Читать книгу Ghost Moon - Heather Graham, Heather Graham - Страница 9

Liam’s call had opened the door to the past.

Odd—that was actually what she had done in her mind, she realized. Closed a door. And as if that door had been real and tangible, she had set her hand on the knob and turned it.

Cutter Merlin, her mother’s father, had been so many things. He had doctorates in history and archaeology, and he had been the best storyteller she had ever known. His beautiful old house in Key West had been like a treasure trove, filled with things, and each thing had offered a story. She had loved growing up with the exotic. While her friends could be easily scared, she loved the idea that she lived with a real Egyptian mummy. At campfires she had told great tales herself, describing how she had awakened once to find the mummy standing over her…reaching out for her.

It had been great. The others had squealed with fear and delight.

Except for Liam, of course. She could remember the way he would scoff at her stories. He was two years older than she was, but in their small community they often wound up at the same extracurricular events, and even when they were in grade school, they had battled.

“Yeah, sure!” Liam said, mocking her story. “Like the mummy really got up. The mummy is old and dead and rotten, and if you let me in the house, I’ll prove it!” he would say.

“Ask my grandfather!” she’d dared him.

“I’ll be happy to,” he’d assured her. But he never did. He didn’t want to prove his words, because her stories made her popular.

And they were good stories, of course.

He’d been so elusive; that little bit older, somehow, even for a boy, more mature.

And sometimes, when they were grouped together out on the beach at Fort Zachary Taylor, she told stories that were true about the aboriginal tribes her grandfather had known, getting a little bit dramatic by adding the fact that Cutter had barely escaped with his life—and his own head.

Liam listened, rolling his eyes at her embellishments.

She had been tall, since girls did tend to grow faster than boys. But Liam had grown quickly, too, and by the time they had reached their early teens, he had stood at least an inch over her, and when she would talk, he would lean against a doorframe, arms crossed over his chest, that amused and disbelieving look on his face.

But when her mother had died, he had been like the Rock of Gibraltar, telling her to go ahead and break down when she had tried so hard not to cry in public, and he had held her while she had sobbed for an hour. He had been her strength that night, smoothing her hair back, just being there, never saying that it was all right that her mother was dead, just saying that it was all right to cry.

And then…

Then she hadn’t seen him again. Her father took her away from Key West, hurriedly, one night. She had left most of her belongings, taking only one suitcase, because her father had been in such a rush.

She’d told no one goodbye.

And no matter how real her life in Key West had been, everything about it had faded away. She had enrolled in a California school. She had acquired new friends. She had played volleyball in the sand, and she had finally learned to surf in cold water. Everything in their apartment was brand-new, and her father never even watched old movies.

There had only been one time when she had asked him about Cutter. She had never called him grandfather, grandpa, or even gramps—he had always been Cutter to everyone. And so she had asked her father, “Do you hate Cutter, Dad? Do you think that he hurt Mom somehow?”

He had hesitated, but then shook his head strenuously. “No, no. Cutter is a good man. Don’t let anyone tell you anything different, ever.”

“Then why did we run away from him?” she’d asked.

“Because bad things can follow a good man, and that’s that, and please, I don’t want to talk about it anymore.”

And that had been it.

Key West had faded away, like a scene out of a movie, one she had seen long ago. Until her father was dying, and he had talked about Cutter again.

Cutter wasn’t safe.

She’d loved him. She thought about it now, and she knew that she had really loved him. He’d had such a wonderful sense of adventure. His eyes had been brilliant while he’d described the pyramids in Egypt and the temples in ancient Greece. He talked about places like the Vatican, St. Paul’s Cathedral, Westminster Abbey and Notre Dame with great awe. He’d talked about the catacombs in Paris, and about marvelous, creepy grottos in Sicily.

His talent as a storyteller had been amazing. And, of course, he’d turned her into one, she thought. No one had ever really known when Cutter was telling the truth—and when he was spinning a very tall tale.

She called Joe Richter, the attorney, to let him know that she would come in person, and then she called Avery Slater, her creative partner, to let him know that she was leaving and why. And naturally, Avery appeared at her door within twenty minutes.

He was seriously one of the most beautiful people she had ever seen, and she used his image for one of her characters, Talon, an angel who had come to live among men. Avery was tall, and he spent his free time at the gym, so he was lean and muscled, as well. He had luxurious, thick, almost black hair, his eyes were chestnut and his features might have adorned a Greek statue. He was a skilled animator, her partner and one of her best friends. She knew that people often thought they were a romantic pair, but Avery was gay, not in the closet in the least, but someone who was very private as well, unless he was among close friends.

