Читать книгу Standing In The Shadows - Shannon McKenna - Страница 8

He was slouched against an ancient, battered beige Cadillac, parked in a tow zone. The stub of a glowing cigarette was pinched between his thumb and forefinger. He sank into a crouch and stubbed it out. His face was hard, and grim with what looked like controlled anger. He straightened up, looming over her. She’d forgotten how tall he was. Six foot three, or something ridiculous like that.

Her hand was pressed hard against her open mouth. She forced herself to drop it. Head up, shoulders back, don’t lock your knees, she told herself silently. “Why are you lurking in front of my building?”

His dark brows twitched together. “I’m not lurking,” he said. “I was just having a smoke before I rang your bell.”

His tawny hair was longer and wilder than it had been at Crystal Mountain. His chiseled, angular face was even leaner. His green eyes were so brilliant against the smudges of weariness beneath them. Wind ruffled his hair around his broad shoulders. It blew across his face, and he brushed it back with his hand. The one with the brutal burn scar.

He could have been a barbarian Celtic warrior heading into battle, with that hard, implacable look on his face. Stiffen his hair with lime, give him a bronze helm, a torque of twisted gold around his neck, chain mail—except that most Iron Age Celtic warriors had disdained armor to show their contempt for danger, the fussy scholar inside her reminded. They’d run naked into battle, screaming with rage and challenge.

Oh, please. Back off. Don’t go there.

She didn’t want that image in her head, but it was too late. She was already picturing Connor’s big, hard, sinewy body. Stark naked.

Her eyes dropped, flustered. She focused on the cigarette butts that littered the ground beside his battered boots. Three of them.

She glanced up. “Three cigarettes? Looks like lurking to me.”

His face tightened. “I was just working up my nerve.”

“To ring my doorbell?” She couldn’t keep the sarcasm out of her voice. “Oh, please. I’m not that scary.”

His lips twitched. “Believe me, you are. For me, you are.”

“Hmm. I’m glad I have that effect on somebody, because the rest of the world doesn’t seem too impressed with me these days,” she said.

His eyes were so unwavering that the urge to babble was coming over her. “Why do you need to work up the nerve to talk to me?”

“Your last words to me were less than cordial,” he said wryly. “Something along the lines of ‘Get away from me, you sick bastard.’”

She bit her lip. “Oh, dear. Did I really say that to you?”

“It was a bad scene,” he conceded. “You were upset.”

“I’m sorry,” she said. “For the record, you didn’t deserve it.”

His eyes were so intensely bright. How could such a cool color give out such an impression of heat? It scorched her face, made something clench up low and hot and tight in her body. She wrapped her arms around herself. “There were extenuating circumstances.”

“Yeah, there sure as hell were. Are you OK, Erin?”

Wind gusted around them, setting his long canvas coat flapping around his knees. She shivered and clutched her thin denim jacket tightly around her. No one had asked that question in such a long time, she’d forgotten how to answer it. “Is that what you waited three whole cigarettes outside my building to ask?” she hedged.

A quick, hard shake of his head was her answer.

“So…what, then?”

“I asked my question first,” he said.

She looked down, away, around, anywhere else, but his gaze was like a magnet, pulling her eyes back and dragging the truth right out of her. Dad used to say that McCloud was a goddamn psychic. It had made Dad nervous. Rightly so, as it happened.

“Never mind,” Connor said. “Shouldn’t have asked. I need to talk to you, Erin. Can I come up to your place?”

The thought of his potent male presence filling her dingy little apartment sent shivers all down her spine. She backed up, and bumped into the wrought iron railing. “I’m, uh, on my way to visit Mom, and I’m in kind of a hurry, because the bus is about to come, so I—”

“I’ll give you a ride to your mom’s house. We can talk in the car.”

Oh, great. That would be even worse. Stuck all alone in a car with a huge barbarian warrior. She couldn’t bear his burning scrutiny when she felt so weepy and shaky and vulnerable. She shook her head and backed away from him, toward the bus stop. “No. Sorry. Please, Connor. Just…stay away from me.” She turned, and fled.

“Erin.” His arms closed around her from behind. “Listen to me.”

His solid heat pressed against her body nudged her shaky nerves toward what felt like panic. “Don’t touch me,” she warned. “I’ll scream.”

His arms tightened around her ruthlessly. “Please. Don’t,” he said. “Listen to me, Erin. Novak’s broken out of prison.”

A cloud of black spots danced in front of her eyes. She sagged, and was abruptly grateful for his strong arms, holding her upright. “Novak?” Her voice was a wispy thread of sound.

