He was already on his way, noticing the light was off. No one was there, or, he discovered, in any of the other rooms. By the time he knocked on Dolores's bedroom door, his instincts were on high alert.
Dolores opened the door and looked at him in sleepy confusion.
"Is Andrea in there?"
She shook her head.
Neal headed back into the living room and bent to pick up his shoes. "She's gone."
Rose was already buttoning her sweater, and the others scrambled to their feet. "I wonder why Strudel didn't bark to warn us?" She glanced down at the dog. "Hell, she's still asleep."
"Where could Andrea be?" Aura Lee wondered in a shaky voice.
Kerry gestured from the window. "Look." Across the courtyard the lights of the main house were flicking off, one by one.
Neal was at the door and through it before anyone else could move. They caught up with him on the porch as he reached for the doorknob.
"Neal, wait a minute," Rose hissed behind him.
"No."
"Here." She handed him a flashlight. "So you don't break your neck."
The door squeaked as he pulled it open and Kerry groaned from the steps.
"Hush," whispered Elizabeth. Aura Lee and Noreen crowded against her, forcing her through the door and into the foyer. Kerry and Dolores crept in after Rose, Strudel following. Ahead of them Neal walked steadily toward the picture gallery hallway.
Rose fumbled for the light switch but when she pushed it, nothing happened. "Do you smell that?" she asked Noreen. "Ozone?"
"Possibly." Noreen stepped cautiously across the floor and bumped into Elizabeth.
"Neal's headed to the living room," Elizabeth whispered. She moved forward, the others trailing after her. They stopped at the doorway. The fire had died down to embers, adding deeper shadows to the cold gloom.
Rose forced herself to look to the windows and was relieved she couldn't make out the vapor they'd seen before.
Neal turned on the flashlight and moved the beam over the carpet and furniture, but nothing else was there.
In the glow Rose caught sight of material trailing down over the mantel. "Neal, look at the portrait."
He aimed the cone of light at it, where the burgundy drapery sagged halfway over Caldicott Wyntham's face. On the deepest fold they saw white letters: LEAVE HERE.
"My God, where is she?" Neal looked around the room in frustration. "Fan out and search the place. We don't know what this thing can do to her. I'll start with her bedroom." He strode out, the flashlight beam bouncing in front of him.
"Got any more of those?" Kerry asked Rose. "I tried the switches in the hall and the spare bathroom. Nothing."
Aura Lee was already making haste toward the kitchen. "We have candles and at least one more flashlight."
"Now you're talkin'." Elizabeth scurried after her, Kerry right behind. When they came back into the living room, they held candles and Aura Lee was wielding a steel flashlight half the size of a baseball bat.
Rose had one ear cocked toward the hallway. "Do you hear that?"
"That humming sound?" Kerry took a step toward the door, and a sharp crack stopped her in her tracks. "What was that?"
"Don't know." Elizabeth's hand was shaking, and the flame of her candle set the shadows to dancing.
"Dios, let's go back to the kitchen. We have to find Andrea." Dolores grabbed Kerry's arm and pulled her round. "Come on, we'll look in there."
"We were just in the kitchen. I didn't see anything," Kerry protested.
"What about Andrea's studio?" Rose asked.
"We didn't check it. Let's go."
The air was bitterly cold and they had to force themselves to keep walking. As they approached the kitchen door it began to swing back and forth. "Neal?" Rose called, voice trembling. "Is that you?"
No answer.
Squaring her shoulders, Rose growled, "Grab my hand, somebody, and the next one grab hers. We're going in all together—" She watched the door swing open again. "Now!" They forced the door to stay open and pushed their way into the kitchen. Behind them the door swung faster and harder until it broke loose from the hinge pins and fell against the lintel.
"Keep going," Rose yelled. "Get to the studio. Let's go."
The French doors of the studio were closed and dark. And locked. Rose rattled the knob fruitlessly. "What the hell? There's no key to this door." The humming was building in volume.
Kerry shook Rose by the shoulder. "Our friend Stanley doesn't want us to go in there." She had to raise her voice to be heard.
"We must go in immediately," Aura Lee declared. "Goddess, protect us now." She swung the oversized flashlight against the glass pane above the knob and shattered it. Smashing the shards along the edges, she cleared enough room to reach through the gap. When she turned the lock the door popped open, and they staggered back at the rush of cold air from the room. The humming was ferocious. Rose forced herself to step inside.
Shadowy motion in front of a large pale square stopped her in her tracks. "Hand me that flashlight." She flicked it on, and in the glow Andrea moved in front of a canvas on an easel.
"What's she doing?" Dolores shouted.
Brush in one hand and palette in the other, Andrea applied paint to the picture. Her eyes were shut, her face vacant of emotion.
"Did you find her?" Neal demanded from the door.