He burst into her home with the ease of a best friend, heading straight into the kitchen, opening the refrigerator and finding the chardonnay. He poured himself a glass, didn’t offer her one and swallowed it down as if it were water, staring at her all the while.

“You can’t just up and go to Key West,” he told her, setting his glass down firmly on the counter.

“I’m not moving to Key West, I’m just going down for a few weeks. My grandfather died,” she said.

“Yes, yes, you told me that. But you weren’t close—you hadn’t seen him in years,” Avery reminded her.

“I owe him a decent burial,” she said.

“Send money,” he said. He frowned. “Oh, wait—will you inherit money? A lot of it?”

She laughed. “I don’t know. Maybe. He had a number of artifacts, but I knew, even as a kid, that he’d willed a lot of his things to various museums.”

Thoughtfully, Avery nodded. “Yes, yes, a will. Of course. There you go. There’s no need for you to go to Key West.”

“Yes, there is.”

“An attorney can arrange for a funeral.”

“Avery, he was my grandfather.”

“But we have work to do!” he said.

“Avery, I will bring my computer. And my scanner. And I will send you the strips, and you will set them up for animation. It will all be fine. Seriously. We’re ahead.”

“You can never be ahead in this business. We have to keep the Web stuff going daily—that’s the only way to really acquire an audience. The bigger we get on the Web, the more the advertisers will pay,” he reminded her.

“I have to go.”

He frowned. “I don’t think you should go.”

“Why?”

“I’m seeing a guy who reads tarot cards,” he told her.

“Okay…?”

“He warned me that a friend would want to go on a dangerous journey,” Avery said, his expression somber and grave. “It’s dangerous.”

“The danger is in getting a serious sunburn,” she said. “Avery, I lived there, remember?”

“And your mother died there, remember?”

She felt a chill, and it was almost as if she knew the words would haunt her later.

“You can take me to the airport, if you want,” she told him.

He sighed deeply. “You’re going to go no matter what I say, aren’t you?”

“Yes.”

He came over to her and drew her into his arms, hugging her tightly. She was touched by the gesture; she had thought that he didn’t want her going because he was so ambitious, and he liked to work together, with her at his beck and call whenever he had an idea.

But he seemed genuinely concerned.

She drew away from him. He was so gorgeous.

“It’s okay. I’ll see to the house and his things. I owe Cutter that much. And I want to have a funeral for him. Then I’ll be back. It will all be fine. Really,” she assured him.

“No. That’s not what will happen. You’ll go home, you’ll see old friends. You won’t want to come back here.”

“I left as a teenager. My life is here,” she said. “I’ll be back.”

He wagged a finger at her. “If you’re not back immediately, I’ll be down there to get you. I’ll take care of you. And if there’s anything bad, well…I’m psychic, you know.”

She laughed. “No, I didn’t know. But by all means. Key West is beautiful. Come on down.”

He sniffed.

At last he left, still offering dire warnings to her.

She needed to pack, but she wandered out to the porch and gazed at the pool she shared with the others who lived in the group of old bungalows. She stared at the water.

Cold water. Even heated, it was still cold, in her mind.

Key West had warm water. Beautiful, warm water.

A sudden scream startled her and brought her back inside. She had a habit of keeping the television on for company. One of the movie channels was running an all-day marathon of classic horror movies.

Someone was running from a werewolf.

She smiled and sat, and then stretched out on her sofa, watching the television. As she did so, her eyes grew heavy. A nap would be great; she had tossed and turned through the night.

As she felt herself nodding off, she thought about fighting sleep.

She knew that she would dream.

It seemed that a scene from a movie was unfolding. The house was distant at first, sitting on its little spit of land. The water around it was aqua and beautiful, as it could only be around Florida and the Caribbean.

But then dark clouds covered the soft blue of the sky, and the ocean became black, as if it were a vast pit of tar.

The camera lens within her dreaming eye came closer and closer, and the old Victorian with its gingerbread façade came clearer to her view. She heard a creaking sound and saw the door was open, that the wind was playing havoc with the hinges.

She was in the house again, and she heard the screams and the wailing, and she saw her father, as she had seen him that day, holding her mother, the sound of his grief terrible. She ran toward him, screaming herself, calling for her mother.

Then Cutter himself came running down the stairs, crying out in horror. He sank down and she felt herself freeze, just standing there as she had on that day.

