The West Wing had become a study in sensory deprivation.
Evelyn sat on the edge of the velvet sofa, her back straight, her hands resting motionless on her knees. The door was locked from the outside—a heavy, electronic thud that had echoed through the suite an hour ago like the closing of a coffin lid. Silas had stayed true to his word: no monitors, no phone, no digital pulse. To a woman who lived in the binary, this was the equivalent of being buried alive.
But Silas had made a fundamental mistake. He had taken away her tools, but he hadn't taken away her mind.
She wasn't crying. Crying was a waste of electrolytes and energy. Instead, she was listening. She was feeling the "breathing" of the house that Silas had mentioned during their rainy morning in the conservatory.
Clockwork.
The word from the nursery laptop was a jagged glass shard in her mind. It wasn't just a code; it was a memory of her mother's voice. Everything in this world, Evelyn, is just a gear. You just have to find the one that's out of sync.
She stood up, her bare feet silent on the silk rug. She didn't look at the cameras—she knew they were there, their unblinking lenses tracked by Silas's security team, or perhaps by Silas himself. She moved to the center of the room, near the massive, antique grandfather clock that stood against the far wall. It was a masterpiece of 18th-century engineering, its pendulum swinging with a rhythmic, hypnotic tock... tock... tock.
In a house filled with high-tech servers and fiber-optic cables, this clock was an anomaly. An "useless" antique. Or so it seemed.
Evelyn leaned her forehead against the cool mahogany casing. She closed her eyes, tuning out the hum of the air conditioning and the distant throb of the estate's generators. She focused entirely on the clock's heartbeat.
Tock... tock... click... tock.
There it was. A microscopic stutter. A gear that didn't belong.
She reached for the brass winding key hidden inside the casing. Her fingers were steady, though her heart was racing with a cold, focused fire. She didn't wind the clock; she turned the key counter-clockwise, three full rotations.
A soft, mechanical groan vibrated through the floorboards. To an observer on the cameras, it might have looked like she was simply adjusting a piece of furniture. But behind the heavy oak paneling of the wall, something had shifted.
A gap opened—no wider than a human hand—between the clock and the fireplace.
It wasn't a secret passage to the outside. It was a speaking tube—an ancient, brass-lined acoustic system built into the bones of the manor long before the advent of digital surveillance.
Evelyn pressed her ear to the opening.
Initially, there was only the rushing sound of air. Then, faint and distorted, she heard a voice.
"...the encryption didn't hold. Vane is demanding the source code by Friday."
It was Marcus. His voice was stripped of its usual professional sheen, sounding harried and sharp.
"I don't care about Vane," a second voice replied. It was Silas. He sounded different—lower, more guttural, the way a man sounds when he's talking to himself in the dark. "I care about the nursery. Who set up that transmitter, Marcus? Who in this house knows enough about my father's old protocols to bypass the main relay?"
"The sweep turned up nothing, Sir. No physical evidence other than the footprint. But the silver coin... it was a direct message. Someone is reminding us of 2018."
"Then they're reminding us of a murder," Silas hissed. The sound of a glass shattering against a hard surface echoed through the tube. "If Evelyn is part of this... if she brought that 'Clockwork' ghost back into this house..."
"She hasn't left the West Wing, Sir. She hasn't even looked at a device. She's just... sitting there. Watching the clock."
"Watch her closer," Silas commanded. "I want to know the exact second her mask cracks. No one is that calm unless they're waiting for a signal."
Evelyn pulled back from the tube, her breath coming in shallow gasps. Silas didn't just doubt her; he was using her as bait. He was waiting for her to break so he could justify the monster he had become.
The anger that had been simmering in her chest since the nursery now boiled over into a cold, lethal resolve. He wanted a ghost? She would give him a haunting.
She moved back to the center of the room, making sure her movements were fluid and "normal" for the cameras. She picked up a book from the coffee table—a heavy volume on the history of the Nightwood fleet—and began to flip the pages.
But her mind was mapping the house. If the acoustic tubes ran from the study to the West Wing, they must also connect to the servants' quarters and the basement tunnels Silas had mentioned. The estate wasn't just a fortress; it was a giant, hollow instrument. And she was going to play it.
Midnight arrived with a heavy, oppressive fog that swallowed the gardens.
In the master suite, Silas sat in the dark, the only light coming from the bank of security monitors on his desk. He was staring at the screen for the West Wing.
