Forever and Always

by Jude Deveraux

  She left the room in a flash and I wondered what she was up to. I mention jewels and she leaves.

  Ten minutes later the woman who’d opened the door for us brought my three suitcases into the room. When I tried to tip her, she shook her head and left. As soon as she was out of the room, the first thing I did was ascertain where the cameras and microphones were. People don’t realize how much energy machines give off, but I’d found out long ago that I could find machines with my mind. It took just a few minutes of concentrating to find them.

  Disabling them without alerting the watchers was another matter. I hung a hat over the little dried flower wreath that concealed a camera that looked toward the bed. In the bathroom (how rude! I thought) I sprayed my hair, then leaned over as though to get something and thoughtlessly sprayed the panel by the mirror, thus covering the camera lens.

  The microphones were more difficult but I managed—after three tries—to smash the one under the bed with the suitcase. Since there was no camera to see me, I put on a little radio show as though I were using the poker as a fencing sword, then said “oops” just before I smashed the microphone with the poker.

  I knew I was giving too much away by doing these things but, really—a camera in my bathroom!

  Once I was alone, I started digging through my bags and soon found what I wanted: my black Lycra cat suit.

  At the sight of the suit I refused to let myself cry. I hadn’t worn it since Adam and I had gone into the tunnels in Connecticut. To cover his attraction to me, he’d complained about everything I did or said. Of course I’d known we were safe. And I’d known—

  I made myself stop thinking about Adam, then went into the bathroom to change. When I emerged a few minutes later I halted. I could feel Linc near me. A second later, I saw his face at the window—the second floor window.

  “What in the world are you doing?” I asked as soon as I got the window open. He was hanging by his fingertips and I had to help haul him in.

  “Episode twenty-three was about a cat burglar,” he said as he fell onto the floor. “The director made me put on a leotard and crawl along the ledge of an eighteen-story building to see if it could be done.”

  I helped him stand up. “I thought all that was fake, that the actors were really only a couple of feet off the ground.”

  “I was, but I still couldn’t slip or—Wow! You look great.”

  I stepped away from him. “So how’s Mrs. Hemmings?”

  Linc groaned. “You can’t believe the offer she made me. She wanted to pay me to—” He waved his hand. “Anyway, I got no information out of her. She’s never been here before. But I talked to another guest and she said that the masseuse who used to be here was named Lisa, but she said she had never seen a little boy around here. She said that Delphia didn’t like men, children, or animals. You know, you really do look good.”

  “Touch me and I’ll make your head hurt,” I said, but I was smiling. His desire for a woman was getting stronger every time I saw him. His aura was now about a foot around his body and it was bright red. “You should have taken Mrs. Hemmings up on her offer,” I said, making sure there was lots of distance between us.

  Linc plopped down on my bed and I could tell he was sulking. I wondered how many women had turned him down in his life.

  “Did anyone see you climb up whatever you climbed up to get into my room?”

  “I don’t know. You’re the psychic. You tell me. And why are you dressed like that anyway?”

  I had no intention of telling him anything so I began sending him soothing thoughts that I hoped would put him to sleep, but since I was in a hurry I was a little too pushy.

  “Ow!” he said, rubbing his neck, then he began reciting the Gettysburg Address again.

  I didn’t have time to deal with him. “I’m going somewhere and I want you to stay here and wait for me.”

  He didn’t bother to answer. “What a fireplace!” he said, rolling off the bed, going toward the mermaids, his hands ready to grab their breasts.

  I put my body between him and the mermaids. A mistake. As his hands got near me, I gave him a look that made him halt. He stepped back, smiling. “Wherever you’re going, I’m going with you.”

  “To the library,” I said. “I have to do some things there. By myself.”

  “Such as disengage all machines that make fake ghosts appear?”

  “Now who’s the mind reader?” I asked.

  “We did a show that had a séance. A woman went to one and never returned, so I know something about the tricks. If you go, you go with me,” he said, and I knew he meant it.

