Chapter Seventeen

 

Actually, what he gulped out was, “I want you.”

It sounded so unpracticed, so heartfelt. And unlikely or not, I seconded that sentiment. Passionately. Maybe it was the whisky. Maybe it was nervous tension. Maybe it was sexual tension. I’d been aware of and attracted to Seamus since I’d first spotted him gilded in sunlight and standing on a clump of begonias.

Maybe it was the fact that I hadn’t had sex with anybody since Greg and I split up.

Whatever it was—and maybe it was a combination of all of the above—somehow this moment became right guy at the right time and the right place.

Without another word I opened my arms to him. And when Seamus’s arms locked around me, pulling me close, it just felt right. In fact, it felt like relief. Like I had been swimming upstream for hours and I’d finally managed that last, monumental leap of faith.

He kissed me, whispered, “I’ve been thinking about this for so long,” kissed me again, and stopped talking. It was with that second kiss that I started to pay attention.

As Seamus’s warm, hungry mouth moved against my own, I realized for maybe the first time in my life that kissing was more than two sets of lips pressing against each other. A lot more. Seamus tasted of whisky, but he also tasted pleasantly…human. Like clover honey and bare skin and sun-dried cotton. Real. Alive. Immediate. Greg’s kisses had been sophisticated and cinematic; the prelude to seduction. Seamus kissed like kissing was the point. He kissed me like someone yearning for connection, like someone who cared—and frankly, like someone confident in his kissing. A confidence that was well placed, as it turned out.

I liked the taste of him. I liked his warmth. I liked the feel of his smile against my mouth and the tiny kisses he interspersed between the long, breathless, moist stretches of osculation.

When Seamus lifted his head to gasp, “Would you want to—?” I gasped back—with maybe a hint of exasperation, “Well, yes. Of course.”

His laugh cracked, and he pressed his mouth to mine again as if he couldn’t get enough of kissing me—which I understood because I felt the same way. Like I had made some amazing scientific discovery and needed to keep verifying my test results.

Positive.

Still positive.

Positively positive.

By then I was out of the dressing gown, my pajama shirt…and was trying unsuccessfully to get my slippered foot through the cuff of my pajama pant leg—lust has a way of fogging the brain. Finally I gave my foot an impatient flip, and the slipper went flying only to hit the lamp, which crashed off the table, smashed on the floor, and went out.

“Oh hell,” I said into the sudden blackout.

Seamus laughed. I liked the sound of that in the darkness. Soft, intimate, a little unsteady. Uncannily familiar. Not familiar in that we’d spent lots of nights like this. Familiar in my feeling I’d been waiting forever for a night like this.

“I like the way you move,” he joked, lowering himself on top of me, and my hands fastened on his wide shoulders, appreciating the easy flex of muscle, the feel of his warm, smooth skin. Naked skin. He had been more efficient in scrambling out of his clothes. I slid my hands down his ribs, flanks, finding the hard, taut globes of his ass.

His chest hair tickled my nipples, and the beam of moonlight through a crack in the draperies silvered the line of his nose and the gleam of his teeth.

“I like you too,” I said. It was true. I don’t deny it went through my mind that having sex with Seamus was a good way of keeping him on my side, the side that was willing to do pretty much anything to protect Aunt Halcyone, but that wasn’t why I was giving in to this. I wanted Seamus for his own self. And for my own self.

I took his unresisting hand, guiding it to the opening of my pajama bottoms, and Seamus needed no further invitation. His hand slipped through the slit of now slightly damp cotton and found me waiting. Hard.

Aching.

I wanted nothing as much in that moment as I wanted to feel Seamus’s hand wrap around my cock. What he did was reach lower, find my balls, strong fingers closing around the twin sacs, caressing.

“God, you feel wonderful,” he whispered, and squeezed gently.

The night changed color.

I let out a shuddering sigh, raising my hips instinctively. “Please…”

Seamus exhaled a long, wavering, “Why don’t we try it this way,” and we shifted gingerly, awkwardly against the cushions so that I could settle against him, half cradled between his legs, his cock bumping against my buttocks. Not graceful, not even comfortable really, but the right angle, and that was all that mattered.

His fingers wrapped around my shaft, a good solid grip that stopped short of a stranglehold, and I pushed up into his hold.

The darkness and unfamiliar surroundings made it easy, unreal, dreamlike. I found my rhythm, moaning softly as I tensed and thrust into that beautiful, steady slide of pressure and friction.

“Good, so good,” I panted, pushing harder, faster…

“That’s it. You’re beautiful. So beautiful,” Seamus urged me on.

