by E. J. Dawson
“A lord in his castle is hardly in a position to question my manners,” she retorted, “especially when his conduct has a questionable past.”
Alasdair surprised her by laughing, not remotely offended, until Letitia echoed him.
Alasdair then told stories of Ireland and of legal cases, always seeking to entertain and never letting the conversation fall short. She answered in kind—how she’d grown up on the west coast of England, not within sight of Ireland but explained that she always wanted to go there.
They talked of their families. Letitia had none, and the extensive Driscoll family lived all across the United States, though its roots were still firmly dug into Ireland.
He asked her about what she did during the war, and she regaled him with schoolyard antics before he told some of his own.
Letitia’s cheeks hurt from the laughter he coaxed from her, and he was never far from a devilish grin that made his eyes glimmer with his misdeeds. Letitia felt the perpetual tension seep from her shoulders. Everything was pleasant, as though she were on a cloud.
“Coffee in the drawing room, sir?” Horner was there, the meal gone, and Letitia was full and far happier than she had been in a long time. She had stopped drinking the wine, feeling a little light-headed but hadn’t taken leave of her senses.
“Yes,” he answered. “Though given Ms. Hawking’s disdain for coffee, I suspect she would prefer tea. Is that right, Letitia?”
“Tea would be nice,” Letitia said, flushing at the casual use of her name as he escorted her to the room they’d spent the sleepless night in. The grand piano was open with sheets already laid out.
“Do you play?” he asked as she eyed it.
“No, the best I manage is choir from when I was a schoolteacher, and they were all so dreary.”
“Perhaps something by an American composer.” Alasdair smiled and sat at the piano. He began to play, and with far more expertise than Letitia had imagined of the broad hands. A bright and sudden tune, it matched their conversation and spirits. It was pleasant on the ear, and Letitia lost herself in the melody. Alasdair stroked the keys, softening the tune until it became a trickle of intrigue and a pleasant apprehension.
“What seductive nonsense,” she said when he finished.
“It’s Gershwin,” Alasdair said. “I learned to play when I became frustrated with Chopin, and I find some of these new jazz players relaxing, but with poignant points.”
“I had no idea you were so talented,” she said, surprised at his ability.
“I’m not just a lawyer,” he said, playing a riff at random but not looking at her. “I have other passions, you know.”
She did want to know.
Letitia had never been surer of anything in her entire life.
“What else can you play?” she asked, coming around the piano to run her fingers over the keys.
It was the first time she’d deliberately come closer, and from his sudden stillness, he’d noticed, careful in his movements as he turned to her yet remaining on the bench. She sat beside him, letting her fingers stroke the keys, indenting them to play the mournful and jarring tune at random, every note a chance to create something more.
“I’d play Chopin if I thought it would please you,” he murmured, and she gazed at him, too close and somewhat intoxicated, but still her whole self, eyes wide and waiting.
Her lip curled up at one corner.
He captured her hand on the keys, the other cupping her cheek as he leaned down to kiss her.
Chapter 18
Letitia’s face was aflame, heat pouring from him into her, searing through his lips and on to her own.
The kiss burned with an intensity that rippled down her body, and she couldn’t—and wouldn’t—have stopped it for anything. The sensation of him gusted over her, hotter than she could imagine, the depths of the desert chasing away the echoing dark within her soul. He became the air she needed, the link to the life she had let fade. It was her own; she’d become lost in her past, and he was her future.
She wanted nothing more than for him to keep kissing her.
There was a bang in the hall, closely followed by a shriek.
“Alasdair!”
He broke away, getting to his feet, but a tentative squeeze of her hand and a promise in his eyes assured her this was far from over. Letitia was so lost in his gaze that she jumped as the drawing room door was thrust open.
Abby stood there, pale but for two pink spots in her round cheeks. She darted her gaze between them.
“Oh, Letitia,” she said, “thank goodness you are here.”
“What is it, Abby?” Alasdair was striding across the room.
“It’s Nola,” Abby panted, face pale. “She was fine when we left here and had dinner with Patrick and Suzette, but when we got to the theater, she started to get nervous, twitching and starting at every little sound. I thought it might be the crowd of people, but she said it was something else.”
“What else?” Letitia said, coming over, and Abby shook her head.
“Alasdair, I don’t know what happened.” Her hands covered her face. “Nola’s gone!”
“What do you mean, gone?” Alasdair asked.
“We were at the theater.” Abby gulped between sobs. “Everything was fine during the first act, but at intermission, I went to get lemonade, and when I got back, she’d disappeared. I don’t know where she went. Someone saw her walk to the restroom, but I don’t know how she left the theater. Nobody saw her leave.”
“Did you call the police?”
“Yes,” Abby said. “The theater manager did, but I came straight out to get you, because I knew—” Abby broke off, staring at Letitia.
“He came to take her…” Letitia whispered, a terrible apprehension overwhelming her. “She escaped from him, so he took her to finish what he started.”
Letitia broke off as Abby grabbed her arm, pinching it to the bone.
