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"Damn!"
She stood up and ran her fingers through her hair. She'd almost managed to forget the reason she'd spent the past couple of hours locking windows and doors and preparing to camp out in the drawing room. Now, reality hit like cold water pouring out of an upended bucket.
If her visitor, the man who claimed he was Matthew McDowell, was really an expert at the game of now-you-see-him, now-you-don't, all her preparations—the locked doors, the locked windows—were a joke.
It was dark in the room now, dark enough so that glancing back over her shoulder made her realize she should have turned on the lights a long time ago. She went quickly from lamp to lamp, switching them all on. There. That was better. Now she could see—
Bang!
Kathryn screamed and spun around in terror.
"Ba-bang. Ba-bang. Ba-bang."
The wind must have torn a shutter loose. It was flapping back and forth and sending up an ungodly racket.
For that matter, so was her heart. It was going ba-bang, ba-bang right along with the miserable shutter.
She opened the window and grabbed for the shutter but the wind had gotten stronger and it almost tore the shutter from her hand. She hung on to it, dragged it closed, aid jammed the lock home. The wind came swooping down again, roaring like a freight train as it tore at the house.
The lights flickered, plunging the room into darkness.
No. No! The electricity couldn't fail. Not tonight. No electricity meant no lights. No telephone. No connection to the outside world.
The lights blinked, then came on. Even the telephone gave a quick, tinny shriek as if to prove it was still working.
But for how long?
Kathryn stared at the squat, old-fashioned instrument, the one Matthew had pretended not to recognize.
Maybe she ought to call somebody. The police. Or Olive. Or Jason.
No. Not Jason. He was half a world away. What could he do, except sit there in his apartment and worry and wonder if she'd lost her mind?
As for the police or Olive... what was the point? What could she possibly say?
"Hello, this is Kathryn Russell at Charon's Crossing, and I just saw a ghost? Oh yeah. She smiled tightly. Right. Make that kind of call in New York, the odds were good nobody would give a damn. Make it here, the news would be all over the island by breakfast."
"Crazy American says Charon's Crossing is haunted."
What a great tag-line that would make for a real estate sign.
Besides, she was a long way from saying she'd seen a ghost. There
was always a perfectly rational explanation for things like this.
What explanation, Kathryn?
Well... well, some kind of trick with mirrors. Magicians did stuff like that all the time. And they used hidden doors. Trap doors...
Kathryn sank down on the edge of the settee.
The last thing she wanted to think about right now was the possibility of hidden doors. Besides, she'd have known if he'd used one. Or if he'd used a mirror. After all, she'd been standing, what, six inches from Matthew when he'd disappeared.
But he couldn't have "disappeared." People couldn't do that any more than pigs could fly.
Another gust of wind tore at the house. The lights dimmed, blinked and went out. She held her breath until they flickered to wavering life.
That was twice. Three strikes, and you were out.
