Forever and Always

by Jude Deveraux

  And there, lying on the floor, was Darci. She had on some long white robe, her hands crossed over her breast. She looked like a sacrificial virgin in a bad B movie.

  With my heart pounding in my throat, I ran to her and picked her up. Until I touched her, I didn’t realize I’d expected her body to be cold. When she was warm to my touch I almost cried with joy. As I picked her up in my arms and pulled her to me, I sat down on the filthy old floor, putting my back against a wall. I’d played a cop in too many episodes to trust my back to an open door.

  “Darci,” I said, smoothing her hair back from her face. I kissed her forehead, then her cheek, then her chin. My lips hovered over hers.

  “Don’t even think about it,” she whispered when my lips started to touch hers.

  “You’re alive!” I said.

  “Did you think I was dead? Were you going to kiss a dead person?”

  “I was going to run off with one this evening,” I said as Darci got off my lap. She was rubbing her head and blinking a lot.

  “What dead person did you want to run away with?” She looked at me sharply. “You didn’t see Amelia by yourself, did you?”

  I wasn’t going to let her get out of telling me about herself. “Would you mind telling me what happened to you at dinner, and why you aren’t in your own bed now, and who’s the old blind man in my room?”

  “Henry went to see you?”

  She’d avoided all my questions. Before I could say another word, her eyes opened wide, the last of the sleep out of them. “This house is on fire.”

  “That’s what Henry said.”

  “He told you this house is on fire, but all you’re doing is sitting here?” She got up but then had a dizzy spell and grabbed on to me.

  “Darci, you’re in no shape to deal with this. I want you to go downstairs and get out of this house immediately. Get in the rental car, find a telephone and call—”

  I stopped because she was running out the door. “The women are still in their rooms asleep,” she said.

  I ran after her. “Their doors are locked, and where’s the fire now?” As soon as I said it, I knew. I could smell the unmistakable odor of smoke. It came from upstairs in the attic.

  “Open the doors and get the women out,” Darci ordered as she put her foot on the bottom stair.

  I caught her arm. “No, you don’t. You don’t go anywhere without me.”

  “Someone’s up there. I have to get her out.” Her voice was urgent. “Linc! Let me go!”

  I didn’t release her. I meant it when I said she wasn’t going anywhere without me. She looked at my hand and made it burn. I held on. The burn grew worse. I didn’t let up. My eyes watered; my knees grew weak; my stomach clenched. But I didn’t let go. I’d come to know Darci Montgomery and I knew that she wouldn’t continue giving pain to a good guy, to me.

  I was right. The fire in my hand stopped as abruptly as it had started and I’d not let go of her arm.

  “I have to—” she began, but then she turned away from the stairs and ran down the hall, me right behind her.

  I knew what she wanted. I held on to her arm as I kicked open the nearest door. Mrs. Hemmings was sound asleep in her bed. “Help me search for her cell phone,” I said, and two seconds later Darci had it. Moments later I’d called the fire department.

  “They’re on their way,” Darci said as she ran out the door toward the stairs up. “They’ll be okay. I see no death around the women.”

  I ran up the stairs after Darci and stopped her just as she was about to open the door to the room where I’d spent the night with Ingrid, where I’d found my son’s toy. “It’s hot,” I yelled. “Don’t touch that door.”

  “But how—?” Darci asked, meaning, How do we get into the room?

  I wanted to ask her who was in there that was so worth saving, but I didn’t. We’d lost too much time already to talk about anything.

  The door to the next room wasn’t hot, so I turned the knob and it opened and we went in. For now, the fire was on the other side of the wall. My guess was that the fire was at the end toward the door, so maybe the other end of the room near the windows was free of fire. Maybe there was enough air in that end of the room that a person would still be alive.

  But how to get into the room? If I went out the window in this room, across the roof, and into the next window, it would take too long.

  My thoughts had taken only seconds to reach the conclusion that there was only one way to get into that room quickly. Darci had to do what she’d done the night I’d been with Ingrid: She was going to have to use her mind to open the wall.