  “All right.” I sighed to let him know I didn’t like the idea, although, truthfully, I didn’t want to go sneaking around by myself. I couldn’t cut wires or whatever while using my mind to make sure I wasn’t caught. “Let me make sure the hall is clear.”

  When Linc started to open the door, I shut it. “What do you think you’re doing?”

  “Checking the hallway. Excuse me. I forgot that you can do what no one on earth can do and that I probably know only fifty percent of what you can do.”

  “One percent,” I said. “And hush.” I closed my eyes and searched with my mind. I felt no one near us, felt that no one was about to come down the hall. I sent out thoughts that no one wanted to go into the entryway or—

  Opening my eyes, I asked Linc, “Do you know where the library is?”

  “What if I hadn’t dumped Mrs. Hemmings and come here, ready to rescue you? How would you even have found the library without me?”

  I opened the door slowly, peeking out just in case. Something was very strange in that house and I meant to find it. As far as I could feel, there were no cameras or microphones in the hall. It was my guess that there were certain people—namely Narcissa and Delphia—who didn’t want their movements recorded. Since they used the hallway, there were no recording devices.

  “I would have moved the library to me,” I said over my shoulder to Linc as I left the room.

  “You can’t really move a room, can you?” he asked, following me.

  Turning, I walked backward down the hall. Okay, so I was enjoying his lust. I planned to remain faithful to Adam forever, but it was nice to look at Linc’s beautiful body and see the lust that encircled him grow and develop. If auras were tangible he would have had a wall of fire behind him.

  “No, I can’t move a room but I could, say, make a backhoe driver get lost and end up with his machine in the library.”

  “That wouldn’t really move the room, that would destroy it. Not the same thing.”

  His voice was getting deeper and the flames of his aura bigger. “How about if I make someone think that she had to go to the library to get a book? I could follow her.”

  “She’d better be a locksmith because they keep the room locked.”

  His aura was now nothing but fire: red, orange, tiny bits of green at the tip. I could feel its warmth. As I went down the big stairs backward, I felt that my body had ice around it and he was the warmth I needed. Adam, Adam, Adam, I thought.

  Linc broke the spell. “This is it,” he said, his arm on the door behind me, his head coming down close to mine.

  The spell was broken when I saw a man’s face behind Linc’s left shoulder. I blinked and the face was gone. When Linc’s face got to where mine had been, I ducked under his arm.

  “Did you see that?” I asked, looking around but seeing no one.

  “What?” Linc asked, his voice higher. His aura was cooling, like a fire going down, no longer flames, but a warm glow. It wouldn’t take much to set it to blazing again.

  “I think I saw a ghost. Isn’t that marvelous? I’ve never seen one before. I mean, I’ve seen many of them inside my head, and talked to a lot of them, but I’ve never seen one in solid form. It takes a lot of strength to be able to appear in life form. One time I was in a new house but the people had used boards on the walls from some old cabin. I could feel bits of ghosts all over the walls. It wa
s as though they’d cut pictures into strips and glued them back together. Can you pick the lock?” His aura was down to a reddish brown.

  “You’re a very strange person, you know that?”

  “Because I want you to pick a lock?”

  “No, because most people are afraid of ghosts.”

  “Most people are afraid of me,” I said. “Did you know—”

  He cut me off. “You mean, did I learn how to pick locks, hotwire cars, and was I in a gang when I grew up in Harlem? For your information, my parents taught college and I—”

  Racism, I thought, and gave a sigh as I pulled the little fanny pack I wore around to the front. “I was just being polite. My cousin Virgil taught me how to pick a lock.”

  “Virgil?” he asked. “About so high? Mean-looking? Scar across the side of his face?”

  “That’s him.” I was bending down and working with the little tool Virgil had made for me when I was a kid. I used to love to get sent to stay with Virgil because he never thought anything that happened around me was odd. He was the person I came closest to telling what I was able to do, but then I think Virgil, just by being quiet and listening, figured out more than others did.

