Echoes in Stone (37 page)

“No!” Lily spun, her eyes wild, her snarled red hair flying out around her. “No. He only wanted what all the rest of them wanted. Holly is four years old now. The same as—as I was. She’s old enough now. Ripe. He’ll want her as well.”

Her expression shifted, as if she’d donned a mask. Her whole body underwent some odd transformation. Jessa blinked. Lily still looked the same, yet something had changed.

Gone was the wild woman. The person looking through Lily’s eyes now looked somehow younger. Her collarbones were still hollowed, her shoulder blades still protruded from her back like misshapen wings, but Lily managed to look plumper, softer, more rounded. The gaudy red satin gown still hung loose on her emaciated body, but she stood taller, smiling shyly at Jessa.

“Jessa. You must be patient with poor Lily. She doesn’t always understand. Her fear sometimes makes her do things. Mean things. It’s not her fault. It’s the man’s fault. That’s why she has the mirrors. They frighten him. We’ll be safe here. He won’t come here.”

The mirrors. They covered every surface. They circled the room, intensifying the light. In every shape and size, dozens upon dozens of mirrors. Large mirrors hung in gilded or plain wooden frames. More mirrors stood on the floor. Mirrors leaned against the walls and the single chair and pallet bed, which comprised the only furnishings in the rooms. Shards of mirror had even been attached to the faded, moth-eaten tapestries hanging on either side of the casement window in the far wall.

Over and over again, the coruscating walls reflected the monstrous scene. The images were distorted, as fragmented as Lily’s tormented mind.

The effect only added to Jessa’s growing dizziness. “Lily? Honey? You have no need to be frightened.”

“I’m not Lily.” The woman laughed, the sound eerily like the giggle of a little girl. The same sort of giggle Holly made when Jessa tickled her or told her a funny story. “Susanna couldn’t do a thing about that brazen Lily, but she kept me safe all the time, while Lily—while Lily—” The woman’s voice faltered, a look of confusion in her eyes.

Without taking her eyes off Jessa, Lily crept backwards until she bumped against the bed where Holly lay so still. Jessa tensed, on the balls of her feet, ready to race to the child’s aid if this mad creature made one gesture to harm the child. But Lily only reached down, retrieving the rag doll she’d tucked next to Holly. She crossed back to Jessa, holding the ugly thing out for her inspection.

“You see? Susanna. When Lily was a little girl, her daddy gave her this doll. He told her the doll’s name was Susanna.” The creature giggled, as sweet a sound as Holly would have made. “Did you know that the name Susanna means ‘lily’? He’d give her the doll, then tell her to think about tea parties, or ponies. Then he’d pull her onto his lap, or lay her down in his very big bed, and do things to her. He bit her. Put his tongue in her mouth. He hurt her.” Lily bunched the front of her skirt in her hand. “There. Between her legs. Poor Lily.” Tears trembled on Lily’s lashes, trickling down her cheeks.

Jessa’s eyes welled up as well, but she couldn’t afford to give in to her emotions. Not while Holly remained in such danger from this unpredictable woman.

“But Susanna and I fooled him.” Lily smiled as suddenly as she’d started crying. A crafty look entered her eyes, far too old to match the childlike voice. “While the bad men rutted on poor Lily’s little body, Susanna and I ran off to play. Susanna said men think only with their cocks, but little girls were smarter than that. Susanna said to be patient. Susanna said they’d be punished for their wickedness. For their sinful ways.” Lily cocked her head, as if listening to a voice from some distant past, clutching the rag doll to her chest. She scrubbed the tears from her eyes.

“Lily.” Jessa clutched her hand to her roiling stomach. Oh God, how had her half-sister endured? She’d only been a little girl. Her heart shattered. “Sweetie, I’m so sorry for all the bad things that happened to you. I wish—”

“Sometimes, when Lily was older and her daddy no longer wanted her, Susanna would sit on the floor outside Lily’s bedroom, listening. Lily’s daddy only liked Lily as long as she was little. He liked to dress her up in white lace and pink satin ribbons and frilly petticoats.”

Lily shifted again as Jessa watched. For an instant, she became the Lily Jessa remembered. Sparkling, blithe, her eyebrow cocked, her smile arch and flirtatious. Her voice changed as well, sounding older, with a cutting edge of bitterness. “Daddy’s friends preferred me this way. Dressed in red satin, rouge upon my cheeks, my lips, my nipples, with kohl around my eyes. Lovely, don’t you think?” Lily held out her skirts, dipping into a deep curtsy.

