I glanced at the clock over the mantle and saw I had approximately three minutes before I had to go and meet Aoife. A little unsteady on my feet after the whiskey, I turned to leave when I spotted Sylvia sitting quietly by herself in the corner. Her eyes were on Vee, and I was momentarily stunned by her twisted, angry expression. I’d never seen her look like that before. It completely transformed her normally benign, pleasant face, making her look startlingly mean.
She must’ve sensed me looking because her eyes flitted to mine, and the angry expression fled. She gave me her usual meek smile, and I smiled back, though I couldn’t stop seeing the mean look she’d had only seconds ago. She was probably angry that Vee was getting this big fancy party when she really didn’t deserve it. All she did was hang around the house, spitting unkind, vitriolic statements at me and Sylvia, and now she gets lavished with all this attention. Totally unfair.
Come to think of it, I wouldn’t put it past Noah to throw the party just to anger his mother. After all, there was clearly no love lost between them.
I paid a quick visit to the bathroom, then decided to sneak out through my bedroom window to avoid being seen leaving. Finally, there was a benefit to being relegated to sleeping on the ground floor. I opened the window as wide as I could and shoved my coat and bag out before squeezing through and dropping a few feet to the ground.
I thankfully landed without twisting my ankle and dusted myself off. I pulled on my coat and zipped it up when a voice startled me.
“Where are you off to?”
Noah stood leaning against the wall of the house smoking a cigarette.
“Oh my God, you nearly gave me a heart attack!” I exclaimed.
His lips curled in a smirk as he lifted his cigarette to his annoyingly attractive lips. He stepped forward and gazed down at me. “I forgot to tell you how pretty you look tonight.” He lifted a hand to touch the ends of my hair, and my breath caught. Heat simmered beneath my skin, and for a moment I felt like we were trapped in our own little bubble. His eyes lowered to my mouth, and that was my wake-up call to step back.
“I’m going to meet Aoife,” I said. “I’ll be home before midnight.”
“Don’t get up to too much trouble.”
The only trouble I get up to is you, I wanted to say but I held it in. I thought he’d enjoy that statement far too much. “I won’t,” I replied quietly, glancing up at him.
He sucked in a drag and exhaled, the smoke drifting up over his face and for a moment making him look like the seductive devil I imagined him to be last night. His eyes wandered over me, and I felt my stomach tighten at his close examination. He didn’t say anything, and the tension between us became so thick that all I could do was turn around and walk away.
“Have a good night,” he called out. My stomach flipped at his husky voice. Aoife and Jimmy stood waiting at the end of my street, both wearing warm coats and scarves.
“Hey,” Aoife called. “We worried we were going to have to come get you.”
I shook my head. “The party’s in full swing. It was hard to sneak away. Hi Jimmy.”
“Hey Estella,” he replied shyly, his hand in Aoife’s.
“Right, well, we better get a move on,” Aoife said, and we started to walk. The castle wasn’t far from Ard na Mara. We took a shortcut, making our way through a small patch of woods. We emerged through the trees, and the crumbling old building came into view. My mind went back to the noble woman who once lived here, who hated her life so much she’d jumped to her death. Lady Maeve. I shivered at the memory of the dreams I’d had about her.
“You okay?” Aoife asked, eyeing me.
“I was just thinking about Lady Maeve,” I answered.
“Oh yeah, I almost forgot about her. Do you think she haunts the castle?” Aoife said, putting on a spooky voice.
Jimmy gave a quiet laugh. “Don’t be silly. There’s no such thing as ghosts.”
I wasn’t so sure about that. Lately, I had the distinct feeling ghosts lingered in more places than we even realised.
“Such a sceptic,” Aoife teased, poking Jimmy in the stomach. “Ghosts are real. Back me up on this, Stells.”
“Yes, I’m pretty sure they’re real. Then again, I live in an almost two-hundred-year-old house. Strange noises and spooky vibes are my day to day.”
Jimmy cast me a speculative glance. “Have you ever seen a ghost though?”
I shook my head. “No, but …” I hesitated, wondering if I should tell them. The whiskey in my system seemed to spur me on. “I have these nightmares, and every time I wake up, I can’t move. Like, I’m awake and I can see around my room, but I can’t speak or move my body. And I just get this weird sense a ghost is haunting me, giving me the nightmares, because when I wake up they still have control of me, at least for a few seconds, and that’s why I can’t move or speak.”