Harlequin E Shivers Box Set Volume 4: The HeadmasterDarkness UnchainedForget Me NotQueen of Stone

by Tiffany Reisz

  Maybe she wanted some tangible permission to give herself over to Sheriff Constantine’s kisses. Bones and murders be damned.

  She turned and her sparkly shoes tapped decisively up the back stair until she came to the door. In the darkness its white surface glowed. The black iron knob protruded in stark relief. She grabbed it, tried to twist it. The cold hard metal stung her hands. It took several rattling tries before the latch finally clicked and Maddy could push the heavy door forward.

  The mellow scent of aged wood and dust wafted out to greet her.

  Maddy paused for only a second. Then she pushed inward, intruding into Constantine’s secret space. His masculine presence made way for her, but only just. His residual aura was close against her skin in a quiet sandalwood hush of privacy and retreat.

  The wall switch lit only a small lamp in the first room. Its feeble glow did little to dispel mysterious shadows. Several other switches clicked without result. Her feet trod uneven floorboards that creaked and sighed beneath dusty rugs. The room with the working lamp was to her left. The kitchen was to her right. A long stretch of hall reached darkly to the front of the house. There would be a stairway leading to upper floors.

  She stepped into the kitchen first. It was clean and cheery in the dark and there was a hint of previously brewed coffee. Maddy breathed deeply, tasting Constantine on her lips. Then she moved from the kitchen into the lamp-lit sitting room. The lamp was near a large upholstered chair faded red in the pale light. Professional magazines and a crime novel sat on the table beneath the lamp. Beside them an empty mug perched half off a coaster, forgotten.

  So simple.

  So cozy.

  But there was a layer of dust on the book where it lay with its binding toward the ceiling. It had been placed open with pages down as if the reader would return any second. Many, many seconds had passed judging from the dust. Weeks and months worth of seconds. Maddy ran one finger down the cover leaving a trail.

  She knew Constantine worked long hours, but the abandoned book made her instincts flutter.

  She took the cup to the sink and ran water in it before heading down the hall.

  The house made a soft settling noise around her—water in the pipes? She had used the kitchen tap. She paused. The noise faded. It had sounded nothing like water. It had sounded like a sigh. The silence was no better because now she waited for another noise. Her ears ached in expectation of a sound she couldn’t explain. The woman at the Gala had disappeared through a solid wall. And she’d been glaring, angry over something Maddy couldn’t possible imagine.

  She walked on. She’d come this far—there was no going back now. Lights from the street came through the front windows. Her dress looked ethereal and ghostly against her legs as she climbed the stairs. She focused on the swishing chiffon and not the unfathomable shadows she approached above her.

  She tried one wall switch. Then another. Nothing. Finally a third lit another lamp.

  Upstairs she was startled by the flutter of sheets stretched over doorways. The stutter step of her heart in response to her surprise caused her to pause. She forced herself to resume normal breathing. Along with the sheet-covered doorways, there were drop cloths over everything. Chairs, tables and unidentifiable things lurked in shadowy forms under white like a mysterious forest with cloaked limbs that reached and stretched and begged for mercy toward the ceiling.

  She passed through, not daring to look beneath the cloths for fear that something more horrible than furniture might meet her eyes.

  Her dress brushed and trailed against the huddled forms as if magnetized, the lavender chiffon clinging to one draped piece after another.

  But it was the rooms closed off by the hanging sheets that bothered her most. The house settled and sighed again between one step and the next and, occasionally, the sheet to this room or that would flutter and shift from drafts—surely from drafts—but it seemed very like the respiration of something—or someone—just out of sight.

  Finally, she came to an uncovered room and when she looked inside she found uncovered furniture. The wall switch worked, lighting another lamp near a massive mahogany bed and a mismatched chestnut armoire.

  She edged inside the bedroom urged on by the scent of sandalwood and gun oil—so sweet, rich and familiar—as well as the need to escape the flutter of sheets in the hall.

  But once inside, the blood rushed from Maddy’s face and extremities. Her hands, cheeks and feet went numb.

