The Girl in Blue

by Barbara J. Hancock

  Finally, Trinity changed into a sachet-scented nightgown she pulled from her old bureau drawer. Most of her clothes had been ruined in the Boston fire and the subsequent dousing of its flames, but she didn’t mind pulling the once familiar folds of satin over her head. Its loose soft sleeves left room for the light bandages on her arm and, as always, her petite height made its length warm against her legs.

  As it settled on her shoulders, she noted that she filled it out more than she had several years ago. The delicate pink material was made immediately more adult by her full breasts and defined hips and legs. When she’d been a teen, she’d been thin. Now, she was fit, but she didn’t diet away every ounce of softness. The nightgown seemed to approve of her fitness regime, sliding into place by hugging her curves.

  Okay. Maybe a little less chocolate before exams wouldn’t hurt.

  While she brushed her hair into calmer waves that wouldn’t try to take over her bed in her sleep, she heard another noise, a muffled thump and what sounded like a voice.

  She paused. Tendrils of hair clung to the brush as static held them out from her head and the whole room seemed to go electric as she waited for the laughter.

  And waited.

  She didn’t realize she held her breath until the high tinkling humor sounded and then hot air from her lungs left her in a rush.

  It would be dangerous to follow and find that laugh.

  Instinctively, she knew it.

  Though she had no proof Clara had caused the fire in Boston, the lifelong visitation had suddenly become more solid, more real.

  The electricity in the air had settled to sizzle in a warning wash of adrenaline beneath her skin. But she couldn’t ignore the laughter, could she? Not after the fire in Boston. Not after the matches and the long cemetery stare.

  Trinity lowered the brush to the table and turned to the door. She avoided meeting her eyes in the mirror. They would be wide and afraid. She could feel her lids straining as if she was terrified to blink because she might open her eyes to find The Girl in Blue hadn’t waited to be found, but rather had come looking for her instead.

  She went to her bedroom door and opened it with a click of the knob and her hand pressed against the wood. It swung inward ever so slowly as she tried to be quiet. And because her ears strained and her breath was light, she suddenly noticed that the never-silent Hillhaven had gone as deathly still as the grave.

  There were no creaking sighs. No rustlings. No mice. No bats. Samuel Creed might have left or been asleep, but wherever he was seemed absent, as if the house was completely vacant except for Trinity and…the laugh that came again down, down, down the dark hall and into the oldest wing of the house.

  Trinity had never liked the east wing and she certainly didn’t relish the idea of opening the double doors that led to it in the upper landing at night in search of ghostly laughter.

  She did it anyway.

  The tender flesh on her arm demanded that she be brave.

  She hurried across the cool moonlit floor of the landing, ignoring the flutter in her chestwhen she passed the long, dark stairway that disappeared into the empty lower reaches of the house.

  She was a child of Scarlet Falls. Of course she was afraid of the dark.

  But she couldn’t let the fear stop her. She was an adult now. It was time. She couldn’t run from the eerie dead girl who wouldn’t leave her in peace no matter how far she roamed. She couldn’t ignore her and hope that she meant no harm. She couldn’t fight her. But she might be able to find her and discover what kept her restless and wandering.

  The doors screeched from disuse when she turned the knobs and pressed them inward. Cold, unheated air rushed dustily out to greet her. She released the knobs and stepped forward, barefoot in her nightgown with nothing but the pounding of her heart in her chest to make this real and not a walking dream.

  The hallway stretched out from her in a long expanse, but what made her stop and draw in a sudden startled breath wasn’t the appearance of The Girl in Blue. Clara Chadwick didn’t appear. Trinity didn’t hear another haunting tinkle of laughter. What she saw was the spill of lamplight from one of the east wing bedrooms and what she heard was the archaic sound of a typewriter with decisive staccato strikes of fingers on its keys.

  * * *

  She should have taken into account what she was wearing and the lateness of the hour, or the odd fact that she was wandering the halls in search of a ghost after midnight. Instead, she was drawn to the warm glow of light and the industrious sound of the typewriter, step by step. She pictured what she would find before looking into the room, but nothing prepared her for the intimacy of Samuel Creed at work.

  He sat at a cherry desk with his hands pounding away at a vintage machine the likes of which Trinity had only seen in movies. But it wasn’t the typewriter that held her attention.

  It was Creed.

  His hair was wild and mussed. His pale face intense. His concentration held and riveted to the paper scrolling upward, ever upward.

  Then he noticed her and the full intensity of his concentration moved from the paper to her.

  She actually took a step back because the look in his eyes held such ferocity of feeling.

  “Trinity,” he said as if he conjured her from thin air by speaking her name. The power of creation was in his tones. When he said her name, and only then, did she become a part of the world in which he currently dwelled.

  She watched him straighten and blink and pull his hands from the keys. She’d known a musician once who had woken in much the same way from a jag of composing. There was an otherworldly quality to a passionate artist, one that said they brought a little of wherever they went when they were in a creative fugueback with them when they reentered the real world.

  Maybe Creed’s dark eyes couldn’t be entirely attributed to his death. Maybe where he went when he was writing shone through. Of course, she’d seen the book filled with death with his name on its jacket so maybe they were both one and the same.

