Page 44 of Wolfsbane Hall #1

The Green Room

Celestine’s worst nightmare was laid out before her. Frances’s lifeless eyes stared at the ceiling of the Green Room, Babette cradling her body and howling. “No, no, no, not you. Not you.” The scream was raw, guttural, and hysterical.

The brunette rocked back and forth, back and forth, her eyes glazed over and hollow and her hair falling messily over her shoulders, all the while never stopping her haunting whispers of, “No.”

As she watched the scene unfold, the heartbreak tore through Celestine’s chest, too, but she had no tears left, and the fact that she couldn’t get herself to loose even a single drop for the woman who had been her mother figure for nine years broke her even more.

Who couldn’t shed tears for the ones they loved?

Celestine’s nostrils flared, and her jaw grew tight and tender.

Even Babette could manage it, and she wasn’t nearly as close with Frances. In fact, it was news that the brunette even cared this much for the older woman. Celestine honestly didn’t know Babette could care about anyone .

Had Celestine missed it? Had she been too focused on herself and the Specter to see the other girl?

Babette wouldn’t want anyone to see her acting this way. The girl was formed of dissociation and distance, not wanting to get close to anyone. And she certainly wouldn’t want anyone to witness this level of pain.

Celestine walked to the door, shut it quietly, and then returned to Babette, kneeling beside her. She stretched out her hands to the floor and spoke with Wolfbane inside her head, asking the house to bar anyone else from entering the room and hearing Babette’s anguish.

“Not you.” Babette’s eyes twitched to Celestine’s and flared. “Of course, it couldn’t have been you instead. You should have died first.”

Celestine smiled sadly. “I know. I always thought I would be the first to die among us, too.”

Babette scoffed and gently tucked Frances’s hair behind her ears. “You’re like a cockroach. Impossible to kill.”

“I guess I could be a cockroach. I can scurry very quickly, and I do have an oval face, but I don’t really have the hair for it. I am not a redhead. Although I don’t know if you could call their shells hair, ya know?”

Babette tried to suppress an amused laugh. She hated that she found anything Celestine said amusing.

“Is there anything I can do?” Celestine asked.

“Why are you always so nice to me?” Babette visibly swallowed. “It’s so irritating. Always so good, so perfect. Never anything out of place. It’s obnoxious.”

Celestine sucked her lower lip into her mouth, chewing on it as she thought. “It’s because I pick people who will never love me back… It’s a character flaw. I guess I am just used to being treated poorly.”

“Me, too. I pick terribly.” Babette’s eyes locked with Celestine’ s, and there was a heavy weight in them. The weight of all the stars in the universe. The weight of the universe.

A shattered silence descended in the space between them.

The air was cold and thick. Confusion licked at Celestine’s core.

She’d never had a positive moment with Babette, never able to find common ground or respect between them before, but it felt like there was a shift in the air—like they might be able to change their future.

Possibly even be friends or, at the very least, friendly.

“So, she guessed who the Specter was and got it wrong?” Celestine asked, her eyes falling back to the cold, broken, lifeless body of her friend.

“Yes.” Babette’s voice was hollow.

“Why did she guess?”

“Because there were only forty minutes left to guess, and she was convinced.” Babette wrung her hands. “She didn’t think there was any possibility that she was wrong.”

“Who did she guess?” Celestine asked, but she was fairly certain she already knew the answer.

“James.”

Celestine nodded, her heart leaping into her throat. “So the Specter is officially not James or Dean.”

“Officially?” Babette raised a dark brow.

“Dean is the Phantom.”

Which meant that the Specter had to be Everett? There was nearly no chance that the uncles or Archibald were the Specter. They weren’t around the mansion enough, not to mention the younger Ashbrooks all but confirmed one of them was the Specter.

So it was Everett.

As if summoned by her thoughts, Everett appeared out of thin air in front of them, causing Celestine to jolt and clutch her heart, it surging far too fast .

“Come on, dolls. You’re gonna miss the climax,” Everett said with great jubilation. “And trust me, you don’t want to miss this part.”

“Fuck,” Babette uttered softly. “You shouldn’t do that. It’s jarring.”

He flashed a dimple and traced her with his gaze. “Is it?”

“Of course, it is,” she bit out. “But of course, you wouldn’t care about that because you don’t care about anyone. But by all means, show us to your next show of horrors. We’ve been having so much fun already tonight. Why not a little more?”

Celestine’s eyebrows crinkled. Babette had never talked back to him before. Perhaps she was done with the men and Wolfsbane Hall’s games, too.

A sickeningly sweet smile blanketed Everett’s cheeks. “Then follow me.”

They did. Both girls were wary and walking as if on eggshells. Nothing about the night was expected, but more so than that, everything about the night was tainted. So much had ruptured that they would never think about it or their jobs the same.

Everett led them back to the showroom—the Ballroom.

Once again, the ghosts were dancing and putting on an illusion, a show, a dance of secrets and lies.

But there was something different about this show.

It was putrid, like maggots and worms crawling out of a corpse.

Celestine shuddered. Whatever was about to happen wasn’t going to be good.

Everett went over to his brothers, who were standing in front of a table of champagne glasses, discussing something in hushed voices.

Babette and Celestine shared a look of camaraderie, both of them fully understanding that they were done. Something had shifted between them forever. It was small, but it was something .

“Oh no,” Babette whispered under her breath as Lorraine and Irene walked up to them. The last thing either girl wanted was to talk to the monstrous matriarchs of the family.

“The final two,” Lorraine said with a twisted smile.

Babette rolled her eyes. “Was that supposed to be hard? There were only ever three of us.” Venom dripped from her ruby lips, and she reached out and slapped Lorraine across the face. “Fuck you and your fucked-up family. Frances was the best of us.”

