Prologue

Doctor Dana Langston walked down the insipid hospital hallway to the coffee machine. She was about to end a 72 hour-long shift, and keeping her eyes open had become a herculean task by itself. She hissed at the overly bright lights that illuminated the corridor, finding them abrasive enough to bring on a migraine. The extreme January cold didn't help to make her feel better, either – it crept under her clothes, spreading across her skin like the lacy tide on a frigid winter beach.

There was a blizzard raging outside, one so strong that the familiar sight of New York's dirty streets had been almost erased. Dana could see so from the transparent double doors that were a few feet away from the coffee dispenser, and part of her wished she could be snuggled under the warm covers of her bed, reading a book and having some hot cocoa. She looked at her clock – it read 3:00 am, almost time to go home... Well, she'd probably have to wait until the blizzard had toned down a bit, no one in their right mind would go out during it!

The smell of substandard coffee soon loitered inside the ward, and after tucking her change inside her pocket, Dana finally allowed herself to sit down on one of the homogeneous plastic chairs that were lined against the dull beige walls. She focused her tired eyes on the flickering screen of the old TV set hanging from the ceiling; the commercials had begun – short, attention grabbing and required no intellectual effort to be understood. If she was lucky, she'd be able to spend the last half hour of her shift sitting there, without needing to move – after all, her patients were already stable and asleep, and there had been no emergency calls. She really needed a rest, for she could already feel the pain of one of her tension headaches radiating around her entire head; she needed to close her eyes, just for a second, and wait until the Tylenol she had taken a few minutes ago made effect.

Dana had almost dozed off when she heard a faint rapping noise coming from nearby. The blows were paused, and seemed to be progressively losing strength, and it took a second for her exhausted mind to even register that the noise was coming from the glass doors in front of her. She lazily stretched in her chair before opening her eyes.

The sight that met them slapped her the rest of the way awake.

Just outside the door, the trembling shape of a woman huddled, collapsed, on the freezing sidewalk. Dana almost didn't believe it at first – who would? Nobody had been past that door since this weather had started, and nobody had been expected until it'd cleared up! But blinking didn't make the sight go away, and the woman weakly tried tapping again only to miss the glass entirely.

Horrifyingly, that was when Dana saw how skeletal her hands looked, how her cheekbones looked sharp enough to cut, and how pale the rest of her face was compared to her blue lips.

Shit. The poor woman was hypothermic! And it was no wonder, when you took the time to notice that she was only wearing oversized pyjamas and a pair of old boots! How long had she been out there, malnourished and poorly dressed and exposed to New York's worst blizzard in years? Why had she gone out there in the first place?!

Dana immediately sprung out of her chair, ran to the doors and dragged the semi-conscious woman inside the hospital. Although the doctor was horrified by her clearly life-threatening condition, she knew exactly what she had to do. She swiftly took her cardigan off, and then proceeded to wrap the woman with it, thereby beginning the long and tedious process of raising her body temperature.

"Hannah!" Dana screamed, "Hannah, get your ass over here immediately!"

A petite, brown-haired nurse rushed into the ward, and gasped in horror when her eyes saw the poor woman that Doctor Langston was holding against her body.

"W-wha- what happened? Did she get here walking?!"

"Yes, she did! She's hypothermic! Go get me all the blankets you can lay your hands on! Then bring a gurney and Doctor Jacobs."

The nurse nodded and ran away to complete the instructions she had been given by the winded doctor, who was now looking for a pulse. Luckily she found it – it was faint and paused, but it was there.

"Holy shit..." Dana muttered to herself the moment she removed the drenched pyjama pants. There was a trail of uncountable bruises and abrasions all over her legs, which the doctor soon discovered, her own pulse racing, were mirrored on the woman's arms and torso. "Who did this to you…?!"

Truthfully, the doctor hadn't expected an answer, so she jolted when the woman's eyes opened and she immediately started throwing out low, faint grunts, like she was trying to speak. Like she was trying to speak but the words were trapped in a prison deep in her body. Trapped and trampling each other in their rush and desperation to get out.

