Jaden (St. Sebastians Quartet #1) (5 page)

"I have no intention of getting out of it. She'll be there, too."

CHAPTER FOUR

Jaden spent a relaxing evening on the deck. She'd managed to not think about the Man in White. That's what she called the entity that had haunted her for most of her life. She'd simply been too busy. After she'd gotten home from the grocery store she'd wasted entirely too much time trying to get the man from Main Street out of her head. Then she'd made an elaborate dinner. She'd eaten it down on the beach where she'd sat and watched the sun set. It had been a perfect first day in St. Sebastians, and she was excited for what the future might hold.

Tomorrow, she had to start giving serious thought to what she could do for money while she was here. She'd go into town and see if there were any prospects for an unemployed customer service rep. And she'd get started on her book, the great American novel.

It was closing in on midnight when she finally decided to go to bed. Only, when she got into her aunt's bedroom, the prospect of sleep began to unnerve her.

She walked around the room, looking for anything out of place, but found nothing. She checked the closet, the bathroom, even looked under the bed, but everything was normal.

"You're spooking yourself, Jaden," she told herself. "You haven't seen him since you got into town." Was it too much to hope that there was something about St. Sebastians that was keeping him away?

She changed into her nightgown and settled into bed with a book.

Her eyes shot open suddenly. Her skin was damp with sweat, she noticed this immediately. And she was afraid. But what was she afraid of?

That question didn't take long to answer. She wasn't in her aunt's bedroom anymore, she was away, in his world. In the Red World. And she knew what had awakened her. It had been the screams. The screams of the people around her. They were everywhere. There were faces, but too many of them for her to see any one face. And they were all in agony.

She was standing on a cliff, looking down into an abyss. It was a bit like the time her parent's had taken her to the Grand Canyon, only the sky was red here, and the canyon was filled with screaming people. At the bottom of the canyon was a river of fire. The flames danced high, the molten water rushing past and carrying the forms of writhing people.

She had to help them. She didn't know how, but she had to do something.

"You can't help them."

Fear washed over her anew. Had she really been so stupid to think she could escape him by running to the other side of the country? He was no mortal man that could be trapped by invisible borders. He was an entity, and as it turned out, he could go wherever she went.

She could see his blond hair. It was bright in this world of red, and beautiful and long. As beautiful as his face. He had the face of an angel. His beauty was why, when she'd been a child, she'd thought he was her guardian angel. Always there to watch over her, to protect her. It wasn't until years later that she'd learned he was no angel, but a demon. More evil and more vile than every movie monster she'd ever seen on the big screen.

"Let them go," she said, knowing he'd never do it.

"And why would I do that?"

"What you're doing is wrong. They're innocent, aren't they? They don't deserve this."

He stood slowly, towering over her. And he closed the scant distance between them. When he grabbed her face, she tried to shrink back, but his grip was too strong.

"Go home, Jaden. You don't belong here."

"I would love to wake up. Right now."

"Leave St. Sebastians. Or you'll end up like them."

He looked down into the abyss, at the river of fire. And then he pushed her over the cliff.

She was in free fall.

She screamed as she fell. She could feel the heat of the fire enveloping her, growing hotter the closer she came to the bottom.

She jerked upright in bed, still screaming.

She looked around the bedroom, blinking, expecting to see him. But he wasn't there. And she was awake.

She touched her jaw where he'd grabbed her and was surprised at the raw pain she felt. In a moment she was in the bathroom, looking at her reflection.

"What the hell?"

She stared at the bruises on her face, the circles of flesh where his fingertips had dug into her skin.

This had never happened before. She'd never carried an injury with her from a dream. Never. Did that mean he could touch her in the waking world, now? He'd never been able to before.

She looked at the clock and saw that it wasn't quite eight, yet. Still, she went to the kitchen. She opened cabinets, her hands shaking because she hadn't been able to shake off the feeling of falling and falling and falling. And the heat. Her skin had been melting. She'd felt her skin melting.

"Damn it!" she said, slamming a cabinet door shut.

She went to the great room, almost running. And that's where she found it. A bottle of Jack Daniels Tennessee Honey. She didn't bother going for a glass. She opened and drank. She drank until her hands stopped shaking, then she drank a little more. When she stopped, she settled on the floor cross legged, breathing heavy.

None of the dreams had been like that. She'd felt her skin melting. And now her face was bruised.

What the hell was going on?

He wanted her to leave St. Sebastians. That much was clear. But why? What was it about this place that would cause him to attack her? Well, he'd always attacked her in dreams. She'd just never felt it before. He'd never actually touched her before.

"He's stronger here," she said, then capped the bottle and returned to her aunt's bedroom. She had to get dressed and find out what about St. Sebastians unnerved the entity so much.

CHAPTER FIVE

Kenda sat in his office, a large coffee mug on his desk sat forgotten. He'd stopped at Aunt Edna's Bakery as he would any morning, but today he was hoping to run into Jaden. But she hadn't been there.

He'd had a bout of temporary insanity when he was leaving his house. He'd actually thought about showing up on Jaden's doorstep and... he wasn't sure what he'd do once she answered. Leave her the signed copy of The Stand. Ask her to lunch later in the day. What?

He'd never been this drawn to a woman before, and he wasn't quite sure what to do with all the emotions jumbling around in his brain. He didn't even know her. She could be a certified lunatic for all he knew.

"Don't do anything until tonight," he told himself.

"Talking to yourself now?"