  There was a chest. It sat at the foot of the bed. On it laid a book that wasn’t dusty. It was faded and obviously very old, kept from closing by all the miscellanea stuffed between its pages.

  ∗ ∗ ∗

  Diary of Evelyn Chadwick Wildes

  He has betrayed me.

  He will not return.I’m not to be a wife or a widow.

  I am set aside.

  Everywhere people stop and stare and whisper. Ours was never a love match, but the forget-me-nots he gave me while we courted mock me now. One lone posy. The meager gift should have been forewarning. I imagine a different woman than me showered in flowers now given the unmeasured affection I am never to know myself.

  I will never forget him as easily as he has forgotten me.

  ∗ ∗ ∗

  The diary wasn’t dusty.

  When Maddy picked it up forget-me-nots fell in a dry rain of powder petals to the floor. With horror, she saw the same scattering of petals throughout the whole room, even standing out in faded pale blue against the rich burgundy of Constantine’s comforter on his bed.

  She dropped the book and it followed the petals to the floor, louder and harder. She’d found dried forget-me-nots in her own room again and again. Always pressed into the frame of the dressing table’s mirror. There should have been a drawer full of forget-me-not posies, but there hadn’t been. It had been the same tiny bouquet somehow moved to its place in the mirror’s frame over and over again.

  Bones.

  Maddy’s foot bumped the side of the chest when the book fell from her fingers.

  She knelt among the moldering petals and touched the small chest on the floor.

  There was a tiny key in the lock.

  She lifted numb fingers to twist, turn and lift.

  The lid rose far easier than it should have and the hinges didn’t creak…as if someone lifted it often to look inside.

  Nestled on faded pink silk was a dingy white gleam.

  The lid fell closed from her fingers.

  Maddy stumbled up to her feet and away, backward out the door and several steps more until she came against the sheet draped across the opening of the adjoining room. The sheet loosened. It tangled around her arms and fell, brushing over her face. She cried out, but the sheet smothered her sounds. She fought as if the cool cotton was alive, kicking and pushing it away.

  Finally she was free.

  Air rushed in gasps from her open lips.

  Once again she was surrounded by the drop cloth forest. Here, there, everywhere. Strange shapes and unknown things hidden, vaguely threatening and even more frightening than before.

  Maddy tried to watch them all for movement. She made her way back to the stairs.

  She doesn’t want to be discovered. She doesn’t want to be sent back to the grave. Gracie paid the price for trying to get evidence of Evelyn’s ghost on film. Am I next?

  Maddy wouldn’t allow the sheets to move. She willed the drop cloth covered shapes to remain empty chairs and tables and inanimate things. Harmless. Immobile. But as she passed the last room closed off by a sheet, the house sighed again and the sheet billowed.

  Only this time it wasn’t a shapeless flutter.

  This time a face appeared, pressing outward against the gauzy fabric of the sheet until its features could be seen. Eyes, forehead, cheeks and mouth—opening and closing as if trying to speak.

  Alwaysssss.

  Maddy had heard the voice before in the whisper of Scarlet Falls.

  A form materialized beneath the fa
ce. The suggestion of a woman’s body filled out the fabric with voluptuous Victorian curves.

  Maddy backed away.

  She fell against a draped coat tree, then a settee. Each time she had to struggle to free herself from cloth and what lay beneath as if the inanimate objects worked against her to hold her for the approaching horror beneath the burgeoning sheet. She saw hands pressing outward against the sheet. Fingers reaching toward her bent like claws.

  She made it to the stairs. She rushed, risking a twisted ankle in her heels to make it quickly down the next step and the next.

  “Alwayssss…”

  The voice was audible now. Not only in her head, but carried in the sighs of the house around her. And worse, coming hoarsely from above her where what was manifesting beneath the sheet must have become solid enough to claim its ability to speak.

  Maddy ran.

  She ran back through the house.

