A Murder at Alcott Manor

by Alyssa Richards

  The dead zone.

  Emma’s feet were no longer in her lap. Anna Kate wasn’t on the other couch anymore. Though her children were here, in her dream, in this bridge of time that Alcott Manor occupied, Mason was not.

  She thought of him as vividly as possible, remembering the light in his eyes and the feel of his straight dark hair through her fingers. She prayed he had been able to drift off, or at least drop into a deep enough meditation, so she could pull him in. Asher had the home court advantage and she wanted Mason’s support.

  “Can we go swimming later?” Emma’s voice came from the direction of the kitchen.

  “Maybe,” Asher said. “Did you bring your swimsuit?”

  “Ohh. I think it’s still at Grandma’s house. Can we go get it tomorrow and swim in the ocean?”

  “Probably. We’ll have to let your mom work that out when she gets here.”

  “Mama’s coming?” Anna Kate asked. Her voice was upbeat but tired, as if it were Christmas morning and she hadn't gotten nearly enough sleep the night before.

  Layla followed her daughters’ voices with the same focus as if they had screamed for help. They were in danger—not only because their dad was a ghost and he didn’t have any restrictions in Layla’s dreams, but also because the clock was ticking on their bodies’ health. If she got them back, but not soon enough, they would fall into a coma.

  She arrived in the kitchen to a familiar scene—both of her daughters and Asher playing cards around the table and drinking hot tea. Emma sat in her father’s lap and he coached her on sneaky ways to win.

  “Mama! Look! It’s Daddy!” Anna Kate said when she saw her mother.

  “He’s alive! See? I told you he wasn’t dead!” Emma Cath spun around and hugged Asher’s neck.

  Below table level and off to the side, Asher made the blade of a knife slip from his sleeve and the silver metal glinted in the kitchen light.

  “Make me a tea, would you, Lay?”

  Her soul cringed when he said it, as though he fastened a collar around her neck with those few words. “Just like old times, right?”

  “Exactly like old times.” Asher gathered the knife inside his sleeve, got up, and put his youngest daughter in his chair.

  “I’ve missed you.” He kissed her on the cheek and every part of her leaned away from him. “Listen, I know it must have been a shock to find the girls with me. To tell you the truth, it was just one of those spur of the moment decisions. I felt your dream—like the opening of a door, like a passage, like an invitation from my long-lost love. Then the girls were there, and I just thought—what a great opportunity to get the family back together. I knew if the girls were with me, you would soon follow.”

  “Why don’t we let the girls get some rest and you and I can catch up.” She made an accommodating smile and stepped toward her daughters. She was going to whisper a secret to each of them, that they were dreaming. She knew she would have to tell them several times and encourage them to wake up.

  Just try.

  She had to plant the seed, create a little doubt.

  “Why are you looking at your watch? We have all the time in the world.” He stood behind Emma, appearing possessive and threatening with his hands on her shoulders.

  Layla stood next to Anna. “I’ll stay here with you, Asher. But it’s time for the girls to go to bed.”

  Emma pointed across the room. “Mama, it’s Mr. Mason.”

  Layla turned to find Mason just outside the kitchen doorway, drawing back, wide-eyed and obviously not yet ready to be seen.

  Thin black wings spread behind Asher in an instant and a single flap was all it took to put him behind Mason. The knife he had hidden up his sleeve pressed to the front of Mason’s neck.

  The girls screamed and Layla gathered them close.

  “No one invited you, Mister Mason,” Asher said.

  “It’s my fault, Asher. I must have thought about him. Let him go, he doesn’t even know what’s going on. I’ll get him to go home.”

  “Daddy!” the girls yelled. “Don’t hurt him!”

  “It’s okay, it’s okay. Daddy’s not going to hurt Mr. Mason. I’m just going to send him home.”

  “And how are you going to do that, Layla-pup?” A distant bud of evil took form in Asher’s eyes.

