He needed to do that. He needed to get himself back together as soon as he could…because he had a feeling he was going to need all his strength in the very near future.
Rosemary turned on every light in the house. Ostensibly, this was so she wouldn’t miss anything out of place, would make sure to erase every possible hint of Caleb’s presence there, but she knew it was really so she wouldn’t jump at every shadow, every faint noise.
Because it was creepy to be there. Maybe the prickly, crawling sensation along the back of her neck arose from the simple fact that both the people who’d once lived in this house and called it their home were now dead, or maybe it was the uncomfortable realization that Caleb Lockwood didn’t need a key to come and go here, could just pop up right in front of her as she rounded a corner.
Part of her had been worried that Detective Phillips might have come by with a forensics team to check out the place despite agreeing to meet her at the property the next day, but the house looked undisturbed. Rosemary didn’t know enough about police procedure to know whether that was normal or not; maybe the case didn’t have super-high priority because Will had more or less walked out of the hospital under his own power, and nothing had been stolen from the house. It was still assault and battery, but could they really call it a robbery when she claimed the intruder hadn’t taken anything?
She supposed the detective would illuminate some of those finer points when they met. For the moment, though, she had work to do.
As she’d told Michael, the piece of sheetrock that had covered the entry to the crawlspace was still propped up against the wall in the hallway. She looked all around, double-checking to make sure there really weren’t any signs of the supernatural flames Caleb had summoned to attack her and Will, but the walls were smooth and bare, unmarked except for a few minor scuff marks that she guessed had been left behind by the tenants who’d recently vacated the place. It really did seem that the only thing she needed to do was get that sheetrock back in place and then hurry back to Pasadena.
She headed out to the garage, vaguely remembering that it hadn’t been quite as empty as the rest of the house. There’d been a ladder, hadn’t there, leaning against the garage wall next to the built-in storage cabinets?
Apparently, her mind had been playing tricks on her, though, because she didn’t find anything as useful as a ladder, only some cans of paint and several boxes of unused floorboards, clearly left over from the time when Colin and Madeline had updated the house. Rosemary poked though the cupboards, hoping for maybe a folding chair or even a sturdy plastic box, something that would give her the extra boost she needed to reach the hallway ceiling.
Not a damn thing, though.
Scowling, she went back inside the house and inspected all the rooms, just to be sure she hadn’t overlooked something. But the tenants who’d lived here last had done a good job of clearing out all their belongings, and the place was completely empty.
“Well, shit,” Rosemary muttered, and stalked out to the hall, where she stared balefully up at the dark hole in the ceiling. It looked like a mouth to her, a gaping, hungry maw that would be all too happy to swallow her whole.
Which she knew was silly. It was just an opening to allow access to the home’s ducting, no more, no less. And while she thought she could be excused for allowing her imagination to run away with her, she knew she was alone here. There hadn’t been even the faintest hint of anyone else around, especially not the part-demon villain that Caleb had turned out to be.
She reached in her purse and got out her phone to check the time. A little after ten. Not even the local Walmart was probably open at that hour, and it wasn’t exactly a good time to knock on a neighbor’s door and ask if she could borrow a stepladder. If she’d been thinking a little more clearly, she would have gone out to Will’s garage and poked around there to see if she could find a ladder to take with her, but she’d had that false memory of spying one here and hadn’t thought such measures were necessary.
Well, the joke was on her.
If worse came to worst, she’d just drive back to Pasadena and get a ladder from Will’s house — or from Michael’s; she knew there was one tucked away in the far corner of the garage at the house where she’d been staying. However, she really hated the idea of wasting that much time and being away from Will for that long, although she knew he was perfectly safe with her mother watching over him.
Once again, her gaze settled on the rectangle of sheetrock leaning innocently up against the wall. Too bad she couldn’t just snap her fingers and have it magically sail through the air and settle back in place.
Except….
The idea that flashed through her head was so ludicrous, she actually chuckled at herself for entertaining the notion at all. But for some reason, it refused to go away.
What if she could?
All right, maybe not snap her fingers, but only a few hours earlier in this very hallway, she’d somehow managed to summon a shield that had protected her and Will from the onslaught of Caleb’s demonic magic. If she was able to do that, who knew what else she was capable of?
Besides, no one was here to see her fail. If this didn’t work — and she was pretty sure it wouldn’t — she could laugh at herself, get in the car, and see if there was a twenty-four-hour Home Depot somewhere nearby, or, failing that, go back to Michael’s house and fetch the ladder there.
All right, then.
Rosemary planted her hands on her hips and stared at the piece of sheetrock, willing it to rise into the air and settle itself back in place. Of course, it just sat there.
“You’re going to feel really stupid about this tomorrow,” she muttered to herself, and then squinted and tried again.
Still nothing.
She knew she should probably just give up and get out of there before she wasted any more time. Then again, maybe she was taking the wrong approach.
Feeling more ridiculous than ever, she raised a hand, pointing it toward the sheetrock. “Use the Force, Luke,” she murmured, and couldn’t quite hold back a nervous chuckle.
