Deceptions

by Kelley Armstrong

  "Come here, Letty," the light-haired girl called. "Sit with us."

  "Look at the water," her companion said. "Isn't it marvelous."

  They reached out their hands as Letitia walked over.

  "No!" I said, jumping between them. I turned to the brunette. "Don't do this. She's not responsible. He is."

  I knew it was pointless. These were only phantasms, memories. But the brunette met my gaze, and she smiled, a terrible and beautiful smile.

  "We know who is responsible. And this is how we repay him. Take from him as he took from us. That is our way. Death is quick. Regret is not."

  I remembered Gabriel saying almost the same thing, first to the men in the parking garage, then to James. Letitia walked through me and took the young women's hands.

  "Shall we go for a swim?" the light-haired one said.

  "What?" Letitia forced a ragged laugh and pulled back. "You are really quite amusing, but I ought to go--" When the women didn't release her, she said, "This isn't funny. Please let me go."

  They opened their hands, but her fingers remained stuck to theirs.

  "Wh-what?" she said, backpedaling uselessly.

  "We're taking you for a swim, pretty Letty. A swim in your new pool."

  They wrapped their arms around her and leapt, and as they did, their gowns puddled at their feet and their hair tumbled from its pins, cascading over their bare backs, pitch-black now on one, glowing white on the other. The brunette's skin darkened, too, turning as black as her hair. Their bodies thickened, necks lengthening, as they transformed.

  I raced to the pool edge. It didn't matter that it would do no good. I shouted at the kelpies to stop.

  They dove into the water with Letitia trapped between them, flailing wildly. Even after the water closed over them, I still heard her screaming. Down they went, so fast and so deep that I was certain the pool bottom was a mirage, that it somehow opened into the lake itself. Otherwise--

  The kelpies hit the bottom and they kept going, right through it, vanishing. But Letitia did not. Instead, her body jolted and a red flume of blood swirled up, suffusing the water, spreading out in crimson tendrils.

  She floated to the top, her pale blue dress billowing around her. Blood kept pumping from her crushed skull, an impossible amount of blood, the water darkening with it. She floated there, her hair and dress swirling around her. Then she dropped out of sight into the bloody depths.

  "I'm sorry," I whispered.

  "Why?" said a voice beside me. I looked over to see the little girl. "This is how we repay death. We know no other way. We have no understanding of mercy."

  "I do."

  She cocked her head. "I misspoke, then. They have no understanding of mercy. We may . . . and yet we would do the same. It is in our blood. We answer fire with fire. Blood with blood. In our hearts, there is no other way. Protect those we hold dear. The rest can fall to ash and dust."

  "I'm still sorry," I said. "For her."

  "But are you sorry for him?"

  She waved at the house. Nathaniel Mills was leaning over the top railing, scanning the garden for his missing wife. I looked at him, and it was as the girl said. I understood that I should feel pity. And I did not. He'd earned this fate the day he ordered those fires.

  "How does one fight fire?" whispered a voice beside me. I turned to see the dark-haired kelpie, in human form now. She reached out and traced a dripping-wet finger across my cheek. "With water. Fitting, don't you think?"

  I wanted to retreat from her touch, but I found myself transfixed by her eyes. I saw the blue fire ripping through this field, and other fields and forests, iron circles and dying fae.

  "They scream in pain, but they never scream for mercy," the kelpie said. "They know it does no good. The fae learned that lesson from humans, and this is how we pay it back."

  She dove into the pool. Except there was no blood in it. Little water, even, only a foot or two in the bottom, filthy and bloated with dead leaves.

  "Is it over?" Gabriel asked.

  I nodded.

  "What did you see?"

  "They killed her. Letitia Roosevelt. Kelpies did."

  My gaze lifted to the fountains on the hill. Nathaniel Mills had murdered fae and yet he'd had them carved in stone to decorate his home. They'd had their revenge. Killed his wife, drove him away, let the house fall to ruin, reclaimed by nature.

  "Hopefully, that means the visions are over, and we can finally do what we came here to do."

  "You mean what we were brought here to do," Gabriel said.