  I felt rather than saw Linc shiver. “I wouldn’t want to meet that guy on a dark night,” he said. “Or in sunlight. In fact—”

  He stopped talking when I pushed the library door open and we looked inside. If there had ever been any ghosts in that room, I didn’t feel them.

  I looked around the room while giving myself time to feel what was in there. Two walls were covered, floor to ceiling, with books in walnut shelves, the third wall had shelves and a fireplace, and the far wall had two big windows hidden under heavy burgundy-colored velvet curtains.

  While I was looking, I scanned for cameras and microphones. I could feel that there was a lot of electronic equipment in the room but none of it felt “on.” It was like when the electricity went off. You knew the refrigerator was there, but it wasn’t humming, wasn’t using electricity, wasn’t “alive.”

  As I looked about the room, I couldn’t help but notice the decor.

  “Too dark,” I said. “If this were my library, I’d do it all in greens and yellows. Don’t you think yellow curtains would be nice?”

  “I think two people have been killed and I think this is serious. And I also think that if we had any sense we’d get the hell out of this place.”

  “Watch your language, please.” I really hated the use of vulgar words. They were for shock value, so what value was there in using a shocking word every time a person opened his mouth? Or her mouth?

  When I looked at Linc he was pulling books out of the shelves, looking at them, then putting them back. “I don’t think this is the time to choose reading matter. We should—”

  “Bingo,” he said, looking at me in triumph. He’d pulled out books that were glued together, their insides cut away so they formed a box. Behind the box was what looked like a projector. “Is it possible you know anything about electronic equipment?”

  “Both my daughter and my niece have telekinetic powers, but I don’t. If one of them were here now, she could—”

  Linc looked at me in disgust. “You have a small Phillips screwdriver in that pack of yours?”

  He’d meant “know” as in having read a manual. “Oh,” I said. I gave him a tool that was Phillips on one end and flat on the other. The middle had a hole in it that fit a 3/8-inch hexagonal nut.

  “Virgil?” Linc asked as he took the tool.

  I nodded and watched him. From the look of the way he was adjusting screws, he could have built whatever the thing was.

  “Cool,” I said. “I’ll find them, you disable them.”

  “Partners,” he said, the top of his head hidden in the bookcase.

  “Like Holmes and Watson.”

  “More like Lucy and Ricky,” Linc said, and I laughed.

  Concentrating, I tried to find the other machines in the room but with their not being on, it wasn’t easy. I think someone had turned off the circuit breaker so that if there was a storm or an electrical malfunction, the machines in the room wouldn’t blow up. They must be expensive, I thought.

  We pulled more fake books out, found more machines, and Linc disabled all of them. He said they were high-tech recorders and a projector for storing holograms. “Simple movie stuff,” he said. “No offense, but I see why they don’t let men stay here. Any man would know what these things are.”

  “Sure,” I said. “Men are so very clever. That’s why you have a kid whose mother you’ve never even met. Tell me, Mr. Brilliant, when you were in that room with that little cup didn’t you consider that what you were doing might result in a child?”

  He didn’t bother to answer me but I could tell that he was embarrassed. The next second, he said, “Oh ho!” sounding like someone in an English movie. He had found a tiny wire along one edge of the bookcase. As his hands followed the wire, it looked as though he was a mime because the wire couldn’t be seen.

  “It goes up there,” he said, nodding toward the paneling above the fireplace. He looked back at me. “I don’t know what this wire is but on our show about séances, the woman used one like this to make things in the room move and to make noises. She hooked it to her elbow and all she had to do was move her arm and voilà! things moved. Whatever we do, I don’t think we should cut this wire. I’ve fixed the machines so it looks like normal machine malfunction.”

  I gave him a look.

  “Yeah. Well, okay, so they’ll know someone did it, but they’ll also wonder if maybe the machines went out on their own. If we cut the wire I think it—”

  “Would make them insane with rage and they’ll murder us in our beds?”