  I couldn’t waste my time with words that took too long to say, so I put my hands on Darci’s shoulders, her back to my front, and in an instant I sent the image to her that she had to open that wall.

  “But I can’t do that by myself. I need—”

  I tightened my grip on her shoulders. We didn’t have time for this “I can’t” garbage.

  I knew I couldn’t help her, but maybe my presence would give her support. I pulled her closer to me and my hands dug into her shoulders until I was sure I was hurting her.

  I could feel the tension in her body. She became as stiff as steel. “Come on, Darci baby, you can do it,” I said, and her body tightened even more. “Where the hell are you, Devlin?” I said through my teeth.

  I felt more than heard his laughter, then when I looked at the wall, I saw the flowers in the wallpaper become eyes. They crinkled up in laughter. I shook my head to clear it, never letting go of Darci’s shoulders. I looked back at the wallpaper, the eyes blinked twice, then changed back to flowers. As far as I could tell, Devlin the Shape-Changer was here and he’d changed himself into wallpaper.

  I conjured up an image that told Darci Devlin was here helping her and did what I could to send it to her. I didn’t want her to know he was playing tricks with the wallpaper, so I sent her the vision that he was standing behind me, looking normal, his strong hands on my shoulders.

  I don’t know if I had anything to do with it or not, but the wall began to open. When the wall was open only about a foot high, I felt Darci move under my hands. She was planning to wriggle through that space all by herself—without me. She had the advantage on me that she had unbelievable mind powers, but I was a lot bigger and a lot stronger than she was. I knew she could paralyze me or give me a headache, but I also knew that she couldn’t do two things at once.

  I wouldn’t release her shoulders and I sent her a vision of my going through the wall with her. I felt her tense, as though she wanted to argue with me, but I guess she decided not to waste time. She concentrated more and the wall opened wider. Seconds later, we were on our bellies and snaking into the room.

  It was Sylvia Murchinson on the floor, passed out from the smoke. Fire licked around the door. It wasn’t too big and too hot, yet. Holding my breath, I grabbed bed-clothes and began to hit the fire.

  Behind me, Darci was over Sylvia, and at one point I saw Darci giving the woman mouth-to-mouth. The second Darci had turned her attention elsewhere, the hole in the wall closed, which was good because an increase in oxygen would have fanned the flames.

  As soon as the fire was out, coughing and choking, I opened the door, then I ran to the window, unlocked it and pushed it open. I took a few deep breaths, then looked down at Darci. She was leaning against the window seat, breathing the clean air. Opening the wall had taken a lot out of her.

  Beside her, still on the floor, but now opening her eyes, was Sylvia. It looked as though Darci had saved the woman’s life.

  As Sylvia began to come to her senses, she reached out to Darci, but Darci pulled her arm back, not letting the older woman touch her.

  I remembered that it was Sylvia who’d talked to Darci at dinner and afterward Darci had been catatonic. Yet Darci had saved this woman’s life. She may have saved her life, even given her mouth-to-mouth, but Darci wasn’t allowing the woman to touch her.

  “Let’s get out of here,”
I said. Since Sylvia wasn’t in any shape to walk, I picked her up and ran for the open door, pausing to look back at Darci. She was getting up but she was having difficulty. My inclination was to drop Sylvia and go get Darci, but my conscience wouldn’t let me.

  “Go to my room,” Darci said, sounding like a hundred-year-old woman. “He’s in the basement now, lighting fires there.” Before I could speak, she said, “Get everyone out of the house. I can hold him, but I can’t hold the fire.”

  Opening the wall had exhausted her, but she still had to paralyze a man in the basement.

  With Sylvia in my arms, I ran down the stairs, and by the time I got to the bottom the woman was stroking my arms and neck, running her hands over my chest. I smelled booze and I wondered if she’d been on the floor in the room as much from being drunk as from smoke inhalation.

  “You rescued me,” she said. “You saved my life. I felt your kiss and I knew—”

  “Darci saved you, not me,” I said and was sickened by her.

