He didn’t believe in the “we” part of her plan, but he let her go on because he still thought he could get past her defenses and give her a heaping dose of Good Time Charlie, but it didn’t happen. And then he caught her writing things down, things about him and them and what needed to be done. She was sly, hiding her words away, but he knew about them, and he also knew he had to find them. He didn’t want anything written down that somebody else could find, so he started searching through her things the moment the light died in her eyes and she was staring through blank, glassy orbs toward the ceiling. He found nothing but her herbs, which she’d dried and put in jars. He was getting really pissed at her—what did you write, bitch?—when warning bells went off in his head. Someone out there. One of them, the ones she’d talked about. He could feel the prickle of her search for him as if it were tangible against his skin.
Who? A lover who hadn’t yet revealed herself to him? He tried to send her a mental message, but she didn’t respond. He’d tried off and on ever since, but whoever it was was biding their time. Playing coy.
Choking sounds woke him from his reverie, and he saw that his date’s eyes were bugging, her hands plucking frantically at his taut fingers circling her neck. He had somehow grabbed her neck in his reverie and was squeezing and squeezing, and squeezing a little more. Immediately, he released her.
She gasped and spit and shrieked, “You goddamn maniac! Get the fuck out!”
“I didn’t mean to do that,” he admitted honestly.
She slapped at his hand when he tried to smooth her hair. Then she slapped at his arms and head, until he had to pin her arms down before she did some real damage. It was time to move on. Loose ends needed to be taken care of. Twisting away from her, he grabbed up his clothes, dragging them on.
“What are you doing? Where are you going?” she demanded.
“Getting the fuck out, like you asked me so nicely.”
When he walked out the door, he heard something slam against it from the other side. Her shoe probably. For all their protestations, they never could get enough.
Sometimes it was almost a hardship.
Snow was falling fast, covering everything. He stood for a moment on her front step, his expression hardening as Good Time Charlie disappeared beneath another persona, the one he loved best, the one closest to his real self.
Time to take care of business.
Closing his eyes, he stood on the sidewalk in front of her building in the falling snow and whipping wind and went inside himself, drawing on his power. He sent a message to Pops, just because he could, the fucker, and then he reached out for the one again. The lover who’d contacted him on Echo Island. The one who’d scared him into leaving before he could find Mary’s writings. He could practically feel her slide away from him, eely and just out of reach.
I’m coming for you. He sent the message with all the strength of his sexual power. He knew it was one of them. One of the ones Mary wanted him to destroy. I’m coming for you.
And then suddenly a message came back, filling his brain so fast and hot that he jerked physically, as if struck: I’m way ahead of you.
Charlie looked around wildly at the snow-covered streets. A game? Way ahead of him? No way!
Who the fuck are you? he sent back.
But though he listened with every fiber, muscle, and cell of his being, waiting in the darkness as snow melted on his hair and skin, there was no answer. All he could hear and feel was the moaning rise and fall of the wind.
With fury burning through his veins, he stomped toward his snow-covered truck, ready for the next chapter. He was going to kill them all.
CHAPTER 17
Highway 26 through the mountains was blocked off at the base of the four-lane climb up the farthest west pass. The two eastbound lanes had a line of flashing barriers, the yellow light sputtering in uneven flickers, warning unwary travelers that there was danger ahead.
The two westbound lanes had no such barriers, and there was no one manning the eastbound ones. Emergency workers were needed elsewhere.
Without a qualm Hale turned into the oncoming lanes and drove around the barriers, going a whopping twenty miles per hour. Anything more and he’d be fishtailing up the hill, and that was a best-case scenario. He returned to the eastbound lanes as soon as he was around the flashing obstructions, his TrailBlazer churning through the thick snow, the engine whining a bit in four-wheel drive. His hands were tight on the steering wheel; his jaw was set; his fear mounting.
He hoped he ran into a rescue crew, but if he didn’t, he was sure as hell going to find Savannah. She’d asked for 9-1-1, not a tow truck. She was a cop who wouldn’t overstate the need, and she’d admitted the baby was coming. He didn’t care that she’d said she was fine. She needed help beyond the fact that her vehicle was out of commission, someone to aid her with the birth of his son. If he, or someone, could get to her in time.