“He broke out the other night. With two of his goons. Georg Luksch was one of them.”

Her fingers dug into his rock-hard forearms. Her head spun, and her stomach with it. “I think I’m going to be sick,” she said.

“Sit down, on the steps. Put your head down.” He crouched beside her and rested his arm across her shoulder. His touch was light and careful, but the contact reverberated through her entire body.

“I hate to scare you,” he said gently. “But you had to know.”

“Oh yeah?” She looked up at him. “What good does it do me?”

“So you can take steps to protect yourself.” He sounded as if he were stating something too obvious to put into words.

She dropped her face down against her knees. She shook with bitter laughter, like a dry coughing fit. Protect herself. Hah. What could she do? Hire an army? Buy a cannon? Move into a fortress? She’d been trying so hard to put this nightmare behind her, but she’d just swung around in a big circle and smacked into it again, face-first.

She lifted her face, and stared into blank, empty space. “I can’t deal with this,” she said. “I don’t want to know. I’ve had enough.”

“It doesn’t matter what you want. You have to—”

“I’ll tell you what I have to do, Connor McCloud.” She wrenched herself away from him and rose up onto unsteady feet. “I have to go to my mother’s house to pay her bills and mortgage, and get her phone turned back on because she won’t get out of bed. Then I have to call Cindy’s school and beg them not to withdraw her scholarship. I take the bus because I lost my job and my car got repossessed. I’ll worry about homicidal maniacs another time. And here comes my bus. So thank you for your concern, and have a nice evening.”

Connor’s face was stark with misery. “I didn’t want you to get hurt, Erin. I would’ve done anything to stop it.”

The look on his face made her chest hurt and her throat swell shut. The bus groaned to a halt, a suffocating cloud of diesel fumes rising around them. The door sighed and opened its maw for her.

She laid her hand against his broad chest, and yanked it right back, shocked by her own boldness. His body was so hard and warm.

“I know it wasn’t your fault,” she said. “What happened to Dad. He did it to himself. I knew he was in trouble, but he wouldn’t let anyone help him. And none of us knew how bad it was.”

“Miss!” the driver bellowed. “You on or off?”

“It wasn’t your fault,” she repeated. She scrambled into the bus, and clutched the pole as it pulled away, watching Connor’s tall form recede into the dusk. Wind whipped his shaggy hair around his stern, sculpted face. The canvas coat flapped. His penetrating eyes held hers, tugging at her, until the bus turned the corner and he was lost to sight.

She collapsed into a seat. Her eyes darted from passenger to passenger, as if Georg would suddenly pop out of nowhere and flash her that seductive smile that had so perplexed her at Crystal Mountain six months ago. She’d been surprised and gratified to be pursued by a guy like that. Almost tempted to give him a whirl just to break the spell of her self-imposed celibacy—but something had held her back.

Her friends had been so impatient with her. What the hell do you want in a guy, Erin? He’s smart, he’s built, he’s charming, he’s got a sexy accent, he looks like a GQ cover model, and he’s warm for your form! Stop acting like a friggin’ nun! Go get you some, girlfriend!

She’d tried to explain that the easy warmth that Georg exuded didn’t warm her. It was sort of like the way her taste buds could not be fooled by saccharine or Nutrasweet. The sweetness didn’t follow through, it didn’t satisfy. Her girlfriends had shrugged that off as unconvincing. They told her she was too fussy. Or just plain chicken.

The fact that she hadn’t gone to bed with that awful man had been her one small, private satisfaction and comfort afterwards, when her world lay around her in ruins.

Nobody in the bus was the right size or build to be Georg. Every time the bus lumbered to a stop, she held her breath until she saw who boarded. A teenage Goth girl with black lips and a pierced face. A portly Latina lady. A young urban professional woman in a suit, coming home from working Saturday at some high-powered job, like she herself so often had, back in the dear old days of steady employment. No Georg. Not that she would necessarily recognize his face, after what Connor had done to it. The memory of that bloody duel made her queasy again.

She was being stupid, really. If Novak really was bothering to think of her, it wouldn’t be Georg that he would send.

It could be anybody.

Novak read the e-mail on the screen of the laptop and typed a response. His hands were deft on the keyboard even with the use of only his right hand plus the thumb and middle finger of his left. He stared at the text as he rubbed the stumps of his maimed hand.

A constant, throbbing reminder of the debt he was owed.

