Spooked

by Sharp, Tracy

  Jude kept his back to me as he gathered leaves off the end of his rake with gloved hands. “Drop it, Lorelei. You’re going to get us both punished.”

  Anger and frustration made me grit my teeth, but underneath the rage was a deep sense of hopelessness that I fought off by working harder.

  The other kids were working around the area. Strummer drove a riding lawn mower, shredding leaves on the ground as he went. He looked at me for a moment with a dark, intense stare and I felt fear slither over me. I looked down, focusing on my work.

  Two girls I hadn’t yet met were working in another area of the yard. I didn’t know what they were laboring on, because I have no idea in the least about gardening, but they worked in the colorful flower beds around the gardens. I wondered what their talents were. I could easily find out if I used my ability on them, but I was afraid they would know, and I’d be reprimanded. I figured by how afraid Jude was of repercussions that being reprimanded would be a very unpleasant thing.

  The work would be endless, I knew. Lucian could easily hire a full outdoor staff, but he wanted to keep us busy. The busier you are, the less mischief you’re likely to get into. At least, that was the theory. If we were dead tired by day’s end, we had no strength for shenanigans.

  I was deep in thought when the leaves in the flower beds began swirling upward. I frowned; I hadn’t noticed any wind. The autumn day was cool and sunny, but the air was calm. The only wind appeared to be in the flower beds. I stepped back and watched as the leaves on the ground lifted up, dancing around one another and coming together. More and more leaves moved together, twirling in a tornado pattern.

  “Oh, shit.” Jude came up to me and I felt his hand pull my arm backward. “Come on. Move it.”

  “What is it?”

  I watched in awe as the leaf tornado moved into a giant heart shape, hovering there in front of us, and then moving higher, so that we were looking up at it.

  Jude pulled me backward.

  The heart broke apart, the leaves scattering momentarily until they came together again in the shape of a bird, its wings flapping rapidly.

  I watched, open-mouthed and amazed, as the bird came toward me and wrapped me in its wings.

  Jude cried out and yanked me away as the leaf-bird broke apart and the leaves fell on me and on the ground around me, the sound like a sharp whisper.

  I fell backwards, on my rear end, awestruck. I looked around me. “What just happened?”

  Jude helped me, taking both my hands and pulling me up. “Strummer just sent you a greeting card of woodland spirits. Apparently, he likes you.”

  I turned and looked behind me, my gaze finding Strummer sitting on the riding mower, grinning. He nodded his head once, and then started the mower moving again, the smile not leaving his face.

  “You never know what he’ll send. Woodland spirits are mostly harmless,” Jude said. “But he’s not.”

  “Awesome,” I said. My luck just kept getting better.

  ***

  After working in the yard, we were given lunch, made by Lucian’s chef, whose name I learned was Matt. The best chicken noodle soup I’d ever had, with thick turkey and provolone cheese sandwiches. The bread was definitely homemade.

  “Wow. Delicious.” I took another bite of my sandwich.

  “Yeah. Matt’s got skills,” one of the girls from the gardens said. She had shiny golden hair tied back in a ponytail and merry brown eyes. “I’m Betty, by the way.”

  “That’s a name you don’t hear much,” I said. “I like it.”

  “Thanks. It works. I was named after a great-grandmother. She was Elizabeth, shortened to Betty. I’m just Betty.”

  “It does work,” I said

  She smiled at me and I smiled back. Betty was apparently a happy person. I figured that her cheeriness was either contagious or annoying to people. I liked it. Her attitude was a welcome change.

  “What is your special skill, Betty?” I asked her.

  She grinned, sat back and looked into my eyes. Her face became expressionless.

  Suddenly, I felt someone in my head. My right hand picked up a corn muffin and tossed it at Jude. A musical laugh came bubbling up my throat and both hands came up to cover my giggle.

  “Nice, Betty,” Jude said, brushing muffing crumbs off his shirt. He then began buttering the muffin, which had fallen onto his plate.

