Book Five, Chapter 98: Clara- Part I
I waited for the storyline to end, but it never did. The needle on the plot cycle said The End, but unlike normal, the needle never reset back to the beginning.
So there I stood, bleeding from my wounds, watching as the sun rose higher.
I was Off-Screen. Everything was Off-Screen.
In my heart, I knew what that meant.
Secret Lore.
When nothing started happening—when Silas never arrived with his red button—all I could do was begin to wander around. That was when I realized, from a distance, that there were no vehicles parked in front of the Manor house. There had been enough vehicles for each of us. I had a convertible, Antoine had a truck, and then there were several others, but none of them were there now.
The fountain, too, was gone. There had been a beautiful water feature of some kind—a statue of a woman—but it was also not there. As I observed that, my eye was drawn to the Manor house itself.
It was beautiful.
It was no longer the decrepit, dying place that teenagers would call haunted. It was new. None of the windows were smashed or boarded up.