Hang in there, Savvy, he thought grimly.
“Where’s Aunt Catherine?” Ravinia demanded. She was covered in snow, her blond hair unnaturally dark from the dampening flakes.
Isadora and Ophelia were in the main room, the room Catherine sometimes called the great hall, which just about summed up her grandiose and formal way of acting, being, and generally annoying Ravinia. Isadora and Ophelia looked over at her blankly, and Isadora lifted a shoulder. She obviously didn’t know and certainly didn’t care.
“Where’s Cassandra?” Ravinia demanded.
“In bed,” Isadora said. “Like Lillibeth.”
Her schoolteacher tone grated on Ravinia’s nerves. Isadora was the oldest of the lodge sisters, and she’d patterned herself after Catherine in about every way Ravinia knew. If there was to be a succession of strict dictators, Isadora had her hand up to be first choice and was waving it.
“You went over the wall again,” Isadora said, disapproving, one eyebrow arching.
“It’s snowing like a beast out there.” Ravinia didn’t owe Isadora, or any of them, for that matter, any explanation. Besides which, Catherine had laid down the law, and if she found out Ravinia had left, she might actually kick her out of Siren Song like she’d threatened. And Ravinia wasn’t ready for that yet.
“Catherine’s probably in bed, too,” Ophelia said. She was more of a peacemaker. She’d certainly helped save Ravinia from Justice, and she’d been sewing Ravinia pants and shirts for years, her own way of rebelling against Catherine’s strictness, but recently she’d been leaning toward the Isadora camp, and Ravinia just didn’t need it.
“Nope. I went to her room,” Ravinia declared. “I even lit the oil lamp, and there’s no one there.” She had done a little bit of snooping while she was inside her aunt’s room. Had found something of interest, which she’d taken and slipped inside the back waistband of her pants.
“The door wasn’t locked?” Isadora’s brows drew into a deep furrow.
Well, of course it was locked, but Ravinia wasn’t about to explain more about her special skills. They all talked about their “gifts,” but Ravinia’s gift was ingenuity and resourcefulness. She knew how to pick a lock with wire and slim pieces of metal, although Catherine’s dead bolt was so old, she could just kinda work it back with a pair of needle-nose pliers slipped through the crack. Her true gift, however, was the ability to look into a person’s heart and know their secrets, but she kept that one to herself. She’d pretended for years that she had no extra ability, that she was like Catherine and seemed merely to possess a clear head with emotions tightly under control. Okay, hers weren’t so tightly controlled, but she had managed over the years to appear that way—at least she hoped she had.
But what she could see was whether a person was good or evil. She had to get close to them, physical contact was best, and then it took only a few words or a sideways glance or sometimes maybe a bit more, if they interested her in some way, before she had them pegged. It was crazy how many real sickos there were out there. Still, she’d rather be walking among them than stuc
k in this frigid prison. She had her GED—they all did—after years of stultifying home schooling by Catherine. Good God, her aunt was a woman of a billion facts and figures and nothing else. A hollow core. Consumed with rules and regulations, and there was simply no fire.
With her last thought, Ravinia turned toward the blaze that was currently crackling and spitting inside the cavernous mouth of the stone fireplace. The only heat this drafty lodge put out. Sure, the generator allowed for lights on the first floor, but that was it. Even now, standing near the hot flames, Ravinia felt cold to the bone, her hair still damp. She rubbed her arms as Isadora, as always, was going on and on, saying, “If she finds out you were in there alone, she’s not going to like it. And I don’t believe the door was unlocked. You had to have found a way—”
“Where the hell is she?” Ravinia cut her off. “Did she leave?”
“Lillibeth said she met with Earl earlier,” Ophelia put in hurriedly to avoid a further fight.
