by Tamara Berry
In the absence of mindless destruction, I jerk to my feet and start pacing the floor, brushing past a quaint sitting room into an even quainter kitchen, where a sleek black cat is curled up in front of an Aga stove. I barely register the picture they make before turning on my heel and stalking back the way I came.
“They thought it would be best to stabilize her and see if she woke up again,” Liam adds as I start on my third revolution of Thomas’s house. It’s not large enough for real pacing. “But she hasn’t, and the doctors don’t sound very hopeful that she will. They, uh, want to know what we’d like to do.”
“What we’d like to do?” I echo.
“Yeah. About the breathing tube. I told them not to touch anything until I had a chance to talk to you first. I figured you’d want to be there when . . .”
He doesn’t finish. There’s no need for him to. We both know enough about comas and semi-comas to understand the implication. They wouldn’t have put Winnie on a ventilator unless she needs it in order to breathe. And if she needs it in order to breathe, then removing it will only mean we’re sentencing her to death.
Our sister, the other part of us, our missing third.
“I don’t understand,” I say. And I don’t understand—not any of it. Not why Nicholas hired me to come all this way only to block my investigation at every turn. Not where that pile of bones came from. Not why a mysteriously vanished body has no one fearing for their lives.
And I definitely don’t understand why death—my friend, my companion, the entity I’ve relied on to make my living for years—is suddenly fighting back.
“You know what?” I ask in a purely rhetorical vein. “I’m done. I’m not playing this game anymore. If the police want to ask me any more questions, they’re going to have to go through the embassy to do it.”
“But—”
“No, don’t try to change my mind. There’s nothing keeping me here, not really, not if I don’t need the money to pay for Happy Acres.” In fact, the only thing I want right now is to hear Winnie’s voice for myself, to listen to her call me silly Ellie in person—
“Wait a minute.” I stop. “What time did all this happen?”
Liam sounds perplexed. “What do you mean?”
“The waking up, the seizure.” The phrase that seems to be becoming a pattern as of late. “What time was it in New York when it happened?”
“I’m not sure . . . A little before noon, I think. Why?”
I do some quick mental arithmetic. Accounting for the time difference, that would have placed me in the early evening, right around the time I took a walk with Nicholas over his land.
And heard, from some faraway place I can’t see or touch, a voice promising to come to my aid.
It can’t be. I know the rules and limitations of our world, understand better than anyone that people will look for any kind of sign they can hinge their beliefs on. Hearing strange voices in a castle that I know is being manipulated by someone with an ulterior motive is no surprise; the only thing worth note is that I’m actually in danger of falling for it.
And yet . . .
“Don’t unplug her,” I say, shocked at the ferocity of my own voice. “Whatever they say or urge you to do, you can’t let them. Not yet.”
“I won’t, of course, but—”
“She’s here, Liam.”
“Ellie.”
“I know how it sounds, but I’m not kidding. I’ve heard her talking to me, teasing me. I didn’t know who it was at first, but . . .” But there’s no other rational explanation. For the voice or for any of this. “I think she might be trying to help me.”
His tone of disbelief says it all. “Winnie is trying to help you find a fake ghost?”
No. She’s trying to help me find a murderer. She’s protecting me. I don’t know what it is about Castle Hartford—if it’s the age or the ambience, if it’s a place where miracles really do happen—but she’s been with me since the moment I first caught sight of it. It would explain why I feel so at home there, why even now, with so much danger hanging overhead, I’m eager to get back.
“Just trust me. I need a little more time, that’s all. Whatever you do, don’t let them take Winnie off that ventilator.”
“I dunno. You’re scaring me. If I didn’t know any better, I’d say you sound like . . .”
I’m forced into a laugh. “Like someone who’s losing her mind?”
“No,” he counters. “Like someone who believes in the supernatural.”
Last week, there would have been no stronger insult to launch at my head. To reopen the belief that Winnie is out there somewhere, just beyond my reach, is to reopen myself to everything I’ve spent the last decade struggling to overcome. Belief, hope, optimism, love.
Yet that’s exactly what I’m doing, all common sense to the contrary. For the first time in my adult memory, I’m starting to think there might be a light at the end of the long, dark tunnel of my life. For the first time in my adult memory, I’m excited about what that light might hold.
“I’m sorry,” I say, not the least bit sorry at all. “I’ll call you later with more details. There are a few things I want to check out before I say more.”
“But—”
“Just trust me, okay? I know things sound desperate, what with all the murders and bodies around here, but I’m not in any personal danger. I’m good.”
There’s another long pause, this one extending so long I suspect we lost our connection. My brother’s voice eventually crackles over the line. “You aren’t good. You’ve never been good. That’s what worries me.”
“I know,” I admit with a laugh. “Which is why it’s so fortunate I have you and Winnie to ground me.”
There’s nothing more for us to say, so I hang up and tuck the phone in my pocket, almost surprised to find that I’m still inside Thomas’s cottage. It’s as eerily quiet and empty as before, as though no one has lived here for centuries, as if the man-of-all-work is, like the mustachioed man, nothing more than a figment of my imagination.