Lorraine lunged at Babette, but Celestine stepped between them.

“I won’t hesitate to hit you, too, girl,” Lorraine said, balling her fist and moving it toward Celestine’s face.

She shut her eyes tight, bracing for the pain and force of the punch, but nothing happened, and Celestine peeled an eye open, confusion littering her expression.

“Touch her, and I will lock you in a cage for five hundred years,” Dean said, holding his mother’s fist. “And I will let Everett…and James torture you.”

Lorraine’s face turned a shade of deep crimson, but she said nothing else, lowering her hand.

A silence soaked the space between them like the ocean waters in the north. Frozen and deadly.

But Irene cut through it and said to Celestine, “How are you still alive?

Lorraine crossed her arms. “Because she’s our sons’ little whore, and they will do anything to keep her alive in this game.”

“Even I think that’s too much,” Babette said beneath her breath.

Dean seethed, his anger taking on a physical presence, causing the floor to shake between their feet, but he wasn’t the only one angry. Fury also broiled in Celestine’s blood .

Her jaw tight and hands curled, Celestine said, “I’m alive, because I am clever and not foolish enough to guess the riddle before I am beyond certain.”

“And how is that going for you, girl?” Lorraine asked, a sickening amusement dancing on her face. “It doesn’t even matter what I do. You’ll die soon.”

She was more right than she even knew, but Celestine rolled her shoulders back and refused to let this ancient and horrible woman intimidate her.

“Perhaps I will.”

“Oh, this is so fun,” Irene clapped and said in a high-pitched voice that sounded like a fork dragged across a plate. “It’s been fun watching the others struggle, but I don’t think you’ve struggled enough, little blondie.”

“Yes, have you even been trying to solve your games?” Lorraine asked in a mocking voice. “It seems like you are merely a lazy, lowly whore who has no thoughts in her tiny little brain. You deserve to die.”

Whore again? At the very least, be a bit more creative…

“That’s en—” Celestine started, but Dean cut in, “Mother, you will—”

“No, you won’t.” Celestine stepped in front of Dean and pushed him out of her way. This was her fight, and Celestine would no longer cower. “I don’t need you to rescue me, Phantom. I can do it on my own.”

She faced Lorraine, her voice a noose preparing to strangle the other woman.

“How dare you judge me. How dare you call me despicable things, and why? Because I am a penniless orphan? Because I wasn’t born with money and power?

It’s not the seventeenth century anymore.

Old money is waning and becoming irrelevant.

Soon you will be just as powerless as me.

” Celestine shook her head. “And as for your boys , I flirt with them, and yes, I fuck them, because I can. It is my job to be a flirt…and they enjoy it. I am paid to be the pretty, desirable ingénue that women want to be and men want to fuck. It’s all an act, and while I do have genuine feelings for your sons, and before tonight, I would have considered them friends, but after all this is over, I don’t think I’ll have even an ounce of feeling left for them.

So don’t worry, Lorraine, you will get everything you wanted, and this time, you didn’t even have to kill anyone. ”

Celestine finished her speech with conviction, but her feet wobbled. The energy used had far overworked her. She took two wobbly steps and hit the table hard, using it to steady herself. Dean reached a hand out to steady her, but she shook him off.

“Get away from me.” Her voice was raw. “I never want to see you again.”

“Celine…”

Rage clawed at her back. “No, Dean,” she said in a low, dark whisper. “Never call me that again. I hate you.”

Her stomach twisted into knots, and she didn’t know how to unravel them. It was all far too much. Anyone would have cracked under the pressure.

Irene clapped slowly and sarcastically, a taunting note in her voice. “Oh, the show is getting so delightful. Star-crossed lovers, a brutal breakup, and a betrayal.”

Vivian stepped in front of her mother and glowered. “For once, Mother, can you just stay out of it?”

“But this is why we came!”

James interrupted the display by clicking a knife against his wine glass. “As is our family tradition, shall we make a toast to our good fortune and wondrous show, which is about to meet its climax?”

Wine flutes filled with champagne appeared in every person’s hand. Everett made his way to Babette’s and Celestine’ s sides, but Celestine was still breathing too hard, her heart storming in her ears and her vision blurring in and out. She’d had too much excitement for a lifetime.

“Celeste, you need to sit,” Everett said, forcing her into a chair. When he had her entirely sitting, his twin raised his wine flute into the air.

“To secrets,” Dean said with a wicked smirk.

Everett nodded and raised his glass. “And lies.” He tipped his glass into his mouth and downed the drink in one gulp before the toast was even over.

“And grand manipulations,” James added.

Vivian raised her glass. “And this hell of a night being over.”

Then every Ashbrook raised their glasses and clinked them together.

Babette and Celestine shared a look of concern but raised their glasses to match the family.

But before Celestine and Babette could drink, Everett stole the wine flutes from their fingertips and downed them both in quick succession.

When they stared at him with wide eyes, he merely shrugged and said, “What? I was thirsty.” He winked.

Within a second of taking his third drink, Everett crumpled into a heap and was clumsily caught by Babette. “Fuck, you’re heavy.”

But he wasn’t the only one who fell. All around them, every Ashbrook fell to the floor.

“Not again,” Walter whined as his knees buckled and he fell to the floor.

Dean was the only Ashbrook left standing, because he hadn’t sipped his drink yet. But his gaze tracked between them, and a sinister smile crept onto his face. “To Death.” He held up his glass and gulped it down, his eyes locked on Celestine’s. “Solve the riddle, dearest Celine.”

And he, too, collapsed to the ground .

Babette lowered Everett to the floor and felt for his pulse. When she couldn’t find it, she grew frantic and tried to listen for his breath. But nothing.

“He’s dead. They’re all dead.”