But the soft series of pops that come next has to be cracking wood. That can mean only one thing and it’s absurd: something is chewing the gazebo itself.
Impossible . . .
Caitlin clamps her hand over the flowing wound. Her suicidal conviction has evaporated at the first signs of either a monster or a miracle, she isn’t sure. The dark tendrils curling up through the fresh cracks in the gazebo’s floor have started a serpentine crawl toward the splatter of blood at her feet.
They are snakes gone boneless, she thinks. That’s how they’ve squeezed through the cracks in the gazebo’s floor. But when they continue to rise straight up into the air with strength and determination, when their fat, wrist-thick bodies don’t droop or bend, when she sees not one, not two, but four tendrils in all, rising on all sides of her in an almost perfect circle, she glances down at her hand, at the tiny rivers of blood spilling in between her fingers, to see if her blood loss is severe enough to cause hallucinations. But while the pain is still there, the flow is too slight, hitting the jostled floorboards in fat intermittent drops. She isn’t near death, that’s for sure. And the shock of almost walking in on her husband fucking another woman has pushed the champagne rapidly through her system, leaving her stone-cold sober and alert.
Caitlin can see clearly alternating patches of strange luminescence lining the slender bodies of these strange creatures. And while everything about their size and their behavior is utterly wrong, their composition is simple, common even.
“Flowers and leaves . . .”
She whispers these words to herself.
Not snakes, not the fingers of some subterranean beast. Vines. That’s all. But once she’s whispered these words aloud—flowers and leaves—the words only deepen her paralysis, because by then she can see that the blossoms, each one about the size of her hand, are opening in unison. They look like the flowers of a calla lily, but inside of their four, evenly sized white petals is an insect-like amalgam of stamens and filaments, and all of it glows with an interior radiance so powerful it looks like it might drift away, spirit-like, from the temporary prison of the petals.
And each blossom, each impossibly animated, pulsing blossom, is pointed directly at her.
They’re looking at me.
Then the smell hits her, a force as powerful and determined as the vines themselves, plugging her nostrils, making her eyes water. She hears her own quick, deep breaths as if from a distance, a ragged counterpoint to the sounds of the floorboards underfoot settling back into their new disturbed positions. The smell is blanketing her, consuming her. She blinks madly, trying to resist its call, because not only is it somehow drawing in darkness from the edges of her vision, but it is also nothing like the cloying perfumes she has always associated with Spring House.
It is the smell of fire.
. . . They are coming.
She can feel the horse hooves pounding the mud, can feel them through the channel she has opened in the palms of her callused hands, the ones that connect her to the clamor of angry souls within the soil. She can hear their shouts. They have discovered the decimated cane field, and they know what she has done. That after promising them a limitless bounty, she has punished them for their betrayal.
And because they have some sense of what she is capable of, they will come with their polished Colt revolvers, and they will attack with as much swiftness as they can muster. And so she has no time to wait. She must bring herself to the very raw edge of her power, the place where she can feel a writhing, feral chaos in the darkness on the other side.
The darkness below. The darkness underfoot.
She’s always pulled back from that place, not in fear that she wouldn’t be able to stop the result, but in fear that it would tear her apart from within. But now the choice is to either die by their lead, or summon forth a final justice from an earth that has always spoken to her in a magical language only she seems to hear.
Because they are angry. They are seeking their own twisted form of justice, and this fact leaves her with the despairing realization that all forms of justice are somehow twisted at their core. Will Felix Delachaise be among them, or will he leave the bloodiest work to his overseer as usual, the same overseer whose work she halted in mid-whip, beginning this whole mess?
But when the door to the slave quarters behind her blows open, she sees neither the overseer nor Spring House’s bastard owner. She sees a perfectly framed view of her husband, Troy Mangier, halfway out of his suit, bare ass flexing as he drives himself into the beautiful young woman. And Caitlin feels herself jostled inside of her dreaming point of view—who was it? A slave?
The past and present have met in a fever dream of rage, and now her husband is staring slack-jawed at her through a doorway—in time, in history, in sanity, she can’t know—while he continues to fuck some little slut atop the bathroom sink. But the rage is leaving her. Maybe because Troy is staring at her over one shoulder, mouth open, eyes vacant. His expression is devoid of lust; his thrusts seem compulsory now. The floor between them explodes, and with the exhalation of her crippling rage, Caitlin senses the arrival of a strange new power.
3
“Not here,” Troy whispers.
And that’s when Jane Percival realizes why he won’t take his hand out from his Hanes, even though she’s pushed back over the porcelain sink so far the copper faucet is digging into her spine, even though her dress is hiked so far up her legs he’s been able to work wonders on her with his mouth for a good five minutes now—his blood isn’t pumping to all the right places yet, and he doesn’t want to let on.
What does he want? A short walk, a little caffeine? Neither will be easy to come by with the wife hovering somewhere downstairs.
Is she hovering, Jane wonders, or is she passed out drunk somewhere?
Caitlin Chaisson spent most of the night glaring at Jane like she was some party crasher, and all night long Jane fought the urge to get right up in the girl’s face and let her know that while he was singing “Happy Birthday” with the rest of them, Caitlin’s husband was winking at Jane across the room and dragging his top teeth across his bottom lip like he could taste her on it.
