Aquamarine (14 page)

She’d paused halfway down the stairs, willing Teague to turn, knowing that he would, and that when he did, the look on his face would be worth every penny she’d spent on the dress.

He turned, then seemed to freeze for one endless moment. The look on his face wasn’t quite what she’d expected. Instead of appreciation and desire, there was incredulity and shock.

“Kirsten?” he said in a ragged voice. He blinked, then blinked again, as if he couldn’t believe his eyes. “Shea? What is this? A joke?”

She didn’t answer, though her gaze never left his for an instant. All her attention was focused on his beloved face. She couldn’t get enough of looking at him.

She seemed to float down the stairs and into his arms, her body as insubstantial as a dream. Still in that strange somnambulist state, she dragged his face down to hers and kissed him with all the force of her long-pent-up passion. Seven long years she’d hungered for this. Seven endless years lost in a limbo of yearning.

Teague drew back with a startled look. “Shea?” he whispered.

Kirsten smiled at him with Shea’s mouth and Shea’s dimple. “No, silly.” She pouted prettily. “Don’t you recognize me, Wolfman?”

His blood ran cold. He stared at her, still not believing.

She stiffened and frowned slightly. “You’re not happy to see me?”

“I—”
Happy
wasn’t the right word.

“I know I’m trespassing, but I had to say good-bye. Things ended so abruptly for me. For us.” Her mouth tightened. “I was murdered, Teague. The murderer has to pay.” She closed her eyes for a second. Then her eye
lids fluttered open again and she sighed softly. “I’ve missed you.”

It’s not really Kirsten
, he told himself. For some bizarre reason, Shea must be trying to trick him. He gripped her shoulders. “This isn’t funny.”

“It’s not meant to be.” Although her lips were curved in a gentle smile, her eyes were tragic. She ran the back of her hand along his cheek. “Must be a full moon,” she whispered.

His guts tied themselves in knots. “This can’t be.
You
can’t be,” he protested.

The look on her face was inexpressibly sad. “Can’t it? ‘There are more things in heaven and earth,’ “she quoted, then smiled ruefully. “Despite all the lies and the trickery, I truly did love you, Teague.” She kissed the tip of one finger, then pressed it to his lips. “Good-bye, Wolfman.”

Teague started to say something, but before he had a chance to utter a word, her face went blank and she crumpled, going limp in his arms like a marionette with broken strings.

When Shea regained consciousness, she was alone, stretched out on the sofa in front of the fireplace and wrapped in the soft folds of a mohair afghan. The hands of the grandfather clock stood at five after four. She’d been asleep for several hours.

“Teague?” she called. Her voice seemed to echo in the silence.

She sat up in a rush as she remembered the events immediately preceding her collapse. Had it been a
dream? Surely it had. She couldn’t have done what she’d done, said what she’d said. It wasn’t possible, was it?

“Teague?” She could hear the rising panic in her voice. Surely,
surely
, it had been a dream. She’d been thinking about Kirsten earlier, had been uneasy about trespassing in Kirsten’s room. Perhaps those brooding thoughts had triggered her strange dream.

She heard him coming before she saw him. “Shea, it’s all right. I’m here.” He ran down the stairs.

She struggled to put her fears into words. “I-I didn’t know where you were.” That sounded pretty lame. She sat up straighter, gripping her hands together tightly. “I had a bad dream. When I woke up, you were gone.”

“Not gone. I’ve been here all along. I just slipped upstairs for a minute to check on Mikey. She’s fine, by the way, snoring away like a buzz saw. I didn’t know kids could rip zees like that.” He edged closer, and she saw the wary expression in his eyes, so at odds with his casual tone.

Her throat tightened. “It wasn’t a dream, was it?” He didn’t say anything, but that was a kind of answer in itself.

Sinking down next to her, he wrapped his arms around her. She had an almost overpowering urge to dissolve against him in a soggy puddle of emotion, but she didn’t. She searched his face for the truth. “Teague, am I going crazy?”

“If you are, then apparently it’s a contagious form of madness.”

She grabbed him by the shirtfront as if she were a cop and he were an uncooperative witness. “Tell me what you saw!”

He gathered her hands in his, holding them against
his heart, which was pounding away beneath his shirt like a jackhammer. “I saw Kirsten. I looked up and there she was, staring at me through your eyes.”