The wind on the terrace made his eyes tear up. They burned and stung, unused to the colored lenses, and he pulled the case out of his pocket and removed them. The glues and the custom-made prosthetics that changed the shape of his features were uncomfortable, but temporary. Just until he could organize a final bout of cosmetic surgery.

He gazed out over the city. Such a pleasure, after months of staring at the walls of a prison cell, to cast his gaze out toward ranges of ragged mountains that hemmed in the jewel-toned greens and blues and silver grays of Seattle. He hit SEND, and took a sip of cabernet out of a splendid reproduction of a second-century B.C.E. Celtic drinking cup. It was fashioned from a real human skull, decorated with hammered gold. A fanciful indulgence, but after his prison experience, he was entitled.

He had Erin to thank for this expensive new caprice. Odd, that he had not developed a taste for blood-drenched Celtic artifacts until now. Their penchant for ritual murder resonated in his own soul.

The sacrifice that he had planned was blessed by the gods. He knew this was so because Celia had come to him in a vision. He was always moved when one of his angels visited him. They had come to him in the hospital where he lay near death, and they had comforted him in prison. Souls he had liberated, forever young and beautiful. Their shades had fluttered around him, distressed to see him suffering. Belinda had come, and Paola, and Brigitte, and all the rest, but when Celia came, it was special. Celia had been the first.

He savored his wine, his pulse leaping at the memory of the night that had marked his life. He had taken Celia’s lovely body, and as he spent himself inside her, the impulse rose up like a genie from a bottle, huge and powerful. The urge to place his thumbs against the throbbing pulse in her throat, and press.

She had thrashed beneath him, her face turning color, protruding eyes full of growing awareness. Celia could not speak, she could only gasp, but he had sensed her passionate assent. They had been linked, a single mind. She was an angel, offering herself to him.

The fanged gods had claimed him as their own that night. And he had understood what tribute the gods demanded to confer power and divinity. They had marked him, and he would prove himself worthy.

Celia had been a virgin, too. He had found that out afterwards, when he washed himself. How poignant. It was a curse to be so sensitive. Doomed to grasp for the spontaneous perfection of Celia’s sacrifice, over and over. Never quite reaching it.

The door to the terrace opened. He felt the red, throbbing glow of Georg’s energy without turning. “Have a glass of wine, Georg. Enjoy the pleasures of freedom. You refuse to relax. This puts us at risk.”

“I don’t want wine.”

Novak looked at him. The thick, shiny pink scar that marred Georg’s cheek was flushed scarlet over his prison pallor. His beautiful yellow hair had been shorn to stubble on his scalp, and his eyes were like glowing coals. “Are you sulking, Georg? I hate sulking.”

“Why won’t you let me just kill them?” Georg hissed. “I will be a fugitive for the rest of my life anyway. I don’t care if—”

“I want better than that for you, my friend. You cannot risk being taken again.”

“I have already made arrangements,” Georg said. “I will die before I go back to prison.”

“Of course you have. I thank you for your dedication,” Novak replied. “But you will see, when you are calmer, that my plan is better.”

Georg’s face was a mask of agony. “I cannot bear it. I am dying.” The words burst out in the obscure Hungarian dialect they shared.

Novak rose from his chaise and put down his wine. He placed the scarred stumps of his maimed hand against Georg’s ruined face. His cosmetic surgeons would improve matters, but the young man’s youthful perfection was gone forever. Another score to settle.

“Do you know why the butterfly must struggle to escape its chrysalis?” he asked, sliding into dialect himself.

Georg jerked his face away. “I am not in the mood for your fables.”

“Silence.” The nails of his left thumb and middle finger dug into Georg’s face. “It is the act of struggling that forces out the fluid from the butterfly’s body and completes the development of its wings. If the butterfly is released prematurely, it will lurch around, swollen and clumsy, and soon die. Never having flown.”

Georg’s lips drew back from his gaping, missing teeth with a soundless hiss of pain. “And what is this supposed to mean to me?”

“I think you know.” He let go. Blood welled out of the red marks that his nails had left. “Struggle is necessary. Punishment exalts.”

“Easy for you to talk of punishment. You did not suffer as I did, with your father’s money to protect you.”

Novak went very still. Georg cringed away, sensing that he had gone too far.

Georg was wrong. His father had taught him about punishment. That lesson was frozen in his mind, dead center. A tableau in a globe of imperishable crystal. He turned away from the memory and held up his left hand. “Does this look as if I know nothing of punishment?”

Georg’s eyes dropped in shame, as well they ought.