Evelyn was asleep. Or she appeared to be. She was curled under the silk duvet, a dark silhouette against the pale sheets. She hadn't moved for three hours.
Silas rubbed his eyes, the pain in his back a dull, throbbing reminder of his limitations. He felt a sharp, bitter tang of regret in his throat—the memory of her bare feet on the cold marble, the look of profound betrayal in her eyes when he had locked the door. He had seen her as a wildfire, a partner, and then, in a moment of primal fear, he had turned her back into an asset.
"Why won't you just break, Evelyn?" he whispered to the silent screen. "Why won't you give me a reason to trust you, or a reason to destroy you?"
He stood up, his legs trembling slightly as he reached for his cane. He needed to see her. Not through a lens, but with his own eyes. He needed to know if the heat he had felt in the dressing room was real, or if it was just another layer of the digital deception.
He moved through the quiet hallways, the thud-drag of his cane muffled by the thick rugs. When he reached the West Wing, he bypassed the electronic lock and stepped inside.
The room was freezing. The window was wide open, the heavy velvet curtains whipping in the damp, foggy wind.
Silas's heart plummeted. He moved toward the bed, his cane hitting the floor with a frantic rhythm. He pulled back the duvet.
It was empty.
A row of pillows had been arranged under the silk to mimic a sleeping body.
"Evelyn!" Silas roared, the word tearing from his throat in a mix of fury and genuine terror.
He spun around, searching the shadows of the room. He expected to find her gone—escaped into the night, back to Julian Vane or whatever ghost had called her.
Instead, he heard a sound. A soft, rhythmic clicking coming from behind the grandfather clock.
Click... click... click.
Silas moved toward the clock, his hand reaching for the concealed holster at his hip. He kicked the side of the clock casing, the heavy wood groaning under the force.
The panel slid open.
Evelyn wasn't running. She was sitting in the narrow, dusty space behind the wall, surrounded by the brass gears of the acoustic system. She was holding a small, silver-plated screwdriver she had scavenged from a loose hinge in the bathroom.
She looked up at him, her face pale, her eyes burning with a cold, terrifying brilliance.
"You're late, Silas," she said, her voice a low, steady blade. "I was beginning to think your security team was as incompetent as your family."
"What are you doing?" Silas hissed, his hand dropping from his weapon as he stared at her. "How did you find this?"
"I'm a hacker, remember?" Evelyn stood up, stepping out from the shadows into the moonlight. She was covered in dust, her oversized sweater smudged with old grease, but she had never looked more powerful. "You took away my binary. So I hacked the physics. Did you know your 'fortress' has a leak, Silas? I heard everything. I heard about the Congo ledgers. I heard about the 'vultures' in the basement. And I heard how much you're enjoying watching me 'break'."
She stepped closer to him, her bare toes touching the edge of his slippers. The tension between them was no longer the desperate hunger of the dressing room; it was the raw, dangerous friction of two predators who had finally stripped away the lies.
"I didn't send that message," she said, her voice dropping into a lethal whisper. "But I know who did. And it wasn't a ghost, Silas. It was a warning. Clockwork isn't a code for a computer. It's a code for a person."
Silas stared at her, his breathing ragged, the pain in his back forgotten. "What person?"
"A person who was in that car ten years ago," Evelyn said, her eyes locking onto his. "A person who isn't buried in a grave, but who has been living in the shadows of this estate since the day you bought it."
Silas's grip on his cane tightened until his knuckles turned white. "That's impossible. No one survived that crash but my father. And he died three years later."
"Then who is currently breathing in the acoustic tube connected to the basement, Silas?" Evelyn asked, a dark, chilling smile touching her lips. "Because I can hear them. And they're calling your name."
The silence of the room was suddenly broken by a sound—a low, rhythmic scratching coming from the floorboards beneath their feet.
Scritch... scritch... scritch.
It wasn't a mouse. It was the sound of a fingernail tapping on wood.
Silas looked at the floor, then back at Evelyn. The 'Golden Cage' had just become a house of mirrors. And for the first time, the monster of New York looked genuinely afraid.
"Chapter fifteen, section two," Evelyn whispered, her hand reaching out to touch the cold, white fabric of his shirt. "In this house, the only thing more dangerous than the truth is the person who's been hiding it."
She leaned in, her lips brushing his ear, her breath hot and defiant.
"Now... are you going to keep me locked in this room, or are you going to help me catch a ghost?"