“You saw the children.” The simple statement of fact contrasted with her usual posturing.
“Yes,” she said. “I saw them.”
“We’ll proceed tonight.“ The woman’s hoop earrings jangled as she nodded.
“Tonight?” Sharon hadn’t been prepared for that. “It’s late, and I’ve got to put my son to bed.”
“Meet us in the attic at midnight,” said Bella. “To delay would be unwise. The spirit is restless, and restless spirits get into mischief.” Without waiting for an answer, she helped Grayson into the car.
Sharon withdrew, already questioning her decision to go ahead with the session. She neither liked nor trusted Bella Gaskell, and she certainly didn’t believe in communing with the dead.
But whatever might be stirring, it was no longer confined to the attic. She and Bella and perhaps others had seen something at work in the church tonight. She needed to confront the issue, and this was the only avenue that came to mind.
“What’s going on?” Ian asked as they got in his sedan.
Sharon glanced at Greg and Jody in the back seat. Her son lolled sleepily, not paying attention to grownup conversation, but she knew he had big ears.
“I’ve decided to take Bella up on the séance idea,” she murmured, keeping her voice as low as possible. “Tonight at midnight.”
Ian backed out and headed for the street. “Why? You were so dead set against it.”
“You didn’t notice anything strange tonight?” Sharon asked.
His face kept appearing and disappearing as they drove through the darkness between streetlights. “Strange in what way?”
“Some weird shadows.” She didn’t want to be more explicit within Greg’s hearing.
Ian shrugged. “I was too absorbed in the music. Your sister is amazing.”
Sharon felt a glow of pride. If anything, Karly’s voice had strengthened in the past few years. She was glad she’d been able to share its beauty with Ian.
Behind them, Jody said, “I’ll second that. If she cuts a CD, I’m first in line to buy one.”
“Would you mind going with me tonight?” she asked Ian.
“Of course not. I wouldn’t dream of leaving you alone with that pair,” he said.
“You’re right on that point,” Jody chimed in. “I can’t say that I approve of this séance business, but maybe it’s just as well. Bella can do her thumping and pontificate in a deep voice and get the whole thing out of her system.”
Put that way, the business sounded more amusing than frightening, Sharon thought gratefully.
With traffic sparse, they arrived home in minutes. As Ian lifted the dozing boy from the car, Jody said, “Since you two are going to be busy, why don’t you let Greg sleep over in my apartment? Ian can set up my guest cot.”
Sharon considered the offer. “That’s very generous of you...”
“We’ll enjoy a leisurely breakfast and let you sleep late,” Jody added. “I expect you’ll be worn out.”
The offer was too good to decline. Even with the front door locked, Sharon didn’t like the idea of leaving her son unsupervised in her apartment during the séance.
“Thank you,” she said. “I’m sure he’d enjoy that, and I’d be grateful.”
“Besides,” Jody added as they went inside, “this way I can keep him as far as possible from that dotty Gaskell pair. Ian, you watch over Sharon.”
“Will do,” he replied.
Thinking about the séance made Sharon feel the way she had once on a roller coaster, after the safety bar snapped into place and the motor started to hum. She’d realized that she’d been crazy to get on this thing in the first place but it was too late to get off.
Frank didn’t say much on the ride home, beyond congratulating Karly in a subdued voice. She wondered if he was tired or simply distracted.
She was worn out, herself. In retrospect, the peculiar image she’d seen at the church seemed like a waking dream, the kind that used to intrude occasionally when she’d pulled an all-nighter in college. What stayed with her was the security of knowing Frank was protecting their daughter.
After laying the baby in the crib, she found her husband sitting on the foot of their bed, one sock on and one sock off. He looked as if he had started to undress and run out of steam in the middle. “I’m sorry,” he said.
Karly unhooked an earring. “For what?”
“I guess I blew it,” he said.
What had he done? “Blew what?”
