Chapter 296

Victor and Justin pushed ahead of us and hurried downstairs. But a search of the first floor turned up nothing.

“If someone was in the house, they’re gone now,” I Justin.

“Was it a real person or a ghost?” Amy asked.

“It looked like a real person in the upstairs window to me, and a ghost wouldn’t sneak out while we were all on the second floor,” Victor replied.

“Whoever it was, at least they didn’t take the chicken,” Justin joked. “Let’s eat. I’m starving.”

“Have you found anything missing since the ‘ghost’ showed up?” Victor asked Amy as we began to eat.

Amy shrugged. “Aaron and Alfred, you know the house better than me. Have either of you noticed anything missing?”

“Just some family photos from the parlor,” Aaron replied. “I thought you didn’t want photos of your mother’s killer and her family scattered around.”

“And an antique vase and an expensive original painting from the library are missing,” Alfred said. “I also thought you took them.”

“That’s a shame,” Aaron said. “Pat and Amanda loved those pieces.”

“Who would have taken them?” Amy wondered.

“Aaron, is there a safe in the house?” Victor asked. “Most wealthy Alphas have small safes in their homes for valuables.”

“We got rid of one in the living room because nobody used it,” Aaron replied. “But Martha had one in her suite. I don’t know the combination, though.”

Victor pushed his plate away. “We should check on it when we go upstairs.”

I finished eating too. “That was delicious, Victor. Thank you.”

The others agreed with me, and we cleared the table over Alfred's objections that we were doing his job.

Amy assured him his job was secure and asked if he wanted to sleep on the second floor with the rest of the group.

“Oh, no, Miss Gray,” he replied. “I’ve slept in my room next to the kitchen for decades. No intruder, mortal or not, will frighten me from my place.”

“Aaron, your room is at the other end of the second-floor hallway,” Amy said. “Would you like to move down the hall closer to us?”

Aaron chuckled. “I’ll take a sleeping pill when I get upstairs. Nothing will bother me for eight hours.”

“Let’s check that safe before we go to bed,” Victor suggested. After making sure Archer Manor was locked up for the night, he and I led the way upstairs.

The lights didn’t flicker when the six of us piled into Martha’s suite. But I thought it was much colder than the rest of the house.

“It’s behind the watercolor landscape,” Aaron told us.

Victor moved in front of a faded ocean scene and pulled the painting off the wall.

“We don’t need the combination,” Victor announced. “It’s open, and it’s empty.”

“Martha kept her good jewelry and a few thousand dollars in there,” Aaron said. “I wonder if the nurse took it with her.”

That was a possibility I hadn’t thought of. “Victor, which window did you and Justin see someone standing in when you arrived with dinner?”

He pointed at the tall, double-pane window beside an armchair. “This one.”

“The curtain is stuck on the chair back on one side,” Justin pointed out.

“Whoever it was, they’re gone now,” Victor said. “We should try to get some sleep.”

The group said goodnight and split up to go into the bedrooms we made ready that afternoon.

Amy and Justin went into a room with light blue walls. Heather went into one with pretty pink walls, while Victor and I had a room with sage green walls and brown carpeting.

“These rooms are nice.” Victor sat on the bed. “It’s very generous of Amy to turn this mansion into a homeless shelter.”

“Is the bed comfortable?” I asked.

Victor laid back. “It would be much nicer with you on the bed with me.”

I stretched out next to him and turned on my side. “Better now?”

He turned and pulled me into his arms. “Much better,” he said a second before his lips claimed mine.

His mouth soon had me craving more, and I pulled his hand to my breasts.

“Touch me,” I whimpered. “It feels so good.”

My handsome Alpha caressed my body until I was moaning with delight. I was about to reach for his manhood when horrifying moans echoed from the hallway.

Victor and I leaped from the bed and hurried into the hall. I held my phone and recorded the sounds and a figure floating along a wall at the other end of the hallway.

“What is that?” Victor said and rushed toward the ghostly figure.

It was a man, but his features were blurry. The figure and the sounds were chilling, but with Victor by my side, I wasn’t afraid.

But then, a blood-freezing scream resounded through the second floor. It came from Amy and Justin’s room.

Victor and I ran to the room, and I flung open the door. Amy stood on the far side of the room, her face a mask of terror as she pointed at the closet door.

A second after we entered the room, Justin burst through the door to the attached bathroom. He was wet and had a towel around his waist.

“What happened?” he demanded. When he saw Amy cowering on the other side of the room, he rushed to her side. “Babe, what’s wrong?”

Amy buried her face in his shoulder for a moment, her whole body shaking.

“A ghost came through the closet door,” she explained. “His face started to melt into a skeleton, and I screamed.”

Victor went to the closet and examined it. “There’s nothing in there now.”

I got closer and took a few photos of the inside and outside of the closet.

“Is everyone okay?” Heather asked from the doorway.

“Yes,” I replied. “Amy had a scare, but she’s fine.”

“Was it the noises on the third floor that scared her?” she asked.

“No, a dead guy coming through the closet door,” Amy told her.

“What noises?” Victor asked.

“It sounds like somebody is wrecking the room above mine,” she explained.

Victor and I walked up the hall and entered the room Heather had been sleeping in.

She was right. The thumps, bumps, and bangs sounded like someone was destroying the room Amy had so nicely redecorated.

Amy appeared in the doorway, and her fear turned to anger. “This is too much!” she declared and headed for the stairs.

Justin hurried after her. “Let Victor and I go first.” He kissed her and nodded to Victor.

Amy, Heather, and I followed the men up the stairs to the third floor.

As soon as we reached the third-floor hallway, we could hear the sounds coming from the second door on the right. The racket grew louder as we walked closer.

But when Victor threw the door open, the sounds stopped. He flipped on the lights, and he and Justin stepped inside.

They came back into the hallway with baffled expressions on their faces.

“What?” I asked.

“Nobody was in there,” Victor replied. “The room is fine.”

“It looks perfect in there,” Justin agreed. “But what was making those sounds?”

Amy, Heather, and I had to have a look. The sounds had seemed so real that we expected the furniture to be broken and the walls damaged.

But Victor and Justin were right. There was no damage at all. The room looked exactly like it did after we made the bed that afternoon.

I took several photos to cover every inch of the room and followed the others back downstairs to the second floor.

We were surprised to see Aaron out of his room.

“What was all the racket?” he asked around a yawn. “You could wake the dead with all the screaming and moaning. And what was going on upstairs?”

We explained about the sounds, the floating figure, and the guy in Amy’s closet.

“That room was Amanda’s.” He pointed to the room Amy and Justin chose to sleep in. “More ghostly events happened there than anywhere else in the house.”

“I’m not sleeping in that room. We’re moving to the room on the other side of Victor and Daisy,” Amy told Justin.

“That’s how Amanda dealt with it,” Aaron told us. “She would go to a friend’s house, and the spirit would calm down.”

Everyone settled in to try to get some sleep until something else happened.

But Victor and I woke around eight the next morning and realized the ghost had taken the rest of the night off.

“What do you think is going on?” I asked him while he got dressed.

“I think someone is faking our ghost,” he replied. “That ghost in the hallway was projected onto the wall somehow.”

“I believe you’re right,” I agreed. “And we're going to find a way to catch them.”