A gull shrieked in the darkening sky. Novak looked up, and exulted in the wild creature’s freedom. Soon he would be reborn, with no father, no mother. He would be spotless, surrounded by gods and angels. He would be free at last, and he would never look back.

He jolted himself back to the present. “Be grateful that you have been chosen as my instrument to make this sacrifice, Georg. My gods are not for cowards, or weaklings.”

Georg hesitated. “I am not weak,” he said sourly.

“No, you are not.” He patted Georg’s shoulder. The younger man flinched at the contact. “You know my tastes just as I know yours. I would rip their throats out with my teeth and drink their blood, if I had that luxury. But I cannot compromise this new identity before I have even established it. You know exactly what it will cost me to step aside and let you play…while I watch.”

Georg nodded reluctantly.

“I have chosen you to tear them to pieces for me, Georg,” Novak said gently. “And still, you cannot wait. You whine. You complain.”

Georg’s eyes narrowed. “Do you plan to give it up, then?”

“Give up what? Drinking the blood of innocents?” Novak toasted Georg with the skull goblet and smiled. “You know me too well to ask such a stupid question.”

Streaks of purplish red appeared on Georg’s cheeks. The flush faded almost instantly to ghostly pallor. “I will help you,” he said.

“I know you will, my friend,” Novak said. “And you will be rewarded for your loyalty. You must be patient, and trust me.”

The terrace door opened, and Tamara and Nigel stepped out. Nigel looked uncomfortable, but that was his natural state of being.

Tamara smiled, stunning in her brief, ice-green dress. She’d changed her chestnut hair to red and her golden eyes to green since he had sent her to monitor the household of Victor Lazar, his old friend and nemesis. He suspected that she had done her duty there with a fraction too much zeal. Perhaps he was being unfair.

In any case, red suited her, and after six months of enforced celibacy, it suited him, too. She was astonishingly beautiful. He would settle for nothing less in his bed. And her ability to hack into computer databases and change the nature of reality to suit his whims was nothing short of magic. She was immensely talented.

Nigel cleared his throat. “The courier has just delivered the blood samples from Switzerland,” he announced.

Novak nodded his approval. Plans were proceeding with orderly smoothness. “Excellent. You know what needs to be done. See to it.”

“The switch is arranged,” Nigel said. “I have identified a technician at the DNA laboratory named Chuck Whitehead who is perfect for our purposes. I will arrange for him to do the switch late Sunday night. According to my statistical analysis, that’s the period when the laboratory is most deserted. I will dispose of him afterwards myself.”

“I have some good news, as well,” Tamara said. “We won’t need to bait the trap after all. The transponder on McCloud’s car shows him parked outside Erin Riggs’s apartment for thirty-five minutes this afternoon. He then followed her to her mother’s house.”

His eyes wandered over her body, appreciating how the sheath set off her long, perfect legs. “Wonderful. Stalking the poor girl already.”

Tamara’s smile widened. What a remarkable creature. Wanted all over the world for computer crimes and fraud, and her sexual skills were just as prodigious. She would do absolutely anything.

In fact, now that he thought about it, her lack of squeamishness was almost inhibiting. A touch of disgust or fear was like a pinch of salt that brought out the flavor of a dish. After so long without sex, he had been less discerning than usual, but his natural high standards were quickly reasserting themselves.

He was irritated. He wondered if she were doing it deliberately. Unacceptable, that one of his servants should presume to manipulate him. How dare she.

Georg stirred restlessly, his fists clenching. “So the police must have told McCloud that we are free,” he said.

Tamara turned her brilliant smile upon him. “It would seem so.”

“Then Erin knows that I am coming for her.”

Tamara’s smile faltered at the concentrated malevolence in Georg’s voice. Then the smile quickly reappeared…and gave him an idea.

“No, Georg,” he said. “Don’t be obtuse. Erin knows nothing of the sort. I have spent a great deal of money to arrange for reports of our sighting in France.”

“I am dying,” Georg moaned, in dialect. “I suffer.”

Novak sighed. Georg could be so tedious. The poor man was a volcano of festering anger from his traumatic prison experience.

Perhaps he should offer Tamara to Georg, and observe the results. He could gauge her loyalty and commitment, and at the same time, siphon off some of Georg’s restless, dangerous energy.

“Stay and help us celebrate, my dear,” he said. “Georg, would you care to indulge? Let Tamara ease your torment.”

Georg’s ruined mouth twisted in a feral smile.

Novak studied Tamara’s reaction. Her expression did not waver, but he sensed the tightening in her jaw as the smile froze into place.

His loins stirred. Yes. This was what had been missing. Delicious.

