by Juniper Hart
Joe himself seemed torn as she looked from one person to the next. Grace watched his eyes slip toward the back stairs, and when she turned her head to look, she saw Father looming in the shadows, his black eyes burning into her.
“You see? Grace is happy to stay,” Mr. Tanner said. “Let us sit down and talk.”
“You may wait in the dining room,” Grace told them. “I will serve breakfast shortly.”
The men nodded, but Miss Luciano remained in place. “I will help Grace.”
Tanner and Luciano seemed to share a long look, though no more words were exchanged as the men disappeared into the dining room. The moment they were out of earshot, the elegant woman turned her attention to Grace.
“Are you in danger here?” she asked without preamble. “Are you being kept here against your will?”
The question was shocking to Grace.
“No!” she denied hotly, and Miss Luciano’s face seemed to relax slightly.
“I’m sorry for asking,” she said contritely. “But this place is unlike any other we’ve been to. We want to ensure we are making a good purchase.”
Grace wanted to ask what she meant, but she was painfully aware of Father watching her every move.
“Grace…” Miss Luciano tried again when she did not speak. “Is there anything you can tell me about Eden? Anything you think we should know?”
Grace lifted her head and stared into Miss Luciano’s clear blue eyes. Somehow, they reminded her of Harmony’s for reasons she didn’t understand.
They have something in common, she thought, trying to make sense of her strange thought. Suddenly, Grace realized she could talk to the woman about Harmony, about Father, about the glass room, but her tongue stuck to the roof of her mouth like it was coated in honey.
Slowly, she shook her head. Even if they were not the devil’s minions, as Father had proclaimed, even if they were good, they would be gone in a short while, and she would be left alone with Father and the others to suffer the punishment of her betrayal.
What could outsiders do to protect Harmony? She didn’t even know for certain where the girl was at that point.
I am the only one who is having blasphemous thoughts. Everyone else is content in their lives. I should be grateful I have Father. Shame on me for considering telling her anything. The devil truly has infiltrated Eden, and I permitted it.
“No,” Grace whispered, picking up a pan from the burners. “Eden is a wonderful place, free from sin and protected by Father. Shall we eat?”
8
When Harmony opened her eyes, she didn’t immediately know where she was, but she knew who she was for the first time in four years.
Perhaps it had been the lashes she had administered upon herself, or the deep resentment that she’d felt toward Father. Overnight, something had switched in her brain, and suddenly, Eve was no more. Harmony Jagger had come back full force and with a vengeance.
How the hell did I let myself get to this? she wondered, her eyes fluttering open to stare at the ceiling above her. Was I brainwashed? Me? Harmony Jagger? Five years ago, anyone who knew her would have lost control of their bladders laughing at such an asinine thought, but that had been before Harmony had hit rock bottom.
As she lay on the unfamiliar bed, she blinked several times, trying to piece together what had happened.
In her mind’s eye, she saw herself, carefree and over-confident, leaving the less-than-perfect childhood she’d shared with her sisters and two half-brothers behind. For as long as she could remember, Harmony had always known that there was something different about her and her sisters, well before her mother, Jennifer, had remarried her emotionally absent stepfather and the boys had been born.
While her sister Sam had gone out of her way to make up for the lack of affection by being over-accommodating, Harmony had retreated into herself and learned to self-destruct. There had been years of drug use and partying, years which she couldn’t always piece together, until one day, she had woken in a hospital bed, an IV pumping electrolytes into her veins and a stranger standing over her bed.
“Who the hell are you?” she rasped out, her mouth filled with cotton.
“Your savior,” he answered simply. Harmony had been too out of it to laugh as she stared into his inky, dark eyes, trying to understand who he was and what he wanted from her. “You overdosed, Eve,” he told her, and Harmony’s eyes narrowed.
“My name isn’t Eve,” she replied. “It’s—”
“No,” he said flatly. “It isn’t. Not anymore. You died and have been reborn.”
In her affected state, Harmony found herself listening to his words, the truth of them making more sense than they should have. She absorbed the incredulous statements that he was a god and was going to save her from the path of destruction on which she found herself.
I don’t even believe in gods, she wanted to tell him. For some reason, she didn’t. Instead, she followed the man from the hospital in Seattle to the remote hotel in Ocean Shores, where she relearned who she was with isolation and meditation in the glass room.
“Father” had been both kind and cruel to her, the combination of his bittersweet actions both confusing and convincing the girl that she was going to save the others from eternal hell by marrying her into the commune. Aunt Grace was her only companion, and through the two elders, Harmony had eventually begun to truly believe that she was Eve, the first wife of the world.
She sat up, shaking her head in disbelief, and realized she was in one of the suites. Why had she been moved? Her teal green eyes darted about. Inhaling sharply, she also realized that her fever had broken.
Harmony was on her feet, scrambling toward the door, but it was locked from the outside.
Confusion overcame her. Had Grace said something to Father? Did he suspect that she’d gotten her memory back? She thought of what she’d said to Grace, about how they weren’t who Father claimed them to be. Had she ratted her out?