“Oh God…oh God…” I let my head fall back against his shoulder. “Jesus, Mary, Joseph… Don’t let this be a dream…”

Seamus’s thumb feathered across the leaking tip of my cock, stroked the exquisitely sensitive underside of my foreskin until I saw lights sparking behind my eyelids and I began to come in hot, wet waves, spilling over Seamus’s willing, waiting hand.

The fine, fierce relief of it, that release of tension like no other. Laughter bubbled in my throat even as tears stung my eyes. And he’d done it with just his hand. What the hell would it be like with lips and tongue and cock?

It really was better when you liked your partner.

Seamus’s heart pounded against my shoulder blades. His cock was like a stalagmite prodding my backside. I was out of the habit of caring, but I cared about this. I cared that Seamus not regret tonight, that he got to experience not just the physical pleasure, but that sense of lift and near-liberation that was now sweeping me along.

I pulled out of his arms, turning on wobbly knees so that I could kiss him. His lips parted, and I slipped my tongue inside, flicking against his. I wrapped my hand around the rigid, painful pole of his cock, and his breath hitched.

I kissed him deeply, thrusting my tongue softly, enticingly as I tugged and stroked him, and Seamus made a helpless sound and began to thrust into my grip. Just a few hard shoves and he was coming too, coming in splashes of silver. Moonstruck, all right. Both of us.

He fell back at last, pulling me with him, and we lay in a surprisingly comfortable sprawl of legs and arms.

There were probably a dozen reasons we shouldn’t have done it, but I couldn’t think of a single one.

Seamus kissed the top of my head, settled, and began to breathe in the quiet, easy rhythm of sleep.

The pulled shades knocked against the windowsills like ghostly hands. The summer breeze sent the drapes gusting out, spectral-like, before flattening back against the walls.

 

 

It was not yet dawn when I left Seamus sleeping and started back toward the main house.

The air was damp, chill, with a thin, vaporish mist rising from the wet grass. Under the inconstant light of the half-shrouded moon, the untamed rose branches spiked upward from the shadows like grim, clawed tentacles.

I was thinking it would be better to sneak around to the back and go through the kitchen rather than head straight for the front door. It was too soon for Betty to be up, and even Tarrant had to sleep sometimes.

I was only a few yards from the kitchen entrance when I caught the glimmer of something pale out of the corner of my eye. I turned in time to see a filmy, white figure gliding slowly down the stone steps leading to the wilderness of the rose garden.

My heart stood still.

In fairness, with everything that had been going on at Green Lanterns, it was maybe natural that I might, just for a split second, believe I was witnessing something supernatural.

The words took form in my mind.

The ghost walks…

Except Green Lanterns was supposedly haunted by Ogden, and the figure that froze me in my tracks was definitely female. A woman in a flowing white gown.

The pale form descended down the steps and disappeared from sight.

Liana.

It had to be Liana. For one thing, no one else at Green Lanterns owned that kind of frivolous nightwear. Aunt H. had been wearing silk men’s-style pajamas as long as I’d known her, and Betty? My vague recollection was Betty’s nightwear was straight out of the Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman collection.

All at once everything fell into place. Liana was on her way to meet Ogden, who was most certainly not dead, whatever Seamus thought. They had been in it together from the first. This entire “haunting” was nothing but a scheme to defraud Aunt H. of whatever remained of her money. As well as her sanity.

Without further hesitation, I turned to follow Liana into the rose garden.

Though she didn’t have much of a head start, it still took me a couple of minutes to locate her in the riot of dead brambles, overgrown roses, and tall stone urns. I heard her crashing around and moaning before I saw her; clearly, she didn’t think she was being followed.

As Liana’s whimpers grew louder, I slowed my steps. I thought I saw the shimmer of her nightdress a few yards ahead, but I lost sight of it again in a pocket of mist that came down as effectively as a curtain.

When I came out on the other side, there was no sign of Liana.

Not only had I lost sight of her, I could no longer hear her.

I swore softly and stood motionless, listening to the croaking of the frogs that now ruled the stagnant fish ponds. My eyes strained the tumbling, twirling mist.

Where the hell had she gone? Had she finally noticed me trailing her?

There.

What was that? The snap of twigs? A pebble skittering across the walk? Something—someone—was moving slowly along the path.

To my relief, I spotted Liana still weaving and wavering as she made her way toward…a light. Yes, a blurry circle of illumination shone through the branches several yards ahead. What was that? The beam of a flashlight? Was Ogden coming to meet her? I stared, stared…

It seemed large for a flashlight beam.

My mouth was suddenly dry, my heart thudding in my ears as I tried to decide what to do if it was indeed Ogden. Should I confront him or follow him? Definitely, I should try to film them with my phone. And if I could record their conversation, all the better.