He smiled at Nigel. “Nigel, you may stay. Tamara likes to be watched, no? Did you learn to love it during your time with Victor?”

Her smile was like a neon sign, bright and empty. “Of course, boss,” she said, without missing a beat.

Nigel’s face paled, but he knew better than to decline. Poor, sexless Nigel. This would be good for him. He was less manually skilled as an assassin than Georg, but the mask he presented to the world was impeccable. He was a dried-up, forgettable, middle-aged gray man, whereas Georg had lost his ability to blend. Georg was now no more than a deadly weapon to be kept hidden until violence was called for.

Georg wrenched Tamara’s fragile dress down. The shoulder straps broke, and she stood naked on the terrace, the chilly evening breeze making her dark nipples tighten. She waited, unsure of what was expected of her. It was rare, to see her at a loss. Arousing.

Nigel grimaced, afraid to look away. Georg unbuttoned his pants.

He settled back on his chaise, lifted the skull goblet to his lips, and gestured for them to begin.

It occurred to him, as he watched the spectacle, that he could liberate Tamara after her usefulness was done. The danger to his new identity would be minimal. Tamara was estranged from what family she had. She barely existed on paper. The contacts through which he had found her would not ask questions. Her body would never be found.

Perhaps she had been offered to him just for this purpose.

Georg was being very rough. Novak sipped his wine and thought about reining him in. He did not want Tamara damaged, at least not yet. But then again, the show suited his mood, just as it was.

The ancient Celts believed that the skulls of their victims had potent magical powers. Perhaps he would make a new drinking goblet out of Tamara, decorated with hammered gold. What he had planned for Erin Riggs and Connor McCloud was a gift for his fanged gods.

But Tamara would be all for him. A special treat.

The earthy, rhythmic sounds of the act taking place on the terrace were drowned out by the voices of his angels in his head, like the wind in the leaves. Tamara would soon join their ranks.

Punishment exalted. His angels knew this. And the word they whispered, over and over, was always “Never…never…never…”

In every language on earth.

Mom’s car was in the driveway, but the house was dark. Erin was surprised to discover that her heart could actually sink any lower.

She approached the handsome Victorian house where she’d grown up. The overgrown rhododendrons wreathed the porch in shadow. The Fillmores next door had mowed a surgically neat line where their lawn ended, to accentuate the ragged forlornness of the Riggs’s lawn and make their silent protest plain.

She rummaged through her purse for the keys and let herself in, deliberately making a lot of noise. She switched on the porch light. Nothing happened. She peered up at it, and realized that the bulb was gone. Very strange. If Mom had removed it, she would have replaced it.

It was as dark as a tomb inside, with the blinds drawn. She flipped on the floor lamp in the living room. Nothing. She tried to tighten the bulb. There was no bulb.

She tried the track lighting in the dining room. Nothing. Maybe the power was out…no. The lights had been on at the Fillmores’.

“Mom?” she called out.

No response. She felt her way slowly, toward the utility closet where the lightbulbs were kept. She grabbed three, and stumbled back. She screwed a bulb into the living room lamp and flipped it on.

The sight jolted her rattled nerves. The rolling table that held the television was dragged away from the wall. The cables that connected it to the power strip were torn away. The cable box lay on the ground. Her first thought was of burglars, but nothing seemed to be missing.

Her dread intensified. “Mom? Is something wrong with the TV?”

Still no response. She threaded a bulb into the hanging lamp over the dining room table. The room looked normal. She climbed onto a chair to replace the bulb in the kitchen ceiling lamp.

The light revealed a cluttered mess. She peeked in the empty refrigerator, sniffed the milk. It had turned to cheese. She would load the dishwasher and set it running before she left. Maybe do some grocery shopping, but that would leave her no money to travel with.

She headed for the stairs, and gazed, tight-lipped, at the new pile of untouched mail below the mail slot.

There was still a bulb in the wall sconce on the stairs, thank goodness. She started to climb, passing photos of herself and Cindy, her grandparents, and her parents’ wedding portraits. The four of them, skiing together in Banff on that vacation they had taken five years ago.

She knocked on the door to the master bedroom. “Mom?” Her voice sounded like a frightened child’s.

“Honey? Is that you?” Her mother’s voice was froggy and thick.

Her relief was so intense, tears sprang into her eyes. She opened the door. Her mother was sitting on the bed, blinking in the light from the stairs. The room smelled stale.

“Mom? I’m turning the light on,” she warned.