Then her mother and father and Cutter all faded to mist, and she stood in the empty house, alone. There were boxes and objects, spiderwebs and dust, and there was something else in the house as well, something that seemed like a small black shadow, and then seemed to grow…dark, stygian, filling the house with some kind of evil.

The mummy rose from its sarcophagus and stared at her with rotted and empty eyes. It pointed at the black shadow, and its voice was as dry and brittle as death as it warned, “The house must have you. It’s up to you. Now you—you must come, and you must stop it from growing, from escaping. It’s loose, you see, the evil is on the loose, and it’s growing.”

The mummy wasn’t real. The mummy was dead. Liam had said so.

Terror filled her. She heard her name called. She turned. Liam was there, a tall, lanky teenager, reaching out to her. “Come here, come to me, it isn’t real, the mummy is dead, it’s in your imagination, in all the stories. Don’t believe in it, Kelsey—take my hand.”

There seemed to be a terrible roar. She turned, and the mummy was a swirling pile of darkness, a shadow, and the darkness was threatening to consume her.

Kelsey awoke with a start. She was in her charming living room, in her charming bungalow apartment, and she had fallen asleep with the television on.

And the movie channel she watched was showing Boris Karloff in The Mummy.

She laughed aloud at herself, turned off the TV, and decided that she was going to get things done, batten down the house, pack so she could leave in the morning, and then get a good night’s sleep. She wasn’t a coward; she had spent her childhood with Cutter, and really, she had to have some kind of sense of adventure.

I owe you, Cutter! I’m so sorry. I should have come to see you. I never should have let you die alone like that.

Please forgive me.

She wasn’t afraid.

The house was just a house.

And Cutter’s mummy was just preserved flesh that could now find a good home in a museum. Everything in perspective.

Cutter himself needed to rest at last, in peace.

She would see to it.

Liam shouted the officer’s name. “Ricky!”

There was no answer. As he reached the bottom of the stairs, however, he saw him on the floor, caught in the glow of light from his own fallen flashlight.

“Ricky!”

He rushed over to the man. Hunching down, he called for backup and an ambulance. He instantly checked for Ricky’s pulse, and was relieved to find that it was beating steadily.

Ricky groaned, and moved.

“Lie still. Where are you hurt? What happened?”

There was no sign of blood anywhere near Ricky.

As Liam spoke, Ricky opened his eyes, staring at Liam for a moment and then jerking around in panic. He stared across the room in the darkness. Liam aimed his flashlight beam in the area that seemed to be causing Ricky so much fear.

His light fell upon a suit of armor.

Ricky let out a scream, trying to choke it back.

“Ricky,” Liam said evenly, “it’s a suit of armor. Probably real, historic and worth a mint.”

“It moved!” Ricky declared.

Liam walked toward the armor. It was just that. Metal. It was buckled together by leather straps that had been made to replace the originals. They were probably period, but not historic.

The metal display stand was not on rollers. It hadn’t moved.

Liam turned to look at Ricky. He was rubbing the back of his head. It appeared that the man had seen the armor and backed himself into the edge of one of the display cases on the other side of the room.

“I swear to you, it moved!” Ricky told him.

He’d called for an ambulance. Even as Ricky stood, rubbing his head, and Liam checked all around the suit of armor, they heard the sound of a siren. Help was on its way.

Ricky winced, looking sheepish. “It moved. I’m telling you, it moved.”

“It’s dark down here, and you’ve heard all kinds of rumors about this place,” Liam said. He sighed, shaking his head. “Or maybe it did move, Ricky. Maybe a trespasser was in here, hiding behind the suit of armor, and when you knocked yourself out, he got away.”

Ricky’s mouth fell open. He was young, twenty-five years old. He was a good officer. Strong, usually sane and courteous. He could break up a barroom brawl like no other.

He protested weakly. “No…no, I would have seen a person.” He cleared his throat. “Oh, Lord, Lieutenant Beckett, please…maybe we could not mention this?” he asked hopefully.

Liam was irritated; he might have just lost his chance of finding whoever had broken in. But he said, “I’m not going to say anything—hell, I don’t want half the idiots in this city starting all kinds of rumors about haunted houses and animated suits of armor. Let the paramedics check you out. Just say you crashed into the display shelf, and that’s what I’ll say, too. It’s the truth.”

He walked out. The paramedics were exiting their ambulance with their cases in their hands.

“It’s a knock on the head, self-inflicted,” Liam said. “I think he’s fine, but check him out, please.”

The paramedics nodded and headed for the house. A patrol car came sliding up to park beside the rescue vehicle. He sent the two officers inside, telling them to secure the residence before they left.

