She thought she’d like to interview a ghost.
She began to type her thoughts, using the stream-of-consciousness method that served her best, and could and would be refined later. From time to time she paused to make a quick handwritten note to herself on her pad, on some point she wanted to dig into later, or a reference area that needed a closer look.
When she heard the front door open, she kept working-thought fleetingly: Quinn’s back early. Even when the door slammed, sharp as a shot moments later, she didn’t stop the work. Wedding tension, she supposed.
But when the door behind her slammed, and the thumb bolt on the lock snicked, it got her attention. She saved the work-it was second nature to save the work, and her mind barely registered the automatic gesture. Over the sink, the window slid down, the slow movement somehow more threatening than the slammed door.
She could hurt it, she reminded herself, as she rose to sidestep to the knife block on the counter. They’d hurt it before. It felt pain. Drawing the chef’s knife out of the block, she promised herself if it was in the house with her, she would damn well cause it some pain. Still, her instincts told her she’d do better outside than locked in. She reached for the thumb bolt.
The shock ripped up her arm, had her loosing a breathless scream as she stumbled back. On a sudden, thunderous burst, the kitchen faucet gushed blood. She stepped toward the phone-help, should she need it, was only two minutes away. But when she reached for the phone, a second, more violent shock jolted her.
Scare tactics, she told herself as she began to edge out of the kitchen. Trap the lone woman in the house. Make a lot of noise, she added when the booming shook the walls, the floor, the ceiling.
She saw the boy through the living room window. Its face was pressed against it. It grinned.
I can’t get out, but it can’t get in, she thought. Isn’t that interesting? But as she watched, it crawled up the glass, across it, down, like some hideous bug.
And the glass bled until it was covered with red, and with the buzzing black flies that came to drink.
They smothered the light until the room, the house, was dark as pitch. Like being blind, she thought as her heart began to buck and kick. That’s what it wanted her to feel. It wanted to claw through her to that old, deep-seated fear. Through the booming, the buzzing, she braced a hand on the wall to guide her. She felt the warm wet run over her hand, and knew the walls bled.
She would get out, she told herself. Into the light. She’d take the shock, she’d handle it, and she would get out. Wall gave way to stair banister, and she shuddered with relief. Nearly there.
Something flew out of the dark, knocking her off her feet. The knife clattered uselessly across the floor. So she crawled, hands and knees. When the door flew open, the light all but blinded her. She came up like a runner off the mark.
She plowed straight into Gage. Later, he’d think she would have gone straight through him if she could’ve managed it. He caught her, fully expecting to have a clawing, kicking, hysterical female in his hands. Instead, she looked into his eyes with her own fierce and cold.
“Do you see it?” she demanded.
“Yeah. Your neighbor out sweeping her front walk doesn’t. She’s waving.”
Cybil kept a viselike grip on Gage’s arm with one hand, turned, and waved with the other. On the front window, the boy scrabbled like a spider. “Keep it up.” Cybil spaced her words evenly. “Waste all the energy you like on today’s matinee.” Deliberately she released Gage and sat on the front steps. “So,” she said to Gage, “out for a drive?”
He stared at her for a moment, then shaking his head, sat down beside her. The boy leaped down to race around the lawn. Where it ran, blood flowed like a river. “Actually, I’d stopped in to see Fox. While I was there, he got this little buzz in the brain. A lot of static, he said, like a signal just off channel. Since Layla said you were the only one on your own, I came up to check.”
“I’m very glad to see you.” Fire sprang up from the bloody river. “I wasn’t sure I was getting through, with our psychic Bat Signal.” To help keep herself steady, she reached out, took Gage’s hand.
On the lawn, the thing screamed in fury. It leaped, and it dived into the stream of flaming blood.
“Impressive exit.”
“You’ve got balls of fucking steel,” Gage murmured.
“A professional gambler should be able to read a bluff better than that.”
As every inch of her began to shake, Gage took her chin in his hand, turned her face to his. “It takes balls of fucking steel to bluff like that.”
“It feeds on fear. I was damned if I was going to give it lunch. But I’m double damned if I’m going back in the house alone, right at the moment.”
“Do you want to go back in, or do you want to go somewhere else?”
His tone was casual, almost careless, without a trace of there, there, honey. The last hard knot in her belly loosened, and she realized that last little one had been pride, not fear. “I want to be in Bimini, sipping a bellini on the beach.”
“Let’s go.”
When she laughed, he went with instinct rather than judgment, and took her mouth with his.
Stupid, he knew it was stupid, but smart couldn’t be half as satisfying. She tasted like she looked-exotic and mysterious. She didn’t feign surprise or resistance, and instead took as he did. When he released her, she kept her eyes on his as she leaned back.
“Well, that was no bellini in Bimini, but it was very nice.”
“I can do better than nice.”
“Oh, I have no doubt. But…” She gave his shoulder a companionable pat as she rose. “I think we’d better go inside, make sure everything’s all right in there.” She looked out over the lush green lawn, toward the front window sparkling now in the afternoon sunlight. “It probably is, but we should check.”
“Right.” He got up to go inside with her. “You should call Fox’s office, let them know you’re okay.”
“Yeah. In the kitchen. That’s where I was when it started.” She gestured to the living room chair lying on its side. “That must’ve been what flew across the room and knocked me down. The little bastard threw a chair at me.”
Gage righted it, then picked up the knife. “Yours?”
“Yeah, too bad I didn’t get to use it.” She stepped into the kitchen with him, let out a slow breath. “The back door’s closed and locked, and so’s the window. It did that. That was real. It’s best to know what’s real and what isn’t.” After rinsing the knife and sliding it back into the block, she picked up the phone to call Layla.
Assuming she’d want it the way it was, Gage unlocked and opened both door and window.
“I’m going to cook,” Cybil announced when she hung up the phone.
“Fine.”
“It’ll keep me calm and centered. I’ll need a few things, so you can drive me to the market.”
“I can?”
“Yes, you can. I’ll get my purse. And since I now have bellinis on the brain, we’ll stop by the liquor store and pick up some champagne.”
“You want champagne,” he said after a beat.
“Who doesn’t?”
“Anything else on our list of errands?”
She only smiled. “You can bet I’m getting a pair of rubber gloves. I’ll explain on the way,” she said.
SHE BROWSED, STUDIED, EXAMINED THE OFFERINGS in produce. She selected tomatoes with the care and deliberation he imagined a woman might use when selecting an important piece of jewelry. In the brightly lit market with its mind-melting Muzak and red dot specials, she looked like some fairy queen. Titania, maybe, he decided. Titania had been no pushover either.