The Kingdom

Twenty-Four

When I left the library a little while later, I found Wayne Van Zandt nosing around my car. He had his hands cupped to his face, peering in through the back window. When he heard my approach, his head came around, but his smirk told me he wasn’t unduly concerned that I’d caught him snooping.

“Are you looking for something?” I asked coolly. My gaze tried to stray to those scars, but I forced myself to focus on his eyes. Still, I couldn’t help but think of everything Thane had told me about the attack. Apparently Wayne had no recollection except that he’d gone to the falls to meet Luna.

I felt an odd tug and glanced over my shoulder, expecting to find Luna glaring at me. Instead, I saw Ivy standing in the shade of the clock tower staring at us. As our gazes collided, I felt a chill creep up my spine. Wayne noticed her, too, and muttered under his breath.

“Were you looking for something in my car?” I asked again.

“Just waiting for you,” he said.

“Why?”

“I thought you might be interested to know that I found a kennel up in the hills.”

“Did you make an arrest?” I asked anxiously.

He stroked a finger down one of the scars as if deliberately trying to bait my gaze. “No need to,” he said. “Someone was there before me. The dogs were all gone and the kennel was torched. The owner got himself roughed up, too. He wouldn’t talk, of course.” His eyes narrowed as he searched my face. “Don’t suppose you’d know anything about that incident.”

“Me?” I asked in surprise, even as I visualized the cut at Thane’s temple and the bruises on his knuckles. “How would I know anything about it?”

He turned his head to observe the street. “That stray still hanging around the Covey place?” His tone was casual, almost distracted, but I had the impression of a cold calculation behind the question.

If he meant to catch me off guard or provoke a reaction, he had no idea who he was dealing with—a woman who had been disciplined by the presence of ghosts since childhood. “I told you the other day, he’s probably long gone by now.”

“That is what you said,” he agreed.

“Wayne, what do you think you’re doing?” a voice demanded from the sidewalk. We both turned as Catrice Hawthorne stepped off the curb and headed toward us, her shabby attire a far cry from the elegant cocktail dress she’d worn to Asher House the other night. Her floppy hat and shapeless capris reminded me of the garb favored by the tourists who flocked to the Battery in the summer, the ones who avidly snapped pictures of the mansions and bartered for souvenirs at the Market.

Annoyed, Wayne said, “This is none of your business, Catrice. Go back to your vultures.”

Her eyes sparkled with good humor. “Vultures are scavengers. Hardly my area of expertise.”

“Maybe I wasn’t talking about birds,” he muttered.

She laughed as she turned to me. “I’m so glad I ran into you, Amelia. My car is on the fritz and I wonder if I could trouble you for a ride home. I’m right on your way.”

“Of course. No trouble at all.”

“You’re a lifesaver. And if you have time, I’ll give you that tour of the studio I promised.”

Her genuine warmth once again took me by surprise. She was so much more personable than either Bryn or Luna, or anyone else I’d met in Asher Falls, for that matter—with the possible exception of Thane.

She shook a finger at Wayne. “I know it’s asking a lot, but try to work on that attitude. You’ll give Amelia a bad impression, and we don’t want to scare her off.”

He merely glared as we climbed into the car, and I pulled away from the curb.

Catrice glanced back with a chuckle. “I hope this isn’t too much of an imposition.”

“Not at all.”

“I thought you looked as if you needed rescuing. Wayne can be a little overbearing at times, especially with strangers. He’s been through a lot, though, so we try to cut him some slack.”

“You’ve known him a long time, I take it?”

“We grew up together…all of us…Wayne, Luna, Bryn, Edward, Hugh and myself. We were thick as thieves as children.” She removed her hat and placed it on the console between us. Sunlight streaming in through the windshield set fire to her red hair as she ran fingers through it. “Then Hugh and Edward were shipped off to boarding school, Wayne’s family moved to Woodberry for a time and we three girls were left to our own devices.”

“You and Luna and Bryn?”

She smiled. “Blood sisters, we called ourselves. We were quite the explorers. There was a time when we knew these hills as well as our own backyards.”

“What about Freya Pattershaw?” I kept my gaze on the road, but from the corner of my eye, I saw Catrice turn to study me.

“How do you know about Freya?” she asked after a moment.

I’m being haunted by her ghost. “I saw a picture of you and Bryn and Luna at Asher House. Freya was in the background.”

