by Barb Hendee
But she had to admit that when he finished, she looked like a young lady fit for the finest houses of Georgian society.
“Just bring your velvet purse tonight,” he said. “I’ll have rest of our things sent.”
She blinked, alarmed now. “Sent where?”
His nearly colorless eyes glinted, as if amused by her confusion. “To the estate of Camille du Blois, of course. Did I not tell you? I met with her this week. We’ve been invited to stay, and I decided I rather liked the idea of being her special guest. It lends us credence. She’s arranged for our first séance two nights from now. If you do exactly as I say, more should follow. We’ll be the toast of the town.”
She stood up. “So soon? You said I wasn’t ready. We haven’t even practiced. How are you going to play this?”
He leaned closer. “Just do as I’ve instructed. Speak only the phrases I’ve taught you when we’re socializing. Watch your diction and your posture, and then when the show starts, just stay with me, inside my head, and speak the words I pass you.” He smiled. “We’ll dazzle them.”
Two nights later, Ivory found herself sitting down at a large round table in the parlor of Camille du Blois.
Camille was an aging widow who seemed overly taken with Christian, but there were also three men present who appeared to be struggling not to stare at Ivory. She was well aware that she looked especially alluring tonight—in part thanks to Christian—and although she was beginning to wonder if Christian had ever run a confidence game in his life, he certainly had good instincts.
Distraction was eighty percent of success.
He seemed to already understand that, and the sheer physical presence of the two of them was proving quite a distraction. Before leaving the hotel to come here a few nights ago, he’d even pierced his ear and put in a gold ring.
“Touch of the gypsy,” he’d said, smiling.
Now he was in command of the entire room—and the room was not short on powerful men.
“Colonel Gerard,” Christian said, “before we begin, can you tell me who it is you wish me to call from the other side? I only need a name.”
In addition to Christian, Ivory, and Camille, there were three Southern officers sitting at the table, a lieutenant, a captain, and a colonel. Colonel Gerard sat between the other two, but his sharp gaze was moving between Christian and the candelabra on the table with some reticence in his eyes, as if he now regretted having requested this audience.
“It’s all right, Colonel,” Camille said gently. “Whatever you say here is in complete confidence.”
Christian had gone to great lengths to make sure it was clear he’d been told absolutely nothing regarding the reason for tonight’s séance.
“He’s been dead a long time,” Colonel Gerard began, shifting in his chair uncomfortably. “He served with me in my early career. His name was Anthony Leroy.”
Christian nodded, but his face was unreadable. He looked detached, untouchable, and yet compassionate at the same time. Ivory could not help admiring his finesse. He’d been born to do this.
“Everyone please join hands,” he said, and for a second, she wondered if the colonel would agree to join hands with two other men, but Christian added, “We must form a circle,” and the officers obeyed him—quite a testament to his authority here.
Stay with me, Christian flashed. Stay inside my head and see what I see. Then speak only the words I give you.
Christian closed his eyes. “Anthony Leroy, hear me. Come to me from the other side. Speak to me through Ivory.”
Locked inside Christian’s mind, Ivory could see a clear image of Anthony Leroy inside the colonel’s thoughts.
Christian called for Leroy again, dragging out the anticipation, and then he opened his eyes. “He is with us in the room, standing beside the table.”
Colonel Gerard started in surprise and looked to the blank space where Christian was gazing.
Christian smiled. “He’s tall and lanky with brown hair in need of a cut.” He squinted slightly. “He’s missing the little finger of his left hand.”
The colonel gasped, and both men with him turned slightly pale.
“He can see you, but he can hear only me,” Christian said. “What would you like me to ask him?”
The colonel seemed at a loss now, as if he never truly believed matters would get this far. “Ask him…ask him if he cheated that night. He’ll know what I mean.”
“Did you cheat, Anthony?” Christian asked.
Instantly, Ivory felt him feeding her answers. She stared straight ahead as if in a trance. “I did, my friend. I was pulling cards from inside my sleeve, but you were not to blame. My being cashiered had nothing to do with what happened later.”
She could even hear the pitch of Leroy’s voice in Gerard’s mind, and she managed to copy it effectively.
The colonel was trembling slightly now, his face white, and through Christian, Ivory could see the whole story. As a young man, Colonel Gerard had enjoyed the closest friendship of his life, and he’d been at ease with Anthony Leroy in a way he’d never known before. One night, they’d had far too much drink, and they were playing cards for money, along with three other young officers, and Leroy won so many hands that Gerard began to suspect him of cheating. On any other night, Gerard might have let it go, but he’d had a bad day, and he was drunk, and he called his friend out in front of witnesses. Cheating at cards was a serious offense in the military, and because of Gerard’s outburst and accusation, a formal inquest was held. Leroy was found guilty. He was discharged in disgrace and sent home to Louisiana. Two months later, he shot himself in the head.
For almost thirty years, Gerard had suffered over this, wondering if he’d been so drunk that he’d accused his friend unfairly…wishing more than anything else that he could just take the whole night back.
