The Ghost of Ashford Hall

The gown was a loan, the pearls were paste, and the name I'd been paid to answer to wasn't mine—yet the lie fit like a second skin as I stepped from the town car into the cold New York night. Ashford mansion loomed, all gargoyles and gothic spires, its windows blazing with light that somehow failed to warm the stone.

The front doors swung open before I could knock. A draft curled around my ankles, smelling of dust and roses long dead.

You're not her, a voice breathed against my ear—a woman's voice, close as a kiss. But you can help me.

I turned. No one stood there. But at the edge of my vision, a figure wavered like heat over a road: pale, translucent, a young woman in a gown from another decade. She raised one hand, pointing past me, toward a portrait in the grand foyer—a portrait of the missing heiress, Eleanor Ashford. The face was my face. The same bone structure, the same fall of dark hair. The resemblance that had gotten me hired.

"You came." Nathaniel Ashford's voice cracked as he crossed the marble floor, tears standing in his eyes. "Eleanor. My darling."

Behind him, his son leaned against the stair rail, a champagne flute in hand. Elias Ashford smiled like a man watching a trap spring shut.