Her eyes widening, Dana nodded and shushed her.

"Okay, okay! It's okay, just…just take your time – take it easy, take it slow," her mind raced as she thought about what to do next. What to ask. "Can you tell me who you are?"

The mystery woman tried again, but stopped and started groaning in pain instead when Dana made the mistake of trying to touch and move her arm by her wrist. Her wrist, the horrible swelling of which was creeping out from under her pyjama sleeve, was at an angle no human wrist should have been.

Fuck. So her wrist was broken, too.

"B...Babcock," the woman choked out. "I... C.C. Babcock."

"Your name is C.C. Babcock?" the doctor tried again, sighing in relief when she spotted Hannah bringing lots of fluffy blankets with Doctor Jacobs hot on her heels.

"Y-yes... I was k-kidnapped... 23rd of May..." C.C. whispered before closing her eyes once again.

Dana's head was reeling. Had she just said 23rd of May? That was 8 months ago! "Miss Babcock, please, open your eyes," Dana pleaded as she, Hannah and Doctor Jacobs placed the woman on the stretcher and used the blankets to bundle her up.

"Call Niles... I... wanna... Niles..." C.C. rambled, not opening her eyes. She was too tired, and very much in pain – a nap, she thought to herself, she needed a nap. Everything would be fine after she'd had a nap.

"Who is this person? Miss Babcock? Speak to me!" Dana ordered her, pushing the gurney through the long hospital corridors.

"Niles... Sheffield butler... I... need him...call Niles... I need Niles."

She was finally safe – or well, as safe as she could be considering what had happened. C.C. welcomed the darkness that was slowly consuming her, and Niles was the last thing in her mind's eye before she fell into oblivion, finally losing the battle to remain conscious.

Gasps of air ripped through the dark of Niles' room, drowned out only by the shrill ringing of the telephone that had to have woken him. The cold air had hit his face as he'd bolted upright, and he'd wiped the sweat from his face as he'd caught his breath back and realised what was happening.

What was happening, and what had happened. He was almost grateful he'd woken up, even if looking at the clock did tell him it was five in the morning. The nightmare he'd been having until the phone had torn him from it had been the worst yet…

He dreaded to think how much worse they could get. They'd plagued him since the day one Miss C.C. Babcock, Broadway producer, had disappeared – seemingly off the face of the Earth – eight months previous.

The last time he had seen her was when he'd woken up in a hospital bed after his heart attack…

It had been his fault. His stupid, cruel prank that had made her go. After having smacked him with the bouquet of flowers she'd bought for him, of course. And then she'd just never come back – not to work, not to anywhere, as far as anybody could tell. No one knew what had happened to her nor where she was, and as the months had gone past and the police search had practically turned in circles, Niles had felt his hope of anything changing, any news or concrete evidence, slipping away.

He'd wanted to trust them for all this time. To believe that they could really do something and find Miss Babcock and bring her back to them all. But the longer it went on and as every day passed, the less he could see it happening anymore. Everything seemed to lead to dead-ends, no answers, no evidence. And no matter how hard he pushed, no matter how hard any of them pushed, what was there to be done? The police could only do so much when they were basically grabbing at and trying to hold onto ghosts.

Fuck, he hoped she wasn't one of those ghosts now…he didn't think he could bear it. The mansion had only just been standing for nearly a year, and it wouldn't hold much longer…

Swallowing, he fumbled around on his bedside table for the still-screeching phone. He didn't know who could be calling, and he wouldn't have cared if there wasn't a chance it could've been the police. It was probably utterly pathetic of him, but there was still hope in there. Hope, and a dream that maybe one day he'd see C.C. Babcock come through the door of the mansion again, smiling and throwing her coat at him without even acknowledging his zinger.

His hand closed clumsily around the receiver and he picked up.

"Sheffield residence?" he rasped.

"Niles? It's Detective Lane. I need you to get to Lenox Hill Hospital right away."

Niles' heart skipped a beat. Hospital?! What had happened? "W-Why? What's the matter?"

"She's been found. C.C.'s alive and back with us."