  At that Sylvia gave a little laugh, which sent her coughing. We were in Darci’s bedroom now, so I dropped the woman on the bed and went to the doorway. I was going to get Darci, but Sylvia’s words halted me.

  “That proves she isn’t the Hillbilly Honey.”

  Turning, I stared at the woman on the bed. “What does that mean?”

  “Last night I told her it was me who coined the phrase and that I got my husband to publish the book about her. If it was her, she would have let me die.” She seemed to think this was a great joke.

  “Murchinson,” I said, realizing who Sylvia was.

  “Howard Murchinson, the owner of the tabloid.”

  “One and the same.”

  “And you—” I couldn’t think more about what she’d just told me, and if she said another word I might kill her. I had to leave the room. Darci was at the head of the stairs, sitting there, her eyes glazed. I knew she was using her powers to hold the man in the basement. I didn’t want to break her concentration but I did want to get her downstairs closer to me.

  I picked her up, carried her downstairs, and put her on a chair in the hallway. As far as I could tell she never broke her concentration.

  I looked at the long corridor full of locked doors. How did I open the doors in a hurry? I didn’t have time to break them all down.

  I went back to Darci’s bedroom. Sylvia had pulled the coverlet around her and was peacefully sleeping. It wasn’t easy to tamp down my hatred of her. What she’d done to Darci—No! I couldn’t think about that now.

  “Get up,” I said, pulling her out of bed.

  “I’m tired. I want to sleep.”

  I leaned over her. “You get up and you help me get the other women out or so help me God I’ll toss you out that window.”

  She blinked at me a couple of times and looked as though she was going to protest, but she got out of bed.

  “Do you know where keys to the rooms are?”

  “Yeah, but why do you need them?” she asked, yawning.

  I shoved her shoulder and pushed her toward the doorway. I wanted to ask her a lot of questions about the room upstairs and why she’d been locked inside with a fire. I wanted to ask about who was in the basement, but I didn’t have time.

  Sylvia walked ahead of me with the air of a martyr, of someone being persecuted unjustly. “I should be in a hospital, you know,” she said. “I should—” She stopped when she saw Darci sitting on a chair in the hall. I had to admit that Darci looked almost as strange as she was. She was wearing a long white robe with a gold belt and little gold sandals. She was sitting utterly rigidly and her eyes were narrow slits.

  “What is her problem?” Sylvia asked, as though she and I were friends.

  “There’s a fire in the basement,” I said calmly, “and if you don’t hurry up we’re all going to burn to death.”

  Without a word, Sylvia turned on her heel and started for the down staircase. If there was a fire she was going to get herself out and the rest of us be damned.

  I pulled her back, said, “Keys,” then gave her another push that let her know I meant business.

  There was a portrait halfway down the hall. She grasped the frame, pulled hard, and it opened to reveal a rack full of numbered room keys.

  I shoved a handful at Sylvia. “Open the doors,” I said as I grabbed the rest of them.

  “I don’t know why you’re so mad at me,” she said, moving down the hall. “I’m the victim. I’m innocent in all of this. I was just paying for a service.”

  I didn’t have the time or inclination to discuss philosophy with her. She didn’t know I knew as much as I did. What I really knew was that my son couldn’t have been exploited if it weren’t for people like her. “Sylvia?” I said.

  “Yes, Jason,” she answered, smiling at me.

  “Don’t leave this house until the last person is out.” I didn’t say any more because I knew she got my meaning.

  I went into Mrs. Hemmings’s unlocked room first to wake her and tell her to get out, but the woman was so hard asleep I couldn’t wake her. I ran to the rooms of four other women but I couldn’t wake any of them. There was no way I had time to carry each of them down the stairs and out of the house.

  I met Sylvia in the center of the hallway. “Two are asleep, Delphia and Narcissa are gone,” she said.

  Darci, I thought. Only Darci could wake the women and get them out in time. But if she did that she’d have to release the person in the basement. Where oh where was the fire department?

  “Get a cell phone,” I ordered Sylvia. “Call the fire department again and the police.”

  “The police?”