He stepped down to the lawn and looked back at the house. He felt the presence behind him and didn’t turn.

“Did you see anything?” he asked softly.

“No, I was with you,” Bartholomew said.

“Well, what do you think?”

“I don’t like the place, if that’s what you mean.”

“Is there anything in it? Anyone?”

“I sense—something,” Bartholomew said.

“I’m telling you, this has to do with something human,” Liam said flatly.

“Maybe. I’m human,” Bartholomew protested.

“You’re a ghost.”

“But I was human. Evil isn’t…it isn’t necessarily human.”

Liam groaned softly. “We both know that human beings are the ones who carry out physical cruelty and injury to one another.”

“Well, we don’t actually know everything,” Bartholomew said.

“If I were going to be hounded by a ghost,” Liam said, “you’d think it would be one who knew a little more about eternity.”

“There’s no one in the house now,” Bartholomew told him indignantly. “No one who isn’t supposed to be there. No one human.”

“Someone else was in that house tonight,” Liam said with certainty.

“I think so, too,” Bartholomew said.

“And now?”

“Whatever is in there isn’t human,” Bartholomew said quietly. “So, what now?”

There was nothing else to be done for the night.

“Now? Hell, I’m heading back for a new batch of fish and chips,” Liam said. But as he walked toward his car, he hesitated. It was dark now on the little peninsula. But there were three acres surrounding the house. There was a strip of beach on the property, and near that there were mangrove swamps and bits of pine and brush on higher ground. The house itself was built up on a large slab of coral and limestone, but surrounding it were dozens of places where someone could conceivably hide, or places where one might stash a small vessel like a canoe, or…

Hell. A decent swimmer could make it across to the mainland easily.

In the darkness, someone could hide with little chance of actually being discovered. He would need a helicopter and megalights to find someone in the night.

He made a mental note to get an electrician out there in the morning.

When he reached O’Hara’s, he found Katie, David and Jamie at a table, all dining on fish and chips themselves.

“Well?” David asked curiously.

“Teenagers,” he said.

“They mess anything up?” David asked.

“They were huddled together in the kitchen, terrified,” Liam said. “They thought the shadows were coming after them.”

Katie laughed. “I can well imagine that place at night. They must have been scared out of their wits.”

“Hey, that place is frightening to an adult,” Jamie O’Hara said.

Liam was surprised that Jamie might have ever found anything frightening. He was a solid man with gray hair, bright eyes, and the calm confidence that made him a good man in any situation and—in Key West—a good barkeep. He could stare down any man about to get in a brawl, and if a punch was thrown, he had the brawn to walk an unruly guest right out to the street.

He’d been both a friend—and something of a parental figure to all of them.

“Cutter Merlin was born and bred right here, and he was popular with folks when he was a young man. He was our version of Indiana Jones, I suppose,” Jamie said. “When he got older, that’s when folks started talking about him. They said that he got himself into too many places that maybe he shouldn’t have gone. It wasn’t until his daughter died, though, that folks started saying that he might have been a Satanist, or a witch. Trying to explain that wiccans, or witches, practiced an ancient form of religion that had to do with nature and that Satanism meant worship of the Devil didn’t seem to go over. After his daughter died, people said everything in the world about him. He’d signed the Devil’s book. He held Black Masses. You name it, people said it.”

“He was a nice old man, and a great storyteller,” Katie said. “I was out there a few times. Kelsey is a few years older than me, but we were in a sailing class together, and we all went to her place for a picnic after the final day. Cutter was great. He dressed up in a suit of armor, then showed us how heavy it was and why a knight needed a squire. He was wonderful.”

Jamie shrugged. “Well, you know how people gossip, and you know how rumors start. People said that his daughter died because he’d signed a pact with the Devil—and that was why Kelsey’s father got her the hell out the minute he could after his wife passed away.”

“I wonder if it occurred to people that he might have been in tremendous pain—and that he wanted to raise his daughter without her having to remember how her mother had died on the stairs. A tragic accident,” David said.

Liam hesitated, thinking about the things the M.E., Franklin Valaski, had said the day before when he had studied Cutter Merlin’s mortal remains and mentioned the man’s dying expression, comparing it to that of his daughter.

She had fallen, but her eyes were open, her lips ajar…

And Cutter had been found with a relic in his hands and the book in his lap.

In Defense from Dark Magick.

Just what the hell had the old bastard been up to?