  I started back up the stairs. "Yes, someone brought us here, and from what the girl says, it's not for tea and crumpets, but it's not to hurt us, either."

  "Yes, I believe that's exactly what she said. Whatever you find here will hurt--"

  "Me. Just me. Which means it's my choice, right?"

  "And my opinion on the matter carries no weight."

  With every word, his voice chilled ten degrees.

  "You know it does," I said as I continued climbing. "Hell, sometimes yours carries more than my own. But when it comes to matters of personal safety, you can be . . ."

  I trailed off, and we made it all the way to the top terrace before he said, as if through clenched teeth, "Overprotective?"

  "We've both been through a lot," I said carefully as I turned to face him. "I think that might lead us to overestimate the threat level--"

  "Really?" His shades were off, ice-cold eyes boring into mine. "After all this, you think it's possible to overestimate the threat level?"

  You're pushing him away. Don't do this.

  I took a deep breath. "I can't leave not knowing what I was supposed to find."

  "Yes, you can. You can return to the car and wait there while I search the house."

  "And what in God's name has ever led you to believe that I'd go hide in the car while you do this for me? I am not some--"

  I cut myself short and turned away, my arms crossing as I fought to regain my temper. I didn't want to fight about this. I really didn't.

  So what do I want?

  To have him agree I should search and accompany me into that house.

  Isn't that as unreasonable as what he wants?

  There was no middle ground here. I wanted what I wanted, and damn him if he didn't give it to me.

  I exhaled, let my arms fall to my sides, and turned. "I'm sorry. I--"

  Gabriel wasn't there.

  I looked about, expecting to see the scenery changed, the house new again, some sign of a vision . . .

  Then I spotted his back, as he walked into the house.

  "Damn you, Gabriel," I muttered, and took off after him.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  I knew what every structure on the Villa's grounds had been, no matter what its condition. Inside the house? Inside I found only endless empty rooms, with the occasional rotting chair or moldering carpet.

  Legend had it that when Mills discovered his bride's body in the pool, he'd walked up the stairs, through the house, out the front door . . . and never returned. He'd ordered everything to stay exactly as it was, allowing priceless antiques to rot. My father had told me a different version. He'd heard that Mills had ordered his men to sneak in and spirit off the most valuable of the furnishings, so he could maintain the romantic fiction while recouping the most significant losses.

  Judging by the wall of broken windows, I'd just entered the conservatory. Brisk lake air blasted through. I jogged to the next room, but I could see no sign of Gabriel. I called, "Gabriel? I'm apologizing, okay? I was being bullheaded, and while I don't think I'm the only one, I want to talk about this."

  No answer. As I walked to the far doorway, I made tracks in the dust on the floor. One set crossing the room. None at the doorway, meaning Gabriel hadn't come this way.

  Was there another exit from the conservatory? I took three steps back the way I'd come and then heard an impatient, "Olivia," from the opposite direction. I hurried into a long, narrow room with tw
o fireplaces . . . and a half-dozen doors.

  "Shit," I said.

  "Where am I?" a voice demanded. "What the hell is going on?"

  The voice seemed to come from all corners, booming, oddly distorted, like speakers turned up too loud. Not Gabriel. Yet it seemed familiar.

  "I know you're here," the voice continued. "Damn you, come out and face me."

  I turned and there was Nathaniel Mills. He was older, bloated and unkempt, a flask in one hand as he staggered toward me.

  "Do you think I can't hear you?" he shouted at the empty room. "Whispering, laughing, taunting? Do you think I don't know what you did, you ungodly sons of bitches? Come out and face me!"

  He stormed around the room, kicking at invisible debris, shoving aside invisible furniture. Then he stopped dead. He seemed to move around something, carefully, and then let out a cry as he dropped to his knees.

  "Letty! It can't be. You're wet. So wet. And your poor face. Your beautiful face. What have they--?"

  He stopped abruptly again and staggered up. "No, you're not real. You're dead and buried." He wheeled, shouting, "Damn you all back to the hell you came from. You--"

  His gaze lit on me. "You."

  I took a slow step back.