“I’ve been trying to lock you in a cage.” Frank’s mouth quivered. “You don’t belong with me. You’re too special to live cooped up this way.”
Karly stood beside her dressing table, wondering how the two of them had managed to switch positions. She’d had the same thought herself until tonight, when she’d finally grasped how much she depended on this honest, caring man.
Frank knitted his fingers together. He had the sturdy hands of an engineer. “I fell in love with you on the stage. I can’t imagine what attracted you to me. Maybe you saw something that isn’t there.”
“Or maybe I didn’t see something that is there.” Realizing she was still holding her earrings, Karly placed them in a velvet case.
“I realized something tonight,” her husband confided. “I realized that I’d forgotten who I fell in love with. It also occurred to me, well, that I’m afraid of being like my father.”
“But he died when you were twelve,” Karly said. “And you practically idolized him.”
“I’m not afraid of being the kind of person he was,” Frank explained. “The point is, when you were pregnant, this idea kind of grew in the back of my mind that I was going to die young too. That I would leave you and Lisa with no means of support. I wasn’t consciously aware of that. I just took it for granted until I stopped and took stock of myself tonight.”
“You’re afraid of dying?” Karly didn’t know what to say. At the age of twenty-seven, she’d never given the matter much thought.
“Not for my sake. For yours.” Frank said. “That’s why I was working so hard to fortify my family against fate. The problem is, because I was tired all the time, I resented your joy and your sense of fun. But those are the things I love about you. I’m sorry, Karly.”
She wrapped her arms around him and pressed her nose into his neck. “You weren’t just in the right place at the right time for me, you know. You were also the right man.”
“Am I?” Frank said.
“Absolutely. I want you around for as long as I can have you. I don’t want you to die, either, regardless of how much money we do or don’t have.”
He pulled her onto his lap. “Let’s go away this weekend, just the three of us.”
“Where?” she asked.
“Anywhere,” he said. “We’ll leave early tomorrow and drive up the coast, like we used to when we were dating. Maybe we’ll go as far as Malibu, or Santa Monica would be all right. I just want to feel free again. I want to be with the woman I love and spend time with our daughter.”
The doubts were gone. Karly was amazed how quickly a painful twist in a marriage could straighten itself and the path ahead look straight and true again.
“Sounds good to me,” she said, and unbuttoned his shirt all the way down. Suddenly she didn’t feel tired any more.
Ian shrugged off his jacket in front of the mirror. He ripped away the shirt too, and the navy slacks.
A churning energy had been growing within him all evening. At moments he’d felt too keyed up to sit still, and then Karly’s voice would capture him and he would forget his restlessness.
Ian wished it were daylight so he could work out at the gym or go for a jog. Even that didn’t seem like enough. He wanted to swim in the ocean, so far out he could barely see the shore.
He clenched his fists and watched the muscles ripple across his chest. Tonight he wasn’t Ian Fanning, disabled policeman, but a giant of a man, a laborer with sweat gleaming on his sinewy body, Paul Bunyan felling trees and
scooping out lakes with his hands.
Ian laughed. His voice rang out, startling him. Of course he was Ian Fanning. Who else could he be?
Wondering what had gotten into him, he drew on his jeans and an oversized sweatshirt and turned on the TV to watch the late news before going upstairs.
Staring at the attic steps, Sharon wished she knew what had drawn her to this point. A few weeks ago, she’d been an ordinary widow in Buffalo, N.Y. for whom the occult existed only on the Science Fiction Channel and in Stephen King novels. She hadn’t had the least interest in attending a séance and if she’d seen something weird in a church, she would have wondered if someone had drugged her.
She couldn’t possibly be taking this situation seriously, but she was. She’d felt threatened ever since she arrived at this house, and tonight she’d seen the threat extend to the next generation. Running away wasn’t going to help. The discovery that she and the Fannings were related and the way the circle kept coming together had convinced her of that.
Down the hall, Ian strode out of his apartment, showing no sign of weariness. He must get a second wind late at night.
