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“Getting the fuck out, like you asked me so nicely.”
When he walked out the door, he heard something slam against it from the other side. Her shoe probably. For all their protestations, they never could get enough.
Sometimes it was almost a hardship.
Snow was falling fast, covering everything. He stood for a moment on her front step, his expression hardening as Good Time Charlie disappeared beneath another persona, the one he loved best, the one closest to his real self.
Time to take care of business.
Closing his eyes, he stood on the sidewalk in front of her building in the falling snow and whipping wind and went inside himself, drawing on his power. He sent a message to Pops, just because he could, the fucker, and then he reached out for the one again. The lover who’d contacted him on Echo Island. The one who’d scared him into leaving before he could find Mary’s writings. He could practically feel her slide away from him, eely and just out of reach.
I’m coming for you. He sent the message with all the strength of his sexual power. He knew it was one of them. One of the ones Mary wanted him to destroy. I’m coming for you.
And then suddenly a message came back, filling his brain so fast and hot that he jerked physically, as if struck: I’m way ahead of you.
Charlie looked around wildly at the snow-covered streets. A game? Way ahead of him? No way!
Who the fuck are you? he sent back.
But though he listened with every fiber, muscle, and cell of his being, waiting in the darkness as snow melted on his hair and skin, there was no answer. All he could hear and feel was the moaning rise and fall of the wind.
With fury burning through his veins, he stomped toward his snow-covered truck, ready for the next chapter. He was going to kill them all.
CHAPTER 17
Highway 26 through the mountains was blocked off at the base of the four-lane climb up the farthest west pass. The two eastbound lanes had a line of flashing barriers, the yellow light sputtering in uneven flickers, warning unwary travelers that there was danger ahead.
The two westbound lanes had no such barriers, and there was no one manning the eastbound ones. Emergency workers were needed elsewhere.
Without a qualm Hale turned into the oncoming lanes and drove around the barriers, going a whopping twenty miles per hour. Anything more and he’d be fishtailing up the hill, and that was a best-case scenario. He returned to the eastbound lanes as soon as he was around the flashing obstructions, his TrailBlazer churning through the thick snow, the engine whining a bit in four-wheel drive. His hands were tight on the steering wheel; his jaw was set; his fear mounting.
He hoped he ran into a rescue crew, but if he didn’t, he was sure as hell going to find Savannah. She’d asked for 9-1-1, not a tow truck. She was a cop who wouldn’t overstate the need, and she’d admitted the baby was coming. He didn’t care that she’d said she was fine. She needed help beyond the fact that her vehicle was out of commission, someone to aid her with the birth of his son. If he, or someone, could get to her in time.
Hang in there, Savvy, he thought grimly.
“Where’s Aunt Catherine?” Ravinia demanded. She was covered in snow, her blond hair unnaturally dark from the dampening flakes.
Isadora and Ophelia were in the main room, the room Catherine sometimes called the great hall, which just about summed up her grandiose and formal way of acting, being, and generally annoying Ravinia. Isadora and Ophelia looked over at her blankly, and Isadora lifted a shoulder. She obviously didn’t know and certainly didn’t care.
“Where’s Cassandra?” Ravinia demanded.
“In bed,” Isadora said. “Like Lillibeth.”
Her schoolteacher tone grated on Ravinia’s nerves. Isadora was the oldest of the lodge sisters, and she’d patterned herself after Catherine in about every way Ravinia knew. If there was to be a succession of strict dictators, Isadora had her hand up to be first choice and was waving it.
“You went over the wall again,” Isadora said, disapproving, one eyebrow arching.
“It’s snowing like a beast out there.” Ravinia didn’t owe Isadora, or any of them, for that matter, any explanation. Besides which, Catherine had laid down the law, and if she found out Ravinia had left, she might actually kick her out of Siren Song like she’d threatened. And Ravinia wasn’t ready for that yet.
“Catherine’s probably in bed, too,” Ophelia said. She was more of a peacemaker. She’d certainly helped save Ravinia from Justice, and she’d been sewing Ravinia pants and shirts for years, her own way of rebelling against Catherine’s strictness, but recently she’d been leaning toward the Isadora camp, and Ravinia just didn’t need it.
“Nope. I went to her room,” Ravinia declared. “I even lit the oil lamp, and there’s no one there.” She had done a little bit of snooping while she was inside her aunt’s room. Had found something of interest, which she’d taken and slipped inside the back waistband of her pants.
“The door wasn’t locked?” Isadora’s brows drew into a deep furrow.
Well, of course it was locked, but Ravinia wasn’t about to explain more about her special skills. They all talked about their “gifts,” but Ravinia’s gift was ingenuity and resourcefulness. She knew how to pick a lock with wire and slim pieces of metal, although Catherine’s dead bolt was so old, she could just kinda work it back with a pair of needle-nose pliers slipped through the crack. Her true gift, however, was the ability to look into a person’s heart and know their secrets, but she kept that one to herself. She’d pretended for years that she had no extra ability, that she was like Catherine and seemed merely to possess a clear head with emotions tightly under control. Okay, hers weren’t so tightly controlled, but she had managed over the years to appear that way—at least she hoped she had.
But what she could see was whether a person was good or evil. She had to get close to them, physical contact was best, and then it took only a few words or a sideways glance or sometimes maybe a bit more, if they interested her in some way, before she had them pegged. It was crazy how many real sickos there were out there. Still, she’d rather be walking among them than stuc