"Lord!" Kerry yelped. Her hand went to her chest. "You scared me."
Neal ignored her and plunged across the room to Andrea. He called her name but she didn't pause, just slapped more color onto the canvas with the jerky animation of a puppet.
Kerry paled with rage. "Stanley Thornton has to be doing this. We found out what he did, what he's kept hidden all these years."
"But what can we do?" demanded Rose. The air was thickening with menace. "How can we stop him?"
Kerry pushed against the coldness to stand in the center of the studio. "Stanley Thornton!" she shouted. "We know you killed Kelvin Haslett!"
Dolores stared at her open-mouthed, and then nodded stiffly, setting her dark hair into motion. "All of us do," she said loudly. "We've figured out everything." The air began to swirl and the humming increased, more painful to the ears.
Dolores caught hold of Kerry's hand.
"You let Jessamine believe Kelvin abandoned her," Elizabeth yelled. She fumbled for Dolores's other hand and grasped it.
"You caused great harm," Noreen accused, "then and now. Your lies have been found out." She reached for Aura Lee, bracing herself against the air beginning to twist around the room.
"You must leave this place," Rose commanded as she groped to connect with Aura Lee's hand. Papers and jars of paint were rising into a slowly swirling mass.
"We cast you out of this place." Aura Lee took a deep breath and shouted fiercely. "We cast you out!"
Abruptly the humming stopped and everything fell to the floor. Andrea crumpled at Neal's feet and something rattled behind him. He knelt and gathered her into his arms. "She's ice cold," he said over his shoulder. "Let's get her to the fire." He carried her through the kitchen, maneuvering past the broken door and into the living room. The overhead lights blinked on as they trailed after Neal. He set Andrea on the sofa and tucked a throw around her. "Put wood on the coals."
Rose and Kerry fumbled to collect branches from the basket beside the hearth, and soon little tongues of flame were licking at the kindling. Strudel crept into the room and headed toward the warmth.
Neal rubbed Andrea's hands and arms, all the while calling her name. Finally her eyes opened and she looked up at him in confusion. "Neal? What are you doing?"
He held her to him and rested his head against her shoulder. "Thank God. I didn't think you'd come out of it."
"Out of what?" Andrea pulled away enough to sit up. "What are you talking about?"
Rose bent over the back of the sofa. "Do you remember anything?"
"What?" Andrea stopped to sip at the glass Neal held to her lips. Co
ughing a little, she swallowed more and then pushed it away. "Okay, okay, tell me what's happening."
Together they did. By the time she heard the description of her unconscious painting her face was tight with despair. "I don't remember any of it," she said finally. "The last thing I can think of is when we were at Dolores's house, just getting ready to sleep."
Noreen leaned back in her chair. "No memory of painting?"
"No memory of anything." Andrea laid her head against Neal's shoulder. "What did I paint?"
Rose was half-asleep, but at that she jerked to awareness. "Good question." She looked around the room at the women who sprawled in various stages of exhaustion. "Does anyone want to get the painting, or shall we go take a look at it?"
Aura Lee struggled up from the wingback chair. "I'll get it."
"It's too big for you," Elizabeth protested. "I'll help."
When they jockeyed the large canvas through the door, Rose was surprised at the tears on Aura Lee's cheeks. She got up to help them steer it around a chair and stepped on something sharp. "Ouch." They propped the painting against the wall.
"Oh," Noreen said on a long sigh when she saw it.
It was the work Andrea had begun days before, but no longer was Kelvin Haslett in peril. He paused at a bend in a rocky trail to look at the woman down the path from him. Smiling, he extended his hand to her and she reached for him. Her blonde hair glowed in the sunlight, and her eyes were filled with love. Flowering current bushes and early mist obscured the way they'd come.
"Is that Jessamine?" Kerry asked in a choked voice.
"Of course it is," Aura Lee murmured. "They found each other."
Andrea stared at the work, her eyes shaded with melancholy. "I don't remember."
Neal stretched his arm around her shoulders. "Remember it or not, you painted it. It's brilliant."
Rose bent to search the rug for what she'd stepped on. "You did all this while all hell was breaking loose in the studio. At least..." She stood up holding something in her hand.
Dolores nodded. "I think maybe so much chaos was in there because Stanley was fighting to keep her from finishing the story." She gestured toward the canvas. "It was like a big distraction, you know?"
"Is Stanley gone now?" Andrea asked.
"I hope to God he is." Dolores crossed herself.
"I think he probably is," Rose said in an odd voice. She opened her hand and on her palm was the snarling lion-head ring.
Aura Lee sank toward the floor, and Elizabeth and Kerry grabbed her arms, guiding her to a chair. "Where did you get that?"