Unfortunately, unlike with the Bertram sisters, no one in this room knew what had really happened that night. The only one who’d been there was the colonel, and he didn’t know himself.
So Christian was working off the cuff, and he’d already decided to tell Gerard that Leroy had been cheating—thus easing him of one possible piece of guilt. But then Ivory felt his mind moving forward, and he began feeding her a story.
She kept her eyes straight ahead, still playing the conduit, and she copied the inflection of Leroy’s voice. “But you don’t know everything. I wasn’t disappointed to be sent home. I was happy. I wanted to go home, to help my father with the plantation, to marry my girl…to live my life at home. But when I got back and Susanna found out I wasn’t going to be a career officer, she broke with me. She never loved me, only the idea of what I’d be. But I loved her…and one night, I drank a bottle of brandy and put a gun to my head like a fool.” Ivory paused. “It wasn’t you, Gerard. You did me a favor getting me thrown out. It never had anything to do with you.”
The colonel was staring at Ivory, and the muscles in his jaw were clenched. “Tell him I miss him.”
“He misses you,” Christian said to the empty space by the table.
“I miss you, too,” Ivory answered Gerard directly. “Nobody ever listened to my stories the way you did.”
“He’s gone now,” Christian said, turning his head from the empty spot. His voice was full of compassion. “Did you learn what you needed from him?”
The colonel nodded once, shortly. He seemed almost beyond speech, but he managed to say, “I’ll have the money sent over tonight.”
An hour later, Ivory sat in front of the mirror in her guest room, thinking over everything that had just happened downstairs.
Christian was right. Together, they were capable of quite a show.
With him asking the “ghost” questions and her giving the answers, it was impossible to doubt them, especially when he’d made a point of not even learning the dead person’s name before sitting down at the table.
They’d been dazzling.
Astonishing.
So why wasn’t she happy? S
he felt trapped and sick to her stomach.
The door opened, and Christian walked in, smiling. For once, the smile reached all the way up to his eerie clear eyes. “You were perfect,” he said, “better than I could have imagined. Camille will have her friends on a waiting list inside of a week, and from now on, they’ll be paying in advance.”
But then he saw her face in the mirror, and he stopped halfway across the room, just watching her reflection.
The sickening fear began welling inside her, and she didn’t think she could stand it tonight.
He finished crossing the room and reached over to pull a few pins from her hair. “I’ll keep you safe,” he said quietly, “and you’ll do exactly as I say, won’t you?”
Sometimes, if she agreed with him quickly, the worst of the fear faded a little.
“Yes, I’ll do exactly as you say.”
chapter twelve
Wade jerked away from Ivory’s mind and gripped the steering wheel, gasping for air. The sickening fear he’d felt inside her was too much, and he hadn’t been able to stay in the memory.
But she was choking beside him, her green eyes wild, and he fought to get control of himself so he could try to help her.
Coming out of this the first time was never easy.
“You’re here,” he managed to say. “You’re with me in the car.”
With both hands on the dashboard, she cried out, “Did you see that? All of it?”
For once, her defenses were completely down, and he couldn’t help a stab of guilt for having put her through such memories, for making her relive them.
But the reality of what he’d just witnessed began to take hold.
“Oh, Ivory,” he said. “Is that how you’ve spent the last two hundred years?” He shook his head in disbelief. “You’re coming home with me. You have to get away from him.”
She choked again, just one more time, and then whispered, “I can’t.”
With little else to do, Julian was stuck in his hotel room, just waiting for a report from Mary, waiting for something, anything, to happen.
The problem was that he had no idea what that might be, and he most feared that Eleisha and Philip would just take Christian, put him in the backseat of a rental car, and drive him home to Portland…which would leave Julian with the only option of attacking Christian at or around the church.
To date, he’d managed to create the illusion for Eleisha that the church was a safe zone. This belief had kept her going, kept her searching, even after he’d sliced the heads off a few vampires she’d so painstakingly located.
But he’d never attacked anyone near the church.
The last thing he wanted was for her to lose heart and give up. Losing someone she’d brought safely all the way home might be a final straw. He paced across the floor, wondering what he could do from here to make them leave the manor but not leave immediately for home.
The air beside the couch shimmered and Mary materialized.
The sight filled him with hope. “Has something happened?”
Her mouth was in a tight line, as if she was considering something. “Not the best,” she said finally, “but something. Wade and Ivory left the mansion and drove to the Seattle Center by themselves. I don’t know why. But they’re both there now. Do you want to do anything?”
He put his fist to his mouth. That still left Eleisha and Philip guarding Christian, and everything Mary had reported so far left him with the impression that Ivory was one of the newer breed—and not much of a threat.
“Does Ivory seem important to Christian?” he asked.
Mary frowned. “They don’t talk to each other, but I think he needs her for the séances.”
“Did Wade have his cell phone?”
“I don’t know, but I’ve never known him to leave it behind, especially not when they’re away from Portland like this.”
That was good enough. If he could pin Wade and Ivory down someplace, make them afraid to leave the center on their own, and frighten them enough, he might be able to get Wade to call for help. One way or another, that would leave Christian vulnerable.
