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Ravinia grunted a noncommittal response, then pushed through the door and trudged back to the motel, letting herself inside her room, which was just as she’d left it. Dropping the backpack with a thunk on the industrial carpet, she fell onto the bed and stared up at a crack in the ceiling as she munched through first one pepperoni stick and then another.
She couldn’t just hang out in the room. Sooner or later the maid, the motel manager, or someone else would show up and kick her out. Besides, she had way too much to do to be stuck inside just . . . waiting. She felt tense and impatient and annoyed.
When haven’t you?
She almost smiled. She’d pretty much been the same her whole life. Ask anyone who knew her. She’d never felt comfortable at Siren Song. Had always known something else was out in the real world waiting for her. She just hadn’t had the means to strike out on her own, and she’d been too young, too sheltered, and well, too afraid to completely leave everything and everyone she’d known. She’d battled Aunt Catherine daily and it was only when Justice had threatened their lives that she’d finally felt a sense of community with her own family. Solidarity. Yes, she missed her family. And yes, sometimes she ached for the safety she’d once felt at the compound, but that security hadn’t existed for some time and she knew she’d never be content to live out her life behind the gates her aunt had erected.
The truth was, the gates weren’t strong enough to keep her in, nor solid enough to keep danger out.
Despite Aunt Catherine’s best efforts, the evil had invaded.
First had been Justice, a cousin of sorts and a twisted psychotic. More recently was Declan Jr., her brother, who was no better and maybe even worse in ways. Half brother, she reminded herself.
Lying upon the bed, Ravinia closed her eyes and remembered those last few days in Oregon before she’d taken off in search of Elizabeth.
Aunt Catherine was wrought with worry and deigned to take Ravinia into her confidence. With Justice, they’d had their hands full protecting themselves at the lodge, but with Declan Jr. . . . there was just no telling what his plan was or where he would strike next.
Fear made Aunt Catherine confide in Ravinia about Elizabeth, fear for her only child. Ravinia’s own mother Mary had dropped babies as indiscriminately as a cat, with about as much interest in them, although at least a mother feline spent a few weeks tending to her young. Not so Mary, from all reports. She had lived for sex and drama and danger, and her behavior had led Aunt Catherine to exile her to Echo Island, the outcropping of rock just outside Deception Bay that was less than a mile across from end to end and whose shores were treacherous enough to discourage would-be afternoon boaters from trying to go ashore.
Catherine was far different from her indiscriminate sister. Catherine’s affair had been a love match.
Ravinia gleaned that, though far be it for Aunt Catherine to admit as much.
Mary’s revolving door of lovers had eclipsed Catherine’s relationship with Elizabeth’s father, apparently, and since Catherine had, for the most part, pretended the affair had never existed, it was a well-kept secret . . . until Declan Jr. targeted the women of Siren Song and couldn’t be stopped completely. Aunt Catherine feared he would go after her only child.
Elizabeth.
Though Ravinia and most of the rest of the world relied on conventional means to locate someone, Declan Jr. had other ways. Evil ways, some said, though Ravinia suspected it was all part and parcel of the same brand of “gifts” the daughters and sons of her ancestors all possessed. Declan Jr. just chose to us
e his malignantly. Or maybe it wasn’t even a choice....
Ravinia shivered a bit at that thought. Maybe neither Justice nor Declan Jr. could really help themselves. And maybe there were more of them out there, too. Tortured souls unable to keep themselves from their murdering proclivities. Whatever the case, Justice was gone, and Declan Jr. was still missing after wreaking havoc upon a number of people around Deception Bay, including Aunt Catherine and those at Siren Song. He’d been less focused than Justice in his deadly mission to rid himself of the others like him, but he was equally vicious, destructive, and determined.
She thought about the other player, her half brother Silas, whom she now considered a friend and who seemed to be working with Aunt Catherine and against Declan Jr.
Ravinia first ran across Silas when she was walking along the ice-crusted highway outside Siren Song and something about him drew her in. He knew who she was, which unsettled her. He gave her a sheaf of papers to take to Catherine.
Her aunt clued her in. “What did he look like?” Aunt Catherine asked after Ravinia handed over the papers—adoption records it turned out.
“I don’t know. Dark hair. Blue eyes . . . I guess. Handsome,” Ravinia replied reluctantly.
“His hair was dark? Not any shade of blond?”
Ravinia knew what she was asking as all her sisters were blondes, a strong genetic trait running through the family. “He’s not one of us, is he?”
Her aunt didn’t answer directly, but Ravinia later learned he was her half brother. Meanwhile, a number of strange incidents had happened that she had been involved with, at least peripherally—all of which culminated in a fire on Echo Island that they witnessed from the lodge—and Aunt Catherine said it was Silas who had set the blaze. He was burning the bones of Declan Jr.’s father, who by all accounts was about as bad as bad can be.
Ravinia stirred. Bad to the bone, she thought without humor.
Ravinia knew about the bones as she’d been instrumental in helping dig them up from the Siren Song graveyard, at Aunt Catherine’s request. But the casket and bones were missing. Creepy, that. Ravinia didn’t understand completely what it was all about, but she was careful not to ask too many questions as she’d never before been privy to any of Aunt Catherine’s thoughts and plans, and she didn’t want to blow things.
“Why would Silas burn the bones?” she managed to ask, to which Aunt Catherine replied, “It’s how you kill the Hydra. Burn it, so it doesn’t grow another head.”
Ravinia sat up. Mysteries within mysteries . . . Her brother Declan Jr. was still alive and likely still focused on his mission of indiscriminate death and destruction; psychos like him didn’t just give up and change course. Like Justice, Declan Jr.’s ultimate target seemed to be the women of Siren Song, Ravinia’s sisters and aunt, but he’d taken a more circuitous route to them and had been thwarted in the process.
It seemed that her brother Silas was following Declan Jr. When Ravinia had met him on the road, he’d been heading north while she was going south because her mission was to find Elizabeth, who was unaware of who she was and the threat Declan Jr. represented to her.
Maybe Declan Jr. had gone north initially, but that didn’t mean he wouldn’t go south eventually and then Elizabeth was a sitting duck. Not exactly Aunt Catherine’s words, but close enough. Ravinia was to find her and warn her, although that was bound to be one tricky conversation.
