City Infernal Read Online Free Page B

crust of the Blue Ridge mountains a hundred miles away; song birds—not garbage-plump pigeons—lifted off the railing when she stepped out.
    It was an alien environment indeed: Cassie preferred the cityscape at night, not late-morning sun shining over farmland and forests. But she wasn’t about to complain. The quiet countryside was what her father craved for his own rehabilitation—Cassie would just have to get used to it. Beggars can’t be choosers, she reminded herself. It beats the view from a psych-ward window.
    Though she lacked her father’s appreciation of country scenery, she absolutely loved the house. Blackwell Hall, as it was called, loomed over a hundred acres of disused grazeland from the summit of a pleasantly wooded incline known as Blackwell Hill. Blackwell Creek burbled at the hill’s foot, feeding unsurprisingly into Blackwell Swamp. When Cassie had asked who Blackwell was, her father had answered with a casual “Who gives a crap? Probably some plantation magnate from before the Civil War.” His law firm had inherited the house in an estate settlement; his former partners had gladly given it to him as part of his severance when he’d agreed to endorse his client list over to them for no future shares. He’d simply wanted out, and the millions he’d invested throughout his career provided several more million per year in interest income. Dad was rich for life, in other words, and Blackwell Hall, regardless of its history, provided the seclusion he believed was desperately necessary for them both.
    The old southern antebellum house had obviously been added to—if not eccentrically—since its original construction. Gone with the Wind meets the Adam’s Family, she thought when she first saw the pictures. Works for me. The front of the original structure—and its polished white-granite pillars—faced west, and around that, the rest of the delightful monstrosity had been built: a three-story manse with a dormer level, a garret level, iron-cresting along the roof, stone cornices, parapets, and off-hanging turrets windowed with stained glass. Ivy crept up the genuine mahogany siding, and great bow windows, complete with functional shutters, seemed to have grown from its fieldstonewalled first story. There was even an old oculus window in the mansion’s central garret.
    This place is so creepy, I LOVE it! was Cassie’s first assessment.
    Inside, the expected clash of styles merged well in an overall refurbishment that borrowed from Colonial and Edwardian styles. Whole walls were reserved for deep man-tall fireplaces and slab mantles and hearths. So what if they’d never be used in the nine-month hot season ? They looked cool just the same. The floor layout was a fascinating maze, with odd corridors branching this way and that, rooms leading to smaller rooms lead. ing to still smaller rooms, frequent dumb-waiters, and even hidden closets behind hinged bookshelves. The original gas-lamp fixtures remained, having been refitted with electric lights; six-foot-high sconces provided standing room for statutes of southern historical figures such as Jefferson Davis, Lee, and Pickett, plus more brooding unidentified figures. Thirty rooms in all, the house was a clash of stereotypes which brought visions of southern belles fanning themselves alongside stuffy robber-barons from the ’20s.
    And the ubiquitous multi-layered drapes kept the interior dark—just the way Cassie liked it.
    What functioned as the “living room” was more like an atrium, a thousand square feet in itself. Exotic throw rugs covered the refinished natural wood floors. There was a den, a study, a sitting room, and a library, too, not to mention a vast country kitchen which her father had upgraded with high-end appliances. Other millionaire upgrades appointed the house: a hot tub, a 54-inch television and home theater, spacious black-marble bathrooms, and much else. Lastly, the house didn’t have a basement, it had a series of