A chilly blast of wind slapped at her, nearly tearing her small suitcase from her grasp. Only the vise-like grip of her frozen hand kept the suitcase secure. That was the cause of the howling. The wind was suddenly picking up, and if she didn’t make it to the castle soon she’d freeze to death out here. With the light fading fast, it would be dark soon. Too dark to see her way up the hill.
Against the sting of the wind on her face, Jane chanced a look up at the hilltop. She must have started her climb up the hill twenty minutes ago, but the castle seemed no closer. It appeared to float over the world, the conical roofs of its towers and turrets almost disappearing behind clouds as they reached heavenward. It was like something out of a fairytale, this castle overlooking a thickening blanket of silver snow. And it could all be hers if she just reached its front gate.
No, she would have to do a lot more than that if Wintergarten was going to be hers. Especially since she couldn’t afford a lawyer to help her win her inheritance case. That was the whole point of this trip. It was why she had taken the vacation days from her crummy job answering the phone at the motel. Why she had gotten on a plane for the first time in her life, using frequent flyer miles to pay for the trip to Germany.
Just four months ago, she never would have believed that she would have gotten a phone call in the middle of the night from a lawyer in Germany. The lawyer had called to notify her that her distant relative, Friedrich von Westen, had died with no living heirs. Friedrich’s will had requested that the castle be handed down to his closest surviving relative. That left Jane, her father, and a Wall Street banker she had never met. But her father was in an insane asylum and in no mental state to inherit anything, so it was down to Jane and the banker.
She shivered. Not from the cold wind, but from thoughts of her father. He had abandoned her mother when Jane was just four years old. And thank goodness for that, because her father had ended up becoming one of the most notorious mass killers in New York State history. He had chopped up a dozen innocent people with an ax by the time Jane was ten years old, and she would never be able to get the horror of the crime scene photos out of her mind.
That was why she was here. To prove that she was the rightful owner of the castle and restore a little bit of honor to the family name. And not only that. After years as a single mother working her fingers to the bone, Jane’s mom deserved to finally retire. Turning the castle into a hotel would guarantee that her mother never had to work again.
Finally the castle gatehouse came into view, giving her enough hope to forge ahead. When she reached the gatehouse Jane stopped to catch her breath, exhausted after the long trek up the hill.
The sound of a low voice speaking German startled her, and she peered through the portcullis.
“H-hello?” Jane called as she noticed a hunched-over figure on the other side of the gate. “Is anyone there?”
She cringed. Whoever it was probably didn’t speak any English. She’d have to use the rudimentary German she had been learning over the past couple of months. “Mein name ist Jane Westen.”
The figure came closer and she saw an elderly man holding a flashlight come into view.
“I speak English,” the man said, eyeing her suspiciously.
“Are you Herr Kramer?” she asked. “Wintergarten’s solicitor?”
The man shook his head. “No. I am the groundskeeper.”
“Well, Herr Kramer should be expecting me,” she said.
The groundskeeper’s lips thinned in response.
“Please. I’ve come all this way.” The wind began to pick up in earnest and she shivered. Jane didn’t know what she would do if she was turned away now. Going back down the hill wasn’t an option. The tour company only drove to the hill’s base every few days, and the small car certainly couldn’t drive up the steep slope to the castle. “Is Herr Kramer here?”
“Yes. He is here.” The groundskeeper sniffed loudly, eyed her again for a long moment, then motioned for her to step back.
She did as he instructed and the portcullis slowly went up.
“Thank you so much,” she said gratefully, dragging her suitcase with her.
The groundskeeper said nothing. He merely beckoned for her to follow him across the snow to the castle entrance.
At the castle’s double doors, the groundskeeper produced a set of huge metal keys from his pocket and let her inside.
She followed him into an immense great hall with a vaulted ceiling that made her feel tiny and insignificant. Despite the large fireplace on the far side of the hall, the place still felt drafty. The air was stale and smelled faintly of mildew. As if nobody had lived in the castle for some time. Old armor and deer heads mounted on the walls cast long, dark shadows, the light from the fireplace doing little to illuminate the place.
There were scores of paintings on the walls. Each one was some long-ago ancestor—the grand dukes and duchesses who had lived at Wintergarten, starting with what looked like a fifteenth-century nobleman and ending with a photo-realistic painting of Friedrich von Westen. As she moved through the hall it was impossible to shake the feeling that they were all watching her, the painted eyes following her down the hall.
Jane suppressed a shudder and glanced to her left in an effort to find something less creepy to look at. Mounted on the wall was an assortment of medieval weapons. Swords,