  “I’m not here to hurt anyone. I just needed to clean up after the celebration. Asher? What’s going on?” Mason played it beautifully, no sign of any nerves, and Layla was proud of him. But Asher wasn’t buying it and that gave her cause for more concern.

  “Mason, this is a dream. You can leave any time you want by just waking up. Right, girls?” she asked.

  “What are you taking about, Mama?” Both girls turned their worried faces to her.

  “Shhhh, it’s a dream. Just a bad dream. Wake up, girls, wake up!”

  “Wait just a second!” Asher wrestled Mason into one of the straight back kitchen chairs. “Hand me that rope from the supply box there, would you, Emma Cath?”

  Emma reached into the box of spare tools and removed a few lengths of rope and handed it to her father. Asher tied Mason’s wrists behind the chair back.

  Mason was far more athletic than Asher and, under normal circumstances, he would have flattened him with a punch. But her dead husband had a stronger sense of himself in this world. If he had figured out how to create wings, he apparently figured out how to have super strength as well.

  Layla and the girls stared at the blood that dripped from Mason’s neck and wrists. “Wake up, Mason,” she whispered. It had been a mistake to bring him here.

  “Everybody wake up!” she screamed.

  “Mama, what’s going on?!” the girls cried and clung tightly to her.

  “Wait, wait, wait,” Asher said calmly as though everyone was overreacting. “Girls. My sweet, sweet girls. If this is just a dream, and you wake up from it, then you won’t have your Daddy back, will you?”

  Emma and Anna shifted their glances between Mason and Asher and hiccupped teary breaths.

  “That’s not right, Asher.” Layla thought to lie and tell them not to worry. That when they woke up, their dad would still be there with them and they would be a family again. She’d put them into therapy for recovery.

  “But it’s true, isn’t it? They wake up? I’m gone from their lives forever. Is that what you want, girls?”

  They both shook their heads and hugged their father as though they held the key to his life.

  Asher beamed with poisonous pride. “Then it’s not a dream and there’s no reason to try to wake up.” He waved his hands and said wake up as though that were the craziest suggestion. Like jump off a cliff! “It’s just that easy, then. Hang on to me, my babies. Hang on to me.”

  “Oh, Daddy,” the girls cried. Literally cried, because of course they would do anything to keep their father alive.

  Thanks to Asher, anything she suggested to them would be refuted with “but we don’t want Daddy to die!”

  “What about the rest of us, Asher?” Mason struggled against the ropes that bound his arms behind his back and to the chair.

  Asher sat the girls at the table again, wiped their tears, and kissed their cheeks as if he cared.

  Emma Cath peeked at Mason, a dark shadow of worry flitted across her angelic face.

  Yes, baby. Something is wrong. Terribly wrong. Follow that scent.

  Layla willed her youngest to hear her thoughts. Her sweet, street-smart baby, who was having her sharp-needled compass dulled and confused by her own father.

  “What’s the matter, Emma Cath?” Layla asked.

  “Um. I think Mr. Mason is hurt. Daddy, why did you tie him up?”

  Asher stroked her hair as though he owned her. “I think he just needs a Band-Aid. Don’t you worry.”

  “Why did you tie him up?” Layla asked.

  Asher kept his eyes on his girls and the cards that Anna Kate dealt. But Mason shifted his stare to her.

  “Wake. Up,” Layla mouthed to him. One of
them ought to get out of this mess and he wasn’t much help anyway, tied up as he was.

  Mason only shook his head.

  “When a stranger walks into my house uninvited, I tend to think they’re here to hurt us.”

  “He’s not a stranger, Daddy,” Anna Kate said. “He and Mama are old friends.”

  “I’m not here to hurt anyone,” Mason said.

  “Oh, Mister Mason,” Asher sighed. “Now you two girls play the game I just taught you while I talk to Mommy. The grown-ups will work this out. Okay?”

  “Gin?” Anna Kate asked.

  “That’s right, darlin'. And when you win you say…”

  “Sa-weeet Ginger Brown,” the girls said together.

