A Dark & Stormy Night

by Anne Stuart

  He forced himself to pull away, back away from her in the darkness, the water sloshing noisily. With his night-trained eyes he could just see her, though he knew he would have disappeared into the blackness. She put a hand up to her mouth, and she was shaking.

  "We shouldn't be doing this," he said. "I have to get us out of here."

  She didn't argue with him. She turned away from him, wrapping her arms around her body to ward off the growing chill. "How?"

  The calm sense of her question was as bracing as the icy water. As far as he could figure, there was no way out, but he wasn't about to tell her that He couldn't afford to have a hysterical woman on his hands.

  "I'll find a way."

  "There is no way out." She was very calm. So much for his notion of hysterical women. "Is there?"

  He considered lying to her, then dismissed the notion. "No," he said. "Not unless the Marvels come for us."

  He heard her deep, shaky breath from across the pitch-black room. And then she turned and faced him. "Then I don't see any reason why we shouldn't do it," she said. And she waded through the water, leaned her body against his and put her arms around his neck.

  He was a fool, but he couldn't help himself. He slid his hands up her long, sleek thighs, bringing the loose, flowered dress with them. She kissed him, and he realized she was singularly unused to kissing. He didn't care. He simply wrapped himself around her, drowning in the untutored grace of her mouth, her arms.

  She was so alive. So strong, so warm beneath the loose dress, and he wanted to touch her, everywhere, to feel the heat of her flesh warming his. He'd been cold for so very, very long, and he needed the fire of her. Right or wrong, he was going to take her. There was no way he could fight it any longer.

  The pounding on the door echoed through the damp tomb like the wrath of God, and he froze. "O'Neal!" Mrs. Marvel bellowed urgently. "Are you in there?"

  He didn't want to set her away from him, but he had no choice. "We're here, Mrs. Marvel," he called out, carefully moving Katie away from him. "Have you got the keys?"

  "They're still in the locks. Give me a moment, sir, and I'll have you out of there in a jiffy."

  "I guess we're not going to drown after all." Katie's voice was shaky in the darkness.

  He felt shaky, as well. Close to drowning, and he was a man unlike other men, a man who could not drown. But he'd felt carried away on a deep, rich wave of longing, and he could have given up, gone under, quite peacefully.

  "Not tonight, anyway." He sounded calm, almost cynical, as if the taste of her mouth didn't linger and taunt him.

  The door pushed open against the rising water, and a shallow light filled the room. Mrs. Marvel's sturdy bulk stood in the shadows beyond the lantern, and he wondered why he wasn't more grateful at being rescued.

  "The water's rising fast, sir," she said. "There's no telling how high it will climb. Do you want me to see about moving some of this stuff to higher ground? I can have Willie down here in no time."

  "There's no need, Mrs. Marvel," he said, taking the lantern from her and holding it up so that Katie could make her way through the water. "All these things have already spent a great deal of time under water—a little more won't hurt them." He glanced at Katie's pale, strained face as she moved past, her clothes brushing against him. "Are you all right?"

  "Fine," she said lightly. "I think I just need a good night's sleep. You're certain we're not in any danger here? If the water is filling the basement won't it damage the foundations?"

  "The foundation is solid rock. We're safe, Katie. Go to bed, and when you wake up in the morning the storm will probably have passed, the sun will be shining, and you can be on your way."

  She stopped and looked up at him out of still, blue eyes, and there was knowledge and sadness in them. It was nothing compared to how she would look at him if she ever knew the truth, he thought, steeling himself. She was better off away from here, away from him, away from things she couldn't believe and would never want to experience.

  "That would be nice," she said politely. "Though I'll miss the ghosts."

  He managed a wry smile. "Since you're the only one who's ever seen them, maybe they'll follow you."

  She shook her head. "You know they won't. They belong here."

  You belong here, Katie. The words came into his head, spoken in his father's voice, and the sensation was so strong he shivered.

  She was already gone, climbing the stone steps out of the gathering water, disappearing into the shadows. And he wouldn't call her back.