  She made it over dusty rugs and through unlit shadows. The lamp in the sitting room no longer glowed. Even the streetlights seemed to have gone out. But she could see the backdoor and ran for it with all she had in spite of heels and any lingering disbelief.

  The stubborn doorknob rattled in her clumsy fingers. Beneath the sound of the protesting latch, she thought she heard a step on the stairs. Then the doorknob turned and she wrenched the door open. She slammed it behind her and fled down the stoop and into the yard. Before she could decide whether she should make for the street or the tangled path to the Carriage House, an immoveable wall of flesh prevented her escape.

  It was Deputy Smith. Her panic registered his identity with sudden certainty even before she pulled back and looked up at his face. He was as firm and strong as she had imagined him to be. And even more intimidating at night. The streetlights lit his face only softly so she couldn’t really see his expression.

  “The sheriff is looking for you, and Tom, too,” he said. He turned his face back toward the path then he looked over her head at the house behind her. She risked a glance herself. She half feared there’d be someone impossible at the door. A long dead face manifested in the physical once more, horrible, gray and peering out. Maybe even twisting the stubborn knob with skeletal fingers to try to follow her outside.

  There was no one there. The window above the knob on the door was empty and black. But she pulled back from Smith’s tight grip anyway and moved around him toward the path.

  “We should go find them,” she said. Her voice was as steady as she could make it. She hoped the slight tremor wasn’t noticeable to someone who barely knew her.

  Smith looked back at the house again. As she’d moved, he’d turned toward her. The eerie pale glow of streetlights painted his lean face with odd planes and shadows. His silvery eyes gleamed blankly with a reflective shine much like the windows in the house behind him.

  “Did you go inside?” he asked.

  Maddy edged farther away. How much did Smith know about Constantine and the chest of haunted bones? Could she trust him to help or was he somehow involved?

  “I was only looking at the lawn and the plantings,” she lied. “It could use some work.”

  “All the King’s horses and all the King’s men couldn’t put Humpty together again,” Smith said. The rhyme made gooseflesh rise on her skin. “Some people and places stay shattered when they fall.”

  He spoke so calmly and knowingly. As if he had answers to questions she’d never thought to ask. He also suddenly seemed taller and broader than he’d seemed before. Less nondescript and more like he was claiming the spot where he stood.

  She’d reached the path. Smith hadn’t moved. His presence had grown somehow, but he hadn’t moved. He stood near the house almost as if to stand between her and it. The house was more alive than before. Or maybe it was only because she’d experienced its awareness firsthand. She wasn’t imagining the windows watching her. She knew there was something beyond the windows that watched, waited and wanted her gone.

  “I’ll go find the sheriff or Tom,” Maddy said.

  “Find Amelia. She’ll help you,” Smith said. She didn’t ask him why not Constantine or Tom. She didn’t ask him how he knew Amelia Glass.

  Because he had stepped toward her like he might change his mind about letting her hurry away.

  This time the trip back up the path was rushed and pitch black. The lights from the street didn’t penetrate. She worried about what she rushed toward and what she rushed from. The tangle she’d pushed through earlier was even more stubborn. Branches hung in her hair and once or twice she had to stop to pull free and the sting of snarls torn loose caused tears in her eyes.

  The glow of the Carriage House lights when they came into view was welcome. The lack of cars left on the street was not.

  “Trinity Creed took Gibbons for you. She said you both have an affinity for cats,” Constantine said.

  He came from the side of the Carriage House where a thick growth of ivy had hidden his presence. He’d taken off his tuxedo jacket, but he hadn’t loosened his tie. The perfectly knotted tie almost made her forget everything else she’d seen. He held her diamanté clutch in his hands.

  She’d once told Trinity about talking to the Historical Society’s stuffed mascot on its embroidered pillow. She remembered Trinity had confessed to thinking Gibbons the First was sleeping. She hadn’t known the other woman long enough to know she had a wicked and grim sense of humor. In spite of all she’d been through in the past hours, she smiled.

  “Where’s Tom?” she asked Smith had acted like she should avoid the sheriff and his fellow deputy, but, of them all, she trusted the kind, sad-eyed man the most.

