79

F lorence was curled up on the chaise in the library, barely awake, with her nose in a book keeping Clay company while he scribbled in his notebooks like a mad man, the sounds of paper rustling and him grumbling in frustration. The sleeves of his shirt were rolled over his forearms and his hair was sticking every which way in dark curls that hadn’t seen a decent shower in a week.

“Have you gotten anywhere?” I asked him, leaning over the table.

Clay looked up at me with concern in his clouded eyes.

“No,” he sighed, his tone husky and exhausted. “From the information that Wes got out of her, and the letter from Agatha, the only thing I’m even remotely sure of is that the house is an entity older than we’ve ever dealt with. This isn’t some old witchcraft bullshit, it’s old god world type stuff.” He sighed. “Even if I figure out what the hell it is, or where it came from… I don’t know if that’ll include how to kill it.”

“Have you only been searching Celtic lore?” I asked him when my eye caught the book to his left.

“It was the most obvious place to look. As far as we know the Manor has always been in Ireland.” Clay shrugged.

“But Ireland wasn't always Ireland.” I pointed out. “Before the war of independence we called it éire,” I reminded him.

“ériu…” Clay mumbled and started throwing things around on the table in a fury. “What if the Manor isn’t a thing or an entity, but a vengeful god?”

“Can we kill a god?” I questioned, to which Clay just swore under his breath and continued to search.

“Hah!” He called out. “Look at this.” He handed me a heavy book of Irish mythology, open on a page to a beautiful looking woman draped in red with a look of discontent in her dark eyes. “Morrígan. The goddess of war, death and fate.” Clay pointed to the wording. “It was said that she was a shapeshifter that could often appear as a beautiful woman to seduce men.”

“So you think Florence is Morrígan?” I asked, a bit confused and a little scared of his ideas.

“No, I don’t even believe the Manor is Morrígan.” He waved me off. “I think that the Manor is something similar to the goddess, changing and bending the rules of what we can see to entice us. It’s how it lured Florence here but, just like any ancient being, it needs sacrifice to survive,” Clay explained. “A host to feed off.”

“So Agatha?” I asked.

“The host before Florence. We have no idea how long she lived. Everytime I try to pull one of her diaries from the shelf it turns to dust in my hands. But if the theory is correct the house was feeding off Agatha for God knows how long.” Clay pushed from his chair and stared down at the research.

“But that doesn’t explain why the Manor killed Agatha and trapped Florence–” I offered further to keep his brain working, periodically looking over at Florence, still half awake, seemingly still engrossed in her book, not paying attention to us at all.

“That’s the problem. Even running on the idea that the Manor is a goddess, or some form of one, we still don’t know what it wants.” Clay sounded frustrated. “It practically consumed Agatha from what Florence has described and, from her journals her friend Aisiling is either a second victim or was never in the Manor at all. Lore suggests she escaped or was even let go but how or why?” Clay ran himself in circles with thought.

“The Manor only needed one?” I asked.

“But why ?” Clay questioned urgently.

“The letter…Agatha wrote that the house requires…”

“Requires what though?” Clay sighed. “A vessel, a host?”

“A heart,” I whispered. I looked over at Florence, wishing I could just wander over and curl into her lap. “It requires a heart.”

“Agatha stopped caring, stopped finding joy in what the Manor could provide.” Clay stepped up beside me, staring at Florence and her soft smile as she read something in her book. A brief moment of calm in the storm of her mental deterioration.

“Agatha’s heart died long before her body–” He realized.

I looked over at him, exhaustion sweeping through his features.

“You should eat something, you look pale,” I said quietly, reaching over and placing my hand on his bicep and gently squeezing with my fingertips.

“There’s no time for that.” He brushed me off and started searching the shelves again.

“You’ll do no one any good passed out in the library from starvation,” I said.

“I have water, which means I could last a week or so…” He grumbled on about the facts of a human body surviving without food until he found what he was looking for.

“Clay!” I snapped so he would stop and look at me. “Enough. You can research ancient shape shifting gods after a sandwich.”

“There’s no time.” Clay shook his head and continued. Fine , if I couldn’t get him to stop for a moment I would at least get Florence out of this library of doom.

I made my way toward her and knelt beside the chaise, peeking at what she was reading before asking, “would you like to go for a walk?”

She looked up from her book, her green eyes finding mine, and nodded.

“Come on then, let’s leave him to his books.” I smiled at her and pulled her from the chaise into me, wrapping my arm around her waist and holding her against my chest in a tiny sway as I walked us backward. “You smell pretty today.” I inhaled her and loosened my grip on her waist as I stepped back.

“Where are we going?” She asked me. She was wearing a pair of trousers again with a simple shirt and only a pair of socks.

“I don’t know, but we’re going far away from that.” I pointed to Clay dropping another stack of books on the table.

“Do you think he’s figured it out?” She asked me, looking over her shoulder as we wandered from the library into the hallway .

“He’s closer. Whatever this place is, it’s definitely alive like you said. It's narrowing down exactly what alive means to it that’s the problem,” I explained and she furrowed her brow in confusion.

“Technically you can be alive, dead or undead. Undead are monsters such as zombies, vampires, and ghouls. Monsters that have to be killed in a certain way in order to truly make sure they’re gone. Spirits are dead. You have to burn their remains, or anything that the spirit may be clinging to. Something they left when they passed on that tethers them to the living world.”

She watched me in amazement as we walked.

“Alive is simple and complicated at the same time. Just like any monster it comes with its own set of rules,” I told her and turned the corner into the foyer.

The Manor hadn’t shifted in a while, most of the hallways had remained the same. It was eerie, it felt like it was laying in wait, biding its time and waiting until we were relaxed enough to strike again, when we wouldn’t be prepared.

“How about some sunshine?” I asked her, pointing toward the door and she nodded.

Fall would be coming soon and the chill would set in. Hopefully we would be long gone before that happened. Florence followed me as I reached out for the knob to open the front door for her.

But a loud echoing click sounded.

“What?” Florence surged forward, her hand instantly on the heavy brass knob. She turned it back and forth, the door never budging .

“Watch out,” I instructed and she moved to the side for me. I tried yanking on it but the wood was cemented shut, not moving even an inch under my protests. “Fuck.”

We were locked inside.