by Anne Frasier
Strata Luna was talking: “Elise is a strong, independent woman. I understand that. Who needs a man? Beyond sex and the occasional back rub? And a cup of tea brought to bed?”
“Riiiight.” It came out as more of a question. No need to point out the obvious—that she was talking to a man.
She let out a resigned sigh that seemed to imply he was too dense for the room. “Have you ever thought about you and Elise together?”
Weird that her words echoed the very thing he’d said last night. “She doesn’t think of me that way,” he hedged, fairly certain the woman would know if he lied.
“I can help.”
“I don’t need your help.”
She began moving around, looking at his shelves of books, wiping at the dust on his TV. “I started thinking about this when Elise was abducted. She’s an independent spirit, but she needs somebody in her life. You’re both single and close to the same age.”
David felt his heart soften a little. This woman who claimed she cared for no one, claimed she needed no one, was worried about Elise.
Strata Luna gave him an eloquent shrug. “You don’t believe in spells, so what does it matter?” She tucked a gloved hand deep into a fold of her dress and pulled out a small red bag secured with a drawstring. The scent that had followed her inside was stronger now, and he realized it came from the bag she held in her black-gloved hand. “Take it,” she whispered. Her voice was dark and smooth, the tone like nothing he’d ever heard. And for the first time, he began to doubt his lack of belief.
Truth be told, Elise gave David’s life meaning and made his world livable again. And almost losing her . . . that changed a person’s perspective. It made him question the role he’d been okay with before her abduction.
He didn’t believe in spells and mojos. He didn’t believe you could make someone love you. But even though he didn’t believe even a little bit, he humored Strata Luna and took the bag, fingering the smooth velvet, inhaling the scent.
She actually bestowed a smile on him.
God, she was beautiful. Some people said her beauty was the reason for the veil. Without it, men fainted in the street as she walked by. David felt a little woozy himself right now.
“Sleep with it under your pillow,” she told him. “Every night. And before another full moon, Elise Sandburg will love you with the love of a thousand poets.”
Strata Luna left in a swirl of black.
Love. Right. David closed the door after her. He didn’t believe, but he’d keep the mojo anyway. He liked the way it smelled.
CHAPTER 7
Elise spent the bulk of her first full day at the plantation settling in and roaming the house and grounds—as much as she could with a cast and crutches. By evening she realized she’d done a little too much roaming, and pain drove her to bed early. She shook a full dose of medication into her palm and popped the pills. She’d reached the point where total oblivion was welcome, but she’d settle for anything that cut the pain in half. Just cut it in half.
Once the pills were swallowed, Elise propped her leg and cast over a plumped pillow and lay there in a sweat, staring at a crack in the wall while doing the breathing exercises she’d learned in Lamaze classes. Doctors had said her ankle wasn’t broken, but the tendons and muscles had been so worked over that healing could take a long time. But it wasn’t just her ankle that hurt. It was bruised ribs, a shoulder that had been dislocated for most of her captivity, and a multitude of cuts and stab wounds, none of which had been deep, but all meant to inflict pain and disfigure her. And her back . . . God, the mess he’d made of her back . . . She hadn’t been able to do more than glance at it in the bathroom mirror. Maybe someday . . . or maybe never.
The phone next to her bed rang and she answered. David. He asked how she was. He asked if she was ready to leave the plantation. Elise told him no in a voice she hoped wasn’t edged with pain. Had she overcorrected? Had that sounded too perky?
“I thought about coming out there tonight, but I had to work late,” he told her. “Then I had a missing person’s case dumped in my lap. They wanted a homicide specialist’s opinion.”
It was weird to think of him working cases without her. She didn’t like it. Almost like hearing he was seeing someone else. What an odd thought, but that’s kind of how it was with them. Those late-night visits to alleys where they bonded over dead bodies. But even if she’d been in Savannah, she wouldn’t have been able to be involved in any cases. Doctor’s orders. Not just the doctor who’d treated her in the hospital, but the psychiatrist assigned by the department had ordered her off the force for six weeks.
Elise’s immediate reaction had been concern about boredom. She didn’t know what to do with herself when she wasn’t working. “Savannah will be the murder capital of the world by the time I get back,” Elise had told Dr. Kicklighter. But it seemed things were going along fine without her. Elise didn’t like that.
She told David about last night and how she’d mistaken Melinda for Anastasia. “She looked and sounded just like her mother.” The pills were kicking in. Elise felt her body begin to relax.
“How about I come and get you tomorrow?”
Elise was having trouble forming thoughts. And once she got the words lined up in her head, she felt too tired to bother saying them. “I’m perfectly fine here,” she finally managed.
“What about groceries?”
“The cupboards and freezer are well stocked. I microwaved a burrito for dinner. It was surprisingly good.”
“Your voice is slurred,” he noted.
Just move along. Nothing to see here.
Elise didn’t like being out of control, but he was right. She could feel the thickness of her tongue and the heaviness in her arms. She could feel warmth seeping through her veins. “I had to take something,” she confessed.
“See, this is why you should stay at my place,” he said. “When it comes to pain medication, you’re an amateur.”
