by Susan Conley
She removed her fingers, leaving him to stare at the compass in his palm. He felt a strange wetness forming behind his eyes and willed it away.
“You’re one hell of a counselor, Doctor.” He closed his fist and cleared his throat. “You’d make one hell of a lap dog.”
She gave a bright laugh and Adrian swung about, depositing the compass on the floor in front of them.
“Now,” he grinned boyishly, “here comes my best trick yet.”
Janice bent down, wrapping her arms around her knees, her attention glued to the compass.
Adrian raised his hands confidently, feeding off her excitement. Abruptly, the compass vanished, replaced by a small book. Adrian’s fingers froze in place.
“What the hell? … ”
“That’s amazing, Adrian!” Janice exclaimed with a clap of her hands.
He cut her off with a growl.
“I didn’t do that. I can’t manipulate matter.”
She panicked at once, inching closer to him with a gasp and quickly scanning the air around them.
“Who did it then?”
The question needed no answer. They both knew who had done it. Adrian reached out and picked up the book. Absently, he flipped through the pages.
“What is it?” Janice asked, peering over his arm curiously.
“Lisette’s diary.”
She snatched the book from his fingers and Adrian suppressed a desire to snatch it back. What was this new trick sent their way? Janice began flipping pages, scanning the passages.
“The answer is here, Adrian,” she declared. “Why else would Lisette transfer the book to us here?”
“We don’t know it was Lisette.”
“I know,” Janice stated. “Like Muriel said before, when we are slow to act, the ghosts push us along.”
Adrian wrenched the book from Janice’s fingers.
“I tell you there’s nothing here.” He flipped through the pages with annoyance. “It’s a typical diary, filled with romantic, fairytale notions about Prince Charming.” Adrian sent Janice a side-ways squint. “In this case, call Prince Charming the Baron Dumas.”
She yanked the book from his fingers once more.
“We just haven’t seen the clue, that’s all.”
Adrian swiped the book back.
“I tell you there’s nothing here. Just a lot of female gibberish about living happily ever after. Lisette was a typical ditz.” His gaze scanned the last pages of the journal, studying the sporadic passages of writing. “At least we can be grateful that once the ship docked Lisette didn’t have time to write more of that romantic hogwash.”
“What did you say?!”
Once again, the diary was ripped from his fingers and Adrian fought down an urge to box Janice’s ears. She was being a royal pain in the ass with her insistent grappling of the journal. He watched as she eagerly bent over the dog-eared pages. What the hell was she looking for?
“Of course!” she exclaimed, a moment later. She smacked the pages and flashed the book at Adrian. “Right there all the time — beneath our noses.”
Irked, Adrian peered over at the scrawled, faded handwriting.
“What’s there?”
With a hiss, Janice bolted to her feet and spun around.
“It’s so clear, I don’t know why I didn’t think of it before. Lisette never left the ship. Those last entries aren’t hers!”
“Don’t be absurd!”
She bounced back down, slapping the pages of the book in emphasis.
“I’m right, Adrian. I feel it to the depths of my being. Lisette was murdered on the ship.” Her hand swept the air. “The crawlspace isn’t in this house. It’s on the ship. Lisette never made it off the ship.”
Adrian frowned, digesting her words. Could she be right? He inspected the scrawled writing closer. It was similar but he couldn’t swear it was the same. And she had a point. The whole tone of the diary did seem to change at the end.
“I’m right, Adrian, you know I’m right,” she insisted. “You hit it on the head before. Lisette was filled with romantic notions, the diary’s full of it — except at the end. Trust me, Adrian, an eighteen-year-old girl is not going to stop fantasizing in her diary just because a ship has docked. If anything, with a wedding day approaching, she is going to be even more of an airhead … what’s that smell?”