“I wonder if Kelsey will come back?” Katie mused. “Actually, I wonder what she’s like now. Do you think she became a Valley girl?”

“I don’t know,” Liam said. He was curious. He wanted to see her. It had been a long time. Other women had come into his life, and other women had gone. She was the only one who had ever teased his memory in absence. “I don’t know,” he repeated with a shrug.

And he suddenly prayed that she had become a Valley girl, that she would stay away and that whatever cursed the Merlin house, human or other, would never touch Kelsey.

The next night, it was a dinner of shepherd’s pie that he had to leave. It had just arrived, and the call came from the station.

It was Jack again.

“Lieutenant, I know you found kids last night, and I can’t believe they’re back, but we’ve just gotten another call. This time it was from a tourist who is staying at a bed-and-breakfast across the way. He saw lights on at the Merlin house, and he’s certain he heard a scream.”

Liam set his fork down. “There are lights on because I had an electrician out. The lightbulbs are all new. I left a light on inside the living room, and one on the front porch.”

“Sir, the lights are coming from an upstairs bedroom. The lights didn’t bother Mr.—” Liam could hear papers rustling as Jack checked his notes “—Mr. Tom Lewis, from New York City. What bothered him is that he could swear he heard a scream.”

“All right. I’m going out,” he said.

He slid off his bar stool. He’d been alone thus far that night, though Katie was working her Katie-oke, and he knew that David would be in soon. Clarinda had taken his order and delivered his food. She came by as he stood. “I take it you’ll be wanting this reheated when you get back?”

He smiled at her. “Yep, thanks.”

“The Merlin house again?”

“Yep. What made you say that?”

She grinned at him. “You don’t usually leave your dinner for drunks on Front Street.”

He nodded, thanked her and assured her that he’d be back.

On the street, he looked for Bartholomew, but he didn’t see the ghost, who usually hovered near or around him. It disturbed him to realize that he wished that Bartholomew was around.

He wondered if he should call for backup, but decided that he would be able to see in the house that night, and he wanted to move in quietly himself.

So thinking, he parked out on the road and walked onto the property.

When he reached the house, he moved quietly up to the porch. When he touched the front doorknob, he carefully twisted it and once again found it open. He pressed it inward carefully, remaining as silent as he could.

To his surprise, he heard conversation coming from the kitchen. “Look, none of this stuff is worth stealing. I thought we could find some small thing that would bring in a few bucks, something that no one would notice, and maybe sleep a few nights in a place that wasn’t a hellhole,” someone said. “But there’s nothing. We’re going to take a shrunken skull? There aren’t even any amulets or anything on that ragtag excuse for a mummy. And guess what? I don’t like this place! It’s creepy and scary. That damned door opened as if the house was sucking us in!”

“Don’t be ridiculous. This is a house—that’s all there is to it. Things are things. The dead are dead, and I don’t know about you, but I’m certain there’s got to be something that doesn’t weigh a hundred pounds and can be sold easily,” said a second speaker. “He’s supposed to have all kinds of jewels, diamonds and so on.”

“You know what? You’re wrong. This is bad. I don’t feel good about taking anything out of this place. It may be cursed, you know?” said the first voice.

There seemed to be a slight hesitation between the two; Liam almost moved forward, but then the second speaker said, “All right, so the house is…weird. Creepy. We look fast, we get out—fast. Hey, I was always kind of close to old Merlin. Ran errands and stuff. He owes me, honestly. So, nothing creepy will happen if we’re just careful about taking what we need, and not robbing the place blind.”

It was enough. Aware of his gun in its holster beneath his light cotton jacket, Liam stepped forward, walking casually into the kitchen.

The first man, with scraggly blond hair and a scruffy face, let out a startled yelp.

The second one spun around as if he were ready to pounce on the threatened danger; he saw Liam and backed down.

Liam knew them both.

The scruffy blond was Gary White, a guitar player who wasn’t bad, with a voice that, likewise, wasn’t bad. He could get work. Thing was, while he wasn’t bad, he just wasn’t good. That meant he didn’t work all that often, but he was still convinced that he’d get rich one day, that he’d be discovered in Key West. His last name fit him—his hair was so bleached out by the sun, it was platinum, nearly white.

The second man was Chris Vargas. He was dark haired, about a decade older than Gary, an inch taller, and he couldn’t play guitar at all. He had a beat-up old rickshaw, and made money running tourists up and down Duval Street. He had a home in a tiny apartment above the garage of a house on the south side of Old Town.

“What the hell are you two doing?” Liam asked tiredly.

