by Isabel Wroth
I looked up at the gray sky, at the fluffy clouds and pictured her face that first time we’d met.
The awe-filled wonder and the tears she’d almost started crying when we came face to face again.
That look... I hadn’t understood then, but now I knew, I remembered how my birth-mother looked at me with nothing but love in her bright blue eyes and called me by my name.
Dasha. That's the name you gave me.
Because of Aaron and Janet's pathetic grab at a trust fund, it read Josephine Calla Beauchene on my fraudulent birth certificate.
I had a Social Security card, I paid taxes, I had papers that said I was an American citizen, but those birth records and adoption papers were fake. I wondered what would happen now.
Would I have to go through a host of legal hoops to remain a citizen?
Would it matter?
“That was some show, Miss Beauchene.” Sheriff Davidson appeared at my shoulder with a lit cigarette between his fingers, lifting his head to blow a stream of smoke up over my head, glancing sideways at me as I wiped the last of the tears from my cheeks and made an effort to smile at him.
“How'd you know Katya's murder went down like that?”
After the purge of all that filth and emotion, my give-a-damn was busted. Thus, I thoughtlessly announced, “I'm psychic.”
Davidson gave a goofy laugh. “Good one, but really, how'd you know?”
I looked at him askance and thought, Seriously? I just told you the truth, and you—a trained law enforcement officer— think I'm joking? Damn. Maybe I should try that more often. Lie by telling the truth.
Out loud, I said, “I read too much Sherlock Holmes and made up a story based on what I knew about my so-called parents and Katya, then filled in the blanks with what I thought could have happened. Did they confess about Elliot?”
The sheriff took a long drag on his cigarette and shook his head slowly, “Not yet. They’re holding firm on Elliot's death being an accident. But ...” He heaved a weary sigh and popped the brim of his Stetson higher up his forehead.
“Three homicide detectives tell me that boy was murdered. I gotta believe them. The DNA results came back on Katya. She tell you she was your mother?”
Not in so many words... “Before I was taken to the asylum. The drug regimen combined with the electroshock therapy scrambled my brain like an egg.
“The therapist I saw said short term memories are usually affected first, so it wasn't surprising I'd forgotten.”
“Heavy,” Davidson commented, and then lapsed into thoughtful silence for a while. “The coroner will release Katya's remains once I hand over the case file to the district attorney if you wanted to give her a proper burial.”
“I do. I will.”
“Good. No one should die alone like that.”
I bit into my cheek, then gnawed on my thumb, glancing up at him while he stared up at the clouds rolling by.
Should I? Will he listen? Will he freak out? Screw it.
“Remember that,” I blurted, and the sheriff looked down with his brows raised in question, and there was no going back. “Remember that, Paul, when you're alone in your house with a gun in your hand. You're a good man, and no matter how bad it gets, no one deserves to die alone.”
I expected him to react negatively. To bluster at me, or laugh, or pat me on the head like a crazy person.
To my surprise, he just looked at me pensively, then gave a little wave of his cancer stick.
“Psychic, huh?” He gave a wry grunt when I shrugged, going back to looking upward at the gray, wintry sky. “I hear that big house of yours has been for sale since you left for the city. How come?”
I practically leaped on the opportunity to change the subject.
“I hate that house, and I didn't realize until yesterday just how much,” I admitted. “I got tons of offers over the years, but I couldn't—can't—let it go. Not until Elliot's murder is solved.”
“It does seem to attract some dark shit.”
No argument there, Sheriff. “Would it be possible for me to get Katya's necklace back?”
“Absolutely. I'll have the doc give it a good cleaning first. You uh, you always dress like this, or was it for them?”
I found Sheriff Davidson looking at me with a hint of amusement and obvious male appreciation.
My heart truly belonged to Callum, but the sheriff's attention was still flattering.
“It was for them. Janet has a thing for expensive shoes. I knew it would piss her off or make her jealous. I wanted to throw her off even before I said anything.”
Davidson's appreciation grew a little. “Been taking interrogation lessons from your man?”
My laughter was immediate, banishing the last lingering traces of my anger. “Lessons? No. I was a murder suspect myself the first time Callum barged into my apartment. I picked up a few things from being on the business end of his interrogation skills.”
“Don't let her bullshit you, Davidson. Jo's got plenty of natural talent.” Callum came striding around the corner with his sunglasses on, looking like an arrogant playboy in his slate gray suit, pale purple shirt, and an amethyst silk tie stamped with tiny gold stars.
I'd bought that tie from Melinda on my last trip to Under There and a pair of panties for myself in a matching color.
I thought it would appeal to Callum, knowing I'd coordinated my underwear with his tie. A nice little thing to think about while he was working.
Every time he ran his hand down the fabric to settle it, like he did right now, my panties would be on his mind.
I could practically feel his gaze drop to my butt even behind the mirrored lenses of his shades. He held his hand out to me, our fingers tangling together as he gave me a sexy smirk.
“So I saw,” Davidson agreed easily, blowing his last stream of smoke up and away from us. “You two should probably stay local tonight. Storm's about to hit.”
