Everlasting

  Beth was already asleep again. Will lay down next to her, and Ivy next to him. She was the last to drift into a fitful sleep, and she awoke before the others.

  Sitting up, feeling the morning’s damp chill, she hugged her knees to her chest. On one side of them the dunes looked like pale and rounded hills against an orange sky. On the other, the bank of dark vegetation gradually assumed the leafy outlines of shrubs and dwarfed trees. As the sky brightened, Ivy’s gaze fell upon the end of the narrow boardwalk extending from the bluff’s stairway to the dunes. “Dusty.”

  She rose to her feet, and the cat, tail held high, turned circles on the walkway, meowing when she was close enough to pet him.

  “Some watch-cat you are, cutting out when things get rough.”

  Dusty rubbed his cheek against her hand and trotted toward the steps.

  “I’m not in danger now, thank you.”

  The cat waited for her at the bottom of the steep stairway, his back to her, his nose pointed upward and tail waving lightly. Ivy glanced toward the landing, halfway up the steps.

  “Looking for me?” Lacey asked.

  “Actually . . . yes.” Ivy climbed the stairs, arriving at the facing benches just as Dusty leaped into Lacey’s lap.

  “Good boy,” Lacey said, running her purple-painted nails through the cat’s orange fur. “You know, when Ella was alive, it took all my energy just to materialize the tips of my fingers so I could pet her.”

  “Ella liked you and Tristan.”

  “She was partial to Tristan,” Lacey replied. “But then, aren’t we all?”

  Lacey looked as Ivy had seen her the last time, dressed in a tank top and ripped jeans. Her blunt cut bangs blew in the wind.

  Ivy sat down opposite her. “Lacey—”

  “‘I need your help,’” Lacey interrupted. “You know, if I had a feather for every time you’ve said that, I’d be—”

  “An angel?”

  “A cockatoo. So what is it this time?” Lacey asked.

  “Beth, Will, and I need your help.”

  “The radio especially.” Radio was Lacey’s term for a natural medium, a person open to spirits from the other side. “She’s getting mostly one channel now. Gregory’s.”

  “Can you help her?” Ivy asked. “Can you slip inside Beth?”

  “What? Do you think I’m crazy?” Lacey exclaimed

  “Or inside me,” Ivy said, “and help Will and me expel Gregory.”

  “The way you talk, chick, you’d think it was as easy as voting him off the island.” She spread her hands as if holding up a title. “I can see it: Soul Survivor, Heaven’s newest reality show.”

  Ivy grimaced.

  “I’ve been making some inquiries about the situation,” Lacey went on. “A demon is expelled from this world if the person he’s occupying dies. Of course, if the demon realizes what’s going on, he’ll slip out before his doom is sealed and find another host.”

  Ivy shook her head. “There must be some other way to get rid of Gregory.”

  “Well, then, you figure it out. I have other clients who appreciate me and—”

  “Beth tried to kill me last night.”

  Lacey blinked. “Excuse me?”

  “Afterward she passed out, but when she came to, Will and I could communicate with her. The only other time I could get through to Beth was when she was holding a pendant we’d given her. Could it have special power?”

  Lacey sat back against the bench, thinking. “No more power than you and Will have. And no less either. Must work kind of like saints’ relics—as an extension of the strength in you and Will. She shouldn’t take it off.”

  “It’s gone.”

  “A pendant, you said. With an amethyst? Look anything like this?” Lacey asked, holding it up.

  “Where did you find it?” Ivy cried, both stunned and relieved.

  Lacey flicked her head. “At the bottom of the steps.”

  Beth had said the water wanted it, and Will had seen Beth standing at the top of the stairway, talking to “the water.” This was as far as she had been able to throw it.

  Dangling from Lacey’s fingers, the purple stone caught pink fire from the rising sun, then the angel dropped it in Ivy’s hand. Ivy’s fingers closed around it.

  They sat quietly for several minutes, watching the sun edge above the horizon.

  “I’m glad to have this back. Still, Will and I could really use your help watching over Beth.”

