Dark Lily: Shadows, Book 4 (16 page)

Gaby’s eyes snapped up. “Damn! Mitchell, stop! Don’t drink the… Shit.”

It was already too late. Mitchell knew it by the way his mind filled with billowing black fog.

“Perhaps a tad too much whiskey,” Emily remarked in the far, far distance. Then she smiled, and he swore her incisors lengthened.

Not real, he got that, because he heard maniacal laughter and felt the floor turn to rubber.

The walls began to break apart, like shards of glass. The glass slivers dripped blood that turned to crimson pools where it landed.

“So pretty.” Clucking, Emily took Gaby’s cup away and laid her head on the arm of the sofa. When she turned her gaze to Mitchell, her eyes gleamed as red as the blood on the floor. “She’s pretty, and you’re a fighter. To the bitter end, I’m sure. You overlooked me, didn’t you, Mitchell? Completely discounted the silly, middle-aged woman with all her lumps, bumps and quirks. Never mind. I’ve confounded many an authority figure in my time and will again, I daresay.”

“Who…?” was all he got out.

She bent close and, oh yeah, her incisors looked long and razor sharp. So did the horns he visualized on her head.

“I’m what’s called a sleeper,” she said. “I don’t murder people, you understand. That’s for the Leshads of the world. I’m all about immobility. And, of course, money. Now you close those killer dark eyes of yours and tell yourself you did your best. No need to worry about Gaby. You’ll be together in the ghostly realm soon enough.” Her face dissolved. Her tone grew humorous. “Goodbye, Mitchell Stone. Give my regards to your bastard grandfather.”

Chapter Eighteen

Gaby heard the murmur of voices, hushed and unclear, a man’s and a woman’s. Her body was moving. She thought of levitation, but it couldn’t be that, because every so often her hip bumped against someone’s stomach.

Her mind wanted to drift away. It required a huge effort on her part not to let that happen. She could and would fight the effects of whatever drug Emily had slipped into her tea.

The thought of Mitchell dying for her as Phoebe had burned holes in the layers of black enveloping her brain. There had to be something she could do, if not physically then mentally.

On the outer edge of her mind, a woman who sounded like Phoebe but wasn’t whispered Gaby’s name.
“You knew me once,”
the mystery female said.
“But not as well as I knew you. I’m not a ghost. We are one and the same in many ways. And neither of us are alone.”

“Who are you?” Gaby asked.

The voice that answered belonged to Emily. “You know who I am, dear, or you would if I hadn’t been a trifle heavy-headed with my specially tweaked chloral hydrate, whiskey and sassafras tea. Not to worry. You received a smaller dose than your interfering lover. He won’t be waking up in a hurry.”

“We hope.” Even doped, Gaby recognized CJ Best’s polished tone. “Leshad wants Stone completely out of the picture, Emily. Shouldn’t you go back and ensure that he is? Python and I can get Gaby to the rendezvous.”

Python? Gaby envisioned the worst but didn’t move.

“Your Python is little better than a zombie, Caleb.” Emily snorted. “Thinks like one, moves like one. And from what I’ve seen, you’re not familiar with the perils of the swamp. Leshad wants the girl, I’m delivering the girl.”

“We’re delivering the girl,” CJ corrected. “You wouldn’t be part of this at all if Stone hadn’t brought Gaby back to Bokur Island.”

Emily laughed. “Don’t be an ass. He had to bring her back. Her ghost friends are here.” A beam of light shone over Gaby’s face. “There it is. The abandoned shack I found yesterday.”

An idea glimmered deep in Gaby’s mind.
Think
, she ordered herself.
Concentrate. One move, one action. One message to the right island resident.

“In we go,” Emily instructed. “Python, lay her on that old table, then take a position outside. Oh my, Caleb.” The light beam shifted. “You look positively peaked.”

“Considerate of you to notice,” he snapped. “I ingested about a gallon of Mississippi mud after Leshad shoved me overboard.”

Emily ran her beam around the room. “You can therefore understand my preference for the role I play.” The flashlight clicked off. “The moon does a fine job of illuminating this place, don’t you think?”

“Are we alone?” CJ asked suddenly. “I never feel like I really am these days.”

“You believe some of Gaby’s dead friends tagged along for the party?”

“I’d hardly call this a party.”

Gaby heard a lighter flick and smelled cigarette smoke. Emily inhaled with gusto. “You really do worry about the wrong things, Caleb. Ghosts are incorporeal. People who fear them endow them with a great deal more power than they actually possess. They pop out of the ether, and otherwise rational minds panic. I can honestly say I’ve never been harmed by a ghost.” Gaby felt one of her eyelids being lifted. “Fuzzy-headed but coming back. If you’re squeamish, Caleb, perhaps you should wait outside. I’m sure Leshad will be here soon… Ah, no.” She whooshed out a stream of smoke. “My oversight. He’s with us already.”

Gaby hadn’t sensed him. Could be a result of the drug Emily had used. Could also be that Leshad had more going on in his psyche than anyone realized.