“Do you know where she is?” she said, voice whisper-thin. Nails dug into her skin, but Letitia didn’t need Abby’s reaction to become riddled with dread.
“You’re hurting me,” Letitia said. Sickness was filling her, a revulsion itching to make her ill on the carpet as fear cascaded over her. Fear—and realization.
Simply because she’d removed the spirit didn’t mean another entity wasn’t out there.
One she hadn’t predicted.
“Help me find my daughter,” Abby demanded, shaking Letitia’s arm as she grimaced. “If you think he’s got her, you have to find her now, you have to!”
“Let her go, Abby. Now.” Alasdair snapped, taking his sister’s arm and drawing Letitia back. He was careful to hold Letitia to his chest and to usher her to the sitting room.
“I made a mistake,” Letitia whispered with horror. “I think I’ve made a terrible mistake.”
“What mistake?” he said, sitting her on a couch.
“I-I think I’m going to be ill.”
“You’ll do nothing of the sort,” he said, brusqueness in his tone as he rose and retrieved a drink from the sideboard. He returned to thrust a tumbler into her hand, and she didn’t touch it, so he brought it to her lips, sure to see her swallow the contents. She coughed against the burning liquid in her throat.
“He’s the one,” Letitia said, feeling her teeth chatter. “I’ve been so stupid. The spirit haunting Finola—I never thought of him as anything other than a spirit. But the specter, whoever he is, he’s not gone. He’s found a way to enact his will. The typewriter wasn’t enough…” Her voice drifted off, her mouth opening and closing in horror as it occurred to her what she would have to do to save Finola.
“I have to find out where she is,” she said. “Scry for her, search for her somehow. Right now, before he—”
“Don’t you dare say that, you can’t let him. You have to do something,�
� Abby screeched, coming to stand in front of Letitia, who shrank against her seat.
“You aren’t helping, Abby,” Alasdair said in a clipped tone, and she stepped away as though he’d struck her.
“You don’t get to back away from this,” Abby said. “This all started because of you.”
“If you can’t be civil, then get out—now!” Alasdair shouted, and Abby whirled about and fled the room, eyes filling with tears. Alasdair looked after her, but after a moment his shoulders sagged, and instead, he turned to Letitia.
She gritted her teeth. “I need to find another way of reaching out to her. I need to find her and where he might be holding her before I can’t anymore.”
He stilled. “What do you mean?”
“I have a horrible fear that whoever has taken her knows the spirit’s wishes,” she said. “That they mean to do to her what they only hinted at in her nightmares.”
“You mean the violation—” Alasdair choked off the word.
Letitia nodded morosely, clutching the now empty glass to her chest. “Maybe I should have searched harder before this happened, taken the chance, and seen for myself who he was, even if it meant opening myself to his evil.”
He came before her to fall to one knee, grasping her upper arms and giving her a light shake.
“No, Letitia,” he said. “Don’t do that to yourself. You have to stay collected. I need you to find her before that happens. Can you do that?”
Seeing the conviction in his green eyes, she nodded.
“Good,” he said. “What do you need?”
Letitia forced herself to take one breath and then another. “I’ll start with something of hers. An object, something that belonged to her.”
Alasdair drew back, the slow movement drawing her attention.
“Like a picture?” he said. “One she drew, that she said would be important?”
“Yes,” Letitia breathed the word, and when he stood and held out his hand for hers, she took it. They climbed the stairs, rushing past Finola’s bedroom to the adjacent room. It was a studio of sorts, lined with books and cupboards with a large table against one wall. In the center stood an easel.
Paper and drawings lay like discarded leaves from a tree, all in charcoal black, of darkness and figures, hands reaching out.
Letitia bent to pick one up without thinking, and a jolt ripped through her hand.
Flung into darkness, she felt someone grip her thigh hard enough to bruise. She couldn’t see them, but their strength pinned her down. She couldn’t struggle against the chains on her wrists, and she felt the cool breeze of her nakedness as another hand grasped her.
“No!” She snapped out of vision and dropped the picture.
“What did you see?” Alasdair was at her side, staring down at the images with disgust.
“Nothing,” Letitia assured. “It wasn’t real.”
She panted, fearing the worst, but as the sensation receded she could see it was only a memory. But the answer lay in the pictures here and Letitia needed to find it.
She left the ones on the floor and went to the picture on the easel, full of blackest shadow.
There was so much on the paper that at first, it was hard to distinguish what Finola had drawn, but beneath the charcoal lines came a sketch in silvery lead. The outline of a door, with columns at either side, gaping white holes becoming windows. But in every window a figure stood looking out, hands to the panes of glass, beseeching, all while the doorway had the ragged edges of a gaping maw.
Hovering over the sketch, Letitia’s finger traced them, and she saw within the anxiety of the picture itself. “She drew an old house…”
“Goddammit,” Alasdair muttered, and Letitia looked over her shoulder at him. “It’s the hotel. She’s drawn the old hotel.”
“The one you took her to when this first started?” Letitia asked, and he nodded, studying the drawing.
