Psychic for Hire Series Box Set

by Hermione Stark

  And then Lila is standing in the doorway behind me, her eyes wide in horror, her hands flying to her mouth in shock, saying, “What have you done?”

  Chapter 38

  DIANA

  Lila staggers a couple of steps backwards. She is looking at me like she barely knows me, sheer horror on her face. Her eyes are fixed on the knife in my hand.

  “It wasn’t me!” I tell her urgently.

  Lila just gapes at me. She looks like she is about to run away.

  I wave the knife. “She used this to defend herself. It’s too small to have made these wounds.”

  Lila flinches.

  “Look!” I point at the door she is standing beside, at the bloody pawprint on it, the wood beneath splintered from big claws savagely gouging into it.

  Lila yelps and immediately steps away from it.

  “It was DCK, Lila. The Devil Claw Killer. I swear it wasn’t me.”

  She lets out a hysterical little laugh and then cuts it off abruptly. “Of course it wasn’t you,” she says. “I know it wasn’t you. I just followed you up here.”

  “Oh! Thank God you believe me!” In sheer relief I throw myself into her arms, and we hug tightly, both of us still shaking.

  I babble, telling her about Storm. That he is investigating me. That the Coltons are dead. And now Ms Celeste too.

  “This was the woman who was in the video with you?” Lila says. “The video from last night?”

  I nod.

  “First your aunt and uncle and now someone else you know? They’ll think you did this too!”

  “But you’ll tell them it wasn’t me, right? You’ll tell them you saw me discover the body?”

  Lila laughs harshly. “I’m a succubus and a working girl. They won’t believe what I say.”

  “But you’ll tell them?”

  “Of course I’ll tell them. But Diana, you have to stop being naive. You’re one of us. If they catch you, they’ll pin it on you. What are you going to do?”

  “I don’t know,” I say in a small voice.

  “I do,” she says, suddenly sounding determined. She picks up the knife from where I have dropped it and wipes my prints off.

  “You can hide in my room for now,” she says, “until I figure out a way to smuggle you out of here.”

  Gratefully, I nod my head.

  Do you trust this one? says the little voice. Be sure.

  I am sure, I tell her.

  I go back to Ms Celeste and gently close her eyes. It feels awful to leave her here like this, all alone, but Lila urges me to hurry. She makes me wash the blood off my hands. She makes me change out of my bloody skirt and put on a similar one of Ms Celeste’s.

  We leave the room and shut the door firmly behind us. We hurry down the stairwell and wait until our corridor is empty. We both sprint to her door, and she hurriedly unlocks it, and ushers me in. Once we are on the other side, and she has safely locked us both in, I collapse onto my knees, panting.

  I am sobbing, I realize. I must look a state. My heart is still pounding painfully, and if it were not for Lila I have no idea what on earth I would have done. I had lost all my wits up there. I would probably have stayed crying over Ms Celeste until they caught me.

  I turned to look at Lila, to thank her, and something in her face makes the words freeze on my tongue. She looks pleased. Victorious even. She is leaning against the door, her weight against it, her hand possessively on the handle. Not to keep someone out. But to keep me in.

  I open my mouth to ask her what is going on. But then she glances to her bed and I notice the man sitting there. It is Freddie.

  “Took you long enough,” he says.

  “She wasn’t at breakfast,” she says irritably. “But luckily I caught sight of her.”

  Freddie gets up from the bed and comes towards us. The bruises around both of his eyes have blackened and a cut is on his nose where Storm had broken it. He smiles coldly, and I see two of his front teeth are missing.

  “Bitch,” he says. “Your boyfriend did this to me.”

  And then his fist punches into the side of my head and I blackout. When I regain consciousness, I am being carried. I am slung over someone’s shoulder like a sack.

  Be still, the little voice says urgently. Don’t let them know you are awake.

  But I am already squirming. I realize that my arms are bound together behind my back. My ankles are tied together tightly. There is a thick wad of cloth inside my mouth and tape over my lips, and something is over my eyes.

  “The bitch is awake,” says Freddie.

  The proximity of his voice tells me that it is him who is carrying me.

  I moan, trying to scream against the gag, and I thrash my body wildly. Freddie’s hand tightens cruelly across the back of my thighs, his nails cutting into my skin. He jerks the bindings around my ankles so hard that it hurts.

  “Be quiet, bitch,” he says. “Or I’ll hit you again.”

  “There was no need to knock her out,” says Lila. “I could have persuaded her to come with us quietly.”

  “Yeah, like you persuaded her last night?”

  “That wasn’t my fault,” she snaps. “She got spooked.”

  I moan again, louder this time, trying to plead for Lila to help me.

  She won’t help you, says the little voice.

  “Keep the bitch quiet,” hisses Freddie.

  “Hush, Diana,” Lila says. “It’s all going to be okay. I promise.”

