Liz looked down at the crumpled body of Paul Delacorte. “He was insane,” she managed to say.
“He deserved to die,” Roger told her, approaching her, taking her hand and leading her away.
“We’ve got to get out of here,” Liz said.
“Yes, my darling, we have a greater destiny than this.”
She didn’t really understand his words, but it didn’t matter. Roger was helping her around the debris and toward the ladder that led downstairs. “I thought we could hide out in the study,” Liz was saying. “Or perhaps the basement . . . somewhere that the winds can’t get to us . . . the storm can’t last much longer.” She thought of something. “We’ve got to find Nicki! Hopefully she’s found a safe place.”
Roger said nothing. But he guided her past the ladder that led through the opening to the first floor.
“We’ve got to go down, Roger!” Liz shouted, the winds picking up again and howling through the holes in the ceiling. “It’s not safe up here.”
“I’m taking you on another route to safety,” he explained. “It’s where Nicki is.”
Liz didn’t understand, but she clutched Roger’s hand tightly and allowed him to lead her down the corridor. At last they stopped.
“Here it is,” he said.
He dropped Liz’s hand and pressed both palms against the wall. Liz heard a scraping sound, and then a panel in the wall slid back. She recognized the closet in the room where she had been attacked. Beyond the closet came the flickering of candlelight.
But Liz wouldn’t move. “We have to go downstairs!” she insisted to Roger. “The attic has been ripped off and a whole chunk of the second floor is exposed to the hurricane! It’s only a matter of time before this part of the house gets blown away as well!”
“It’s safer to go through this way,” Roger said, stepping into the passage and offering his hand. “The other way was destroyed.”
Liz looked at him, unsure.
Roger smiled. “Trust me, Liz.”
She took his hand.
70
Variola, seated on the floor, as far away as possible from the terrible ceremony that was taking place, spied Mrs. Martinez out of the corner of her eye, dithering by the door.
Variola knew it was over. She had lost. The ceremony was draining her of her power, sucking her very life force from her body. Mrs. Hoffman had indeed learned her lessons well. She had mastered the arts that Variola had taught her, so much so that Variola was now powerless against her. Hoffman’s power came directly from Variola; she was siphoning it off, bit by bit. The weaker Variola became, the stronger Hoffman grew.
But there was one tiny hope.
Mrs. Martinez.
“Go,” Variola whispered, and she prayed to Papa Ghede that her whisper would bounce across the room and resound in Mrs. Martinez’s ear.
The look Mrs. Martinez suddenly shot her told her that her prayers were answered.
Variola knew how horrified Mrs. Martinez was by all of this. How sorry she was that she’d ever gotten involved in such madness. It had started out innocently enough: Mrs. Martinez had been fascinated by Variola’s tales of magic in the islands, and gradually she had come to believe that such magic might help her family prosper. She had become an avid pupil, assisting Variola in teaching Dominique and Mrs. Hoffman all the arcane arts. And, lo and behold, her daughter Teresa suddenly was promoted at work. Her two beloved grandchildren started getting all A’s in school. Mrs. Martinez credited the vodou gods. She was glad to keep assisting Variola in her ceremonies with Dominique and Hoffman, and eventually their little coven grew. It had been harmless in the beginning. Spells to keep them young. Rituals to enhance prosperity. Love potions for Mrs. Delacorte to prevent her husband from straying.
Mrs. Martinez had never expected bloodshed.
Variola fixed the older woman with her big black eyes from across the room. “Go,” she whispered again. She could slip out now. No one was looking. They were all focused on the bleeding ceremony. Variola turned her eyes back to the repulsive sight. That poor girl, Nicki, who had come to this house on an errand of mercy, was hanging from the light fixture on the ceiling, her blood draining into goblets that were held by the two men. At least Nicki hadn’t suffered. Hoffman had slit her throat effortlessly, and once the girl was dead, the soulless housekeeper had had her strung up, then sliced her body in various other places, producing a flow of blood like wine from a cask.
