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“Camilla would have contacted me, Rafer, but she couldn’t, someone was keeping her from me. All these years I’ve known that, tried and tried to get through to her, but I couldn’t. I could hardly stand it. But then I had the dream, no, it was a vision. You know about the vision, Rafer. Camilla came to me, yes, she came to me just as I told you and your father. I saw her clearly. She told me there was a girl nearby, a girl her age, dark, like her, with eyes like hers. She told me to find her, Rafer, and bring her to Eagle’s Nest, get close to her, that I would know when I found the right girl. Then Camilla could use her to help contact me, to tell me where she is. She said she wasn’t strong enough herself to get through to me, she’d tried and tried. It was up to me.
“Don’t you see? I had to find that girl. I prayed we’d find the one girl who’d be perfect and help Camilla contact me. None of them was right until this new girl, Linzie Drumm. She’s the one, Rafer. I looked into her eyes and I saw something I didn’t see in the others. I saw strength, like Camilla’s strength, Camilla’s power. I know she’s the one. I have to try with her, Rafer, I have to. It will still be possible, if the two of us work together, to find Camilla, finally. You do believe that, don’t you?”
Rafer swiped away the tears. Suddenly, he looked utterly calm, in full control of himself, and he sounded like the father, not the son. He said to his mother, his voice gentle, “No, Ma, none of those girls are going to be able to help you find out where Camilla is, not even Linzie Drumm. They aren’t going to add to your strength, none of them is going to help you hook up with Camilla. Don’t you understand? It’s impossible and Pa knew it, yet he did this for you.” He paused, then added quietly, “He was afraid not to do what you wanted, just as I was.” And now he’s dead hung silent in the air.
Cyndia was shaking her head. “You’re wrong. You make it sound like your pa was afraid of me. It isn’t true, your pa wanted Camilla back, too.”
Rafer shook his head. “Listen to me, Ma. Camilla’s not in Paris. She’s not in New York. She’s not even in bloody Florida. She’s not anywhere. She didn’t leave you when she was sixteen because she was angry at you. She didn’t leave you at all. Don’t you understand?”
Cyndia stared at her son. She whispered, “What are you talking about, Rafer? I always knew my Camilla was somewhere, knew it to my soul. And I was right, she came to me in my vision and told me exactly what to do. She was sixteen when she left, a rebellious age, and she was so independent, always defiant. Like every teenager, she wanted to do the opposite of what was good for her, what I wanted her to do. My perfect gifted child. She was all I could ever want. I must have her back, Rafer, or I’ll go mad.
“Don’t you understand? Once I connect with Camilla, I can go to her and bring her home.”
Rafer said quietly, gently, “Ma, in your vision, when Camilla came to you. Did she actually appear to you? Did you actually see her?”
“Of course I did. I saw her clearly, my beautiful Camilla, so talented, so ready to live life to the fullest. I love her, Rafer, your father worshiped her, everyone admired her. She will come to me, she’ll tell me why she ran away. Remember all those worthless investigators your father hired over the years? They claimed they couldn’t find any trace of her, the idiots. In my vision Camilla said she’d had to hide herself from them, from all of us, that she was in danger, but she needs me now.” She stopped a moment, searched his face. “Don’t you see? Linzie Drumm, she’s the key to finally seeing Camilla again.”
“Ma, how old was Camilla when she came to you in your vision?”
Cyndia stopped cold. She shook her head back and forth. “No, no, that doesn’t matter.”
“She was still sixteen, wasn’t she?”
Cyndia said nothing, kept shaking her head.
“Not everyone loved her, Ma.”
Cyndia’s head snapped back. “That’s not true. Camilla was magical, she’d come into her gift, she was testing her limits. She was so happy with what she was, ready to conquer the world. No matter why she left, no matter what she’s done over the years, she deserves to be happy, deserves to be someone important. She wants me to find her now, Rafer, she wants me to bring her back.”
Rafer straightened, taller than his father, but young and fit, strong. “You want the truth about your precious Camilla? Oh yeah, she was happy, you’re right about that. She was deliriously happy with her gift, with what she could do. She loved to rub my nose in it, me, the little brother who didn’t have any gifts, the little brother who didn’t count, who couldn’t protect himself, whose parents didn’t even see him. How could you not know how she made me her slave? That she tried out her powers on me? Experimented on me. On me, Ma. I was only eleven years old. She made me do things, stupid things, awful things. She made me hurt the boy who broke up with her—made me steal the car he loved and wreck it, and I almost killed myself doing it. She told me she’d make all the blood in my body burst out of my mouth if I told you or Pa or anyone. She called me her little toy.
“You didn’t see what she was, what she was doing. I don’t think you wanted to see. She was the only one who was important to you. I was nothing at all, worse, a failure because I didn’t have your gift.