Shielding my eyes, I searched the horizon above the tree line. It was gray up there, but I didn't see any indication of a storm, and there hadn't been anything on the weather app when I'd checked this morning.
“What storm?”
“Thunderstorm and high winds coming off the Nantucket Sound. The weatherman said it would lose steam as it came inland, but you can smell the ionization in the air.”
I took another deep breath, searching for the scent Davidson described, but all I got was damp air and pine trees. Pleasant, but nothing like what he was talking about.
“Within the next half-hour, it'll be a torrential downpour out here,” Davidson warned. He offered Callum his hand. “Thanks for the assist on this one, Graham. Appreciate it.”
Callum shook the sheriff's hand and gave a manly jerk of his chin. “Any time.”
To me, Davidson gave me the Cop Look, and when he squeezed my hand this time, I saw his death again.
Only now, he was an old man sitting in the same leather chair, and instead of a gun lying on the floor far away from his lifeless fingers, it was a TV remote.
“I'm going to keep pushing the Beauchenes’ about Elliot's death. I'll let you know as soon as I have something, and uh, tell your PI to call me directly from now on if he needs anything.”
The shock of having been able to change my vision, possibly even change the course of Paul Davidson's life, left me stunned into stupefied silence.
I stood there staring up at him mutely, only able to nod in response. He let me go, tipped his hat, and wished us a safe drive.
“What just happened?” Callum asked once he settled into the driver's seat and got us on the road.
Still somewhat in shock, my answer was dull and monotonous. “I think my curse is getting stronger.”
“Meaning?”
The seatbelt cinched tighter around my chest as I inhaled and glanced nervously at Callum while he negotiated the turn out of the parking lot.
“I'm seeing stuff when I touch people.”
In reaction to my hesitance, he reached over and took my hand, st
ill focused on the road.
“Okay. Seeing what?”
That he so readily accepted I was seeing something—that he so readily accepted me and all the weirdness I came with—made me appreciate him even more.
It was a recent change that he didn't tease me about having a psychic moment, and I wondered if the hypnosis session had been beneficial for both of us in ways I hadn’t anticipated.
“When I shook Dr. Anderson's hand, I saw her slumped over her desk in the office and knew something was wrong with her heart and that the cardiologist she'd seen had missed something important. Then I kissed you in the elevator and saw—"
Callum interrupted me with a squeeze and a wry grin. “Baby, I love you, but unless you saw me get murdered and can ID the killer, I don’t want to know how I die.”
Fair enough. Even though it’s a good thing... “You don't get murdered.”
“That's good news. I'm guessing you saw the night of Katya's murder when you grabbed Janet's hands?”
I was grateful that Callum didn’t refer to Janet and Aaron as my parents. So much so, I folded both my hands around his and leaned over to kiss his cheek in thanks.
“Actually, no. That part just sort of ... came out.”
“Well, it came out right on the money. I read the coroner's report, and—” He glanced at me with a small frown of concern. “Do you want to know the details?”
“Yes.” I had painted the death of my birth mother, dug up her body, and not an hour ago, described the night of her death in detail. Whatever Callum might tell me couldn't be worse than all that.
“The coroner here did a good reconstruction. In the statement Janet gave, your ... Aaron, swung the shovel from the ground up—he compared the trajectory of the swing to a something like a golf club in the report—and connected with the base of Katya's skull.
“Both her shoulders were dislocated post-mortem from being dragged across the grass, and there was also a post-mortem fracture around the orbital socket the doc couldn’t account for.
“I called him up just before I came outside. He said coupled with the bruising to the bone, being stepped on is a reasonable explanation.
“Even if Janet hadn’t confessed to you, the broken acrylic fingernails the techs got from sifting through the dirt had traces of Janet Beauchene’s DNA in the polymer, along with Katya’s blood and skin cells. That alone would have been enough to convict her.”
“That's good,” I murmured, glad there was real, tangible evidence to support my psychic intuition.
“It is, but she and Aaron both confessed, so the rest is just gravy. Did you see Davidson kick it just now?”
I told him about the two different visions I’d had while shaking Davidson’s hand, and for a few minutes, Callum was silent in contemplation.
“So, by telling him not to shoot himself, you changed his future?”
“I hope so, but honestly, I don't know,” I confessed. “It changed what I saw, at least.” A crack of thunder split the sky with such force, the entire car vibrated. “Wow. Guess Davidson was right about the storm.”
Callum turned another corner, and it was like we'd driven into Niagara Falls. “Maybe he had a psychic moment, too.”
He was teasing me; I could see it in his grin when I scowled at him. “Jerk.”
IT WAS ONLY ONE IN the afternoon, and the weather forecast said the storm would rage through the night.
I didn't want to stay at the mansion, but the weather took such a turn for the worst—seventy-mile-an-hour winds, power lines came down, trees fell across the road, rivers swelled to dangerous levels—we had no choice but to seek shelter.
There was a covered walkway between the garage and the house, but with the wind blowing the rain sideways, even in the thirty-second dash to get inside, we were both soaked to the skin.
It was sheer dumb luck I still had the keys to the mansion in my purse, and when I went to start turning on lights, it was only to discover the power was out.