“You’ve done well, Emily. You can leave.” The freakishly distorted comment came from a patch of darkness untouched by the moonbeams. “Caleb, sit.”

“I think I should stay,” Emily countered. More smoke wafted past. “To ensure that she wakes up properly.”

“As you wish.”

As she wished? Gaby’s astonishment mirrored the blustering disbelief that bolted through CJ’s mind. He contained it, however, and took a seat on a crate near the door.

A gloved finger, had to be Leshad’s, stroked the curve of Gaby’s cheek. “She looks much like her mother and nothing like that bitch Madeleine.”

Emily blew more smoke. “She has an impressive amount of psychic energy. Very much like her grandmother, I’d say. The question is can she access what you require? Madeleine was schooled for many years by Twila Black. Her power was formidable, as we know. The ability to see ghosts has been Gaby’s predominant skill from birth. The rest is a wide scatter of the unknown. She could be a goldmine or a dud. Ah, there. Her mind is clearing quickly now.”

How can Emily know what my mind is doing?
Gaby wondered. Who was she to Leshad? A blood connection or merely a lucky find?

Whoever and whatever the woman was, she had a certain amount of second sight. She probably couldn’t get into resistant minds, but she understood parapsychology, and she was quite likely telepathic.

She also chain-smoked. Gaby struggled with an urge to cough as a lighter was flicked and Emily lit a second cigarette.

“Oh, yes, waking up quite nicely,” she cooed. “Open those pretty green eyes, Sleeping Beauty. No faking allowed. I only appear to be a flighty, doddering woman. The truth is, I’m frighteningly perceptive. And I know how much of my doctored tea you consumed.” Her tone grew strident. “Wake up, Gabrielle. Now!”

Fuck you
, Gaby thought, and pushed her mind toward Leshad. No surprise, it rammed into a wall, but for a moment, less than a heartbeat of time, the letter C came clear to her.

Tucking that away, she eased her eyelids open and stared straight up. Python had laid her on the table like a sacrificial virgin. Except she wasn’t a virgin, and she had no intention of being sacrificed.

“And there she is.” Leshad’s distorted voice was a rusty nail stuttering along Gaby’s spine. “You’ve caused me an inordinate amount of trouble, Gabrielle.”

Her vision steadied and began to adjust. “I wish it could have been more.”

Emily laughed. Leshad didn’t. Neither did CJ Best, but if hostility had fists, his would have punched all three of them senseless.

“It’s fortunate that I require your services, or you’d be dying as we speak. Piece by screaming piece.” Leshad’s remark was a lazy flick. “Unfortunately, you’re Madeleine Lessard’s granddaughter. You have her voodoo blood and, I believe, her abilities.”

Gaby’s stomach muscles clenched. She refused to let her response do the same. “I can’t alter Madeleine’s curse, Leshad. That’s the first rule of voodoo. What’s been done can’t be undone by anyone except the person who did it.”

“Well, thank you, Samantha Stevens. As it happens, I received a copy of that memo from your mother aboard the Delta Belle. Oh, I’m sorry, I meant to say your late mother. Ah, well, perhaps you and she will still be able to converse given your special talent. Can you guess where this conversation is headed?”

“I have an idea,” she murmured.

“You see ghosts,” Leshad said coldly. “You talk to them. Madeleine is a ghost.”

“Madeleine’s dead,” Gaby corrected him. “Not everyone who’s dead hangs around.”

“Not everyone who’s dead has the wherewithal to hang around. Madeleine did and does. Don’t lie to me. I’ve seen the bitch myself. Shortly after I killed her, she tried to shock me into skidding off a very slippery road. Lucky for me, I’m an excellent driver. I reacted to her as another driver might to a trapped hornet. I stopped my car, got out and waited for the bee to leave.”

“You waited in a bar,” Gaby said by way of clarification. She levered onto her elbows and attempted to take her snatch of insight—the letter C—deeper. Not surprisingly, Leshad turned a mental lock in her face.

“You talk to ghosts,” he repeated, tightly. “If Madeleine can manifest, she must still have power. You’re going to convince her to lift the curse she put on me, or you, Gabrielle, will find yourself riddled with black holes, each one seared into your soft flesh with a fiery poker. I’ll start at your feet and work my way up, very, very slowly.”

At the end of the table, Emily lit a third cigarette and blew on the glowing tip. “You’re losing your objectivity, Leshad, and with it your ability to make wise decisions.”

“Did I ask for your opinion?” Leshad snarled.

“No.”

“Then shut up and let me handle this.”

“Whatever you say.” Emily sounded amazingly unconcerned considering the rage currently pumping out of her employer.

“Does anyone want to know what I think?” CJ inquired.

Emily wheezed out a laugh. “My God, Caleb, your timing— Oh, what now?” she interrupted herself to demand. She turned toward the door. “Python?” she called. “Are you there? I can’t feel you.” She regarded CJ. “I trust he knows his name?”

“He does,” CJ replied stiffly. “He also has his orders. I told him to circle out wide and guard the perimeter.”

