by Julie Kenner
He was sitting on the floor beside the tub, his head lowered, sobbing.
And then he wasn’t her husband, and they weren’t in the bathroom. He was Jack McCain, sitting on the bottom steps in the hidden basement bunker, his head in his hands.
Kiley went to him, knelt in front of him. “Jack, it’s okay. It’s okay, it wasn’t real.”
He lifted his head slowly, blinked the confusion from his eyes. “Kiley?”
She nodded, and he pressed her face between his palms, pulled her to his face, kissed her lips over and over. “Jesus, you’re okay. I thought I—I thought I’d—”
“I’m okay. So are you, and you’re not Phillip Miller. You’re Jack. All that was—I don’t know, it was…it was someone else. It was the past coming in. Sharon Miller reliving it through us, so we’d finally understand.”
He nodded, holding her closer.
“It wasn’t real, Jack,” she told him.
“You’re right about everything but that.” He brought his head up, looking past her, into the darkness. “It was very real.”
She turned to follow his gaze, and she saw them. Faint wisps in the shapes of women. Some were more defined than others, mists shaping into faces and limbs and hands. Others were just vague shapes, silhouettes of light in the darkness. “God, there are so many of them,” she whispered. “But there were only four in the room.”
Jack rose, clasping her shoulder. “They’re buried in the back lawn.”
She closed her eyes. “Oh, God.”
“It gets worse,” he said softly. “He’s still doing it.”
Her head came up fast. “What?”
“Phillip Miller isn’t dead, Kiley. He’s alive and well and living not far from here. And he’s still murdering women.”
And then she remembered. “The missing prostitutes from Albany. Oh, my God, Jack! We have to get out of here, we have to stop him and—”
There was a groaning sound, and a powerful crash, followed by light spilling in from behind. The trapdoor lay open, the way to the cellar clear.
Kiley met Jack’s eyes. “I am so sorry I ever called you a fraud, Jack. You’re—you’re so amazing it’s scary.”
He shook his head slowly. “Remind me to tell you later why you’re dead wrong about that.”
She frowned at him. But then she turned to look back at those shapes, the spirits of women, all of them. “It’s over. We’ll stop him. We promise. And then you can rest in peace.”
EPILOGUE
KILEY’S ENTIRE HOUSE WAS surrounded in yellow police tape. Police cars, SUVs and vans lined the street, and heavy equipment growled and belched in the back yard. News crews were everywhere, but Kiley wasn’t giving any interviews. She’d written what she could about all of this in her latest column, and the rest was going into a book.
She stood on the sidewalk, watching the bodies being exhumed and carried in plastic bags out to waiting vehicles, one by one. Jack sat on the curb close beside her, fallen leaves in brilliant colors carpeting the sidewalk around him, reading the paper.
Officer Hanlon came over to where she stood. “They’ve arrested Phillip Miller. There were three women in his basement when they arrived.”
Jack looked up from the newspaper. Kiley’s throat tightened up. “Alive?”
“Yes. Thanks to you.”
She swallowed hard. “Thanks for telling me.”
Hanlon nodded and headed back to the house. Kiley looked down at Jack. “Well?”
He met her eyes, then refocused on the page and began reading aloud from her latest column. “‘So to sum it up, I’ve learned that not everything I don’t understand or believe in is necessarily make-believe. There are good psychics, and there are bad ones. And the only way to judge which is which is by how they make you feel. If their advice helps you, heals you, answers a need you have, then they are as genuine as any minister, priest, pastor or shrink. I’m retiring from my former career of debunking everything I don’t happen to believe in. After what I’ve seen in my house, I know now that there is far more in this world than I will ever understand. And it humbles me to admit that the extraordinary and genuine skills and gifts of three psychics I called fakes—two of them in this very column—were what enabled me to find the truth about the women who were murdered and buried on my property, and to stop a killer at the end of a thirty-year spree. Those psychics were for real, even though I claimed to have proven otherwise. I will never question what I don’t understand again.’”
