Trueblood 01-The-Consolation-Prize Read Online Free PDF Page A

repeated slowly. Maybe he was a bit thick. “I’m…booked…in…for…four…nights.”
    He gave her a quizzical look. “How did you find out about Sunset Spa?”
    “It was a consolation prize.”
    “What for?”
    “What does it have to do with you?”
    He looked around and then bent his head to her ear. “Leave right now,” he whispered and walked off.
    Chloe watched him stride away. Nice butt. She lifted her camera and took a snap. When he got to the gate in the wall, he turned and shouted, “And stop eating the peas.”

    She broke off three more pods. By the time Chloe reached the gate, he’d vanished.

    * * * * *
Back in her room, Chloe sat on the bed trying not to look at the fireplace. She should leave. If a complete stranger told her she should go, then she ought to be out of here. There was just the little problem of not being able to approach her car and she had the sneaking suspicion that if she were to try and walk out, she’d go in a circle and end up back at the hall. But if there were demons to confront, they were hiding. She’d come, seen the place without freaking out, and now she could go.
    Only she couldn’t. So why was she here?
    She trembled as her gaze slid back to the wooden fire surround. Maybe the people who owned the hall didn’t know how bizarre it really was. Chloe had to admit she was curious to see if the passageway was still there, if the things she’d left as a kid were still around. Why else had she brought the flashlight?
    She stood up and walked across the room. Bad idea. Pack up and go . That wasn’t her sixth-anda-half sense; that was her common sense. But when her hand opened the drawer she took out the flashlight, not her clothes. Chloe crouched at the base of the fireplace. It hadn’t been used when she lived there, but it was a period feature in a listed building and not to be touched, which was probably why Sunset Spa hadn’t ripped it out. She put her hand up the chimney and felt for the lever. Still there. As she pulled, part of the carved wooden surround slid out. Chloe looked at the wooden mouse standing proud of the other carvings and her heart beat faster.
    Taking the mouse in her hand, she twisted left. The fireplace slid into the wall with a grinding crunch, leaving a gap at the side. Chloe switched on her flashlight and crawled into the darkness.
    An old habit made her press the lever inside to return the fireplace to the correct position.
    The musty smell of stale air and dust held a familiar comfort. It had been Chloe, not her sister, who’d found the passageway. Blabbermouth Lucy had told their mother and the sisters had been threatened progressively with a cold bath every night for a week, no chocolate for a month, and no TV for two months if they played in there. Chloe thought her mother showed a distinct lack of imagination because the bathwater rarely rose above lukewarm, they could buy their own chocolate, and their grandmother behaved like Gollum with the precious TV remote.
    But then their grandmother had died. A few months later their grandfather had come home with a dazed look on his face and the elegant Selena on his arm. Chloe’s mother had stressed the girls were never to tell their new grandmother about the secret corridors. Nor were they to call her Grandma. Ever. That instruction came from Selena. Chloe didn’t blame her. Selena was younger than Chloe’s mother and was as far from a grandmother as it was possible to get. Short skirts, high heels, and perky breasts. Chloe wondered what she looked like now.
    Despite dire warnings about getting trapped, falling through rotten timbers, encountering family ghosts or flesh-eating insects, the passageways were an irresistible lure to Chloe. She discovered that the narrow channels wove throughout the walls of the house and had found five ways to get into them. There were even hidden stairways between the attic and the basement so she could move around undetected and spy through peepholes. It