Spooked (13 page)

Betty shrugged. “I think she cares about him. I think her mother was good to her, but her father took off when she was a baby and left her mother with four kids. Paula said that they lived way below the poverty line. Lucian was doing her mother a favor financially, by taking Paula off her hands. I don’t know whether she’s still in contact with her family. Paula said that he still sends her mother checks to help out.”

“That’s pretty cool of him.”
Considering that her mother didn’t seem to mind Lucian treating Paula like a concubine
, I thought. Still, he didn’t have to do that, which implied that Lucian did actually care about Paula. Maybe he wasn’t a complete monster after all.

“Yeah. I guess.”

“What is her special talent?”

“Aside from pleasing Lucian?” She grinned wickedly. “She can predict what people will do. She is never wrong.”

“That’s a good talent to have. Must come in handy.”

“I’m sure it does, but these days I think Lucian keeps her around for her other talents. I don’t think he’s capable of loving anyone, but he is very fond of her.”

“How did she fly into Lucian’s radar?”

“She called the cops when she left a convenience store to let them know that it was about to be robbed. They arrived during the robbery.”

“So she was on the news,” I said.

Betty nodded. “Lucian saw her face and was instantly taken with her. He personally paid her a visit at the burger joint she was working at.”

Jude sat back and crossed his arms. “You talk too much, Betty. You’re going to get us all in shit with Lucian.”

“Okay, okay.” Betty held a palm up to Jude. “I’ll shut up. Anyway, the point is, Paula is a sweetheart. She may let you use her laptop for a minute, or at least search the news in your town for you, if you tell her why.”

“When can I ask her?” I felt my nerves humming with excitement. “Where is she right now?”

“I’m sure she’s having lunch with Lucian. I’ll ask Matt, the cook, to look her in the eye and intend to give her a note. Then she’ll know he wants her to come into the kitchen and talk to him. She’ll know that the information is not intended for Lucian’s ears.”

“All he has to do is intend to give her the note?”

Betty nodded. “Yep. She’ll predict that he’ll give her a note. And that works just fine. We’ve used this technique before.”

“She won’t tell Lucian?”

Betty shook her head. “She hasn’t yet. I think she cares about him and is loyal to him, but that there are some things that are better kept from him.”

I felt relief move over me, making me feel tired. “Thanks, Betty. I really appreciate this.”

She gave me a bright smile. “No problem.” Then her smile fell away and she said, “I really hope they find those girls and that they are just fine.”

“So do I, Betty.” But a creeping sense of dread had settled into my heart when I thought of Eliza and Kerry, and I felt deep in my soul that they were not fine.

Not fine at all.

Chapter Thirteen

Paula was a beautiful girl. Long, chestnut hair fell around her shoulders in soft, shiny waves. She had almond-shaped eyes the color of deep, rich chocolate. I could see why Lucian had been instantly taken with her. I was taken with her, too. She had a lovely smile and a gentle way about her that made you want to be around her.

Betty whispered into her ear, and Paula smiled and nodded. She took me by the hand and led me into an area past the living room and dining room to a short hallway and to an elevator.

When we stepped in, I was taken aback by my image. The elevator was mirrored, and I was struck by how pale and tired I looked. My hair was not soft and bouncy as it usually was, but hung lifeless around my shoulders. My eyes looked a little wild.

“You can shower in my room,” she said, noticing my expression in the mirror.

“I’d appreciate that,” I told her.

“Lucian has kept you so busy, he hasn’t gotten around to having someone show you where the shower room is.”

“I had no idea this elevator was here,” I told her.

“There are a lot of things you don’t know about this place,” she said.

We stepped off the elevator and entered a large office overlooking the gardens. The view was gorgeous, bright flowers everywhere.

“Lucian wouldn’t like this, so don’t breathe a word. Okay?” She took my hand and led me to a desk, where a laptop sat.

I looked around the room. “Aren’t we being watched right now?”

She shook her head. “I’ve made it clear that I want no cameras or bugs in my room.”

I looked at her, and then glanced down.

