by Kay Hooper
After a moment, Quentin suggested, “Same father, different mothers?”
“A half sister?” Diana thought about it, absently drawing her arm free of Quentin’s grasp so she could rub her temple. Her whole head was throbbing, making it difficult for her to think. “Maybe. As far as I know, he never married again after my mother died. But there could have been some sort of relationship along the way, I suppose.”
Quentin hesitated, then said, “You told me you were very young when your mother died. How young?”
“I was four.” She nodded before he could point out the obvious. “Yeah, I’ve already thought about that. If Missy was less than a year younger than me, it means she was born while my mother was still alive. She was in and out of hospitals even before I was born, but it got worse with every passing year. Which means my father was involved with another woman while my mother was probably ill in a hospital.”
“Diana, we don’t know that. We don’t really know anything. Except that we’ve found a photograph of you and Missy together and that your father—caught completely off guard—didn’t deny she was your sister when you asked him about it. That’s all we know.”
“You sound like a lawyer,” she murmured.
“I am a lawyer, technically. And I’m a cop. Look, all I’m saying is that we can’t assume anything. If there’s one thing I’ve learned in my life, it’s that any situation is always more complicated than it looks at first. Always.”
Diana felt as well as heard the thunder rolling down from the mountains, and rubbed her temple harder, wishing the pounding would stop and wondering why his voice sounded distant all of a sudden. “We probably won’t have to assume for long,” she said. “If I know my father, he’ll be here by Sunday evening, Monday at the latest.”
“Are you okay with that?”
“I don’t have much choice, do I? It’s a public hotel.”
“That’s not what I meant.”
She knew that. “If I have to face him, it might as well be here, and might as well be now. I want the truth. I’m tired of . . . not remembering. Not knowing.”
“You’ll get there. We’ll get there.”
“Yeah.” She looked away from him finally to stare at the photo in her hand, still rubbing her pounding temple. “In the meantime, I feel like I’m in the middle of a bad soap-opera plot without a rudder. Sisters separated in childhood, one of them murdered and now a restless ghost. A mother who died in a mental hospital. A lying, cheating father. An old Victorian hotel where ghosts walk. And an FBI agent who believes I can somehow make sense of it all.”
“I do believe that.”
Thunder rumbled and boomed, loudly now, and lightning flashed.
The photo blurred a little and then cleared. And Diana caught her breath as she could have sworn that the image of Missy took her hand off the dog and held it out as though beckoning. To the person holding the camera. Or to her older sister looking on.
“Diana—”
Before he could touch her, she flinched away from the movement she felt more than saw, murmuring, “No. Don’t.” She didn’t take her eyes off the picture.
“What is it?” he demanded, his voice strained.
Don’t let him touch you. Not now. Not this time.
The voice was too familiar, its urgency too real, for Diana to be able to disobey, and without even considering the matter she heard herself tell Quentin tensely, “Don’t touch me. There’s something I have to— Just don’t touch me. Wait.”
Lightning flashed brilliantly seconds after she uttered the command, and abruptly Diana found herself in the gray time.
Alone.
Ellie Weeks hadn’t believed she could be more nervous than she had been making that phone call, but with everything happening in and around The Lodge, she was convinced she’d jump out of her skin if somebody so much as said boo in her general vicinity. Of course, being watched like a hawk by that old bat Mrs. Kincaid was enough to make anybody jittery, and she expected that pregnancy hormones could account for the rest, but still.
She was beginning to think getting kicked out of this place might not be such a bad thing. Assuming she had someplace else to go, of course.
She checked her cell phone for the tenth time, just to make sure she had a strong signal and hadn’t missed a call. And like the other nine times, the indicator promised a strong signal and no missed calls.
“Shit,” she murmured softly.
“Ellie!”
She jumped and then turned to face Mrs. Kincaid, knowing she looked guilty as hell but unable to do anything about it. As unobtrusively as possible, she slipped the cell phone back into the pocket of her uniform. None of the staff was supposed to carry their phones on duty. “Yes, ma’am?”
“I thought I asked you to get the Orchid Room ready. We have a Very Important Guest arriving tomorrow.”
There were always Very Important Guests checking in, Ellie thought. But her mild curiosity as to who might be checking in became something else as she wondered suddenly whether this guest might be the result of her phone call.
Could he have gotten here so fast? Would he?
“Yes, ma’am.” She tried to keep the hope out of her voice, asking as casually as possible, “A returning guest, ma’am?”
Mrs. Kincaid frowned at her.
Quickly, Ellie said, “I just wondered if it was somebody we knew liked a certain kind of soap or extra towels or—or something like that.”
Still frowning, the housekeeper said, “As a matter of fact, it is a returning guest. Check your worksheet, for heaven’s sake, Ellie. His preferences are noted, as always.”
“Oh, yes, ma’am. I’m sorry. Sort of scatterbrained today.”
“I noticed,” Mrs. Kincaid snapped. “Keep your mind on your work if you want to keep your job.”
Ellie nodded and went hurriedly to get her cart, her heart pounding in sick excitement. Was it him? Was he coming here after getting her message, perhaps because he knew or had guessed what she had to tell him?