  Just as suddenly as she’d appeared inside me, she left, and I felt her absence the way you feel when your best friend who was just sitting next to you suddenly leaves the room.

  She came alive again, giving a little laugh and seeming quite pleased with herself. She reached for a piece of chocolate cake. “That’s my skill.”

  “Wow,” I said. “That’s a handy talent to have.”

  “It does come in handy sometimes. But it’s dangerous to do for more than a few minutes, really.”

  “Is it harder to leave someone if you stay too long?” I asked.

  “It is. And it’s not a good idea to leave your body for long. There are bad spirits who can take over your body when you’re not in it.” Her face had become serious.

  “I’ve heard,” I said.

  “And…there are terrible people who will do things to your body while you’re not in it.” She was no longer smiling. “But then, sometimes that is when my talent comes in the handiest.” She was quiet, staring at her plate.

  I shivered inwardly. Leo. I’m sure she didn’t dare inhabit Leo to make him back off. He’d tell Lucian, and leave out the whole sexual assault part of it. Maybe she’d even tried, and been punished. The guy needed a serious ass-whooping, and I decided wholeheartedly that someday I’d be the one to give it to him.

  “What is the longest you’ve been inside someone else?” I asked her.

  She thought for a moment, chewing a bite of cake slowly. “I helped my twin brother through a math test for about twenty minutes once.”

  I grinned. “Did he do well on the test?”

  “He aced it,” she told me, winking.

  “Can you go into animals?”

  “Yes,” Betty said. “I prefer cats. But I’ve been inside dogs, horses, birds, a frog, and a shark.”

  I stared at her. “A shark?”

  She nodded. “At an aquarium when I was really little. I didn’t know I was going to do it. I was just watching him so closely that I went into him, right through the glass. My mother was holding me, thank goodness. She thought I’d just fallen asleep. I was three.”

  “What was it like?”

  She shuddered. “Cold. Alien. There was really nothing there. I left the shark pretty fast. It scared me.”

  “I bet it did.”

  “I just started crying and couldn’t stop. My parents had to take me home.”

  I ate in silence for a moment, thinking about Betty’s family and wondering where they were.

  “How long have you been here, Betty?” I finally asked her.

  “About six months. It’s not so bad. Mostly. My talent is used outside this building.”

  I could only imagine what they made her do when she entered someone else’s body.

  “Someday I’ll go back home,” she said. “If I do a good job and don’t complain. We all will. I’m sure of it.”

  I offered her a little smile, but I wasn’t as optimistic.

  I let my mind wander a little, wondering what was going on in my town. I wondered whether Mick was looking for me. “Are we allowed to watch the news, read the paper, or listen to the radio? I really want to know what’s going on in my town. If I could just jump on the Internet and read the town newspaper online, it would mean a lot to me. Does anyone even know where we are?”

  “We’re nowhere,” Jude said, a hard edge to his voice. “Don’t ask that question again.”

  I said to Betty, “Two girls from my high school have gone missing. They vanished within days of each other. I was using my ability to find people’s secrets when I was taken.”

  Betty’s eyes grew rou
nd. “Missing girls? That’s terrible. There is one person who has more privileges than the rest of us.”

  Jude looked up at Betty, a warning look in his eye.

  Betty rolled her eyes. “Oh, for God’s sake. Two girls have disappeared from her town, Jude. This is important. She’s going to figure it out anyway.”

  “I’m going to figure what out?” I asked, looking back and forth from one to the other.

  Jude sighed, shaking his head and staying silent.

  “Morgan’s been here the longest and has access to all those things, but don’t bother asking her because she won’t help you. There is one person who might,” Betty said coyly.

  “Who is it?” I asked, frustration tingeing my words.

  “Paula. You haven’t met her yet. She dines with Lucian, mostly. She was helping me in the flower beds earlier, just because she wanted to hang out with me. But she’s Lucian’s…” she struggled to find the right word.

