The Stroke of Winter(60)

“I guess all of that barking tired them out,” Tess said, reaching down and giving Storm a little scratch behind the ears.

“It’s not every day they get to do battle with the unseen,” Wyatt said. A big tray with a tiled top emblazoned with a drawing of a chef was positioned on the sectional, and he set the pizza box on it. Then, he poured glasses of wine from a bottle chilling in an ice bucket on the side table.

The pizza, the wine on ice, the fire—he had done all this while Tess was in the shower?

“I’m sorry I took so long up there,” she said, wincing a little. “I couldn’t resist washing some of the day away.”

“Think nothing of it,” he said. “I’m glad you made yourself comfortable.”

Wyatt sank onto the sofa and motioned for her to do the same. And with the pizza and wine on the tray between them, their first evening together at Wyatt’s house began. Somewhere in her heart, Tess knew it wouldn’t be their last.

She took a bite of her first slice and closed her eyes in food rapture. “This is delicious,” she murmured. “Small-town pizza. There is nothing better.”

“The best,” Wyatt said.

Tess took a sip of her wine. “I really should call my dad to tell him about what the police found,” she said, wrinkling her nose and resting her back against the sofa’s soft cushions.

“And yet, she makes no attempt to pick up the phone.” Wyatt raised his eyebrows.

“Is that bad?” Tess said, with a sigh. “After all that’s happened today, I just feel like . . .” She didn’t finish her thought. She didn’t quite know what she felt like.

Wyatt took another slice of pizza. “You don’t have to call him tonight if you don’t want to,” he said. “I get it. It’s a lot. You should take a little time to process it before you bring it up to him anyway. I’m thinking you don’t know quite what to say. I know I wouldn’t. And plus, it’s an hour later there right now.”

Tess thought about this for a moment. Wyatt was right. She didn’t know what exactly she’d say to her parents. A lot of information had been thrown at her that day, from Joe and his stories about Daisy, to Kathy and her stories about Grey and Frank, to the police and their revelation that the studio bathroom had been covered in blood. And not to mention the figure in the window and the unholy screaming. She wanted it all to stop, even for just a few hours.

“I’ll call him in the morning,” she said. “It would be ideal if I could wait to see if the police could identify the DNA. But can they even do that after so many years? Does it degrade or anything like that?”

“I’m no expert in police procedure, but I have watched every episode of Law & Order,” he said with a grin. “Seriously, though, I think they can extract that information after many years, yes. I mean, we hear all the time about the police opening cold cases after decades and solving them using DNA evidence, right? They’ve even exhumed bodies to do DNA matches.”

He was right, Tess thought. The police would surely run DNA tests on the blood at the crime scene. She wondered how long it would take. Weeks, maybe?

She grabbed another slice and noticed her hands were still shaking. So, the shower hadn’t washed the day away, after all.

While Tess and Wyatt were chatting about real-world matters like blood samples and DNA, what they weren’t talking about hung in the air around them, just as a ghost would, filling up the room with unseen dread.

Tess held Wyatt’s gaze for a long time. “What was that, in the studio, Wyatt?” she said, her voice not much louder than a whisper. Tears were pricking at her eyes.

He leaned back into the sofa cushions and took a deep breath, considering his answer. “I can’t tell you what it was,” he said, finally. “But I can tell you what it wasn’t. It wasn’t a person. It wasn’t an animal. It wasn’t any type of sound that could be made by water running through pipes or old houses creaking or anything like ancient wood splintering from the cold. Nothing like that.”

“It was not of this world, is what you’re saying,” Tess said.

“Yeah, like Jane said before,” Wyatt said. “It’s a pretty safe bet your house is haunted.”

“But I’ve been coming here my whole life,” Tess protested. “I’ve never seen or heard anything like this at La Belle Vie.”

Wyatt nodded. “I know,” he said. “But what Jane said is really true. Renovations sometimes disturb things.”

Tess took a deep breath and scratched her head. “You’re talking like you believe all of this stuff—ghosts, spirits. Do you?”

“I guess I do,” he said, propping his feet up onto the chaise. “It’s not something I go around spouting off about, but—”

“Has anything like this happened to you before?”

“I’ve seen some things,” he said. “Experienced some things I can’t quite explain. Jane’s right about the fact that this whole town seems to be haunted. Or enchanted. Or something. It’s like the veil that everyone talks about, the separation between this world and the next, seems very thin here. Like a person could pass right through without even knowing it.”

This sent a chill up Tess’s spine. She had always felt Wharton was a magical place. Not a malevolent one. “Why is that?”