  “Daddy will take care of everything.”

  Asher’s eyes had gone flat and dark. Layla wondered if maybe something were missing. His soul, perhaps? Or maybe something had infected him, like a dark spirit. Or was this his true color making itself known? Perhaps in this dream world, he couldn’t hide this part of himself as well as he did when he had a body.

  “Come with me, Layla-pup. Let’s have a chat.”

  Asher put his arm around her and she flicked it away. Mason squirmed in the wooden chair and it rattled against the floor.

  Asher clicked his tongue against the roof of his mouth. “Girls, don’t get too close to him, okay?”

  They nodded and Asher escorted Layla into the main hallway. Her feet were spongey against the carpeted floor, a subtle reminder that this wasn’t real. And yet reality was far too close to her dreams than she would have liked.

  “Let’s make a deal, shall we?”

  “And what deal would that be, my dead husband?”

  He shook a scolding finger at her then dragged it along the outer curve of her breast. “This strength, such spunk. I’m going to have a good time with this.”

  She smacked his hand away.

  “Oh, oh, oh—” he sang. “Careful there little mama. I do hold all the cards here.”

  She wished she had spent more time doing more physical things in her dreams. Swimming underwater and flying to Paris with her own wings didn’t help her much now.

  “You want your daughters to live a long and happy life. And I would guess that right about now you regret bringing Mason into our home.”

  “I didn’t bring him here.”

  “Actually, I think you probably did. But never the mind.” Asher waved his hand three times and turned in a circle. He was playing the part—the man of the house.

  “Point is that I think we can reach a compromise. I’ll let the girls go home and Mason, too, if you’ll agree to stay here with me. All I ever wanted was to own this property. Not the house, really. But since I can’t do much about that, I might as well enjoy what I can.

  “Of course I never planned to spend the rest of my life with you either. But looking the way you do these days—well, I hate to let that go to waste. Plus I’m due.”

  Due.

  The word reminded her of the baby she carried. Not here. But there, where her body was. She needed to get back to it, soon. The baby wouldn’t survive without her.

  “What exactly are you due, Asher?”

  “A reward! Remember I’m the only one who loved you when you were fat.”

  She cringed at the word, that tiny word that functioned more like a weapon.

  “You never loved me, Asher.”

  “Okay. Got me there. But I was the only one to marry you, and the only one to sleep with you. I deserve a reward for that.”

  A laugh slipped out before she could catch it. “I’m not sure the sacrifice was yours, Asher.”

  He shook his head and pointed his cigar at her as though he were impressed. “I am going to have so much fun with this! Taming you the first time took consistent effort. But this—this is going to be a challenge. Can’t wait.”

  She charged him with the speed she had seen him use earlier in the night. If he could do it, she could do it, she thought just before she took flight. In an instant, her wings were outstretched and her hands landed tight on his throat.

  He tumbled backward and onto the thick, patterned rug, surprised and angry.

  She’d never wanted to kill someone before, not really, not like now. She pressed her thumbs against his throat and felt only the thrill of success when he gagged.

  His face turned red but his joker’s smile slowly bloomed and his hands circled her wrists, lifting them away from his neck with strength he had never shown in life. He pressed his hips against her and said with a whisper, “Make love to me, Layla. Right now, just like you did with him.” He nodded in the direction of the kitchen.

  “Argh!” she screamed and flew from him, backing away several feet.

  He brought himself upright, laughing as though they had just been roughhousing. Innocent play. “You’ll come around, my sexy girl. When I’m the only game in town. Because that sex drive? It doesn’t die when your body does. The hunger continues. And you’re looking surprisingly good these days.”

  “I’d rather—”

  “Die first?” he interrupted.

  “That’s not what I was going to say.” Though it was and they both knew it.

  He paced back and forth in front of her, eyeing her from the waist down. With appetite, she imagined.

  “I’m not leaving without my children.”

  “Yes, I see that. And Mason? You’re going to wait for him, too?”

