Jane cautiously stepped out of the church. The overcast sky seemed to have fallen closer to the ground, a dense fog rising to meet it. The graveyard, benign by day, now seemed to hold dozens of places to hide. Winged angels cast shadows over crooked stones. Trees grew at a slant and gargoyles loomed over tombs, warding off all evil. Standing in the doorway for the chapel, she was in clear view.
“You know I have a gun and I do know how to use it,” she said, addressing the graveyard. “You might as well come out. I’m sure that you want me to think that Scully Adair is doing all this. After all, you know that Scully is a descendant of Margaret Clarendon. And you must have heard that there were a few references to the fact that Margaret was suspected of having helped Elizabeth along to her death. But, you know what? I don’t think that Scully herself knows that she has any relationship to the castle. Margaret’s child with Emil Roth went up for adoption. We only found out the truth because we have access to all kinds of records. Phoebe, you were good. I mean that scream you let out when you found Reverend MacDonald was really something. And the shock in your eyes? Amazing. So, you had an affair with Emil Roth. You thought you were the one. And I don’t believe that you did kill Cally Thorpe. That was really just a tragic accident. But if people started dying at every wedding, that would give the castle a real reputation. But that wasn’t enough. You figured you’d get rid of Mrs. Avery. Make it really ghostly. You hated her, because she sucked you in. She fed you the story about Scully and her being a descendant of Margaret. You thought you’d replay history, except this time you’d win!”
Jane barely ducked in time as a piece of broken plaster wing off a cherub came flying her way. By the time she was up again, her quarry had moved. Slinking low, she ran from one tomb to the next.
“Phoebe, my Krewe will have figured it out by now, too. Killing me will get you nowhere. Nor is there anywhere for you to go. You’ll be arrested, and you’ll face murder charges. If you give yourself up right now, I can try to help you.”
Jane had moved away from the chapel a fair distance. Phoebe was leading her to the rear, a place where the graves began to ride down the slopes off the cliffs. She raised her head, trying to see in the near darkness. She thought she heard something—coming from behind her.
She was certain that Phoebe was before her!
Something thumped into the gravestone she’d ducked beneath.
An arrow.
She heard laughter from the fog-riddled graveyard before her, eerie in the strange dying light and the cool air.
“No one gets married here! They don’t marry here. They die here!” Phoebe called to her.
Jane thought she heard a snapping sound on the ground, coming closer. She rolled quickly and slunk on the ground, staying low. She was armed and she could aim. But she couldn’t make out a damned thing to shoot at.
“Brides die!” Phoebe cried, laughing.
The sound was both ahead and behind Jane.
In fact, it seemed to come from all around.
Sloan was quickly on his feet, racing to the back of the house. At the rear exit from the kitchen, he thought that he felt someone behind him.
He turned.
And she was there. Elizabeth Roth.
She stared at him with a drawn face and worried eyes.
“I’ll find her!” he promised.
“The fog has fallen,” Elizabeth said.
“I’ll find her!” he said. “Come with me?”
“I can’t leave the house.”
“Try.”
She shook her head.
He couldn’t wait.
He bolted out of the castle and was instantly astounded by the pea soup of New England fog he found himself within. He could still see the spire of the chapel, so he headed toward it. He made his way through the gate, down the path, and threw the chapel door open.
Jane wasn’t there.
But he heard something.
Laughter.
Eerie in the strange fog. It seemed to come from the left, and then from the right.
“Jane!” he shouted. “Jane!”
He heard her reply.
And as he did, he realized that shouting had been a mistake. She was might be risking her life to shout out a warning to him.
“It’s Phoebe and someone else, Sloan! Someone else with a bow and arrow, hunting us down,” Jane shouted back to him.
He dropped to the ground just as something whizzed by his head. He tried to calculate the source of the arrow that had come his way. But whoever was shooting with a bow and arrow was now halfway around the church.
The laughter had come from the far rear.
On his hands and knees, he crawled around the graveyard.
Jane tried to determine where she was, but with the distance they’d come she thought she might be in the back of the chapel, near the cliffs.
“I’m going to get you!” Phoebe said, her voice startlingly near.
She couldn’t see anything. So how could Phoebe?