Cross My Heart

by Natalie Vivien

  “Xavier,” I croak, but I hadn't intended to speak at all—and I realize then that I'm not alone in my head.

  There's...someone else here.

  It's me, Elizabeth, the other thinks at me—though I already knew, already felt her close, closer than my own shadow. At some point after Xavier crashed out of me, Elizabeth filtered in. How, I don't know. Why, I couldn't guess. But her habitation isn't invasive so much as familiar, comfortable. And gracious. I still have access to all of my limbs, all of my senses—though, apparently, she can borrow them.

  She borrows my hand now—and punches Xavier in the face.

  The blow dissipates his water droplets for a moment, but then a strange, gurgling laughter emanates from his form. “You punch like a spoiled rich girl,” he snarls. And then a wall of water engulfs me.

  I'm drowning. Again. We're drowning.

  What can I do? How can I—

  Kiss her, Elizabeth tells me.

  Suddenly, like magic, Trudy is in the pond, in my arms. She wraps her legs around my waist and her arms around my neck, and our mouths—despite the water between us—crash together.

  And it feels like we're flying.

  I'm kissing Trudy, and Trudy's kissing me, but on a different level, Bess is kissing Victoria. Despite time, despite death, they're reunited, entwined, and the kiss grows so fevered, so intense, that tears course over my cheeks, and my heart swells like a balloon in my chest.

  Oh, my God...

  There's so much love.

  It's dizzying, gravity-defying. It's more powerful than anything I've ever felt before. I'm full, whole, immortal.

  And when our lips disconnect, all that remains of Xavier is a ring upon the surface of the water, a ring that I break up into little waves with my hand.

  “He's gone,” Constance whispers from somewhere nearby.

  “Yes, he's gone,” Victoria agrees, with Trudy's mouth. “As long as we were kept apart, he was able to use us, to drain our energy and hold us captive here.”

  “And now that we're together...” Bess whispers through me.

  “Now that we're together, he's nothing. He's left forever. And we, my love, can leave at last, too.”

  Constance draws a step nearer, her hazel eyes wide, her beringed hand hovering at her mouth. “This is...astonishing.”

  “But first... Oh, it's an impolite request, but it's been so long, you see.” Bess closes my eyes and fills with me a whoosh of gratitude—and then she asks me, by thought alone, to grant her one last wish before she disappears.

  “What?” I whisper, jaw gone slack. “But...” Shocked, I open my dripping eyelashes to gaze at Trudy's face, the face that isn't quite hers anymore. Her mouth moves, in a very Trudy-like fashion, into a teasing sideways smile.

  “Hey,” she says softly, shrugging her shoulders, “who are we to stand in the way of true love?”

  “Yeah. I guess...” I lift my brows and laugh hoarsely. “Well, I'm game if you are.”

  “Totally. This'll make a great chapter in my autobiography.”

  “No one will ever believe you.”

  “Not sure I believe it myself, but what the hell? Shall we?” Trudy offers me her wet arm, and after we bid goodbye to a still-gaping Constance Reed—with a promise to return her candles to her through Marie—we traipse out of the pond and across the back lawn together. Then we slosh into the house, walk upstairs, aiming for my—and Elizabeth's—bedroom.

  “On second thought...” I raise an eyebrow and reach for Trudy's hand, tugging her toward the open bathroom doorway, instead. And inside of my head, I hear Bess laugh musically, amused, granting her approval.

  Then I flick on the chandelier and run the hot water in the clawfoot tub, pouring some rose-scented bath salts beneath the faucet. The steam rises, the sweet perfume fills my nose, and Trudy is in my arms, her skin cool from the night, slick from the pond.

  “You made a promise, tiger,” she says, her voice velvety. “Remember?” She removes my hand from her back and places it, quite purposefully, on her jumpsuit's zipper. “Wanna help me out of this thing?”

  Coursing with adrenaline, I growl my assent, pressing my mouth against her neck as my hand slides beneath the hot pink fabric and finds her peaked nipple. I pinch and pull as my questing lips taste, lick. Then we're kissing—so hard that our teeth clack together, so deeply that I feel all that I am, all that Elizabeth is, mingling with Trudy, with Victoria. It's the oddest sensation, as if I'm kissing two women at once, and yet there's only Trudy before me, only Trudy who grows hot beneath my tongue...