“Uncle Earl,” Ravinia said, baiting her sister, and was rewarded with Isadora’s tightened lips. No, he and Catherine weren’t lovers. Catherine was too shut down, and Earl was about as talkative as a corpse. Ravinia couldn’t picture them in bed together. Ugh. However, she had managed to learn that Earl actually had some family. He was a Foothiller, a member of one of the Native American tribes who had mixed with the locals and formed a community, which was up the road from Siren Song, in the foothills of the Coast Range. One of Earl’s relatives had gotten involved with someone from Ravinia’s own screwed-up family, and supposedly there were any number of “gifted” people among the Foothillers, as well.
As long as they weren’t as screwed up as Justice, it was fine with Ravinia. She just wanted to leave the lot of them behind with their whole stinking woo-woo nonsense. Was there any truth to it? Sure. Some. Had any good come from it? Not that she could tell.
“Did she leave with him?” Ravinia asked.
“In this weather?” Isadora shook her head. “She’s around here somewhere.”
“The attic?” Ravinia had done a pretty thorough search of the lodge, apart from the attic and her mother’s old bedroom, which was too creepy to go into. It was like walking inside a diorama of a 1960s bedroom, and though very little scared her, Ravinia had felt the echoes of something sick and noxious the few times she’d gone into her mother’s room.
“I’ll go find her,” Ophelia said, gathering her skirts and heading up the stairs.
That left Ravinia with Isadora. Never really a great plan.
Isadora seemed to think the same, so she tilted back her head, with its blond bun so much like Catherine’s, then folded her hands over her stomach, tucking each up the opposite sleeve of her dress as she walked toward the kitchen. Again, like Catherine.
“Puke,” Ravinia said loudly when she was alone.
Three-quarters of an hour later, Ophelia returned with a cobweb fluttering off the side of her hair. “She’s not in the attic.”
“How is it you have the keys?” Ravinia asked.
Ophelia eyed her steadily. “Ravinia, if you want Aunt Catherine to trust you, you need to stop going over the wall and doing God knows what.”
“I call it living.”
“Yes, well . . .”
“Did you go inside our mother’s bedroom?”
Ophelia gave a slight shake to her head. “No.”
“Well, you better do it. Here comes Isadora, and she looks . . . worried.”
Isadora hurried from the kitchen area. A bright flush tinged her cheeks, and her lips were a little blue from the cold. “I went in the backyard. She’s not there.” She was shaking her head, her tight bun threatening to unravel.
Ravinia immediately turned toward the downstairs hall.
“Where are you going?” Isadora demanded.
“To check with Lillibeth.”
“She’s sleeping!”
“BFD,” Ravinia muttered and kept on going. She gave a sharp rap on the door, then pushed it open. Lillibeth’s room was not locked. She had her own bathroom, which had been retro equipped with lowered counters and a handicapped toilet and a shower that was flush with the floor so she could roll in and move herself to a fixed chair that was in reach of the handheld showerhead.
Trying to adjust her eyes to the dim light, Ravinia saw Lillibeth was in her bed. She turned over to face the doorway. “Ravinia?” Lillibeth whispered, sounding confused.
Ravinia hit the light switch and flooded the room with illumination. Lillibeth shot bolt upright, pulling herself to a sitting position with the two bars screwed into the wall on either side of the headboard of her twin bed. Her blond hair was down and tousled, and her beautiful heart-shaped face was turned toward Ravinia in horror.
“What’re you doing? I was asleep!”
“I’m looking for Catherine. You saw her last with Earl.”
“Aunt Catherine?” Lillibeth repeated, blinking. “Yes . . . she went out to meet him.”
“Did you see her come back?” Ravinia asked with forced patience.
“No . . . I went to my room. It was getting late.” She eyed her younger sister. “You weren’t around.”
“No, I wasn’t,” Ravinia said tightly. “We can’t find Catherine anywhere. Did she say anything to you?”
“I knew Earl was at the gate. . . .” She glanced past Ravinia. “He wanted to talk to her.”
“How did you know it was Earl? You saw him?”
Lillibeth shrugged. “I just knew.”