Barbara Riggs gazed up at her daughter, her eyes dazed and reddened. Her usually meticulous bed was wildly disarranged, half of the mattress showing. A terrycloth bathrobe was draped over the television. “Mom? Are you OK?”

The shadows under her mother’s eyes looked like bruises. “Sure. Just resting, sweetie.” She turned her gaze away, as if looking her daughter in the eye were an activity too effortful to sustain.

“Why is the bathrobe over the TV?” Erin asked.

Her mother’s neck sank into her hunched shoulders like a turtle retracting into its shell. “It was looking at me,” she muttered.

Those five words scared Erin more than anything else had that day, which was saying a hell of a lot. “Mom? What do you mean?”

Barbara shook her head and pushed herself up off the bed with visible effort. “Nothing, honey. Let’s go have a cup of tea.”

“Your milk’s gone bad,” Erin said. “You hate it without milk.”

“So I’ll just have to cope, won’t I?”

Erin flinched at her mother’s sharp tone. Barbara’s eyes softened. “I’m sorry, sweetie. It’s not you. You’re an angel. It’s just…everything. You know?”

“I know,” Erin said quietly. “It’s OK. Let me make up this bed.”

She tucked and straightened the bed, but when she grabbed the bathrobe to pull it off the TV, her mother lunged to stop her. “No!”

Erin let go of it, but the robe was already sliding onto the floor with a plop. “What is it?” she asked. “What is it with the TV?”

Her mother wrapped her arms around her middle. “It’s just that I’ve, ah…I’ve been seeing things.”

Erin waited for more, but Mom just shook her head, her eyes bleak and staring. “What things?” Erin prompted.

“When I turn on the TV,” her mother said.

“Most people do,” Erin observed. “That’s what it’s for.”

“Do not be snotty with me, young lady,” Barbara snapped.

Erin took a deep breath and tried again. “What do you see, Mom?”

Barbara sank back down on the bed. “I see your dad, and that woman,” she said dully. “In those videos. Every channel. Both TVs.”

Erin sat down heavily on the bed. “Oh,” she whispered. “I see.”

“No. You don’t. You can’t.” Barbara’s voice trembled. She wiped her puffy eyes, and groped for the bedside box of Kleenex. “The first time, I thought it was a dream. But then it started happening more often. Now it’s all the time. Every time I touch the thing. Today it turned itself on. I swear, I didn’t even touch it today, and it turned itself on.”

Erin had to try several times before she could choreograph her voice into being low and soothing. “That’s not possible, Mom.”

“I know it’s not,” her mother snapped. “Believe me, I know. And I know that it…that it isn’t a good sign. That I’m seeing things.”

Their eyes met, and Erin glimpsed the depths of her mother’s terror. The yawning fear of losing her grip on reality itself.

She reached for the controls on the TV.

“No!” her mother cried out. “Honey, please. Don’t—”

“Let me show you, Mom,” she insisted. “It’ll be perfectly normal.”

An old Star Trek episode filled the room. She changed channels, to a rerun of M.A.S.H. And again, to the evening news. She changed that channel quickly, in case news of Novak’s escape should be announced. That was all Mom needed to hear tonight. She left it on a perky commercial for floor wax. “See? Nothing wrong with the TV.”

Her mother’s brow furrowed into a knot of perplexity. A chorus line of dancing cartoon mops high-kicked their way across a gleaming cartoon floor. “I don’t understand,” she whispered.

“Nothing to understand.” Erin tried to sound cheerful. It felt forced and hollow. She flipped off the TV. “Come on downstairs, Mom.”

Barbara followed her, with slow, shuffling steps. “I don’t know whether to be relieved, or even more frightened that it was normal.”

“I vote for relieved,” Erin said. “In fact, I vote that we celebrate. Get dressed, and we can go out to the Safeway. Your fridge is empty.”

“Oh, that’s OK, honey. I’ll do it myself, tomorrow.”

“Promise?”

Barbara patted her daughter’s anxious face. “Of course I will.”

A teabag dangled inside the teapot, fluffy with mold. “How long has it been since you ate, Mom?” Erin demanded.

Barbara made a vague gesture. “I had some crackers a while ago.”

“You have to eat.” Erin rummaged through the clutter for the dish soap. “Did you know about Cindy’s scholarship?”

Barbara winced. “Yes,” she murmured. “They called me.”

“And?” Erin scrubbed the teapot with soapy water, and waited.

No reply was forthcoming. She looked over her shoulder, frowning. “Mom? What’s happening? Tell me.”