“Check on him, Caleb,” Leshad said. A sly note crept in. “Once you’ve ascertained our muscle man’s status, go back to town and revive Stone. I want him brought to me. Alive.”

“You want me to bring a former cop here?”

“Yes.” The word was softly uttered, yet there was no mistaking the steel in Leshad’s reply. “We’ll leave it to Python to build that fire and locate a poker. To be used if necessary on Gabrielle.” The steel hardened. “Right after it’s used on Mitchell Stone.”

* * * * *

Someone or something bounced like a toddler on Mitchell’s back. It kicked his ribs and thumped its fists between his shoulder blades. In the background, a shrill female voice with a heavy Creole accent shouted at him. The same thing, over and over again. “Wake up, wake up, wake up!”

“Stop screaming,” he mumbled in a slur too rough to be coming from his larynx. Then the memories, a veritable tsunami of them, stormed through him. “Shit, Gaby!”

He wanted to shove to his feet, but all he could manage was a listless roll from his stomach onto his back. The bouncing stopped, and the screaming intensified. Across the room, a door crashed open, feet clattered, and Fred Ficket gave him a double-handed whack to the chest that caused his already impaired breathing to stall.

“Chief?” The deputy sounded frantic. His arms went up.

“Thump me again, and I’ll shoot you.” Mitchell’s tongue weighed twenty bristly pounds, but thankfully, it worked. “Water, Fred.”

“Water. Yeah, sure.” Feet thudded to the mini-fridge and back. Knees hit the floor. “I was with my cousin, Chief.” Fred shook his shoulder as he spoke. “We were talking about things. In the trees, behind the hotel. Annie has an old shed there, but, well, it’s not important. Anyway, we saw Gaby being carried out the back door. I knew that couldn’t be good, so I told Harley to go home, and I came straight up here. I think someone drugged you.”

“Emily Dillard.”

Fred’s head bobbed. “She was walking ahead of the big guy who had Gaby. And there was another man.”

Working himself onto his side, Mitchell gulped water and set his mind on Gaby. “Jacket,” he said.

“Oh, you won’t need that.” Fred flapped a hand at the window. “The rain’s stopped and the moon’s out. You’ll be wanting a flashlight though. The swamp has a lot of scary places.” He squared his narrow shoulders. “I’ll come with you. To help Gaby.”

“Stop yelling at me,” Mitchell muttered to the shrieking ghost.

Fred frowned. “I, uh, wasn’t really yelling, but I am kinda scared.”

Mitchell lifted his gaze to the opposite wall, saw what he expected and scowled. “I’m awake, Celia and Billy. Or awake enough to know what’s going down. CJ Best, and probably worse than him, has Gaby.” He detected another movement. “Oh, fuck. All three of you?”

“Three of who?” Bewildered, Fred blinked at the wall.

The final apparition could only be Madeleine Lessard. Mitchell saw empty black eye sockets, skin thin as crepe paper, hair like dirty string and some sort of wet burlap sack that barely covered her skeletal body.

“Okay, if you’re here too, it’s definitely worse.” Although his muscles protested, he forced himself to an unsteady crouch. He located his jacket that held guns Ryder had brought for him. “I’m on it. Go terrorize Leshad until I get there.”

It was Madeleine who spoke. “The female has drawn a curtain around him, around all of them, to shut us out. She knows voodoo, Mitchell. I feel I should know her. Perhaps I did in life. You must locate Gabrielle.”

Teeth gritted, Mitchell shoved to his feet. “Do what you can, Madeleine. Fred, get a message to Rick Ryder. Use my iPhone. Tell him to contact Crucible, let him know Leshad’s here on Bokur Island, and he’s got Gaby. I’m going to get her back.”

“Great.” Fred stared. “How?”

Mitchell’s lips curved ever so slightly. “With a little help from an old friend. The kind Leshad’s psychic sleeper won’t expect.”

* * * * *

“We need to get her off the island, Emily,” Leshad said the moment the door closed behind CJ Best. “Can you cloak the three of us until we’re away?”

“No.”

Fury radiated from the depths of the shadow where Leshad stood. Gaby sensed it but couldn’t slip around it and into his mind. “Why not?”

“Because my strength lies in brewing potions and using them to weave spells. You know my limitations, Leshad. You also know I’m nothing compared to Madeleine Lessard.”

“So you insist.”

Emily used her cigarette to point. “She could do it.”

“She could, but she won’t.” Gaby sat up, ignoring the dizziness that made lying back down extremely appealing. “Mitchell showed me the calling-card murder file, Leshad, or as much of it as he was able to access. You’ve killed more than two dozen innocent people. Obviously, the psychic murders were personal, but the consensus is you committed the others strictly for profit.”

Leshad remained silent. Emily sighed. “Think of it this way, my dear. Couture creations sell, always have, always will, but not nearly as well as off-the-rack. Businesses often rely on a high turnover to make a profit, and you’d be surprised how many ordinary people want certain individuals out of their lives. Where there’s a desire, there will invariably be a service. Provide it and you free yourself to pursue other avenues. In Leshad’s case, personal ones.”