"I stepped on it." Rose set the ring on the mantel. "Do you think it fell off him in there?"
Kerry stared at the ring. "We let him know he lost. After all those years of hiding, we found out what he did. Any power he got from the secret is gone."
"'And the Truth shall set you free'," Noreen said softly.
Rose smiled sadly. "That's no woman's quote."
Noreen shrugged. "Even a man will get off a good line every once in a while."
Kerry sat down heavily. "I'm too tired to have the nervous breakdown I have coming to me." She yawned, laughing weakly in the middle of it. "One thing for sure, you'll never be able to come up with a quote for all the stuff that's happened here." She grinned at Noreen. "Nobody could."
"On the contrary, I have just the thing," Noreen said gravely. "I'll quote Jessamine herself as to what was between her and Stanley Thornton, between her and Kelvin:
"The line midst love and hate—
like light and dark—
lies at the edge of the shadow."
The End
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Want more from Yvonne Montgomery?
Here's an excerpt from
A SIGNAL SHOWN
The Wisdom Court Series
Book Two
~
Brenna was nearly running when she rounded the side of the house. The electric lanterns above the doors of the two associate houses, as well as the yard lights along the fountain at the center of the circular driveway, illuminated the cobblestone expanse. The murmur of the water and the thud of her shoes against the bricks were the only sounds.
Swiftly Brenna leapt up the steps to her building, key in hand. Moments later she was jerking open the door to her flat, slipping inside, turning the latch. The reach for the light switch was instinctive. In the silent living room she heard her rapid breathing and felt the pounding of her heart. What had just happened? She was frightened, but of what? She'd seen no one, had heard nothing threatening.
Brenna went to the sofa and settled onto it. As she put her camera onto the coffee table, it rattled against the glass top, and she saw her hands were trembling. Had it been a panic attack or had she'd picked up on something wrong?
Slowly her breathing evened and she stopped shaking. Pushing herself off the sofa, she went to the kitchen. When she faced the bank of uncovered windows, she stopped in the doorway. Dammit, stop acting like a scared kid! She hurried to the cabinet over the counter and yanked a glass off the shelf. Tugging at the cork, she tilted the Bailey's bottle over the glass, knocking it against the rim only twice before the glass was full. Turning her back on the blank panes, she snatched up the bottle. When she reached the living room, her hands were trembling again. She gulped a healthy swig of the liqueur.
Brenna set down the glass and bottle, then sank onto the couch, snagging the green plaid throw from the arm, wrapping it around her shoulders. She didn't have to think about it right now. Probably be better if she didn't. Too much weird shit going on. She fumbled for the camera, nearly knocking it off the coffee table before she curled her fingers around it. She'd gotten some shots—enough to warrant going back with the sixteen-millimeter. The lighting would be a bitch to get right, but it'd be worth it to try.
Flicking the switch to run back through the photos she'd taken, she reached again for the glass. Sipping the creamy liqueur, she saw a decent snap of the lichen on the rock, and a stand of pine saplings that wasn't too bad. She'd caught the look of interdependence in the way the spindly young trees leaned against each other, as if too many strong winds had come their way.
When she came to the image of the finger-shadows extending down the hill, Brenna sighed. No way could the small lens capture the impression of claws, but she'd hoped for more than she'd gotten. The dark areas dominated the square screen, with the trees themselves showing up as only lighter vertical shapes. The flash had illuminated the nearest trunks, but that served to focus on the pines rather than the shadows. How would she manage the contrast?
She moved on to the shots of the house. Her gaze sharpened. A whitish shape was under the roofline, near the attic window. Brenna gently rubbed against the screen with a corner of the throw, but she couldn't tell what it was. No way to tell without more detail. She levered herself off the sofa and headed for the studio and her laptop.
Downloading the snapshots onto the hard drive, Brenna sipped more of the liqueur. She was feeling better. Nothing like a little alcohol to even out the bumps. Bumps in the night, no, things that go bump in the night.
Glancing down at the laptop screen, Brenna saw the download had been completed. She clicked through the shots, stopping at the series she'd taken of Wisdom Court. Another click enlarged them, and she bent over the first shot to check for the anomaly. There it was. She jerked back in shock, and the glass slipped out of her hand onto the rug. "Holy shit."
A chill snaked down her spine. She was looking at a white face in the att
ic window. From it desperate eyes stared at her.
~
To purchase
A Signal Shown
from your favorite eBook Retailer,
visit Yvonne Montgomery's eBook Discovery Author Page
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~
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Yvonne Montgomery became afraid of the dark, after her parents allowed her to see Psycho at the tender age of twelve.
Now Yvonne lives in a shadowy three-story Victorian house in Denver’s historic Capitol Hill where her imagination rises to the challenge when the old floor-boards creak for no reason and the window panes rattle without wind.
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