  "Do you think I can't see you?" His figure pulsed, shimmering as he moved, and then it wasn't Mills coming at me. It was James. He stopped short and wavered there, his eyes wide. "Liv? What's going on? Where am I?"

  "James?"

  I reached for him, but he vanished. The little girl's voice whispered at my ear, "Gabriel was right. You need to go."

  "But Gabriel's here," I said.

  As if on cue, I heard his voice, snapping with impatience.

  "Olivia? I do not have time for this."

  I took one step his way and then stopped.

  That's not Gabriel.

  It sounded like his impatience, his diction. But if Gabriel thought I was in danger, would he really storm off? I might lose my temper and do such a thing. Gabriel was ice, exact and calculated. He'd freeze me out, but he would never walk away if he thought I was in trouble.

  That's why I hadn't seen his footprints. Because he hadn't really gone into the house. It was like that alley near the prison when we tried to follow the Huntsman. I'd turned my back and then stumbled into a vision that I mistook for reality.

  I jogged back the way I'd come and ended up in an unfamiliar room. I retreated, and tried the door to the left of it, then the one on the right. Neither returned me to anyplace vaguely familiar.

  Okay, I'm hallucinating. No big deal.

  I sputtered a laugh at that. I suppose it was a sign of progress that the thought I was going crazy didn't even cross my mind.

  The question was: Which was the hallucination? The house now, as I tried to get out, or earlier, as I was coming in? Either way, there were plenty of exits--both doors and broken windows.

  In the next room, I found the younger Nathaniel Mills, at a desk, telling his foreman his plans for burning out the fae.

  They both looked up as I stepped in.

  "Yes?" Mills snapped. "What do you want?"

  "Nothing. Sorry."

  I backed away . . . and tripped over Letitia, lying in her soaked party dress, tributaries of bloody water creeping across the floor. When I retreated, she lifted her head. Her face was crushed--nose smashed flat, blood streaming from her mouth, one eye bulging, the other a dark pit.

  "You didn't save me," she rasped through broken teeth.

  "I couldn't."

  "You can't save anyone. You ruin everything you touch. Mallt-y-Nos?" She spat blood and broken teeth. "They should have left you as you were. Crippled and useless."

  Her cold hand wrapped around my ankle. I broke free and raced through the next doorway. It was a library.

  "Liv?"

  James stood at a shelf, fingering the moldering books. When he saw me, his face lit up. He started my way and then faltered, his smile evaporating in a look of despair.

  "I--I don't know what happened, Liv," he said. "All I wanted was to get you back. He said he'd help and then . . . it went wrong, and I don't understand how. I know I hurt you, frightened you, and I don't understand that, either. It seemed so simple. You were in danger, and I had to save you, and nothing else mattered."

  "It's okay," I said.

  Another smile, this one wry and sad. "No, it's not. I can see that. It's clear now. Everything's clear." He looked at me. "I never meant to hurt you."

  "I'm fine. I'm--" I inhaled deeply. I'm lost in a house of visions, and I'm talking to one of you, which is not fine at all.

  He looked over his shoulder. "I need to go. I just . . . I saw you and I wanted to say I'm sorry. I'm so, so sorry."

  "It's all right."

  "It isn't." That wry smile again. "But do you forgive me anyway?"

  "Of course. And I'm sorry that I--"

  He put his hands behind my head and I felt them, just the barest whisper brushing aside my hair, and then his lips against mine. My eyes closed, and when they opened, I was alone in the room.

  "James?"

  I felt stupid calling for him, but he'd given me what I wanted--an explanation--and I couldn't help wishing that we really could say our apologies and part with a kiss, hanging on to those memories of something that had been good, once upon a time.

  But I knew James was in Chicago, at work. So what did seeing him here mean? That these weren't visions at all, but figments of my imagination? Overactive daydreams--things I imagined and things I wished for?

  I needed to get out of here.

  I stepped through the next doorway into an absolutely empty room. I breathed a sigh of relief and strode forward--

  The wallpaper rippled. I pushed myself to continue, but I couldn't look away from that bubbling wallpaper. Then a line of blue fire ripped through it, curling and smoldering and blackening it in its wake. The fire flashed out, leaving burned words.