Kenda hadn't seen Chris enter the office. He was dressed in blue jeans, a sky blue button up shirt, and had his hair pulled back and away from his face. Chris was the only man Kenda knew who could pull off colorful clothing and still look masculine. Pink, sky blue, he'd even worn a pale green suit once. Kenda had tried that same suit on and had looked ridiculous.

He looked down at his own clothes. Standard navy suit with the standard red tie. Boring. Jaden would probably take one look at him tonight, when he was standing with his brothers and Nico, and forget he existed. He was like plain, yellow wallpaper when his brothers were around.

"Hey!" Chris snapped his fingers in front of Kenda's face. "Snap out of it. We need to leave now if we're gonna make it to the old Lancaster Mansion on time."

Kenda got to his feet. "What time is it now?"

"Nine-thirty."

"We're supposed to be there at ten, right?"

"Yep."

"So we have what, five minutes to catch the ferry to the island?"

"You know it never leaves on time."

His mind was snapping back into place, returning to where it should be. Work. "This would be a huge deal, Chris. Can you imagine how incredible it would be to remodel that place? To see all the nooks and crannies. I hear the maze hasn't been touched since the last Lancaster left the island."

"Sounds like a lot of work to me, since it would be me and my team doing all the actual labor. You get to do the prissy part."

"Design isn't easy. Especially when we're looking at a place like the Lancaster Mansion. We have to update it, but not so much that it doesn't retain its old world charm."

The Lancaster Mansion had sat vacant for well over a decade, on the cliffs that overlook the town. The location was prime. It had panoramic views of the ocean, and it was surrounded by forest, on a small island about a mile out. Getting to the old mansion proved difficult at times. Once you got to the island, there was the matter of driving up the mountain to get to the house. The road flooded whenever it rained, and bad thunderstorms always knocked down trees. Legend had it that old Mrs. Lancaster didn't want anyone in her home, so she warded people off with the flooding and downed trees. But the old mansion was truly a beauty. Kenda couldn't imagine anyone who could afford the house wouldn't buy it just because some occasional flooding. He was of the opinion that the thing really keeping people away was the legend that went with the house. The most recent had to do with the last residents, the Lancaster family. The Lancaster's oldest son, Jimmy, had gone crazy one night and killed his entire family with a baseball bat, before throwing himself off the cliff to the beach below. He'd died on impact. Before Jimmy, a child had gone missing on the estate. He had belonged to a workman who was their redesigning the garden. The boy's body was recovered nearly a year later, in the maze. The Stevenson family had lived there in the early 1900's. Father, mom, three sons and four daughters. All found dead the morning after Thanksgiving. Nobody ever knew what happened to them or how they died. The mansion was filled with stories like this. Deaths and disappearances. These days people believed the old mansion was haunted. Nobody went up there. Workmen refused to step foot on the property for fear of dying a painful death or disappearing.

Fortunately for Beryl Chambers, the Brownings weren't a superstitious lot. If hired, he'd go to the mansion every day, if necessary.

Kenda slid on his suit jacket, adjusted his tie, then remembered to grab his coffee before he left the office.

They walked to Chris' car. Kenda slid into the passenger seat, happy to have something other than Jaden to think about. Fortunately, the day was nice. Not a storm cloud in the sky. It should be an uneventful drive.

There wasn't any traffic getting to the pier. Summer, with the inflow of tourists, could be a real pain. But it was still too early for that, he supposed.

They got there just in time to catch the ferry. Chris drove his car up the ramp then parked it. They got out and walked to the upper level. Kenda never tired of this ride. The views were spectacular. Most people took the ferry to go out to one of the small islands to fish or to get to the city on the other side of the water. By car the drive from St. Sebastians was an hour, but by ferry it was ten minutes. Clyde, the ferry captain, had probably assumed he and Chris were spending the day in the city. When Chris told Clyde that they were going to the Lancaster Mansion, Clyde nearly fell off the side of the boat in shock.

"We may be doing the remodel," Chris explained.

Clyde pushed his cap aside and wiped at beads of sweat along is forehead. "I wouldn't go there if I were you. Not for all the tea in China."

"A woman lives out there now. Beryl Chambers."

"Yeah, I know her. Know of her. She never comes to the mainland, did you know that? Just stays out on that cursed island by herself all the time. It's not natural."

Kenda stepped closer to Chris, sure he'd misheard. "You've never taken her into town?"

"Nope. Not once. I make food deliveries once a month, but that's all. Just leave what she ordered at the dock."

They crossed the rest of the way in silence. On the water, you couldn't see the house. At least not from this side of the island. All Kenda could see were trees.

"How big is her family?" Kenda asked, as they neared the pier.

"Oh, I didn't tell you? You're gonna love this. It's just her. She's a widow."

"One person in that big house? On the island? Does she know about the stories? That might change her mind about living there."

"I don't know."

"Well, the realtor would have had to tell her."

"Yeah, yeah. But I don't think she'd have cared."

"Wouldn't care that her house is the site of numerous deaths and disappearances? That it's haunted?"

"Allegedly haunted."

"Allegedly haunted," Kenda agreed. He didn't believe in ghosts, but you couldn't legally allow someone to purchase a house without disclosing the fact that people all over St. Sebastians believed it was haunted.

At the pier, they climbed back into the car and started up the steep incline toward the mansion.

"Who sold her the house?" Kenda asked.

"Honestly, I have no idea. And it doesn't matter. She's not that kind of person. I've only spoken to her over the phone, but I get the feeling she doesn't go in for hauntings and stuff like that."

The black fence that enclosed the property came into view. It was about twelve feet high, and grown over with shrubs and weeds. Kenda would have loved to see the house in its heyday, but it had been like this for as long as he could remember.