Compulsion (36 page)

That
was how she was going to play it?

“Is there a reason I should be mad?” Barrie asked. “Come on, Cousin. Think hard.”

Cassie’s face flushed crimson. Then the color drained away. “Oh!” she exclaimed. “I clean forgot. Wait. You didn’t think—” She broke off, unclasped a chain from around her neck, and pulled Barrie’s Tiffany keys from underneath her shirt.

Barrie snatched them back before Cassie could change her mind. The returning click went off in her head, and her eyes fluttered closed with the release of pressure.

“That was the other reason I’ve been calling you,” Cassie went on. “I found your necklace after you left. The chain broke, but I’ve been wearing the keys so Daddy wouldn’t find them. I wanted to keep them safe for you.”

Even now, part of Barrie, a big, irrational part, still wanted to believe Cassie. “Then why didn’t you leave it with Pru when you were here?”

“And when exactly did you find it?” Eight asked before Cassie could even answer.

Cassie shifted her balance, not looking at either of them. That was the problem with wanting to believe in Cassie. She’d had the necklace before Barrie and Eight had reached the boat. Anything that came out of her mouth now was going to be a lie, and Cassie had to know Barrie knew it. But she was counting on Barrie to be too stupid, or too naive, or too . . . weak . . . to call her on it.

It was time for Barrie to be smart. Screaming at Cassie wouldn’t help. They still had to go to school together, so they needed to find a way to get along. Barrie tightened her hand around the necklace. She had it back. That was what mattered most.

“Thanks for bringing this back for me,” she said, “but Eight and I have to be somewhere right now. Sorry.” She grabbed Eight’s hand and tugged him toward the house.

“I was hoping we could hang out.” Cassie hurried after them. “Maybe get a hot dog or something. My treat. I traded shifts so I could come see you.”

“Another time.” Barrie walked faster than was comfortable with her ankle. But she wasn’t going to limp in front of Cassie.

They reached the terrace. “What about later? Game of pool at the Resurrection?” Cassie asked.

“We have plans later too.”

“What kind of plans?”

If Barrie had to look at Cassie’s lying face another second, feel half-sorry for her another second, she was going to lose it. “Please, Cassie. Just go.” She paused at the bottom of the steps. “I’m sure we’ll figure it out later, but right now I need some time.”

“So you are mad?”

“I’m not mad.” Barrie started up the stairs, then spun back around. “What did you think was going to happen? You thought you could take my necklace, and I was going to let that go?” She held up her hand as Cassie opened her mouth to answer. She couldn’t listen to any more excuses. “Just drop it,” she snapped. “I have something I have to do, but I swear, I’ll call you as soon as I can.”

She was aware of Cassie watching her all the way up the staircase, and she didn’t relax until Eight finally shut the kitchen door behind them. Judging from his furious scowl, though, the conversation was far from closed.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” he demanded as she hurried across the kitchen. “Cassie had your necklace before we even left Colesworth Place, didn’t she?”

“She had to realize I would know she had it. I don’t get her.”

Eight followed her through the swinging door and down the corridor to the closet beneath the stairs. “I’m sure she was
waiting to see what you would do. Waiting to see if she could get away with keeping it. The Colesworths all seem to operate on instinct and deal with the consequences later.”

“So what do we do?” Barrie asked, speaking as much about how to open the box as she was about the situation with Cassie. Both seemed fairly hopeless.

“Let me see the toolbox.” Eight rummaged around inside and pulled out a chisel and a hammer.

Barrie leaned back against the wall. “Cassie had to be worried I was going to call the police. Right? I’ll bet that’s why she’s been calling.”

“Hold that thought.” Eight chipped away the last of the rust that had fused the seam of the box closed. He levered the box open triumphantly. Inside were two large iron keys. “Jackpot,” he said.

The secret panel swung open, and Barrie scrambled over the headboard. Inside, the hidden room was empty except for a threadbare Oriental carpet and dusty shelves rising to the ceiling on every wall.

