Author's Note: Hey everyone! If you're new to this story, or even if you've read it before, Chapter 1 has been revised and updated. Go check it out!

Seras stood on the edge of the cliff while Mr. Coombe Jr. parked the car, looking out at the bright, brilliant ocean. The blue stretched to the faded white-grey of the horizon, gulls sweeping down left and right to soar over the white-capped waves that crashed to a climax on the rocky shore beneath. She breathed the fresh, salty air, heard the call of birds and baa-baaing of sheep in the rocky fields they'd passed on their way to the house.

Turning, she put a hand on the gate fencepost and looked up at the despondent visage of a home. It had gotten worse since the picture had been taken, the salt spray peeling the paint from the sides of the house and the windows collecting a brown dust on every inch of glass. The porch was leaning, one side nearly fallen in from disrepair, but Seras saw nothing except opportunity. It'll be a wonderful house, once I get my first few paychecks and start on repairs. She tilted her head, looking at the brambles climbing up the eastern side of the home and reaching for the missing shingles of the roof. Above it, the smaller left tower and larger right tower cut unevenly across the clouded sky like broken battlements.

"It feels…" she murmured, a hand going to her throat involuntarily. "It feels as though I'm being watched…."

"Uh, Ms. Victoria?" The realtor came from around the greenhouse, where he'd parked the car in the absence of a proper drive. He looked up at the house with paled cheeks and a trembling smile. "It's, err… it's only a short drive to Laburnum Mount…" he offered.

"But I want to see the inside," she protested, pointing at the sagging porch. He started, as if an electrical current had gone straight through him.

"T-t-the inside?" he repeated faintly, the master set of keys limp in his grasp.

"Yes!" She tilted her head at him before clearing the two rotten steps leading to the door. The porch creaked ominously beneath her weight, but didn't give. "What on earth's the matter?" she called down to him. "I thought you were worried about wasted time!" He shook his head again, pushing his sunglasses up onto his forehead.

"If you insist," he sighed, climbing the stairs and nearly losing his boot when the topmost one cracked. He winced at her, as if saying 'see what I mean?', and then she stepped back to let him pass to the door. He flipped through his keys, and she tried to peer into the dirt-caked windows as she waited. She could see nothing but her own grimy reflection staring back at her, eyes full of hope.

There was a rusty squeal of a tumbler and then the door swung open, only to have the lower hinge break. Mr. Coombe Jr. looked at it, then at her, and held out an inviting hand with a wry smile. She slipped past him to the inside of the house, stopping in the foyer area and surveying it with a smile.

The foyer dipped down past two carved pillars into a larger area that seemed to serve as a room in itself, though there wasn't much other than a single rocking chair and a few end tables pushed around the walls. The stairs ended her, stopping once at a half-landing and then climbing towards the upper story. She walked over to them, happily noting that here the floorboards didn't creak at all. She glanced at the sturdy column that held the railing in place, blowing at it. a cloud of dust flew into the air, dancing in the dim light from the windows.

"Dusty," she said needlessly, turning around and looking at the bare walls. Mr. Coombe Jr. shrugged.

"It's been empty for years. The last tenant only stayed two days." He pointed to the back of the house. "Office is back there, living on the right, dining off the living." He looked around skittishly, following her closely as he spoke. She wondered whether he meant for her protection, or his own. Did he think she'd fall through the floor here?

She shook her head and pressed lightly on the double doors leading to the living area, peering through a crack. The light fell on a face, grim and dark, and for a moment she was startled into thinking that another person was in the house. Her heart leapt in her chest and thud-ump-bumped heavily against her ribs, but she was nothing if not brave and let the doors fly open, standing with set feet and squared shoulders in the threshold. The light from the foyer fell and dispelled the shadows in the room, proving the face to be nothing more than a large portrait.

"Oh," she sighed in mingled relief and disappointment, shaking her head once more at the portrait. She stepped into the room, looking up at it as she drew closer. It was a man of perhaps nine and thirty, or even in his forties, dressed in a black suit with a red cloak—the kind her own great-great grandfather was dressed up in, in the small daguerreotype her Aunt Eva kept on the mantle in the drawing room. His dark hair was long and slightly curled, brushed smoothly over his shoulders and framing the pointed chin, the long nose, the pale visage, the high brow. His mouth was a thin line, his shoulders broad, his face the vision of aristocracy. He looked severe and icy, but in the eyes—oddly colored, though she assumed the portrait's colors had faded what was meant to be brown eyes to a dull red-orange—in his eyes, there was an intelligence, a cunning and wry, humored expression that flickered as embers might.

The portrait maker must have been a master indeed, to catch that sort of expression in a man's gaze. She felt the realtor come up behind her.

"It's a painting," she said, her eyes still locked with the man in the portrait. "For a moment, I thought… who is it?" Mr. Coombe Jr. drew back the heavy brocade curtains, letting in more light as well as a beautiful view of the sea.

"The, uh, original owner. A Count… Alucard." He took in a quick breath and looked away, anywhere in the room but at the portrait.

"A count, you say." She tore her gaze away, turning in a slow circle to see the old-fashioned furniture, the dull reds and browns, the silk wallpaper and regal carpet. "That explains the décor, then."

"Which is in frightful taste!" the man replied, pursing his lips at an old globe with a burnt mark covering eastern Europe.

"We'll have to agree to disagree on that," Seras laughed, pulling aside the curtains to the opposite window. She wrinkled her nose. "What an ugly tree!" she fussed, looking at the skinny, skimpier willow that grew right in the way of what would have otherwise been a picturesque view of the hills.

