Fantasy Life (15 page)

She had developed a lot of nervous ticks in the last three decades, but the hand-wringing bothered her the most.

She stopped, wiped her hands against her jeans, and then stuck her thumbs in her back pockets. Her feet were bare, and the stone beneath them was cold, but she didn’t go get shoes. For one thing, her bedroom was too far away—three stories and half a wing from the entry—and for another, she wanted to seem casual when Lyssa arrived.

Lyssa, who should have been here by now. Cassie had sensed her hours ago. Lyssa and Emily were exhausted, pushed beyond their limits, and heading here because it was the end of the earth.

At least, that’s what Emily thought. Then Cassie shut her granddaughter out of her mind. People didn’t like it when Cassie knew what they were thinking, and the last thing she wanted to do was alienate her granddaughter.

Grandmothers and granddaughters were supposed to have better relationships than mothers and daughters. Of course, considering the relationship that Cassie and Lyssa had, any relationship would be better.

Cassie looked at the black stone walls, glistening in bright overhead lights. Cliffside House was made of basalt, black lava rock that shined as if it had hardened wet.

The legend was that Cliffside House had risen from the cliff it was built on, in the middle of a thunderstorm, appearing like a castle in the fog. The legend first came from the local tribes that wandered up and down the coast. There were reports of Cliffside House as far back as 1800, before anyone had settled here, but Cassie always believed that what people saw was just the basis for the mansion that some crazy person had built.

Or she would like to believe it, if it weren’t for one thing.

Cliffside House always changed.

The county had stopped trying to list how many rooms Cliffside House had or how many stories it rose from the side of the cliff face. On the 1920 tax records, the first that listed Cliffside House as Buckingham property, the house was recorded as two stories high with twelve rooms along with an indoor bath. By the 1940 records, the house had five stories and forty rooms, with five indoor baths.

Cassie had never found all five bathrooms, but she knew the house had six stories, at least when she was a child. Now the
house went no higher than four. Her bedroom, in the South Tower, was on the house’s highest level.

That room had been hers since she was a child, and she could remember going out her bedroom door to the circular stone staircase and going up a flight to her own grandmother’s room, just above hers. When Grandma Iris died, Cassie no longer had a reason to go up there. One afternoon, when she missed her grandmother greatly, Cassandra started up the stairs, only to find that they ended around the corner from her room. A flat piece of black stone covered the top step like a lid on a jar.

Cassandra had placed a light in her window, then gone outside and looked at the house from a distance. She saw her light at the top of the tower. Her grandmother’s room was missing as if it had never been.

Cassie had lived through other strange things in this house. But the main part of the house remained the same. The Great Hall, kitchen, formal dining room, and family room on the first level, a spectacular living room one level down, and a full basement below that. Then there were the first-tier bedrooms on the level above the main level, and the branching staircases that led to the tower rooms.

Athena slept in the North Tower, and Cassie in the South. When she was little, Lyssa had also slept in the South Tower, but Cassie knew Lyssa wouldn’t want to be that close to her now.

Lyssa and Emily would have bedrooms on the first tier, the stately old rooms that Athena once used to impress guests.

Cassie had spent the last two weeks cleaning the rooms, refurnishing them from other parts of the house, and making an afghan for Emily. Cassie had also spent a good part of her winter savings on new bedspreads, sheets, and towels for the bathroom that adjoined the two rooms.

Athena had no idea what Cassie was doing—they lived in the same house, but they rarely spent time together—and
probably hadn’t visited the south-wing, first-tier bedrooms since the last visitor nearly a year ago.

Cassie should have told Athena that Lyssa and Emily were corning, but she didn’t know how. Athena would want to take over the preparations. She would have wanted to redesign the rooms, picking different ones from Cassie, of course. And she would have rehired that damn contractor to modernize a bathroom, just like he had modernized the kitchen.

Cassie hated the new kitchen. It no longer felt like part of the house. It looked like something out of
Architectural Digest
instead of the warm, cozy place it had been during her first four decades of life.

Her hands were clasped together again, wringing, wringing. She pulled them apart. Her fingers ached. She glanced over her shoulder at the phone, sitting on an alcove that jutted from the stone wall.