“Well, this is disappointing.” Eight jumped in after her and looked around. “What do you think? Some kind of a safe room? I guess that makes sense, since the original Watson was a privateer.”

“Pirate. Otherwise, why bother with a treasure room?” Barrie followed the finding pull and the
yunwi
to the back corner. Stronger and more sickening than ever, the sense of loss came from behind the paneling. She jiggled the nearest shelf, but it didn’t budge.

“What are you doing?” Eight came and peered over her shoulder.

“There has to be another hidden panel. Here, help me figure out how to get it open. You take that far wall, and I’ll take this one.” She started at the corner and worked back toward the master bedroom, checking every shelf attached to the ornate paneling. The carvings were the same as in the bedroom, and she pressed and twisted each of them, looking for a keyhole. Eight watched her a moment, then started at the corner, checking the back wall of the room. They both startled as something clicked.

“Found it,” Eight pointed to the button at the base of a fleur-de-lis.

The wall rumbled. A large section swung inward, revealing a steep flight of steps that vanished into darkness.

Barrie’s stomach turned at the loss that pulled her down the passage. The light from the bedroom didn’t reach the bottom, and she fumbled along both sides of the stairwell for a switch. Cobwebs tangled in her fingers, and rough brick scraped her skin.

“I remember a flashlight in the toolbox,” Eight said. “I’ll go grab it.”

Barrie nodded. She waited for him just inside the hidden room, as far from the narrow staircase as she could get without
obviously retreating. Whatever was down the stairwell made her want to crawl out of the treasure room, shut the secret panel, and ignore the whole abandoned wing the way Pru had managed to ignore it all her life.

As if they felt her reluctance, the
yunwi
crowded around her, trying to nudge her toward the stairs. When Eight came back, she let him go first.

“You just want me to clear all the cobwebs, don’t you?” he said.

“Of course. Do I look stupid?”

Cold, stale air wrapped around Barrie the deeper they descended, and she tried not to wince as the steps made her ankle ache. The anorexic beam of Eight’s flashlight didn’t hold back much darkness. More and more of the
yunwi
who had followed her into the passage fell back, until only a handful remained. Even they lagged behind as if they were afraid.

Barrie trailed her fingers along the bricks and counted steps to keep herself from hyperventilating—192 stairs to the bottom. They had to be at least two stories underground. Three stories from the master bedroom. She closed her eyes at the thought of all that earth above them held back by a few bricks on the ceiling.

Eight ran the flashlight over an iron door with black cross-pieces. “You have that other key?”

Barrie dropped both into his outstretched hand. “I don’t remember which one we used upstairs.”

“Want to do the honors?” He glanced back at her, his eyes gleaming in the darkness.

“That’s all right. I wouldn’t want to deprive you of all the fun.”

Something in her voice must have given away her panic. “It’s going to be fine,” Eight said. “Whatever’s on the other side can’t be that bad.”

“Snakes and alligators,” Barrie said, wishing that were all.

But it wasn’t. The loss coming from behind the door raked her skull like nothing she had ever felt before. She took the flashlight so Eight could fit the key into the lock, but the light trembled in her hand. She squared her shoulders and tried to keep it steady.

The first key got the lock open, and Eight grinned back at her. “Fifty-fifty, right? Good omen.”

He leaned into the door, and it opened with a groan of protest and a belch of something acrid and decaying. A few
yunwi
darted through the gap. The rest hung back by the stairs. Barrie glanced at them before stepping forward to shine the flashlight into the blackness.

Beyond the door, the walls curved to form an arch overhead, but the light didn’t penetrate far enough to find the far end of the room. Eight pushed past Barrie and stopped a few yards inside.

“It looks like the escape tunnel Cassie was talking about.”
He moved deeper into the chamber, looking around and shining the light at the walls and ceiling. At the edge of the flashlight beam, his foot connected with something that gave an echoing clank.