Janice’s fingers brushed her nose. Simultaneously, Adrian’s own nostrils filled with a sickly stench that cut off his breath and sent a series of sharp pains rippling across his forehead. The pain was so acute and unexpected he almost slipped from the steps. Holy Vegas, someone was trying to invade his mind. He dug his heels into the floor, throwing up a mental barricade. Beside him, he heard a stuttered cough and caught sight of Janice now holding her sweater to her nose in an attempt to keep from breathing the noxious odor.
Adrian knew it was useless. The spirit had finally found a weapon to use against them. Damn, there was that probing pain again in his head. Someone was seeking entrance, hammering at him with a muted strumming.
“I’m going to pass out, Adrian,” Janice mumbled through the folds of material.
“Oh, no you don’t.” Adrian cautioned, leaping to his feet. Snatching her wrist, he dragged her up from the steps and toward the sacristy door. As they fled, the stained glass windows over the mounted crucifix began to rattle in their frames and behind them, a strangled groan wheezed.
Passing under the crucifix, Adrian felt a second sharp sizzle across his forehead. The probing was more insistent now, getting harder to keep out. He clutched Janice’s wrist tighter and rushed them both through the sacristy door in two seconds, into the small room and out into a deserted atrium beyond.
The fresh air hit Adrian at once and he began to gulp in streams of it. Janice did the same, collapsing against the wall and bracing herself against it.
“I can’t make it, Adrian,” she murmured between a stuttered gulp. “I think I’m going down first.”
Adrian opened his mouth to deny her words but the probing pain sliced off his breath. Clutching his head, he doubled-over.
“Adrian!” He heard Janice’s call but it became distorted in his head. He willed the probing to stop, pleaded with it. It didn’t. He felt fingers digging into his arm. “For God’s sake, Adrian. Tell me what’s happening to you. Let me help you.”
“You can’t,” he groaned, “it’s a mind meld.” Another wave of pain shot across his temple and Adrian slumped, shoving Janice away from him. “Get away. Stand back.”
She took a hasty step back but went no further.
“I’m not leaving you, Adrian. You can’t make me.”
Her words caused another stabbing pain to rip along his scalp. It was coming for him. Sweet Jesus, why him first? His question was lost in the hiss of static that bounced off the atrium walls and slammed him back hard against the cement piling and away from where Janice stood. The sharp wrench gutted his shoulder blades and collarbone and seared his lungs. Shit, but the spirit was as strong as Hercules. He struggled to gain his footing, ignoring the rousing pain emanating in his right shoulder.
In the next instance, a sparkle of multicolored lights appeared out of thin air before him. Stupidly, he reached out to ward it off and felt an immediate connection. The pain in his head subsided completely as the lights swallowed his fist. Fascinated, Adrian stared at the lights tripping up his arms to his shoulders, across his neck and rippling down his left side to his pants and on to the tips of his toes. He was going down, he could feel it. He was going to leave Janice at the mercy of the baron.
Swinging his head, he sought Janice through the scrim of light. His eyes lit on her frozen figure. She stood in stark terror, staring at the sprinkle of lights encasing him. Immediately he knew she thought he was being possessed by Lisette’s mur
derer. If only he could find his voice, tell her not to worry. If only he could tell her he was in no pain. If only he could beg her forgiveness for what the baron was about to make him do.
A caressing urge bade him close his eyes and he did so, finally giving into the pull of the feathery caress on his brow. Ahead was darkness, a resting place. He felt his knees buckle and knew he was falling. He hit something hard, but couldn’t name what it was. He was only aware of a deep voice calling softly in his head.
“I will do you no harm.” The words were oddly comforting and Adrian felt his pulse rate begin to descend downward into a slow crawl. Willingly, he surrendered his mind to the lullaby in his head. “Dormez. Sleep. I will do you no harm.”
