she nor even Orion had. Jasper didn’t appear to be worried about that.

Zephyra was startled by a brisk snap, and she whipped her head around to look at Aurora. The female had closed the book and now sat straight up, her eyes bright again.

“I’ve found it,” she said. “Wake the others. I know how we’re going to stop this thing.”

---

The iron knocker on the front door resounded through the house. For a moment, Jasper didn’t know what it was. Disoriented by sleep, he stirred, vaguely registering that he was still in Ravenscroft Manor.

He’d been dreaming again – the same skeletal face he’d seen in Northern California hovered over him. This time, she moved her mouth, speaking a word he couldn’t hear.

The pounding on the door startled the others, too; all except Hawthorne, who strode out of the study with a practiced ease. Jasper sat up and the familiar pain flooded back in. The wounds in his upper arm had sealed over and no longer dribbled blood, but his shoulder was still broken and ached. His head ached, too, the pain returning behind his eyes as he tried to focus on the present moment.

He looked down and saw an empty space where the diary had been.

Jasper jumped to his feet, knocking over his chair. He spun to face the others in the room, but had only opened his mouth when Hawthorne returned.

“Mr. Jasper,” he said, “it’s for you.”

Behind him appeared another Fae male.

He was glamoured to appear human, but hadn’t bothered with period-appropriate clothing. It was Malcolm, one of Barty’s miscreants, and the male originally assigned to this case. His cheeks were red as though he’d run a long way, and he was soaked from trekking through the marshes on foot. Had Barty reassigned him here?

Orion and Zephyra watched, mouths ajar, as Malcolm came forward with an envelope and held it out to Jasper.

Jasper took it in his good hand, noting the telling seal, and opened it.

Return. Now.

His blood boiled at the sight of those words; that hateful, scribbled hand. Threeves.

He looked back up at Malcolm, who was less belligerent than the postal pixie, but would wait for an answer all the same.

“What is it?” Zephyra asked, when he could only glare at the messenger.

Jasper kept his gaze pinned on Malcolm but answered her. “Barty wants us back. He wants us to withdraw.”

“Withdraw?” Orion, who’d been asleep on the floor, sat up and struggled to get to his feet. “Why?”

“There’s been a complication,” Malcolm said. He was considerably smaller than Orion, and his eyes widened as the male stood, towering over him.

“A complication?” Jasper took a step towards Malcolm and he flinched. “What sort of complication?”

“I don’t know the details, sir,” Malcolm squeaked. “I was just told to deliver that note. Nothing more.”

Jasper crushed it in his hand and turned, tossing it into the fire. The greedy flames hissed and sprung at it, devouring it whole.

“Tell Barty he’ll have to wait,” he said, looking back at the messenger.

“Jasper.” Orion’s voice was tight with fear. “We can’t disobey a direct order – "

“If we leave, then this creature is going to finish off this family,” Jasper snapped, facing Orion. “The first edict of the code – "

“Is to follow orders,” Zephyra finished. “Whatever they are. Barty has a reason for this – he has to.”

“You’re not leaving, are you?” Isabella said, from her seat on the couch.

Jasper turned to her, noting Aurora sitting by her side, clutching the diary with her blood-caked hands. “No,” he said.

“Jasper – " Orion began, but Jasper cut him off with a voice like venom.

“You leave,” he snarled at his companion. “You go back to Barty like a good little dog. I’m staying. Neither of you need to stay with me, but I’m going to finish what I’ve started.”

What he didn’t say was that he pitied Isabella, and Jonathan, and all the ghosts trapped in this cursed place. He didn’t say that he feared the dark thing climbing through the walls, this monster that stole his power and kept carving ancient, unspeakable runes into bodies and floors. Orion, who’d helped the least on this mission, wouldn’t be missed, but he would.

“You go, Orion,” Zephyra said. “Tell Barty what the situation is here. Jasper and I will stay to clean it up and follow you. We were just discussing – Catherine here thinks she’s found a way to stop the Shadow Man.”

The slightest ounce of gratitude welled within Jasper as she spoke. Zephyra could always be relied for support, even when Orion made it a point to antagonize him. The third member of their party looked perplexed, eyebrows knit together, gaze flicking between them in disbelief.

“You’ll be expelled, both of you,” Orion said. He almost sounded worried for them.

“We have to do this,” Jasper returned. Whether or not you have the courage is not my problem.

Orion looked around at the others in the room, waiting for them to speak, but no one did. His hands fell limply at his sides.

“What should I tell Lord Threeves?” asked Malcolm, when it was obvious they were decided.

“Exactly this,” Jasper replied. “Orion has returned, as requested. Zephyra and I are preventing another human life from being lost, per the code that Barty wrote. If he’s got a problem, he can come get me himself.”

Malcolm blanched, but nodded. “Be quick,” he advised, before turning to leave. Orion followed, sulking, and when Hawthorne closed the door, the room was held in an electrified silence.

“Jasper,” Aurora said, stirring from her seat on the sofa, “while you were resting, I found something that may help.”

She stood and handed him the diary, turned to a page near the back. He tried to ignore the blood caked into her fingers as she pointed to a word that had been hastily scribbled into the text, underlined three times:

STARLIGHT

Click Here to Continue to Part Four

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