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“So, accumulated knowledge from this latest adventure.”

Cleo ticked off fingers. “Collin Poole didn’t roll around with Dobbs of his own free will. Dobbs murdered Arthur Poole. For Dobbs, itwas always about the manor, not the people. They were just obstacles or stepping stones.”

“Like the day in the library, I was awake, aware. It felt dreamlike on the other side, but I was awake and aware.”

“After Poole was dead,” Trey continued, “and she wasn’t focused on him, she sensed something. Sensed you without knowing what or who.”

“I hadn’t been born yet—but I was there in that time and place, and awake, aware.”

“Exactly. Despite what she’d done, Collin Poole married Astrid Grandville. But that day, on the path, she didn’t know she’d kill Astrid, take her ring, create the curse.”

“I can only think she believed she could force or seduce Collin into marrying her, so she could have the manor. It was and is what she wants. To be mistress of the manor.”

“Forever. You told us she said forever,” Trey added.

“Yes, but…”

“She always intended to have it, to hold it. If it took her death, her blood to do that—forever—clearly she’d do whatever she needed to do. I imagine she didn’t see it happening so soon, but nobody lives forever.”

“She’s batshit.” Owen took another pull of his beer.

“No one can argue that one. But”—Cleo held up a hand—“could she have foreseen that Astrid, and all the ones who came after her, would stay? I don’t think so. This house? It has a power of its own. And it doesn’t want her.”

“It doesn’t,” Sonya murmured. “It doesn’t want her.”

“It must burn for her to know that.” Cleo continued, “To know people, the spirits of them, go on day and night, tending to it, while she’s trapped in a hell of her own making.”

“She can’t break the spell,” Sonya said slowly, “or she’s gone. She tied herself with her own words, her own blood magic. Every generation, and a bride. She sealed that with Astrid’s blood, then her own. She’s as caught in that cycle as the brides she killed.”

“She hopes to scare you out, push you out,” Trey said. “You’re athreat. It may be a hell of her own making, a cycle she’s trapped in, but it’s what she has.”

“Seven—she repeated it. Maybe she got it from me. Maybe I thought of the rings, the women, the brides, and how it started with the murder of Arthur Poole. She sensed me, or something, maybe she sensed that, too. It confused her, and I swear it hurt her.”

“Looks like we have to find a way to hurt her again, and harder.”

Cleo smiled at Owen. “I like the way you think.”

Clover weighed in with Aerosmith and “Don’t Get Mad, Get Even.”

“Words to live by.” Sonya picked up the pizza she’d barely touched, and ate.

Chapter Twenty-seven

The day before The Event, they had a foyer full of flowers. Cleo had a ham in the oven, and her fingers crossed. They’d put together a simple buffet menu for family in what they hoped would serve as a prelude to the feast the next day.

Every inch of the manor shined.

They arranged and rearranged tables and chairs outside, and lit countless candles and hoped that the forecast for the next day—sunny, low seventies—held.

Sonya hauled flowers upstairs to place arrangements—hours of debate on those—where they’d selected.

When the doorbell bonged, she nearly ignored it. Dobbs’s rumblings had been few the last couple of days, but that remained one of her favorites.

Then she remembered Yoda had gone down to the apartment with Cleo so she couldn’t count on his bark to tell her.

She opened it, found Winter.

“Mom!”