No one had called her. So far everything had to be all right.

But the radio said the storm had gotten bad enough to wash away roads in the corridor. Anchor Bay was isolated—no way in and no way out. Maybe Lyssa and Emily were staying in Portland tonight.

But that didn’t account for the feeling that they were just a few blocks away, the feeling Cassie had had for more than an hour now.

The front door opened, and she jumped. Athena walked in, holding a rainslicker over her head. The slicker was black, just like the night, and dripped all over the stone floor.

Athena looked at Cassie in surprise. “What are you still doing up?”

Usually Cassie went to her tower when she got home. She had a kitchenette in there, and she often made herself dinner. Then she’d watch television, read, or knit until it was time for bed. Sometimes she’d go out on the widow’s walk, especially on nights like this, and watch the waves.

Cassie shoved her hands in the back pockets of her jeans. The air blowing in the front door was cold; she could feel it through the heavy sweater she had put on. Her toes had become little blocks of ice.

“I’m waiting,” she said, and braced herself.

Athena put the slicker in the stone walk-in closet that was an original part of the room. Cassie made it a point not to use that closet. She had never found the back of it, and the entire thing gave her the creeps.

Athena, however, had no fears of anything in Cliffside House. She came out of the closet, rubbing her hands on her black pants. They were lint-free and still had a crease running down each leg, with no wrinkles in the back.

Somehow, Athena had perfected the art of looking regal, no matter how tired she was, no matter how hard she had worked, or how long she had been awake.

Cassie knew her mother had been up since dawn. They had collided in the kitchen. Cassie had decided to make a coffee cake and needed the full stove. She had been unable to sleep, worrying about Lyssa and Emily. She had known they were on the road somewhere, but at that point, she hadn’t known where.

Athena had come downstairs fully dressed to make her own breakfast. Instead, she had a fresh piece of coffee cake, and a cup of coffee, complimenting Cassie on her cooking, something Athena rarely did.

Athena had looked as refreshed then as she did now. As far as Cassie was concerned, her mother hadn’t aged a day since Cassie’s earliest memories of her. Athena hadn’t shrunk as she got older. She was still six feet tall, and slim, with her sharp, aristocratic features making her look more handsome than beautiful.

The only thing about Athena that had changed in the past few decades was that she had finally let her hair turn its natural
silver. She still wore it in a chignon on top of her head, like the Gibson girl she was too young to be, and when she dressed up, soft coils of it fell across her face. Usually, though, she pulled the knot back tightly, allowing her perfect bone structure to give her face extra authority.

Not that Athena needed it. She was always the most commanding presence in any room she entered.

Even in the large Great Hall, with the expensive bouquets of flowers that Cassie had scattered around the room, Athena dominated. She put her hands on her hips and studied Cassie.

“Waiting,” Athena said, even though a good three minutes had passed since Cassie’s comment. “Waiting for Lyssa, then?”

Cassie felt even colder than she had a moment ago. “Is she here?”

“Gabriel is driving her through Bay Hills so that she can get here. Highway 19 has been flooded all day. Don’t you listen to the news?”

Cassie did, but she had no idea where Lyssa was on the road. She also expected her daughter, who had grown up here, to know the hazards of winter travel in the mountains.

“You should have warned her about the weather.” Athena’s tone was sharp. Her blue eyes flashed. She was obviously very angry, although she never raised her voice.

Cassie still felt as if she were five years old when confronted with her mother’s anger. “I never spoke to her.”

That stopped Athena. “What?”

Cassie shrugged one shoulder, her hands still stuffed in her back pockets. “She never called. We only talked a few times after—you know, Reginald died.”

Athena’s dark eyebrows met over the bridge of her nose. “Good Lord, Cassandra, she’s your daughter, and she’s in trouble. What were you thinking? You should have been there for her.”

And so it began. Cassie’s fingers curled, the denim material
straining against her skin. Whatever she did wasn’t good enough, not for Athena, and certainly not for Lyssa.

“She’s the one who wanted no contact with me, Mother,” Cassie said. “That last conversation, she made it clear she didn’t have time for me.”