Chapter 23
SATURDAY — 5:15 AM
Janice felt as if whole sections of her body were torn away. A harrowing headache pounded her forehead and the heaviness in her energy felt like a millstone. Emotionally, she was spent, spiraling downward into a deep chasm. This couldn’t be happening, she reasoned. Someone was trying to invade her mind. It was if she stood in the middle of a burning lake of herself, unable to escape. What did the invader want? She tried to think it out, but only found her thoughts murky and muddled. Save. Save someone. But who? Adrian! The word was a whisper of terror running through her mind.
Her gaze fluttered left, to the floor, to the body encased in swirling lights. Beneath the core of sparkles, Adrian’s body was motionless and Janice’s heart plummeted. Adrian was past helping. If the evil cloud hadn’t spun his mind around and killed him, the resounding crack of his head against the atrium floor surely must have.
Janice felt her eyes watering and then a glaze seemed to come down around her brimming eyes. Now someone was probing her very soul, the invasion arousing fear and uncertainty. She felt a sudden nervousness slip back to grip her. Something disturbing was about to happen, but what?
A sharp pain ripped across her forehead and her knees buckled under the assault. Unable to catch herself, she hit the floor with a wrenching crack to her knees and right wrist. A sizzling fire shot up her right forearm. Broken! The word echoed and re-echoed in her mind, but for some reason Janice couldn’t place it, connect it to any other word she knew. What was broken? She should know. Why didn’t she know? Why wouldn’t the probing go away? She’d will it away.
Throwing her head back, Janice tossed her hair across her shoulder in a gesture of defiance. The action brought doubled pain and instant understanding. Her left hand flew to her right, cradling it gently. She had broken her wrist. Sucking in her lower lip, she braced herself against the throbbing pain. Get out! Get help! The words reverberated over and over, taunting her mind. Get out! Get help!
Janice twisted her head, searching for the nearest exit. Get help? But from where? And from whom? She couldn’t see a door and didn’t know where to look. Distressed, she choked back a frustrated cry and tried to concentrate. There had to be a doorway out of this nightmare. Oh, why couldn’t she think straight? Or see the room clearly? Why were the walls shimmering as if they were alive?
Suddenly, it struck her. They were alive. She wasn’t hallucinating. The atrium walls were beginning to crinkle and fold in on themselves. What a wonderful illusion. She knew a man once who did illusions, didn’t she? Who was he? Oh, why couldn’t she remember his name!
Mesmerized, she continued to contemplate the receding walls. They were dimming, growing smaller, leaving behind a current of air that tickled her nose and fanned the ends of her hair. She was moving, but not moving. How wonderful. The atrium walls receded to a tiny pinpoint, finally replaced by an orange glow, then a purple, then a green and then back to the band of bright orange again.
Watching the colorful pinwheel, Janice suddenly felt a burning sensation in her chest, as if her lungs were being snatched from their cavity. She attempted to raise a hand to the area in self-defense but found her brain and arms malfunctioning. She was slipping away — stalked by a sparkle of lights that had appeared inches away from her knees. Dizzy. The colored lights were spinning toward her, making her dizzy. Time slip! She was time slipping. But to where?
The air around her colored to a cobalt blue and Janice felt her mind reel in confusion as jumbled phrases and thoughts tumbled through her head. She was going back in time. Sarah! She was going to see Sarah. Happiness. Joy. No, Anna. She was going to see Anna. Sadness. Despair. No, Aubert. She was going to see Aubert. Elation. Relief.
Janice tried to stop swimming through the haze of feelings and desires, tormented by the conflicting emotions pummeling her senses. Why was her own loneliness clawing at the back of her throat to get out? Silence. She waited. No sound emerged, just a well of tears that spilled over, moistening her eyelashes and staining her cheeks.
And then the pinwheel started again. One hundred years. Two hundred years. She was dying. Janice felt a wretchedness of mind she’d never known before. She was going to die. Like Lisette before her. Like Anna. Like Mama. Death was stalking her, like a black plague devoid of hope. The thought so depressed her, she flung out her hands pleading for mercy. This time her arms responded, galvanized by a suddenly functioning brain.