Happy Birthday, princess!
Still, she hadn’t planned to move quite this fast, because she hadn’t been prepared for how epically drunk her target was going to be. Just the thought of having to stop now sends a spike of panic through Jane. Her first choice would have been slow seduction, not a frenzied quickie in the upstairs bathroom. But in her experience nothing killed a long game faster than a false start, or a suddenly remorseful husband buttoning up his pants and racing for the confessional booth. And tonight had taken weeks of subtle but careful preparation, weeks of listening studiously as her best friend, Margot, gossiped about the loveless marriage between her two wealthiest clients, one a former hero cop her aunt Judy would have described as crap your pants handsome, the other a spoiled-rotten trust-fund baby who went through life looking like she’d just smelled something terrible and it was you.
It wasn’t an easy sell, getting Margot to take her on as a crew supervisor for bigger events, events like Skanky Chaisson’s birthday party. The two women met when Jane worked the bar for one of Margot’s first events after she started Simply Splendid eight years ago. Since then, Jane had pitched in at all levels of the business, except for supervisor. Still, Jane wasn’t interested in passing trays; she was pretty damn sure the unflattering black-and-white uniform would make it that much harder to catch Troy Mangier’s eye. Instead she’d pitched Margot hard on the position that would allow her to wear a sparkly, low-cut cocktail dress, enabling her to look as classy and elegant as most of the other invited guests.
But now Jane is missing in action during teardown, her target is on the edge of bailing, and there’s a possibly suspicious wife somewhere nearby.
Good Christ, if Margot gets wind of even half of this, Jane will b
e in a world of trouble far bigger than an angry wife pounding on the door with the side of one fist.
Troy Mangier pulls up his trousers by his belt buckle and takes a step back, forcing Jane to unwrap her legs from around his waist. The way she sees it, she’s only got two options: try for the remorseful, romance-novel routine of I’m so sorry I forced myself on you—even though she hadn’t, technically—but my feelings for you are just soooooo strong, or drop to her knees and take him in her mouth right there.
But before she can commit to either, Troy Mangier takes her by the hand and pulls her off the sink. Her feet land gracelessly on top of her high heels instead of sliding into them cleanly, and Troy grabs her by the waist to make sure she doesn’t lose her balance as the shoes crumple under her feet like foliage.
Their lips meet in a sloppy kiss that fills her mouth with scotch breath, and Troy Mangier says, “Come with me.”
4
The hallucination breaks, giving way to a reality inside the gazebo that is more dreamlike and impossible than any of the visions that just strobed across her mind’s eye.
At the moment when Caitlin is sure her knees are going to strike the gazebo’s floor, a slick tendril wraps around her throat and she cries out, sure she’s about to be choked. But it does nothing of the kind. Rather, with a gentleness that seems almost human, it rights her until she is standing on both feet once again, before it slips off her shoulder, slides briefly down her left breast, and hovers in the air in front of her, level with her chest. In the pulses of light that line the stalks of each vine, she sees a clover-like assembly of leaves unfurling at its tip, opening to her just as the blossoms have. Only nothing glows within these leaves. They contain darkness deeper than the vague, shadowy definitions inside the gazebo.
But there is no misinterpreting the gesture; it’s as delicate and unnervingly polite as the sudden catch that kept her from falling knees-first to the floor.
She can vividly recall each vision that came from the scent of the blossoms, the jostled, terrifying flashbacks and the absolute certainty she was inside the body of some long-dead slave, the sense of imminent attack—they are coming!—but then, at the very end, her own husband, followed by the miraculous sense of the rage draining from her.
Draining, the word occurs to her easily, instinctively, and she remembers the eagerness with which the first tendrils that poked up through the floor pursued her fresh drops of blood. And that’s when she realizes what the unfurled leaves and the helpful vine hovering in the air before her look like—an extended hand.
A soft pop comes from the direction of the main house, the sound of someone trying—too late—to keep a screen door from slamming behind them. Peering between the vines, Caitlin sees them: Troy and the little slut.
Two silhouettes moving down the back of the house, crouching down to avoid the kitchen windows before they hurry through the maze of fountains and flower planters, bound for the oak-shadowed corridor on the opposite side of the property that houses the gardening shed. They are oblivious to her, where she stands shrouded by magic and shadow.
The girl almost trips, which causes her to throw her hand to her mouth to stifle her startled cry, and Troy curves an arm around her shoulders, and together, they stumble toward the shed.
As she watches her husband and his little slut join the darkness, Caitlin craves that cleansing feeling that marked the very end of the violent vision quest the blossoms just gave her—that sense that the rage she feels toward Troy has been expelled from her like a breath she’s held in for half a minute too long. Even if it means being rocketed back inside the body of that terrified slave. Even if it means unleashing some greater power from the inexplicable monster before her.