“What do you want me to say, hon? The conditions are clear. The scholarship is only valid if Cindy keeps up a 3.0 average. It was 2.1 last semester. Her midterms this semester were a disaster. There’s no money for tuition if she loses that scholarship.”

Erin stared at her in blank dismay. “Cindy can’t just quit school.”

Barbara’s shoulders lifted, and dropped.

Erin stood there, frozen. Her soapy hands dripped onto the floor.

Mom looked so defeated. Now would be the moment to pull a rabbit out of a hat, but there was no money for tuition at a private college. Not even fees from her new client could solve a problem of that size. The CDs were cashed in. The new mortgage had gone to pay for Dad’s defense.

Erin wiped her hands on her jeans. She groped for something positive to say as she gazed at her mother. The impulse sagged and faded into silence. Barbara Riggs had always been so well dressed and perfectly made up. Now her face was puffy, her eyes dull, her unwashed hair snarled into a crooked halo.

Suddenly the messy kitchen was too depressing to endure. “Let’s go into the living room, Mom.”

Barbara flinched. “I don’t want to look at the—”

“There’s nothing wrong with the TV. Once I hook it back up, I’ll show you that it’s as normal as the one upstairs. There’s no space on this table for me to open your mail. Come on, let’s go.”

Erin scooped up the mail on her way in, trying not to notice her mother’s stumbling, shambling gait behind her. She flipped on the lamp in the living room. Something was odd. She hadn’t noticed it before, distracted as she’d been by the disheveled state of the TV. “Why is the clock turned to the wall? And Grandmother Riggs’s mirror?”

Her mother’s blank, startled gaze lit on the stained wooden backing of the antique mirror. The wire that held it to the hook barely cleared the ornate gilded frame. Her eyes widened. “I never touched it.”

Erin dropped the mail on the couch, and lifted the mirror off the wall. It was incredibly heavy. She turned it around.

The mirror was shattered.

Cracks radiated out of an ugly hole, as if someone had bashed it with a blunt object. Glinting shards of mirror glass littered the carpet. Her mother’s horror-stricken face was reflected in the jagged pieces.

Their eyes met. Mom held up her hands, as if to ward off a blow. “It wasn’t me,” she said. “I would never do that. Never.”

“Who else has been in the house?” Erin demanded. “How on earth could you not have heard the person who did this?”

“I…I’ve been sleeping a lot,” her mother faltered. “And a couple of times, I, ah, took some Vicodin for my headaches and my back pain. And when I take a Vicodin, an army could troop through here and I wouldn’t hear them. But God knows, if there’s one thing I would never forget, after everything that’s happened, it’s to lock the doors!”

Erin laid the mirror carefully upright on the floor against the wall and wrapped her arms around herself.

Seven years of bad luck. As if they hadn’t had their quota.

Another thought struck her. She glanced at the grandfather clock, another of the treasures that had come with Grandmother Riggs from England at the end of the nineteenth century. She turned it around.

The face of the antique clock was shattered.

She drifted to the couch and sat down. The pile of mail beside her suddenly seemed much less important than it had minutes before.

“Mom, maybe you should talk to someone,” she whispered.

Barbara’s reddened eyes swam with desperate tears. “Honey. I swear. I did not do this. Please believe me.”

A heavy silence fell between them. Silence that was like darkness, teeming and writhing with terrible possibilities.

Erin shook herself and got to her feet. “I’m going to clean up that broken glass. Then I’m taking the frame and clock to Cindy’s room until we can repair them. And then we’re going to clean up your kitchen.”

“Don’t worry about it, sweetie. I’ll do it.”

“No, you won’t,” Erin said.

Barbara tightened the sash of her bathrobe with an angry tug. “Do not take that tone with me, Erin Katherine Riggs.”

Her mother’s sharp response made her feel better, oddly enough.

She murmured a garbled apology and hefted the mirror, shaking as much glass as she could out onto the floor. Busy was better. Activity blocked thinking, and she didn’t want to think. She preferred to scurry around, hauling the mirror and clock upstairs, gathering up slivers of glass from the carpet and putting them into a plastic bucket.

That was better than chewing on the two possibilities available to her: Mom had done it and didn’t remember doing it, or Mom hadn’t done it. Which meant that someone else had.

She wasn’t sure which notion terrified her more.

She shouldn’t leave Mom at a time like this, but she couldn’t afford not to go to Silver Fork. They needed that money so badly. Her mind ran over the problem the way the vacuum cleaner was running over the rug. Each time she thought she was done, she heard another little ting. Always more of them, hidden in the deep pile carpet like tiny, cruel teeth awaiting unwary bare feet.

