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Chloe wrenched free of Ravinia’s grasp to run to Rex and Elizabeth, the three of them holding each other tightly.
Heart heavy, Ravinia walked to the edge of the cliff and gazed down into the water as another phumf of water shot upward. Though her anxious eyes scoured the shore for long, long minutes, there was no sign of either Nadia or the wolf.
Chapter 35
The air was lung-freezing cold, the grounds hard as iron around Siren Song in the last week of January. The huge lodge looked down at Elizabeth somewhat balefully, she thought, though she could see it might have an austere charm during the summer. Leaves on the surrounding bushes had been iced by Jack Frost, each vein limned in white. The headstones in the graveyard behind the lodge were cold and gray, brooding under a low, winter sun. Grim, it definitely was, but the women she’d met inside the lodge, her cousins, had greeted her with open arms as if they’d been waiting for her all their lives when she’d walked through the gates.
She stood at the edge of the graveyard beside Catherine and Ravinia, who’d made the trip north with her, though she seemed even more anxious than Elizabeth to get back to California. She was making a life for herself there, bound and determined to be Rex’s assistant and partner in the private investigation business. Rex had come with them too, but was in a rental car outside the front gates, not allowed to enter as he was of the male gender, apparently one of Catherine’s damn near unbreakable rules.
He didn’t like it much, and neither did Elizabeth, but they had listened to Ravinia when she’d outlined the blueprint of what life was like at Siren Song. Both were trying to abide by the strange rules. Now Rex turned his thoughts to the time directly after Nadia fell.
Ravinia grew increasingly uncommunicative since the fight with Nadia on the cliff’s edge. She told them it was because the wolf was probably dead, and though neither Elizabeth nor Rex knew exactly what she was talking about, Chloe cried huge crocodile tears and said, “No, he can’t be. He just can’t be,” which seemed to be something they shared between them. There also seemed to be some kind of telepathic connection between her and Ravinia as Chloe had told Elizabeth that she’d called Ravinia and Rex to the house where Nadia was holding them.
When Nadia’s death, and the killings before it, hit the news, Vivian was beside herself, feeling halfway responsible for bringing Nadia into their Moms Group. She alternately begged Elizabeth to go back to the gym with her and pleaded with her to attend another Sisterhood session. Elizabeth promised to start back up with yoga, but she wasn’t interested in the Sisterhood. Nadia had hidden her true self amongst the other members, and Elizabeth didn’t feel comfortable there, anyway.
Detective Driscoll told Rex about the police investigation into Karl Vandell’s death and the murders of Channing Renfro and Officer Seth Daniels. It appeared that everything Nadia had said to the women of the Sisterhood was an out and out lie. Her adoptive parents revealed she didn’t even like children and didn’t intend to have any. Nadia had merely used the multiple miscarriage story to garner sympathy to find a way into Elizabeth’s life through Vivian. She’d joined the Sisterhood as a means to enter all their lives.
As for Karl . . . Nadia apparently killed him when he’d stopped being a reluctant assistant to her plans. His colleagues told Driscoll that Karl had initially welcomed her sudden interest in joining a women’s group, hoping it would stem her dark spiral down into obsession. He worried that she would become fixated on something to the point of neither eating nor sleeping. These colleagues believed that when he discovered her long-simmering, one-sided love affair with Elizabeth Ellis, she finally turned on him. Ligature marks were found around his wrists and ankles where he’d been bound and had struggled to free himself. It was believed he’d been deceased less than a day when Rex found his body.
But who was Nadia, and how did she have gifts? That question remained unanswered.
Ravinia told Elizabeth once again that she should go to Siren Song and meet her cousins and her mother. With the events of the past few weeks, Elizabeth was inclined to take what Ravinia said as truth, so she called Catherine on Ophelia’s cell phone and reached the woman who claimed to be her biological mother. That had been a weird and stilted conversation, but Elizabeth also remembered Detective Dunbar’s urging to meet them in person and so the trip was arranged.
They left Chloe in the Hofstetters’ care for the trip north and heard from Tara that Chloe and Bibi were getting along swimmingly. Without Lissa’s influence, the two girls had no problems. As far as Elizabeth knew, Chloe hadn’t exhibited any further signs of her gift, so she was hoping that with Nadia gone, the worst of Chloe’s “spells” would abate.
Rex stopped his musings to watch Catherine, Elizabeth, and Ravinia as they walked to the graveyard. It was just as Ravinia had said—long dresses and old-fashioned style; huge wrought-iron gates; an imposing wooden lodge with its blend of time past and modern touches; a long, potholed drive; a bevy of blond women; a wild and roaring ocean across a winding road. Catherine, herself, definitely looked like a woman from a different time.
The first meeting between Elizabeth and her mother had been as awkward as the phone call; Elizabeth wasn’t one to embrace and hug and neither was Catherine. But their mutual desire for space had worked for both of them, and they’d slowly relaxed in each other’s presence.
Many of Elizabeth’s ancestors were buried in the graveyard. Catherine walked her between the graves and pointed out different names, giving her a brief history of their lives. Ravinia didn’t say much as they wandered around. When Catherine was satisfied that Elizabeth was brought up to date, they walked to the back door of the lodge, but there Catherine had hesitated, looking back once more. Elizabeth and Ravinia stopped, too.
“Declan Jr.’s still out there,” Catherine said, turning from the graves toward the west and the ocean.
“You feel him, too?” Ravinia asked, waking up a bit.
Catherine shook her head. “Do you feel him? I just believe we’d know if he was dead.”
“I don’t know what I feel.” Ravinia backed off, turning away.
“You still think Declan Jr. will come after me?” Elizabeth asked Catherine.
“The boys in our family . . . seem to feel the gifts harder, and it becomes more dangerous with age. I don’t like taking chances,” she answered.
That was enough to give Elizabeth the willies and even Ravinia looked at her aunt and scowled as if she didn’t want to hear it, either.
“Come inside,” Catherine said, leading the way into the cavernous kitchen. She put a kettle on the stove and poured some loose brown leaves into a tiny basket and began steeping a pot of tea. Elizabeth expected some of her cousins to join them, but when she looked toward the living room, Catherine said, “I want to talk to you alone, so I asked them to give us some time.”
“You want me to leave, too?” Ravinia asked. She didn’t look happy about it, but sounded as if she would comply.
“No, I want you to hear this, too.” Catherine turned to Elizabeth. “I thought Declan Jr. had followed your scent to California, but it wasn’t Declan who came after you. It was a woman, which was something of a surprise, but now I think I know who she was. Lost Baby Girl.”
“What?” Ravinia had taken a seat at the end of the table. “Lost Baby Girl. What are you talking about?”
“There was a kidnapping a long time ago,” Catherine said in her precise way. “A woman who ran a private adoption agency had a baby stolen from her car. She’d put the baby in the car and then the phone rang inside the house. When she went to answer it, the baby was taken.”
“No cell phone?” Ravinia asked.
