The dead filled the manor, but not as the spirits Sonya had grown used to, even fond of. They filled it now with blood and broken bodies, with agony and despair.

She felt their pain and their fear as her own as she looked down at Astrid Poole and the spreading red stain on her white dress. As she looked up at the first Collin Poole’s body swaying above his bride from the noose he’d fashioned through his grief.

And beside the first bride, the last, as Johanna Poole’s broken and bloodied body lay at the base of the stairs. And beside her, his hand over hers, the last Collin Poole, the husband who’d outlived her by decades before falling to his death down that same grand staircase.

Though he’d lived longer, grown older, Sonya saw her father in that face. Now grief, instant and fresh, joined the pain and fear.

Needing the life, the warmth, she gripped Trey’s hand. “It’s Collin. It’s my father’s twin.”

“Yeah, just the way I found him.”

To Oliver Doyle III—lawyer and lover—Collin Poole had been family. Remembering that, Sonya put her arms around him.

“I’m sorry. So sorry.” Then she squeezed her eyes tight. “God, God, can you hear them? Can you hear all of them?”

“I hear them. Owen.” He turned to his friend and Sonya’s Poole cousin.

“Hard to hear anything else, unless you add in the dogs howling.”

“Put me down.” Cleo gave Owen’s chest a nudge so he set her on her feet. “I dropped a glass. None of us are wearing shoes, so watch where you step.”

She moved to Sonya, took her closest friend’s hand and found it as icy as her own.

“I’ll clean it up.”

At Owen’s words, Cleo shot him a fierce look. “Don’t you go anywhere. Don’t you dare.”

“We have to stop it.” Unable to help herself, Sonya pressed her hands over her ears. “She’s torturing them. We have to stop it.”

“Fear feeds her,” Cleo reminded the rest. “I’m really trying not to give her a goddamn crumb, but…” She trailed off, looked up the staircase. “Oh Jesus.”

Johanna stood, as did the shadowy figure with her. Even with the din, they heard the snap as her head jerked. Her lifeless body tumbled down the stairs as it had on her wedding day.

“She’s killing them again. All of them. Everyone’s dying again. We have to stop it,” Sonya said. “Fuck fear.” And her anger burned out fear as she swiped tears from her face. “She’s making them feel it again, tormenting them to scare us.”

Even as she spoke, the first Collin Poole, the noose around his neck, leaped off the stairs. The rope snapped, and so did his neck.

“Brutal,” Owen muttered. “I’m in for a round of fuck fear.”

“A circle, join hands,” Cleo ordered.

“Why?”

“Look, Owen, I’m an amateur, but unity counts. What did you do when Pye ran off and up to the Gold Room door when that bitch was having another one of her fits?”

“Went after the cat.”

“You sang. So, hell, sing. Everybody, sing.”

“You want us to sing?”

She shrugged at Trey. “It’s better than standing here just watching and hearing all this. Clover uses music to communicate with us, so what the hell.”

“What are we singing?” Owen wanted to know, and took a firm hold on her hand and on Sonya’s as Astrid Poole, a hand pressed to the bleeding wound, staggered down the steps.

“I can’t think of every damn thing.”

“Are we pissed?” Trey demanded, and let that fury ride as the man he’d loved like a second father tumbled down the steps.

“Damn right.” Tears might’ve fallen, but Sonya repeated, “Damn right we’re pissed.”

“Then try this.” He lifted his voice over the cries, the weeping, the howling. “Keep you in the dark, you know they all pretend.”

His voice, which had once led a high school garage band, rang true as Owen’s joined it.

Digging for lyrics, Sonya came in on the verse with Cleo. “Send in your skeletons.”

It sure as hell fit the moment, she thought as they sang words of defiance and challenge. Words with no fear.

Lights flickered on and off; doors slammed. But slowly, gradually, the sounds of torment lessened.

When they reached the bridge, and she sang about being the hand that would “take you down,” she meant it.

By the time they finished, the house had gone quiet. No one lay at the base of the stairs; no one swayed from a rope above them.

“Foo Fighters.” Owen gave Trey a fist bump. “Inspired choice.”

“I figured ‘The Pretender’ was a solid choice because that’s all Dobbs is. A pretender trying to be mistress of the manor.” He brought Sonya’s hand to his lips. “You okay, cutie?”

“I will be.” Since Yoda pawed at her legs, she bent down to pet him. “You had a time of it, didn’t you? All you guys had a hell of a time.”

“So did my girl,” Cleo said as the black cat wound between her legs, then Owen’s. “They all might want a little fresh air. I could use it myself.”

“Just leave the door open,” Sonya suggested, “let the air in. I’ll clean up the glass.”

“I’ve got it,” Trey told her. “Stick with Cleo.”

