Page 2 of The Seven Rings
She came to the manor alone—though she wouldn’t remain alone—to learn of this newly discovered part of her family, to learn their history, to uncover how and why her father had been taken away from his brother.
How was it, though he’d never been to the manor before his own tragic death, that he, an artist, sketched it? How, though he’d never known of his twin, had he drawn a mirror framed with predators where he and a boy who looked like him stood on either side of the glass?
And as she learned, she walked and worked.
When the mirror called to her, she stepped through the glass. She witnessed the death of seven brides, and grieved for them. She witnessed the theft of seven wedding rings, and swore to retrieve them.
With what she’d once believed impossible now her reality, Sonya MacTavish understood the rings were the key to breaking the curse and forever banishing Hester Dobbs from the manor.
For all those who’d come before her, for the house she’d made her home, for those seven lost brides, she vowed to stay and hunt and fight.
Even as death woke all around her.
Chapter One
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?”