Gary looked at Chris in alarm. His mouth began to work. “Uh—uh.”

That was all that he could come up with.

Vargas said, “Oh, hey! We saw lights in here. We knew that old man Merlin just died. We thought we’d better check it out.”

“Vargas, you ass, I just heard you talking,” Liam said.

Chris Vargas reddened. He was a lean, lithe man in decent shape from running up and down all the time with a fair amount of weight behind him. He could probably be dangerous, under certain circumstances, Liam decided. His features were sharp, like a little rat’s. He’d been scraping for a living too long, drinking to drown his unhappiness a few too many nights.

“All right,” the man said softly. “We—we weren’t after much, Lieutenant Beckett. Honest to God. Just some little thing.”

“And you were in here last night, too, trying to scare those kids to death, huh?” Liam asked.

“No, we were not in here last night!” Gary White said, indignant. He stood straight, and seemed really hurt at the accusation.

Liam looked at Chris Vargas. Vargas stared back at him, shaking his head emphatically.

“Oh, God, we’re under arrest, right?” Gary asked miserably.

“How did you get in?” Liam asked.

Gary looked puzzled. He wasn’t the sharpest knife in the drawer. “Um—the door?”

“You walked in the front door. How? You picked the lock?” Liam asked.

“No, it wasn’t locked,” Gary assured him.

Liam believed him. Gary White was just a bit too dense to be a good liar.

“Look,” Vargas said, “we just walked in because—”

“You were robbing the estate,” Liam interrupted.

“Not really robbing,” White protested. “Just…Ah, come on, Lieutenant. If you heard us, you know that we’re just…All right, so we were going to take something really little. And, hell, we’re not bad. The kids in here the other night—those little bastards have broken into other places. They don’t steal, but they smoke pot, yeah, they smoke pot up in the rooms and play with all the stuff the snowbirds leave behind.”

“If you weren’t in here,” Liam asked wearily, “how do you know about the kids?”

“Because everybody knows about the kids,” Vargas said. “Ah, Lieutenant! You know this is a small town, really. Everybody knows everything. And it’s true. I heard they got the bejesus scared out of them here. I hope it’s true. It will keep the little rug rats from causing real trouble.”

“That’s right,” White agreed solemnly, nodding at Vargas as if the two of them were the most solid citizens in the world.

Gary White must have seen something in Liam’s face. He choked slightly, cleared his throat and asked, “Are you going to arrest us?”

This whole thing was beyond absurd. Two nights in a row. First, kids. Second? Two of the denizens of the place who weren’t known for violence, who just eked out a living. If he arrested them, an attorney would have them out on bail. And what would they get for trespassing? They hadn’t stolen anything; he had arrived too soon, and, from what he could tell, they couldn’t find anything they actually wanted to steal anyway.

He thought about the paperwork.

And, to his knowledge, Gary White had never done anything to break the law that was more serious than jaywalking.

“Get the hell out of here,” he said.

They both stared at him.

“Now,” he said.

They bolted like lightning. He turned and watched them from the kitchen doorway. They had trouble opening the front door, the one crashing into the other, crashing into the door, then each other again.

Finally, they made it out.

He walked to the door himself. There was nothing wrong with it that he could see. The lock hadn’t been picked.

Someone else out there had a key.

Tomorrow he’d have to have the lock changed.

Going from the West Coast of the States to the east coast made it difficult to arrive with much of anything left of daylight, especially once daylight savings time was gone. But Kelsey had found an early-morning flight that got her into Miami around three in the afternoon. She could have taken a puddle jumper down to Key West from Miami International Airport, but she wanted to drive. Baggage claim at MIA was insane, but eventually she was ready to head out for the rental-car agency, and by four-thirty she was driving south.

The turnpike took her to Florida City, and she headed down U.S. 1, past the gas stations, one real restaurant and fast-food eateries to the eighteen-mile stretch of nothingness that led to Key Largo and from there south and then west to Key West.

They’d improved the road, though she still saw signs and crosses where those in a hurry had tried to pass, only to pay the ultimate price. She managed to get behind a truck towing a huge boat trailer, but she didn’t mind waiting for the passing zone.

It had been a long time.

The day was beautiful. The turquoise water glistened, the waves were gentle and calm. In a few areas, construction workers were still claiming land to widen the road and the stench of stagnant water overpowered the view, but the sight of a cormorant soaring above the water seemed to lift the stench beyond her windows, and then she was past it.

A new overpass made getting into Key Largo a bit easier and faster, and it was still daylight when she arrived. Key Largo was built up. She assumed she’d see that all the way down the Keys.

