Prince of Wolves: Autumn Court #3 (Rosethorn Valley Fae Romance)

by Tasha Black

  She stuck the tissue back in her purse and grabbed her phone to check the time. If she could spare a few minutes before their next showing, maybe she could look for a broom and dustpan here to clean up.

  “What’s that?” Amy called from the conservatory.

  Sara hurried in to find her client pointing to a massive, sheet-covered object.

  “Oh, that’s the piano,” Sara said with a smile. She knew Amy was hoping for a house with room for a piano. “Hang on, I’ll show you.”

  She put her phone on the window sill and lifted the edge of the sheet, revealing a glimpse of what it covered. The piano was made of a beautiful tiger striped wood, unlike any other Sara had ever seen.

  She remembered gazing in the window at the piano from the garden as a child and seeing her own reflection staring back from the enormous floor to ceiling mirror in the gilded frame that graced the inside wall of the conservatory.

  She pulled gently, but the sheet seemed to be caught on something, so she gave it a good tug.

  It came loose suddenly, releasing a cloud of dust.

  Amy immediately began sneezing and coughing.

  “She’s having an allergy attack,” Al said. “We need to get her out of here.”

  Amy covered her mouth with her hand and nodded.

  “Go ahead,” Sara said. “I’ll be right behind you.”

  Al ushered a red-faced Amy toward the front door as Sara hurriedly turned off the lights.

  By the time she passed the grandfather clock in the front hall her clients were outside.

  Sara stepped out onto the front porch and locked up, feeling the same strange sense of sadness she always did when she closed the keys back up in the lockbox.

  This house was a landmark. Its gardens had been a playground for her as a child. It was sad to think that all of it might soon be gone.

  By the time she joined Al and Amy back at her little Saab in the driveway, Amy’s face was looking normal again and the coughing and sneezing had stopped.

  “Are you okay?” Sara asked her.

  “Yeah, it was the weirdest thing,” Amy said. “As soon as I came outside, I felt better.”

  “Black mold,” Al said, nodding to himself sagely. “It’s a sure sign.”

  It wasn’t. But Sara wasn’t about to tell them that.

  They all got in and she started the car, trying to remember which house they were seeing next.

  Music drifted to her from somewhere - the exact song she had been humming, accompanied by bells and drums, as if it were coming from just outside the car.

  She turned to look but there was nothing there - only the circular drive and the hulk of the house, looming over them.

  “Oh, great song,” Al said, reaching between the front seats to turn up the radio.

  The song coming from the car’s speakers was a sixties folk-rock classic. There were no bells or drums.

  Sara shook her head, hoping she wasn’t actually going crazy.

  There was no time to go off the rails. She had another half a dozen houses to show to Al and Amy in the next four hours. The Martins were determined to lock in their mortgage interest rate, which meant she would probably be writing an offer with them tonight.

  She took a deep breath to clear her head and pulled out of the long drive, leaving the old house, and hopefully the odd feelings, in the rearview mirror.

  2

  Dorian

  Dorian sat on his throne and gazed out over the ballroom.

  The sun was setting, casting long shadows across the black and white marble tiles.

  Each day he watched the sun’s journey across the checkerboard floor. He knew its path so well he was sure he could paint it from memory, a fiery red at dawn, cool blue shadows at dusk.

  Soon, the party would begin, and the ballroom floor would be covered in dancers, their frenzied movements bringing the space to life just as they had every night for a thousand years.

  The palace of the King of Darkness was never at a loss for a party.

  All the rooms in Dorian’s mansion seemed to lead to this one. No nook or cranny in the world could hide his subjects when it was time to dance.

  He sighed and gazed out the window onto the rose garden, as he’d done so many times.

  To his surprise, soft music greeted him.

  He spun around, but there was no one there.

  His subjects were all asleep as usual, in anticipation of tonight’s revelry. Only the king was unable to rest.

  He listened again, but the melody had gone silent.

  Too bad. It had warmed his heart and made him somehow homesick, as if he were being called back across the years to something soft and sweet. Something small, and young…

  Ah, yes. The child.

  But she hadn’t appeared in the garden in…weeks? Years?

  He realized he was no longer aware of the passage of time in the mortal world. It didn’t matter. He would never set foot there again. His sentence had been clear on that.

  He closed his eyes and pictured the child, all chubby cheeks and long dark hair. How she had loved his rose garden. She sang to the blooms with all the passion of a budding bard.

