Wicked Games (22 page)

“It’s creakier than it looks,” Carter said as they walked through what seemed like a parlor on the third floor. “These old mansions. There’s no way to get rid of the draftiness, no matter how much money you throw into them.”

“Yeah, I guess. But it’s marvelous.”

Carter smirked. “Only the best for good old Paul Moore the third.” He turned a glass knob and pushed open a heavy oak door. “Your room, madame.”

Wow. A canopy bed. It must have been two hundred years old, at least.

Carter dropped their bags on a bench and then threw himself backward onto the bed. He bounced a few times, then laid back and crossed his arms behind his head.

It was all too much for Jules, such casual luxury. To think that this was really a part of her life now. She dove in after Carter and wrapped her arms and legs around
him and kissed him deeply, joyfully. This was already pretty close to the best vacation she’d ever been on in her entire life.

They lay there, all wrapped up in each other, for a while, gazing up at the white, lacy fabric strung like a roof over the bed, just happy to be in this place together. Getting used to it, Jules studied the room. A bleached wooden wardrobe. A cool-looking Eames chair. There was a painting mounted across from the bed, vibrant dashes of color, a dancer. She reached down, extending her arm in a graceful line toward her outstretched toe, so delicate and yet so poised. It looked like—but it couldn’t be, could it—an actual Degas. Jules had imagined dancing for Carter like that and him seeing the same beauty in her that Degas had seen in the woman he’d captured in his paintings.

“Is that—”

“Yeah. It’s real.”

“Wow. I need to get used to the idea that this is really happening to me.”

“Just wait till you see the hot tub on the roof.”

She studied the painting, the five thousand shades of yellow and pink it contained. It soothed her, and calmed her excitement. Suddenly, Jules felt the exhaustion release in her body. They’d driven for seven and a half hours. Then there’d been the craziness with the Mazda and the hospital. She had a stiff neck and her head still
throbbed. She closed her eyes and felt herself breathing.

There were noises, she realized now: creaks and pitter-patters coming from she didn’t know where.

Listening more closely, she wondered if maybe she could discern a pattern. A door turning on a rusty hinge. A step-step-step-pause on a loose floorboard. Then more steps, deliberate. Someone walking on tiptoes through the house.

“Do you hear that?” she asked Carter.

“What?”

“Listen.”

There it was again. A scurrying in the room directly below them.

“That,” she said. She knew that Carter had told her that he’d spoken to Lilah’s mother. She knew that the girl was, theoretically, way off in Mississippi, hanging posters in her freshman dorm room or whatever, but—there it was again, like someone had opened a closet door downstairs or something. “There’s someone downstairs,” she whispered.

Carter was sitting up, his head cocked, listening.

“I don’t know, Jules.”

“There!” said Jules. “That
di-di-di-di-dum
. Like someone’s moving from room to room.”

Carter must have seen how wide her eyes were, because he placed his hands on her shoulders and held them firm like he was trying to physically still her fears.

“Jules, she’s not here,” he said. “It’s going to be okay.”

He nudged her close to him and wrapped her up in his arms.

“It’s just the house. I promise. It’s like a hundred and fifty years old. There’s all kinds of weirdness to it. The floors creak. All that wood everywhere is settling all the time and it makes crazy groaning sounds. Squirrels hide their acorns on the roof and then rustle around up there all night looking for them. You’ll see. By tomorrow you won’t even notice these sounds anymore.”

Jules wanted to believe him. What he was saying made total sense. But there was a possibility he was wrong, and no matter how far-fetched that possibility was, as long as she knew it existed, she had a hard time not fixating on Lilah. She thought briefly about a phone call she’d received last week from a blocked number—she hadn’t told Carter about this one. She’d heard what sounded like heavy breathing on the other end of the line—or maybe it was just the wind; she hadn’t been sure—and then an abrupt cutting off of the line. At the time she’d decided that it must have been her mother, butt-dialing from her work-issued cell phone, which always came up blocked. But now she wondered,
Could that have been Lilah?
No. Well, maybe. She hoped not.

