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“I mean it.” He gazed at me intently, and I pursed my lips. He seemed to think his word was enough. “I know what you’re thinking, but… you are wrong.”

I remembered what Nicholas had said on the hilltop, and Wyatt’s words before that. Everyone was denying responsibility, butsomeonewas to blame. Jonathan was dead. Maggie was dead. I needed a better answer than outright denial. Yet, I was here with Adam, socialising… and maybe even trusting him.

“Truly, I didn’t know he was here. Not for certain.” Adam quietly interrupted my musings. “What did he say to you?”

“Wyatt told me she couldn’t sense him, either. But I knew – somehow. Don’t ask me how, but I knew I could lure him out.” I was avoiding his question, as stupid as that was. It was the whole reason I’d come here, wasn’t it?

“What did Nick say to you, Erin?” he repeated.

I peeked sideways at him before answering. “He told me it wasn’t him, but he didn’t think Wyatt had killed Maggie or Jonathan either.”

Adam barked out a short laugh. “After Paris and the war… I had thought Izzie would have been the first person he would accuse.” He swirled his remaining whisky. “I know I would. Did he provide any justification?”

I nodded, emptying my glass and placing it on the table. “He said Isabel wouldn’t hurt his family.”

Adam paled visibly and put a hand to his mouth in an almost laughable gesture of shock.

“I should have known!” he muttered to himself. “ThatJonathan? I’d lost track, but…” he trailed off before raising his voice so I could hear him. “I mean, he couldn’t have meant the woman; what was her name?”

“Maggie.” I supplied, resisting the urge to tell him he wasbeing disrespectful to the dead. “Nicholas said Jonathan was a descendant of… his brother?”

Adam nodded. “There have been many, over the years. Occasionally Nick has been known to get involved in their lives. It is not something he does often.”

It made sense. But it shouldn’t – everyone seemed to be telling the truth, and no one knew what had really happened to Jon. Or Maggie. I was back at square one. Tom would be fuming that all his research had come to nothing.

Adam poured another measure into my empty glass, and topped up his own, resting back on the sofa cushions – every inch the aristocrat.

“How well do you know them?” I asked eventually.

“Nick and Izzie?” he clarified. “Nick has been a friend from the very first time I encountered him in London, years ago. My, I was young,” he closed his eyes and shook his head, remembering. “Izzie has been… more of an unavoidable side effect of that friendship. The two of them were joined at the hip, once.”

“Why don’t you like her?” I asked. “Aside from the obvious.” I noticed he hadn’t said specificallywhenthey’d met.

Adam laughed, the firelight glinting golden in his hair as he shook his head. “I have never understood whyanyonelikes Izzie Misery if I am quite honest. The woman is arrogant and demanding to the point of utter exasperation. It’s a consequence of her upbringing, unfortunately.”

“Her upbringing?” I leaned forward. “Who is she, exactly?”

“That isn’t my story to tell,” Adam raised an eyebrow at meexpertly. “As much as it’s a good one.”

I didn’t think he’d give up the information so easily, but it had been worth a try.

“All I’ll say is she’s lived a most different life to you or I. But how about you, dearest Erin? What’s your story, I wonder?”

I rolled my eyes at him but found myself explaining what it had been like to grow up seeing things other people couldn’t, and how I’d come to do something about it with Jon’s help. I told him about feeling, always, like something was missing; how empty and dark I felt inside. The drink seemed to be loosening my tongue, but it was a relief to get it out.

Adam listened without interruption. Really listened, the way Jonathan once had. It was an effortless thing to open up to him, which I absolutely should have been on my guard about, but… I’d come here to talk. I needed a friend.

As easily as the conversation flowed, eventually, I had to hold myself back. I couldn’t bring myself to tell him what I’d really done, up on the hilltop. But between being furious at myself and my reluctance to analyse my feelings about everything, I just wasn’t ready for the inevitable questioning. It wasn’t that I didn’t have the answers yet – but admitting to them was a whole different thing.

It had been late when I’d arrived at the manor, and my eyes grew heavy as we talked. Chatting and drinking in the music room, I relaxed for the first time since those blue lights had shone through my living room window. It wasn’t surprising then, when the warmth of the fire, the delicious honey whiskyand several nights of restless nightmares caught up with me. I dozed off when the conversation lulled, vaguely aware of Adam dimming the lights and covering me with a blanket.

???

Iawoke with a start, disorientated. Scrambling up off the sofa, I checked the time on my phone – it was after seven in the morning, not quite sunrise. I groaned inwardly, my head pounding. There was a loud crashing sound from down the hallway, and I realised belatedly it must have been what woke me.

Adam was nowhere to be seen, and I needed to get the coffee shop ready for opening before the customers started showing up demanding their morning lattes. Narrowly avoiding slipping, I crept across the chilly hallway in my socks and was almost to the front door when the sound of voices reached me – presumably from the kitchen since it was the only open doorway I could see. One voice was unmistakably Adam, but the other…

“I was certain he was in the city. It confirms everything.” Isabel Wyatt’s melodic voice carried through the doorway, more clipped than it had been the last time we’d spoken.