As if this mansion isn't creepy enough.
“Well, we're safe from the storm,” Callum announced, pulling the flashlight off the slide of his gun to lead the way through the dark, gloomy interior of the house.
“Let's get out of these wet clothes and see what we've got to get us through the night.”
I directed him to the mudroom, glad to see the cleaning service had laundered the bathrobes left in each of the bedrooms, and they were all still hanging in the linen closet.
“Least we won't freeze, huh?” Callum joked while both of us stripped down and hung our wet things before exchanging them for the thick, fluffy robes.
I understood why he slid his cell into one of the pockets. I was keeping mine with me too, but I lifted my eyebrows when he tucked his gun and handcuffs in the other pocket.
“Until we settle in for the night, I'd rather not leave it lying around.”
A reasonable explanation, I supposed, so I didn't comment. We found some crackers left in the pantry, a few cans of soup, I had granola bars and some chocolate in my purse, and there was plenty of wine locked in the cellar downstairs.
“Not exactly fine dining, but we won't starve,” I told him, holding up the cans of organic chicken soup someone left behind.
Callum grunted, setting all our supplies out on the counter. “Let's look for some candles and some stuff to burn in the fireplace. It's gonna get cold.”
“There should be plenty of firewood in each of the bedrooms upstairs, so all we need now is wine, a pot safe enough to set in the fire, and we can have dinner by firelight.”
My lover made an appreciative sound, the idea appealing to his more romantic side.
“Works for me.”
We took the meager food offerings upstairs and got comfortable in the Green Room, whiling away the hours with bouts of unhurried sex on the plush rug in front of the fire.
We didn't talk about the Beauchenes, or my curse, or anything that had happened today.
Instead, Callum asked about the year I'd gotten to spend with my birth-mother and the happy memories I had of her.
“I wondered if you were related, that day we went to the pervert's apartment to see her painting,” Callum told me, lying on his side facing me while I sketched him in one of the books I'd left here as a child.
He was nude with just a sheet thrown over his hips, and framed by the firelight behind him, he looked like a fallen angel.
Surprised by his observation, I looked up from my sketch with a frown.
“You didn't say anything.”
He hummed softly, reaching for his glass of wine to sip, peering at me over the rim of the crystal glass.
“Sometimes a hunch is just a hunch, and I didn't want to bring it up without evidence.
“Sweet Red only shows half of Katya’s face, but your jawline and hers are the same. You have her eyes and her lips.”
That he could see Katya in me was the single most precious thing I had to remember her by, and I was so moved that a trickle of grateful tears slid down my cheeks. Callum asked me gently if I was alright.
“Yeah. I painted that picture of her when I came home, and Janet was so quick to get rid of it. Of all of Katya's things.”
Except...
“You thought of something,” Callum rumbled, sitting up so he could scoot closer and brush the last of my tears from my cheeks.
“When I was in the thick of the hypnosis, I watched myself paint Katya's Portrait of Death. I called it, Sleeping Beauty. I was fully conscious, talking to her, laughing.”
Callum nodded, frowning attentively as he listened. “That's when you started speaking Russian in that really creepy little girl voice of yours, baby.”
I was too distracted by the thoughts running through my head to call him out on teasing me.
“I need to go check on something.”
I got up to put on my robe, fishing my cell out of the pocket to flick on the flashlight application, ignoring Callum's demands to wait for him as I hurried from the
room and upstairs to the third floor.
A dramatic flash of lightning turned the world a violent purple right as I opened the door to my childhood bedroom.
The wind was howling outside, the rain pelting the windows like pebbles.
Swallowing the instinctual shiver of fear, I crossed the dark room to where my drying rack stood against one wall, finding a few landscapes I'd forgotten about, and on the very bottom rack, there it was.
Sleeping Beauty. My second Portrait of Death. I sat down right there on the floor with the ten by twelve canvas in my lap, studying the details by the bright light of my phone.
“Damnit, Jo, I said wait for me!” Callum chided as he came striding toward me with his penlight in hand.
“I completely forgot,” I answered hoarsely, studying the details I'd added once Mrs. Decker had left us to our happy afternoon in the sun.
“I'd already painted Red's murder, but I didn't realize this was another manifestation of my curse because I was sitting with Katya in the yard, talking about tea parties and TV interviews, practicing my Russian.
“I did this, three days before I picked up Elliot's washcloth and painted his death. I didn't realize ... I forgot. How could I have forgotten this?”
“Jo, look at me.” He cupped my chin in his big, rough hand and gently made me look away from the painting.
His eyes seemed to glow in the combined shine of our flashlights, earnest and intense.
“You were just a little girl. You weren't responsible for any of the things that happened to you. Katya would never blame you for her death.”
“How can you know that?” I whispered, the tears flowing unchecked now as the grief threatened to overwhelm me.
Callum carefully took the portrait of death from my lap and set it aside, propping it up against the edge of the drying rack.
“She was your mother. She fought for you, and she died trying to protect you. She loved you.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
I loved the way the air smelled after a storm. In the city, it washed away the prevalent stench of trash and urine in the streets, but out here in the forest, it enhanced the fresh, clean smell of nature.