The dress, which probably once clung to voluptuous curves, gaped open at the neckline. The spots of rouge on Lily’s pale face were clownish, smeared from her exertions and tears. The kohl had been wiped away, but left its mark in the form of gray smudges under her eyes.

Jessa wanted to stop up her ears, to escape the deluge of Lily’s words, but didn’t dare move. This version of Lily was canny. Sharp. Watchful.

The torrent of Lily’s memories continued unabated. “When my courses started, Daddy handed me off to his very special friends. By then, Susanna had begun to teach me to take my own small revenges on them. Each of them—fat, warty, pocked, old beyond measure—rutted and tore at me. I’d scream ‘Oh my God! Oh my God’ into their hairy ears. Each waddled away, thinking he’d given the young lady the ride of her life.” Lily smothered her bright, brittle laugh with her hand.

Jessa remembered that laugh. Lily—a teenager—with the boys buzzing around her at church on Sunday mornings.

“In other words, my dear, innocent baby sister, I faked it.” Condescension dripped from Lily’s voice. “Made each of them believe they were studs among men. Then I’d laugh after they left. Loud and long. Stupid oafs. Didn’t they know there is no God? If there was, he certainly wasn’t listening to the cries of little girls. Only Susanna listened. She heard everything.”

Lily held up the ragged doll, glaring at it. “Oh yes, Susanna, you heard it all, but did nothing to stop it. You’d run off to your tea parties, leaving me to deal with those fucking pigs alone.”

Lily shook the doll, then clutched it to her heart. “But I’ll give you credit, Susanna. You protected the child when no one else did.” Lily’s glittering eyes bored into Jessa’s. “Susanna—unlike me—believes there is a God. She believes he punishes the wicked. The sinful. Unfortunately, she believes me to be in the ranks of the sinners. The most depraved, most wicked of all, because sometimes—if he were not too fat, and not too old—I found a measure of release with some of those men. And so I must be punished as well.” Lily sighed, shaking her head.

Jessa glanced at the child on the bed. Had she shifted?

Lily, following her look, stared at the child as well.

No, Holly still lay sprawled on the coverlet, her small bare foot dangling over the edge of the bed. Jessa took an almost imperceptible step toward Lily, but the woman swung back around to face her.

Her face had shifted again. The lips were pursed, as if she’d bitten into something foul. Her chin dropped, revealing a certain looseness of skin under it. As if she’d aged while Jessa watched.

Lily ran her hand through her faded, straw-like hair, shoving it away from her face. “I killed them, you know. Lily’s father. And yours.”

Jessa gasped, tears springing to her eyes. “Dear God, Lily! What are you saying?”

“Aren’t you listening Jessamine? I killed them. I found Lily’s father one day, drunk, passed out in his library. It was quite easy, really. Splash some of his very fine brandy about and throw a lucifer into it.” She chuckled. “I very nearly didn’t make it out myself that day. Caught my skirt on fire and burned my leg. But it worked in my favor. Poor little orphan, injured trying to save her daddy. Then Jack Palmer showed up.”

“Lily—” Jessa held out her hand, as if to ward off the onslaught of Lily’s words striking at her raw nerves as if they were knives. She was going to be sick—she couldn’t listen anymore. But Lily ignored her.

“He’s likely not your father, you know. Jack Palmer.” The woman chewed on her lips. Anger flashed in her eyes. “I saw them there in the barn one day. Jack and that man you call
Uncle
Stan. Some uncle you’ve got there. A pederast. A fornicator. A man who prefers to lie with other men rather than with a woman.” Susanna, for this manifestation could be none other than she, spat at the floor, then wiped a stray strand of spittle from her mouth.

Jessa gasped again, brutalized, reeling from one gut-level punch after another. The fumes from the oil lamps thickened the air. The heat they gave off was turning the room into a sauna; the glitter of them, amplified in the mirrors, stabbed her eyes. Holly had still not moved. Jessa couldn’t help it. Tears flowed over her cheeks.

“You may well stand there sniveling like some innocent girl, but I know you’re not.” Lily—
no, this was Susanna
—paced, growing more agitated, crazed, as her tirade escalated.

Jessa had been the focus of Lily’s brand of excitement in the past. This could turn into a murderous rage at any second. She had to keep her talking, to keep her insanity reined in for as long as possible, until she could find a way to save Holly and herself.