  "I can't imagine how that door would have slammed shut," Mrs. Marvel was saying in her warm, comfortable voice.

  "Neither can I." He glanced up into the darkness, almost thinking he could still see her, when an uneasy thought entered his brain. "Where's Willie?"

  "You'll not be thinking he would have locked you in there?" Mrs. Marvel sounded like a mother lion defending her cub. "You know as well as I do that there's no harm in the boy. He wouldn't hurt a fly."

  "Of course he wouldn't," O'Neal said swiftly. Wondering if he still believed it.

  "The water must have pushed it closed," she said, starting up the stairs, her impressive bulk hiding any last sight of Katie's slim ankles.

  "Yes," said O'Neal. It made perfect sense, one of life's little mysteries solved. But he didn't quite believe it.

  "You told me you wanted to get rid of them," Willie said, his voice not much more than a whine. "I was just doing what you told me to do."

  She slapped him, hard. "You didn't listen. Yes, they have to die. But not until I'm ready. We have to get rid of the girl first. Then things might calm down enough so that we can stay on for a bit longer. It's been peaceful here. We've got access to large sums of money that no one can trace. I'm not in any hurry to give that up."

  "But you promised me…"

  She slapped him again, and he didn't even flinch. "I promised you the girl. I said you could have her if you didn't take too much time with her. I didn't tell you it was O'Neal's time yet."

  "But, Ma…"

  "And by locking them in together, and sabotaging their lamp, you gave them the perfect chance. Did God take away your eyes as well as your brain, boy?"

  "They don't like each other," he said with a snuffle.

  "Idiot! They can't keep their eyes off each other. O'Neal's obsessed with her. It would be hysterically funny if it weren't so dangerous. He's been fighting it, but locking the two of them up isn't the way to keep them apart."

  "She hates him. She's always arguing."

  Mrs. Marvel snorted, giving up the notion of hitting him again. It did little good, and her hand was numb. "She's besotted, poor fool. He's a handsome man, and she's just silly enough to imagine herself in love with him. A dangerous combination if the two of them are thrown together. Which is exactly what happened when you were fool enough to lock them in the vault room."

  "I don't see what it matters…"

  "If he starts to care about her then he won't be willing to keep on with the comfortable life we've been living. If he knows she's dead he'll be in such a state he won't be bringing in any more money, and if he just thinks she's disappeared he'll probably go after her and leave us in peace."

  "Sorry, ma," Willie muttered.

  She slapped him again, just for good measure. "You try my patience, boy."

  "I can go up now," he said eagerly. "Finish her off before anything else happens."

  "No." She took a deep breath. "Things should be safe enough for the night. Unlike you, I have a brain in my head. Those two were up to something in the vault room, and now they regret it. They won't go anywhere near each other tonight. Tomorrow morning will be soon enough. Either the storm will be over, and you can drive her into town, or we'll dispose of her some other way."

  "Drive her into town? But, Ma, you promised!"

  "What's a poor mother to do?" Mrs. Marvel asked herself wearily. She looked back at her son. "Haven't you been listening to me? I don't mean really drive
her into town. Just take her far enough away and do what you like."

  "Yes, Ma," Willie said happily.

  The electricity lasted long enough for Katie to have a hot shower, change into the nightgown Mrs. Marvel had left her and crawl into bed, all set to discover whether she still loved Jane Austen as much as she used to. Not that the low-wattage bulb in her cavernous room would have done her eyesight much good, but the blackness that closed down around her was far too reminiscent of her sojourn in the water-soaked vault room, unpleasantly so.

  This time she was alone, she thought. Thank God, of course. She would hardly want to be lying curled up in bed with O'Neal for company, now would she? Would she?

  The wind had risen to a high-pitched shriek, battering against the windows, shaking them in their casings. O'Neal had said the storm would be over by morning. O'Neal had any number of strange notions.

