Serpent's Gate Read online

  “Well, from where I’m standing, you didn’t. I think university is overrated, personally. But I suppose everyone’s different.”

  “Quite so.” Boris tilted his head the way he’d done when they’d first met. Luke felt as though Boris were sizing him up somehow. He only hoped he could pass muster. “Tell me,” Boris said at last, “are you busy tomorrow?”

  Luke struggled not to sound too excited. “It’s Saturday, so no. I’m free all day.”

  “Then may I invite you on an excursion? There is a medieval castle I wish to explore a few hours’ drive from here. I have arranged for a private showing.”

  “Sure—I’d love to. That sounds great!”

  “Excellent. I must attend to some business this afternoon, but I will pick you up here at nine tomorrow morning.”

  “Perfect!”

  “Until tomorrow, then.” Boris lowered his shoulders in a brief bow before striding down the path and through the gate.

  This time, Luke watched and admired every confident step he took. Even after Boris had gone, he stood staring at the gate and wondering how he’d managed to do something so right for a change.

  The House on the Cliff

  by Jade Astor

  Please enjoy this sneak peek at Chapter 1!

  Noah Camden is 23, a recent graduate of vocational college with a degree in small-engine mechanics, and utterly without job prospects in his small seaside tourist town. His luck seems to change when he stops to help an obviously wealthy man change a tire on the road. The man, Lloyd Peterson, offers him a job caring for his vehicles at Cliff House, the imposing manor on the nearby cliff, and chauffeuring his son Tristan around for the summer. Tristan, Noah learns, is too afraid to drive after being in a serious car wreck the summer before. He’s spent the last year away from home, though no one wants to say where he was.

  Though they are of vastly different social classes and backgrounds, Tristan and Noah slowly bond. Noah is less comfortable around the other people at Cliff House, including Dr. Adrian Ballard and the twins, Ryder and Sophia Driscoll, who were Tristan’s childhood friends. Though everyone is outwardly friendly to him, Noah suspects they are hiding something about Tristan from him. One day, Tristan breaks down and confides the truth. His first lover was Martin Praxley, a handyman on the estate. While they were driving together, Tristan crashed his Maserati and killed Martin. He now believes Martin’s ghost is haunting him, bent on revenge. Since he cannot be assured of Noah’s safety, Tristan is reluctant to take their budding relationship to the next level.

  Noah can’t believe this wild theory until strange things begin happening and he even thinks he sees Martin himself. He vows to figure out what really happened when the accident occurred…and if it’s possible that Martin could have come back from the dead to torment Tristan.

  Chapter 1

  “Vocational college, huh?” The burly guy with the long grey ponytail and tie-dyed t-shirt peered at Noah over the top of his resume. “Certificate in auto and small-engine mechanics? You’re a little overqualified to work here, don’t you think?”

  Noah shrugged, trying to mask his annoyance. Of course he didn’t fit here in his crisp white shirt and red knit tie. Even the creamy linen-weave sheet of paper with the fresh laser print outclassed the dingy tourist shop’s rows of painted seashells, microsized bathing suits, and clothing plastered with crude slogans and tacky graphics. Still, unless the owner of Dale’s Sea Shack had just teleported down from an alien planet—which might not be beyond the realm of possibility—he should know how scarce real jobs were along the coast. For most of the natives, “working” meant serving the revolving population of tourists in one capacity or the other. The alternative was chronic unemployment, a condition Noah had hoped all his life to avoid.

  “Maybe so.” He answered through clenched teeth, careful to keep his tone neutral. Dale wasn’t the first storeowner on the boardwalk who had received one of his crisp new resumes, and from the looks of things, he wouldn’t be the last. “I’d like to work on cars, but no one’s hiring just now.”

  Dale nodded. “Well, I’ll put this in the file. Couple weeks from now, when the tourists start coming down, I’ll probably need cashiers. If anything opens up I’ll give you a call.”

  Just like that, the interview was over. Noah saw no point in arguing. He’d received the same casual brush-off from every other shop owner he’d talked to that morning.

  After he’d thanked Dale, he set off down the sidewalk, newly come to life with the first wave of spring tourists. Guilt nipped at his heels as he walked back to his car and got in. Far from being disappointed at his lack of success, he felt a certain relief. Seasonal minimum-wage work had its place in the economy, as everyone in his community knew, and even a crummy tourist-industry job would help him put money away toward renting his own place. Still, Noah couldn’t help wanting something more substantial for himself. The auto classes had been a step in that direction, but he hadn’t counted on every other graduating member of his class beating him to the few available positions in the area.

