Seduction (40 page)

“Katy?”

And behind her lifeless face is the reflection of the monster who killed her, his lips still tasting Joelle’s last breath, curved now into a charming smile, his eyes full of seduction and promise, the author of the last chapter . . .

“Katarine,”
he whispered.

Belmondo.

The earring dropped out of my hand.

CHAPTER

•

FORTY-SEVEN

“I imagine you’ve read my essay by now,” the voice in the phone message said. “So you know who I am. Or was, rather. That was before I met you, Katy.”

Drago,
I thought, suddenly understanding more than I wanted to know.
Drago and Belmondo are the same person.

“I really don’t think you ought to be alone. Perhaps I should come by.” My heart stopped. “To protect you.”

I scrambled to my feet.

“For the record, you misunderstood my visit to Marie-Therèse,” he went on in his smooth, caring voice. “She was glad to see me.”

“Oh, God,” I moaned. “God, no.”

“I’ll be there soon, my darling,” he said before the phone clicked into silence again.

My legs rubbery with fear, I stumbled into the bedroom, where I’d put my things away and threw everything that fit into my suitcase, all the while chattering to myself to keep from screaming:

There’s no place like home, there’s no place like home, oh please let me get home, please, please . . .

I swallowed down the nausea that was rising in my throat as I closed the suitcase and swung it off the bed while slipping into my shoes.

Peter hadn’t killed Marie-Therèse. The “young one” had been Belmondo. It had been Belmondo all along.

There’s no place like home, there’s—

Two feet before I reached the front door, the bell rang.

The song dried up and came out a pathetic whimper. Quickly, I glanced toward the window. Twelve stories to the street. Jumping was not an option.

The bell rang again. I closed my eyes and thought hard. In light of my recent reassessment of Belmondo, I doubted that he’d been telling the truth when he said I had the only key to the apartment, so ringing the doorbell was probably just a formality. Still, I could use that. I could start screaming as soon as I opened the door. At this time of night, someone would notice, and maybe call the police.

It wasn’t much of a plan, but—I looked back at the window—it was all I could come up with at the moment. Taking a deep breath and hoping fervently that it wasn’t my last, I opened the door and prepared for my swan song.

“Katy.”

I choked on my own spittle. “Peter,” I said, ridiculously relieved.

We stood facing each other for what seemed like an awfully long time. When we finally spoke, it was at the same time.

“Can I come in?” he asked.

“He killed Marie-Therèse,” I said.

“Huh?”

“Never mind,” I said. I threw my arms around him. The suitcase thumped on his back. I felt a flood of pain and fear flow out of him into me. But over everything was love. Peter’s love for me.

“I never should have doubted you,” I said.

“About what?” he asked as I rested my face against his chest. “Hey.” He pulled away from me, then pointed to my suitcase. “Are you going somewhere?”

“Yes,” I whispered, shoving him backward. “And you’re going with me. Hurry.”

We ran for the stairs—I didn’t trust the elevator—and hustled down the twelve stories to the ground floor. The doorman nodded as Peter and I streaked past.

“I . . . have . . . a car,” Peter panted as we hit the street.

“Where?”

“Here.” He threw my suitcase into the backseat of a Peugeot.

“Hurry, Peter,” I urged. “Please.”

To his credit, Peter never questioned why I was so frantic to get out of there, and so bossy about it. He just got in and burned rubber.

“Where to?” he asked when we got on the highway.

“Anywhere.” I looked out the back. It didn’t look like anyone was following us. “The airport,” I amended.

“What?” He looked over at me. “You’re leaving the country? Now?”

“I have to. We both have to, Peter, believe me.”

“But I can’t just—”

“Look out!” He’d been so engrossed in our conversation
that he’d drifted into the next lane. The car beside us blared its horn, and Peter yanked the wheel of the Peugeot.

“Wait a second.” He pulled off at a rest area and stopped by an overlook. “You need to tell me what’s going on, Katy,” he said.

I hung my head. “Belmondo,” I said. It was hard for me even to say his name.

“What’d he do?” Two red dots appeared on Peter’s cheeks. “Tell me, did he—”

“He killed Joelle,” I said. “I found her earring.”

“What?” I don’t think he’d been thinking along those lines at all. “Then the mummy on the street . . .”

I nodded. “He killed her in his apartment. He killed Marie-Therèse, too. And I think I was going to be next.” My voice cracked. “When the doorbell rang, I thought it was him. But it was you.” I pressed my lips together trying not to cry with happiness.

“When I got back to the house, Sophie said you’d been there to get your things.” He looked down at his hands, avoiding my eyes. “And that Bel—
he
was going to look after you.” I guessed Peter didn’t want to say his name either. “I figured you were done with me.”

“Then why did you come?” I asked.

He looked into my eyes. “If you’re breaking up with me, I want to hear it from your own mouth,” he said.

I felt so ashamed. I hadn’t been nearly as loyal. “I’m so sorry,” I whispered, not daring to look at him. “For everything. I’ve been acting like a skank.”

Peter swallowed. “Me too,” he said. Gently he touched my hair. “I got greedy. They were offering so much . . .”

“I know.”

“So maybe I deserved to lose you to a handsome creep.”

“You didn’t lose me,” I whispered.

He took my hand. “Good,” he said, “because I can’t.” His hands were shaking. “That’s what I needed to tell you. I can live without Harvard and Shaw Enterprises and just about everything else.” His voice cracked. “But I can’t live without you.”

“Oh, Peter.” It was all I could think of to say.

“We’ll make it through this.” He’d said it before, but now I believed him.

