“Yes, Mary Jane?”
“It’s time,” I told her.
She didn’t answer me and I waited several long moments to work up the courage to carefully get to my feet, still pressing the planchette against my chest, and step around into the open doorway. Sarah was sitting on the floor, holding the Sandman’s real planchette and on the floor next to her was the body of her brother. He was riddled with dozens of planchettes, impaled to death by the very devices he’d so coveted.
Sarah looked at my free hand and the spikes and she said, “May I do the honor?”
I considered not trusting her—she was a murderer after all—but then I considered that I didn’t have the mobility to hold on to the planchette on my chest and destroy the other one at the same time. Bending my knees and extending my hand, I offered her one of the spikes. She raised it feebly and brought it down on the crystal. It took her several tries, but at last the thing was broken and then she laid the spike lengthwise on the surface of the planchette.
Tentatively I lifted one of the remaining spikes in my free hand and knocked the gem out of the center of the planchette at my chest. The metal stopped pulsing with energy immediately. The Sandman had been disarmed. “Everett?” I asked her next.
She pointed to Glenn’s desk. Stepping carefully around the planchettes littering the floor, I approached the desk warily. In the center I saw that Glenn had painted the surface to resemble a large Ouija board, and there in the middle was a worn photo of Everett Sellers. One of the only remaining planchettes on the opposite wall began to rattle and I knew it was about to aim straight for my head. I lifted my hand holding all the remaining stakes high, and brought it down as hard as I could in the center of the desk. For a moment, nothing happened, and then the planchette simply fell to the floor.
I surveyed the terrible mess and my gaze finally came to rest on Sarah, who lifted her chin, and looked at me with such tenderness. “You look just like your mother,” she said to me. “And she was the most beautiful woman I ever knew.”
I swallowed hard, but continued to hold her gaze without tears.
With a sigh Sarah sat back, looked at me, and held up something small hidden in her hand. Belatedly I realized she was holding on to a prescription bottle. “My happy pills,” she said, her words slurring.
I gasped. “Ohmigod, Sarah! No!”
She closed her eyes and fell back with that smile still on her lips. And then she was gone.
Chapter 16
The moments after Sarah’s suicide were awful. I was torn between trying to help her, Breslow, and Heath, and it was a tough call as to whom to help first. I had to recruit Chloe to help Breslow, and Heath had somehow managed to crawl up the steps and make it to the front porch, but that’s as far as he could go. I called dispatch, looking for backup, which finally arrived.
The reason it was so late getting to us was that there was a four-alarm fire at Porter Manor, and nearly the entire mansion and some of the surrounding woods went up in smoke.
The cause was determined to be arson, and I had no doubt that Sarah had set the fire. She’d known when she’d made her first confession to us in the hospital that her dream of ever owning or living in Porter Manor again was gone.
Christine was totally heartbroken, but Daddy promised her that they’d rebuild such a grand manor that no one would even remember the Porter place, and in the meantime they had a perfectly lovely home to live in, which I could now attest they did.
Heath and Breslow were taken to the hospital and X-rays confirmed that my sweetheart had suffered three fractured ribs. How he’d even stayed conscious, given the amount of pain he’d been in, was something of a miracle.
Beau had suffered several blows to the face and head by flying planchettes, but Chloe had ridden with him in the ambulance, and last I heard, she was sweetly nursing him back to health.
As for Deputy Cook, he came to immediately after the Sandman was banished once again to the lower realms. No surprise, he didn’t remember a thing about attacking Sheriff Kogan and Kogan actually surprised me by subtly altering the official report to read that Cook had become light-headed and fallen while holding a knife, accidentally stabbing Kogan. No charges were filed, and I heard that Cook went right back on duty, although for a while he’d also been ordered to wear a fishing vest with a few magnets in the pockets—just in case.
All the other victims of the Sandman’s possession had also woken up confused and remembering nothing about the incident at the mental hospital. No charges were officially filed there either, although how Kogan had managed that, I still wasn’t sure.
Linda woke up just a day later too, not remembering much about her attack, but able to smile and hug me, and there were no signs that she’d have any lasting damage, so I was incredibly relieved. She didn’t make it to Daddy’s wedding, but I thought that might’ve been for the best. Linda had loved Mama, and it was a hard thing to watch the love of Mama’s life marrying someone else.
I knew that for a fact.
Even though the ceremony was small, it was still lovely all the same. Michel—Gilley’s man—flew in and they made such a handsome couple. Daddy barely batted an eye when he was introduced to Michel, and I had to give him marks for that at least.
And, despite the pain Heath was still in, he managed to slow dance a few songs with me. As the party was winding down, I went inside and walked from room to room, taking it in and thinking about Mama and how much I missed her. She would have loved the wedding. I knew she was there in spirit of course—she was never one to miss a good party—but it still hurt to think that I’d never come through these doors again and feel her presence as intensely as I had before Daddy and Christine took up with each other.