But as I watched, the light seemed to shrink, retreating into the trees, moving farther from the house—and Liana.

A strange feeling came over me.

That flitting, nebulous glow was not a flashlight beam. I had seen that weird light before. It was the same uncanny, fuzzy iridescence I’d witnessed at the first séance. Hell, I’d chased that light down the stairs only a few nights ago.

I watched Liana’s shadowy figure stumbling along, arm outstretched.

Had I got it wrong? Was Liana pursuing the light?

I started forward, feeling the chill of the damp stone beneath my slippers. Previously I’d been angry and self-righteous, determined to catch Liana and Ogden red-handed, but now I felt…afraid.

I wasn’t sure why, but my sense that something ominous was about to happen grew steadily as I made my way across the slippery, uncertain terrain.

When I reached the end of the garden, there was no sign of the spectral light—or Liana.

I listened.

In the distance I could hear a car engine, and farther away a dog barking. Nothing else.

Where had she gone? Assuming she had not collapsed and was lying unconscious in the grass, there were only two possibilities. She could cross the long, empty meadow to the Carter School House—the property now owned by Rational Christians United—or she could go down into the maze.

I really hoped Liana was making for the old schoolhouse. But the meadow, though full of mist and shadows, was not so misty or shadowy that I could have mistaken Liana wafting across the grass and wild flowers in her flowing nightie for a tumbleweed or fence post.

That left the maze.

No one in their right mind would venture down into the maze at this time of night, but there was no guarantee Liana was in her right mind.

I turned and retraced my steps until I reached a place where I could safely climb down the rank, weedy slope.

Even as a kid, the maze held zero charm for me. Sure, it was mysterious and secret—largely forgotten—or at least ignored—by the adults in my life. It was also dark, damp, and damned eerie. As much as I’d enjoyed exploring Green Lanterns, the maze had not been one of the places I’d hung out.

I half ran, half slid the last few feet, landing safely, if muddied, at the bottom of the slope. I listened for a moment, my eyes probing the flickering shadows and trailing mist.

Even with half the trails swallowed by hedges and strangled by tree roots, I had a bewildering choice of possible pathways. I knew from unhappy experience some of those avenues wound in circles, some zigzagged in diamond patterns, and others looped endlessly around themselves. Aside from scaling the hillside, there were only two ways out: one path led back to the rose garden above, one led to the old swimming pool.

If I hadn’t been uneasy before, the memory of the swimming pool took care of that. Aunt H. had mentioned the pool being drained earlier in the summer because of cracks in the plaster. As far as I knew, it hadn’t been repaired, refilled—or properly fenced off.

Not good. An empty swimming pool with a concrete floor? Not good at all.

The more I considered the possibility of Liana blindly racing around in the dark, chasing the bouncing ephemeral ball, the more alarmed I became.

Because as much as I did not trust Liana, as much as I wanted to believe she was playing along with some scheme of Ogden’s, her grief seemed genuine. Granted, she was an actress, but if she was faking her despair, she was one of the best actresses I’d ever seen—and I’d seen plenty of great performances by now.

I started in the general direction of the pool, pushing my way through what felt like a long, endless tunnel of cobwebs and vines and dead branches. Sharp, twiggy stems snatched at my robe and scratched my face and hands. At this rate, I’d be lucky not to end the night with an eye poked out.

I crossed an overgrown path, shoved my way through another thicket, and felt the scrape of stone beneath my soaked slippers. I turned my phone flashlight downward. There, beneath the dead leaves and dirt, was the path to the swimming pool.

At least I was headed in the right direction.

I followed the uneven walk for a few more yards, and then, as suddenly as the curtain rising on a performance, the mist cleared and I reached an iron gate in the middle of a wall of relatively tidy hedge. The gate was open, hinges creaking mournfully in the morning breeze. I went through and found myself on the long grassy lawn separating the maze entrance from the swimming pool.

By then it was dawn, and in the red-gray light, I could make out a faraway figure in white walking along the edge of the pool.

What the hell was she doing? Where did she think she was going?

I kicked off my slippers, shrugged out of my dressing gown, and took off running across the grass. My heart was in my throat, my stomach in knots. Every moment I expected to see Liana tumble off the coping and plunge the thirteen feet to the bottom of the cement floor.

“Liana!” I shouted.

The white figure never turned, never hesitated. She continued her wobbling progress down the length of the pool—moving toward the ladder of the high diving board.

This can’t be happening. Except it was. I saved my breath for the last sprint across the cement deck.

She was halfway up the ladder when I reached her. I sprang up the rungs and grabbed her ankle. A little too enthusiastically as it turned out because she nearly toppled off.