Jack folded the newspaper and got to his feet. “It’s wonderful. Your best column ever.”
She shrugged. “If a psychic as gifted as you are doesn’t know whether he’s a fraud or not, how the hell can I pretend to?” She shook her head. “I can’t believe you were as convinced you were a fake as I was, all this time. How can you have a gift like that and not know?”
Jack shrugged. “Chris knew. He knew all along. I guess it just took a case I cared this much about to make me aware of it.”
“Yeah? And what was it about this case that made you care so much?”
He gave her a slow, sexy smile, reached out to clasp her nape and pulled her to him for a long, lingering kiss. His lips moved against hers when he said, “I think you know.”
“No way,” she whispered back. “You’re the one who’s psychic, remember?”
“Right. So I suppose I have to spell it out for you.”
She sent him a smile and nodded. “Please.”
“I’m nuts about you, Kiley. I don’t know when I went from hating you to loving you—maybe it was from the very start. But I know I do.”
She nodded. “I was hoping you’d say that.”
“Why?”
“Well, I’m going to need a place to crash for a while, for one thing.”
He made a face at her. She smiled fully. “And you know, there is that pesky fact that I love you, too.”
“Do you?”
“Mmm-hmm.”
He kissed her once more, tucked her under his arm and led her back down the sidewalk toward the car. “When the police have finished here, we should have the other psychics in town come back here, do a cleansing ritual, make sure those spirits have made it across to the other side. They deserve to be at peace. God knows they’ve suffered long enough,” Jack said.
“I agree. But I have a feeling they made it just fine. I think they’re at peace now, Jack.”
“Yeah, I feel as if they are, too.”
They reached the car, and he opened her door for her.
“Where are we going?”
“My place, or I guess I should say our place now.”
She shot him a loving look. “You mean I can move in?”
“Yeah. Just one rule, Kiley.”
“What?”
“You can’t bring any ghosts with you.”
Dancers in the Dark
Charlaine Harris
TORONTO • NEW YORK • LONDON
AMSTERDAM • PARIS • SYDNEY • HAMBURG
STOCKHOLM • ATHENS • TOKYO • MILAN • MADRID
PRAGUE • WARSAW • BUDAPEST • AUCKLAND
CONTENTS
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ONE
RUE PAUSED TO GATHER herself before she pushed open the door marked both Blue Moon Entertainment and Black Moon Productions. She’d made sure she’d be right on time for her appointment. Desperation clamped down on her like a vise: she had to get this job, even if the conditions were distasteful. Not only would the money make continuing her university courses possible, the job hours dovetailed with her classes. Okay, head up, chest out, shoulders square, big smile, pretty hands, Rue told herself, as her mother had told her a thousand times.
There were two men—two vampires, she corrected herself
—one dark, one red-haired, and a woman, a regular human woman, waiting for her. In the corner, at a barre, a girl with short blond hair was stretching. The girl might be eighteen, three years younger than Rue.
The older woman was hard-faced, expensively dressed, perhaps forty. Her pantsuit had cost more than three of Rue’s outfits, at least the ones that she wore to classes every day. She thought of those outfits as costumes: old jeans and loose shirts bought at the thrift store, sneakers or hiking boots and big glasses with a very weak prescription. She was concealed in such an ensemble at this moment, and Rue realized from the woman’s face that her appearance was an unpleasant surprise.
“You must be Rue?” the older woman asked.
Rue nodded, extended her hand. “Rue May. Pleased to meet you.” Two lies in a row. It was getting to be second nature—or even (and this was what scared her most) first nature.
“I’m Sylvia Dayton. I own Blue Moon Entertainment and Black Moon Productions.” She shook Rue’s hand in a firm, brisk way.
“Thank you for agreeing to see me dance.” Rue crammed her apprehension into a corner of her mind and smiled confidently. She’d endured the judgments of strangers countless times. “Where do I change?” She let her gaze skip right over the vampires—her potential partners, she guessed. At least they were both taller than her own five foot eight. In the hasty bit of research she’d done, she’d read that vampires didn’t like to shake hands, so she didn’t offer. Surely she was being rude in not even acknowledging their presence? But Sylvia hadn’t introduced them.