When he spotted her, his face came alive. Instinctively, they reached for each other as he approached and their bodies slid together, his arm encircling her shoulder, her hand touching his waist. Their mouths met in a promise. She missed him, had been missing him since they parted after making love yesterday.
She loved the texture of him against her skin and his masculine aroma. “This business of keeping apart,” he murmured. “We won’t succeed for long.”
“We have to. For a few days, at least.” She heard the lack of conviction in her tone.
“Don’t tell me you’re sleeping well.” He rested his forehead against hers. “I know I’m not.”
“Who needs sleep?” She kissed his eyebrow, registering the formation of bone beneath it and the strong plane of his temple. So much to explore.
From the top of the stairs, Pete Gaskell called, “Hey, down there! Time to start!”
“Okay,” Sharon said, and reluctantly parted from Ian.
“Why won’t these people just go away?” he teased in a low voice.
“Let’s hope they will,” she murmured. “Soon.” Catching his hand, she led the way up the stairs.
Entering the attic, they found themselves in a space defined by a small circle of candlelight. Beyond, the pitched roof stretched into darkness. Although Sharon had seen the attic in daylight and knew its parameters, tonight she felt as if she were entering an unfamiliar world. But the only things living here, she reminded herself, were spiders and their prey.
Pete and Bella, who wore a paisley headscarf and a floor-length caftan, had pushed aside some of the trunks and toys that jutted into the central pathway to clear room for a card table and four chairs. Atop the table blazed an array of stubby candles set on mismatched saucers.
Behind her, Sharon felt the heat from Ian’s body as he leaned down to whisper, “I don’t see any trick wires. Do you?”
She shook her head and wondered if their hosts had overheard. If they did, they gave no sign. Bella seemed absorbed in staring into the gloomy recesses beyond the table, while Pete puttered about nursing a sputtering candle.
Sharon had expected to see some form of equipment on the table, a crystal ball or a Ouija board or at least a deck of cards, but there was nothing. “What are we supposed to do?”
Bella gestured toward the chairs. “Please be seated.” Despite her solemn expression, her eyes betrayed her excitement. Tonight she was clearly in her element.
Sharon just wished they could get it over with.
Seeing that the others waited for her to go first, she chose the chair closest to the exit. That placed her facing the length of the attic, with the door to the widow’s walk off to her right outlined faintly by moonlight. Bella sat across from her, Ian on her right and Pete facing him.
Following Bella’s example, they clasped hands around the table. “Let the circle be unbroken,” said the woman in the scarf. “Do not let go, whatever happens, or we will release the power.”
Sharon uttered a low cough, partly to cover a surge of irreverence and partly because the air of the attic had made her throat dry. She wished Bella would refrain from hamming it up, but apparently that came with the territory.
Head bowed, the medium muttered something low that Sharon didn’t catch. “She’s calling on her spirit guide, Geraint. He’s the ghost of an 18th century British lord,” Pete told them quietly.
The chanting resumed and amplified, reverberating off the rafters and filling Sharon’s ears. Her skin prickled as a cold draft blew across her arm. The noise clarified into a deep voice issuing from Bella.
“I, Geraint, have come to guide you. What is it that you seek?” The accent sounded upper class British and the timbre startled Sharon, an arrogant baritone utterly uncharacteristic of her neighbor.
“We seek the restless spirit that dwells here,” Bella said in a normal voice, her eyes half-closed. “We want him to tell us what he seeks and why he threatens the children of this family.”
In the pause that followed, Sharon listened to the soft breathing of the people around her. Ian squeezed her hand for reassurance.
The deep voice rang out again. “The spirit is angry. Terribly angry. He has ordered this woman to go away, and she has not done so.”
The air crackled with hostility. A chill ran up Sharon’s spine. She wondered whether it was the spirit or Bella who wanted to get rid of her.