Barbara ran a sink full of hot, soapy water, and was washing the dishes when Erin came back in from emptying the garbage. It was bad enough to have admitted to those hallucinations, or whatever they were, but to have her daughter think she was so far gone as to smash family heirlooms…that was unthinkable. Heaven knew, if she were to smash a Riggs family heirloom, she would damn well remember doing it.

Erin leaned against the porch doorway. Barbara’s heart ached at the pinched, anxious look in her daughter’s face.

“Thought I’d get to work on this mess,” she said awkwardly.

Erin looked relieved. “Great idea.”

“I’ll just load up this dishwasher and set it running. Maybe we can nuke a couple of Budget Gourmets. Have you eaten?”

“I should get home. I have to pack for my trip tomorrow. Let’s put one in for you.” Erin peered into the freezer. “Swiss steak and chicken teriyaki are your choices, Mom.”

Barbara’s stomach lurched unpleasantly at the thought of food. “Leave them for now, hon. I’ll have one later. What’s this trip of yours?”

“I’m going to the coast. Another consulting job for Mueller.”

“Oh, that’s lovely! You see? Cream always rises to the top, no matter what happens. You’re going to do just fine, sweetie.”

“We all will, Mom,” Erin said. “But you’ve got to stay on top of your mail, and we’ve got to work out a plan for paying the bills. And you’ve, uh, got to cool it with the Vicodin. You need to be more alert. If…if somebody is coming into the house.”

Barbara nodded, and tried to smile. “Of course.”

“I’ll help as much as I can, but I can’t do it alone.” Erin’s voice shook.

“Yes, I know,” Barbara hastened to say. “I’m sorry I scared you, baby. I’ll pull myself together, and we’ll all be fine. You’ll see.”

“Cindy, too. Maybe we could set up a meeting with the scholarship committee, convince them to give her another chance. She can’t just quit school. I’ll call her tonight.”

“Yes. You do that. She looks up to you,” Barbara encouraged. “I appreciate your help, hon. I really do.”

Erin pulled on her jacket and hesitated, gazing at her mother with big, worried eyes. “Are you sure you’re going to be OK, Mom?”

“More than sure,” Barbara assured her. “You go and get packed. Have a good trip. Call when you get there, OK?”

“I can’t,” Erin said. “Your phone’s cut off.”

Barbara flinched. “Oh, God. Well, don’t worry about it, hon. I’ll take care of it right away.”

“I’ll do it when I get back, Mom,” Erin offered. “I don’t mind.”

“Don’t worry. Run along and get ready. You have to be at your best tomorrow,” Barbara urged.

Erin gave her a tight, lingering hug and a kiss, and left.

Barbara peered out the window and watched Erin run down the sidewalk, light-footed and graceful. She turned the corner and was lost to sight.

Barbara straightened up and looked around with a new sense of purpose. She twitched the crocheted throw on the loveseat back into place and rearranged the pictures on the mantel. She gathered up the mail and rifled through the envelopes with a semblance of her old efficiency, shaking her head at all the past due notices.

It was time to stop moping and working herself into a state. Making her little girl worry herself sick. For heaven’s sake.

She stared at the TV with hostile eyes, and finally knelt down, plugged in the power strip, reattached the cables, and pushed it back to its place against the wall. She took the remote in her trembling hand and held it out in front of her like a weapon, challenging the blank screen. The mail crumpled against her chest in her shaking hand.

Enough foolishness. What she had seen was the result of too many sedatives. And it would be nice to watch the evening news.

She turned it on.

Gleaming, naked bodies, grunts and moans…the film flickered, but the images were horribly clear. Her husband. His mistress. She stabbed at the remote. The TV did not respond. She stabbed at the off button on the TV itself. Nothing. The thing was possessed.

She knocked the appliance onto the floor, but the bodies kept on grunting and heaving, lewd and bestial. Cackling, demonic laughter echoed in her head. She lunged for the fire iron by the fireplace and smashed it down against the screen. It sparked and popped, spraying glass all over the carpet. The demon TV was finally silenced.

Barbara Riggs stared at the fire iron protruding from the TV’s shattered belly. She lifted her hands to her face. Envelopes fluttered down around her like snow, forgotten.

She sank to her knees. A high-pitched mewling sound was coming from her mouth. Shards of glass ground themselves into her knees. She barely felt them. Her heart pounded. Her lungs wouldn’t take in air. She was coming apart. Shaking to pieces.

The terror filled her mind like black smoke, bearing her under.