  “More or less,” Linc said. “What else do you have in that pack of yours?”

  I held it out to him; he rummaged in it and found a little pink knife I’d had since I was a kid. The blade had been sharpened so many times it hardly existed. “Perfect,” he said, then bent the wire around the knife to make a kink in it. “All we need now is to hook this on the corner of the mantel and the wire won’t move if anyone pulls it. I think I can climb up there.”

  The tiny decorative ledge on the bookcase was too narrow for his big feet. “I’ll climb if you’ll give me a boost up.”

  “Oh yeah,” he said, then held out his arms to me as though he meant to hug me. When I took a step away from him, he grimaced. “Now you think I’m a rapist?”

  “Touchy-feely,” I said, and he gave me such a lascivious look that I laughed. The next minute he cupped his hands, I stepped into them and he nearly tossed me up to the high mantel. “I almost hit the ceiling,” I hissed down at him.

  “Sorry. I have too much stored energy. You think this place has a gym in it?”

  “I think there’s a gym somewhere and that Delphia uses it. She’s stronger than she looks.”

  “Speaking of looks…” he said, looking up at me as I stretched up to reach the top of the mantel and pull the wire into place.

  I didn’t respond because my senses came alert. “Someone’s coming,” I whispered.

  “Wire fixed in place?” he asked and when I nodded, he grabbed my ankle and pulled me off the mantel.

  If my senses hadn’t been so full of the approach of someone I would have screamed as I went flying through the air to land in his arms. When I opened my mouth to protest, Linc set me on the floor and put a finger over his lips to be quiet. Softly, I ran to the door and leaned against it. I was puzzled. I had put a mental no-entry sign on the hallways, so who was out there?

  Closing my eyes, I tried to visualize the person I felt but didn’t hear. Images came to me but they made no sense. A man. A woman. A ghost. A…A dragon?

  At that image, I started to open the door but Linc put his arm above my head and held the door shut, which annoyed me. “I could make you—” I whispered, but stopped because I felt the person—or thing—move away.

  “Gone!” I said, pu
shing Linc against his ribs. It was like trying to move a rock. When I looked up at him, he was smiling in a lewd way.

  “We are finished in here,” I said. “You need to work out. Get rid of some of that energy.” His aura had erupted into flame again.

  “I know a better way to get rid of energy,” he said as he bent his head as though to kiss me.

  I slipped under his arm and when he held the door shut, I stared at his hand. I used my mind to transfer the red-hot heat from his aura to his hand. It was a lazy trick since I didn’t take the time to conjure energy, but I wanted to get out of there and see who or what had been able to get past the spell I’d put on the hallway.

  With a yelp of pain, Linc moved his hand from the door. As he was blowing on his hand to cool it off, I ran toward my room. My mind was split as part of me tried to find the person who’d been in the hall and part of me sent Linc a message that he needed to find a gym and stay there until dinner.

  Once in my room, I stripped out of my Lycra and put on jeans and a knit shirt. On my way out I took my sun hat from over the camera in the dried flower wreath and put it on my head. Let them look at the empty room for a while, I thought.

  I wandered around the “castle” for about thirty minutes, not seeing much, but feeling all that I could. Six of the bedrooms were occupied and I felt that the women in them were sleeping. Drugged, I wondered? Drugs to keep the guests quiet would make the housekeeping easier.

  A lot of doors were locked. In fact, nearly every door was locked. There was a pretty little sitting room where I think tea was served that was open, but I didn’t go inside. There were at least four cameras hidden in the room and I felt that someone was watching me with great interest. I had to tamp down a desire to grin and wave.

  I kept walking about the house, trying doors, but all were locked. I could feel there were many people in the house but it was difficult to pinpoint their locations. I could feel people under my feet and over my head so the basement and attic rooms were occupied—or at least used. I couldn’t feel a child anywhere. Nor could I feel the ghost I’d so quickly glimpsed behind Linc.