By six-thirty she had lost the daylight, and she had come to the middle Keys where there were still vast tracts that didn’t seem to have been built up much. Marathon had acquired another shopping center, but the lower Keys were still tiny and starkly populated. She slowed at the signs warning that her speed needed to be minimal in honor of the little Key deer that roamed the area, and at last, in darkness, she reached Stock Island and then drove on to Key West. Following North Roosevelt Boulevard around, she sought out the shopping plaza on the newer part of the island where the attorney had assured her he would leave the key to the Merlin house in a lockbox—a brand-new key because the police lieutenant had suggested new locks. She found the shopping center easily enough, decided she’d just stop quickly for a sandwich at a small Cuban restaurant and went to procure the key. As she punched in the number Joe Richter had given her, the door to his office in the plaza opened.

“Kelsey. Kelsey Donovan! Young lady, you have grown up!”

Joe Richter was probably about fifty. She remembered him the minute she saw him because he hadn’t changed at all. His hair was snow-white, and he had a full head of it. He was lean, a gaunt man who managed to maintain a presence and a tremendous sense of dignity.

“Joe, I remember you, of course,” she said. When she had called about Cutter’s death, he hadn’t reminded her that she knew him. But she had been distracted when she called—still wallowing in guilt.

“I was just about to leave—you just caught me. I wanted to let you know we can do a formal reading of the will anytime you like. You’re the only heir, so…Then,” he added, clearing his throat, “we do need to make arrangements for Cutter’s burial. He’s still at the morgue, awaiting your plans.”

“Thank you, Joe, for handling everything so far,” Kelsey said.

“He was my client for years, though even I had barely seen him lately,” Joe said.

“When did you see him last?”

“About six months ago.”

“That long? Was there any special reason you saw him then?”

Joe shook his head. “No. His will has remained the same since your mother died. I happened to be shopping down on Front Street, so I took a ride out. I told him he needed a maid—he said that he’d tried hiring someone once, but she’d left in the middle of the job, screaming. I guess the house isn’t for everyone.”

“No,” Kelsey agreed, smiling.

“Well, young lady, I’m going to suggest you get some help to clean the place out. It’s going to need a lot of work.” He hesitated. “Can I do anything for you now? Would you rather stay somewhere else? I can get you a reservation…Of course, you could have gotten your own reservation, if you had wanted,” he added gently.

“No, I think I need to get out to the house. Everything is actually working, right? Electric, plumbing…that kind of thing?”

“Oh, yeah, the police saw to it. All I had to do was hire the locksmith—safety’s sake, you know?”

“Sure, thank you. I’ll talk to you tomorrow,” she told him.

He nodded and watched her head out to her car. She revved the engine and found herself looking around the plaza. She might have been almost anywhere in America, in this parking lot. This portion of the island was fairly new, created by dredging salt ponds, digging some places, dumping others. Once she headed down Roosevelt toward Old Town, things changed. Hospitals, restaurants, tourist shops and bars were interspersed among old Victorian buildings, and grand dames from the past sat side by side with neon lights. The Hard Rock Cafe was located in one of the old Curry mansions—in fact, it was “haunted,” of course. Robert Curry, unable to sustain the family fortune due to ill health and a lack of business smarts, had killed himself there. Also on Duval was St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, rebuilt and rebuilt again—and still the haunt of a sea captain and a group of children tragically killed in a fire. Key West jealously guarded her ghosts, just as she did her bizarre history and all her citizens who had come and gone.

Kelsey didn’t drive as far as Duval, though, turning to take Simonton down to the wharf and then turning onto the private road that led out to Cutter Merlin’s house.

Her house.

She hesitated a minute at the overgrown gravel drive that led out to the house. Funny—as a child, she had never thought of the house as remote.

That night, in the darkness, the road looked like something out of a slasher film, and the house seemed to sit in a lonely jungle far from the mainland.

It wasn’t far, she reminded herself. She and her friends had swum the distance from the house’s spit of land over to the mainland many a time. Of course, they were good swimmers. They knew the currents that could sweep by, but the eddy would keep them closer to the road, and they had learned as kids never to strike out alone. Her mother had been an amazing swimmer and diver, and she had taught Kelsey that the biggest mistake those who knew what they were doing made was that they didn’t take common-sense precautions.

Still, the house seemed so austere, so alone out here tonight.

All right. So much for the swimming. She had walked in and out of town as a kid. There was nothing far or remote about the place.

It was hers, and she had to take care of the place.