Anger and indignation flooded her, but she warned herself to be calm. She needed to get out of there, and she wouldn’t be able to do it if she was outnumbered.
Think, Harmony, think! Cautiously, she backed away from the door and sat back on the bed, realizing for the first time that she was naked from the waist up. Her eyes popped, though she instantly understood why. Those damned lashes on my back, she thought miserably, turning her red hair to look at the ugly welts on her back.
To her amazement, there wasn’t a single scar left on her body.
“What the hell?” she muttered aloud. “How long was I out?”
Once more, she bounced to her feet and looked around the room for a dress to wear. Her eyes fell on one of her customary gowns of simple cotton, and she pulled it over her head before whirling toward the window. The panes were obviously locked, and even if Harmony was able to open them, the drop was thirty feet to the ground. She would break her legs if she risked it.
Shit. Shit. Shit. Biting on her lower lip, she spun around, grimacing at the swirl of the hem around her bare ankles. How did I ever get caught dead in this? she wondered, looking down at the smock. Was I drugged?
There were so many questions, so much that didn’t make sense. How had Father found her? Why had he kept her? How many more women were there?
She thought about how much time she’d spent in the glass room, being reprogrammed, made to believe she was someone else, and her blood began to boil. Were there others like her? Had Grace been treated that way, too?
Harmony ground her teeth together, feeling the long-lost sensation of her once infamous temper rearing its head. All around her, a dull hum began to vibrate through the room, and her brow furrowed as she gazed at the slight pulsating of random objects all around her.
Am I doing that? Instantly, her mind shifted to the night of the flogging and the way the candles had flickered in her fear and anger. I am doing that!
Steeling her breaths, she tried to focus on the Tiffany lamp at the bedside and willed it to move with her
eyes.
Come on, she begged it silently, groaning slightly with the effort. Come on…
The door swung open, and Harmony gasped, whipping around to confront the newcomer, her concentration faltering.
“Ah, Eve,” Father purred, sauntering toward her. “How good to see you up and about, child. How are you feeling?”
Her mind exploded with a thousand ways to react. Her first thought was to kick him in the groin and run, but she knew she wouldn’t get very far. Even if she did, she had no way of getting out of their remote area. How well could she really fend for herself against the elements for days?
No. I can’t do that. I’ll get caught and brought back for sure. Should I confront him, tell him I know the truth? She shoved that idea from her head. If she just played along and pretended to be the girl he had believed her to have become, it was her best shot at developing a plan from escaping this madman.
“Eve?”
“Yes, Father,” she said quickly, flashing him a smile which churned her stomach. “Much better.”
“Let me see your lashes,” he said, striding toward her, but she backed away, shaking her head.
“No, Father,” she muttered. “I’m much better. I-I just need some rest.”
He paused and cocked his head to the side, a half-smile forming on his lips.
“Are you refusing my orders, Eve?” he asked in a tone which was far too pleasant. Harmony felt a shiver of unpleasantness wash through her.
“No, Father, of course not,” she told him. “I mean that they have genuinely healed. See?” She knew fighting was futile. He would just hurt her and end up seeing what he wanted, anyway. Raising her dress, she turned her back to him and heard him inhale sharply.
“Indeed,” he mumbled. “Indeed, I do see.”
“It must be a miracle,” Harmony offered, trying to keep the sarcasm from her voice, but Father was already striding toward the door, shaking his head as if trying to come to terms with something.
At the doorway, he paused and turned to her, his eyes narrowed.
“How do you feel?” he demanded slowly.
“Much better, Father,” she assured him, but he shook his head harder.
“No,” he said. “I mean, how do you feel?”
She cocked her head to the side, her brow furrowed. What the hell are you babbling about? she wanted to snap, managing to contain herself.
“I’m afraid I don’t understand, Father.”
His eyes lingered on her a moment longer before he released a grunt and stormed from the room, slamming the door in his wake. The furniture quivered, and Harmony’s jaw tightened when she heard the lock engage.
I haven’t been locked in for a while. He’s suspicious of something. I need to be careful.
With a massive sigh, Harmony flopped back onto the bed and dropped her head against a pillow, her eyes trained back on the lamp. One way or another, she was going to need to find a way out of there before shit got even weirder.
One more time, she focused her full attention on the table, willing the lamp to move.
But no matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t get it to quiver in the slightest.
9
Orion was more conflicted than he had been before they had returned to Ocean Shores. In fact, he was beginning to wish he’d never suggested turning the plane around in the first place.
It was abundantly clear that whatever was happening went beyond his understanding, and the more he tried to get a handle on it, the less it seemed to make sense.
“We need to renegotiate the terms of this deal,” Vera told him as they took the car into town that afternoon. “We need to demand that the hotel be delivered vacant.”
Orion eyed her warily. There were two problems with that idea, problems he was sure that Vera had already considered before speaking: the first was that the specs they had come up with were determined upon a certain amount of revenue during renovations.