Her worksheet was, as they usually were, maddeningly enigmatic. No names. The guest due to check into the Orchid Room the following day preferred no fresh flowers or scented soaps due to allergies, and required both extra towels and pillows.
Which told her nothing. Ellie hadn’t prepared his room before his last visit. But her friend Alison had.
It required only a few minutes for Ellie to push her cart into the service elevator and take it up to her floor—which was mostly deserted due to check-outs. Whether it was the fairly unobtrusive presence of the police or general unease about what the hell was going on, quite a few guests had decided to cut short their stays.
Not that Ellie minded that. She unlocked the door to the Orchid Room and pushed it open, forgetting in her haste the automatic knock-first-even-if-you-know-the-room-is-empty rule drummed into them all by Mrs. Kincaid.
At The Lodge, privacy and discretion were guaranteed.
She quickly stripped the bed and dragged the vacuum out into the room, just to make it look as if she had been working in here. And it was sheer chance that as she turned for the door, she noticed a flicker of lightning from outside the window catch something metallic that was otherwise hidden in the deep pile carpet.
Ellie hesitated, but she was too curious not to look, to search for what the flash of light had revealed.
A locket.
The locket.
The same damned one she had found before, in this very room.
“You’re in the Lost and Found,” she murmured, staring down at what lay in the palm of her hand. “I took you there. I put you in an envelope and left you in the Lost and Found. So . . . how did you get back here?”
It was a puzzle, and baffling, but Ellie had more important things on her mind at the moment and was easily able to shrug it off for now. She slid the locket into the pocket of her uniform, disobeying yet another of Mrs. Kincaid’s iron rules because she didn’t have time to stop and do the envelope thing.
/> Besides, it apparently hadn’t worked the last time.
She checked the empty and very quiet hallway, then went in search of her friend.
Despite the earlier flash of lightning, Ellie was only vaguely aware that another storm was crackling and groaning outside. She’d been here long enough to be familiar with the way spring storms rolled down from the mountains, and since she didn’t have to be out in this one, she didn’t pay attention to the increasing violence in the sounds.
Where was Alison working today? Hadn’t she said something about the North Wing? Yes, because she’d been unhappy about the assignment; she was one member of the staff who was easily spooked, and was convinced The Lodge was haunted. Particularly that wing.
Ellie had never shared that conviction, largely because she was singularly uninterested in ghosts. Even if they existed, they were dead, so why worry about them? It wasn’t as if a ghost could hurt anybody, after all.
Still, as she slipped through corridors and crept up stairways, Ellie was conscious of a weird impulse to look back over her shoulder. She’d rarely seen The Lodge so seemingly deserted, maybe that was it. Or maybe it was just because she was unusually jumpy today, unusually anxious.
Those pregnancy hormones, probably.
She had searched two floors of the North Wing without success. Not that she knocked on every door, of course; she was just looking for Alison’s cart. But it was nowhere to be seen, and by the time Ellie climbed yet another set of stairs, she was getting as weary as she was impatient.
She got tired so easily these days, dammit. And that hardly boded well for her ability to hide her condition from the eagle eyes of Mrs. Kincaid.
“He has to come,” she murmured as she rounded another corner. “He has to.”
“Who has to?”
Almost jumping out of her skin, Ellie stared at someone else who wasn’t supposed to be here. “Just—talking to myself,” she said hastily, and before that could be questioned, added, “What’re you doing up here?”
“Waiting for you,” he said.
Diana looked around the still, silent lounge, vaguely interested as always in the peculiarity of this. The strong Victorian colors were gone, the patterns of fabrics and wallpaper muted and blurred now. No lightning flashed outside the blank, silvery sheen of the windows. No thunder rumbled. Everything was gray and silent and cold.
Diana knew Quentin was still sitting beside her, but when she turned her head, he wasn’t there. And for a moment, she felt a rush of terror as she wondered if she would be able, this time, to find her way out of the gray time.
“It’ll be harder,” a sweet voice said. “You’re deeper in now. I’m sorry. It has to be this way.”
Diana looked toward the door and felt only a little shock to see the sister she had never known. Every bit as thin, pale, and haunted as she had appeared on the veranda, this time she was speaking aloud in a voice much older and wiser than the years she had lived. Her oval face was solemn.
“Missy.” As always, Diana’s own voice sounded strange and hollow to her ears. She wished she could feel something other than sadness for this unknown sister, but that’s what she felt. Sadness. Because Missy had been cheated of her life, and because Diana had been cheated of her sister.
Nodding, Missy said, “We don’t have much time.”
“There’s no time here,” Diana said. “I’ve figured out that much.”
“Yes, but he’s with you. On the other side of the door you opened. He won’t wait very long before he . . . interferes. He’s afraid for you.”
“Afraid I’ll get . . . stuck . . . here.”
“Yes.”
“Will I?”
“I don’t know. I only know that you need to be here, and that now is the best time. While it’s storming. There’s a lot of energy while it’s storming, energy that helps you. Please, Diana, come with me.”