“Go,” Variola whispered a third time, her eyes returning to Mrs. Martinez.
The older woman hesitated just a second, then slipped out the door. No one noticed her leave. A small smile crossed Variola’s face.
“Drink, my love,” Mrs. Hoffman was saying to the formerly naked woman, who was now wrapped in a gray robe and seated in a chair. Hoffman held a goblet of Nicki’s blood up to the woman’s lips. “Keep drinking, my darling.”
The woman was responding. Variola couldn’t deny that. Her eyes were becoming clearer. She had stopped trembling. She was coming back to life.
Hoffman’s magic was potent. She had learned well. Variola had to give her that.
But magic used for evil, for one’s own selfish rewards, never came to good. At this rate, however, with her strength draining nearly as fast as Nicki’s blood, Variola doubted she would live to see Hoffman’s ignominy.
“I believe she has been bled dry,” one of the men announced, turning away from Nicki’s wasted corpse.
“But she needs more!” Hoffman commanded. “She is coming back to us! She is waking up, but she needs more! And it must be given to her tonight, when the power of nature is still surrounding us, gifting us with life!”
“The blood has stopped flowing,” the man told her.
“Cut the body down,” Mrs. Hoffman snarled. The man did as he was ordered. Nicki’s body fell to the floor, a bony heap.
Suddenly, a sound from the other side of the room. They all turned.
Roger Huntington stepped out of the closet, leading Liz behind him.
71
Maria Martinez rushed down the stairs and through the kitchen. But where could she go? Who could she tell of the horrors being committed upstairs? Outside the hurricane raged. Several of the palm trees were down, crushed against the windows of the first floor. Sheets of rain slammed against the glass like a barrage of stones.
How could she go out there? How could she get help?
Maria picked up the phone in the kitchen. Of course it was out. Her own cell phone had lost reception some time ago.
She could go to the garage and get her car. She would drive through the rain. It was the only way. She hurried out through the sunroom.
But then she remembered the other cars in the garage. She had been there when Mrs. Hoffman had directed the guests where to park. Maria had objected that they were blocking her in, but Mrs. Hoffman had dismissed her concerns. “You’ll be the last to leave,” she had said. “There will be a lot to clean up after we’re done.”
Another palm tree came down, smashing through a window in the sunroom. Rain and wind and broken glass whipped inside. Mud was splattered all over the furniture.
A lot to clean up. That was for sure.
No matter what, no matter the dangers outside, Maria knew she had to get out of this house. The danger inside was worse. Mrs. Hoffman would soon realize she was gone. And she would be angry. Very angry. And with her sudden acquisition of power from Variola, what might she be capable of doing to Maria to exact punishment?
She had never expected it all to become so terrible. It had started as a lark—as something fun. Then it had become something Maria had hoped would help her family, whom she wanted so desperately to find the success she’d never had for herself. But it all changed the day of the accident. The day the Coast Guard came to the house and told them Mrs. Huntington had been washed out to sea.
“You don’t believe it, do you?” Mrs. Hoffman had asked Maria later that night. “You don’t believe that Dominique is dead, do you?�
�
“What else can I believe?” Maria had asked.
Mrs. Hoffman had taken her to a secret room in the attic and showed her.
There was Dominque’s body. Bruised, battered, bloody. But breathing.
How very much Hoffman wanted to believe she could restore Dominique to life. How wild had been her dream! And that creature on the second floor—that shambling, deformed creature drinking a dead girl’s blood—was the product of that wild dream.
Maria should have gone to the police after Audra was killed. She had suspected just where the poor girl’s blood had gone. But Mrs. Hoffman had threatened her. “What magic has done for your family,” she warned, “can also be undone, and worse.”
“It was all a lie,” Maria said out loud, her hands in her hair, not knowing what to do. “Teresa got that promotion all on her own, because she was a good worker. Marisol and Luis earned those grades through their own hard work. Magic had nothing to do with it.”
If that was so, then she had nothing to fear from Mrs. Hoffman.