Only…were her eyes deceiving her, or had the recalcitrant piece of plasterboard just moved ever so slightly?
She supposed it could have been a trick of the light, although the hallway was brightly illuminated by the overhead fixture and there wasn’t much chance of her seeing something that wasn’t there. The piece of sheetrock sure wasn’t moving now, but maybe that was because she’d dropped her hand and wasn’t focusing any longer.
Once again, she raised her hand. This time, though, she wasn’t reminded so much of Luke Skywalker but a scene from a silly movie called Mallrats where one of the characters had basically imitated Luke in order to retrieve his own prop lightsaber. The joke there had been that the character reaching for the lightsaber in question was just an ordinary guy, and everyone in the audience had expected his efforts to be futile.
Except they hadn’t been. He’d retrieved the damn lightsaber.
Move, damn you, she thought.
And there it was — much more than the brief shudder she thought she’d seen a few minutes earlier. This time, the piece of sheetrock shifted visibly and then began to slowly rise into the air.
Holy crap.
She couldn’t lose focus now, though. Jaw clenched, Rosemary visualized the sheetrock drifting higher…higher…moving at just the perfect angle where it inserted itself into the opening in the ceiling and then settled in place.
Which was exactly what it did.
For a moment, she was so flabbergasted by what she’d done that she could only stand there and stare up at the opening to the crawlspace, no longer open at all. There was no sign that anyone had touched it, nothing that should make Detective Phillips believe it had been disturbed in any way.
Eventually, though, she realized she needed to get back to Will’s house. There was no point in standing there and imitating a large-mouthed bass. Yes, this was the crazy cherry on top of a day that had been filled with cr
aziness, but she could sort all that out later.
She walked through the house and shut off all the lights, and finally went out the front door and locked it behind her. Only when she was behind the wheel of Will’s powerful car and back on the 134 Freeway headed east did the reaction really hit her. A shiver worked its way down her spine, and she clung to the steering wheel with tight, frightened fingers.
Because if she could make a piece of drywall float through the air and settle itself in position…what else was she capable of?
Chapter 4
Her mother answered the door in response to Rosemary’s quiet knock, then quickly scanned her face. What she saw, Rosemary didn’t know for sure. She’d done her best to compose herself on the drive home, but she had a feeling she hadn’t been entirely successful. Her thoughts just didn’t want to leave her alone, worrying at the problem of the strange way her powers kept increasing, stewing over what Caleb and his demon cohorts might be doing to the footage. Not knowing was always the worst.
To her relief, however, her mother only asked, “Everything went okay?”
“Just fine,” Rosemary replied. On the drive back to Will’s house, she’d decided not to mention the episode with the plasterboard to her mother. That would only open a whole other can of worms, and she was just too exhausted at that point to get into it. “No one was there. Like Michael said, Caleb got what he wanted and didn’t have any reason to stick around.”
A nod, but her mother’s expression was still troubled. “Do you want to talk about that?”
“About what?” Rosemary said, although she knew exactly what her mother had meant with her question.
“About Caleb.”
“Not really.”
Her mother didn’t respond, except for possibly the faintest lift of one eyebrow. “I made a fresh pot of coffee.”
“Thanks.” Rosemary headed toward the kitchen and set her purse down on the counter there. The space was filled with the warm scent of coffee, and she breathed it in as she went to fetch a mug for herself. Just the aroma was enough to make her feel a little more awake — or maybe she’d done that to herself, nerve endings thrilling from the strange new power she’d somehow awakened.
“I hope you don’t blame yourself.”
It figured that she wouldn’t let it go. Rosemary knew her mother wasn’t the type to nag or harp on topics that her daughters wanted to put behind them, but at the same time, she had a way of making damn sure you acknowledged a problem rather than simply sweeping it under a rug.
“I don’t,” Rosemary said. Well, that was a lie. She kept thinking there must have been some hint, some clue she’d overlooked, something that would have told her what she was dealing with in Caleb Lockwood. But no, she’d been so swept off her feet by his good looks and friendly, down-to-earth charm that she hadn’t bothered to scrutinize him very closely. Also, some psychic she’d turned out to be — not even a ping of warning that Caleb wasn’t all he seemed.
Then again, maybe he’d been using his own powers to make sure she wasn’t able to pick up anything wrong about him.
Since her mother only sent her a very direct look, giving the lie right back to her, Rosemary knew she wasn’t going to wriggle out of a discussion that easily. For a moment, she used pouring herself a cup of coffee as cover for her hesitation, but since Glynis knew her daughter hardly ever doctored her coffee, there was no point in fussing with cream and sugar — if Will even had any cream in the house.
“I was stupid,” she said distinctly. “I shouldn’t have taken Caleb at face value. I let myself get bowled over by him because I’ve been going through a bad patch lately.”
Her mother folded her arms and kept gazing at her steadily. “I think you’re being a little hard on yourself…especially since you seemed to realize early on that you also had an attraction to Will. When we talked the other day, you already appeared to have made up your mind which one of them you wanted to be with, even though you didn’t want to admit it to yourself.”