  But the garden was empty now. For all he knew the mortal child was a grandmother, or long dead.

  The sound of a small crash in the dining hall snapped him out of his reverie.

  He leapt off his throne and strode across the floor to investigate.

  At first glance, the room appeared unchanged. The massive wooden table stood motionless at the center of the room, awaiting a feast that would never come.

  He was about to return to his throne when he spotted the broken vase on the hearth.

  Heart pounding, he moved closer to be sure.

  Yes, the thing was in shards, surrounded by withered petals and a drop of scarlet blood, like the scene of a marvelous, miniature murder.

  Nothing like this had ever happened before.

  He felt a cruel smile pull his lips upward.

  A snatch of music, a broken vase.

  This was something glorious.

  This was something exciting.

  This was something… new.

  3

  Sara

  At the end of her day, Sara smiled and walked Al and Amy out the front door of Tarker’s Hollow Realty Group.

  “Sara, we can’t thank you enough, truly,” Amy said. “You knew we’d fall in love with Rabbit Lane, but you showed us everything else on our list anyway.”

  “And she didn’t even say I told you so,” Al teased, giving her a warm smile and a wink.

  “I hope it all works out,” Sara said, unable to help smiling back. “It feels like such a good fit.”

  “We’ll keep our phones handy,” Amy said. “Just in case of good news.”

  They left smiling and even waved to her from their car before pulling out onto Park Avenue.

  In moments like this, Sara really did love her job.

  The Martins had chosen to put in an offer on a sturdy and charming Arts & Crafts cottage in Rosethorn Valley, not too far from the old mansion where they’d started their day. It was just the right kind of house for the downsizing former hippies - close to the Art Center and the Quaker retreat.

  With any luck, Sara would be attending a home inspection with them a few days from now.

  She realized she’d better set a reminder in her phone to connect the Martins with some local inspection companies so they could call ahead to see about holding a spot.

  She grabbed her bag and rummaged around in it for her phone but came up empty-handed.

  No…

  She popped out to check her car, but the charger was empty.

  She sighed and headed back into the office. Had she left it on a desk? She had been using the office computer and the land line while they were writing up the offer. She couldn’t remember having her phone in there at all today.

  It was fine. She would just perform a quick find-my-phone from her laptop. Hopefully, the thing was somewhere
in the building.

  But when she told it to play a sound, there was no ping that she could hear.

  She checked the laptop screen again. The blip that appeared on the map wasn’t in Tarker’s Hollow at all.

  It was back in Rosethorn Valley, but not on Rabbit Lane.

  It was at the top of the ridge, in the big mansion.

  Sara ran a hand through her hair and sighed.

  It was late, well after eleven. And as much as she loved the old place, there was something creepy about the idea of going back there alone in the middle of the night - particularly when she didn’t have her phone.

  But she had an offer submitted. If the other agent called late tonight or early tomorrow, she needed to be available.

  And if someone else showed the house before she made it back there, they might take the phone.

  She grabbed her things and hastily locked up the office.

  Park Avenue was dark, the pale circles from the streetlamps the only breaks in the velvet darkness.

  She started her car and couldn’t help but think of the music she thought she’d heard earlier.

  “You’re going crazy from too much work,” she said aloud, wondering if talking to herself was just more damning evidence.

  Things always got like this in early summer. Real estate was hectic in the first half of the year. By June, she was always exhausted and prone to misplacing things, and staying up a little too late watching TV and eating ice cream straight out of the container to de-stress.

  “Here we go,” she told herself, the tree canopy of Tarker’s Hollow parting as she crossed the bridge over the creek.

  It was a mild night - at least there was that. Her trek took her past tree-lined streets and then deep into the hilly wooded town of Rosethorn Valley.

  She sighed longingly as she passed her own house. It was a lovely, lumpy stone and stucco townhouse from the 1830s, one of half a dozen attached homes originally built for the workers at the Old Mill. It had steep stairs, small rooms, and low, beamed ceilings and she loved it irrationally.

  On clear nights, she could even see the mansion from her bedroom window, something that had captured her imagination when she first moved into the house.

  “You’re going to see the mansion tonight,” she muttered to herself. “Whether you want to or not.”

  The engine of her little Saab whined a little as she set off up the private drive that led to the mansion.

  The property was one of a handful in the area that still owned its original acreage. The drive led through a dark expanse of trees and foliage that was decidedly unkempt.

