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Urgently she whipped around, pushing me towards the open garage door with what strength she could find in her small body.
“Run!” she screamed and Rodney moved like a cobra, taking hold of her hair and using all the force in his labor hardened arms to smash her face into the window of the truck. The girl had no chance to defend herself, not even to raise her hands to slow the momentum of her skull striking the inflexible surface. There was a nauseating crack. Fear propelled me backward, but my feet tangled and I sprawled to the ground as the groundskeeper bashed his sister’s head against the glass, until blood began to spread through the web of cracks the impact had created. When at last Felicity went slack, he released his hold and she collapsed into a heap.
“Look what’s happened,” Rodney said, a strange note of regret mixing with the hate in his voice. “Look what I had to do because you just wouldn’t die.”
A kick of adrenaline revived me, and I turned over, scrambling to my feet to run out into the rain. I’d made it only two steps before a crushing grip encircled my arm, yanking me off balance. I landed against Rodney’s chest, and he wrapped me in the cage of his arms, fingers finding my throat. He squeezed hard enough to momentarily block my breath, and I clawed at his hand.
“Callum calls you kitten, isn’t that right?” he cooed, unaffected, “Well, kitty, I’ll loosen my grip if you stop trying to use your claws.”
I had little choice, my head already swimming. Against my every instinct I went still, and as promised he eased the pressure, allowing me to suck in several lungfuls of burning air.
“There’s a girl.” he said into my ear. “The racket you and Callum made in that greenhouse today was enough to make a whore blush. You know, you should’ve picked me. I would have had to kill you one way or another, but you’d have lived longer and we could’ve had a real good time.”
“You’re disgusting,” I grated.
“I’ve been called that once or twice by women feistier than you. Listen, since we’ve never had the pleasure, tell me…” The arm around my waist shifted as he slid his hand toward my crotch, pressing his body against mine. To my eternal horror, he was aroused. “Did Callum take good care of that sweet little…”
I thrust my backside into him, grinding against his erection, and he sucked in a harsh breath, caught off guard. He loosened his hold on my neck, his sick mind likely believing I was reciprocating his lust. Utilizing my new range of movement, I smashed the back of my head into his face. The cartilage of his nose crunched, and a warm splash of something, blood or saliva, hit my neck, running down into the collar of my shirt. He cursed and though he didn’t release me, he moved his offensive hand away from my thighs, only to slap me flat across the front of my face with his palm. My lip caught against my bottom teeth, opening the skin up. The metallic taste made me sick.
“How do you like it, crazy bitch?” he growled, then took a deep breath through his wounded airways, laughing his golden laugh like I hadn’t just broken his nose, like he hadn’t just killed his sister. “It’s all right. I know what you need.”
He wrenched me around, pinning me with his hips and one arm against the hood of the truck as he rummaged for something in his pocket.
“Take your medicine, Millie,” he coaxed. Four of his fingers were in my mouth, further opening the wound from his assault. They were coated in something powdery and sweet that dissolved on my tongue before I could even swallow. I tried to bite him, but gagged instead, and he took the window to remove his hands from the danger of my teeth.
“A bit of datura for your final trip,” he sneered, smearing the remainder of the powder and my own spit across my face. At last he released me, tucking the toe of his boot against my ankle and shoving me sideways. I tripped, stumbled wildly, then by some miracle remained on my feet, putting on speed to careen out of the garage and into the pouring rain.
“That’s right, little rabbit,” Rodney called behind me, howling with laughter. “Run, run while you can!”
Chapter 24
As I sprinted back across the house, I screamed for help, stopping for barely a moment to pull on the cellar door. The latch on the inside had clicked closed, locking me out. I looked over my shoulder to find Rodney coming after me, his pace unhurried. With nowhere else to go, I turned to the gardens. The rain made the terrain treacherous and unfamiliar, and I struggled to navigate. Rodney called out my name, high and frantic. If anyone heard him, it would seem he was searching for someone lost, but in truth he was only letting me know he wasn’t too far behind. Making my progress all the more grueling was the poison working its way through me, mixed with the powdered sugar. I thought of the sweets that Felicity occasionally brought me, sprinkled with white. It had never been the tea. It had never been Callum.
I stumbled, falling on my shoulder in front of the entrance of the rose labyrinth. My head swam, the ground beneath me undulating, breathing. I rolled onto my back, sick and terrified and so very tired. Every step I had ever taken toward bettering my life only seemed to ruin it all the more. Rain pooled on the lids of my closed eyes.
Millie.
I turned my head toward the sound of my name, expecting to see Rodney towering over me, but it was the woman in white, crouching at the labyrinth mouth, watching me through stringy strands of wet hair.
A hallucination. She was a figment of my imagination. But nothing explained why I shared her with Ms. Hughes.
The now familiar sensation of being drawn to her by a physical, invisible force had me sitting up, gingerly standing to my feet. The apparition, whatever it was, hallucination or ghost, stood with me, and we looked into each other’s eyes for the first time.
Her face was mine.
Millie, she said, though her blue lips remained closed, water running from the sides of her mouth, down her chin.
Then like a deer startled by the gunshot of a hunter, she sprinted away from me, and with all the life I had left, I followed. She twisted through the topiary garden, past the tunnel of trees and through a break in the hedge wall of gardenia. I staggered after her, barely keeping her in sight, passing through an unfamiliar quarter of the garden grounds with its terracotta terraces overgrown and untouched by care, cypress trees untamed, and gravel paths marred with the brown carcasses of weeds. This was the Italianate.
I knew where she was going.
I emerged from beneath a marbled arch into a wilding path, worn only by the feet of a few who dared come into the wilderness of the woods that surrounded the estate on every side. We wound through the pines and naked oaks, the ground covered in winter moss and old leaves, wet and rotting, and I heard the water. It was so very loud. The phantom approached the edge of the ravine, made nearly invisible by the underbrush, then turned toward me, her back to the dark water rushing ferociously from the downpour.
I was empty of energy, supporting my weight against the spindling trunk of a young fir.
“Don’t,” I said, words drowned in the sound of the rain and river.
The apparition’s body hurtled backward, arms flailing, and fell out of sight into the rapids below. I made a small, useless noise.