  One of his strangest had been to kiss her. She still wasn't quite sure why he had. He found her annoying, intrusive, smart-mouthed, all of which she admitted she was. Why in the world would he want to kiss her? Want to do even more than that? If Mrs. Marvel hadn't rescued them they would have ended up on that hard wooden counter with her dress up about her waist. Not the most romantic of fantasies, but she'd been beyond romance and over the edge into shivering passion.

  They used to say that calories consumed alone didn't count. Did having sex in the pitch-dark count? Katie couldn't begin to guess, considering she'd never had sex in her entire twenty-eight years, which had to be some sort of record.

  Her lifelong celibacy had begun accidentally. Even though her family had lapsed from the Mother Church, she'd seen The Nun's Story on television one Sunday afternoon and decided if she became a nun she'd get to wear wonderful, enveloping costumes and look just like Audrey Hepburn. She outgrew that notion in her teens, but the boys she grew up with had never seemed the slightest bit tempting. College was even worse—they were either jocks or nerds or idiots, and even if she started to like someone she never could bring herself to like them that much. And wouldn't you just know it, the first man she decided she did like that much turned out to be a bad-tempered hermit who had no interest in her.

  Well, actually that wasn't strictly true. She could still feel the cool, strong touch of his hand between her breasts, pressed against her heart. She could taste his mouth, the strange, sorrowful possessiveness of it, and she'd wanted to drown in it. Drown in the darkness and his body, the feel of his hands sliding up her legs, knowing he could pull that dress from her and…

  She kicked against the cover, furious with herself. She was being ridiculous, she who prided herself on her no-nonsense attitude. This place had a dangerous effect on her. She had gone from a hard-headed, practical young woman to a dreamy romantic, seeing ghosts, longing for a man who could give her absolutely nothing but trouble.

  And the longer she stayed, the more enmeshed she became. With the ghosts. With him.

  She tossed on the lumpy mattress, rolling over onto her stomach and glowering at her feather pillow in the darkness. It was almost as if this were an enchanted place. Led here by ghosts, watched over by a caretaker and her silent son, lured by a brooding master of the house worthy of a gothic romance, it was almost as if this place didn't really exist. The lack of outside communication, even with the car radio, and the determination of the elements to keep her here seemed almost supernatural.

  Not to mention the ghosts.

  But it wasn't the friendly spirits that occasionally appeared, apparently only to her, that she found so unsettling. It was O'Neal. O'Neal from a distance, glowering at her, watching her. O'Neal up close, touching her, kissing her. He was so cold, until she touched him, and then his skin would blaze with warmth. She wanted to warm him. She wanted to wrap her body around him. and fill him with heat and life.

  She had to be out of her mind.

  She rolled over on her back again, peering into the darkness. There were candles and matches on the bedside table in case the unreliable electricity went out, but she made no effort to reach over and light it. There would be nothing to see, just the shining shadows cast by the candle's glow, and she was already imagining enough hidden there in the darkness.

  "Fiona." Her voice sounded unnaturally loud, even over the noise of the wind. "Fiona, are you there?"

  Nothing moved in the room, no poltergeist tossed anything at her, no presence danced across the air to touch her. She'd felt those small, ghostly hands in her back, propelling her toward O'Neal, but she'd been too caught up in what had happened next to think about who or what had pushed her.

  "Fiona, why did you push me at your brother?"

  The room was silent. There were no ghosts there, listening. Maybe there never had been.

  Katie sighed, wiggling down beneath the worn, ironed sheets. Whether she wanted to leave this place or not, she would. No matter how fierce the wind, no matter how driving the rain, she would damn well walk out of here tomorrow, rather than spend one more night being haunted. Not by the ghosts of O'Neal's drowned family.

  But by O'Neal himself. And her crazy longing for him.

  The steps led down to the sea. On a bright, cloudless day they led out onto a stretch of rocky beach where one could even launch a small curragh. But right now the water came halfway up the steps, and the waves surged even higher.

  O'Neal paused halfway down those stone steps, letting the wind buffet him as he stripped off his clothes. He could feel the change coming over him, the darkness that called to him, and this time he would not resist it.