  “Like I told you, if I had a feather for every time you’ve said to me—”

  “So maybe I’m your mission,” Ivy suggested mischievously.

  Lacey stared at her. “Only if Number One Director has a rotten sense of humor.”

  Ivy shrugged. “Anyway, Will thinks I should go home for a few days.”

  “Your family’s gone. I saw Philip just before they left.”

  “I know. I was thinking of going to Providence.” Ivy felt Lacey’s sharp eyes probing her.

  “Have you told that to Will?” Lacey asked. “Have you mentioned to him that you’re still seeing ‘Killer Luke’ and that he’s really Tristan?”

  “For Will to believe that Luke is dead and Tristan is occupying him is too much to ask right now. I don’t want to push for too much too soon. He needs to trust me fully so we can fight Gregory.”

  “Trust you fully and be partially in the dark,” Lacey remarked.

  “Yeah. It’s the best I can do.”

  The sun was up. Ivy reached in her pocket and turned off her alarm. “I have to go, Lacey. Aunt Cindy will be making coffee, and we’ve got to slip past her.”

  Lacey looked over her shoulder. “I might be able to arrange a distraction. Just for my own amusement,” she added quickly. “Not because it would help you.”

  “Of course not,” Ivy replied. “You’re the best, Lacey.”

  Nineteen

  “EVERYTHING OKAY?” AUNT CINDY ASKED IVY THE next afternoon.

  Ivy’s packing had been interrupted by another visit from Rosemary Donovan.

  “Yes, thanks,” Ivy replied, carrying her overnight bag and a shopping bag filled with treats through the cottage’s screen door.

  Aunt Cindy, gardening in the large plot between the cottage and inn, rose from her knees and peeled off her gloves. “Ms. Donovan seemed concerned.”

  “She was a little.” Ivy set her bags on the swing. “The girl they found in the canal, Alicia Crowley, was once a close friend of Luke. Officer Donovan is afraid he might be back on the Cape.”

  She had come to warn Ivy as well as to show her the photo of Alicia for a second time. But there was no need to do that: Alicia’s picture was all over the news.

  “Then I’m doubly glad you’re leaving!” Aunt Cindy said, tucking strands of faded red hair behind one ear. “And when you come back, I’m going to persuade Beth to go home for a few days. My agreement with your parents was to treat you like independent college students, not little campers, but the two of you are looking a bit too much like college kids—I think you’ve been burning the candle at both ends.”

  “We probably do need some sleep,” Ivy replied. “Thanks for the time off. See you Sunday.”

  “Drive safe!”

  “And thanks again for the homemade goodies,” Ivy said, holding up the bag stuffed with Aunt Cindy’s bread, jam, and cookies.

  As she walked the path to her car, Ivy remembered her stepfather saying her mother’s love brought out the best in him. So what did it mean when the person you loved brought out the liar in you?

  But what choice did she have? Ivy asked herself. When fighting for someone’s life and freedom, when those things had been unfairly taken away, right and wrong seemed to get mixed up.

  “Hello, Ivy.”

  Lost in thought, she hadn’t seen Chase getting out of his small black Porsche.

  “Hey, Chase. Looking for Dhanya? She went with Kelsey to Chatham.”

  “Did she? I guess we got our wires crossed.”

  “A half
hour ago,” Ivy said, continuing to her car.

  “Let me help you with that,” Chase said, reaching for Ivy’s overnight bag.

  “Thanks, but I got it.”

  For a moment, both their fingers wrapped around its handle and pulled. Swallowing her irritation, Ivy let go.

  “Where are you going?” he asked.

  “Home.”

  “Nice,” he said. “For how long?”

  “A few days.”

  “Is everything all right?”

  Instead of carrying the luggage to her car, Chase stood still, boxing in Ivy. She made a wide pass around him and unlocked the VW. “Just taking a break,” she said, holding out her hand for the bag, then tossing it in the trunk.

  “I thought maybe you and Will weren’t getting along.”

  “We get along fine,” Ivy lied.

  “It didn’t look like it at my party.”