  You must still be in the castle, says the little voice.

  She’s right. Why else would they be afraid people will hear us? I thrash my body vigorously, moaning loudly against the tape over my mouth. Freddie dumps me on the floor. He punches me on the side of the head again. I black out.

  The next time I regain consciousness, I am careful to stay still and quiet. My head is pounding from where Freddie has hit me on the same spot twice. My skull feels tender. Stickiness on the side of my face tells me that I am bleeding. Freddie is bundling me into the trunk a car. He leaves me lying curled in that cramped space.

  I feel the presence of someone hovering near my head. It is Lila, checking if I am breathing. She notices that I am awake.

  “Be good,” she tells me. “This doesn’t have to hurt.”

  I hear the driver’s side door slam shut, and know that Freddie has climbed into the driver’s seat. The car starts.

  I murmur against my gag quietly, trying to catch Lila’s attention without Freddie hearing.

  “Stop that,” she snaps. “Don’t do anything stupid. This is for your own good.”

  I mumble louder this time, trying to demand for her to tell me why she is doing this. The gag drowns out my words. I nearly choke on it.

  “Are you shutting that trunk or not?” Freddie snaps at Lila.

  “I’m coming with you,” she says.

  “You can’t! You’re friends. If you leave the same night she disappears, they’ll know you were in on it. We agreed you’d stay here. You’re supposed to be my God-damned alibi!”

  “Screw your alibi.” She shuts me into the trunk. Then I hear more muffled noises as she climbs in to the passenger seat and slams the door shut.

  The car starts. Feeling suffocated, I listen hard. Freddie is voicing savage complaint, and then suddenly he squeaks in pain. The car swerves sharply before correcting course. After that Freddie shuts up.

  Serves him right, says the little voice, sounding satisfied. She doesn’t sound bothered that we might have crashed.

  I kick my feet against sides of the trunk but after some minutes I give up, realizing I have sunk into hysteria. I breathe deeply to calm myself. Brute force isn’t going to work.

  The drive is long. The car’s tires bounce over rough country roads, sending sharp pains through my aching head. I flex my ankles and my arms, straining against my bonds, trying to work them loose. It does not work. By the time we arrive at our destination, my skin is raw and the bleeding is all I have to show for my efforts.

&nbs
p; Freddie gets out of the car and comes to trunk to get me. I try to breathe deeply to control my panic, but the sodden cloth in my mouth chokes me. I am tied up and helpless and he is completely in control. When he tries to lift me, I kick out wildly, trying to catch him in the head and knock him out.

  That’s my girl, says the voice.

  But Freddie grabs hold of my legs before they can deliver the blow. He punches me in the stomach, driving the air from my lungs. He drags me by the legs, pulling me out from the car bodily. When he puts his hands on my hips to lift me, I squirm wildly, repulsed by his touch.

  He spits on me. “Bitch, you think I want you now? You’re nothing now. A repulsive piece of crap. And you’re going to get what you deserve.”

  He lifts me out of the car, and I scream and scream. But the screams are muffled and all they do is choke me.

  Keep calm, commands the voice. Think.

  “Screech all you like,” Freddie says. “There’s no one around to hear.”

  I know that what he says is true. There is a muffled quality to the sound around us, and the breeze and rustling leaves and the crunching twigs under his feet tells me that we are in a forest. Lila is walking a few steps ahead of us. She has no intention of helping me.

  I can’t keep calm. I moan in despair. My heart is beating against my ribs like a rocket. I feel like a trapped animal that knows it is being taken to the slaughter. We come to a stop, and I hear the sound of Lila rapping her knuckles on a wooden door. Someone opens the door. I twist and writhe in sheer panic as Freddie carries me into what must be a house or a cabin.

  Freddie throws me onto a bed. The flimsy mattress bounces beneath me. Somebody rips the blindfold from my eyes. I blink to adjust to the sudden light. The blurry outline of a man is looming over me.

  “Hello, my dear,” says Dr Carrington.

  Chapter 39

  DIANA

  I lay on the bed gasping for breath through my nose. Even with the tape over my mouth, I try to say, “You evil bastard!”

  The words come out completely muffled, but Dr Carrington seems to understand them. His brows shoot up towards his hairline. He tuts at me disapprovingly.

  “We’ll have none of that language. I see you’ve picked up bad habits while you been away. We’ll have to train you out of that.”

  He smooths a strand of hair away from my face almost tenderly. I can see victory in his eyes. He strokes my cheek, and his fingers move down my throat slowly. He is touching me like I am his property, a piece of flesh, and there is nothing I can do about it.

  “Exquisite,” he says.

  “You freak!” I snarl at him, but my muffled shout only makes him smile. I want him to rip the tape off my mouth so that I can scream my rage at him, and he contemplates the tape as if he knows exactly what I am thinking. But then he only smiles, letting me know that he is refusing to give me what I want. He is in control here, and he enjoys having me helpless and unable to speak.