“We can’t all be pros like you.” She realized she was talking with her eyes closed, and she forced them open with a wide blink.
“Which means I would have made a good guide. A guru.”
“Let me ask you this. Would you go swimming in the very pool where your mother drowned? Does that seem odd to you?” Elise asked.
“People do weird things after the loss of a loved one. Like becoming fixated on funeral homes and cemeteries. Or the place where the death occurred.”
Elise sat up straighter, a pillow against the headboard and her back. “Did you use the tub?” she asked bluntly and without a filter. “After your son’s death? Did you ever use a tub again?” This wasn’t something she would normally ask. Too personal. Too terribly painful.
David was quiet for a long time, as if trying to decide how much he wanted to share. When he spoke, the words were without emotion. “I never used a tub before, but after . . . I used one all the time after. I would stay in it until the water turned cold. I would submerge myself and look up at the ceiling through the water. I would imagine what it had been like for him.” His voice broke.
“Oh, David. I’m sorry.” So sorry. Why had she brought it up?
“Maybe she’s doing the same thing,” David said, pulling himself together. He was good at that. “Maybe she’s putting herself in her mother’s place. Maybe it makes her feel closer to the person she lost.”
Elise heard a splash. “Damn. She’s back.”
Then she heard laughter. The echoing, high-pitched kind that sounded like colored kaleidoscope glass. Far away, undefined, with a texture that never quite solidified. This sounded like a party, not a grief-driven visit.
“Who’s back?” David asked.
“Melinda. I have to go. Call you tomorrow.”
Before he could ask any more questions, Elise hung up. Then she hefted the cast off the pillow. This was a maneuver done with two
hands supporting her thigh, cradling her leg as if it didn’t belong to her. She swung the leg and cast to the floor, her good leg following. Then, balancing on the foot without the cast, she reached for the crutches and positioned them under her arms.
She moved toward the door, paused, and waited for a wave of dizziness to pass. The pills had taken care of the pain, but they’d also done a number on the rest of her.
Elise had gone her whole life without a broken arm or twisted ankle. Gunshots, that was different. Knife wounds? Oh, yeah. But now she’d been taken down by a sick bastard who’d spent days humiliating and torturing her.
Don’t think about it.
How could she not think about it when she was dealing with the remnants of that ordeal? Bastard, bastard, bastard. The things he’d done to her. The things she would never tell anyone, not even Dr. Kicklighter. And David. Especially not David. Or her daughter. Oh, God. Not her daughter. Audrey could never know. Elise would change in her eyes. She would become this other person who’d miscalculated. Who’d made a mistake. Who’d been overpowered. If her daughter knew, Audrey would no longer see her as strong and tough. She would no longer see her as the person who would protect her.
A mother should be able to protect her child and her home. And now Elise didn’t know if she could continue to be a homicide detective if it meant putting Audrey in danger.
But she was a cop. That was her identity. Who would she be if that were taken away? And what would she do? She had no other skills. God knew her body was too ravaged to be a hooker. That was a little joke she liked to tell her coworkers. And then someone would finish by saying that wasn’t at all true. “Have you seen the women we arrested last night?” And everybody would laugh.
But even if looks didn’t matter, Elise would have made a crummy whore. You expect me to do what?
So there she went. The bad whore, bad cop, bad victim . . .
Still dizzy, she made her way down the hall. It was hard enough to maneuver with the cast when she wasn’t under the influence. Put a gun in her hand and she turned into a ballet dancer, but otherwise she was just your average klutz with an array of bruises to prove it.
With the crutches under her arms, Elise moved down the hall faster than was wise, but she was mad. So much for her vacation. So much for her sabbatical and her days of self-discovery. Nobody else knew that this was supposed to be a time for serious reflection and soul searching, but still . . . Deep down, she knew she’d never discover herself at the plantation. The real Elise was back in Savannah. At her job. With her daughter. And David. Her mind always went back to David.
Maybe this was an escape. She’d seen something in his eyes that had her running. Or hobbling. She would run later. She would run like hell once she quit wearing the cast.
Or not.
Oh, my God.
Was it more enticing to think about how things could be between them? Could anything live up to her expectations? Round and round she went. And the next time David called she would talk to him in her all-business voice, or mildly friendly voice, and maybe he would never know that she thought about him, thought about them, all the damn time.
No wonder she’d come here.
She hadn’t come to find herself. She was running from David. She was running away from herself. Not toward herself. Oh, how people were full of self-trickery. Some of the worst criminals she’d ever encountered thought they were doing something noble. One thing she would work on while she was here—stop lying to herself. Or at the very least, stop believing the lies.
The momentum, the forward thrust of her body dangling over crutches acted as weight and hurtled her forward. It was kind of like riding a bike down a steep hill, but instead of running into a tree at the bottom, she smacked into the pool-room door with its steamed glass. She paused, then opened the door and inched her way inside.
There she was. In the pool. Swimming in her rubber cap, turning her face to the left to take a breath with each lift of her elbow. The front crawl. What precision. Elise admired it beneath her annoyance.