“Whatever I did, I didn’t get rid of him,” Letitia said. “He’s still there. And it may be where she is.”
Alasdair spun on his heel to leave.
“Don’t,” she called. “I’m not sure yet where he’s holding her. We can’t go until I know where we should go.”
“What do you suggest, then?” The tone was sharp as glass.
“We have to be certain,” Letitia said, swallowing the fear clogging her throat. “There is no point running out there blind. After all, the spirit saw me, knew me as a threat. It’s insidious and clever, and we must take every and all caution against it. I’ll have to do a scrying to find Finola, to see where he’s taken her.”
“But you said before it’s a risk,” he protested. “What do you think you’ll garner by going into a vision where you can’t see?”
“I’ll be able to at least say whether the old hotel is right,” Letitia said, “or tell you if it’s somewhere else. It hasn’t been that long, and we should check before going in the wrong direction. They might not have reached it yet.” Though fear wanted to make her curl away, rising guilt at the great disservice she’d done Finola for not ensuring the spirit was gone prevailed.
“Can you do this?” Alasdair asked, and she heard the indecision in his voice.
“I will be fine, Alasdair,” she said, saying his name with purposeful confidence. “Arrange for a bowl of water, and a photograph if you have one. But first I need to be alone with the drawings, I need to…try and sense her.”
He nodded and then disappeared down the hall.
Letitia focused on the picture, bringing an unbidden memory that was not hers. Someone else had seen this house, but she couldn’t figure out who it might have been. There was only one way to find out, and she did something she promised Old Mother Borrows she would never do.
Ungrounded and with no safeguards, she touched the paper and opened herself to the vision—and stepped within.
Letitia stood in front of the old hotel.
Peeling paint and dust aside, it rose three stories above her, a tower in the center adding a fourth room with wide windows looking out to sea. Against the white weatherboard, the windows were dark and open like eyes. Columns along its wide front porch may as well have been teeth for the menace emanating from the hotel. A snarling grin to welcome her.
The wind whipped through her hair, pushing it into her eyes, but she still studied the hotel. There were figures in the windows, and the sense of watchfulness within them burned her skin. A sullen resentment thrust out at her, but it was nothing compared to the darkness of the doorway to the hotel.
It was the figure from Finola’s nightmare.
It didn’t seem to want Letitia, but she sensed the phantom’s hatred was goaded by her strength. Gone was the mild observance, and in its place was a growing aggression that crawled over her skin, burning her like a forest fire, ash stinging her eyes as the figure drifted from the doorway ever closer.
As she stepped back, the figures at the windows raised their hands. For a moment she believed they were threatening her, too, before she comprehended the desperation. They didn’t want her to leave, reaching out even as the figure at the door tried to banish her.
“You’re trapped,” she said, staring at the windows and recalling the unsettling figures in her visions. He wasn’t the only one seeking her. “It isn’t only him—you’re stuck in the hotel, too.”
There was a scream, a cutting noise that was so loud it struck her like a physical blow, but it had not come from the doorway. It had come from under her feet, the shocking pain in that voice frightening Letitia. It rippled through her skull and the old hotel swam before her eyes before fading away.
The vision slipped and she found herself on her hands and knees back in Finola’s studio. Her legs trembled as she got to her feet, hands visibly shaking as she raised them to her hair, which was still pinned in place.
Sitting back and avoiding touch
ing any more of the drawings, Letitia remembered another drawing.
On a headland.
A great tower in the middle, a front balcony that looked like teeth, and a dark doorway.
Letitia removed the picture from the easel with the barest flick of fingers to avoid touching it before she replaced it with a blank one. She was no artist, but she drew from memory another building, one that had been drawn on a headland.
“What are you doing?” Alasdair was behind her.
“There is someone in the old hotel,” she said, hearing her own tremulous words.
Alasdair stepped over the scattered drawings to lay a hand on her shoulder.
“I know,” he said. “I just don’t know how to get rid of a spirit.”
“No,” Letitia said, gaze drifting and then returning to the picture. “I think someone is using that hotel now. This image isn’t from Finola. One of the girls who went missing, Mr. Edwards’ daughter Cassy, drew this before she was taken. On the day before.”
“He’s the one that reported you to the police.” Alasdair said it tentatively, but Letitia shook her head.
“It doesn’t matter, Alasdair,” she said. “I think that girl is in the old hotel. I think that whatever this creature is, just as it attached itself to Finola, what if it…what if it was possessing someone? Say, a man?”
Alasdair scowled at the drawing.
“No one goes there but me,” he said. “I’ve had a few tradespeople through it to quote the work that needs doing, but I haven’t been back for as much as two months now.”
“None of them are doing any work?”
“No,” he said, “I canceled it all and locked up the place after what happened with Finola. I didn’t know what it was then, and at the time a few of the workers were making comments about odd things happening around the hotel.”
“Such as?” Letitia pressed.
He shrugged. “Things going missing, hearing whispers, the sound of running. Finola was there with me a few times when I visited, so sometimes they thought it was her. To be honest, they didn’t always know I brought her with me. It’s a very large hotel.”