Chapter 30

NEIL

Neil knew the way well, his feet following a familiar path to the door. If there was one place Georgina would be, it was in there.

He and Penelope stopped outside the door. Though he knew what was needed of him, it was something else to confront a ghost willingly. All this time, he'd tried to find the clues, creeping around the castle when he saw things and heard things. But now he was voluntarily entering a room that he knew was haunted. Again. After the concussion and the black eye he could feel setting in, he should have known better, but it seemed he hadn't learned anything at all.

"So," Penelope started, motioning toward the door. "More ghost encounters on your wish list?"

"Not particularly."

"Do we go in together? Or just you?"

"Together. We need to do this together."

She must have liked the sound of that, because she smiled up at him before nodding. "Okay, together."

Neil squeezed her fingers. He breathed in deeply through his nose, then let the breath out slowly. This was it, the end. The finale. He'd waited days for this, days of sleepless nights and heart-wrenching truths. He squinted down at Penelope, at the dark hair tucked behind her ear, at the set of her jaw as she stared ahead. There was no way their story would end here, outside this room. They still had so much to do together, so many things to say.

Their firsts had only just begun.

"Are we going in?" she asked, peering up at him.

With a sigh, he turned the knob and pushed.

The room was not as he'd seen it before. Life had been bled out of the space, light replaced with dark, joy replaced with shadows. Black, syrupy liquid seeped from the corners and the floorboards, oozing from every crack and crevice. It reeked of death, stale and sweet and terribly wrong.

The door slammed shut behind them, making Neil and Penelope jump. He laughed it off, running his free hand through his hair to hide how nervous he was. Okay, terrified. Neil Storm was terrified . Which, in all frankness, he had every right to be.

"It's fine, we're fine," he said, tightening his grip on Penelope's hand.

"Your grip tells me otherwise," she gasped, flexing her hand in his.

"Sorry," he said, loosening his hold.

The bed was bare, just an empty canopy bed with shreds of old fabric dripping from the top. The doors from the wardrobe on the farthest wall had been chopped into pieces at one point or another, and the markings looked strikingly like those of an axe.

The mirror on the wall adjacent to the bed was cracked, hanging crookedly. Neil tried desperately not to focus on their reflections. He'd seen enough horror movies and read enough horror stories to know that was never a good idea.

Aside from the furniture, the room was empty but for the littered leaves and torn, blackened fabric clinging to the sticky substance that seemed to bubble up from the floor with each step.

Gripping Penelope's fingers, Neil carefully pulled her across the room, tiptoeing around the black liquid. They crossed to the small writing desk he'd seen Georgina stationed at. It was not a beautiful thing, simply a useful thing, the wood weathered and worn from years of abandonment.

Neil ran a finger along it. He held his finger up to examine—no dust to be found—and frowned.

"That's weird," he said.

"This is where she wrote all those letters," she mused. Penelope closed her eyes, leaning into the desk. Despite everything in Neil telling him to run, he could watch her all day. "I can picture her seated here, looking out over the grounds, thinking of Archie."

So, Penelope Skinner was a romantic. Neil should have known. He had the strange urge to reach out and wrap his arms around her, to capture her mouth with his. Something about her made him come alive, particularly in a room so devoid of life.

Neil skimmed a hand up her arm, his fingers brushing her elbow. Penelope pivoted to smile up at him but froze, her eyes going to the bed frame behind him. It reminded him of those moments in the hall, hands clasped over Penelope's eyes as the door creaked open and Georgina floated out.

Penelope opened her mouth to scream, her voice not quite working as she let out a raspy squeak and staggered back a step, pointing past him.

"She's behind me, isn't she?" he asked, resigned.

"N-no. She—she's under you."

If there were words worse than he'd imagined, those were them.

Neil hadn't wanted to look down. Hell, if he had the choice, he would have much rather stood there with the knowledge that a ghost crept beneath him than train his eyes on the thing. But his curiosity strained, and even knowing what lay beneath, he couldn't stop his eyes from straying.

