Jodie Shield Modern Gothic Mystery

The year was 1888 and the Morning Star was on her maiden voyage when she foundered and sank in a ferocious storm near a village that came to be called Courage Cove. The owner of the shipping line, Horace Grey, was on board with his family. His infant son drowned and his body was never recovered, so he built the house he called Greystone near where the tragedy occurred and often walked along the shore calling his son's name in hopes he would return from the sea. Tragedy followed tragedy within its walls as the years passed and those that died there lingered including a malevolent, powerful entity.It had been vacant for decades when Jodie Shield was shown the property by a local Realtor. She had come to Courage Cove with her black cat Cinda to find her mother's roots for a biography she had promised to write, and doesn't understand why she is attracted to the rambling, derelict mansion. She only knows she needs to be there for some inexplicable reason, so she buys it and begins the restoration even though warned by a friend she was 'waking the devil'. Soon after she moves in, someone else's dreams and memories find her...those of a young Millie Grey who died there more than a century before…and the horror begins.

Originally built in the wilds of Scotland, the ancient, sprawling mansion had been hauled across the sea stone by stone to a remote island in the North Altantic by the Duke of Sotherby to serve a dual purpose. It was to be a prison for his son, Geoffrey Blackthorne, whom he had rescued from the gallows at Tyburn just before he was hanged for his crimes against women and his personal kingdom where he would be master of all instead of a servant to the King.Time had passed since then…centuries… and now the last of his line has returned to her ancestral home. At 91, Florence Blackthorne decided she wanted to end her days in the place she had romanticized throughout her childhood. A place she had been far too young to remember during her brief visits there…had learned what she did know of it through photos and family stories. She had scoffed at the idea it could be haunted until she moved there with her maid and found out…to her horror… how very wrong she was. Determined to stay there at all cost, she writes an old friend who had been the head of the paranormal research department at the university where Simon had studied. He persuades Simon to help, but how is Simon going to convince a very reluctant Jodie she must come with him to Blackthorne Island?

Which witch is which? That is a question Jodie and Simon must answer shortly after they arrive at Storm Harbor…a quaint, picture postcard town with a dark, sinister underbelly. Above it looms a medieval fortress built in the late 1800s by Duncan Mcfadden…a powerful warlock with other 'gifts'. It was an exact replica of one he had much admired in Scotland. Even though his extreme claustrophobia prevented him from ever entering its myriad tunnels, passageways and hidden rooms, he had made sure they were included in the massive build right down to the most minute detail. Now it's a B&B owned by Loretta Phelps who transformed its stark grimness to accommodate her guests' love of luxury and her own personal taste that bordered on the exotic. Jodie and Simon soon find themselves the pawns of dark forces as they try to rescue the spirits trapped within the walls.