  Still holding her, still kissing her, I drag Trudy's zipper down to her bellybutton, teasing her beneath the fabric with my hands, trailing my now-hot fingers along her sides, the curve of her hips, the edge of her panties. Then I ease the jumpsuit off of her shoulders, baring her warm, pink skin; the outfit slips from her arms, falls to her waist, and I fall to my knees, kissing her stomach, pulling the fabric down, down, along with her panties, until she's naked, blushing, panting...

  In adoration, I kiss her feet, her ankles, her calves. Her hands caress my hair as my hands caress her knees, as I lick the lean length of her thighs—and then, gently, I coax her legs apart. Trudy cries out as my tongue savors her wetness, her sweetness; there is nothing in this moment but her, only her, and this moment is all times, every time, forever. My nails dig into her backside as her hips begin to move in a rhythm, matching the quick, heated pulsing of my tongue.

  “Alex,” she sighs, pulling hard at my hair, moaning softly above me, and then not so softly. “Oh, yes...”

  I balance on my knees and slide two fingers inside of her; she immediately clenches around me, hot, throbbing, as my tongue teases at her clit—

  “Oh!” she breathes, leaning back against the rim of the tub, gripping it with her hands as the waves of pleasure arc through her. I feel them move through her, feel her shock, her pleasure. And when I lift my face to gaze into her eyes, something strange happens: for a moment—and only a moment—it isn't Trudy looking back at me at all. It's Victoria, her long blonde waves loose, her lips swollen and pink, her eyes achingly blue, and when she smiles at me, I wonder who she sees—me, or Bess?

  But an instant later, my Trudy is there again, and I rise, stripping off my wet clothes, turning off the faucet. Together, we climb into the water, chest to chest, Trudy lying on top of me, and the sensation of her body floating just above mine, light and grazing, sets me on fire. Our mouths collide, and I feel Trudy's hand moving between my legs, seeking, touching, teasing me. With a mischievous glint in her eye, she dips her head below the water to bite my nipples.

  I moan, sinking lower, clutching at her hair, her shoulders.

  At last, she lifts her head, laughing. “I suppose this is how mermaids do it. I've always wondered about that. Well, I've wondered more about this...” With a sly smile, her arm snakes again along my length until her fingers find me, effortlessly move inside me.

  I throw back my head, groaning, and Trudy's mouth claims my throat with a line of hot, possessive kisses. Eyes closed, I can almost imagine that we've fallen though time, that we've traveled back to Bess and Victoria's time, that we are Bess and Victoria, seeking any excuse to be alone together, any ploy to steal a private moment, a secret kiss...

  Because, though Bess' father adored her, he would never have understood this. Never. Not this. It simply wasn't done, not with this level of seriousness. Girls played with one another, but they didn't fall in love. It was absurd—or so he would claim. And if they were found out, were, inevitably, forsaken by their families, how would they live? How would they survive?

  These thoughts aren't mine, but they feel like mine, and the emotional impact, the impossibility of Bess and Victoria's love, guts me; hot tears course over my cheeks even as a flood of pleasure crests through my body. I reach for Trudy, search her face; there are tears standing in her eyes, too. I catch them on my fingers, pull her close, as close as two bodies can get... My mouth brushes against her ea
r.

  God, I'm so grateful for her.

  I love her.

  “I love you.” The words are a breath, my truest breath, and Trudy covers my mouth with her own, as if to breathe the words in. She relaxes against me, holding me tight as the hot water laps around our shoulders.

  “Promise?” she whispers, trailing a wet fingertip from my temple to my mouth.

  “Promise.” I kiss her finger and sigh.

  I've never felt so at ease, so content. So free.

  - - -

  I wake tangled in Trudy's limbs, deliciously sore, swollen, naked. She opens her eyes sleepily and offers me a lazy grin. “What a night, eh?”

  I laugh, nestling against her. “All good horror movies should end like that, I think.”

  “With hours and hours of sex?”

  “Basically.”

  “They aren't here anymore, are they? Bess and Victoria?”