“In there.” There were some louver-doored enclosures on one side of the room, much like changing rooms in a department store. Rue entered a cubicle. It was easy to slide out of the oversize clothes and the battered lace-up boots, a real pleasure to pull on black tights, a deep plum leotard and fluttering wrap skirt to give the illusion of a dress while she danced. She sat on a stool to put on T-strap heels, called character shoes, then stood to smile experimentally at her reflection in the mirror. Head up, chest out, shoulders square, big smile, pretty hands, she repeated silently. Rue took the clip out of her hair and brushed it until it fell in a heavy curtain past her shoulder blades. Her hair was one of her best features. It was a deep, rich brown with an undertone of auburn. The color almost matched that of her deep-set, dramatic eyes.
Rue only needed her glasses to clarify writing on the blackboard, so she popped them into their case and slipped it into her backpack. She leaned close to the mirror to inspect her makeup. After years of staring into her mirror with the confidence of a beautiful girl, she now examined her face with the uncertainty of a battered woman. There were pictures in a file at her lawyer’s office, pictures of her face bruised and puffy. Her nose—well, it looked fine now.
The plastic surgeon had done a great job.
So had the dentist.
Her smile faltered, dimmed. She straightened her back again. She couldn’t afford to think about that now. It was show time. She folded back the door and stepped out.
There was a moment of silence as the four in the room took in Rue’s transformation. The darker vampire looked gratified; the red-haired one’s expression didn’t change. That pleased Rue.
“You were fooling us,” Sylvia said. She had a deep, raspy voice. “You were in disguise.” I’d better remember that Sylvia Dayton is perceptive, Rue told herself. “Well, let’s try you on the dance floor, since you definitely pass in the looks department. By the way, it’s Blue Moon you want to try out for, right? Not Black Moon? You could do very well in a short time with Black Moon, with your face and body.”
It was Blue Moon’s ad she’d answered. “Dancer wanted, must work with vamps, have experience, social skills,” the ad had read. “Salary plus tips.”
“What’s the difference?” Rue asked.
“Black Moon, well, you have to be willing to have sex in public.”
Rue couldn’t remember the last time she’d been shocked, but she was shocked now. “No!” she said, trying not to sound as horrified as she felt. “And if this tryout has anything to do with removing my clothes…”
“No, Blue Moon Entertainment is strictly for dancing,” Sylvia said. She was calm about it. “As the ad said, you team with a vampire. That’s what the people want these days. Whatever kind of dancing the party calls for—waltzing, hip-hop. The tango is very popular. People just want a dance team to form the centerpiece for their evening, get the party started. They like the vamp to bite the girl at the end of the exhibition dance.”
She’d known that; it had been in the ad, too. All the material she’d read had told her it didn’t hurt badly, and the loss of a sip of blood wouldn’t affect her. She’d been hurt worse.
“After you dance as a team, often you’re required to stay for an hour, dancing with the guests,” Sylvia was saying. “Then you go home. They pay me a fee. I pay you. Sometimes you get tips. If you agree to anything on the side and I hear about it, you’re fired.” It took Rue a minute to understand what Sylvia meant, and her mouth compressed. Sylvia continued. “Pretty much the same arrangement applies for Black Moon, but the entertainment is different, and the pay is higher. We’re thinking of adding vampire jugglers and a vampire magician—he’ll need a ‘Beautiful Assistant.’”
It steadied Rue somehow when she realized that Sylvia was simply being matter-of-fact. Sex performer, magician’s assistant or dancer, Sylvia didn’t care.
“Blue Moon,” Rue said firmly.
“Blue Moon it is,” Sylvia said.
The blond girl drifted over to stand by Sylvia. She had small hazel eyes and a full mouth that was meant to smile. She wasn’t smiling now.