The tile under her one bare foot was wet and cold, and she suddenly wondered what she was doing there. David was right. She should just go home. This had been a silly idea.
Melinda must have spotted her, because she broke her rhythmic crawl and switched to a breaststroke, making her way to the edge of the pool to surface at Elise’s feet. Just like the previous night.
“Hello, Elise.”
Elise’s mind recoiled.
Same eyes. Same lips. But this time they were surrounded by wrinkles.
Elise thought about the blue paint around the doors and the blue paint around the windows. Was this a slip-skin hag? She’d heard of them. Spirits that could slip themselves over people. Even dead bodies. And what if the evil spirit was inside the house? What happened then?
This is where root magic and Elise had parted ways long ago. Elise had never believed in this kind of thing. Of people being brought back to life, and spells being cast. She believed in herbs for health and healing. But then why were the doors painted blue if not to contain or repel?
Elise suddenly imagined being in a cemetery with David, making love. Bonaventure? Yes, it looked like Bonaventure with the Spanish moss and land that sloped to the water’s edge. She wasn’t wearing the cast, and, in the moonlight, her body didn’t look as ravaged. The marble was cold under her skin, and she wondered whose grave they were desecrating.
“Don’t look,” David panted when he noticed the turn of her head as she tried to read the stone. “You don’t want to know.”
“What are you?” Elise managed to ask the woman in the pool. She was surprised by how little her voice betrayed her inner thoughts and fears.
This was Elise’s aunt, but her aunt was dead. Nobody could be brought back from the dead. Those were the truths she’d clung to, a lack of belief why she’d never take up the mantle to carry on her father’s work. Her belief stopped here. Right here.
As Elise stared, the woman in the pool raised her arms and told her to jump, told her she’d catch her. Or did Elise imagine that? Had her lips moved at all?
As Elise watched, the woman pushed off and did a sidestroke to the ladder. Elise stared some more as the woman climbed out of the pool. Same black swimming suit. Same cap. But the body. Not a young woman’s body. This body was old, with loose skin.
Slip-skin hag.
A slip-skin hag overtook sleepers while they dreamed. This didn’t seem like a slip-skin hag. But what . . .?
Elise took an unconscious and understandably awkward step back. The rubber ends of her crutches made contact with the wet surface. She tried to catch herself with her bad foot. Plastic cast hit tile and it was like metal against ice. It was like stepping into a frozen rink with dull skates.
Elise flew backward, feet out from under her. She saw walls and roof and recessed ceiling lights. And then she was airborne, arms flailing. She thought she heard someone scream, but that could have been her.
CHAPTER 8
Elise hit the surface of the water, flat on her back, the wind knocked out of her in a loud, unfeminine whoof. She sank like a stone. Silence engulfed her as water covered her head. The cast filled and acted like an anchor, dragging her to the bottom of the pool. It was ridiculous, but she imagined how she must look. The cast, weighing her down, her body swathed in the white nightgown, her face surprised, her hair a seaweed cloud, all dreamy and beautiful. And she thought about David. David again! He’d been so against her coming. She could be in his apartment right now, wrapped in a blanket, a cup of hot tea in her hand, an annoying and charming Siamese cat at her feet.
She hit bottom, and she swore she heard a dull, echoing thunk as the cast—that horrible cast—scraped the pale blue bottom of the pool.
Elise thought about the tea parties she and Anastasia used to have in this very pool. Had her aunt died like this? In the deep
end? At the bottom of the pool where she’d loved to go? Had she come down here, had a tea party, and forgotten to surface for air? Just forgotten because it was so peaceful and lovely?
Elise sensed that Anastasia was with her, and then she was. In her black bathing suit. Elise made a drinking motion, pretending to hold a dainty cup and lift it to her lips. Anastasia laughed, and bubbles escaped. Elise wanted to stay there with her. Drinking their tea. Just the two of them in their little private world. Mermaids. Beautiful mermaids with their seaweed hair, their slightly distorted faces.
With burning lungs, Elise mimed her tea. It might be okay to stay. Just stay.
But what about her daughter? What about David? What about the sex they’d never had? In the cemetery? They had to have sex in the cemetery.
But this was nice. Really nice. Elise was surprised, because she’d heard that drowning was unpleasant.
Once again her thoughts went back to David. How horrible that must have been for him to find his child in the bathtub. She imagined him pulling the blond-headed boy from the water, David’s face ravaged with anguish. Poor David. He would never get over the loss of his son. Of that Elise was certain. But he loved Elise. He loved Audrey. She and her daughter weren’t David’s son, but they were important. They gave him a reason to live.
Anastasia tugged Elise’s arm. She pointed up, toward the surface of the water. Elise stared and shook her head. Anastasia’s gestures became more deliberate and frantic. She wanted Elise to leave. Pointing. Her mouth moving. Go! Go, Elise!
Would a slip-skin hag do that? Would a slip-skin hag tell Elise to leave? Would a slip-skin hag try to save someone’s life? No, she would try to drown her. She would try to suck the life out of Elise and take over her body.