  I bite my lip; then I bow my head, thinking. I knew, upon waking, that Elizabeth wasn't inside of me anymore, and I'm guessing that Victoria has left Trudy, too. Their spirits must have drifted off after we fell asleep last night. But the funny thing is...I can still feel them. Close by. In the house. We aren't alone—not yet.

  But why?

  Then it hits me: “The locket.”

  “What?”

  “We never found the locket. Victoria insisted...” I shake my head, raking a hand through my messy hair as I try to disentangle my thoughts. “I don't think they'll be able to leave until we find it. But I don't know where to look. I've never known. It could be anywhere...”

  Trudy, smiling playfully, slips her hand beneath the blankets and touches me, massages me. Her mouth covers mine for a long, toe-curling minute. And then she draws back and lifts a brow. “But I do know,” she whispers, planting a kiss on my nose. “Victoria was a part of me, inside of my heart, my head. I know her secrets now. And I know...” She pauses, face falling. The light leaves her eyes as she says, “I know how she died.”

  “Oh.” I sit up against the headboard so that Trudy can rest her head on my blanketed lap; my fingers weave in and out of her soft golden curls. “Tell me.”

  “They were supposed to meet that night, Bess and Victoria, in the Pattons' house. Victoria was excited. She had a gift for Bess. She'd saved her wages for weeks in order to buy it.” Trudy smiles, as if she's reminiscing. “She'd considered buying a ring, but rings were for other people, boring people, and Bess was hardly boring. Besides, Bess had told Victoria that she hated rings.

  “So Victoria went to McClaren's Jewelry Shoppe and ordered a necklace. A locket, engraved on the back. And it had just come in, and just in time, because this was going to be their first weekend alone together. Bess' father and Xavier were overseas, and the cook was visiting her son in Rochester. Victoria had requested time off from work. She'd bought a new hat.

  “It was going to be perfect. Like a honeymoon.”

  I shift uncomfortably, sighing. “But Xavier wasn't overseas.”

  “No. He wasn't. He'd must have lied to Godrick on the dock, made some excuse. Because he came back into the house, surely startling Elizabeth, and he poisoned her. He killed her. She was already dead by the time Victoria arrived.

  “Victoria had a key and let herself in, and Xavier was cruel enough to allow her to seek Bess in the bedroom, to find her lying lifeless there. Victoria screamed, and then Xavier nearly strangled her, but she escaped him, ran...

  “She ran all the way to the Bridal Veil Falls.”

  “Oh, my God.”

  “I think he herded her there. He wanted the drama. Drama pleased him...”

  “He pushed her, didn't he?”

  Trudy blinks at me for a long moment, as if she's coming out of a trance. “How did you know?”

  “I saw it in a dream. I think Xavier wanted me to see it. The monster...” Chilled, I shiver, imagining Victoria—brokenhearted—standing on the edge of the waterfall, confronting the final moments of her life. “So she took the necklace over the falls with her,” I say softly.

  “No, she didn't.”

  “What?”

  Trudy tilts her head back to gaze at me fondly. “She left it in the house. Dropped it—in an urn Elizabeth had dug out of the ground. In the vain hope that Bess might wake up, might find it.”

  “You mean—”

  “Clever as always, tiger. Yeah. The locket's in Elizabeth's urn at the library. Or...it should be, provided no one's snuck off with it since then.”

  I fling the covers off of my legs. “Well, let's go!”

  Trudy laughs, rolling onto her back. “Are you always so eager in the morning?”

  My eyes meet hers, and longing courses through me, as hot as my blood, and my heart seizes unexpectedly in my chest. With slow, deliberate motions, I climb on top of her, my curves fitting snug against her curves, as if one set was custom-made to complement the other. “I meant what I said last night, you know.” I lick my lips, kiss her lips. “I love you, Trudy.”

  “And I love you, you mad, beautiful woman.”

  My heart beats triple-time in my chest. “You do?”

  “Well, let's see. I'd give up all of my books for you. I'd give up all of my clothes for you. I'd travel the world for you—”

  “You would?”

  “In a hot minute, tiger.”

  I sit up then, wrapping my arms around my knees. “I don't want you to give up anything for me. It isn't fair. And the thing is...” I cast her a sheepish glance over my shoulder. “I think I'm beginning to grow fond of this place.”