Well, that was true. Rosemary still didn’t know whether it was an instinct deep within her that had recognized Caleb’s “otherness” at some level she didn’t quite want to acknowledge, or whether it was simply that she found herself far more attracted to Will physically, but when she’d left her mother’s house on that Tuesday afternoon — a meeting that felt as though it had taken place a hundred years ago instead of only five days — she’d been in more mental turmoil than when she’d gotten there. She’d tried to act as though she was looking forward to seeing Caleb again, but she had been strangely ambivalent.
And now she knew why.
“How is Will?” she asked, deliberately changing the subject. No doubt she’d continue to beat herself up about her blindness regarding Caleb Lockwood, but she didn’t see the point in continuing to hash it over with her mother.
“He’s fine,” Glynis replied. “I can tell he’s in some pain, but honestly, he’s doing extremely well, considering what he’s been through. I made him some more peppermint tea, and he drank it and then went to sleep again.”
That sounded reassuring, but Rosemary had to ask. “Not too long ago, I hope.”
Her mother’s mouth quirked a little. “Less than twenty minutes, so you don’t need to worry about that.” She paused before adding, “He seems like a very fine man. I like him.”
“You do?” Not that any relationship she was in needed to be predicated on her mother’s favor, but after screwing up so royally with Caleb, Rosemary figured it couldn’t hurt to know that Will had Glynis’s stamp of approval.
The twitch at the corners of her mother’s lips turned into a full-blown smile. “Yes, I do. I can see why you were feeling so ambivalent about Caleb.”
“And you don’t think it’s weird that he’s an Episcopalian priest?”
“They don’t take a vow of celibacy, do they?”
“Mom!”
Glynis chuckled. “Good to know I can still shock you occasionally. Why would I think it was weird?”
Rosemary swallowed some of the coffee her mother had made. It was better than Rosemary’s batch; obviously, her mother knew her way around a Mr. Coffee a lot better than she did. “Well, we’re not exactly what most people call Christian.”
“Maybe not, but we’ve always believed in a higher power of some sort, even if it isn’t the one most Christians believe in.” Her mother shrugged, and went over and poured some coffee for herself. “Honestly, I think it all goes back to the same place, when you get right down to it. The trappings don’t matter.”
Well, they mattered to a lot of people. Wars had been fought over those “trappings.” However, Rosemary could see what her mother was driving at, and therefore didn’t bother to argue. Besides, she’d been pretty blunt with Will about not being Christian, and he hadn’t said a word about her lack of religion. If it didn’t bother him, she supposed she shouldn’t let it bother her.
“Point taken,” she said. “But I should probably go check on Will.” She glanced at the clock on the microwave: 10:55. It was going to be a very long night.
“You do that, sweetheart. I’ll just finish my coffee and let myself out. Call me in the morning to let me know you’re still both okay.”
“I will.” Rosemary set down her coffee, and went over and gave her mother a quick hug. “Thank you for looking after him. I didn’t know who else to call.”
Glynis returned the hug, squeezing her daughter for a few more seconds before she let go. “Oh, I’m sure Isabel would have come over and helped out if I wasn’t available, but I’m glad I could do this for you. After all,” she added with a small laugh, “this is probably the most excitement I’ve had on a Saturday night for a long time.”
About all Rosemary could do was shake her head at her mother’s self-deprecating comment. “Well, maybe that wouldn’t be a problem if you signed up for one of those online dating services like Izzie and CeeCee and I have been bugging you about.”
Glynis waved a hand. “Oh, I�
�m not that desperate. At this point, I’m set in my ways. I’ve got my house and my garden and the book club, and I don’t need much more than that.”
Rosemary wasn’t so sure, but she knew better than to press the issue. Her mother had been alone for the greater part of seventeen years and had never shown any interest in remarrying or even dating, although Rosemary and her sisters had done their best to offer their own encouragement on the subject. On many occasions, she’d wondered if their mother was still so in love with their father — despite the way he’d walked out on his family — that she couldn’t allow herself to think of being with anyone else.
Then again, maybe she was making the situation much more romantic than it actually was. Far more likely, Glynis had settled herself into a life that suited her and didn’t see any need to complicate it with a man.
Well, Rosemary would be the first to admit that men could be complicated. On the other hand, she wasn’t quite ready to give them up altogether. Speaking of which….
“I really should go and check on Will — ”
“Go,” her mother said, making a shooing gesture with her free hand. “Like I said, I’m going to finish my coffee and leave. I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”
Rosemary shot her a grateful smile and headed out of the kitchen, mug clutched in one hand. There would probably be many more to follow this one; it had been a long time since she’d pulled an all-nighter, and she knew she was going to need the caffeine. The last time she’d had to forego a night’s sleep had probably been when she and her sisters were finishing up with preparations for the bookstore opening, and they’d stayed up all night stocking the shelves and doing the last little bits of prep because the painter they’d hired had flaked on them and they’d ended up having to do it all themselves. In an odd way, it had been fun, but she wouldn’t have Isabel and Celeste here to help her stay awake. No, this time it was just her and Mr. Coffee.
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