“How did you know who she was?”

“Thane told me.”

“How would he know?” I heard the frown in her voice. “She was dead long before he came here.”

“It’s a small town. I’m sure he’s heard of her. Maybe he’s even seen other pictures of her,” I said with a shrug.

She sighed and turned to stare out the window. “Poor Freya. She was always lurking in the background, always trying to fit in where she didn’t belong. I always suspected her insecurities came from not having a father.”

“What happened to him?”

“No one knows. Tilly was never married, you see. Her past is a little mysterious, to say the least, and she seems to like it that way. She’s always kept to herself, always been the eccentric. Freya was the exact opposite. She wanted more than anything to belong. She would have done anything to fit in.” Idly, Catrice studied her hands. “But for all her indiscretions, she had a way about her. An innocence. Men loved her, women hated her.”

“Did you hate her?”

She swung around. “Me? No, I liked her. As I said, she had a naive charm that I found endearing.”

“How old was she when she died?”

“Just seventeen.”

My chest tightened. “That young? I had no idea.”

“Yes. We were all still in high school. It happened the weekend of prom. Our prom. Not hers.”

“She went to a different school?”

“She attended the public school before it closed. I’m sure she would have transferred to Woodberry with all the others if she hadn’t—”

I flashed a glance. “What?”

“It was just so sad and tragic. Poor Tilly never got over it. She was always such an odd duck, but Freya’s death pushed her over the edge. I suppose one of these days she’ll have to be put in a home.”

I thought about the knife-wielding woman who had come to my rescue in the woods the other night. The same woman who had warned me away from Asher Falls. Mad she might be, but she was also very, very capable. “Freya died in a fire, didn’t she? That’s how Tilly burned her hands.”

“Yes.” Catrice massaged her own hands, as if in deep pain. “It still distresses me to think about it after all this time.”

“Were you there?”

“We were all there. We all saw what happened.” She turned back to the window, deliberately shutting me out, and I knew she wouldn’t say anything else. Thane was right, it seemed. People were reluctant to talk about Freya Pattershaw’s death, and I couldn’t help wondering why.

We drove in silence until Catrice said, “It’s just ahead. See that red mailbox? Turn there. I’m down the road a piece.”

Like the Covey house, her place was sequestered from the main road by the forest. She lived in a quaint cedar cabin with cane rocking chairs on the porch and a hammock strung between two oak trees in the front yard. I could imagine myself spending lazy summer afternoons in that hammock, watching the clouds. Waiting for twilight and the ghosts.

The studio was in a separate building at the back of the property, accessed by a well-worn footpath. As I followed Catrice along the rough trail, my gaze lifted now and then to a trio of hawks circling overhead, their piercing screams raising a chill even in broad daylight. The afternoon was cloudless, and the sun shimmering down through the evergreen boughs was warm on my face. But the deep shade of the woods pressed in on me, and the scent of the pines somehow seemed ominous. I was glad when the trail broke away from the trees, and we descended toward the studio.

The structure itself was inelegant, a large, mishmash of a building perched at the water’s edge, but inside the rustic charm of stone walls and floors complemented the magnificent view of lake, forest and mountain. An easel with a covered painting stood in front of the tall windows, while finished canvases were stacked at least a dozen deep against the back wall, as if they had been accumulating there for years. Most of them were wildlife and landscape scenes, but I noticed a few portraits that intrigued me.

“Have a look around,” Catrice invited. “I’ll make us some tea.”

“Thank you, but I wish you wouldn’t go to the trouble. I really can’t stay long.”

She smiled. “It’s no trouble. I won’t be a minute.”

After she was gone, I browsed through the paintings. The landscapes were beautiful, but I naturally gravitated to the portraits. She’d painted them all—Luna, Bryn, Hugh and a man I recognized as Edward. I thought they must have been done a long time ago because the subjects were very young and Catrice’s technique still crude. But even then she’d managed to tap into an uncanny essence in all of them—that feral quality in Luna, the ice maiden in Bryn and the almost perverted perfection of Hugh. But it was the portrait of Edward that fascinated me the most. His features were unmistakably Asher, but I thought there was a hint of the neurotic in his eyes. I couldn’t stop looking at him.

“Those are really old,” Catrice said as she came to stand beside me. “And not very good. I was still a novice back then.”

“No, you captured them beautifully,” I said. Eerily so. “Do you still paint portraits?”