  “I heard something,” Trinity said. It was a lame excuse for showing up at his door.

  His bedroom door.

  Her gaze quickly inventoried. Unlike his rooms in the other part of the house, this room held no memorabilia. Only personal items like a coat thrown over a massive leather chair and a stack of books by the large rumpled bed. She looked away from his pillows and back to his desk which only held paper and notebooks and reference materials. No ragdoll. No crow. No tiny black Mary Jane. Though she did notice, finally, when she quit seeing slick burgundy sheets every time she blinked, that he had a glass filled with Maiden’s Tears from the lake beside his typewriter.

  The sight sent a stab of unease through her abdomen, but it was nothing compared to what she felt when she also noticed a pile of discarded matchsticks beside the glass.

  “Sometimes I work late,” Creed said. “I didn’t know you could hear me in your room. I like the noise of the keys. Drowns out…other things.”

  The matchsticks meant nothing. She’d found him in the glow of the fireplace the first night, after all. But what if The Girl in Blue had played in his room, too? What if she wasn’t finished?

  He stood up and stretched, and Trinity wrapped her arms around the sudden hollow ache in her middle the stab of unease had left behind. His black tailored shirt was open. The shine of its poplin caused his pale muscular chest to stand out in contrast. The light against the darkness was startlingly attractive. As she’d thought before, he was too big and too powerful to be considered vulnerable, but his naked skin seemed so all the same. She tried not to notice the dark dusting of hair that also stood out, leading in a trail to disappear in the low riding waistband of his equally dark trousers.

  Creed walked toward her before she could think of what to say and suddenly his intensity had nothing to do with his work. He looked from her hair, which she hadn’t had time to fully tame, down to her satin nightgown, which now showed intimate evidence that the hall had been cold. Of course, it wo
uldn’t matter if it had been high summer. The chill in the air had little to do with the pebbling of her nipples that showed clearly beneath the clinging fabric of her gown.

  That it was October meant nothing.

  And he would know it.

  Because her skin was also flushed, showing her desire and her emotions vividly against the nightgown’s pastel.

  Creed stepped closer and her heartbeat kicked because his steps took him—slowly and deliberately—between her and the open door.

  “I’ve kissed you twice since you came back,” Creed said. It was conversational, but his casual tones belied the darkness in his face.

  She didn’t edge away or push him aside. She could have. There was room for her to go around him. He seemed too solid and seductive an obstacle to do that, though. One that said she could go around even as every part of her whispered that she wouldn’t.

  “Yes. I know,” she replied.

  “You kissed me back,” he said and it was speculative as if her willingness made his thoughts run wild.

  She ached in response, a wildness rising in her to rival his.

  “Yes. I know,” she said again. This time softer—tremulous even. But it couldn’t be helped. Because she knew what was about to happen. Knew because intention had claimed her, and it took every ounce of firmness she had to shore it up and gather her courage so that none was left for her voice.

  He didn’t step closer. He didn’t lean in to kiss her again. This time she wore no scarf. There was no dried grass. She was almost naked before him. No excuses for any touch…except the pure need to do so.

  It was hardly a conscious decision. It was a compulsion. Driving her with no logic and no pity for what would become of her, after. There was life and there was death, and there was the sensual dance in between. She hadn’t come looking for Creed tonight, but she had found him all the same.

  Trinity took the final step. Herself. She moved to him and slipped her arms around him, under his open shirt and against his smooth skin. She was still determined to avoid the abyss, but damned if she could resist a walk along its razor-sharp edge.

  Creed stiffened. Surprised. He didn’t make it easy. She couldn’t reach his lips so she had to kiss the sweet and, yes, vulnerable spot where his angular jaw met his neck while he held himself taut and apart.

  But his skin flamed up under the caress of her hands along the muscles of his back and he moaned her name, once, twice, as she licked her tongue out to taste his skin. She wondered if the intoxicating effects of the expensive Scotch he liked to drink somehow transferred itself to him because she was quickly lightheaded as her tongue rasped against his five o’clock shadow.

  And then he was no longer resistant.

  He exploded into movement, turning and pressing her back, using their bodies to slam the door closed while his hands pressed flat against the wood on either side of her face and his long lean body pressed into hers.

  She gasped. Stunned as the air was knocked from her lungs, because she’d already been breathless from taking and tasting.

  Trinity looked up and watched as Creed’s closed eyes opened to meet hers. Dark. Haunted. Shadowed. All of those things and one more.

  Hungry. Impossibly hungry.

  Fear fluttered in her chest, but it didn’t chase her desire away. They met. They mingled. The adrenaline of both heated her skin.

  “I was glad when you left. For so many reasons, but mainly because it was torture to see you and never touch you. You had…issues you were dealing with. I got that. You avoided me after that evening at High Lake and I got that, too,” Creed murmured. He held himself back again. Even though she could feel the desire in his body as it pressed her against the door, she could also feel the tension of his muscles screaming “no.” Every atom on pause.

  Her arms had loosened around his lean torso. She moved them now. Placing her palms against his chest, but gently, very gently because she hadn’t decided if she was going to go along with the pause or urge him out of it.