He grabbed his sword. “Meet me there.”
“They parked in a lot on First Avenue. I’d start around that area,” she said.
Without answering, he headed for the door.
Christian finished climbing the stairs again, and he walked quickly toward Eleisha and Philip’s room.
His inspection of the garage had resulted in finding a little white BMW missing. Although he was more than surprised by Ivory’s actions, he couldn’t have cared less where she’d gone.
In his vision of the future, he’d already replaced her with Eleisha, who would require so much less effort and energy to control. Indeed, although he chastised himself for not having paid enough attention to the control of Ivory these past few nights, this may not have worked out too badly. If he could convince Eleisha and Philip to join him in a search for Wade and Ivory, there might be opportunities to get Eleisha off by herself in the night, and this time, she would not be reading his memories or using any of her abilities.
He was going to use his.
While knocking on the guest-room door, he began going over the best way to sound convincingly accusatory… to sound like Wade had somehow taken advantage of his trust and “stolen” Ivory.
But when Eleisha answered and peered out at him, all such thoughts fled. She was wearing jeans and a red T-shirt. The jeweled clip in her hair was gone, and her hair was a mess, as if she’d been lying down or rolling on the pillows. What was left of her lip gloss was smeared on the right side of her face.
Inside, Philip was sitting on the bed.
Christian didn’t like this.
He didn’t like it all.
Although she’d just started to feel much better, as she peered out the half-open door, something in Christian’s expression brought Eleisha crashing down again toward the idea that she was doing something wrong.
First Philip, and now him.
He was staring her mouth, and she reached up to touch it, realizing the remnants of her lip gloss had smeared. She wiped it away.
“What do you want?” Philip asked Christian, standing up.
That sounded rude, but Eleisha decided not to interfere or correct him.
Something in Christian’s face shifted, and suddenly he looked angry. “Your friend has taken Ivory. They’re both gone.”
“What?” All traces of veiled hostility vanished from Philip’s voice as he crossed the room in a few strides. “Wade’s gone?”
“He wouldn’t do that,” Eleisha said. “He’d never leave without telling us.”
“Well, they’re not in the house, and a missing little BMW in the garage tells me something different,” Christian said dryly.
Eleisha backed away and let him inside. What was going on? “Give me a minute.”
Grabbing her cell phone from her bag, she hit the button to call Wade. His phone rang six times, and then she was sent to voice mail. It was a polite message from Wade himself, telling her to leave a message.
“Call me,” she said. “Right now.”
She lowered her phone and looked at Christian. “Wade would never ‘take’ anyone,” she said. “Was Ivory hungry? Would she have asked him to take her hunting?”
“Ivory is perfectly capable of hunting by herself,” he said.
“Not with Julian out there,” she answered.
Philip was growing agitated. “We have to find him.”
She agreed but wasn’t sure where to start. He’d taken a car? What was he thinking?
“Maybe we should call Rose and have her send Seamus,” she suggested. “He could track Ivory for us.”
She thought Philip would jump at the idea, but his face was thoughtful as he strapped on his machete. “Not just yet. When we all decide to leave here…whatever we decide to do at that point, we’re going to need Seamus at full strength. If Wade took Ivory hunting, I think I know where they went.”
> She blinked. “You do?”
“Back when we lived here, he always said the Seattle Center would be a good place to hunt. I never thought so, but he did.”
Her mouth fell open slightly. “You talked about that?”
Philip nodded. “He liked to go there. I think that’s where he’d take her…if they’re hunting. I say we try, and if I’m wrong, we’ll have to risk weakening Seamus.”
Eleisha had no memory of Wade going to the Seattle Center—as she had reasons for disliking the place—but Wade and Philip had sometimes gone out by themselves back then. It was certainly possible that Philip knew things she did not.
Christian had listened to this exchange without speaking, but he’d watched Philip strap on his blade and button his coat.
“I’m coming,” he said, and his tone brooked no refusal. “I’ll drive.” He pointed to Philip’s waist. “Just let me get my own.”
Somehow, Eleisha wasn’t surprised that he had his own sword.
As he sat in the car, with Ivory beside him, Wade’s mind had gone into overdrive, turning over everything he’d seen in Ivory’s memories.
“What’s his gift? Fear?” he asked.
She shook her head. “No. I didn’t figure it out for years. He plants emotional suggestions into people’s thoughts, anything he wants them to feel.”
“So he’s made you terrified to leave him?” He turned to fully face her. “But if that’s the case, if you do leave, get far enough away from him, won’t the fear eventually go away?”
“I don’t know,” she whispered. “It hasn’t been nearly as strong since you arrived. He’s been…distracted and hardly even noticed me. It’s been a relief. A few nights ago, I never would have slipped away like this without telling him.”
“Well then, that just proves my—”
His cell phone rang, and he swore under his breath before pulling it from his jacket pocket to see who was calling.
Eleisha.
“Don’t answer it,” Ivory said, “at least not yet. Christian just wants to know where I am.”
He looked over at her and saw the pleading expression on her face.