  “The evening was hard on him. His wife used to help with the Gala. She was an active member of the Garden Club,” Constantine said.

  Maddy didn’t ask what had happened to the deputy’s marriage. Perhaps a rocky divorce had caused his sad eyes.

  Just then, Tom’s squad car started and pulled away from the curb with a slight rubbery protest of its tires on asphalt. She was left alone with Constantine.

  “Looks like I’ll be your chauffeur for the evening,” he said. Maddy’s eyes were drawn back to his tie.

  Amelia was nowhere to be seen and it seemed as if the Carriage House was empty. No doubt in Scarlet Falls party cleanup was left until morning. It was already well past the time when most people would be tucked indoors.

  Constantine shook out his jacket and came close enough to her to drape it around her shoulders. He offered her the clutch he must have found on one of the tables near the dance floor and she took it with chilled, trembling hands.

  “Not the best time to take a walk. Did you go all the way to the house and back?” he asked. “That overgrown path can be treacherous in the dark.” He smoothed her tousled hair back from her face, no doubt seeing the scratches that aptly illustrated his description. Hopefully, he wouldn’t guess how desperately she’d pushed her way through the tangle.

  “I thought I’d see if there was other work I could propose to Samuel Creed,” Maddy said.

  Only then did the borrowed jacket make her feel how bare and cold she’d been. She’d dropped her shawl somewhere at the sheriff’s house. She could only hope it had been outside. If he found it in his bedroom or on the stairs, he’d know she’d seen Evelyn’s bones.

  Chapter Nine

  This time there were more things in the big SUV with the bronze star on its doors. The backseat was full of magazines, papers and even a few clothes. Her dress was already wrinkled, crushed and dusty so she climbed up when Constantine opened the door without preamble.

  She didn’t dare look at her shoes. There would be no saving the delicate satin and one sparkly strap on her left foot dangled against her heel.

  Constantine’s jacket warmed her, but she wasn’t sure if it was because it added another layer to her shoulders and arms or if it was the enticing scent of sandalwood and espresso.

  Bones.

  Forget-me-nots and bones.

  There could
n’t be a rational reason he slept with the bones at the foot of his bed.

  He drove her all the way to Fairlane Street without speaking, but he did flip on the radio. Soft jazz seemed to strangely compliment the empty streets of the deserted town where everyone had withdrawn to their homes.

  She’d asked locals about the curfew, but no one had really given her an answer. There had never been a reason to break it with all the businesses closed and no one else stirring. Eventually she’d decided it must involve old superstitions about witches. Especially once she’d seen Samuel Creed’s latest book. Scarlet Falls had been the site of the second most famous witch trials in American history. Seven poor young women had been drowned in High Lake. Their deaths had proven their innocence. If they had somehow survived the forced dunking with their arms bound to their sides by rope, they would have been burnt at the stake.

  Maddy shivered.

  Its dark history had drawn Gracie to Scarlet Falls. The people kept Maddy here. The people—and their desperate need for her gardens.

  Now she’d seen something supernatural with her own eyes. Something Gracie would have stood bravely to photograph rather than running away from. But she couldn’t help wondering if that was why Gracie was gone.

  ∗ ∗ ∗

  The SUV pulled into her drive behind her van. There was no sign of Trinity and Gibbons II. Maddy let herself out and climbed down. But Constantine didn’t drive away. He and his immaculate tie followed her up the walk and to her door.

  Maddy opened her clutch to retrieve her key. Constantine watched her place it in the lock.

  Bones.

  The reminder didn’t help much. After the shock and fear, she wanted warmth and closeness, but the one man she wanted to hold was too dangerous to allow inside.

  “The electricity went off at your house,” Maddy said. “I thought you should know you might need a flashlight.”

  He would need more than that if the ghost of Evelyn Chadwick Wildes was still wandering the halls.

  Constantine raised a brow. How would she have known the lights weren’t working if she had only been looking at the landscaping?