Determined to control some part of this rather than be pulled along like a puppet, Diana said, “Tell me one thing. Are you my sister?”
Missy didn’t hesitate. “Yes.”
“Then why don’t I remember you?”
Missy took a step back, then turned toward the door. “Come with me, Diana.”
Diana wasn’t surprised her second question had gone unanswered; she was only surprised her first question hadn’t as well. She got up and followed Missy from the room. “Am I really moving?” she wondered aloud. “Or am I still sitting back there with Quentin?”
Walking without a sound down the gray hallway toward the stairs, Missy said, “You’re here only in spirit this time.”
Which was the more common way she visited the gray time, Diana knew. She had “awakened” too often in her bed or sitting up in a chair after such a “journey” not to know that much. Still, she had a question.
“Why? This morning was different.”
“This morning, I needed to speak through you. I needed him and the other policeman to hear me. Bringing you through the door physically was the first step. You were sort of . . . connected after that. You felt it, the difference.”
“I was cold. I couldn’t get warm.”
“Yes. I’m sorry about that, but I needed the connection for later. For the cave. So I could speak through you. But it took a lot out of you. More than I expected. I really am sorry.”
Diana accepted the apology, but the farther she moved from Quentin, the more uneasy she became. “Where are we going?”
“There’s something I have to show you.”
Recalling Quentin’s wry comment about the curiously unhelpful role spirits often played when there were too many questions and too few answers, Diana said, “Why can’t you just tell me who killed you?”
To her surprise, Missy offered an answer. Of sorts.
“Because knowing who killed me wouldn’t help you. Or Quentin.”
It was the first time she had said Quentin’s name, something that caused Diana a curious pang she couldn’t have explained. “It would help him. It’s—haunted him all these years.”
“I know.”
“Then don’t you want peace for him? Don’t you want him to put all this behind him and get on with his life?”
“Yes.” Missy stopped and turned to face Diana in the cold, gray hallway. “I couldn’t get through, all the times he was here before. I couldn’t reach him. Even though he brought another medium at least once to try.”
“He didn’t tell me that.”
“It was a long time ago.”
“How do you know that? Time doesn’t pass here.”
Missy smiled faintly. “Because he was younger. Younger and very impatient and determined. I’ve always been able to see him from here. I just couldn’t reach him.” Her thin shoulders rose and fell in a shrug.
“You can reach him now. Through me. So why don’t you tell him what he needs to know? Why don’t you give him peace?”
“It’s not mine to give him.”
“That’s not true.”
“Diana, Quentin blames himself for not protecting me. For not saving me. But, most of all, he blames himself because, deep down inside, he knew what was wrong here. Or at least that something was. He could feel it, just like I could. Being psychic, being a seer, is something he was born, not something created in him the day he found me. The shock just woke him up, that’s all.”
“Missy—”
“He could feel what was wrong here, but he couldn’t believe in it. He was older, maybe that was part of it. Maybe it was just that no one had ever explained why he was different, and so he decided not to be. Decided to be like everybody else. Decided not to pay attention to those feelings he couldn’t explain. His mind told him to ignore what he felt, to doubt his senses. He listened to his mind, just the way you listened to the doctors all these years.”
“That was different.”
“No, it was the same. You knew you weren’t crazy. You knew you weren’t sick. But you listened to them anyway. Because, deep down, you were more afraid of th
e truth.”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“You know, you’ve always known, that the wall between the living and the dead isn’t something solid. You’ve known that you could make doors and let us cross over. You’ve known that you could come through those doors to our side. You’ve known you could walk with us.”
Missy paused, then added, “You’ve always been afraid of being trapped here, like those people you saw in the hospital when we visited Mommy. You knew what I knew. That they were just living bodies without souls.”
Diana felt her throat tighten, felt the familiar tendrils of icy terror coiling deep inside her. The memory triggered by Missy’s words was sudden and incredibly vivid. She was transported back nearly thirty years, her small hand held in her father’s grasp, her short legs trying to keep up as he led her down a long, long hallway. A hallway with doors on either side, some open, some closed. Behind some of the closed doors was silence; behind others she could hear an occasional laugh or sob, and behind one a strange, sad wailing. Through the open doors she could see beds, some of them holding people who were sitting up, reading, watching TV.
But in other beds, people lay still and silent, with machines beeping quietly nearby. Most were just sleeping or unconscious, she knew that. Even then, she knew that.
Some were gone. Their bodies lay there and breathed, their heartbeats recorded by those beeping machines, but the people who had once been inside those bodies were gone.
And they were never coming back.
Diana had known that, with utter certainty. Beyond a small child’s ability to communicate the knowledge, beyond words, beyond reason, she had known exactly what had happened to those people.
Someone had opened a door, perhaps even they themselves. And now they were trapped on the other side, unable to return to their physical selves.
Diana’s terror had been deep and wordless, but it had been nothing compared to what she had felt when her father led her into one of the rooms. When she saw her mother lying still and silent in a bed. When she heard the machines beeping quietly.
When she understood.
“Diana?”