Ravinia wasn’t sure what to make of that. Lillibeth didn’t have Cassandra’s ability to see things. Lillibeth didn’t have any gift as far as Ravinia could tell. She’d had a difficult birth that had done something to her spine, according to Catherine, and had left her crippled. It had always been assumed that the injury had also stripped her of whatever gift she might have had. Or maybe she just didn’t have one. Lillibeth was still very much a little girl. Whatever had happened to her had stunted her emotionally—or so said Catherine—and Lillibeth’s slow maturation seemed to bear that out.
“She went out to meet Earl at the gate,” Ravinia said, hoping for more information.
Lillibeth bobbed her head, worry beginning to crowd her expression.
“How long was she out there? Did she leave with him?”
“I don’t knnnooowww,” Lillibeth wailed.
“We need a phone,” Ravinia said aloud, more to the room at large or the heavens or the fates than to Lillibeth. She’d said it and said it and said it for years, but no one ever listened. She wondered if Earl had a phone or if he was as antiquated in his thinking as her aunt.
Suddenly anxious, Ravinia left Lillibeth’s room, snapping off the light switch and shutting her door on the way out. Sometimes her sister annoyed her, and she felt guilty about it, but Lillibeth was just so immature. It was hard to believe she was older than Ravinia.
She stood in the main room for long moments, thinking hard. Had Catherine left? What had transpired between Catherine and Earl? Something that had sent her away? Because she sure wasn’t at the house, as far as Ravinia could tell.
Briefly, she thought back to her latest foray beyond the walls of the lodge. She’d met someone. A boy. A man, actually. And she’d looked into his heart and found, to her surprise, the way had been blocked. That was unsettling. She’d always been able to see to a being’s core, except with people who knew how to block her, like Catherine, sometimes, although it wasn’t hard to see what she was really like—ice and fortitude—and then Lillibeth was a mystery she couldn’t quite penetrate, probably because her mind was full of childlike things.
Ravinia was even able to see into the hearts of animals sometimes. Once she’d met a wolf down from the hills, and its core had been full of instinct: bonding and a fierce connection to the pack. It looked at her through yellow eyes, and she sensed that it was including her, so as much as she knew how, she filled her own center with a responding “I’m with you” kind of message, which might or might not hav
e gotten through. The wolf turned and left, padding away softly, its gray fur fluttering in the breeze. She couldn’t tell anyone of the encounter other than to say she’d seen a wolf, and even that was resoundingly pooh-poohed. There were no true wolves in these mountains, she was told by one of the Foothillers, who all thought they knew everything about everything. Ravinia’s answer was that maybe it was a fake one, then, but it was a wolf.
But the man . . . his eyes were gray and his hair was dark and he reminded her of the wolf, sort of. He was the first actual human being she’d wanted to spend any time with, and she’d gone looking for him tonight, but she couldn’t find him anywhere around Deception Bay or the beach, where she’d first seen him. In the back of her mind she found herself wanting to leave with him, wherever he would go. She’d come back to the lodge tonight, intending to tell Catherine that she would be leaving soon. Forever. Just like Catherine had ordained.
Only now she wasn’t sure she wanted to go.
“She’s not in the house,” Ophelia declared. Ravinia looked up to see Ophelia now hastening down the stairs again. “I went into our mother’s bedroom,” she said, in answer to Ravinia’s unspoken question. “Aunt Catherine’s not there. She’s nowhere. As if she just vanished.”
“Maybe she left with Earl,” Ravinia suggested.
“Without telling us?”
Ravinia frowned. That wasn’t like Catherine at all. Floorboards creaked, and a door opened. Startled, Ravinia and Ophelia both looked over to see Lillibeth, in her nightgown, rolling out of her room toward them, looking scared. Her skin was ashen, and she worried her lip with her teeth. “I . . . I couldn’t sleep.”
“You woke her,” Ophelia accused Ravinia, as Isadora, who’d gone back upstairs for another check of the second-floor bedrooms, returned to the main floor, where they were now all congregated in front of the fire, shadows flickering across their faces from the leaping flames. Despite the heat and growing embers, the large room felt chilly and without warmth.