Lily muttered, gesticulating as if having a argument with people unseen.

Dear God, how long before someone noticed them missing? Surely, Dash would come to check on Holly before bed. Just as she’d done earlier, he’d find the two maids sound asleep, likely drugged, and Holly missing. But unlike her, he wouldn’t see the woman disappearing down the corridor, headed for the tower room. How long until he raised a search party? Could she hold off Susanna’s notion of retribution long enough for Dash to find them?

Lily, the rag doll clutched in her fist, rocked from side to side, the fires of her madness burning like coals in her eyes. “Jack found Lily in the stable one day, engaged in some fornication of her own with the stable lad. Skirts up around her waist, her legs spread for a man, just like always. I tried to protect her, but she was a born harlot.”

Lily sneered. “Jack was a stupid man. He tried to yank Lily off the boy, but she came up with a loose horseshoe in her hand and swung it at his head. The stable boy started yelling, so she had to shut him up as well. Then, of course, it was up to me to clean up Lily’s mess.” The Susanna creature’s face twisted into a smirk, and she harrumphed.

“Jack was an unnatural man,” she said. “deserving of punishment. The lad? Eh, well, he should never have given in to Lily’s temptations. He should have resisted. Defilers. Both of them. Sinners. God says there is only one way to purify the sinner, to redeem his soul. So I set fire to the barn and sent their souls for judgment.”

Oh, papa. You died trying to help her.
Jessa wanted to sink to her knees, to sob out her grief, but there would be time for that later.
Please God, let there be time later
. How much longer could she stand this?

Lily’s frenzy escalated. “You are in need of redemption as well, Jessamine. I didn’t mean for you to be here tonight. But God, in his wisdom—his righteous indignation—sent you here. I’ve seen you, you know. Watched from secret places only I know. I’ve seen you in the arms of Lily’s husband. Jezebel! Adulteress! Did you think God would let you go unpunished for your lusts? Did you think you could bare your breasts for Dash Tremayne, spread your thighs, yet there would be no retribution? You cannot take the devil’s tail between your legs and cry out to God at the same time, Jessamine. He won’t hear you. He never heard Lily. Only I did.”

Lily’s chest heaved. An unholy light shone from her eyes. Spittle flew from her lips. “I meant only to save Holly tonight, to protect her from the evil men. The house is full of them tonight. Jack’s partner, that pederast is here. I saw him arrive. And Luther, who lays with women in secret but denies his children in the light of day. And Lily’s mother, the great Whore of Babylon herself. A woman who lays with men of all stripes, then casts her daughters into their arms as well. She failed to protect Lily. She didn’t even try! She failed to protect the child, and now I—I—” Lily’s voice rose to a scream, her body shaking with the force of her sobs, her fury.

“Lily Suzanne Palmer! Stop those hysterics this instant! That sort of behavior is completely unacceptable in a woman of refinement.”

Jessa and Lily both spun toward the door in response to the commanding tone of the new voice.

Halfway down the stone steps leading up into the room stood Marguerite Palmer. Tears streamed down her cheeks, but her expression was imperious. She lifted her chin and finished her march up the stairs, the ostrich plume in her turban bouncing with every step..

Behind her, Dash hovered on the steps, eyes wide with shock. With horror. Stan and Luther stood on a lower step behind him, their expressions mirroring his. There was a commotion among them as Winston shouldered the older men out of the way to stand beside Dash.

Dash had found her. Gratitude washed through Jessa. Her knees felt as weak as a newborn’s, as if she might fall to them at any moment.

He’d found her. He’d keep her safe. He’d rescue Holly. Take them away from this nightmare. Dash protected what belonged to him. How could she have been so foolish as to not trust him? Nothing bad could happen now. Dash could be relied upon to see them safely out of this nightmare.

Lily screamed. She took a few steps toward the group on the stairs, then spun back to Holly.

Jessa had taken that instant of distraction to move towards Holly, but hadn’t been fast enough to close the gap. The thick, oily air had her feeling sluggish and too dizzy to think clearly.

“You can’t have her!” Lily screeched. “You! All you bad men! Go away! I won’t let you hurt her!”

The anguish on Dash’s face tore through Jessa. He ignored Lily, his eyes locked on Jessa’s. He stood poised on the balls of his feet, every line in his body rigid, like a runner waiting for the starting gun. Jessa met his intent gaze, hoping Lily wouldn’t notice the exchange while she focused her rage at the group on the stairs.