Suspense

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The silence in Blackwood Manor was not the absence of sound, but a heavy, velvet weight that pressed against the eardrums. Julian Vane stood in the grand gallery, his breath hitching as he stared at the floor-to-ceiling mirror that guarded the entrance to the ballroom.

The mirror was a Baroque monstrosity, its frame a gilded tangle of weeping cherubs and thorny vines. But it was the glass that commanded attention. A single, jagged crack bifurcated the surface, running from the top left corner down to the center, like a lightning bolt frozen in silver. In the ballroom behind Julian, the air smelled of spilled vintage Moët, expensive lilies, and the sharp, copper tang of blood.