Page 17

At the top of the stairs, Evan lit a bundle of dried Noctis, turned on his flashlight, and entered the dark hallway, waving the cleansing smoke around him. The air turned thicker as he passed by doors lined on each side, shadows dancing around him in the glare of the flashlight. Resentment and hunger seeped from those shadows, directed towards where Evan was heading—the door at the end of the hallway.

One might think after so many years of being in this profession, Evan would’ve grown indifferent. But every time he undertook a new case, unaware of what he was dealing with, he was always curious about one thing.

Would this be his last case?

And every time the answer wasno, it made Evan feel as though he was being driven into a particular destination that he was yet to discover. A moment that would flip his life on its head.

Stopping at the end of the hallway, three feet away from the mysterious door, Evan blew the Noctis through the dense black mist. As soon as the two smokes mingled, one black and the other white, a faint sizzling noise echoed in the empty hallway. There was only one bundle of Noctis and such a dense mist of resentful spirits. As expected, the white smoke faded, unable to penetrate the thick black fog.

Evan had to reach into it.

Ugh, if I touch worms or spiders, I’m gonna throw up.

He chanted a quiet spell for protection. Brushing his fingertips against each other, he cast a light barrier over his hand, raising it all the way up to his right shoulder until the whole arm radiated a soft blue light.

One couldn’t be too cautious while reaching inside a void of black mist in a haunted mansion.

As his glowing hand slid through the mist, something creaked ahead of him.

Evan froze.

With awhooshthe black mist parted clean from the middle like it’d been sliced with a blade, revealing a huge wooden door cracked open on the other side.

The horde of malicious spirits was making way for him.

Hiss.

Evan glanced down. The dried Noctis bundle clasped between his fingers slowly crumbled away into nothing. His eyebrow quirked. There was still five minutes’ worth of smoke left in it.

Dusting his hands of the ash, Evan raised his eyes to the door. With the hand covered with the light barrier, Evan pushed the door open, struggling slightly with its jammed hinges. It was pretty obvious the door hadn’t been opened in years, if not decades, perhaps centuries.

Forcing open a gap enough for him to squeeze through, Evan stepped inside the dim room, shining the flashlight over the interior.

A startled gasp left his mouth.

The flashlight glare hit the wall and reflected back at him. Anywhere Evan pointed it, the light bounced back in his face. Because every square inch of all four walls was covered in mirrors.

No windows. One door. And mirrors. Several, countless mirrors of various sizes and shapes.

What the hell…

Dust and a strange smell he couldn’t explain flooded Evan’s nostrils as he stepped further into the room, catching his own figure reflecting from the mirrors across from him. A square panel of glass in the slanted ceiling allowed the moonlight to shine into the room.

In an array of magical formation that Evan had only ever read about, the moonlight from above hit one faraway mirror. The reflected ray from that mirror in turn hit another, then another until every reflective surface in the room was casting a beam of white light. These crisscrossing rays of moonlight met at the center of the mirror room where, sat a giant, oval piece of furniture, draped in a white sheet.

Evan could already guess what that was.

Unease crawled up his spine, circling tight around his neck like a noose. Instincts urged him to step back. Not because the air was thick with malice or resentment or something dangerous. No, it was, in fact, thelackof anything at all in the air.

The room was warm and empty and…quiet.

Dead quiet.

Never had Evan encountered such a haunted space before. No whispers or drop in the temperature or sudden gusts of wind. All those malicious spirits and shadows hovering in the hallway had failed to follow him inside.

Why?

Spirits didn’t have physical form, so locked doors or walls with steel reinforcements were barely a problem. Then what was the reason they’d simply vanished as soon as the door opened? Were they afraid of something?