Except that knife she held in her hands.
Maria had been horrified by how easily Mrs. Hoffman had used it to slice that girl’s throat, as if it was something she did every day.
Dear God . . .
Had Mrs. Hoffman killed the others? Had she murdered Audra, and Jamison, and Rita?
Was Mr. Huntington innocent after all?
And what about poor, dear Thad? Something had happened to Thad. His car was still in the garage but he had disappeared somewhere in the house.
More blood on Mrs. Hoffman’s hands?
Maria knew she had to get out of the house. Whether it was Mrs. Hoffman’s magic or her knife, there was more danger within these walls than outside in the streets. She would push her way through the rain and the wind. She would find someone, a neighbor, anyone. Grabbing a rain slicker in the coatroom off the kitchen, Maria Martinez slipped it on and took a deep breath. Opening the back door, she stepped out into the storm.
72
Liz couldn’t quite fathom what she was seeing. Here, in this small room in the servants’ quarters, in the middle of a hurricane, were gathered a group of people. Chairs were placed in a circle, and candles were burning. She knew the people: Mrs. Hoffman. Mrs. Delacorte. Mr. and Mrs. Merriwell. Mr. and Mrs. Clayton. Karl, the assistant from Roger’s gallery. And the artist, Naomi Collins. They were all looking at her. It was like some sort of strange dream, the kind where random people are thrown together in the most surreal of circumstances.
Except this wasn’t a dream. The rainwater dripping down from the ceiling onto Liz’s face was proof of that.
There was someone else in the room as well, seated on one of the chairs. A woman, it appeared, from the look of the long dark hair flecked with gray. She was wrapped in a gray robe and her face was down. She was drinking from a goblet.
“You fool,” Roger was saying, approaching Mrs. Hoffman. “This was not what we had agreed upon.”
“We agreed on nothing,” Mrs. Hoffman said, turning her back on him.
“What is going on here?” Liz asked.
The darkness of the room had at first prevented her from seeing what else was in the room. But now she discerned Variola on the floor, cradling what appeared to be a body . . .
“Where is Paul?” Mrs. Delacorte was asking. “Where is he?”
“He’s dead,” Roger spit at her. “And he deserves to be.”
“No!” Mrs. Delacorte screamed, dropping into a chair, covering her face with her hands.
“What is going on in this house?” Liz screamed. “We have got to get out of here! This whole floor is going to get blown away!”
As if to underscore her point, a ferocious gust of wind hit the side of the house. Both of the small windows in the room were shattered, pieces of glass flying through the air. Liz managed to duck, but a large hunk sliced into Mrs. Clayton’s neck. Blood spurted out from the wound as if from a faucet.
“Blood,” Mrs. Hoffman said, rushing a goblet to collect what she could before Mr. Clayton pushed her away, doing his best to attend to his wife.
Liz was horrified. “What is all this?” Her heart was racing as she looked around. “What sort of ceremony were you conducting here?”
Roger steadied her, taking hold of her forearms. “My darling, it’s not what I planned,” he said. “This is wrong. Please believe me. I had a much more glorious vision for us. It’s all Hoffman’s doing. She’s mad.”
“Mad, am I?” Mrs. Hoffman asked, a quiver of triumph in her voice. “Tell me if this is madness.”
She gestured to the seated woman in the robe.
“Rise, my darling,” Hoffman commanded.
The woman set aside the goblet she had been drinking from, and did as she was ordered. She lifted her face. Liz gasped.
It was the woman who had attacked her. Her face was still bloated and scarred, but her hair was no longer gray. Now it tumbled lustrously over her shoulders and blew around her face in the wind . . . dark, shiny, locks . . .
Liz knew that hair . . . she had seen it in the portrait. . .
“Dominique,” Roger said, his voice low and breathy.
Dominique took several steps toward them. They were steady, graceful steps.
“How is it possible?” Liz asked.
