The Deception Dance

by Rita Stradling

  We stare at each other, both of us giving our ‘what the heck?’ brow furrows.

  A foot crunches glass making us spin. Nicholas halts in the doorway with Dina peeking out from behind him. Nicholas speaks fast, “Where is she?”

  I stare at him, “Who?”

  Linnie half cries, half calls, “Chauncey!”

  I grab for her but she runs over the mirror remains yelling Chauncey’s name.

  “What happened?” I make my way over the glass chards to Nicholas and Dina.

  Dina steps out from behind Nicholas leaning against the door frame. The only thing betraying that she’s not calm are her widened eyelids and darting gaze. “I heard a shattering sound half an hour ago. I came to see if anyone was hurt and I almost got hit by a flying vase. I tried to stop that girl, but she almost attacked me, so I ran. She had already smashed all the mirrors, a few vases and a window in the back. She was screaming,” Dina touches her neck and shudders. “I found Albert and we were going to call the police, but...” She gestures to Nicholas, “you drove up.”

  “Are you okay?” Nicholas touches my shoulder.

  I blink a couple times, “I’m fine. We should find Chauncey.” As I turn to the destroyed hall I whisper, “This is my fault.”

  One peek into the room I share with Linnie is enough to see it’s destroyed. The large oval cheval mirror lies broken and smashed on the floor.

  Linnie storms out of Chauncey’s room with a piece of paper and black lines of mascara streaking her cheeks. She shoves the piece of paper at Nicholas pointing to it, “Tell me what this means.” Her finger again points to the bottom of the paper when he takes the note from her to read. Linnie yells, “I want to know. What does ‘tell Nicholas he gets what he wants’ mean?”

  He breathes in a shaky breath and holds it. When he exhales, he meets Linnie’s glare. “It means she’s gone.”

  She sobs, “What?”

  Nicholas starts, “I...”

  “What did you tell her? What do you mean? Gone? Gone where? What happened? Tell me!” Linnie’s sobbing makes her words hard to decipher.

  Nicholas says, “Linnie...”

  “How could you? What gave you the right to...?”

  “She couldn’t have gotten far, Linnie. I promise I’ll find her.” Nicholas squeezes past Dina and runs toward the main house.

  Linnie wipes her face. “I’m going.”

  Dina steps out of the way to let Linnie and I pass. Nicholas is already charging down the driveway toward the front gate.

  Stephen walks out the main house's front door. He slings an arm around Linnie and holds her through a few sobs. To me he says, “Albert’s rounding up all our help to comb the grounds. Could you ladies check everywhere in the guest house just in case she’s just hiding?”

  I nod.

  Stephen pats Linnie’s back. “Have you tried to call her?”

  “I have her phone,” Linnie says, sniffling.

  The moon is conspicuously absent and only several darting beams of light, presumably from the mansions staff searching, interrupt the darkness of the grounds.

  “Wait, Stephen,” I say, “since people scan their thumbprint to enter or exit the grounds can’t you track who has left?”

  Linnie steps away and looks at Stephen with wide hopeful eyes. “Are there cameras?”

  Stephen adjusts his weight from one foot to the other, he looks uncomfortable. “The security system,” he pauses to give me an apologetic smile and slight shake of the head, “is not something I can talk about. I wish I could tell you...”

  “What? Why?” Linnie demands.

  “I can’t...” he cuts off, gaze roaming around the parking lot, settling on a flashlight wielding maid, then he shakes his head. “I will go and do everything I can to find your friend.” He pats Linnie on the arm while heading toward the gentlemen’s club. With a jump in his step Stephen disappears through the door.

  “Linnie,” I say wrapping my arm around her as we walk toward the guest house, “when we leave tomorrow...”

  “We can’t leave!” She spins and yells, “You’re kidding, right? What if Chauncey comes back? She doesn’t have a phone or anything. We need to be here!”

  I swallow, “Okay.” Linnie hasn't yelled at me like this in years. She thinks that I’m selfish, that I’m not worried about Chauncey. What if she knows it’s my fault that Chauncey disappeared? This trip couldn’t get any worse.