As Sonya herded Yoda, Trey’s Mookie, Owen’s Jones outside with Cleo and the cat, Trey walked back to the kitchen for a broom. When he returned, Owen stood looking down where they’d seen Collin.

“You saw him fall.”

Owen nodded. “Yeah. I had this sick feeling maybe he’d just taken the leap, tired of living without Johanna. Or worse, that Dobbs did it to him.”

“He tripped. I had the same sick feeling, but he tripped. He was half-asleep it looked like, not real steady.”

“He’d had that cold deal for a few days.”

“Yeah, so not real steady. But something startled him. I think he saw—”

“Johanna,” Owen finished. “At the bottom of the stairs. Whether he really saw her, or imagined it, remembered finding her that way, it unbalanced him just enough.”

“I don’t think it was Dobbs. He just lost his footing, and he went down.”

“He had his hand over hers. When we saw him just now. I don’t think he did it on purpose, but I think he was okay with it. Dobbs made a mistake showing us that, because I feel better about it. Believing he just lost his footing, but he was okay with it.”

“We’re going to beat her, Owen.”

“Oh, fucking-A right we are.” Now he grinned. “I’ve got plenty of songs in me.”

Clover, the sixth bride and Sonya’s grandmother, chimed in with Rihanna’s “Don’t Stop the Music.”

“You got it, babe. And on that note, I want breakfast. I’ve got to get up in an hour anyway.” Owen glanced toward the open door. “What are the odds of talking Cleo into making some predawn omelets?”

“You tell me. You’re the one sleeping with her.”

“I give it fifty-fifty, and I bump that up if I have coffee waiting.”

Trey carried the broom and the dustpan of broken glass back to the kitchen. “Make the coffee,” he advised. “Everyone needs time to settle. This was different from knowing we’ve got a house full of ghosts. It was seeing them die, hearing it, feeling it.”

“Dobbs is quiet now. It had to cost her a lot of energy to pull that off.”

“She wanted to hurt them. Everyone in this house, alive or dead, wants her out. The only way we know of is to find the rings. Take them back. Break the curse, get her gone.”

“And Sonya’s seen all seven brides now. How they died.”

“Exactly. It’s going to get worse from here, Owen.” He sat at the kitchen island, shoved a hand through his tousled black hair. “We can’t be here twenty-four seven. But they both live here, work here.”

With the coffee going, Owen got out eggs, cheese, bacon. If he couldn’t talk Cleo into making breakfast, he’d toss some together.

“I get the worry. I’ve got it, too. But truth?” He looked at his lifelong friend across the counter. “I don’t know any two women—hell, people—who can handle it better than they can.”

“When the mirror shows up, it doesn’t give her a choice. Sonya has to go through.”

“And you can’t go with her.” Owen, Poole-green eyes steady, handed Trey a mug of coffee. “I can, if I’m here. But you and Cleo, you have to wait on this side. That’s a tough swallow for a guy whose nature, and skill set, has him helping people and fixing things.”

“It’s goddamn hard to take it on faith you’ll come back through again.”

“Here’s the thing.” Owen got his own coffee. “Considering it’s framed in predators, it looks like it could eat you alive, but you gotta figure it’s on our side, or why show Sonya what she needs to know to get that bitch out of here?”

“I tell myself that. Like I tell myself, from what we know or believe, Collin and Sonya’s father used it to communicate with each other. Maybe they never knew exactly how or why.”

“Sonya’s dad probably never did, but Collin had to figure it out after your dad did the genealogy. Once he knew he’d had a twin taken away, given up for adoption, he had to figure it out.”

“And by the time he did, and decided to contact Andrew MacTavish, MacTavish was dead.”

“So here we are,” Owen added. “Collin leaves the manor to his brother’s only child. You fall for her. She gets her pal to move in with her, and I fall for her. There’s a kind of symmetry going. I don’t know what the hell it means, but, man, it’s going.”

He heard the sound of dogs racing through the house.

“Let’s see if she’s fallen enough for me to make those omelets.”

Until she’d followed Sonya in the move from Boston to Maine, the only times Cleopatra Fabares recalled seeing the sun rise was after an all-nighter—work or play.

As for cooking breakfast—or anything else—that fell into the pretty-much-never area of her life.

But that was then, this was now.

She’d taken up Sonya’s offer of moving in, of making Collin Poole’s turret art studio her own without a second thought. But with the caveat she would also be in charge of the food shopping and cooking.

That posed a long, wide learning curve for the Louisiana-born artist and illustrator, but—surprise—she learned. And more, she enjoyed it.

And since the three a.m. wake-up call, and all that followed, stirred up her appetite, Owen didn’t have to work hard to persuade her to make omelets.

She bundled up her mass of burnt honey curls, sent Owen out to the herb garden for parsley and tarragon. And got to work.