That said nothing about how I felt about Christine, however. The more I got to know her, the more I adored her, and I was so happy for her and Daddy. . . . It’s just that, well . . .
“Hey,” I heard Gilley say from behind me as I lingered in the parlor, gazing at a framed photo of me and Mama from when I was about four.
“Hey,” I replied.
He came up and put an arm across my shoulders. “How you doin’, sugar?”
I laid my head on his shoulder. My best friend always knew when I needed him. “I’m fine,” I said.
“Hell of a week, huh?”
“It was.”
“Great party, though.”
“Awesome.”
“You okay?”
I smiled. “You already asked me that.”
“Yeah, but now I want you to tell me the truth.”
A well of emotion bubbled up from my chest and I hid my face from Gil as I tried to wipe the tears away quickly. “It’s just . . .”
“Hurts, don’t it?”
I nodded. “But it shouldn’t,” I said. “I mean, Christine is lovely, and I know she’s not replacing Mama, but he’s still Daddy, and even though we’ve had our share of ups and downs—”
“More downs than ups,” Gil said.
“That’s true, but even still . . . he’s so tender with her, Gil. So nice. Like he was with Mama, but with me, he’s, well . . . gruff, and aloof, and . . .”
“A pain in the keister?”
I chuckled and wiped my eyes again. “Yes, that. But it’s more than that. Why can’t he be like he was with me before Mama died? I mean, I had this ray of hope when I first saw him with Christine that he’d turn into that loving, caring man that adored me when I was little, but in the days since the fire, we’re as aloof with each other as ever.”
Gil nodded like he knew just what I meant. “M.J.?”
“Yeah?”
“Did you ever think the problem might not be with Monty?”
I turned to look at him with furrowed brow. “What’s that supposed to mean?” I snapped.
Gil shrugged. “
Did you ever think that maybe, just maybe, you’re still angry at him for pulling away from you when you needed him most and that all those years of his hard drinking took a toll on you, which you haven’t quite forgiven him for?”
“No, Gil,” I said defensively. “When he went through the program, he apologized to me for all of that and I told him right then that I forgave him.”
Gil’s face softened and he looked at me with such sweet understanding. “Sugar,” he said. “Forgiveness isn’t a decision. It’s a process.”
My breath caught at the wisdom of his words, and I took that in, thinking back to all those times I’d had my guard up whenever Daddy called, or we met face-to-face. And since I’d been home, I’d spent most of my time investigating a set of murders and busting a demon, and hadn’t made any real time to hang out with my own father.
And yet I’d held the memory of my mother as close to me as if she’d died yesterday. I’d put her on a pedestal and adored her from afar and Daddy had always paled in comparison with her, and since learning about the horror that’d happened to her as a young girl, I’d elevated her even more.
How could Daddy ever compete with that? No wonder he was distant from me.
Leaning in, I gave Gilley a giant hug and then stepped back and said, “Would you excuse me?”
“You headed back out?”
I nodded. “I think it’s time the groom danced with his daughter, don’t you?”
Gilley beamed at me and squeezed my hand. “I do. But after, do you think we can we go for ice cream?”
“It’s a deal, honey.”
Making my way outside again, I wound my way through the wedding attendees, stopping to kiss Heath on the cheek, while he grimaced in pain but tried to put on a good face as he watched the dancers on the dance floor. “You okay?” he asked me, reaching up to squeeze my hand.
“Yes,” I told him. “I am. I know you’re hurting, but there’s one quick thing I have to do before we go. Is that okay?”
“Take your time, babe,” he said, forcing a smile. “I can always nurse one more beer.”
I kissed him again, then moved away and over to Daddy, who was dancing with his radiant new bride. Tapping him on the shoulder, I said, “May I have this dance?”
Daddy turned to me and a mixture of emotions played across his face—surprise, delight, and also perhaps a bit of melancholy I supposed was caused from all those years we’d spent at war together.
“Of course I’ll dance with you, baby girl,” Daddy said, bowing to his bride, who winked at me as her new husband took up my hand. We danced without saying a word for a bit, and then Daddy leaned back and stared at me intently and I was shocked to see tears fill his eyes.
“Daddy? Are you okay?”
He shook his head. “It’s nothing, honey,” he said, pulling me close again. But after a minute he said into my ear, “It’s just . . . you look so much like your mother tonight. And I always thought she was the most beautiful woman in the world. I guess I never realized how much like her you are. Your beauty and your spirit, you get all that from Madelyn. And, baby girl, you just . . . take my breath away.”
I swallowed hard and wiped a tear from my own eye. Nothing he could’ve ever said could’ve been more wonderful than that.
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