  Linnie, Dina and I search every space big enough to hide a person, and a few not. I pass Nelly grumbling and sweeping up the mess as I repeatedly cross the hall. We even rummage around the locked basement which looks like a room from a futuristic spaceship with florescent lights and sterile blue plastic crates stacked from floor to ceiling in even rows.

  After a thorough and unsuccessful search and a few frantic phone calls, Linnie and I change out of our gowns and into sleepwear. I sigh as I hang the beautiful dress on its hanger; there is no way this can be returned to the store.

  We slump onto my freshly made bed. I stroke Linnie’s hair as she stares at the spot where our cheval mirror used to stand. Linnie doesn’t flinch as I pick out the bobby-pins restraining her brown hair.

  We don’t look up when Nicholas enters the room, but he steps into my view. He looks nervous. I wonder if this is the first time he’s been in the guest rooms. I bet it’s the first time he’s been in here with unmarried women.

  He clears his throat. “We just reached one of our gardeners on the phone. Apparently, Chauncey was waiting in the garage and asked him for a ride a few minutes before we got back. He drove her to his house in Malmo.” His cheeks pink in the low light. “He thought that they were going to...” he clears his throat again, “…well, she ran off the moment he stopped his car.”

  I ask, “Malmo?”

  “About an hour and a half drive south from here.”

  I peer at Linnie’s head on my lap, surprised she hasn’t leapt to her feet, but she’s asleep.

  I whisper to Nicholas, “What is the plan?”

  “Stephen is on his way to Malmo now. Stephen has a talent for finding people.” He pauses, “I don’t think there is much else we can do as exhausted as we are, you should let Linnie sleep. Did you call Chauncey’s parents?”

  “Unsuccessfully,” I say then sigh, “but we’ll try again tomorrow.”

  “Well, good night then, Raven.” He walks to the door.

  “Nicholas,” I say stopping him, “can I have the note?”

  He hesitates at the door then turns back. From his tuxedo pants pocket Nicholas extracts a folded piece of paper. He places the small rectangle into my hand, nods and leaves without another word.

  I let the paper sit in my outstretched palm for a minute, unfolding of its own accord. I take my other hand off Linnie’s head and unfold the letter.

  I read:

  “Linnie, Linnie, Linnie.

  I’m slipping Linnie, slipping through the stone.

  As my foot slides through, the flames lick my toes.

  My skin is ablaze and it festers.

  In every glass the monstrous faces watch me burn.

  And they’re screaming, screaming; I can’t stop screaming.

  Lies, lies, lies.

  The bird that promised I could fly released his talons.

  And I’m falling, flailing, diving to my disastrous end.

  Tell Raven that she has everything I crave.

  Tell Nicholas he gets what he wants.

  And I, so unloved and misunderstood, am entombed by fire.

  Hide Linnie, the inferno’s closing in.”

  “So poetic,” I murmur with a quavering voice. I clench my hands into fists to still them, but they won’t stop trembling. The image of monstrous faces watching from every glass makes my whole body shiver; I concentrate on breathing to calm my nerves. No wonder she broke all the mirrors.

  “Do you think she’s crazy?” Linnie asks with her eyes still closed. Has she been awake this whole time?

  A f
ew minutes pass before I find my voice, “No.” I reread the line about her blazing festering skin. “It’s her tattoo; she has a bad infection on her arm. I’m pretty sure that infections, really bad ones, can spread into people’s blood and make them hallucinate. She needs to get to a hospital.”

  “Why do you think Nicholas told her to leave?”

  I’m about to say, ‘because of how she treated me,’ but I stop. Andras’s words surface in my mind, ‘they will do everything in their power to make sure you stay’.

  Nicholas is too kind for that; it’s ridiculous to even consider he would torment an obviously distraught girl to trick us into staying. I swallow down a sour taste in my mouth. Since I need to say something, I respond, “I’m not sure why.”

  She whispers, “I don’t trust him.”

  “Linnie,” I say, stroking her hair, “you’re the only person this side of the Atlantic that I trust.”

  We fall asleep hugging like we did when we were little and scared of the branches that used to scrape our window.

  What feels like a moment later, I wake to the sound of Linnie shouting into her cell phone. My eyes are still bleary and hard to open but I can make out her figure pacing in our little room.