“My God, Teague, what’s going on?” Her voice was a hoarse whisper.

“I’m not sure. Group hallucination?”

“Do you think so?” she asked hopefully. “I was afraid I’d been possessed, that it was only a matter of time before I saw my face plastered all over the covers of supermarket tabloids.” She felt edgy, restive, as if an electric charge were building in the room. She rubbed distractedly at her arms and was surprised to see the fine hairs standing on end.

“Do you remember what happened?” he asked.

Shea nodded. “She was in charge, but I was there—seeing, hearing,
feeling
everything.”

He gripped her shoulders. “Feeling what?”

“Joy at seeing you again after so long. Remorse for things she’d never be able to change. And underneath …”

“What?” He tightened his grip. His expression was strained, his eyes like chips of flint.

“Anger,” she said quietly. “A cold, implacable anger.”

“Anger?” His voice rose. “Kirsten’s angry with me?”

She shrugged his hands away, drew her knees up, and hugged them to her chest. “I don’t know. I don’t think so. What I sensed was more like a background emotion without any specific focus.” She shrugged again. “She was angry, but I don’t know with whom. I’m not sure she knows.”

He stood and began pacing the room. “Before Kirsten took over, did you have any warning? Or was it like
the ‘memories,’ just there without your realizing anything extraordinary had happened?”

Shea cocked her head to one side, remembering. “I heard a low hum.”

“A hum?”

“A vibration really, hard to describe.”

“I didn’t hear anything.”

“Glory said she didn’t, either.”

“You heard this noise before when Glory was with you?”

“Yes, when we were hauling the photo albums down from the attic. I heard a similar noise then that seemed to be coming from Kirsten’s room. Only Glory claimed she didn’t hear it. I thought she was lying.”

“Why would she do that?”

“Because she’d accidentally locked Beelzebub inside Kirsten’s room. I thought she was afraid she’d get in trouble. You know what her mother’s like.”

“Yes.”

Shea frowned. “What’s going on, Teague?”

He leaned against the mantel, rubbing his forehead as if it hurt. “I wish I knew. Ghostly visitations. Possession.” He gave a bark of unamused laughter. “Not topics I’ve given much thought to. I keep thinking there must be a logical explanation.”

“What happened tonight scared me. I was out of control. No.” She gazed at him helplessly, then shook her head and tried again, struggling to define the difference more exactly. “I was there, conscious of everything that was happening, but Shea wasn’t in control of the situation.
I
was in control, but
I
wasn’t Shea. For a little while I was Kirsten. I was Kirsten!” She stared at him, round-eyed.

Teague resumed his pacing. “There must be a logical explanation.”

“What? We’re both nuts?”

“Nah, unlikely.” One of his rare smiles softened the harsh contours of his face. “But I’m not convinced you’re possessed, either, whatever the hell that means.”

A muscle in her face twitched uncontrollably. “Then how do you explain—”

“What I said before—hallucination. It was late. Tired, stressed out, we were both in a highly suggestible state. After all the time you spent preparing for the masquerade, it’s hardly surprising that in a state of lowered resistance, you got a little mixed-up, identified too closely.”

She wasn’t convinced his theory was the correct one, but she didn’t feel like arguing anymore. “Maybe,” she said. Though it didn’t explain his experience.

“Right now what we both need most is sleep.”

Good idea. With a little luck, she might wake up to find this whole mess had been a nightmare.

Shea slept fitfully, plagued by nightmares, though the only one she remembered clearly was the one that woke her. She flew off the sofa like a rock from a slingshot, positive she was being chased by a freak with a chain saw. The scary part was that even after she was awake, she could still hear the chain saw roaring away. It took almost a full minute for her brain to accept the fact that it was just someone vacuuming a nearby room.

Teague had left a note propped against the brass bowl on the mantel. According to this brief missive Cynthia—and presumably Kevin—were still at the hospital, and Teague was at the job site.

Shea checked on Mikey. The little girl was still sound asleep, not surprising since it was only six-forty. Evidently the mad vacuumer hadn’t been at work up there yet.

Armed with scouring powder and toilet bowl cleaner, Glory Griffin burst in on Shea just as she was stepping
out of the shower. “I’m sorry,” mumbled the embarrassed girl, looking away.

Shea wrapped herself in an oversize bath towel. “My fault. I thought the door was locked.”