“I bet you didn’t know she hated the name Camilla, but what could she expect with you as her mother? She made fun of you, Ma, and Pa, too. She said Pa was just one of your tools, just like I was one of hers. She’d laugh, tell me she was only waiting until she was stronger than you, then she’d rule you like she ruled me.
“I think Pa knew Camilla was bad, but he couldn’t admit it to himself or say it out loud. He knew, but he never did anything to keep her away from me, to keep her from hurting anyone she wanted. Do you know, I think Pa was afraid of her, like he was afraid of you.
“And Aunt Jessalyn knew what she was. She found me one day after Camilla had made me hit myself over and over with a rock, laughing as I cut myself again and again. She called me a pathetic little loser and she left. I was sitting cross-legged on the ground, crying, rocking myself, and Aunt Jessalyn came. She tended me, comforted me, and I told her everything. Like Pa, she knew, knew deep down, and now she had proof. She promised me that day she’d deal with Camilla.
“But I couldn’t wait, I was afraid to wait. Camilla knew Aunt Jessalyn had taken care of me and she was furious. I knew in my gut she could kill me, and then she could go after Aunt Jessalyn, there wasn’t a doubt in my mind. But you, Ma, you refused to see what she was—a demon from hell. She was evil, evil to her rotten heart.” He paused a moment, searching his mother’s face. “You noticed I was hurt, since Aunt Jessalyn had put bandages on me and my face was so bruised. Do you remember what you said? Of course you don’t. You said I should stop fighting with the other boys at school, nothing more. Camilla heard you. You know what? She laughed, said when she was strong enough, she wouldn’t be stupid and blind like you, her lame mom.
“Time was running out and I was scared, so scared, but I had to act. I waited until I knew she was asleep and I snuck into her bedroom. I remember standing over her, looking at her face in the moonlight coming through the window, and I wondered how such a pretty face could hide such evil. I watched her face as I rammed the knife through her neck. Her eyes flew open and she tried to speak, to curse me, to destroy me, but blood was pouring out of her mouth and her neck and she only made garbled sounds. But I was still afraid, so afraid. I pulled the knife out of her neck and shoved it in her chest. I watched her eyes go blank and empty. I didn’t know what to do then, and so I just stood there, frozen with fear, but relief, too, simple relief. She would never hurt me again. She wouldn’t kill me, she wouldn’t kill you or Pa. And then I saw Aunt Jessalyn at the window. She’s never said, but I know she’d come to kill Camilla. I just beat her to it. She told me to take off my bloody pajamas and bury them deep, then take a shower and go back to bed, she’d handle the rest. She placed her hands on my head and looked into my eyes. She told me to forget. I know she’s got some gifts, but the fact was, I never forgot, any of it.
“But I didn’t do what she told me. I wanted to be sure. I watched her carry Camilla away, over her shoulder, and I followed her. I watched her bury Camilla deep in the forest underneath an ancient oak tree. She never knew I was there, watching, and I never told her. I always pretended I’d forgotten. Do you want to know what Aunt Jessalyn said while she was shoveling the dirt over Camilla’s body? Something I’ll never forget until I die. ‘You’re gone now, you nasty little witch, dead and gone. Your sweet little brother will never remember. You shouldn’t have shined Booker, made him sleep with you. I found out, you know. He dreamed it one night and shouted it out. Your own uncle. You had sex with your own uncle.’
“How could I ever forget that? I mean, Uncle Booker was old, like Aunt Jessalyn. But that’s what she said about your sainted Camilla. Then she came back and packed Camilla’s favorite clothes and buried them, too. She cleaned all the blood off the bed and floor until there was nothing left of Camilla, nothing at all. And I was happy, Ma, happy she was gone. And for the first time, finally, you and Pa started to look at me, to actually see me.
“Camilla’s been rotting for eighteen years in the grave Aunt Jessalyn dumped her in. She’s not torturing people like she did me, she’s not forcing them to do what she wants or she’ll make the pain so bad they’ll want to die, like she did me, like you just did to Agent Hammersmith. Camilla’s not anywhere, Ma, except in hell, where she belongs. Do you think she sent you this vision from hell? Do you think she wants you to get her out of the flames?”
Cyndia stared at her son, whispered as she shook her head back and forth, “No, you were only a little boy, she loved you, she had to, didn’t she? It’s a lie, my dear sweet girl—no—”
“No, Ma, I’m not lying and deep down you know it, too, you know what she was. Just like Pa knew but chose not to believe it.”
She looked at her son, her eyes blind, and kept shaking her head back and forth. Then she stopped. Her eyes went vague. She whispered, “I’m sorry, Rafer.”
Rafer dove for her but he wasn’t fast enough. Cyndia put the Beretta in her mouth and pulled the trigger.