  “No, I need to speak to him directly. Please, this is urgent.” She pauses for a long moment then continues, “Could you give me a number for him in Hong Kong?” Another pause, “No, I already called her mom. She...” She shakes her head, “Isn’t going to help. Please!” Longer pause, “Will you call me when you get a hold of him?”

  I sit up.

  Linnie clenches her teeth while she asks, “Well, then, may I call you?” Substantial drops of water drip down Linnie’s face, she wipes them away with jerky swipes. “Don’t tell me to calm down. I’m talking about his daughter’s safety, she’s in danger.” Linnie’s eyes widen. “I’m not being overly dramatic. Her wrist...” Linnie peers at the phone in her hand. “Hello?” Linnie whimpers, makes a sound like, ‘Ugh!’ then throws her phone across the room. She stomps and yells more frustrated sounds, then slumps to sit on her bed laying her head in her hands.

  I retrieve Linnie’s phone, but keep it. “What happened when you called Chauncey’s mom?”

  Linnie doesn’t look up to answer. “She thought I was Chauncey. She didn’t understand what I was saying and it was hard to understand her...” she huffs out a heavy breath, “slurring.”

  “Doesn’t Chauncey’s cell phone have the number for her dad’s direct line?”

  Linnie shakes her head, “I don’t think they talk much.”

  “But Chauncey said...”

  “I know... Chauncey pretends that they’re close, even to me, but I can tell they’re not. She arranged this whole trip with her dad’s personal assistant; I overheard their phone conversations. It’s possible her dad doesn’t even know or care that she’s here.”

  “That’s hard to believe.”

  Linnie looks up. “Not everyone is as lucky as we are, Raven, to have a parent that cares so much about us.”

  The word ‘lucky’ feels like a slap, the backhanded kind. Isn’t ‘lucky’ what Chauncey kept calling me? For lack of a better response, I whisper, “I guess.”

  Linnie spends the morning and afternoon, late-afternoon and evening, trying to reach anyone who will help us, but like the secretary, the Swedish Police and Interpol and the American embassy tell her she’s overreacting. One night missing, is not a missing person. She finally ends her calling search when she chucks the phone across the room with our father's voice still buzzing through the phone’s speaker.

  I reach down, pick up the phone and walk into the hall. "Hey dad," I say.

  "Linnie?" he says, shock in his voice.

  "No, Raven."

  "Oh," he says; from the sound of his voice, I can picture him: slumped forward, head in his hands, squeezing his eyes closed. He says, "What's your sister doing?”

  "Pacing and freaking out. So, you're going to call Brian O’Connell and Chauncey's dad?" I got this much from Linnie's end of the conversation.

  "Birdie, I'll call, but truly... there's not much that Brian can do." Sheriff Brian O’Connell is my father’s good friend and bowling buddy. "I'll try to reach Chancey’s father, and let's hope he's not as indifferent as Linnie's been painting him out to be."

  "Thanks dad. I should get back to Linnie...”

  "Wait...” he says, "This is off subject, but, I know you really wanted to know about Mrs. Trandle...”

  “Yeah, I do.”

  “Well, I talked to Mrs. Trandle's real-estate agent; she said that Mrs. Trandle moved to Sweden, of all places. Crazy coincidence, huh? I guess her grandson is handling her entire move and selling her house from Sweden."

  "Sweden? Are you serious? Did the agent say what her grandson looks like?"

  "I met him, actually. Remember? I told you: I helped him move a couple boxes. He was a good looking, nice young man; the only thing was he had a...” he clears his throat, "he did have a scar that ran across his entire face.”

  I drop the phone. It cracks in two and scatters across the floor. My feet somehow manage to walk into the other room and I sit on my bed.

  Linnie paces back and forth in front of me. “You know what that man said to me? He said that Chauncey is an adult and I’m not her ‘keeper’!” She spits the last word as if it’s a curse. She grumbles, “I need to go to Malmo, tonight.”

  The same argument again, but I somehow can't find words to fight with her any more.

  She doesn't notice, or try to leave.

  After a short forever has passed I manage to mechanically say, “It’s seven-thirty Linnie, you should wait until tomorrow.”