He felt the chill first, then the bite of a clammy hand wrapping around his ankle. As he met Georgina's eyes, sunken into a face filled with death and despair and anger, his legs gave out beneath him. His breath whooshed from his chest as he fell, and he gasped for air, momentarily stunned.

Neil slammed against the floor, head cracking against the wood. He saw stars as the woman yanked hard, and Neil scrabbled for purchase as Georgina tugged, pulling him under the bed. It was a cliché, but in any other moment, he might have laughed because the monster did live under the bed. There was nothing remotely human about Georgina Walsh now, and the sight of her, the feel of her against his leg was terrifying.

"Penelope!" he screamed, one hand gripping the edge of the writing desk, the other waving in the air over him. Penelope's hands wrapped around his free one, tugging with all her might. But she wasn't nearly strong enough, and Georgina wasn't human anymore.

She growled from somewhere behind him, and Neil screeched, his heartbeat thundering as she jerked him back with inhuman strength.

"I'm not letting you go!" Penelope promised. Her hands were sweaty, her grip slipping, but still, she struggled, standing her ground. As she always had.

And then the pulling stopped.

Neil blinked in surprise, narrowing his eyes at the darkness under the bed and the not-woman lurking there. Beady eyes stared back at him, gleaming from the shadows like glowing orbs. The thing Penelope had seen in the cellar… it was Georgina. This would have terrified him then, too. It certainly terrified him now.

"Penelope!" Neil screamed, scrambling back.

Penelope yanked with all her might, and Neil kicked free, both fumbling backward. They tripped, and his arms clamped around her as they turned and watched in horror as two skeletal hands appeared from beneath the bed, the thing freeing itself of the shadows. Georgina stood, bones clambering to right themselves, one leg straightening into position and then the other. She stalked toward them, ratty white dress trailing in her wake. Neil spread his arms before them, blocking Penelope from Georgina, whatever good that did them.

"Georgina!" Penelope yelled, squeezing her eyes tight and clenching her hands into fists. The ghost didn't stop. "Georgina Walsh!" Penelope screeched.

The ghost froze, her eyes going distant.

" Skinner."

Penelope eyed Neil sidelong. "Um, right, Georgina Skinner."

Neil and Penelope watched in surprise as parts of Georgina turned more human, her gross, corpse-like state melting away, layer by layer.

"Georgina Skinner?" Penelope said slowly. "Georgina, we know what happened to you."

Penelope took a step toward the ghost, but Neil reached out as if on instinct, his hands tightening around her wrist.

She shook her head. "No, I'm okay. We're safe." He let go as Penelope moved past him, stopping a few feet away from the woman. She held out a hand to Georgina as if calming a feral animal. "You've been looking for your Archie, haven't you? That's why you've stayed all this time?"

Georgina's lips parted. "Archie," she echoed.

Before them, Georgina began to change. Her flesh and bone filled out, no longer skeletal. Her skin turned pink and plump, her cheeks full, life blown back into her. Her eyes met Penelope's, expression pained.

"Archie," she repeated, voice strained.

"He returned to you, but you had so little time together," Neil started, glancing at Penelope.

The ghost moved to her desk, running a slender finger over its surface. And then she smiled, a soft, pretty thing. "He loved me, my Archie. When he was sent away, he wrote me every week. The servants slipped the letters to me, careful of my father, but Archie's responses stopped coming in late May, and I believed I was left alone. Father would not leave for business, insistent that he could not abandon me, fearful I would go in search of Archie and risk the baby."

She focused on Penelope. "Archie and I married before my father sent him away, though my father would not allow it. Archie was but the mere son of our groundskeeper, and I a future duchess. After Archie asked my father for my hand, my father forbade us from seeing one another. And then he caught us in the garden, secretly wed. In his anger, he sent Archie away to war."

"But you were pregnant," Penelope said softly.