"I beg of you to not be so… precipitous!" She turned, staring blankly. "Hasty," he amended with a blush. "I tell you, this house will not suit you at all!"

"It suits me perfectly," she declared, running a hand over the red damask of a chaise lounge beneath the window. "And the furniture will do as it is, after Walter runs a vacuum over it." She clicked her tongue at the willow. "But that tree ruins the view. I think I'll have it chopped down."

As she turned from the window, a cold, creeping draft fell across her shoulders and she paused, certain that she'd heard something like a light cough. Playing it again in her mind, she thought it might have actually been a word, or even two words. Blinking rapidly, she looked over her shoulder at the wan businessman still wringing his hands in the center of the room.

"Did you say something?" she asked, eyeing him strangely. He shook his head. The wind, her mind reasoned. I'll have to find that draft and nail it up. "Well," she began, turning back around and keeping her ears pricked for more sounds, and perhaps more holes to be boarded. "I think I'd better see the rest of it."

"As you like."

She went to the kitchen, tried the taps, peered into the stove, and nodded to Mr. Coombe Jr.

Walter will like this, she thought happily, imagining her old friend spending winter evenings before the warm oven, polishing the silver. He was more of a friend than a family butler, and she wanted him to be as comfortable as she in this place. Stepping into the dining room, the smile slipped from her face as she saw the remnants of a broken teacup on the table.

"I thought you said no one had been here!"

"No one's lived here," he explained, working his jaw. "The charwoman was here last week, but… she left the key at my office. She won't be back."

"She must have left in a hurry," Seras said, picking up the handle of the cup between her thumb and forefinger. "Loss of a good teacup, I'd say."

"Well." He took a deep breath. "Ms. Victoria, I—"

"Yes, yes. It won't suit me." She looked at the wooden paneling of the dining room, the French doors that led onto a grassy, yet beautiful courtyard. Walter will like that as well…. "But it does. Now, the upstairs." They climbed the stairs, her gloves picking up dust from the railing, until they both stood on the upper landing. She pointed at another set of stairs, and she shrugged again.

"They lead to the main bedroom, in the right tower." She nodded and climbed them, which wound around and around inside the tower before arriving at a small door. Opening it up, she found a bedroom fit for a king. A mahogany four-poster bed with burgundy curtains, chest of drawers and bureau of the same. Before the door that led to the iron balcony, she saw the oddest of things—a large chair, gilded with gold and stuffed with a velvet cushion.

"Ah, so here is where the count must have sat," she said, running her hand over the arm of the chair. She walked past it and opened the door. Light fell across it and she peered closer. "But…" Mr. Coombe Jr. stood in the doorway, looking concerned. "Oh, that's what it is; you're clean!" she laughed. The room seemed to fill with her laughter, breathe it in and expel it out the open door, where it mingled with the sea air.

"I'm sorry?"

"Not you," she laughed again. "The chair." She turned to the door, intending to step out onto the balcony, when a warm chuckle was added to the ghost of her own laughter. "Did you laugh, Mr. Coombe?" she asked, still staring at the sea. The chuckle became a laugh, a gale, a roar, and then something like hysterics. "Mr. Coombe?" she turned to see the man white as a sheet, taking one look at her before running through the open door and slamming it shut behind him. She heard him trip on the stairs as the entire house seemed to shake with the loud screeches of laughter.

More worried about him than herself, she shut the door of the balcony and skipped the steps three at a time, steadying herself with her hands on the walls. She leaped down the second set of stairs, skidded across the rug, jumped the foyer and ran across the rotting porch. Mr. Coombe, who'd had the decency to wait with the front door open, slammed it shut behind her and nearly broke the upper hinge as well.

"Didn't want to show it to you, but no—you had to see it," he blubbered as he locked the door with shaking hands. She stood on the front walk, looking up at the right tower with her eyes wide open and mouth hanging agape, only slightly. Mr. Coombe Jr. moved to join her, but before he could push her away she laughed. It was a joyous one, borne with the frivolity of youth.

"A haunted house!" she exclaimed happily, snapping her fingers. "Amazing!"

"Amazing!?" the realtor repeated, choking on the word. "This house is driving me to drink!" he admitted, throwing his hand up in the direction of the tower. "Four times I've rented it, four times! And not a single soul stayed a full week." He shivered, shaking his head. "The owner is someone in Australia, some 'Renfield' fellow. I've written to him, phoned him, emailed and faxed begging him to release me of this horrid estate, but he only ever replies with 'Rely on You'," he ranted, before throwing his sunglasses to the ground. "Well, I don't want to be relied upon anymore!"

"I'm sorry—" Seras began, but he wasn't through.

"I don't want to ever see this house again! I wish that Count had lived to be a hundred! I wish he'd never been born! A curse on him!"

"Well… you don't have to see it again. I've decided to take it," she announced, to both him and the house."

"The damn—y-you what?!" Seras nodded, crossing her arms.

"After all, if a person runs off at the slightest sound, then of course it'll never be rented out properly. And even if it is haunted, I'm not frightened of something as insignificant as an apparition."

"But… you heard it laugh!"

"So I did. I'll just laugh all the louder as I pay my £25 a month and live a nice and cozy life in Whitby Church," she replied with a wink. "After all, I am a policewoman. I shouldn't be scared much of anything," she said in a conspiratorial whisper.

"If I may say so," he answered, catching his breath, "fiddlesticks."

"Fiddlesticks indeed. I want Gull Cottage."

"In my opinion, you're the most obstinate young woman I've ever met!" She beamed at him, looking out at the sea before climbing into the passenger seat of his car.

"Thank you! I've always wanted to be considered obstinate."