Caitlin extends her bleeding wrist toward the hovering vine. A thirsty pulse moves through the blossoms as it wraps firmly around her open wound. No visions come to her, but the sensation that accompanies the vine’s patient suckling is like a dozen sets of hands gently dragging their fingernails across her skin from her scalp to her toes. Her cry has more abandon in it than any sound she heard Troy’s little whore make in the guest bathroom.
As the vine slides down her wrist, then slips gently free of her palm and fingers, she sees that she has been healed; all that remains of her determined gash is a pale, rosy scar. Before she has time to process the implication of this, the thick tendrils on all sides of her descend cleanly through the spaces between the floorboards.
Barely a minute later, the earth shifts violently underneath one of the fountains in the center of the garden. The impact from below jostles the fountain’s copper basin to such an angle that the water begins pouring out of it in a thin and steady stream. A few seconds later, a tiny stone cherub is knocked from its perch, and several bricks along the side of a flower planter have been knocked free. Caitlin realizes they are but pieces of a contrail from some healing force that is now moving through the soil in pursuit of her husband’s sin.
5
Jane is amazed by the power of desire.
She is terrified of dark places, especially this far out in the country, and on any other night this pitch-black gardening shed would be an un-enterable lair of coiled snakes and patient psychopaths. But tonight, with Troy Mangier palming her and suckling her and taking her in a lust-stuttered waltz across the dirt floor, the darkness liberates.
Jane has watched every single one of his TV appearances she can find on YouTube, dating back to when he first solved the John Fuller murder. She recalls the same features that are currently concealed by shadows, the sight of Troy’s swoon-worthy jawline and thick, muscular neck. These fragmented memories juxtapose with the reality of his fingers working their way inside of her and intensify the delicious, toe-curling thrill of ambition meeting lust. So when she hears a strange crackling sound, she assumes it’s her own dress being torn away from her.
When Troy goes still, Jane takes this as her cue. She reaches for his crotch and is relieved when her hand closes around something hard and thick. She starts to stroke him—it’s much bigger than she expected—and she’s trying to think of the nastiest, dirtiest way to say this to him when she realizes something about the thing isn’t right. The surface of his cock is spiny and slick.
When she realizes the darkness has tricked her, Jane stumbles backward. She sees Troy’s shadow bent at the waist; the fluid-filled, throaty sounds coming from him are not strangled, lustful groans. Choking. He’s choking. A thick strand of shadow juts from his open mouth and up toward the dark ceiling; a sliver of light from the nearby window falls across its spiny length.
The thing Jane just released from her right hand has the body and tense energy of a serpent, and it has now reached an elephantine length in the darkness between her and Troy, curving at the tip, coated in a slick substance that has to be blood. Troy’s blood . . . because the damn thing has punched right through his—they’re connected. Holy shit. It’s the same goddamn thing and it’s gone RIGHT THROUGH—
Jane falls ass-first to the floor before this deranged thought can complete itself. The first scream will feel too much like a surrender, so she tries to screw her jaw shut, which even then has her cursing madly under her breath as she scrambles toward the wall and its racks of gardening tools.
By the time she’s closed her hands around the handle of the axe hanging on a nearby shelf, two more snakes of darkness have punched up through the dirty floor, and Jane Percival glimpses the impossible luminescence coursing through one shimmering white blossom before its petals open like a snake’s jaws . . . and the entire flower clamps down over Troy Mangier’s bulging right eye.
A white pulse streaks through the flower, then the pulse becomes a bright-green glow that courses through the entire tangle of stalks, illuminating its growing, snarled structure. The flower and Troy’s flesh have merged somehow, and the vine just behind the flower swells in thickness. And then Troy’s head has vanished inside a thickening
tangle of . . . she’s about to think of them as snakes again, but even as she pulls the axe free from its shelf, a very steady voice inside of her head corrects her: Vines. They are vines. Look . . .
And because she can’t bring herself to scream just yet, because only decisive action will hold the nightmarish impossibility of all of this at bay, Jane Percival draws the axe back over one shoulder and swings. She is convinced that one good whack will send this creature back down into the ground, that a thing without eyes and a face will react to any swift and terrible blow with pure fear and total retreat.
And yet it doesn’t, and she’s distracted by the sound she made when the axe hit its shifting, growing target—a raspy grunt that threatens sobs. Then she understands. She feels the hot, wet spray and sees how terrible her aim was. The blade has sliced clean through a knot of vine around Troy’s leg, and the eruption of blood is fearsome, arterial, and the vines do not retreat. Rather, they close thirstily over the wound instead, and suddenly Troy Mangier is completely entombed.
The vines are crawling up and over the spot where his head and shoulders were just an instant before, and now they’re coming down on themselves, making a shape that tells her Troy has been devoured from the crown of his head to the center of his chest. She realizes the rest of him is almost gone too, and that’s when Jane Percival finally starts to scream.
6
When the screaming starts, Nova Thomas is washing Caitlin Chaisson’s best china and wondering whether or not to tell her father she saw Troy sneak off into the garden with one of the pretty white ladies from the catering company. Troy must have been drunk as a skunk—otherwise he would have known to pull off his shiny gold necktie. But he didn’t, and the thing winked at Nova each time the shadowy couple passed just outside the halo of one of the security lights fixed on the back of the house.