"Yes," she answered after a moment. The sound of her voice still grated against him, and Neil shivered, wrapping his arms around his middle as she continued, "I knew by April when my father sent Archie away that I was with child. But I was only a child myself, and when I grew sick that autumn and Father feared what would become of our home and his line, he sent for Archie, only to receive no word back of his whereabouts. When we were certain Archie would not return, he made our son the heir to this castle."

"But Archie did return?"

"Yes, in April of the following year. He'd been injured, an infection in his leg, and he recovered in a hospital in Brussels. It was a miracle he returned home safely at all."

Neil's arms slackened, his chest squeezing tight. All those months she thought he was dead. And even then, they only had three years together before Georgina passed away.

"And you were happy, weren't you?" Penelope ventured. "You and Archie and your son had a life together."

"For a while, yes. We were a family until my sickness returned. When the doctor said there was nothing they could do, I promised Archie I would watch after them always. And I did, until Archie passed, then my father, and when our son built his own family, and they too passed, I knew I would be trapped here to watch every single person in my line wither and die." She reached out to touch the canopy bed, but her finger disappeared into the wood. "I have seen even this castle fall apart because of me."

"Which is why you're still here," Neil whispered.

"I had begun to forget who I was and why I was here. No one has spoken my name in some time," she said wistfully. "No one remembers me, yet I have spent two hundred years making up for the mistakes of my life." Georgina looked between Penelope and Neil. "Do not make the same mistakes as us."

To their left, the door screeched open, and the man from before appeared, his jacket still slung over his arm. Now that Neil could see him more clearly, he saw the slight lines around his mouth, the beginning of age in the crow's feet sprouting from the corners of his eyes, and the slight limp in his walk. Archie smiled at Georgina, a look of pure adoration, of love.

"Are you going to leave now?" Penelope asked quietly, glancing between the two. "Now that you remember?"

Georgina smiled, turning back to Archie. "I believe we have some unfinished business, first."

"And then you'll…" Penelope mimed floating away, and Neil caught her hands, pressing them to her sides.

"That might be a sensitive topic," he said.

"I don't know how these things work," she shot back as they inched quietly out of the room. "Where's that clairvoyant from Craigslist when you need her?"

Ghost Archie reached for Ghost Georgina, their hands tangling. Neil thought it was almost sweet. That was until they tugged themselves together, hands and lips reaching for one another, ghostly breaths mingling as they opened their mouths wide for a passionate kiss.

"I did not know that was even possible," Penelope said.

Neil coughed as the room heated up. "I think we better get going," he said, nudging Penelope toward the door.

"Did it get hot in there?" she asked as Georgina flicked her wrist and the door slammed shut behind them.

"I guess ghosts can change temperatures in both directions."

They stopped on the landing, and Penelope gripped the banister, staring down at the large portrait of Georgina, and Neil followed her gaze. Already, it had changed. There were no tears on the canvas, and Georgina's features had softened into that of a kind young woman. The black, ink-like substance was gone, vanished, as if nothing had ever been wrong. Neil's gaze slid from the painting to Penelope. Her braid had come undone some time ago, her messy waves cascading around her face as she peered down at the foyer, and Neil caught a strand between his fingers.

"I want to love someone so much that I'm willing to fuck them in front of some weird, nosy humans," she said, turning to grin up at Neil.

He cleared his throat and pressed a hand to his chest, his heartbeat speeding up as he met those familiar stormy eyes.

"I mean, I could make that happen, but that sounds like some messy business."

She inched closer, gripping his shirt in her fists. "I mean, sex is a messy business."

"It doesn't have to be," he said as he bent closer.

Penelope snorted, gently guiding him down, her kiss light.

"Should we tell the others?" she whispered against his lips.

"Let's make them suffer for a minute longer," he said, turning to press her against the wall, his most favorite spot in the whole castle.

Penelope's lips curved up into a coy smile. "I have a better idea."