“We will,” I said.

As he drove, I tried to memorize Peter’s profile: the sensitive nose, the soft gray eyes, the honey-colored hair that blew gently in the wind from his open window.

How did I get so lucky?
I wondered. The best friend anyone could have was on my side. Always.

We passed under a sign for Orly Airport. “Do you really want to leave Paris?” Peter asked.

“Totally.”

“Even cooking school?”

I rolled my eyes. “It can’t hold a candle to Hattie’s.”

“Okay, then. I’ll go with you.” He veered off the nearest exit ramp and got back on the highway going the other direction.

“Hey, what are you doing? We were headed for the airport.”

“I have to go back to the house first.”

“You’re kidding,” I said incredulously. “Belmondo’s
after
me, Peter.”

“It’ll just take a minute. Jeremiah gave me a check. It was
part of the package he was offering. I’ll have to give it back to him before I go.”

“Couldn’t you mail it?”

“Relax, Katy. Belmondo isn’t going to look for you there. He just took you away from that place.”

“Well . . .” He might be right. Belmondo knew that I would never count on the witches at the abbey to protect me against him or anything else. “So he won’t think I’ve gone back to the house because I’d be crazy to?”

“Something like that,” Peter said. “Anyway, I’ll need my passport.”

“Okay,” I said dubiously.

As we entered the city again, Peter turned down the car’s air conditioning, which made things really quiet. “So how’d you find out about Belmondo?” he asked quietly. “You seemed to really be into him.”

I sighed. “It’s a long story,” I said.

“I’ve got time.”

He was asking me about stuff I didn’t want to think about anymore, but Peter deserved an answer. “Okay,” I said. “It started with a book I found. An autobiography, sort of. He was an alchemist, like you.”

I told him about Jean-Loup’s story and all the coincidences I’d found that linked it to the house on the Rue des Âmes Perdues. “There’s even a link to Whitfield, because Henry Shaw—”

“Who?”

“Your ancestor,” I said. “He was an alchemist too, but he wasn’t the creep that everyone in Whitfield thinks he was. He didn’t turn his wife and children over to the witch hunters.
He protected them, even though it meant never seeing his family again. You’re probably one of his descendants. That’s how you came by your gift.”

“Oh,” Peter said. “That’s interesting.”

“Not nearly as interesting as the fact that Henry’s still around. He goes by another name these days.”

Peter blinked. “Not—”

I nodded. “Jeremiah. He’s been part of this coven since the fourteen hundreds. And it was founded a long time before that. In the Middle Ages they started doing the spell that keeps them young, but they didn’t begin trading all their magic for long life until Sophie took over. Which is how I first got interested in what they were doing.”

I was talking fast now, eager to share everything that had been on my mind. I explained Marie-Therèse’s fear of her birthday and being sent away, and Fabienne’s discovery of the old paintings of Sophie and Joelle. “These witches live a long time, but not forever. That was why Marie-Therèse was so scared. She thought she was going to be sent to a retirement home to live out the rest of her life, but that was only half-true. She was taken to the Poplars—against her will, probably—but she lasted only a few hours before Drago sucked the life out of her.” I didn’t explain that he’d left enough life in Marie-Therèse for me to feast on her last breath. That was just too revolting. “It’s how he killed Joelle, too.”

“Drago?” Peter asked. “I thought you said Belmondo killed Joelle.”

“He did. Belmondo and Drago are the same . . . thing.”

“Then he’s part of the coven too?”

That was a question I really couldn’t answer. “I don’t know
what he is, exactly,” I said, feeling a chill crawling up my spine. “And I don’t want to find out.”

We drove in silence for a while. Finally Peter said, “I’m sorry about your friend.”

“Me too,” I said.

“But I’m kind of glad that you found out about Jeremiah. He’s been pretty good to me.”

I looked over at him, alarmed. “You’re not tempted to stay because of what I’ve told you, are you?”

“No. The opposite. I can’t sign on for all the baggage around this place, Harvard or no.”

“You don’t need Shaw Enterprises to get to Harvard,” I said.

“Maybe not. But I’ll miss Jeremiah all the same.”

“He might still let you work for the company,” I suggested.

He shrugged. “I’ll ask him about it when I return the check he gave me.” We were approaching the house. Peter gestured toward it with his chin. “You don’t have to go inside,” he said.

“That’s okay.” Peter was probably right about my being safe here. Belmondo would be looking for me at his apartment, where he could kill me quickly and privately, not in a house filled with people. That was what my mind told me. But the cold sensation inching up the back of my neck was warning me about a different outcome.

That’s just fear,
I told myself.
Childish, unreasonable boogeyman fear. Nothing more.

“I’d like to see Fabienne, anyway,” I said, trying to dispel the feeling that was making the hair on the back of my arms stand on end.

In truth, I felt bad about having left without seeing Fabby.
When Azrael said it was too late for any of the witches in the Enclave, he hadn’t meant her. She wasn’t an initiate. And unlike the others, she had a great talent for real witchcraft. There was still a chance I might talk her into coming to Whitfield with me.

We pulled up to the back entrance of the abbey. Peter turned off the car, then squeezed my hand. “Don’t worry. If anything happens, I’ll take care of you.”

If you can,
I thought. I loved Peter, but I sensed the Darkness coalescing around me like a cloud. It knew me, where to find me, how to hurt me. And I knew what It could do. I’d watched too many people die when It came near.

“I’ll be fine,” I said, trying to make myself believe it.

CHAPTER

•

FORTY-EIGHT