“What was that? Are you okay?” Barrie came up beside him.

“I’m fine.”

They both bent to examine a black garbage bag that lay on the ground where Eight had kicked it. He tore through the knot in the plastic and pulled out a blackened teapot.

“Here, shine that flashlight closer.” As Barrie sidled up beside him, he turned the teapot over and squinted at a faint maker’s mark obscured by the layers of tarnish. “It’s sterling,” he said. He pulled other pieces from the bag: a tray, a creamer, platters, plates. “How much do you want to bet this is the stuff Luke supposedly took to Canada with him.”

“I didn’t know Luke took any silver.”

“He was back from Vietnam for his father’s funeral, so technically everything was his anyway. The oldest child has always inherited in all three families—to keep the plantations intact from one generation to the next.”

So the master bedroom wouldn’t have belonged to Emmett then. With his father dead, the room would have gone to Luke, and maybe he and Twila had come in to clean out his father’s things. Or maybe Luke’s father had left instructions for him about the secret room before he died.

The pressure in Barrie’s head and the queasy feeling in her stomach hadn’t lessened when they’d found the bag of silver. There was still something here she was supposed to find.

She shone the light farther along the tunnel, walked a few more feet, then looked again. The beam of the flashlight illuminated a leather suitcase, not much more than scraps and clasps and a handle made of brass. Eight went and nudged it open with his foot. The clothes inside had disintegrated, but there were buttons and zippers, a rusted razor and a plastic comb and toothbrush. But finding that didn’t dim the pressure either. Barrie went a few more yards, aimed the flashlight deeper into the room, and almost dropped it as her fingers went numb and nerveless. Her other hand flew to her mouth to stifle a scream.

“Hey, a little light over here?” Eight looked up. Then he jumped to his feet as he saw her face.

Six or seven yards beyond the suitcase, a collection of bones lay on the ground. Barrie pushed herself forward on unsteady legs. And what had looked like one pile in the shaking light resolved into two. Two
skeletons
. The white flash of a ghostly hand rose from one skeleton and moved toward the other.

Eight pulled at the back of her shirt. “Hang on, Bear. You don’t want to go there.”

Barrie kept moving. She had no choice. The finding pull made her want to throw up. But the skeletons were why she was here.

“Luke never made it to Canada,” she said.

“Doesn’t look like it.” Eight’s voice was so quiet, Barrie barely heard him.

The few
yunwi
who had followed them inside stood in a row beside what was left of the bodies. Their heads were bowed, and they moved aside to let Barrie through.

The smaller skeleton lay on her back, still wearing her vinyl boots. The larger skeleton rested half on his side, as if he were reaching toward her. His ghost
did
reach for her, a spectral arm rising like mist from the yellowed bones. Though the fabric of the actual navy uniform had long since disintegrated, Luke’s ghost still wore one, complete with gold pilot’s wings pinned above four full rows of a hero’s ribbons. He reached for Twila’s face, but his transparent fingers touched bare skull.

Twila’s ghost wasn’t there. She must have died before Emmett had moved her body. She and Luke had been forever separated, Twila’s spirit in the bedroom and Luke’s there in the tunnel. Forever reaching for each other where they had died, and never finding comfort.

Luke’s eyes fell closed. His ghostly hand slid away, as if he were too sad, or too weak, for his touch to linger. Barrie tasted salt on her tongue and realized she was crying.

“Christ. Oh, Christ.” Eight pulled Barrie close and drew her head to his chest.

“Do you see him?” she asked.

“See who?”

“Luke’s ghost.”

Eight stiffened and then shook his head. Barrie didn’t have the heart to describe what she saw.

She stooped beside Luke’s remains and picked up the metal wings that lay on the ground along with a plastic name tag. A returning jolt shot through her, deeper and more electric than anything she had ever felt.