“Then you should have spoken to the child. Lord knows, she’s going to need some sympathy.”

The child. Athena couldn’t even be bothered to learn her great-granddaughter’s name, or to remember it this late at night.

“Emily,” Cassie said.

“Well, you should have spoken to her.”

“I tried. Lyssa wouldn’t put her on the phone.”

Athena made a sound of disgust. “Yet you knew they were coming. I thought you promised Lyssa you weren’t going to pry into her mental affairs.”

Somehow Cassie managed to stretch the denim pockets enough to accommodate her fists. “I didn’t pry.”

“Then how did you know?”

“You of all people shouldn’t have to ask that question, Mom,” Cassie said.

Athena harrumphed and stalked past Cassie. Athena’s fashionable ankle boots left wet spots on the floor that Cassie had so carefully cleaned that afternoon.

“Well, if they’re going to be here soon, we should have something warm for them,” Athena said as she stepped into the kitchen.

Of course, Cassie had already taken care of that. The Mr. Coffee held a warming pot of decaf, and Cassie’s favorite teapot sat in the middle of the new table, a tea cozy she had made when Lyssa was little keeping the ceramic warm. The teakettle kept water hot on the stove, just in case Emily wanted some hot chocolate, and cookies sat on the sideboard, laid out as if there were going to be a party.

Athena stopped and surveyed the entire thing. Cassie stopped behind her, surprised, as always, by the look of the kitchen. Its chrome and steel appliances made it seem colder than she liked. They did play nicely off the shiny black walls and the black-and-silver countertops. The teardrop-shaped lights that descended from the ceiling made the entire place look classy in a hot Los Angeles-nightclub kind of way that Cassie despised.

“I see you’re ahead of me here too,” Athena said.

“Don’t be mad, Mom.” Cassie wished she could take the sentence back. How many times had she said that in her life? “Lyssa’s my daughter. She has the right to come back here.”

Athena whirled, a gesture that always reminded Cassie of her mother’s various powers—and how much more dramatic they were than Cassie’s telepathy.

“You think I don’t want Lysandra here?” Athena said. “I’ve missed her every day since her graduation. She belongs here, Cassandra, just like you do.”

Funny way of showing it, Mother,
Cassie thought.
You never once visited her, never went to her wedding, never met her daughter. Hard to believe you love Lyssa as much as the two of you claim.

But Cassandra never said a word, and she never let those thoughts out, not once, because she knew how dangerous they were. Once spoken, they could never be taken back.

“I just wish you told me she was coming. We could have prepared a room, gotten everything just perfect, the way she likes it. It’ll be good to have her in the house again. Lyssa always added an energy that we lacked.”

“I got a room ready, Mom. Two rooms. You forget Emily.”

Athena’s lips tightened. “I haven’t forgotten.”

“But you’re not pleased about her.”

“The child doesn’t bode well for Anchor Bay. You’ve known that from the day you heard about the marriage. I distinctly recall you asking me how you should tell your daughter not to procreate with that Walters boy.”

Cassie’s cheeks heated. She had asked Athena that, but it hadn’t been so much a premonition as selfish concern. In many ways, Cassie held the Walters family responsible for Daray’s death, and she didn’t want Lyssa to know that—especially not if a baby was involved.

“It’s all past, Mother,” Cassie said. “Emily’s here, and she’s part of the family. She’s a good girl. You’ll see.”

“A good girl who might have killed her father.” Athena stepped deeper into the kitchen and stopped in front of the Mr. Coffee. “Caffeinated?”

“Not at this time of night.”

“Then it’s not coffee.” Athena rummaged through the cupboards. Her fingers were the only things about her that looked old. They had age marks and swollen knuckles from an arthritis that Athena never complained about. But she continued to wear the diamond ring in an art deco setting, even though her finger sometimes swelled around it. “We have another machine, right?”

“Mom, you don’t need—”

“I don’t need my daughter telling me what I need.” Athena sighed and rested her forehead against the cupboard doors. Cassie could barely reach those cupboards. She was shorter than her mother by nearly half a foot.