“I’ll come back later,” Glory said. “I didn’t mean to barge in on you. Mama told me to start with this bathroom. Usually I do the upstairs first.”

“I see.” And she did; Ruth was playing games.

“The schedule’s off today because Mr. Jack’s gone. Normally I can’t even run the vacuum until after ten.”

If the Griffins knew that Jack had been rushed to the hospital, then Ruth had darn well known that Shea was trying to sleep downstairs when she’d ordered Glory to rev up the vacuum cleaner. The woman was a menace.

Shea dressed, then headed for the kitchen, wondering what surprises Ruth had planned to enliven her breakfast. Orange juice in a dribble cup? An exploding toaster?

Mikey was perched on a stool at the counter downing her cereal with the same enthusiasm she had shown for her sundae the night before.

“That looks pretty good,” Shea said. “I’ll have the same, Ruth.”

The housekeeper glanced up from the sink, where she was sorting raspberries, and smirked. “Sorry. No more milk.”

“Great.” Shea studied the other woman. Ruth’s fat face looked smug. Had she deliberately used the last of the milk so there wouldn’t be enough for Shea’s breakfast? It seemed the sort of petty behavior she specialized in.

She peered through the contents of the big refrigerator. “No problem. I’ll just scramble myself an egg.”

“No eggs, either.”

“Toast?”

“No bread.”

“Okay,” Shea said, tiring of the game. “What
can
I have for breakfast?”

“There’s some prune juice in the refrigerator. And there’s plenty of cereal. Of course, like I said, the milk’s all gone.”

First the vacuum cleaner, now this. Shea ground her teeth. “At least if I don’t eat anything,” she said under her breath, “I don’t have to worry about being poisoned.”

“Poisoned?” The housekeeper froze. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Didn’t Cynthia tell you what the doctor said?” If Cynthia hadn’t said anything to Ruth, maybe she’d had a reason. Shea wished she’d kept her mouth shut.

The older woman scowled, but her anger couldn’t entirely mask the shadow of fear in her eyes. “Why don’t you fill me in?”

If Ruth was the one who’d poisoned Jack, she already knew more than Shea did, and if she was innocent, then what would it hurt to tell her? “Daddy was poisoned by something he ingested.”

“Ingested?”

“Ate.”

“I didn’t poison him!” Ruth protested quickly. Too quickly?

“I never suggested you did.”

“You said Mr. Jack was poisoned by something he ate, and I’m the cook.” Her voice rose shrilly.

Shea eyed the housekeeper warily. Why was she so worked up? Unless …

A muscle twitched beneath Ruth’s left eye. “I had no
reason to poison Mr. Jack. How could anybody believe I’d do such a wicked thing?”

She edged around the housekeeper. “Ruth, no one’s accused you of anything.”

The housekeeper crushed a handful of berries in one fat fist. The juice dripped through her fingers like blood. Slowly she turned on Shea. “You’re the one,” she said, her face twisted, her eyes wild. “You did it! You’re here to murder us all!” Her voice spiraled into a scream.

Mikey’s face paled.

The woman fell heavily to her knees, locking her pudgy hands together like a set of vise grips. Berry juice dripped down her arms. “Lord of lords, king of kings, this humble servant implores thee. Preserve us from the murdering impostor.”

“She’s not a nimposter,” Mikey said. “She’s Kirsten.”

Ruth’s eyes were bloodshot and distended. Prominent veins writhed like snakes beneath the skin of her sweaty, flushed forehead. “Miss Kirsten’s dead. I saw her.” She threw both arms in the air. “As God is my witness, I saw her poor white face staring up from the pit.” Spittle glistened at the corners of her mouth. She turned an accusing glare on Shea. “God will punish the wicked. You’ll burn in hell for what you’ve done!”

Mikey ran out, but Shea stood, transfixed, both fascinated and repulsed.

Alerted by the sound of her mother’s shrill invective, Glory burst into the room. She teetered in the doorway, halting at the sight of Ruth kneeling on the kitchen floor, her arms raised to heaven in supplication.

“Mama? Are you all right?”

Ruth ran through another impassioned prayer or two,
then groaned and collapsed, still raving, but with the volume tuned down to an unintelligible mumble.

Glory turned a worried face to Shea. “What happened? What did she say?”

Shea shrugged. “She swears I can’t be Kirsten because she saw Kirsten at the bottom of a pit.”