  Sara kept her eyes on the drive, uninterested in any unseen eyes shining out at her from the trees. She knew there was plenty of wildlife in the woods all around the property. It was beautiful in the daytime, but it could be a little unsettling at night.

  Alone.

  With no one else in sight in any direction.

  “Don’t let your imagination get away from you,” she advised herself.

  But it was easier said than done. The darkness was growing palpable, and she swore she sensed movement where she knew there was none.

  At last she reached the peak of the ridge and pulled into the circular drive.

  She climbed out, wishing she had her phone so she could at least use the flashlight mode.

  The massive house loomed over her, but somehow instead of being frightened, she was absolutely compelled to go in.

  She jogged up the stone steps to the covered porch and felt around in the darkness of the doorway for the lockbox that hung around the brass knob.

  Her fingers slid over the buttons and she tried entering the combo blind.

  The box clicked and released.

  She snatched the keys before they could fall out.

  The right one slid into the lock seemingly of its own accord.

  Not for the first time, Sara wondered vaguely if this house was meant to be hers.

  But that was a ridiculous idea. She couldn’t afford it even at the listed price, let alone with the cost of repairs and upkeep. Buying it was just a pipe dream.

  The door opened for her, silently this time, and she stepped into the foyer.

  The clouds outside parted. A splash of moonlight glowed on the black and white tiles - just enough to light her way to the dining room.

  Her phone wasn’t on the mantel where she’d thought it might be.

  She turned toward the conservatory, retracing her steps from earlier.

  An unexpected sound broke the silence, startling her.

  It echoed off the walls of the mostly empty house. Not exactly a bang or a crash.

  It was a more of a tick.

  She froze in place, listening. There was no way anyone else could be showing the house this late.

  There was another tick and it occurred to her that there was a grandfather clock in the center hall. Of course, those hands had been stilled ever since her first visit to the house.

  She tiptoed back to the entry, the ticking growing louder and faster.

  Sure enough, the old clock had come to life. The hands spun around and around the face as the pendulum swung wildly.

  A chime rang out as hour began to sound.

  Sara’s heart slammed in her chest as the sound of the clock reverberated through her.

  It rang again.

  She ran for the conservatory, remembering at last that her phone must still be on the windowsill from when she had removed the drop cloth from the piano.

  The clock kept sounding, each ring impossibly louder than the last as she moved away from it.

  She found her phone, exactly where she’d suspected.

  She grabbed it, slipping it into her jacket pocket, and spun around to head back to the front door.

  Her own movement in the floor to ceiling mirror caught her eye.

  No.

  It wasn’t her own movement.

  The clock chimed for the tenth time, the eleventh?

  Sara froze, gazing into the mirror.

  She was standing on the opposite wall of an empty room.

  But the room reflected in the mirror wasn’t empty.

  In the reflection, much brighter than the darkened mansion around her, misty figures danced and whirled. They all wore ancient-looking ballgowns and suits with stiff, frilled collars.

  And although they wore masks, Sara could see that there was something off about the figures, but she couldn’t quite place it - almost like they weren’t really human at all.

  But what, then?

  She moved closer, trying to get a better view, but realized that her own reflection was missing from the glass.

  Obviously, it wasn’t a mirror after all. Her first thought was that must be some sort of screen or monitor.

  But there was no other technology like that anywhere in the house, and it looked so real.

  As the clock rang out the final chime of midnight, Sara reached out her hand to touch the surface.

  It was cold and solid, like normal glass.

  But she swore she could hear the laughter, taste the scent of strange spices and overripe fruit.

  Her own reflection appeared in the glass now, with the dancers behind her.

  She gasped and slowly, slowly turned around to face the room where she stood.

  The lights flickered to life, and the mysterious dancers whirled all around her, close enough to touch.

  It was real.

  It was all real.

  ***

  Thanks for reading this sample of King of Midnight!

  What happens when Sara comes face-to-face with the cruel King of Midnight, only to find he awakens feelings inside her she never knew existed? And how will he deal with the fallout when her newfound talents land him on the wrong side of the veil, along with a bunch of hungry fae monsters that don’t want to go back?

  Grab the rest of the story right now to find out!

  https://www.tashablack.com/kingofmidnight.html

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  Tasha Black lives in a big old Victorian in a tiny college town. She loves reading anything she can get her hands on, writing sci fi, paranormal & fantasy romance, and sipping pumpkin spice lattes.

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