  Maybe his best option would be to leave the area, he thought as he pulled out of his parking space by the wharf and drove up the narrow street that ran along the coastline. At 23, he felt it was time to strike on his own, and his parents agreed. Any city, or nearly any small town for that matter, would offer more opportunities than Cliff Harbor, Maine. A few times he’d even planned such a flight, letting his imagination drift to exciting worlds of concrete and late-night clubs, including some catering exclusively to men. Maybe he could even find a lover as well as a respectable job. Sure, the tourist trade brought in some good-looking guys, many of them single, but inland responsibilities always drew them back to mainstream society as soon as the air turned cool. For them, Cliff Harbor remained a separate world, a place of escape and rejuvenation. For its natives, it sometimes seemed more like an airless room without windows or doors.

  Still, the room itself was beautiful. As he pulled away from town and headed up the coast on his way home, Noah rolled down his car windows and settled his shoulders against the seat. He reveled in the blasts of cool salty air and drank in the sight of the choppy grey-green sea with its jagged border of tall black rocks. Whatever adventures might await him in the outside world, he knew they could never compete with the simple pleasures of living near and communing with the sea. Like most of the native-born inhabitants of Cliff Harbor who complained about the depressed economy, the damp weather, and the condescending summer tourists, Noah worried he could never be truly happy anywhere else.

  A few miles outside of town, the road narrowed and a vast panorama of sand and sea grass stretched along one side of the pavement. The open ocean raged on the other. Only a few houses perched on the distant cliffs spoiled the illusion that Noah was alone in a vast, picturesque wilderness. For all it affected him, though, those houses might as well have been uninhabited. He had never seen or spoken to any of the people who lived in them. They kept to themselves, entertaining other wealthy friends in their private enclaves across the cove and sending their children inland to fancy private schools during the colder months. People like Noah didn’t travel in their circle, which was fine with him, and he supposed it suited them well enough, too.

  Just around the next curve waited an unexpected sight. A car, the first one he’d seen since leaving the village, had pulled over to the right shoulder with its rear bumper jutting into the road. The air coming through the window turned pungent with burnt rubber, and a few pieces of what looked like tire tread lay across the yellow line in front of him. As he drew closer, he saw a lanky middle-aged man standing on the gravel and stabbing angrily at a cell phone.

  Noah’s first impulse was to keep driving. After all, the guy owned a cell phone, and to judge from his sleek sky-blue convertible, he could afford a tow truck and repair crew. Just as quickly, he felt ashamed of his selfishness. Sighing, he moved his foot to the brake and slowed to a reluctant stop.

  While he walk
ed toward the disabled vehicle, the other driver looked up expectantly. Noah soon saw the source of the burnt rubber smell and the scraps on the pavement. The front tire on the passenger side had blown out and hung in melted shreds around an expensive custom rim. The guy must have been traveling at one hell of a clip to do so much damage, he mused, but with a car like that, who could really blame him?

  “Need some help?” he asked.

  The stranded motorist held up his cell phone—the latest and most expensive model on the market, Noah noticed—with an exasperated expression.

  “No service out here,” the man complained. “Why do I bother paying for roadside assistance when it’s impossible to reach anyone in a crisis?”

  “The cliffs block the signal in certain spots,” Noah said, nodding at the hulking black rocks on the opposite side of the bay. “It’s kind of luck of the draw, depending where you stop.”

  “As you can see, I had no choice. My new tires are apparently no better than the cell phone reception here.”

  He went on grumbling about the high prices and poor quality of various products, but Noah tuned him out. “Do you have a spare tire?” he asked when the man paused to take a breath.

  “As a matter of fact, I do. I don’t suppose you know how to…?”

  “No problem. You’re looking at a certified mechanic—changing a tire is definitely something I can handle.”

  The man’s tense expression relaxed into a grateful smile. “Well, then, I would say it’s lucky you came along when you did.”

  “Looks that way.”

  Noah waited while the man touched his thumb to an electronic key that popped the trunk open with a high-pitched chirp. Since he only owned the one tie, he pulled it off and stuffed it in his pocket before he rolled up his sleeves and got to work. While he knelt on the ground and wrestled with the lug wrench, he noticed the man’s spotless pressed khakis and gleaming tasseled loafers. No surprise he didn’t want to crouch down in the dirt and smear his shirt cuffs with grease.

  While Noah worked, he made casual conversation about his auto classes at the voke, including the inevitable scarcity of jobs for recent graduates, whatever their specialty. The man nodded, watching Noah’s hands pull the old tire free and then reach for the spare.

