Until the Dawn Read Online Free Page A

anger.
    “Loyalty is important to me,” he said with an exhausted, hollow tone. “I need to make this house a safe place for my son, and I don’t trust any of you. It is clear that the misuse of Dierenpark has been occurring for decades. I want you out of here. The lot of you.”
    Behind her, Emil let out a mighty whoosh as though he’d been punched in the gut. Emil had lived his entire life on thisestate. How was he going to get his wife and three children out in the space of ten minutes? Where would they go?
    But even worse was Florence. The old woman had crumpled into a chair, her head sagging on her hunched shoulders. Florence had lived most of her life in this house. She started to quietly weep.
    Sophie blanched as two of the fearsome men lumbered toward her. Instinctively, she stepped back. She’d never had such menacing glares directed at her, and it was intimidating.
    “All right,” she said quietly, picking up her cloak and folding it over her arm. “You’ll find plenty to eat in the larder, and there is firewood on the back terrace. I’ll help Florence collect her things, and we will be on our way.”
    But she would be back first thing tomorrow morning. There had to be a way to defuse the acrimony simmering inside Quentin Vandermark, and she just needed a bit of time to plan her attack. Her weapons wouldn’t be menacing bodyguards or seething anger. She wouldn’t fight on his level. But that didn’t mean she intended to surrender. The real battle would begin tomorrow morning, and she wouldn’t be put off easily.

2
    “I’ M SCARED of the dark.”
    Quentin tensed but wouldn’t let frustration leak into his voice. “I know you are, Pieter, but we’ll find the candles soon and light up the entire house. Come sit beside me.”
    They were in the kitchen, where the sunset filled the room with an eerie pink glow. Pieter was sullen as he flung himself onto the bench, and Quentin winced when the boy accidentally kicked his bad leg. Pain shot up from his shin, through his knee and thigh, finally hitting his spine. Dizzying pain swamped him, but he let no sign of it show before Pieter.
    “Mr. Gilroy has gone on a hunt for some lanterns,” he said as soon as he could deliver the sentence in a normal voice. “We’ll stay here until he finds them.”
    Although it would be a good idea for Pieter to learn how to confront the dark sooner rather than later. There were no goblins or ghosts looming in the shadowy corners, but Pieter’s imagination was likely to conjure them up at the least provocation. Pieter had been sleeping with a small light in his roomever since the incident last summer, and nine-year-old boys shouldn’t need such crutches.
    He ran a hand through Pieter’s silky hair, leaning in to kiss the boy’s head. Raising this child was the most important responsibility of his life, and so far he’d been failing. Coddling Pieter’s fears hadn’t worked. Neither had the parade of specialists and physicians hired by his grandfather. The only thing they had yet to try was forcing Pieter to directly confront his fears, and Quentin’s time to pull the boy back onto a solid footing was growing short.
    Because frankly, Quentin probably wasn’t going to be alive much longer. His leg was getting worse with each operation, and his last doctor had warned he probably had no more than two years before his body finally failed him. How was he to raise this boy to manhood when the time was so short?
    The day had been a catastrophe from beginning to end. For months he’d been preparing Pieter for this day, trying to erase the ominous tales Pieter had heard from his grandfather about the family curse and the haunted mansion that was the cause of it all. Pieter had become convinced he was destined to fall victim to the string of bad luck that plagued their family with each generation. The boy had wept a little this morning when he’d realized today was the day they’d be moving into Dierenpark, the mansion