“A great evil has been done here,” said the voice of Geraint. “Evil that folds upon itself and returns.”
“May we speak to him?” Pete asked. “This spirit—who is it?”
“He says his name is Bradley.”
Hearing the name spoken aloud shocked Sharon like a wave of electricity. With a visible jolt, the current passed to Ian.
Bella gasped and her head rolled back. Ian began to speak in a harsh tone utterly unlike his own voice.
“Why won’t you listen?” His fury blazed at Sharon and his hand tightened on hers, not comfortingly this time but painfully. “Why do you insist on bringing tragedy back to this house?”
There was no trace of self-consciousness about the man. Only a brilliant actor could have pulled off such a stunt without giving himself away. Sharon sat riveted to her seat, paralyzed by the certainty that someone other than Ian was speaking.
“Someone has to stop her!” he cried to the room at large. “Why do you all keep sitting around like damn fools?”
That couldn’t be him, Sharon thought furiously. This was not the man who’d made tender love to her and who had carried her sleeping son into Jody’s room earlier tonight. Someone was manipulating him, and she didn’t believe it was a ghost.
Across the table, Bella lifted her head weakly. She watched Ian with confusion that gradually shaded into grim recognition. “I should have foreseen this.”
“Foreseen it?” Sharon snapped. “You created it! How dare you play on his seizures this way? I don’t know how you managed to hypnotize him, but this is inexcusable!” She jerked her hand from Ian’s. As a tingling weakness ran up her arm, he slumped in his chair.
“You fool!” shrieked Bella. “You may have killed him!”
Although she didn’t believe that, Sharon wished she hadn’t acted so abruptly. “Ian?” She touched his shoulder. “Are you all right?”
He sagged, motionless, for too many heartbeats. She was about to reach into her pocket for her cell phone when at last he stirred and blinked. “What the hell?”
“Your grandfather spoke through you,” Pete said.
“You had a seizure.” Sharon brushed a matted strand from his temple.
“Not like any seizure I’ve suffered before.” Ian straightened gingerly. “I was awake the whole time. I heard what he said and I felt this great rage. But it wasn’t mine.”
“He wants you to leave,” Bella told Sharon. “How can you doubt the evidence o
f your own ears?”
“Why did you set this up?” she asked. “What could you possibly have against me?”
Ian’s smoldering gaze swept Bella and Pete. He shook his head as if tossing away the last traces of his stupor. “I agree. I certainly don’t want Sharon to leave.”
“We aren’t behind this, I swear.” Pete’s pupils had dilated behind his glasses. “I never saw a spirit take over someone else’s body, other than the medium’s.”
Bella pressed the heel of her hand against her forehead. “Bradley’s angry with us. With me.”
“He should be angry. I’m angry, that’s for sure.” Ian stood up, holding the edge of the table for an uncertain moment before letting go. “However you made this happen, you should both be ashamed.”
“We are not the engineers.” Speaking in a flat tone, Bella stared beyond them.
What was wrong with this woman? Sharon wondered. “This session is over,” she said. “You got what you wanted, both of you. I don’t expect to hear another word about séances ever again.”
When Ian caught her elbow, she went with him down the stairs, her body shaky and feverish. Despite her skepticism, she didn’t see how Bella could have made Ian speak as he had. And she doubted the woman had created the electricity she’d felt passing through her.
If anything, the whole business had only made matters worse.
“I’m sorry,” she told Ian as they reached the second floor. “I wish I hadn’t requested this.”
He shrugged. “It’s nearly one a.m. Let’s turn in. Things will look clearer in the morning.”
“I suppose you’re right.”
He didn’t release her arm. “Stay with me tonight.”
Sharon longed for the comfort of his body against hers and the protection of his arms. But she kept thinking about that deep voice pouring out of Ian, filled with rage and disgust. What the possession or whatever it was returned while they were alone?
She wanted to trust him. The problem was that the danger around them had repeatedly expressed itself through Ian.
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