“Now and then but only for fun. The landscapes are my bread and butter. I’m lucky they’ve done so well at the gallery.”

“I don’t think it’s luck. You’re very talented.”

She shrugged. “It’s a gift. I can’t take credit.”

“But you’ve developed that gift.”

“You have one, too,” she said, and for a moment I thought she meant my ability to see ghosts. “Your restorations are every bit as inspirational as my paintings. More so, perhaps.”

I lifted a brow in surprise. “You’ve seen my work?” Was she the anonymous donor?

“I mentioned the other night at dinner that I’ve been to your website. I browsed through your gallery and read your blog. I’m fascinated by what you do. You have a calling,” she said softly. “A purpose. We all do.”

A swooping shadow drew my attention to the window. “What was that?”

“Come see,” Catrice said, and as we gazed out on that magnificent vista, a hawk glided down, talons extended, and snatched something from the grass, winging skyward with a triumphant scream. I was jolted by the scene even though it was perfectly natural. Survival of the fittest.

Catrice said in amusement, “That one didn’t last long.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“The mouse.” She turned to me, eyes gleaming. “Hawks are such marvelous hunters, aren’t they? They can spot something as small a rodent from above the treetops. They rule the skies, too. Other birds fear them. Did you notice how quiet the forest was when we walked through?”

I said slowly, “How did you know it was a mouse?”

She smiled and cocked her head. “I hear the teakettle,” she said and disappeared.

I stared after her. In her own way, Catrice was every bit as off-putting as Luna and Bryn, and I was suddenly reminded of how Thane had referred to the three women after dinner the other night. The Witches of Eastwick, he’d called them. Or I should say Asher Falls.

I tracked the hawk for a moment longer, and then as I moved back into the room, I suddenly had the uncanny sensation that I was being watched. I decided that it must be the painting. Edward Asher’s eyes. Even on canvas, his face unnerved me. But as I moved about the studio, I could have sworn an invisible gaze followed me. It was all I could do not to glance over my shoulder.

Somewhere to my right came a very faint click—like the stealthy closing of a door.

Catrice had gone through a doorway near the windows, but this sound had come from the opposite side of the room where three arched niches had been cut into the stone. As I moved in for a closer look, I saw that one of the arches was actually a door. Had someone been standing there watching me while my back was turned?

I stepped into the alcove and pushed on the latch. The door silently opened, and I heard the distant murmur of voices. I didn’t know why I felt so compelled to discover who else was in the studio. I told myself to let it go. I shouldn’t go snooping through someone else’s private space. My mother would be appalled by my bad manners.

But despite that internal censure, I slipped through the opening and followed a dim hallway until it curved around to another partially open door through which I spotted Catrice.

“—I’m telling you, it’s her,” she insisted.

“I pray you’re wrong,” someone else said, and I thought I recognized Bryn’s voice. “Because that would mean—”

“Oh, God, don’t say it.” Catrice shuddered. “It’s too horrible to contemplate.”

“I’ll tell you what it means,” Luna said softly. “Someone knows.”

When Catrice came out of the kitchen a little while later, I was back at the windows. I turned with an apologetic smile. “I’m sorry you went to so much trouble, but I really have to be going.”

“Oh, you have to at least try the tea,” she said anxiously. “It’s my own special brew.”

My gaze fell to the steam rising from the porcelain cup, and I suppressed a shudder. After what I’d just overheard, I didn’t trust her. And I certainly didn’t want to drink her tea. “I really do have to go,” I said, edging toward the door. “I’ll try it next time.”

“I’ll hold you to that.” She set aside the tea tray to walk me to the door. Her eyes lifted as she stepped outside, and I knew that she was watching the hawks. For some reason, her rapt expression frightened me.

“You can find your way back up to the house?” she asked.

I forced a smile. “No problem. I’ll just follow the path.”

She stood outside until I was out of sight. I never glanced back, but I could feel her eyes on me. The others watched me, too. I had a terrible thought that they had all gathered at the studio to observe me, but how could that be? How could they know that I would give Catrice a ride home…unless it had somehow been prearranged?

But why?

As I hurried along the path, my nerve endings tingled with an awareness I didn’t understand. It was as if some long-dormant instinct had suddenly come alive, and I could feel the forest reaching out to me, hear the leaves whispering to me once again. Even the screams of the hawks somehow seemed familiar.

