Author: LJ Shen
Genre: Romance
Year: 2020
Series: All Saints High
SUMMARY
He’s been told that good girls like bad boys…and he’s as bad as they come.
They call Vaughn Spencer an angry god, but to Lenora Astalis, he is nothing but a heartless prince. His parents rule this town, its police, every citizen and boutique on Main Street―and all Lenora owns is the grudge against him for the time he almost killed her. Not to mention that between hooking up with a different girl every weekend, breaking hearts and noses and rules alike, Vaughn still finds the time to give Lenora hell during their senior year. She fights back tooth and nail…but she never expects him to chase her across the ocean for an art program after graduation.
Now, here they are, living together in a dark, looming castle on the outskirts of London. He’s a fellow intern. A prodigal sculptor. A dangerous genius. Everyone says that Carlisle Castle is haunted, and Lenora thinks they’re right. After all, the castle now hides Lenora and Vaughn’s most ghastly secrets, and their paths begin to intertwine in ways they never could have imagined.
Vaughn thinks he can kill the ghosts of his past, but he doesn’t realize he’s slaying Lenora’s heart along the way―and some wounds never heal.
She may know his secret…but now he knows her weakness.
LENORA
Lenora, 12; Vaughn, 13
You didn’t see anything.
He is not coming for you.
He didn’t even seeyour face.
Every bone in my body shivered as I tried to bleach the image I’d just seen from my brain.
I squeezed my eyes shut and rocked back and forth, curled like a shrimp on the hard mattress. The rusty metal legs of the bed whined as they scraped against the floor.
I’d always been a bit wary of Carlisle Castle, but up until ten minutes ago, I thought it was the ghosts that terrified me, not the students.
Not a thirteen-year-old boy with a face like The Sleeping Faun sculpture—lazily beautiful, impossibly imperial.
NotVaughn Spencer.
I grew up here and had yet to encounter anything as scary as that brash American boy.
People said Carlisle was one of the most haunted castles in Britain. The 17th-century fort was supposedly the home of two ghosts. The first had been spotted by a footman who’d been locked in the cellar some decades ago. He swore he saw the ghost of Madame Tindall clawing at the walls, begging for water, claiming she’d been poisoned by her husband. The second ghost—that of said husband, Lord Tindall—had evidently been seen roaming the hallways at night, sometimes reaching to fix an off-kilter picture, though not moving it an inch.
They said Madame Tindall had pierced Lord’s heart with a steak knife, twisting it for good measure, the moment she realized he’d poisoned her. According to the tale, he’d wanted to marry the young maid he’d impregnated after decades of childless marriage to Madame. The knife, people swore, could still be seen in the ghost’s chest, rattling whenever he laughed.
We’d moved in when Papa had opened Carlisle Prep, a prestigious art school, a decade ago. He’d invited the most talented, gifted students in Europe.
They all came. He was the Edgar Astalis, after all. The man whose life-sized sculpture of Napoleon, The Emperor, stood in the middle of the Champs-Élysées.
But they were all scared of the rumored ghosts, too.
Everything about this place was spooky.
The castle loomed from a foggy Berkshire valley, its silhouette curling upward like tangled black swords. Ivy and wild rosebushes crawled across the stone exterior of the courtyard, hiding secret paths students often snuck through at night. The hallways were a labyrinth that seemed to circle back to the sculpting studio.
The heart of the castle.