Clutching the railings, she shrieked, “Whaa—?! What’s happening? Let me go! What are you doing?”

“What are you doing?” I shouted back. “Are you out of your mind?”

Liana stopped kicking at me and cried in a feeble voice, “Artie?”

“Yes, it’s Artie. What the hell are you doing up there?”

She didn’t answer, bending over the ladder. Her shoulders shook. She began to sob in harsh gulps.

“Liana?”

No reply. Only those terrible, tearing sobs.

“Liana, get down here, or I’ll pull you down,” I warned. I still had her ankle in a death grip, and I wasn’t kidding. I’d cheerfully help her break an arm or a leg before I’d watch her kill herself.

She wailed, “Why did you have to come? Why couldn’t you leave me alone?”

“Why couldn’t I…”

“I want to be with Ogden!”

“You’re not going to be with Ogden!”

She screamed and gave a ferocious kick at my head with her free leg.

I couldn’t block her and still hang on to her, so the kick connected. For a split second I saw stars, and she was free—and using that freedom to scramble up another rung.

I shook the stars out of my eyes and lunged after her, grabbing a fistful of her filmy nightdress and yanking her back. The nightgown ripped. Liana screeched, lost her hold, and came tumbling off the ladder. We both landed on the cement deck.

It hurt, no question, and it hurt Liana more than me because her screams changed noticeably in tone and tenor.

“My arm!” she cried, writhing around on the deck. In the pallid light she looked like an agonized cloud. “You broke my arm!”

“It’s better than you breaking your neck.” I bent over her. “Here, let me see.”

“Don’t touch me! You bastard, Artie. You had no right to stop me. Ogden wants me. He needs me. He sent the light for me…”

Better he had sent the men in the white coats, but whatever. I let her rant and rave while I tried to check her over. She was holding her right arm to her chest, but otherwise seemed sound enough, given the energetic slapping and flailing going on.

“Can you stand, Liana?”

“Leave me alone. I’m going to tell Halcyone to send you away.”

Yeah? Likewise. But I didn’t say it. I was sorry she was injured, but I’d have been a lot sorrier if she’d jumped off the diving board.

“Can you walk, or should I carry you?”

“Go to hell!”

I wasn’t sure I could lug her all the way back to the house. She wasn’t a big woman, but I wasn’t exactly in training. On the other hand, I didn’t dare leave her, in case she decided to finish the job. I could use my cell to call emergency services, but the last thing we needed was to give the local gossip mill more fodder. They’d have a field day with this story. Somehow we had to keep this hushed up.

“Liana, you can walk or I can carry you, but I’m not leaving you here. Which is it going to be?”

She sat up and said, “Don’t. Touch. Me,” in classic actressy accents.

I made an as-you-wish gesture and stepped back. But of course she couldn’t get to her feet without the use of both arms. After a couple of pained tries, she glared at me, held out her good hand, and I helped her stand.

We had to take the long way back, and it was not pleasant. Even knowing what I did about Liana—or rather, Lacey—I didn’t enjoy hearing her anguished gulps and whimpers as we dragged our way up the drive to the house.

Midway there she faltered, and I caught her right before she swooned. I hauled her the rest of the way, carried her in through the kitchen and up to her bedroom. I deposited her on the bed, where she lay limp and waxen-faced, and hurried downstairs to phone Dr. Tighe.

By then the sun was up, but when I reached the ground floor, I found the kitchen was still cold and empty, the shades over the double sink drawn. The coffee machine was off.

I’d been trying to come up with a suitable story for Betty and Tarrant, but it seemed to be unnecessary, though usually by this hour Betty would be fussing over the stove and Tarrant would be sitting in his shirtsleeves, listening to local radio and making revolting sucking sounds as he dunked his doughnut into his steaming cup of coffee.

Was Betty ill again? Was Tarrant officially on strike? I filled the coffee machine with water and measured out the grounds. After the night I’d had, I needed fortification before I tried to explain to Dr. Tighe why Liana needed to be locked up where she couldn’t harm herself or my aunt STAT.

I was closing the refrigerator, carton of cream in hand, when my gaze fell on something pink. I went rigid with shock. There on the floor, protruding from behind the long wooden farm table, was a foot. A woman’s foot encased in a worn, rose-colored slipper.

“Betty?” I could hear the alarm in my voice.

She’s fainted, I tried to reassure myself. That was why the kitchen was still dark.

Dark and unnaturally quiet.

I set down the cream and walked over to where she lay. I stared down.

Betty had not fainted. Even without feeling for her pulse, I knew she was dead. She sprawled utterly, unnervingly motionless in her faded, flowered bathrobe. The eyes in her gray face bulged up at me with horror.