  She walked around to the other side of her car to put the food up front by the air conditioning. Chase’s habit of showing up unexpectedly and talking about things that weren’t his business felt invasive.

  “You left my party early,” he continued.

  “I had a headache. I tried to find you, but you were busy. Dhanya was supposed to tell you.”

  Chase rested an elbow on the roof of her little car. He was “gorgeous,” as Beth had once observed. With his dark curly hair and gray eyes, he needed only a heavy sweater, boots, and a backdrop of Irish headlands to be a travel ad. But he didn’t read social signals very well.

  “Sorry, Chase, I’ve really got to go,” Ivy told him, opening the door, forcing him to step quickly out of the way.

  “The girl who killed herself,” he said suddenly, “Alicia Crowley. She was the one at the carnival, the girl who recognized Luke, wasn’t she?”

  If this was bait to keep her talking, he had succeeded. Ivy stood with the door hanging open. “Yes.”

  “Do you think her death had anything to do with Luke?”

  Ivy kept her voice light, trying to sound innocently surprised by the question. “How would I know?”

  “Female intuition.”

  She grimaced.

  “She wasn’t strangled,” Chase volunteered. “That must be a relief to you.”

  “Not much of a relief to her,” Ivy snapped. She was getting angry.

  “And there was no obvious sign of violence on her body, no sign of a struggle,” he added.

  Ivy frowned. “How do you know that?” Donovan had refused to give Ivy any details about the investigation, saying the police would make a public statement when they thought the time was right.

  “My dad has friends in law enforcement.”

  “I thought he was a lawyer in Providence.”

  “He is. His legal counsel is sought all over. He knows everybody.”

  Was Chase showing off again, demonstrating his knowledge of things no one else knew and his family’s many connections, or was he really looking for information about “Luke”?

  Ivy dismissed the latter idea. She suspected that Chase had an enormous need for attention. As soon as he perceived himself as “rejected,” whether by Beth’s backing away or Ivy leaving his party early, he acted like a child seeking to win back attention however he could.

  “Well, it sounds as if your dad knows a lot more than I do,” Ivy replied, getting into her car, slipping her key into the ignition. “Keep me posted. And if I were you, Chase,” she added, “I’d get down to Chatham. I’m sure Dhanya is waiting for you.”

  TUESDAY NIGHT, AN HOUR AFTER DARK, WHEN Tristan was emerging from the church basement, he heard someone whistling. Stepping back inside the window, he listened intently: the song from Carousel. Ivy had come to the church again. He whistled back and waited impatiently, barely able to see the dark-cloaked figure slip out from a stand of cedar.

  Ivy handed a knapsack through the window, then climbed into his arms. With the window still open, they didn’t say a word, but he couldn’t wait—he pushed back her hood and covered her face with kisses. The feel of her arms around his back, holding on as if nothing could ever make her let go eased his mind and heart.

  After a few minutes he softly closed the window and replaced the block of wood, then picked up the sack and led the way upstairs, a path he could now traverse in total darkness. After so many hours alone in the church, he could tell where he was by sound, from the slightest creak made by the pressure of his foot to the miniscule heating and cooling noises of wood, glass, and metal. He knew, too, the smells, and was as sure as a cat in the dark.

  “You shouldn’t have come,” he said softly. “But you came! You shouldn’t have, but—”

  “Make up your mind!” They were standing in the altar area, he holding her, she burying her laughter in his chest. He tugged on her hood. “Nice cloak. I wasn’t sure if it was a stray princess or a vampire climbing through the window.”

  “I picked it up in Providence today. You can find anything there. I have some things to show you, Tristan. Can we go to the tower?”

  Again he led her though the dark church, and when they reached the ladder, placed her hands on either side of it. “The trapdoor’s open.” He followed her up the ladder, then reached effortlessly for the flashlight, which he had learned to leave in the same place. Ivy had brought a second light and turned it on. Then she removed her cloak.

  Tristan blinked, unsure what to say. He didn’t want to hurt her feelings, if this was some new trend. He’d never understood fashion and makeup. To him, the simpler the better—he wanted to see the real girl. As his old friend Gary used to say: What’s better than naked?