  “Pet,” Jude said, not looking up from his plate. “As a result of her other special skills.”

  “Oh,” I said, lifting my eyebrows.

  Betty tipped her head in the affirmative. “He really likes her. She can come and go pretty much as she pleases. He takes her out a lot. Dinners, movies, vacations. Whatever she likes. She stays in his house with him.”

  Betty was a fountain of information. The more I discovered about the people who did Lucian’s bidding, or bedding in this case, the more I found out about Lucian. “Is that why she stays? Because he lavishes her with special treatment?”

  Betty shrugged. “I think she cares about him. I think her mother was good to her, but her father took off when she was a baby and left her mother with four kids. Paula said that they lived way below the poverty line. Lucian was doing her mother a favor financially, by taking Paula off her hands. I don’t know whether she’s still in contact with her family. Paula said that he still sends her mother checks to help out.”

  “That’s pretty cool of him.” Considering that her mother didn’t seem to mind Lucian treating Paula like a concubine, I thought. Still, he didn’t have to do that, which implied that Lucian did actually care about Paula. Maybe he wasn’t a complete monster after all.

  “Yeah. I guess.”

  “What is her special talent?”

  “Aside from pleasing Lucian?” She grinned wickedly. “She can predict what people will do. She is never wrong.”

  “That’s a good talent to have. Must come in handy.”

  “I’m sure it does, but these days I think Lucian keeps her around for her other talents. I don’t think he’s capable of loving anyone, but he is very fond of her.”

  “How did she fly into Lucian’s radar?”

  “She called the cops when she left a convenience store to let them know that it was about to be robbed. They arrived during the robbery.”

  “So she was on the news,” I said.

  Betty nodded. “Lucian saw her face and was instantly taken with her. He personally paid her a visit at the burger joint she was working at.”

  Jude sat back and crossed his arms. “You talk too much, Betty. You’re going to get us all in shit with Lucian.”

  “Okay, okay.” Betty held a palm up to Jude. “I’ll shut up. Anyway, the point is, Paula is a sweetheart. She may let you use her laptop for a minute, or at least search the news in your town for you, if you tell her why.”

  “When can I ask her?” I felt my nerves humming with excitement. “Where is she right now?”

  “I’m sure she’s having lunch with Lucian. I’ll ask Matt, the cook, to look her in the eye and intend to give her a note. Then she’ll know he wants her to come into the kitchen and talk to him. She’ll know that the information is not intended for Lucian’s ears.”

  “All he has to do is intend to give her the note?”

  Betty nodded. “Yep. She’ll predict that he’ll give her a note. And that works just fine. We’ve used this technique before.”

  “She won’t tell Lucian?”

  Betty shook her head. “She hasn’t yet. I think she cares about him and is loyal to him, but that there are some things that are better kept from him.”

  I felt relief move over me, making me feel tired. “Thanks, Betty. I really appreciate this.”

  She gave me a bright smile. “No problem.” Then her smile fell away and she said, “I really hope they find those girls and that they are just fine.”

  “So do I, Betty.” But a creeping sense of dread had settled into my heart when I thought of Eliza and Kerry, and I felt deep in my soul that they were not fine.

  Not fine at all.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Paula was a beautiful girl. Long, chestnut hair fell around her shoulders in soft, shiny waves. She had almond-shaped eyes the color of deep, rich chocolate. I could see why Lucian had been instantly taken with her. I was taken with her, too. She had a lovely smile and a gentle way about her that made you want to be around her.

  Betty whispered into her ear, and Paula smiled and nodded. She took me by the hand and led me into an area past the living room and dining room to a short hallway and to an elevator.

  When we stepped in, I was taken aback by my image. The elevator was mirrored, and I was struck by how pale and tired I looked. My hair was not soft and bouncy as it usually was, but hung lifeless around my shoulders. My eyes looked a little wild.

  “You can shower in my room,” she said, noticing my expression in the mirror.

  “I’d appreciate that,” I told her.

