Chapter 63
Winnie stood frozen in place, a sense of disbelief washing over her.
Moments ago, she had instinctively warned him to duck, not out of fear that the Ghost Baby would collide with Drake.
After all, with the almost sacred gold aura radiating off Drake, any ordinary phantom that dared to approach him was akin to a moth plunging into the flames.
She was more concerned that the Ghost Baby would be obliterated upon impact.
But reality had a different script.
The Ghost Baby wasn’t reduced to dust. Instead, Drake had somehow caught it in his grasp.
Winnie’s gaze flitted to Drake, who was furrowing his brow, a stern look in his eyes as he focused on the struggling wisp of darkness in his palm.
“Can you… see that thing?” Winnie couldn’t help but ask, her forehead creasing in wonder.
Drake turned to look at her, his expression enigmatic, his deep eyes probing. Clearly, he wanted to know what was this thing.
His palm felt no solid touch, more like he was gripping a condensed and struggling mass of air. As the black mist squirmed, trying to escape, Drake instinctively tightened his hold.
Winnie was about to intervene when she saw his action and instinctively shouted, “Don’t!”
But it was too late.
She watched as Drake’s gold aura engulfed the Ghost Baby, and she had only one thought that the Ghost Baby was doomed to vanish into thin air.
However, in the next instant, as the gold aura flooded the Ghost Baby, the dark malevolence that had enveloped it seemed to be dispelled by the light, fading away entirely.
What remained in Drake’s palm was a chubby little thing, pale as a ghost, resembling a marshmallow cherub.
The tiny cherub flailed its little limbs in his grip, still struggling fiercely.
Even Winnie, who had seen her fair share of oddities, couldn’t help but widen her eyes in surprise and confusion.
Was this… the Ghost Baby?
As the dark mist dissipated, Drake too saw clearly the baby in his hand. A rare tremor flickered through his usually calm and indifferent eyes. He seemed baffled by what he had caught.
Subconsciously, he looked to Winnie for answers, seeing her staring blankly at the thing in his hand. His brows drew together more tightly, and he couldn’t help but prompt her, “Winnie.”
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Chaplet 63
Snapped out of her stupor by his restrained and cold voice, Winnie quickly reacted. Without a hint of hesitation, she stepped forward and deftly wrapped the cherub with a Charm, preventing its escape.
The little cherub tried to squirm away, but Winnie’s quick movements had it wrapped in no time. Then, with a simple red string, she tied up the Ghost Baby like a holiday parcel, holding it in her hand.
Drake was speechless.
Even in the present moment, Drake didn’t let much emotion show, except for a slight twitch at the corner of his eyes that betrayed his inner turmoil.
In an instant, he regained his composure and asked calmly. “Is this one of your pets?”
Last time it was a little fox, and now this strange, almost surreal creature, not to mention the vanishing silken thread he had witnessed before.
Drake was beginning to believe that Winnie, the long–lost lady of the Bryant family, indeed possessed some peculiar talents.
Winnie didn’t expect his question to be about that. Her mouth twitched slightly, but she replied composedly, “No, it’s not.”
She wasn’t in the business of keeping ghosts.
“This is a Ghost Baby I caught earlier on the roof of an abandoned school building,” explained Winnie. “It got away by accident just now.”
Drake eyed the wriggling Ghost Baby in her hand, his deep black eyes speechless.
Considering that Winnie could see it too, she saw no point in keeping it a secret any longer. Besides, she had beeh wanting to broach the subject of those three purple lightning bolts she had seen before, and now seemed like the perfect opportunity.
“If you don’t mind, shall we talk inside?” Winnie suggested, lifting the Ghost Baby slightly and nodding toward the Patterson Manor behind him.
With a grave expression, Drake would normally not invite others into his domain. But curiosity
was gnawing at him, so he turned and headed inside.
Winnie followed, holding the Ghost Baby.
It wasn’t her first time visiting the Patterson Manor, but her previous visits had been rushed, and she hadn’t had a chance to appreciate the manor’s interior.
Unlike the Bryant Manor, the Patterson Manor was decorated in a more traditional Western style, with understated opulence and a touch of Eastern influence.
It was dignified and grand, yet Winnie couldn’t shake a certain emptiness about it.
Only when she followed Drake up to the second–floor study did she realize where this feeling of
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emptiness stemmed from. The Patterson Manor was too quiet. Though there was a palpable presence of life, she had hardly seen a soul since entering.
Considering Drake’s peculiar disposition, it wasn’t hard to quess that the master of the house likely preferred not to have people bustling around him.
The servants here were probably well–trained to stay out of sight unless needed.
That wasn’t too strange.
Winnie knew that some familles employed similar practices.
But beyond the servants, what puzzled her more was that she hadn’t seen any other Patterson tamity members, neither during her last visit nor this time.
Were they gone? Or had they moved away?
As Winnie pondered, she followed Drake Into the study.
Winnie didn’t rush to speak. Instead, she casually hung the Ghost Baby she’d been carrying onto the doorknob of the study before she turned to enter, making her way toward the couch.
Drake watched her movements, his eyes clouding over with a silent brooding before he followed her and sat down on the sofa.
“You can talk now.” His voice was a deep baritone, devoid of any emotion, as detached as if he hadn’t just captured a Ghost Baby moments earlier.
Winnie was straightforward, laying out her profession and recounting the events that had occurred in the abandoned school building.
This naturally included the story about Catherine and the baby she had tragically lost.
Drake listened without interrupting, his face betraying little change.
Families with old money and power, like his, typically had a higher tolerance for the Mystical. Sects and their practices, and his experiences from a young age had given him some inklings of the supernatural.
But this was indeed the first time he had come face to face with it: Well, more than face to face, he had actually captured one.
“Have you never seen one before?” Winnie asked, though she knew well enough that with Drake’s golden aura, not encountering spirits within ten meters was the norm.
Spirits would flee at the mere sight of him.
As expected, Drake shook his head. “No, I haven’t.”
Winnie twinkled her eyes and suddenly reached around him, her hands moving swiftly, and then opened her palm to reveal the gold aura she had plucked from him.
Holding her hand out flat, she asked him, “Can you see these, then?”
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