“You would have let our precious Dominique rot away, wouldn’t you have, Roger?” Mrs. Hoffman asked. “Your plan instead was to bring your darling little Liz into this coven. You would have made that simpering little fool our new figurehead. You would have denied Dominique her rightful place!”
“Yes,” Roger shouted. “And when David was executed for killing Rita, I would have married Liz myself, and taken this house for my own, my father be damned.”
“You milked our coven for all it was worth,” Hoffman said, shouting over the driving wind. “You have been cashing in quite nicely from your deal with Papa Ghede. But it’s over for you now, Roger.” She smiled, or, rather, adjusted her lips in a way that passed for a smile on that plastic face. “Dominique is back, and she isn’t pleased.”
“Dominique isn’t back,” Roger said, laughing derisively. “You can make her walk. You can restore her hair. But what about her mind, Hoffman?” He took a step closer to Dominique. “Go ahead, woman. Speak to me.”
Dominique’s lips moved to form words, but produced no voice. The only sound in the room was the wind howling in through the broken windows.
“You see,” Roger said. “She’s still nothing more than a mindless zombie.”
“This is all madness,” Liz said, backing away from them. “It’s obscene!”
From across the room, Mrs. Clayton, on the floor in her husband’s arms, made a gurgling sound. “She’s dead,” Mr. Clayton cried.
Liz gazed over at the dead woman on the floor, surrounded by all this insanity and greed. She couldn’t help but think, even in the midst of her terror: It’s a long way from Miss Porter’s.
“We’ve got to get to safety,” Mr. Merriwell was saying. “We’ll all be killed up here . . .”
“You’ll do as I say!” Mrs. Hoffman declared, her voice straining to be heard above the high-pitched shriek of the wind.
“No,” Roger said, and Liz saw him withdraw his pistol from his belt. “You’ll do as I say.”
He pointed the gun at Dominique.
73
Never had Maria Martinez ever encountered anything like the force of this wind. The rain felt like solid walls of water she had to run through as she made her way to the street. A couple of time she was literally lifted off her feet by the wind. She was terrified of being sucked up into the hurricane and then dropped miles from here to her death.
She reassured herself that she didn’t have far to go. Just to the next house on the street.
But the gate at that house was closed and locked. There was no use banging or calling to the residents. No one would be able to hear her from the street, and surely the intercom wasn’t working. The sound of the wind
was so loud it felt to Maria as if she were caught in the engine of an airplane. She thought her hearing would never be the same after this.
Providing she lived through it.
Maria hurried to the next house, running from post to post, clinging for dear life each time. A small prayer of thanks escaped from her lips when she spotted an open gate at the next driveway. Running up to the house as fast as she could, Maria had to jump over fallen palm trees, not an easy task for a woman of fifty-nine. Finally she reached the front door and threw herself at it with a thud. “Please!” Maria called. “Please help me!”
No one answered. Maria despaired. They were probably huddled safely in the basement. Or maybe they had fled farther inland before the hurricane struck.
She was having a difficult time breathing. The wind and rain were so strong it wasn’t easy to take a breath. Maria stumbled off the steps back toward the street. She would have to try another house. But she wasn’t sure how long she could last out here.
Hurrying down the street, she was utterly drenched. Her hair was plastered to the sides of her face. She could barely see two feet in front of her.
Suddenly, amid the driving rain, she spotted a light ahead of her. A dim, flashing blue light in the middle of the street. Her hopes lifted. “Hello!” she attempted to shout, but the wind devoured her voice. Maria began to run.
But just as she did so, the wind caught her. She felt her feet lift off the ground. Maria felt weightless, powerless. She struggled, but her arms and legs thrashed uselessly through the air. She felt herself losing consciousness just before she was sucked up into the hurricane.
74
“Do you have reception on your phone?” Detective Joe Foley asked Aggie, both of them crowded into the basement of the police station with the other detectives.
“Intermittent,” she replied. “Just enough for one text to get through from my husband, telling me they’re all okay.”
“Good to know,” Joe said, staring down at his phone. “Looks like I got a call at some point over the last hour. I never heard it ring, though.”
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