Haunted Read Online Free Page A

she stood.
    She felt…
    Fear. Deep and irrational.
    She swallowed, stepping over to close the French doors andlock them tightly. She glanced at Roger. He kept snoring. She tried to calm herself. If she was feeling a sudden and totally irrational fear, all she had to do was run back to the bed, jump in beside him, and he would cuddle and hold her and everything would be all right.
    That was exactly what she was going to do.
    But she didn’t. She didn’t move. Because she saw…
    The silvery movement in the night.
    She blinked, but it didn’t go away. And it wasn’t the darkness, or the reflection of the lights, or a combination of the two. It was something, vague in shape, silvery-white, hovering, moving. It came from the side of the bed, where she should have been sleeping, and it was coming toward her.
    She panicked totally. Her vocal cords were frozen. She stared, breathing out desperate little choking sounds, since she could find no voice. It came closer and closer. She felt ice trickles into blood and limbs and then…
    It was almost touching her. She felt her hair move…pulled? Cold seemed to slap her right across the face. And she could have sworn that she heard a whisper, mocking, scornful. “Silly little girl! He’ll only kill you!”
    Then again…her hair…lifting. On its own, in the grip of the vague, silvery-white substance. A substance that whispered or played havoc with the breeze. There was no breeze. She had closed the doors.
    At last, she found voice, movement, and energy. She let out an hysterical, chilling scream, and ran.
    She didn’t run for the bed and Roger—she headed straight for the door out of the Lee room. Jeannie wrenched at the knob so hard she nearly ripped it from the wood. The door itself flew open, and banged wickedly against the wall. This had no bearing on her. She barely heard it. She kept screaming, tore along the landing, and down the elegant, curving masterpiece of a stairway to the ground level below.
    Â 
    Matt Stone had chosen to stay in the caretaker’s cottage, fifty yards to the left of the main house. It had been his home for years before his grandfather had died, leaving Melody House—and the responsibility for its upkeep—to him. He had only moved into the main house recently because it had become easier on the upkeep side, and, he had to admit, he had come to like it. The grand master suite he had chosen afforded a lot of comfort. Big bedroom, dressing room, office or entertainment space, and it kept him right on top of whatever was going on with the property.
    He liked the caretaker’s cottage, too. Since it had been falling apart so badly due to years of neglect he had rebuilt and refurbished it with every modern convenience. In contrast to the painstaking care they had used in keeping the main house historical, the caretaker’s house was far more state-of-the-art.
    When he had given in to allowing the Lee room to be used as a honeymoon suite, he had opted to spend the night in his old haunts.
    He had been sound asleep, however, when the scream brought him bolting from bed.
    Despite the quiet tone of their small town, as sheriff of Stoneyville he was accustomed to being awakened in the dead of night. Therefore, he was up, into his jeans, and streaking across the patch of lawn that separated the caretaker’s cottage from the main house in a matter of seconds, the key to the huge oak front door in his hands. He burst into the house less than two minutes from the time he had heard the scream.
    There was a light on in the foyer; there always was. Just as soft lights eternally flooded the front porch. He was prepared for anything when he burst through the door.
    Or, at least, he had thought that he was.
    Maybe not.
    There was no apparent danger. Instead, there she was, theblushing bride, standing at the foot of the stairway, shaking and screaming in her altogether. Jeannie was a pretty girl, perfectly