  She could feel the air flowing in and out of his lungs and the steady, hard beat of his heart.

  If possible, the light movements of her hands on his chest caused his face to go tighter and his jaw to clench. He closed his eyes and opened them again before he went on.

  “I’m trying to warn you….You remember how I was by the lake that night….That’s how you remember me. But I’m not dead….I’m not frozen. My God, Trinity, I burn,” he said.

  “Show me,” she said without weighing the consequences.

  She’d thought she was the one with life in her hands, but all caution and nerves and hesitancy wasn’t life. It was life interrupted. Not living at all.

  Creed exploded into movement again. He swept her up into his arms in a dizzy rush while she held on tight for the seconds it took for him to stride to the bed and drop her on it.

  Then he paused again, and she had to rise on her knees to meet him and brush the shirt from his warm, broad shoulders. He watched her with the darkest of eyes as she followed the light dusting of hair with her lips and teeth and tongue to his waistband.

  She didn’t pause.

  She loosened the button and zipper of his trousers, and pressed her lips lower and lower still. Creed moaned, spreading his knees against the mattress for better balance. He threaded his hands into the wild tangle of her hair when she took the velvet length of him into her mouth to intimately discover how much he wanted her.

  There had been adolescent fantasies for her. Had he had them, too? For years, he’d been a dark and dangerous possibility on her horizon. One she feared as much as she desired.

  He shuddered as she plied him with her lips and then the pause was over once more. He pressed her back into the mattress, easing satin up her body to reveal her flushed nudity beneath.

  “I’ve wanted to see you like this,” he breathed against her trembling stomach.

  Trinity buried her hands in his hair as he parted her legs to take a wicked, deep taste of her moist heat. She cried out when his tongue teased and plunged in a rhythm that left her shaken and wordlessly begging with urgent thrusts. All of her focused on his head between her legs and the loving attention he paid her just where she needed it most.

  Tension built, claimed her, carriedher until she was stretched taut with it to the point of breaking. And then she did break into a thousand shattered pieces, but Creed gathered her and held her, his strong hands on her shaking thighs when she was finally able to open her eyes.

  He looked up at her with heavy lids. His lips swollen. His pupils had gone big and black in the darkened room.

  “You’re beautiful,” he said.

  And Trinity reached for him even though she was afraid of the ragged deepness in his voice.

  But before he could rise up and lay in her arms, his eyes widened and sharpened, and he jerked his head toward the door. Trinity smelled it, too. Smoke. While she’d been distracted, had The Girl in Blue decided to come out and play?

  Chapter Six

  Creed stiffened and Trinity reached for her discarded gown.

  “Be careful,” she warned as Creed stood up. He fastened his pants as he stepped across the floor.

  With one hand he tested the knob, and with the other placed flat on the wood he tested the door itself. It must have been cool to the touch because he opened it.

  Smoke immediately began to roll into the room, sucked into the vacuum of oxygenated space from the choked hallway.

  “Quick,” Creed urged.

  Trinity ran to his side and took his outstretched hand. He pulled her into the hall. Through the windows, she could see the roof of the wing where it stretched out behind them. Flames had already eaten their way up through the attic spaces and they now scaled the night sky.

  “This wing is burning!” Creed shouted.

  As they ran down the hall to the doors she’d left open to the landing, they left smoke behind. Creed had grabbed his phone. He yelled into it as they ran, summoning help.

 
; Trinity coughed. Acrid smoke had been sucked into her lungs and moisture trailed down her cheeks as her body sought to clear her vision. She stumbled, but eagerly tried to suck fresh air into her lungs as they ran down the stairs, farther and farther from the fire.

  Creed felt her falter. He lifted her, easily taking the stairs in a rush. Soon she was breathing outside air between coughing fits. The smoke they’d encountered had been enough to re-aggravate her airways.

  Already, Trinity could hear sirens in the distance. Horrible memories assailed her. Screams and pain and the stench of her own burned flesh. There was no one left in the house. No one to save.

  * * *

  Sheriff Constantine asked only a few questions. Hillhaven was old. Its wiring hadn’t been updated as it should have been. She allowed him to go down that path without protest. He would have thought she was crazy if she’d brought up The Girl in Blue. Although, as they talked, she could have sworn his piercing blue eyes had narrowed in his handsome face. He was more perceptive than he seemed, at first. Scarlet Falls’ sheriff would have to be.

  He stood watching the fire department wet down the old wing for a long time before he finally turned back to Trinity. Creed had gone inside to see what he could salvage. She was alone with Constantine and he looked at her for a long time, assessing, maybe summing up the difference between integrity and discretion. He was a tall man, more muscular than Creed and maybe only a year or two older. The love of outdoor sports was written in his tanned skin and sun-kissed hair that showed in waves from the edges of his broad-brimmed trooper’s hat. He wore a pressed khaki uniform with a shiny badge even at thishour, but Trinity thought maybe he wore deck shoes and shorts on weekends with that hat off and ropes in his large calloused hands. Something about the crinkles around his eyes spoke of sun reflected off of water and a sail pointed to the horizon.