She could wait until morning.

That would be ridiculous. She didn’t need a hotel room. She owned a house. Even if she planned on selling it, she owned the house.

She pulled the rental car around the side of the house, where they had always parked the family car. There were no cars there; she wondered if Cutter had stopped driving as the years had gone by. There was a lot she had forgotten to ask Joe. But she had just arrived; she’d spend time with him learning about the entire situation tomorrow.

If Cutter had employed a maid who had run away, he had stopped hiring a gardener as well, that was certain.

She exited the car, and was startled to feel an uneasy sense of being watched the second she did so. She looked around. She could see the lights across the tiny inlet, and the lights in the house itself. A porch light was on, and light glowed from the living room.

Parlor, she corrected herself. Cutter had always called it the parlor. Now it would be called a living room.

Maybe she was having a ridiculous argument with herself about semantics because she just wasn’t sure she wanted to go in.

She had always loved the house. Her mother’s death had been an accident. She had tripped and fallen down the stairs. She might have just broken a leg, or an arm. She might have tumbled down and been fine, just bruised and shaken. But the way she had fallen…

She had broken her neck.

Kelsey dug in her over-the-shoulder bag for the new keys. On the porch, she discovered that there were two bolts, thus the chain of keys. She turned both, opened the door and walked on in.

She thought that memories would come flooding back, that she might feel weepy and nostalgic, but the house was actually different. Not the house per se but the appearance of the house. When she and her parents had lived here with her grandfather, the clutter had been at a minimum. There had still been strange objects everywhere: a hundred-year-old stuffed leopard on a dais, mounted heads on the wall—none of them killed by her family, and none less than a century old—native American art, dream catchers, Indian statues of Kali and other gods and goddesses, Roman busts, wiccan wands and so on. The items had been displayed on the wall, or in etageres, or freestanding on mounts. Now…items were everywhere, boxes were everywhere, and the objects on the walls were strewn with dust and spiderwebs. Cutter’s glass-encased six-foot bookstand—which had held priceless first editions of many works—was open, and it seemed that the spiders and other crawling creatures had done their damage in there, as well. Sawdust and packing material was strewn haphazardly here and there, almost as if Cutter—or someone else—had been feverishly looking for something special among the endless supply of things in the house.

Standing there, looking around, she felt a sinking sensation. The work this place was going to require would be enormous. And yet…they had been her grandfather’s treasures. Joe Richter had his will and his detailed papers on where things should go. Only Cutter would have known what had value, what belonged in a museum, and what had been sentimental to him.

A prickly sensation teased her spine, and she looked around quickly, having the eerie feeling once again of being watched. She didn’t know how that was possible, except that…

Well, actually, anyone could be hiding just about anywhere.

She walked forward and turned on more lights. She frowned as she surveyed all the boxes and crates. She had nearly reached the kitchen when she heard someone on the porch.

They would knock—if they were legitimate.

They didn’t knock. She heard a scratching sound, and something like metal against metal.

With her heart in her throat, she went flying across the room. She reached for the poker in the stand by the fireplace and grabbed the ash sweep instead. No matter; there was no time. She flew for the light switch, turned it off and dived behind one of the boxes.

A second later, she heard the knob twist; the door was unlocked.

Had she locked it again after she came in? She couldn’t remember.

The door creaked open. She heard footsteps, and then nothing. Whoever was there was just standing, listening.

Seconds ticked by with nothing, nothing except the pounding of her heart.

Then, as if the intruder could hear that pounding, he zoned in on her exact location. The footsteps came closer and closer…

And he was right in front of her. In a second, she would be pinned in place, trapped where she crouched in fear…

She shot up, swinging the metal ash sweep. She heard a hoarse cry as the rod connected with flesh, but then it was pulled out of her hand and a body tackled her length, sending her, and him, crashing down between the boxes.

“Bastard!” she raged, struggling desperately.

Her attacker went still.

“Kelsey?”

She knew the voice. Years dissipated. She knew the voice well.

The boy had changed. The long, lean, muscled body bearing down on hers had definitely changed.

“Liam?” she breathed.

“Good God, Kelsey!” he said.

For another split second, he was on top of her, vital, tense, a mass of flesh and sinew like a brick prison wall that lived and breathed…and then he was up, reaching for her hand, hauling her to her feet.

“Kelsey!” he said again, rubbing his arm, staring at her in the shadows.

“Liam,” she said.

Then he turned away from her and walked toward the light switch, and the eeriness of the night was filled with a glow of rationality once again.