While Sylvia searched through a stack of CD cases, the blonde stepped up to Rue’s side. She whispered, “Don’t look directly in their eyes. They can snag you that way, if they want to, turn your will to their wishes. Don’t worry unless their fangs run all the way out. They’re excited then.”
Startled, Rue used her lowest voice to say, “Thanks!” But now she was even more nervous, and she had to wonder if perhaps that hadn’t been the girl’s intention.
Having picked a CD, Sylvia tapped the arm of one of the vampires. “Thompson, you first.”
The dark-haired taller vampire, who was wearing biking shorts and a ragged, sleeveless T-shirt, came to stand in front of Rue. He was very handsome, very exotic, with golden skin and smooth short hair. Rue guessed he was of Eurasian heritage; there was a hint of a slant to his dark eyes. He smiled down at her. But there was something in his look she didn’t trust, and she always paid attention to that feeling…at least, now she did. After a quick scan of his face, she kept her eyes focused on his collarbone.
Rue had never touched a vampire. Where she came from, a smallish town in Tennessee, you never saw anything so exotic. If you wanted to see a vampire (just like if you wanted to go to the zoo), you had to visit the city. The idea of touching a dead person made Rue queasy. She would have been happy to turn on her heel and walk right out of the room, but that option wasn’t open. Her savings had run out. Her rent was due. Her phone bill was imminent. She had no insurance.
She heard her mother’s voice in her head, reminding her, “Put some steel in that spine, honey.” Good advice. Too bad her mother hadn’t followed it herself.
Sylvia popped the disk in the CD player, and Rue put one hand on Thompson’s shoulder, extended the other in his grasp. His hands were cool and dry. This partner would never have sweaty palms. She tried to suppress her shiver. You don’t have to like a guy to dance with him, she advised herself. The music was an almost generic dance tune. They began with a simple two-step, then a box step. The music accelerated into swing, progressed to jitterbug.
Rue found she could almost forget her partner was a vampire. Thompson could really dance. And he was so strong! He could lift her with ease, swing her, toss her over his head, roll her across his back. She felt light as a feather. But she hadn’t mistaken the gleam in his eyes. Even while they were dancing,
his hands traveled over more of her body than they should. She’d had enough experience with men—more than enough experience—to predict the way their partnership would go, if it began like this.
The music came to an end. He watched her chest move up and down from the exercise. He wasn’t even winded. Of course, she reminded herself, Thompson didn’t need to breathe. The vampire bowed to Rue, his eyes dancing over her body. “A pleasure,” he said. To her surprise, his voice purely American.
She nodded back.
“Excellent,” Sylvia said. “You two look good together. Thompson, Julie, you can go now, if you want.” The blonde and Thompson didn’t seem to want. They both sat down on the floor, backs to one of the huge mirrors that lined the room. “Now dance with Sean O’Rourke, our Irish aristocrat,” Sylvia told her. “He needs a new partner, too.” Rue must have looked anxious, because the older woman laughed and said, “Sean’s partner got engaged and left the city. Thompson’s finished med school and started her residency. Sean?”
The second vampire stepped forward, and Rue realized he hadn’t moved the whole time she’d been dancing with Thompson. Now he gave Sylvia a frigid nod and examined Rue as closely as she was examining him.
Dust could have settled on Sean, he stood so still. He was shorter than Thompson, but still perhaps two inches taller than Rue, and his long straight hair, tied back at the nape of his neck, was bright red. Of course, Sean was white, white as paper; Thompson’s racial heritage, his naturally golden skin, had made him look a little more alive.
The Irish vampire’s mouth was like a capital M. The graven downturns made him look a little spoiled, a little petulant, but it was just the way his mouth was made. She wondered what he would look like if he ever smiled. Sean’s eyes were blue and clear, and he had a dusting of freckles across his sharp nose. A vampire with freckles—that made Rue want to laugh. She ducked her head to hide her smile as he took his stance in front of her.