In confirmation of my new belief in the paranormal, the black cat in front of the stove stretches and rises to its feet. Tradition has it that black cats are witches in disguise, the shape-shifting form of women just like me. But that would be taking things too far, even for someone who’s suddenly decided that not everything in this world is exactly as it seems.
“Hello, pretty kitty.” I reach down to the pet the animal. It holds itself back from my touch, watching me with a disdainful eye. “Where’s your owner?”
The cat doesn’t have an answer. Neither, it seems, does the house, because a cursory look around reveals nothing except that Thomas is an extraordinarily neat man with a well-stocked cupboard and one of the most enormous flat-screen TVs I’ve ever seen. The cat follows me from room to room, as though making sure I’m not about to steal anything.
There’s no need. Unless I can find a way to cart the television out the front door, there doesn’t appear to be much of value to take. Thomas is a simple man with simple pleasures, just as he appears on the outside. But where the devil is he?
The house doesn’t appear to contain any answers, so I turn to the cat before I leave. “Do you have enough to eat?” I ask aloud.
I return to the kitchen to scout out the cat’s food dish. I find it under the sink, which is partitioned off with a cheerful calico curtain. A few lingering bites of food remain in the dish, but the water bowl is empty. With a soft cry of protest, I hunt through the pantry until I find a plastic container of dry food and pour every last piece in the dish. I also grab the biggest mixing bowl I can find and fill it to the brim with water.
The cat begins immediately lapping at the liquid, so thirsty it remains still long enough for me to give it a cursory pat. I don’t know where Thomas is staying on his “weekend off,” but it’s obviously not here. In fact, it looks almost as though he’d have let his pet die rather than risk coming home.
Because he witnessed a murder? I
can’t help thinking. Or because he committed one?
No answer is forthcoming, so I decide to head back before I leave too many more fingerprints lying around the place.
“I’ll be back to check on you tomorrow,” I say to the cat. “But if he gets home before then, you send him directly up to the castle, okay? I’ve got a few questions that need answering.”
Predictably, the animal doesn’t reply. It does, however, follow me to the door and watch my departure from the front window, its yellow-green eyes preternaturally bright.
I still have weeds to gather for my fake draught, and it’s too late in the day to pay any more visits in the village, so I head in the direction of Castle Hartford. I have no idea what to expect when I get there, and not many more clues now than I did a few hours ago, but one thing is for sure: I’m not leaving here until I have answers.
To the murder, to the bones, to the ghost’s secret identity.
And, most importantly, to my sister watching over it all.
Chapter 16
“Where is Thomas?” I ask, my voice low and crooning. When no immediate reply is forthcoming, I try again. “Where is the murdered man? And who is the murdered man?”
I strain to hear an answer—any answer. I don’t move, don’t breathe, don’t even think, but all I get in response is the steady drip-drip of a faucet in need of repair and the sound of the refrigerator kicking on.
“Come on, Winnie. You have to help me out. Can you at least give me some sort of sign that you’re listening?”
A gentle cough sounds to my right. Almost jumping up from where I sit cross-legged on the scrubbed wood kitchen table, I look up to find the exact opposite of my gentle, comatose sister reaching her spirit across time and space.
“What are you doing here?” I demand of Nicholas, who leans on the stairway door frame with the kind of ease that indicates he’s been installed there for some minutes.
“I might ask the same of you,” he says. “Didn’t the police tell us to stay out of this room until they’re finished gathering evidence?”
I cast a glance at the line of yellow police tape that is the only thing barring our entry—a line of yellow police tape that Nicholas, too, has seen fit to ignore, since he’s standing on the opposite side of it. “I managed to break through their powerful force field,” I say.
“So it would seem. Why?”
To attempt to communicate with a woman who’s over three thousand miles away and deep in a coma, I think. Even though I’m under the impression that Nicholas was eavesdropping long enough to ascertain that for himself, it’s not a sentence I’m ready to utter out loud just yet. So all I say is, “To gather my thoughts.”
“Mind if I join you?”
I glance down at the kitchen table upon which I’m perched. “Um. Sure?”
He doesn’t, as I halfway hope, climb up and adopt a Kumbaya pose with me. Ever elegant and composed, he pulls out one of the chairs and lowers himself to it instead. His eyes never leave mine as he crosses one leg over the other, his gray gaze disconcertingly direct. Fortunately for me, it’s well into nighttime by now, and the kitchen lights are dim, so he can’t see me blush.
Few things can embarrass a woman who’s seen and done the things I have, but being caught trying to genuinely commune with the spirit world is one of them.
“I’ve always liked this room best of all the house,” Nicholas says by way of breaking the silence. “It has good . . . energy.”
I narrow my eyes. So he did overhear me.
“How is your sister, by the way?”
“Still a vegetable.”
“I see. And, ah, was she able to answer any of your questions?” When I don’t answer right away, he feels compelled to jolt my memory. “The location of Thomas, the murdered man . . .”
“Not directly,” I say and turn a sweet smile on him. “But she did send me you. Do you know where Thomas or the murdered man are?”
“I understood it to be Thomas’s long weekend” is his mild reply. “He only gets one of those a month, you know—he leaves late on Thursday and rarely reappears until Sunday night. My mother tells me he often goes fishing.”