  “This house?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Well...” Trudy sits up behind me, wrapping her arms around my middle, pressing a kiss to my neck. “It'd be awfully nice to have a love nest to come home to—in between adventures, I mean. Hey, you can dig up ancient stuff while I investigate ancient ghosts. I could even write a book... I've always wanted to write a book. Aside from my autobiography, that is.”

  I reach for her hand and gaze deeply into her eyes. “You're serious? You really want to do this? Travel with me, live with me? Like...for good?”

  With expert motions, Trudy swings a leg over my lap and pushes me back down to the pillow, kissing me so long and so hard that we're both left gasping for air. “'Til death do us part.” She covers my face, my chest, my body with her kisses.

  Again, Marie's words circle through my mind: Everything happens for a reason...

  I wrap my reason in my arms and vow to never take her for granted, to never let her feel, for a single second, anything less than adored.

  Chapter Twelve

  Eyes closed, I touch the locket at my throat, relishing the sensation of cool metal upon my hot skin. Behind me, the waterfall crashes against stones, and I feel its mist, hear its roar, its whispers.

  How many tragedies have these waterfalls witnessed?

  How many love stories?

  Trudy slips her damp hand into mine, and I turn toward her, smiling. She's dressed like all of the other tourists at the Cave of the Winds, in a bright yellow poncho to protect her clothes from the ever-present mist. We've walked together down the vertical wooden decks to reach the river and the bottom of the Bridal Veil Falls.

  “Just think—this is where I first glimpsed those cunning green eyes of yours.” Trudy traces her finger over my mouth and says, “This is where I first tasted your lips. I was only a kid, but I knew what I liked. What I wanted.”

  “And, as I recall, you took what you wanted. Very...assertively.”

  “Mm. How about a reenactment?” Tugging on my arm, Trudy pulls me beneath the overhanging stones, into the cave-like entrance, and kisses me—hungrily, endlessly—until I'm laughing, dizzy. And then I kiss her, holding tight to her arms, breathing her in along with the scent of the water, of the stones, of a hundred-thousand stories...

  Her fingers toy with the locket, flipping it over to read the engraving on the back: B. Yours forever. Cross my heart. V. They're the same words that Victoria wr
ote on the note she hid in the conch shell. They must have had a special meaning for the two of them, like a charm, a mantra.

  When Trudy and I found the locket in the water flask at the library, we opened it to reveal a lock of Victoria's golden hair. Then, purposefully, as if we were bewitched, we took it back to V. Rex, fetched Elizabeth's hair from Xavier's room, and placed a small curl of it in the locket, too.

  And...something happened. It wasn't visible, wasn't even audible. But we both felt it, like a lifting, a lightening. A leaving. Bess and Victoria left, finally, at long last. And Trudy clasped the locket around my neck. I haven't removed it since. Normally, I feel no affinity to jewelry, but the locket's weight against me feels right, meant to be—just as the woman in my arms feels right and meant to be.

  I never used to believe in “meant to bes.”

  I never used to believe in love.

  But I thought ghosts were made-up, too. The product of impressionable, hysterical minds. How's that Carl Sagan quote go? The absence of evidence is not the evidence of absence. Over the past several weeks, I've had that message pounded into my brain so hard, I don't think any amount of skepticism could dislodge it.

  Another thing to be grateful for.

  Cordelia's already talking about a backyard wedding, but Trudy and I are more focused on enjoying the moment: right here, right now. Maybe we'll get married someday. Maybe we'll even adopt a dog. Trudy's already picked out a name: Slimer, Slimy for short.

  But that's far off, far away. Right here, right now, I'm standing beneath a waterfall with the woman I love, and I want to linger. I want to cherish her—here, now—because, if Bess and Victoria taught me anything, it's that moments are sacred, finite.

  And love conquers all.

  Love is stronger than hatred, than darkness, than death.

  “Alex, look!” Trudy points.

  I follow the direction of her arm and blink. There's mist clouding my vision, and we're so far below the viewing ledge. But I could swear... I could swear that I see two women wearing Victorian dresses—one black, one white—strolling arm in arm along the railing. They look like the women in my snow globe, heads bent together, whispering to one another, as if they're sharing a secret...