“It’s okay,” she said. “It’s common knowledge around here what I do for Lucian. It’s really not that bad, you know.”

I nodded. “Okay.”

“I’m not a slave here. I don’t feel exploited. I serve a purpose,” she said, her voice soft and gentle.

“I understand,” I said.

Her brows came together , and then she smiled and tilted her head. “But you don’t agree with what I do?”

“No,” I said. “That isn’t it. I’m not judging you, if this is what you want to do. What I don’t agree with is the rest of us being abducted and forced to do Lucian’s bidding. It’s really not all that much fun. We had no choice, Paula.”

“I don’t really know what your situation was, but most of those kids downstairs were living a pretty bad life, Lorelei. They were street urchins. Living hand to mouth.”

“Well, I wasn’t,” I told her, my voice rising and cracking. “I had an aunt who loved me. I had a friend who cared about me.”

“Lorelei, two girls are missing from your town. How long do you think it would be before you went missing, too?”

I looked straight into her eyes. “I
have
gone missing.”

I just didn’t know what the story was behind my disappearance. Was Mick even alive to tell it?

Paula stood behind me as I searched the news in the town of Saints Hollow. The very first headline to come up on the screen hit me like a brick and stole my breath away.

Another Girl Missing in Saints Hallow
.

Brianna Hawthorne had vanished.

***

“Paula, I have to get out of here.” I turned in the chair, looking up at her. “Would you help me?”

Paula’s face was troubled. “Lorelei, I know that you don’t want to hear this, but I honestly think that this is the safest place for you right now.”

I sighed. “You’re right. I don’t want to hear that. Look, I need to get out and use this…freakish ability to find out who is snatching these girls. Please, help me.”

She watched me, silent, her eyes sad for me.

An idea came into my head and I suddenly felt sick. “Oh, hell no. Please tell me that Lucian didn’t steal those girls.”

She shook her head slowly. “I truly don’t know. But if he isn’t the one who took them, there is a very bad person in Saints Hallow stealing young girls.”

Paula allowed me the use of her shower, and as I reveled in the steamy water and lathered myself up in her luxurious vanilla and brown sugar body wash, I thought about what she’d said to me and what my current situation was.

Whatever she knew or didn’t know, Paula wasn’t going to help me out. I believed her, though, when she said that she thought the compound was the safest place for me. I got the impression that any discussion of who Lucian grabbed off the streets for his own uses was forbidden, so Paula wouldn’t breach the subject with him. Though she might mention the fact that I told her that girls were vanishing in my town.

I’d have to find another way out of here, and I’d have to be careful.

Otherwise, I might just disappear for real.

***

“Be careful what you say to Paula. She is Lucian’s…whatever she is,” Jude said.

He was walking me back to my room. Just after nine o’clock, I was tired, but my mind was reeling.

“I have to get out of here,” I told him.

He stopped, grabbed me by the shoulders and stared me in the eyes with an intensity that surprised me. “Listen to me. You are not getting out of here until Lucian lets you go.”

“Which may be never. What happens to the kids who don’t get away? The ones who outgrow their use?”

His lips drew a tight, thin line.

“So I’d be just putting off the inevitable anyway? He’s going to kill us all eventually?”

“I don’t know what happens to them. There are rumors. But I do know that he will kill you if you manage to escape and he catches you. You know too much already.”

“How do you know?”

“Because it’s happened before. Those kids vanish. Just like the girls in your town.”

“Just like I did,” I said.

He shook his head. “No. Worse, Lore. I think it’s much worse.”

“But you don’t really know, do you?”

“I’m sure as hell not going to find out,” Jude said.

“Well, I can’t just hang out here and do Lucian’s slave work, and wait for him to decide he doesn’t need me anymore and then have God knows what done to me. I’d rather take a chance and go where I really am needed.”

His hands tightened on my shoulders. “Please. Don’t.”

I shook him off and went into my room, letting the door close in his face.

***

Someone was opening the door to my room. I sat straight up in bed, peering into the darkness. Without windows down here, there was no light. My breath caught in my throat as a vision of Leo creeping his way into my room filled my mind.