“Don’t do this to me!”
At her plea, the color wheel ceased and the air around her stabilized. Pungent sea air invaded Janice’s nose and she felt her mind connect to another’s. Her pain subsided at once and its disappearance scared her almost as much as the darkness she was now kneeling in. No, correction, not total darkness.
Janice lifted her head, Lisette’s head, and peeped through the square holes of an iron grate to a blazing blue cobalt sky. In the distance, white cloth flapped in the breeze, blocking out the sunlight. Janice heard a ship’s bell toll off to her left. Now, Janice felt — Lisette felt — the rocking motion of the ship. She had been time slipped three hundred years by Lisette. She could feel her presence. Feel her emotions of fright.
Janice focused her mind closer to Lisette’s and was startled at how easily the merge was accomplished. In a flickering, their minds collided and held. Janice saw what she saw, knew what she knew, felt the strange wetness around her knees.
Janice glanced down. Tidewater was seeping into the crawlspace. She was below deck, a long expanse of bulkhead only inches from the top of her head. The space was small and cramped, barely room for one. Yet there were two heartbeats pounding in her ear. Hers and Lisette’s? No. Janice’s pulse skittered in alarm. Off to her left side, she could hear a muffled boyish moan. Chase? Janice refused to look over, confirm her fears. Instead, she reached up Lisette’s hand and felt the brittle crack of weathered wood. And then she heard the soft, snapping sounds of the white sails in the breeze and looked out the grated iron holes again.
Two human shapes stood peering down the holes at her, at Lisette. The woman was vividly beautiful, dark and voluptuous, dressed in a rich, scanty evening dress. A wealth of jet black hair flowed up and back from a center part. In the glare of the dazzling sunlight, the woman broadcasted a regal certainty and flair.
The man beside her was magnificent, on the tall side of six feet. Janice could see the glimmer of gold buttons along the front of his uniform. Lieutenant Arthur, the first mate. His adjutant posture and bushy mustache bespoke a rakish nature. For the moment, he was relaxed, fingering a loose tendril of hair on the woman’s cheek. What was her name again?
To Janice’s astonishment, to Lisette’s astonishment, the man wrapped his fingers around the dark fabric of the woman’s sleeve and then slipped his fingers beneath the shoulder strap. The material slipped away at once, exposing one full, rounded breast. Gently, the man’s palm caressed and circled the dusky nipple, teasing it to a pebble hardness. The woman remained impassive, ignoring the lightly stroking fingers. She looked past the man’s head to meet Janice’s stare head-on. Janice recognized the dangerous, crazed glitter as the woman murmured harshly.
“You’ll never be a barones
s, Izzy. I’ll see to that. You’ll never know the fire of Aubert’s touch. You’ll never hear the ragged whimpers of sheer need escape his lips.” A soft gasp of her own departed the woman’s lips as a tousled head buried itself against her breast.
Janice looked away instantly, wishing she could flee. She shouldn’t be watching, didn’t want to watch. Lisette called her mind back and Janice found herself staring out the grated holes once more into sneering eyes.
“Aubert should’ve been mine, Izzy. You know that. My blood is bluer than yours. You’ll never feel the sensual heat of his naked skin. Never feel the eager tremors of ecstasy with him.” Abruptly, she gripped the tousled head at her breast and ran her fingers through dark locks. Janice felt herself reaching up.
“Save the boy, Simone. If you must kill me, me tuer. But save the boy.”
Janice’s hand snaked to her left and collided with cold flesh. A muttered groan responded to the touch. Adrian? Janice ripped her mind away. No, not Adrian, Chase. The baron’s younger brother, Chase. Janice peered up again through Lisette’s eyes, out at Simone Villashay, her once best friend.
“Aubert will never marry you, Simone.” Janice heard herself murmuring. “He gave his pledge to the king. Only the king can sever the betrothal.”