  His finger traces my collarbone. “You’re my property now,” he says. “You know that, don’t you?”

  He unfastens my top button. “But this is an ugly uniform. I had hoped to see you in something more alluring.” He unfastens the second button.

  I scream at him to take his hand off me. I give him a fiery look, promising retribution the second I am out of these bindings. He chuckles. I close my eyes in helpless fury so that I don’t have to see his smug face.

  Don’t close your eyes, the little voice hisses. Keep them open. Look for an opportunity.

  “There is no need to be shy, my dear,” Dr Carrington says. “You will soon grow accustomed to all this. In time, you will enjoy your new life.”

  His hand strokes back up my throat and grasps my chin. “Open your eyes, my dear. No one wants a shrinking violet. They pay for your sort to provide more… proactive delights.”

  My eyes snap open to glower at him.

  “That’s better,” he says. “I much preferred you in yesterday’s dress. You looked ravishing. A pity Lila failed to bring you to me then.”

  His words make me feel sick with anger. Yesterday I had been so naive, so stupid. I had worn that glimmering midnight and silver ballgown for Storm, and danced with him, and sent forth my rumor about a killer.

  I’d made a predator feel hunted and I had galvanized him into action. And now Ms Celeste was dead.

  And where is Storm now? Is he safe? Is Xander?

  I have always hated the idea of violence, but now I thrash on the bed, fiercely glaring to show Dr Carrington what I think of him. If I was un-gagged, I would have happily bitten his fingers off.

  Help me, I beg the little voice. Please!

  I will, she purrs. If you let me.

  “Yesterday wasn’t my fault,” Lila mutters sulkily. “She wouldn’t come with me. She was rushing to meet Constantine Storm.”

  “Storm?” says Dr Carrington, his eyes narrowing. “That actor’s son?”

  “He’s a detective now,” she says. “Special Agent probably if he’s on the DCK case.”

  “What?” he snaps. “Why didn’t you tell me this before?”

  “I only just found out. She told me.” Lila jerks her head towards me.

  “He’s a Special Agent?” says Freddie sounding furious. “You never said that!”

  “Shut up,” says Lila.

  “What DCK case?” demands Freddie, beginning to sound panicked. He looks from Lila to Dr Carrington. “What case? I never agreed to this sort of thing!”

  “Keep your stupid mouth shut and no one has to know,” says Lila cruelly.

  “Did you give him any reason to suspect you?” says Dr Carrington.

  “Definitely not,” says Lila, sounding petulant. “The only person who thinks I am her friend is her. I told all the other girls that I was only keeping her sweet because she seemed to know Xander Daxx.”

  I shoot a betrayed look at her. I had trusted her. I had confided everything to her, about life with the Coltons, about my feelings for Storm. I cannot understand why she would do this to me.

  Instead of looking guilty, she gives me a defiant look. She is standing next to Dr Carrington as he bends over me. Now she slides her arms around his waist and tugs gently until he is standing upright. She wraps her arms around his neck and kisses him passionately. She presses her body against his and runs her fingers through his hair. It is a display, a show of possessiveness for me to see.

  He pushes her away from him. “Not now,” he says abruptly.

  She pouts. “Please,” she says softly. “I haven’t seen you for so long.”

  He frowns at her, saying impatiently, “Why are you here? You were supposed to stay at the castle.”

  She wraps her arms around his waist again. “But I want to stay here with you,” she pleads.

  He pushes her away roughly. “Don’t be stupid. It is too suspicious for you to be away. You have to go back and make them think you were never missing.”

  He glares at Freddie. “What are you waiting for?”

  Freddie glowers at him. “No way. I’m done with this. I don’t work for you. I only brought the bitch here because of what she did to me.”

  Dr Carrington stalks up to him until their faces are just inches apart. “That’s right. You brought her here,” he says quietly. “And if you give me any reason to believe that you’ve become a liability…”

  He doesn’t finish his sentence. He purposefully lets it trail off. He gives Lila a single glance. She smiles, and then she takes hold of Freddie’s hand. She slides her bare palm up the length of his forearm, her skin touching his.

  First Freddie’s mouth drops open and he stares at her wide eyed. Then he seems to sway towards her, as if mesmerized. Both of her hands are on his forearms now. She clenches them, a hungry look on her face. Freddie gives a cry of pain. His legs buckle and he drops to his knees. He tries to wrench his arms out of her grip, but he seems to have lost all his strength.

  His skin goes shiny and pale, and veins on his face bulge s
tarkly blue under his skin. He squirms but doesn’t seem able to move away from her.

  “That’s enough!” says Dr Carrington.

  Lila abruptly lets go of Freddie. He sags, forehead on the floor, gasping for breath. “What did you do to me?” he pants. “What was that?”