“If we evict the guests, we are putting ourselves back even further than we had been before. Now that we know what a mess the property is in, our renovation budget has skyrocketed, which means we need to recoup our losses. The way to recoup our losses is not by setting ourselves back even more.” He had not meant to sound as biting as he did, but the tension surrounding Eden had affected him more than he cared to admit.
He hadn’t slept a wink since their arrival, the screams in his head as vivid as they’d ever been. Orion couldn’t suppress the idea that someone was calling out to him, warning him. But warning him to what? Go or stay? The obvious answer was the latter. He had to get to the bottom of the mystery surrounding Eden.
He noted Vera’s sullen expression. “I’m aware of that, Mr. Tanner, but something tells me that these people are not the kind of people we want on Tanner property.”
Which brought him to his second problem: Grace.
If we evict the elusive guests, what will happen to that timid girl? She claims she lives there with her father, so why haven’t we met him? Why are they keeping him hidden? He had no idea what to make of Grace or the sketchy looking men he had seen in passing the previous night.
In morning light, everyone had disappeared while he and Vera had been left to roam through the halls of Eden.
Could there be more Enchanted inside? Even with his well-honed senses, Orion was finding it difficult to get a read on the tenants, especially when they did such a good job of hiding themselves from their eyes.
They had gone through the hotel with new eyes that morning, Vera scribbling detailed notes as they strolled through the lobby. Once again, Orion had found himself staring at his reflection in the glass wall, with Vera standing at his side.
“Do you see something here?” he asked her, and he watched her shake her head. He could see she wasn’t really listening to him, though. She was far too consumed with her own thoughts to heed his growing anxiety.
That morning, he couldn’t sense the same presence as he had the night before, but he still couldn’t dismiss the idea that something was beyond that glass.
“Only a fool could have thought this could work,” Vera had muttered from his side, shaking her head and staring in dismay at the tablet in her hands.
Suddenly, the numbers weren’t nearly as tantalizing as they had been.
“It can still work,” he insisted, and he saw the odd expression on her face. She was probably wondering why he couldn’t let it go when it had been her idea. “I can’t give up on this yet,” he said. “I just can’t.”
Vera met his eyes in the glass.
“There is something about this place,” she agreed quietly. “I think, if we work on Grace, we can get her to unlock some of this weirdness.”
Orion nodded slowly. He believed the same thing.
“What do you want to do?” Vera asked, sitting back in her seat, bringing him back into the town car. She seemed more relaxed outside the walls of Eden. Not that Orion could blame her. He noticed a huge weight had lifted the further they traveled from the property.
Conversely, he wanted to run back and absorb more of the energy, like it might bring him closer to whatever it was that kept him there.
“I don’t know yet what we should do,” he confessed, sighing. “I can’t believe there is no Wi-Fi in the hotel. I haven’t seen a single television, either.”
“Maybe that’s the problem,” Vera volunteered. “They’re simply living in seclusion.” But Orion knew it was more than their rudimentary living that was bothering them both.
The car pulled up to a lonely café in town, and the pair spilled out, Orion cringing at the brightness of the sunlight streaming nakedly without protection of the trees.
“Hurry up inside,” Vera urged, covering him as he pulled up his cloak and made his way after her. He hoped that the forecast called for rain later.
Inside, they were seated right away and ordered breakfast, barely speaking while they waited for their meal. When it arrived, they devoured the eggs and waffles with gusto, not reali
zing how hungry they both were. When they had finished, Orion sat back, taking a sip of his coffee, and relished the boost of energy the food had given him.
It’s not a kill, but it will tide me over for now, he thought.
Their server approached the table, a sunny smile on her face.
“How is everything here?” she asked brightly, moving to clear their plates.
“Fine, thank you,” Orion said, returning her smile. He and Vera exchanged a quick glance, and Orion knew his assistant had the same thought as him in that moment. “Have you lived around here for a while?” he asked politely, setting the tone for his question.
“My whole life,” the server chuckled, turning her eyes toward him as she balanced the dishes in one hand, a coffee pot in another.
“Can you tell us anything about the Eden property on the ocean?”
She seemed taken aback by the question, her smile fading almost instantly.
“What about it?” the tiny brunette asked, her tone guarded.
“What are the people who live there like? Do they venture into town much?”
The girl seemed perplexed, her eyebrows knitting in confusion.
“People who live there?” she echoed, eyeing him like he was unstable. “That property hasn’t housed people in years. There’s a caretaker who lives there. John, I think? Jim? Something like that. He pops by every other day or so for our cherry pie. It’s the best in these parts, if you want to try.” She regained her smile, but Orion was not interested in sweets.
“Are you sure?” he demanded. “No one lives there but a caretaker?”
She shrugged indifferently. “As far as I know. I certainly haven’t heard about people living there, and like I said, I’ve been here my whole life. Trust me when I tell you that in a small town, everyone knows everyone else’s business.”
Orion had no doubt about the truth of that statement.
The server wandered off, leaving him and Vera to stare at each other in disbelief.
“How the hell can that be?” Vera murmured, echoing Orion’s thoughts. “That many people who supposedly live there, and no one steps foot off the grounds except for John or Jim or whatever the hell his name is?”