  “Mason’s a big boy. He can take care of himself.”

  “Mmm. Maybe. Doesn’t seem to be doing so well right at this moment—but tell me. This protective hand thing you keep doing.” Asher placed his hand across his abdomen. Then he took it away and put it there again.

  She looked down and removed her hand. The gesture had been instinctual, to protect. She kept her gaze steady. Her mama bear side rose up quick and fierce.

  “I’ve only seen you do that twice in your life. Both times you were pregnant.” His eyes locked with hers. “Could it be that Mason is about to be a daddy?”

  “You’re an idiot, Asher.” She no longer thought about a way to convince the girls to wake up, she only tried to figure out how to kill her dead husband.

  “No. I think I’m right. You’re not that hard to figure out, Layla-pup. Never have been. This little development must be why you’re so driven to get home, why you won’t trade places with them.”

  “Maybe I just don’t want to spend eternity in a hundred-year-old property with a deranged ghost.”

  He cocked his head from side to side. “Maybe. Or you want to get back to your body so you can give birth to that baby. A boy this time, maybe. Right? Then Mason would be yours. Wow, you finally roped him in, eh?”

  “Mason and I are done. You don’t know what you’re talking about.” She willed herself not to put her hand over her belly.

  “Mason is in the kitchen, tied to a wooden chair. So y’all aren’t quite done. And actually, I usually do know what I’m talking about.”

  An old, familiar feeling came to life inside of her, like a cobra rising out of a basket. The snake-like guilt and fear danced with one another while Asher paced in front of her. He stroked his chin in the way he always had, the way he did just before he reared back and struck hard.

  She wanted to move toward him, grab his wrists, and snap them in two. Instead, she stepped away.

  “I think you need some time to think things through before you make a decision,” he said. “You’ll need to choose between the child you carry in your belly and the ones you’ve already given birth to. You can’t have them all.”

  “There’s only one choice I’m making, Asher. My girls and I are leaving together and you’re not going to stop us.”

  “I’m going to send you home for a while, Layla-pup. When you come back, I expect you to have your mind made up. I’m ready to get on with our new life.” He was close to her now and this time she knew the look on his face was sexual appetite.

  There was an unfamiliar sound, one sh
e couldn’t quite place. But when he raised his arm above her in a swift move, she knew the knife in his hand was going to come down hard.

  She only had time to scream, “No!”

  33

  “Where’s Mama?” Emma asked her father. She drew a picture of a happy family on a blank piece of paper with a crayon. “Did I hear her yell?”

  “I don’t think so. She had to run home, sweetheart, but she’ll be back.

  Mason stared at the girls talking with their dead father. Asher stood beside them, appearing just as he always had when he was alive. When Layla told him she had seen him in her dream, he didn’t at all believe her. He didn’t believe Dixie either when she said that Asher was in the house. Because ghosts weren’t something you had to believe in in life. But here he was, right in front of him and more real than he ever would have imagined.

  “Where’d you get these crayons?”

  “Mister Mason had paper and crayons and kid scissors in that drawer for us,” Anna Kate answered without looking at her father, continuing to color. “For paper dolls and pictures.”

  Mason smiled when Asher turned to him. Not because he was happy to see him, but because he hoped to set him off. If seeing their father act like a raging ass scared them enough to wake them, all the better.

  He assumed that’s what Asher did with Layla to get her to leave. He must have frightened her right out of her dream. She would never have left her children otherwise.

  Her children.

  Mason thought about the pregnancy. He had known it couldn’t possibly be real, he had known that beyond any shadowy doubt because he had science on his side. And yet here he was with Layla’s dead husband and their children in a part of the manor that didn’t feel quite real. There was a stillness here that was almost tangible, and anything beyond the manor seemed not to exist.

  The table in front of him was not the one that he had restored. This one was brand new, with only a few minor carving marks on the surface. Curtains in the kitchen window occasionally appeared to have white ruffled edges with tie-backs, which was unlike the straight-edged curtains they usually had.