Whispers of the Silver Coasts

of dull, grey light, muffled by gauzy curtains. For a moment or two she was quite at a loss; where on earth co

a shirt she didn't mind getting paint on – she headed t

r to sit down at a table piled high with fresh frui

able in the large empty room.

takes his meals here, he likes

John Marquand to be one of those men who felt lik

d more in the sunlight than it had at midnight. The stone was all pitted and ol

d it. The colors were pale and fragile, and spiderweb cracks wound through

catch or stop her-but there was something of resignation in her expression; she was already lost. In t

hing properly, but she could make out lighter areas where the paint had peeled away altoge

e's so much emotion in it. Whoever

unblinking eyes. His voice barely reached her e

ed some time." He nodded without any visible reaction. "I

out of the house, trying not to look back. "You keep your mind on what you're supposed to be fixin." He didn't know if she

t, John turned and left, his foot

rush from one pocket and scraped grime from the white marble wall just to the right of an ornate altar depicting some kind of monster bei

never noticed this mural before John pointed it out as she quickly w

e the script written in a language she knew enough of

ed. The mural was

er it was in the chapel. When Sofia came to the door of the chapel, she lo

worked. "You're right," she sighed regretfully. She closed her portfolio and put away

the pictures she shot of the mural. She couldn't get one word out of her head; in

enough by day but at night with low lighting casting deep shadows on the marble floors, it felt no more than a

odded her to push it open, and she did so quietly, cautiously. It was a gallery room. She had never really known what that manor used to be before

t enough space to breathe between each work. All other parts of the estate seemed practically abandoned except for these hallways now filled with art. But these halls were not like th

ing

d was alive compared with everything else in Willing House! There weren't any old paintings either. Old-looking ones yea – th

metimes seen around though usually more generic modernism too: but styles mos

imes out of ten obnoxious abstract as always whether from those wishing themselv

wr

immersed in mind-bending fifteen-minutes-of-fame art movements intriguing enigmatic surrealism. And for so

hn in the doorway, his solid frame taking up the

ng," she rush

isper than he intended. "It was my

st constric

e thought he wouldn't answer. "She died s

rry," Hele

he had been looking at. "She did this one a few m

told her more than he'd intended. Instead she looked ba

in the chapel was one of her many manias. She thou

at?" John's expres- sion grew more serious. "Qu

nd left, leaving Helen

. That mural wasn't just paint on a wall; it was part of the Wolfe family's history,

me to keep going