  I gave her a look and she disappeared down the hall. I could smell the smoke now. The fire was eating up roomfuls of old trash in the basement.

  “Darci,” I said, touching her shoulder and sending her a vision of the urgency of needing to save the drugged women.

  She came out of her trance instantly. When she tried to stand, she nearly fell, but I caught her and the next second she was running from room to room. She put her hand on each woman’s forehead and the woman woke in a panic. Darci seemed to have filled them with the adrenaline of fear because they instantly jumped out of bed and started running for the stairs.

  I was too busy with Darci to give Sylvia any thought, but I assumed that since I didn’t see her she’d disobeyed me and run downstairs and outside to safety.

  When Darci and I reached the end of the hall, she said Narcissa and Delphia were already outside.

  “Let’s go!” I shouted, grabbed Darci’s hand and started running for the stairs, but halfway down, she wrenched away from me and began running up again. I caught her in her room. She was opening the window seat and withdrawing the bowling-ball bag. The crystal ball was inside.

  I grabbed her hand, but when I turned, I looked into the eyes of my agent Barney. Had his ghost come to help us?

  Since I was holding Darci’s hand she felt what I was thinking.

  “He’s real,” she said.

  My head reeled with thoughts. Barney was the only one who’d known my son was mine. He’d known my real name so it would have been an easy matter to find out about my grandmother’s abilities. And Barney had been the first to read the PI’s reports about my son. Suddenly I was sure I’d been given false reports.

  I glanced at Darci. She’d known a man had been killed in the fire in my agent’s office, and she’d known that Ingrid hadn’t meant to kill anyone. What Darci hadn’t known was that the man who’d burned to death hadn’t been my agent but some other man.

  Barney had a gun, which he pointed at me. “Do it again, missy, and I’ll kill him.”

  I assumed the “it” was Darci’s paralyzing of him. However, I guess he’d had enough experience with Darci’s abilities to know that her paralysis was gradual. When she’d done it to me I’d been tying her shoe. She’d paralyzed my body before it spread to my hands. That meant that if she began paralyzing Barney he’d have t
ime to pull the trigger.

  He looked Darci up and down. “With a mind like yours and my talents we could have made a fortune. But you already married one, didn’t you? Too bad you have to die with him.”

  I started to move away from Darci. It was a trick we’d used in my show, to put distance between the victims, but Darci held on to my hand. She seemed to want to see what I was thinking.

  I want to get him talking, I sent to her. I want to get him to tell me where my son is.

  “So, Barney,” I said, releasing Darci’s hand and moving toward the fireplace. There was a poker there. Behind him, the door was open and I could see smoke coming from downstairs. It wouldn’t be long now before we saw flames. “How ya been, Barney?”

  Barney gave a one-sided grin. “I always did like your sense of humor, kid. So why didn’t you tell me you had a grandmother who could make people sick? Give ’em a disease?”

  “I didn’t know she could,” I said, still moving, taking Barney’s gunsight with me and away from Darci. She was standing there, silent, staring, that big crystal ball in its bag hanging by her side. I wished I could will her to run as soon as I got Barney’s back to her.

  “So how’d you pull this off?” I asked, smiling at Barney like we were old friends.

  “Easy. You were always so easy to fool. You cared about gettin’ in bed with that two-timin’ girlfriend of yours and actin’ and that’s all. You left the rest up to me. I had a PI find out about that kid of yours. His mother moved him around so much because the kid could heal people. Like somethin’ out of the Bible. Little kid would fall on the playground and your kid would put his hands on the kid’s heart and the brat would get up and run away.”

  “So you decided to make money off him,” I said.

  “Oh yeah. Lots of money. I just had to figure out how. It wasn’t until your kid’s mother got a job here and I checked out the Barrister sisters that I got some ideas. Those two are into every scam goin’. There isn’t a con artist on earth who couldn’t take lessons from them.”

  I was inching closer to the fireplace. Darci was just standing there, now nearly at Barney’s back, and she was doing nothing. Her eyes weren’t narrowed so she wasn’t doing one of her voodoo spells. Instead she was just staring.