“ ‘Oh, Alastair, darling, I’ve been approached to show my work at the Williams Gallery in New York City,’ ” he said in a mocking falsetto. “ ‘But it’s an exclusive contract. I’m going to take it unless you lower your commission to twenty percent.’ Twenty percent! That’s extortion!”
“Twenty percent isn’t fair?”
“Most gallery owners receive fifty to sixty percent! I was only charging her forty!”
“That must have been disappointing.”
“Disappointing? It was infuriating!” Highbaugh took a deep breath. “Artists. Divas, all of them, and none more so than Delilah Mason.”
“But Delilah must have—”
“And that wasn’t the worst of it,” Highbaugh continued. “Delilah said doctors weren’t to be trusted, but that her natural tinctures could cure everything. She said it was based on years—nay, a century—of research. I spoon-fed that crap to my mother myself. Can you imagine?” His voice broke. “But Delilah lied. It didn’t help at all. Mother started seeing things. She thought I was my own father, can you imagine? And then she…she died.”
“That’s tragic. I’m so sorry, Alastair, honestly.”
“It was Delilah’s fault. And that ridiculous creature, Joel Aristide. A…afop. He was in on the scheme, pushing thatpoison Delilah brewed. So I gave him a dose of his own medicine. Actually, it took several doses, and several days…but how was I supposed to know he would jump out a window?”
“The ‘medicine’ can cause hallucinations,” Harper said quietly. She kept glancing behind him toward the hallway, hoping against hope that Gabe would show up.
He gave her a strange half smile. “Jenny’s learning about those hallucinations, even as we speak.”
“Jenny?”
“She was in on it, too. She and her little friend went around selling that crap door to door, like a couple of witches bringing poisoned apples to the innocent. Or poisoned tonics, in this case. I don’t have the other girl yet, but this one made it easy, came to me all by herself, believe it or not. I offered to refill her water bottle and slipped a little gift—a little of Delilah’s Gift—into it.”
“Where is she? Highbaugh?Where is Jenny?”
He gave a half smile. “She’s learning what it feels like to be helpless, to watch your life slip away.”
From overhead, a scream ripped through the sounds of the rain that still pelted the windows.
Harper bolted from the room and ran up the stairs, fighting against the disorienting sensations that had afflicted her once again. Out of the corner of her eye she saw someone pass by. Clad in a long white gown, the figure disappeared when Harper looked straight at it. She heard her name whispered repeatedly:Harper…
And then she found herself in the doorway of the mirror room.
“Professor Grae?” came a shaky voice. “Help!”
Jenny lay on the floor in the center of the room, tied up, surrounded by candles that reflected to infinity in the numerousmirrors. Harper kneeled on the floor and used her nails to dig into the tight ropes and pull the knots apart.
Jenny’s brown eyes were wide with terror as she stared at the mirrored walls, first in one direction, then the next. “I don’t…I don’t know what’s going on! Get me out of here!”
“Try to calm down, Jenny,” said Harper. The young woman’s agitated movements were making Harper’s attempts to free her that much harder. “I’ll get you out of here.”
Jenny looked toward the hallway and screamed.
Highbaugh, still wearing that strange half smile, was in the doorway. He had a knife in his hand.
Thirty-Five
Harper tried to ignore the song repeating endlessly in her mind:I felt the knife in my hand, and she laughed no more…Why, why, why, Delilah?
“Alastair—may I call you Alastair?” she asked as she worked to free Jenny. “I’m just going to—”
“You’re ‘just going to’ do nothing,” Highbaugh said with a humorless laugh. “You people think you can come in here, do whatever you want. Well, you’re wrong.”
“ ‘You people’? Which people?”
“Exactly!Witchpeople. I saw you talking to the spirits through that mirror. This town is full of women like you. I knew it. I tried to tell people, but would they listen?”