  This is the plan we decided after Nicholas visited us at noon. He came to inform us that Stephen had already left Malmo and was heading to Copenhagen.

  Linnie, hadn’t acknowledged Nicholas, she was suddenly riveted with her cell phone (which had been serenading her with hold-music for an hour).

  I examined Nicholas’s expression before he left for a trace of repentance for chasing Chauncey off. He gave me a tight smile; he didn’t look pleased, but not guilty either.

  Maybe he honestly thinks Chauncey slinking away in the night was for the best. I could understand if he told her she should leave because he thought her a deceitful, double-crossing psycho, I didn’t exactly want to snuggle up to her either. But, what if his motivations weren’t that innocent? Andras’s words wouldn’t leave my mind and I had shivered away from Nicholas’s gaze.

  The moment Nicholas retreated from the room, Linnie shook her head and grumbled, “I bet they didn’t even look.”

  So, now the plan is Linnie will drive the Vespa to Malmo early tomorrow morning to search, while I stay at “home-base” in case Chauncey returns.

  Probably more from exhaustion than any argument on my part, Linnie submits to waiting until the morning and eating dinner. She passes out before nine, fully-clothed and mid-sentence.

  I lie down, intending on waking to see my sister off at dawn. I shift, then shift again, then mouth the word ‘lucky’ over and over into the dark. Rolling onto my stomach and grumbling into my pillow gets me no closer to sleep.

  Incomplete thoughts and memories dance through my mind in a chaotic, not choreographed, disjointed mess. I’m slipping Linnie, slipping through the stone... There is a very bad man looking for you and if you leave the protections that are around you now, he will find you... You’re so lucky Raven. I hate you. A good looking boy except for a scar that ran across his entire face… The infernos closing in...

  His nose touches mine; it’s crooked on his face, it’s been broken, a couple times. Unkempt blond hair falls past his ears. He’s lying on me, weight unfelt by my dream body. The face is so familiar, though I’ve never seen it with my waking eyes. But his blazing green eyes mark him as unquestionably, undeniably Andras.

  “Say it again,” He whispers into my neck.

  I laugh, “I love you, Andras.” As in my other dreams, we
again speak Swedish.

  “For how long?”

  “Forever,” my response is automatic.

  He pulls up to look at me. I’ve never seen a more attractive face, it’s not quite symmetrical, not in the way that the waking Andras is, but faultless. He smiles revealing a little gap in his front two teeth, “What about when we die?”

  “Then we will be together forever in heaven...”

  “Sinners like us? What if I go to Hell?” He smiles and kisses the tip of my nose.

  “I’ll follow you and challenge the Devil...”

  “You would follow me to Hell?”

  “Yes, I’d drag you out.”

  “Do you promise?” He asks.

  “Yes,” I say.

  His smile broadens before he kisses me deeply. Even in sleep the kiss ignites my entire body and leaves me gasping for air. His fingers wrap around the back of my neck and I feel a sudden pulse of heat, but it’s only for an instant; I blink and the heat is replaced by his fingers’ soft caress. His lips brush against mine as he says, “I will keep you, forever.”

  My eyes snap open as the cogs of my mind click into place.

  Nicholas, his brothers, their grandfather, this house, our invite here, Chauncey, her madness, her tattoo, they’re all connected somehow. And Andras, he’s part of it too; he’s against it. Mrs. Trandle was warning me, trying to keep me from someone in this castle. And my mind fixes, my thoughts fix on Tobias Leijonskjöld with a cold dread.

  What did they do to Mrs. Trandle?

  Andras knows something, he must know. And, he is convinced they’d go to any length to keep us here, he was afraid that they’d even harm us.

  Stephen wouldn’t tell us about the security system. What if they trapped us in here? It would be as easy as denying our thumb prints to open the doors...I could probably climb over a wall but not without people noticing me.

  Thinking about Stephen going after Mrs. Trandle is the worst, creepiest part of this. For some reason, I trusted him above anyone else here, felt as if somehow we were the same. Ha, teaches me.

  I need to talk to Andras. There are too many questions and only one source where I’m going to get any honesty.