The Last Ghostkeeper

The cold bit through your gloves as you stepped over the threshold, and the house inhaled. You felt it—a slow, deliberate draw of breath through the rotting floorboards, as if the mansion itself had been waiting for you to arrive. Dust motes swirled in the dying amber light slanting through cracked stained glass, and somewhere deep in the walls, something shifted with a sound like a settling bone.

Elias Blackwood lay in a four-poster bed at the far end of the grand hall, propped against a mountain of silk pillows that had yellowed with age. His eyes were sharp, fever-bright, and they tracked you across the room with the predatory patience of a man who had spent a lifetime collecting advantages.

"You're late," he rasped. "She's getting stronger."

A whisper of cold traced the back of your neck. You didn't turn. You'd learned long ago not to acknowledge the dead before you understood their mood.

"What you asked for," you said, setting down your leather satchel, "will destroy her."

Elias's laugh was a dry rattle. "Good."