  “You can put the ruined one back in my trunk, if you don’t mind,” the man said. “I shall be taking it back to my dealer and demanding a replacement.”

  “Good idea,” Noah said, suppressing a grin as he finished attaching the doughnut. No way would the dealer refund a tire some jerk had torn up by speeding down a bumpy coastal road, but that wasn’t his problem. “I wouldn’t drive too far on the spare if I were you. It’s kind of flimsy. Do you have a long way to go?”

  “That it is also inadequate for its intended purpose does not surprise me in the least,” the man said with an indignant sniff. “Everything is the same these days. Planned obsolescence is destroying this country, one defective product at a time. In any case, no, I do not have far to go. Just across the bay and I’ll be home.” He pointed at the water, which puzzled Noah for a moment until he realized the guy was indicating one of the elegant stone manors perched above the waves.

  “That’s your house?” he asked, too taken by surprise to worry about sounding ignorant.

  “Yes. Cliff House is mine. You know the place?”

  “Well, I’ve seen it from this side of the bay, of course. I’ve never gotten very close to it.” Noah felt his cheeks grow warm as he spoke. He must sound like a real rube to this guy—one of the obscenely wealthy people he had just congratulated himself on ignoring.

  Untroubled, the man pulled out his wallet. “I would like to compensate you for your time and consideration. What would you consider fair?”

  Noah saw him flick his thumb through a thick green wad, and his blush deepened. He realized he could ask for most any price—maybe even a week’s salary at a place like Dale’s Sea Shack—and this guy would toss it over like pocket change. What came out of his mouth next startled even him.

  “Not necessary. I’ll just consider it my good deed for the day.”

  Inwardly, he was promising to kick himself once the guy had driven away. He could have used the money, and flashing it around would have gotten his parents off his back for a while. Gentlemanly pride was way overrated, he decided.

  For a long moment the guy stared from beneath lowered brows, and Noah wondered if he’d offended him. He watched the guy’s thumb stray from the cash to one of the credit card slots in his still-open wallet.

  “Was I mistaken when heard you say you were looking for work?”

  “No mistake. I sure am,” Noah admitted. Belatedly he realized these rich guys had connections, and his pulse quickened. Maybe the guy owned shares in a garage or something—but no way was he ever that lucky.

  The guy’s thumb moved again, sliding down into the wallet. Next he extracted a business card and held it out until Noah took it.

  Lloyd Peterson, it read, followed by Cliff House and then the address and phone number.

  “I have…an unusual situation,” Lloyd Peterson said. He spoke slowly, as though weighing each word. “I am in need of a household employee who is experienced with cars as well as a good driver. I suppose you meet both of those qualifications?”

  Noah nodded a bit nervously, taken completely off guard. Was he on the verge of solving his employment problems? Realizing he might not have to beg Dale for the chance to peddle ugly t-shirts nearly made him giddy with relief.

  “No major accidents yet,” he blurted. When Lloyd Peterson frowned, he regretted his brash choice of words.

  Instead of dismissing him, though, Peterson nodded slowly. “Good. Meeting here was serendipitous after all. I believe you just might be the solution to my dilemma.”

  Noah had never heard a job vacancy described quite that way, but he didn’t dwell on the unusual choice of words. He remembered the manila envelope still lying on his passenger seat.

  “As a matter of fact, I have a resume with me,” he said. Clutching the business card, he hurried back to his car and grabbed one. Lloyd Peterson accepted it, scanned it briefly, and nodded again.

  “Noah Camden,” he read off the top of the page. He seemed to by taste the name as he rolled it over his tongue. Luckily it seemed to pass muster. “Very well, Mr. Camden. Come to my house tomorrow at nine in the morning. We can talk more then.”

  “I’ll be there,” Noah promised. “Nine sharp.”

  “You can find your way all right?” Lloyd tilted his head as if to examine Noah from a different angle. “The roads leading up the cliff can be difficult to navigate—even treacherous, some might say.”

  “I’ll be fine. Like I said, I’m a careful driver—and I can see the house from here, so I know I can find my way.”

  “Excellent. See you then. And thank you again for the good deed. You may find yourself performing a few more of those before the week is out.”

  With that, Lloyd Peterson turned and got back into his car. Noah watched him peel onto the road, driving much too fast, the doughnut screeching furiously in protest. Lloyd would be lucky if he made it home without suffering another blowout.

  But then, guys like Lloyd Peterson tended to be lucky. In most cases, that was how they got rich in the first place.

  Noah hoped some of that luck was about to rub off on him.