My heart thudded against my chest and instinct took over. I quickly and quietly got out of bed. I moved toward the wall and stayed close to it as I made my way toward the door. I listened for movement, but heard nothing. Goosebumps prickled over my skin as the temperature in the room dropped.

I shivered and passed through the doorway, making my way down the hall. Lights should have been on, but the corridor was thick with darkness. Walking on only the pads of my feet, I moved as quickly as I dared. I didn’t care about anything but getting away from Leo. I kept moving. When I thought I might be getting close to the stairway, I reached out with my hand and felt around on the cool wall for the edge, which would lead me to the stairway.

I strained my ears as I moved, but heard nothing. The smell of black licorice filled my nostrils and frigid air wrapped itself around me. I felt a pressure on my back, like something was pushing me along.

The edge of the door came up fast and my feet knocked up against the first stair, sending me forward, my hands coming down hard on one of the steps. I didn’t bother trying to stand, but instead scrambled up the stairs using my hands and feet. I wasn’t taking a chance that I’d fall down them and break a limb. I’d be seriously screwed if that happened—it would be obvious that I’d been trying to escape.

Then it dawned on me. That’s what I was doing. Escaping. So much for formulating a plan. Sometimes circumstances tossed your plans to the wind anyway. I’d learned that over the past couple of weeks.

So I kept moving.

The cold pressure continued to push me forward, as if it were leading me to where I needed to go. If I weren’t so panicked about getting away from Leo and getting the hell out of this place, I’d be freaked about my unseen ally. But for now, I was taking whatever help I could get.

Finally, after what seemed like an endless flight of stairs, I knocked up against a solid surface. I reached out with my hands and felt around in front of me, and my fingers grappled over a doorknob.

Before I could turn it, it turned in my hand.

I almost screamed, but instead froze. I had nowhere to go now except back down the stairs, and I was pretty certain that Leo was down there.

Watching through the blackness in front of me, holding my breath, I waited as the door opened and light from the night sky spilled forward.

A red-haired girl stood in front of me. She reached out and took my hand, and pulled me through the doorway. “Move it,” she whispered.

I moved it, keeping up with her as she ran along the roof of the building toward the edge. Was this my punishment? Being pushed off a building?

Then I saw it. The top of a narrow, built-in ladder. The kind that some buildings had that only went partway down. I never understood that and still don’t.

“Go,” she said, her voice urgent.

I looked at her profile and knew that I’d seen her before. My mind worked to remember where I knew her face from as I made my way down the ladder.

When I got to the end of it, I looked up at her.

“Jump,” she said, and her red hair blew over her face and around her head.

I recognized her.

The cemetery. She was the red-haired girl who hid behind the gravestone, watching Mick and me.

“How far down is it?”

“Does it matter?” she asked.

No. No, it didn’t. I wasn’t going back up that ladder again, even to save my own life.

I closed my eyes tightly, took a deep breath, and let myself drop.

***

I waited for the impact and the sickening crack of a broken leg, but it didn’t come. Instead, just before I hit the bottom, I went through a thick, freezing cold pocket of air—a cloud of mist—which slowed me enough that when I did hit the ground, the impact was minimal.

“Holy shit,” I murmured, sitting on the ground, looking up at the cloud. It hovered around me for a long moment before moving upward again.

“Move it!” the red-haired girl whispered. “Unless you want me to land on top of you.”

I scrambled back and she turned around, came down the ladder, and hung for a moment before dropping into the swirling cloud. I watched the gray mist as it moved around her, and my breath caught in my throat as I saw the smoky shapes of arms and legs moving around within it.

“Ghosts,” I breathed, stunned.

“Yeah,” the girl said, brushing the hair from her face.

“Who are you?” I asked her.

“My name is Fiona. Look, we only have a few minutes to get the hell out of here, so would you kindly get off your butt and get moving?”

“Nice to meet you, too,” I said, scrambling up and following her to the edge of the woods. “Where are we going?”