  “Lucian has kept you so busy, he hasn’t gotten around to having someone show you where the shower room is.”

  “I had no idea this elevator was here,” I told her.

  “There are a lot of things you don’t know about this place,” she said.

  We stepped off the elevator and entered a large office overlooking the gardens. The view was gorgeous, bright flowers everywhere.

  “Lucian wouldn’t like this, so don’t breathe a word. Okay?” She took my hand and led me to a desk, where a laptop sat.

  I looked around the room. “Aren’t we being watched right now?”

  She shook her head. “I’ve made it clear that I want no cameras or bugs in my room.”

  I looked at her, and then glanced down.

  “It’s okay,” she said. “It’s common knowledge around here what I do for Lucian. It’s really not that bad, you know.”

  I nodded. “Okay.”

  “I’m not a slave here. I don’t feel exploited. I serve a purpose,” she said, her voice soft and gentle.

  “I understand,” I said.

  Her brows came together , and then she smiled and tilted her head. “But you don’t agree with what I do?”

  “No,” I said. “That isn’t it. I’m not judging you, if this is what you want to do. What I don’t agree with is the rest of us being abducted and forced to do Lucian’s bidding. It’s really not all that much fun. We had no choice, Paula.”

  “I don’t really know what your situation was, but most of those kids downstairs were living a pretty bad life, Lorelei. They were street urchins. Living hand to mouth.”

  “Well, I wasn’t,” I told her, my voice rising and cracking. “I had an aunt who loved me. I had a friend who cared about me.”

  “Lorelei, two girls are missing from your town. How long do you think it would be before you went missing, too?”

  I looked straight into her eyes. “I have gone missing.”

  I just didn’t know what the story was behind my disappearance. Was Mick even alive to tell it?

  Paula stood behind me as I searched the news in the town of Saints Hollow. The very first headline to come up on the screen hit me like a brick and stole my breath away.

  Another Girl Missing in Saints Hallow.

  Brianna Hawthorne had vanished.

  ***

  “Paula, I have to get out of here.” I turned in the chair, looking up at her. “Would you help me?”

  Paula’s face was t
roubled. “Lorelei, I know that you don’t want to hear this, but I honestly think that this is the safest place for you right now.”

  I sighed. “You’re right. I don’t want to hear that. Look, I need to get out and use this…freakish ability to find out who is snatching these girls. Please, help me.”

  She watched me, silent, her eyes sad for me.

  An idea came into my head and I suddenly felt sick. “Oh, hell no. Please tell me that Lucian didn’t steal those girls.”

  She shook her head slowly. “I truly don’t know. But if he isn’t the one who took them, there is a very bad person in Saints Hallow stealing young girls.”

  Paula allowed me the use of her shower, and as I reveled in the steamy water and lathered myself up in her luxurious vanilla and brown sugar body wash, I thought about what she’d said to me and what my current situation was.

  Whatever she knew or didn’t know, Paula wasn’t going to help me out. I believed her, though, when she said that she thought the compound was the safest place for me. I got the impression that any discussion of who Lucian grabbed off the streets for his own uses was forbidden, so Paula wouldn’t breach the subject with him. Though she might mention the fact that I told her that girls were vanishing in my town.

  I’d have to find another way out of here, and I’d have to be careful.

  Otherwise, I might just disappear for real.

  ***

  “Be careful what you say to Paula. She is Lucian’s…whatever she is,” Jude said.

  He was walking me back to my room. Just after nine o’clock, I was tired, but my mind was reeling.

  “I have to get out of here,” I told him.

  He stopped, grabbed me by the shoulders and stared me in the eyes with an intensity that surprised me. “Listen to me. You are not getting out of here until Lucian lets you go.”

  “Which may be never. What happens to the kids who don’t get away? The ones who outgrow their use?”

  His lips drew a tight, thin line.

  “So I’d be just putting off the inevitable anyway? He’s going to kill us all eventually?”