  “Wow,” he said.

  Ivy smiled and turned around. “I’d do a runway walk, but I’d probably fall through the trapdoor.”

  She was wearing leggings that were sheer as stockings and colored with hearts, roses, and skulls, looking almost like tattoos. Her booties were open-toed thongs, and her toenails were painted different colors. He pointed to her feet. “Are they, uh, comfortable?”

  “Sure.”

  He fished for something else to say. . . . “Lacey likes tank tops.”

  Ivy was wearing a black one, but it was the long vest she wore over it that he couldn’t stop looking at. It was loosely woven from shiny ribbons and pieces of glass, fragments that appeared to be recycled from beer bottles.

  “I hope they filed that glass smooth.” The moment he spoke, he regretted it. He sounded like his father.

  Ivy burst out laughing. “You hate my outfit.”

  “No, no, I think it’s . . . really interesting.”

  “Do I look like an art student?”

  “An art student,” he repeated, mystified.

  “One who might have gone to school with Corinne?”

  “Oh . . . Ivy—?”

  “Wait till you see the makeup!”

  “You’ve been spending too much time with Lacey. Ivy, what are you up to?”

  “A little research in Providence. I want to start with Tony Millwood, the guy Alicia said was Corinne’s longtime confidante.”

  “Alicia also said that Corinne took advantage of him, and he became angry and resentful.”

  “Exactly. Resentful people feel the need to talk, to voice all those things that infuriate them.”

  “Things like the way new friends—art students—replace old friends like him?” Tristan pointed out.

  “There’s a possibility he’ll refuse to talk to me,” Ivy conceded. “But on the school website there were student pages with links. Some of Corinne’s stuff is still there, including a photo essay on a body shop. Which means I now have a believable reason to show up at his shop and ask questions, a reason that should flatter him.”

  But refusal to talk was the least of Tristan’s concerns. “Ivy, we’re looking for a murderer. Everyone in Corinne’s life, especially someone she made angry and resentful, is a suspect.”

  “I’ll be fine. With two girls dead from the same neighborhood, only a lunatic would go after a th
ird,” Ivy reasoned.

  “Just how sane do you think a murderer is?”

  “It will be daytime,” she argued, “with people around. And if you go to Providence with me, you won’t be far away.” Ivy took his hands in hers. “Tristan, the police are not going to ask the questions that need to be asked. It’s too easy for them to blame everything on Luke. If we don’t dig for the truth, no one else will.”

  Tristan withdrew his hands and walked a tight circle around the tower.

  “We owe it to Alicia,” she said.

  Tristan stopped in his tracks. He didn’t need the reminder.

  “I heard that there were no external signs of a struggle,” Ivy said. “If nothing odd is found in the autopsy, the authorities are going to call it a suicide. Andy thought that a paralyzing drug that leaves no chemical trace was used on Luke. If it was used on Alicia, she couldn’t have put up a struggle as she was dumped in the water. I think that Alicia died—that she was murdered—the same way as Luke.”

  “These are just theories,” Tristan said, not because he thought Ivy was wrong, but because he hated the idea that Alicia had been drawn into the murderer’s web by trying to help them save himself from Luke’s fate.

  “Okay, but there is one indisputable fact,” Ivy said. “Alicia wanted to clear Luke’s name.”

  “Because she thought her Luke was alive. We can’t be sure she would have met with us if she had known Luke was dead.”

  Ivy squeezed shut her eyes, but the tears still fell. Tristan felt powerless to comfort her because he couldn’t comfort himself. Alicia was dead—they had asked her to help them, and now she was dead.

  At last Ivy said, “All I know is, at this moment, you are alive. And we need to pick up where our search left off.”

  Twenty

  “HEY. GEMMA,” TRISTAN SAID SOFTLY. “COME ON, sleepyhead.”

  Ivy took her time opening her eyes, wanting to hold onto this moment of being wrapped in Tristan’s arms, safe in the bell tower. She felt his breath on her cheek, then his finger tenderly tracing her lips.