  There is no freedom from the prison of the mind.

  I'd seen the same message at the abandoned psych hospital, when Tristan set me up to "rescue" Macy Shaw. And I understood it no better now than I had then.

  I turned away quickly, only to see another message burned on the opposite wall.

  We are imprisoned by the truth we dare not see.

  We are imprisoned by the questions we dare not ask.

  "I'm asking!" I shouted. "I'm asking and asking and asking, and all I get are riddles and useless visions. What else do you want me to do?"

  The answer came in a flash of blue fire that spelled out one word in foot-high block letters clear across one wall: Understand. Then, in a blink, it all vanished, and I was left staring at moldy and tattered wallpaper.

  I ran through the next doorway, then stumbled over something. I looked down to see an arm on the floor.

  Not real, not real, not real. None of it is real.

  I tore across the room . . . to find myself facing three blank walls. There was no other way out. I turned, keeping my eyes away from the body on the floor.

  Not real, not real.

  But I'd caught a flash of the arm. An arm wearing a watch.

  I know that watch.

  No, I don't. It cannot possibly be the watch I think it is, because that watch is on the wrist of--

  I looked down.

  There it was: that watch.

  "It was my dad's," I'd told James when I'd given it to him.

  "I know."

  "I don't expect you to wear it. It's just a keepsake. Something to say thanks. For getting me through . . ." My voice caught, the grief surging fresh.

  His arms wrapped around me, and when I pulled back, the watch was on his wrist. And from then on, it was always on his wrist.

  Now I was seeing my father's watch . . . on a bare arm, lying on the floor of an abandoned house, blood congealed in a pool--

  No, not him.

  You know it is. You know that arm. Look.

  No, I won't. I--

  I looked.


  It was James. Lying on his stomach, head turned to one side, his back bloodied, his face and shoulders battered, his lips split, his eye black. His eye . . . open. Staring. Empty. Dead.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  I fell to my knees and doubled over, screaming until my throat was raw, every muscle shaking as I crouched there.

  I heard Gabriel shout my name and footsteps pounding toward me. I staggered up and stumbled into the library as he came through the door, breathing hard.

  "I was looking for you," he said. "I heard you scream. What--?"

  "Nothing," I said, grabbing his sleeve and tugging him across the room. "A vision. I just had a vision."

  "Of what?"

  I shook my head and kept pulling him, desperate to get him out of there, to get us out of there.

  He stopped me. "What did you see, Olivia?"

  "Lots of things. Mills. Letitia. Writing on the wall. Let's just go--"

  "What made you scream?"

  "I--" I took a deep breath. "I imagined I saw James . . . James's body."

  "What?"

  I pulled out of his grasp. "It was a vision. Or a hallucination. Like Letitia. I just want to get out of here. Now. Please."

  I ran for the opposite doorway. When I reached it, I realized he wasn't with me and turned to see him walking in the opposite direction.

  "No!" I said. "Don't you take another step, Gabriel Walsh."

  He turned, slowly, and the look on his face . . . I wanted to see doubt and confusion and disbelief and skepticism. Even a look that said he thought I'd lost my mind. But that's not what I saw.

  "Stay where you are," he said. "I'm going to--"

  "He's not there," I said, my voice barely above a whisper. I wrapped my arms tight around my chest, but my legs were still shaking. "It's not really him."

  Gabriel didn't say a word, just turned and went through the doorway. I followed him.

  James still lay on the floor. I'd seen the bruises on his shoulders and face. Now I noticed them around his neck. He'd been strangled. His back wasn't covered in blood as I'd thought. It was a single swath up the middle, a perfectly excised strip of skin. I'd seen the photos of my parents' alleged crime scenes and the bodies had looked exactly like this.

  Strangled. Half dressed. Skin stripped from his back.

  That proved it wasn't real.

  I looked up to find Gabriel watching me.

  "You don't see him, do you?" I said.

  Silence.

  "Tell me you don't see him." I looked up at him, his face swimming behind my tears. "Please tell me you don't see James."