A reasonable explanation, of course, but I can’t help thinking about the convenient timing of it all.
“It’s strange that the police aren’t more worried about his being gone, don’t you think?” I ask.
“The police still believe we’re dealing with nothing more than bones of ancient origin buried in a home of ancient origin,” he replies. “Hardly the stuff of heady intrigue. By the by, what did our good inspector say about Rachel’s drawing?”
I bite my lip. I don’t know how Nicholas managed it, but he’s turned things around so I feel like the guilty party. “Not much,” I say with perfect honesty. “But I’m not too worried. I’ve got a few ideas of my own about his identity.”
“Oh?” he asks politely.
“Yes. What I don’t know, however, is where he could have possibly gone—or who took him there.” I pause, hoping Nicholas will volunteer a few ideas of his own. When he doesn’t, I decide that the only way I’m going to get anywhere is if I take a more direct route. Otherwise, Nicholas and I are going to continue dancing around the subject until one of us drops from exhaustion. “What can you tell me about the smuggling tunnels around here?”
He’s betrayed into a laugh, a low, deep sound that carries a surprising amount of warmth. “Oh, dear. Has Thomas been feeding you those stories, or was it Fern?”
“Fern?” I echo.
His laugh dwindles into a chuckle. “You wouldn’t think it to look at her now, but the three of us used to spend hours scampering over the countryside, trying to find the entrance to those tunnels. They’ve been a legend as long as there have been Hartfords on this land.”
“Fern?” I say again. In the entire duration of my stay thus far, I’ve never seen her near a window, let alone in the great outdoors. At this point, I doubt whether her silky, wrinkle-free skin has ever seen the sun.
“Oh, yes. In fact, she’s the one who instigated it. Once she heard the rumors of possible buried treasure, nothing would do but for her to bundle Thomas and me up to be her scouts. There wasn’t a rabbit warren or molehill within a ten-mile radius that we didn’t investigate to its source.”
“Bundle you up?” I ask, slightly taken aback at his choice of words. “How old was Fern? How old were you?”
A conscious-stricken expression passes over his face, rendering him almost boyish. “Old enough to know we’d never find anything,” he admits. “If no previous generation landed on a network of secret tunnels, there was little chance of our doing so. But we enjoyed ourselves. We used to have some grand adventures, once upon a time.”
It’s a strangely comforting picture to conjure up, a miniature authoritarian Nicholas, all starched up and forcing the two smaller children to do his bidding. “Did you often play with Thomas when you were kids? I was under the impression he’s considerably younger than you.”
“Only by a few years,” he says with a casual air. Then, as if the thought just strikes him, “How old do you think I am?”
A psychic—fake or otherwise—knows better than to answer that question truthfully. “Late thirties?” I guess, knocking a good half decade off my real guess in the process.
He doesn’t correct me or offer up his real age. All I get is a mild harrumph and an air of effrontery, which leads me to believe I may have overshot even that modest estimate.
“Why, Nicholas Hartford, did I hurt your feelings?” I can’t help asking. “If it makes you feel any better, you look about twenty years younger when you smile. No, not that smile. That’s a sneer. I’m talking about the real one.”
“The real one?”
“Yeah. The one you save for Rachel and other people you don’t continually look down on.”
Even his half-hearted sneer drops after that. The look he casts me is so genuinely perplexed—so hurt—that I find it difficult not to take my words bac
k.
“Is that what you think I do?” he asks, his voice quiet. “Look down on you?”
I’m not sure how to answer. In all honesty, I think Nicholas Hartford III looks down on everyone. He’s rich and just close enough to handsome to get away with the epithet. He’s the head of a family that’s been established here for centuries. And although I wouldn’t go so far as to call him charming, there’s a magnetism to him that’s impossible to ignore.
After all, I’m still here, aren’t I? Drawn to this place? Drawn to him?
“I think you’re used to getting things your own way,” I admit. “I think you’re so accustomed to having money and power, it doesn’t occur to you that some people make do without them. I think you care about this house to the exclusion of everything else, and you use that to justify your actions to yourself.”
“Anything else?” he asks, his voice low.
Yes, there is. I drop my own voice to match his. “I think you’ve never experienced the kind of pain and loss that make my profession necessary. And I think that can only be a good thing. No one deserves a life like mine. Not even me.”
The kiss comes as if from out of nowhere. One moment, he’s sitting next to me, all languid ease. The next, he’s on his feet and looming overhead. My position on the table leaves me at a disadvantage, since there’s nothing I can do and nowhere I can hide unless I intend to go limp and slide to the floor. Which, to be perfectly honest, isn’t so far-fetched a reaction. In fact, one might argue that it’s the only reaction when a man’s arms become a wall of sorts, bracing either side of the table as his mouth comes crashing down.
It’s not, despite my trapped condition, an unpleasant sensation. All of Nicholas’s careful competence comes through as he lays an assault on my senses. Controlling is the only word I can think of to explain it, but I don’t mean that in a bad way. Whatever drives this man to succeed—in business and in his private life—is so much a part of him that he can’t lose hold of it, even in a passionate embrace like this one.