I was so attuned to my surroundings that even the miniscule sound of a snapping twig brought me to an abrupt halt. I told myself it was nothing, just an animal rustling in the underbrush. A bird flitting in the treetops. I didn’t believe it, of course. Someone was out there.

The silence seemed palpable as I stood on the trail holding my breath. My heart began to hammer, and I could feel the blood pulsing in my ears. So many things rushed through my head. Wayne’s warning about wild animals. The face wavering in the pool at the waterfall. The chill of the wind, that awful howling. I had the sense that I was being stalked, but was the tracker human, animal…or something from the other side?

I took a few tentative steps along the trail and heard the rustle of leaves as the pursuer moved with me. Now I really was scared. I considered turning and making a run for the studio, but how could I be sure it wasn’t one of them?

Swallowing hard, I willed my pulse to slow. The last thing I needed was to succumb to a full-blown panic. My father had grown up in woods like these. I tried to remember everything he’d told me about wild animals. The moment they sense your fear, you become prey.

Prey.

The very word sent a shiver of dread up my spine. I hadn’t understood before, but it came to me clearly in that moment. I’d been watched at the cemetery, lured into the woods, followed to the laurel bald and now something was stalking me up this trail. I’d been prey ever since I arrived in Asher Falls.

And with that thought, I gave up all pretense of calm. I whirled and plunged headlong up the path, my footsteps pounding in time to my heartbeats. I didn’t know if I was pursued. I had the sense of something rushing through the woods, but I didn’t look back until I rounded the corner to Catrice’s house, and even then I spared only a brief glance over my shoulder.

He came out of nowhere.

In the split second my attention was diverted, he appeared on the path in front of me and put out his hands to stop me.

If not for years of suppressing fear, I would have shrieked louder than the hawks, but instead I gulped back the scream and wrenched myself free of him. I heard him laugh, and in my agitated state, the sound took on a sinister connotation. But when he spoke, his voice was almost pleasant. “Whoa,” Hugh said. “Where’s the fire?”

“I—”

He gazed down at me in bemusement. “Are you all right?”

Even in broad daylight with the pine boughs stippling the sunlight, Hugh Asher’s looks rendered me speechless. Everything about him, from the casual but elegant attire to the way he carried himself, was so excessively perfect.

Once again, I searched for the flaws, and this time they were easy to spot—a faint tinge of yellow beneath the jawbone where a bruise had almost faded and a scab above his left eyebrow where the skin had been split. He’d been in a fight recently, and the thought was so incongruous as to take my breath away. My mind shifted at once to Thane’s cut temple, his bruised knuckles. Had he and Hugh fought?

I tore my gaze from his face. “I was just coming up from the studio. I thought I heard something in the woods.”

He looked past me down the path. “Probably a deer. Could have been a coyote but they don’t normally come out until dusk.”

Like ghosts.

“I’m a city girl,” I tried to say lightly. “I’m not used to the wildlife around here.”

“It does take some getting used to.”

The way he stared down at me made me increasingly uncomfortable, and I had to wonder why he was there. Had he come to observe me, too?

“How’s the restoration coming along?” he asked, still in that pleasing cadence. But no matter how agreeable or personable he seemed, I had no wish to make small talk. I really just wanted to go home, and I glanced longingly toward my car.

“Fine.”

Still he lingered, but I didn’t think he was as relaxed as I’d first thought. There was something about him, some tension or excitement that made his eyes overly bright. “When I was a kid, we used to play hide-and-seek up on that hill. Not a game for the faint of heart. It could get a little hairy after dark.”

“I can imagine.”

“There are places up there where you could hide and not be found for days. If ever.”

Like the laurel bald, I thought with a shiver. “Speaking of the cemetery…I should get going,” I said, latching onto the first excuse I could think of.

“I won’t keep you. But you’ll have to come to dinner soon. Maris has gone away for a few days and it gets dull in that big house with just us three men.”

“I’m sure Luna will be more than happy to accommodate,” I said, surprising myself as much as him.

He lifted a brow, eyes gleaming in amusement. “I think Father may have underestimated you,” he murmured.

“What does that mean?”

Something dark flashed across that handsome face. “You really don’t know, do you?”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about. If you’ll excuse me…I have work to do.”

I brushed past him and headed toward my car. This time, I did glance back, but Hugh Asher had vanished.