  It was always his choice. Even years ago, the first time, when his family had been swept away from him and there was nothing he could do to save them, he'd felt the change and fought it, not even knowing what it was. He supposed he could have kept fighting and drowned, along with the others, but instead he'd eventually embraced the darkness, gone toward that pinprick of light and been transformed.

  It was quite easy now, almost effortless due to long experience. He could shift back and forth quickly, even efficiently, and no one who watched would have any idea what they were seeing.

  And if they saw, they wouldn't believe.

  There were times he'd thought that Willie had watched him, hiding in the bushes, staring down at him as he moved from one life to another. But who would he tell, and who would believe him? Not even his doting mother would believe such a bizarre tale.

  No, he was safe. He stared out over the furious waves. A creature could be dashed against the rocks, even a sea creature. It was a risk he needed to take. He dove off the steps, down, down into the icy blackness of the storm-tossed seas.

  And when he hit water he was a seal.

  Chapter Twelve

  « ^ »

  The room was bathed with the palest moonlight, and above them stars danced in the heavens. Even before she opened her eyes Katie knew that was impossible. The constant roar of the winds, the incessant rain still surrounded the old house, and there would be no moon visible, no stars to see.

  She considered keeping her eyes closed. Whatever it was that filled the room with such a pearlescent glow would probably be unbelievable, and she'd seen more than enough ghosts in the past few days to last her a lifetime. Besides, she had to be dreaming. So why give in to it? Far easier to keep her eyes tightly shut and will sleep back around her like a feather comforter.

  "I know you're awake." The voice was soft as a sigh, with the Irish in it as rich as a song.

  Katie kept her eyes closed. "You aren't supposed to talk," she muttered. "You're just supposed to appear and disappear."

  "And so I would, if you weren't so blessed thick about the whole thing." There was no mistaking the annoyance in the young voice, and Katie couldn't stop herself. She let her eyes flutter open, then slammed them shut again.

  "Go away," she said.

  Dead silence. Which, Katie thought a moment later, was probably far too accurate a phrase. She opened one eye tentatively, but her visitor was still there.

  "S
top fighting your destiny, Katie Flynn," the pale, wispy ghost of Fiona O'Neal said with all the sharp-tongued asperity of an elderly maiden aunt. "Open your eyes, sit up in your bed and listen to me, or I'll be forced to do something about it."

  She did as she was told, reluctantly. Fiona was perched, cross-legged, at the foot of her high, huge bed, and the light seemed to emanate from her. She was like those glow-in-the-dark stars that children pasted to their ceilings—except there was no green tinge to her aura. She looked as if she were sitting directly on Katie's feet, and yet Katie could feel no pressure.

  "What would you do?"

  Fiona's pale, sweet face creased in thought. "I'm that tempted to throw a pillow at you. However, those things aren't worth the effort. It's very hard for me to make things move, or feel my presence. I'm not really here, you know."

  "I know," Katie said dryly. "You're a figment of my imagination."

  "I most certainly am not," Fiona retorted. "How could you have imagined me? I don't expect you've seen me anywhere else but here, have you?"

  "Then why am I the only person who's seen you? And the others, for that matter?"

  "Think about it, girl," Fiona said sternly, addressing someone more than ten years her senior. "There's a reason you're here, a reason you can see us when no one else can even feel our presence, no matter how hard we try to break through."

  She didn't want to hear this, Katie thought. She really and truly didn't want to hear this.

  "I'm leaving in the morning," she said abruptly.

  Fiona's mocking laugh was as light as thistledown, and Katie wondered absently whether you could smack a ghost. "You're not going anywhere, and you know it. I led you here, and you followed. There's no turning back."

  "I thought I was following a piece of laundry blown by the wind," she protested.

  "And why would you be doing that? You have a habit of following stray pieces of laundry into the wind?" Fiona scoffed. "No, Katie, don't fool yourself. Things are difficult enough without you lying to yourself and me as well. I brought you here for Jamie."