The Witch of Stonecliff Read Online Free PDF

was dark, casting long shadows up the wall. They rippled. Pulsed. Her breath lodged in her throat.
    She wasn’t the only one who saw them. She knew that now. Both Brynn and Reece had their own experiences with whatever presence dwelt within Stonecliff. And they were certain Warlow had, too.
    Eleri glanced at the man, but he merely watched her. A confused frown drew his thick, white brows together.She pointed to the top of the stairs. “Bulb’s burned out.”
    The swirling shadows had taken on humanoid shapes—three of them—writhing over the ancient floral wallpaper.
    “I’ll see it’s replaced.” If Warlow did see them, he gave no indication. His expression remained puzzled.
    Could Reece and Brynn have been wrong about the man? Someone had tampered with the lights in Brynn’s room, leaving her vulnerable to the dark mass. But maybe Ruth had been responsible for that, too.
    Eleri backed away from the stair, and Warlow’s frown deepened. No doubt she looked as mad as everyone suspected, but she didn’t care. There was no way she’d move closer to the shadows than she had to. Instead, she used the servants’ stairs off the kitchen.
    After closing herself in her room, she switched on every light to keep the shadows away, crossed to the window and looked out over the sea. White caps dotted the slate waves, black clouds rolling toward her. Wind whistled and moaned through unseen cracks and rattled the glass in its frame.
    A storm was blowing in.
    She turned her head to the left, her gaze almost magnetically drawn to the high roofline of the lodge peeking out between the branches. She sincerely hoped Kyle Peirs would be all right tonight. If anything happened to the man, Detective Harding would have her in cuffs before the sun set.

Chapter Three
    He’d started for The Devil’s Eye, but changed his mind five minutes in. Instead, Kyle turned and walked the opposite way, seemingly without direction, but the farther away from The Devil’s Eye he went, the clearer it became that he was retracing his escape route.
    A phantom ache gripped his throat, and Kyle swallowed hard. Memories played in his head, turned his skin clammy and chilled him to his soul.
    His terrifying run through the trees, naked and bleeding. There’d been no pain, then. Not yet. Adrenaline had been pounding inside him. There’d been a vague sort of heat where his throat had been slashed. A sticky stream down his neck and chest. He had no idea how much damage had been done—not as much as there could have been had he not managed to free his hands and jerk forward as the blade pierced his skin. Later, he’d learn how much damage he’d done to his feet. Running barefoot through a forest had shredded them.
    Now the trees fell away and a field of tangled, yellow grass stretched out before him. Kyle spotted a stone cottage in the distance. It looked smaller in the day than it had that night—even as he drew closer—but his memories were blurred. The drugs pumping through his system then had distorted the world around him.
    At the time, he’d barely been able to make out more than a yellow glow from the window. For the first time since he’d regained consciousness next to The Devil’s Eye, Kyle had actually believed he could survive.
    He stopped walking, closed his eyes against the anxiety swelling inside him. The line between past and present was becoming more difficult to maintain.
    That night had changed everything. He thought of the man who only hours before had been drinking and doing his best to charm some tourist girl into going back to his room with him.
    Kyle might have survived that night, but that man had died, and only a few fleeting memories remained.
    “Good Christ, is that you?”
    Kyle opened his eyes. The squat farmer who had found him that night stood a few feet away, eyes rounded, face pale as though he’d just seen a ghost. But in a way, Mel Barber had.
    Kyle forced a smile. “In the flesh.”
    Barber didn’t return the