She reminded herself that she had a concussion and that her thinking was a little foggy. For Carter’s
sake—and for the sake of her own sanity—Jules willed herself to stop being paranoid.

“You’re right,” she said. “So, how ‘bout that hot tub?” She forced a smile. She didn’t want him to worry.

“Just what I was thinking,” Carter said.

As they neared the wrought-iron ladder that lead up to the trapdoor through the roof of the mansion, he came up behind her and slid his hands around her waist. “You like the place?”

“Yeah. I love it,” she said.

She turned to kiss him and just as her lips grazed his, a loud clap, like someone had slammed a door with extreme force, shuttered through the house.

Everything in Jules tensed up. She let out a small gasp.

“That wasn’t—”

“The wind,” Carter said reassuringly.

Jules wanted to believe him; she really did. The problem was—what if he was wrong?

No matter how
she tried, Jules couldn’t shake the feeling that the noises she’d been hearing weren’t as normal as Carter claimed. She kept these worries hidden, for his sake, as they changed their clothes and got ready to go out and explore the city. She knew he had a whole list of things he wanted to show her, that it was an important place to him and he wanted Jules to see it through his eyes. It would be horrible if she let her paranoia ruin all this.

Just before they left, he stopped off in the downstairs bathroom, a small space at the far end of the dark, wooded hallway.

Standing outside the closed door, waiting for him,
she couldn’t help but peek through the open passageway that led into the darkened kitchen. Was there someone hiding in the shadows there? Lurking behind the refrigerator? Crouching behind the chopping block? She knew she should just believe Carter’s assurances, but the kitchen was tantalizingly close, and really, what was wrong with verification? She had the moment now—when would she have another one?

She couldn’t stop herself. She darted into the room and threw on the lights. A fridge, an oven, an island counter. No sign of anyone but Carter and her. The white enamel table. No one underneath it.

She checked the leaded windows above the sink. They were locked tight with castor bolts, sticky, like they hadn’t been opened in months.

There was a door in the far corner of the room. It led to the house’s large backyard. She pulled lightly at the handle, and it didn’t budge. She pulled harder. It was sealed shut like the windows. She examined the door—one, two, three separate locks.

Whatever it was that had blown through this room, it hadn’t been the wind. No way had it been the wind. The room was closed up tight—stuffy, almost.

There was one more door, built into a short wall, too far out of the way to catch any wind from the front rooms. What was in there? A pantry? A staircase to the basement.

Lilah? Was Lilah hiding right there, right then?

Only one way to find out.

But before Jules had a chance to the turn the handle and throw the door open, she heard the toilet flush in the bathroom and Carter was out and calling to her.

“Hey, you ready, Jules? Where’d you go?”

“I’m right here,” she said. “In the kitchen.”

When he appeared in the doorway, a wave of relief rolled through her.

“What are you doing in here?” he asked.

“Just—nothing,” she said.

She could see the worry on his face. She’d have to try harder, be better. They were fine. They were safe. She had to remember this. She knew it was true.

As she followed Carter out of the kitchen, she heard a creak. She was positive it had come from that door. She couldn’t stop herself from casting one more nervous glance at the kitchen as they left. There was a chef’s knife on the chopping block, she noticed. Had it been there before? It must have been. But she didn’t remember seeing it. Either way, she didn’t bother Carter with this new worry.

She refused to be that kind of girl.

The cobblestone streets
and the live oaks and the ancient streetlamps cast their romantic shadows across the city, and as Carter and Jules sat in the candlelit corner table at the Carriage House, the restaurant he’d had picked for them, and ate their dinner of beet salad, rack of lamb, and raspberry-chocolate mousse, she managed to escape the fear that the day had filled her with. She stared into Carter’s soft, hazel eyes and lost herself in the romance flickering there.

By the time they made their way hand in hand down Congress Street, heading toward the City Walk, she’d put Lilah completely out of her head.

Knowing the state she’d been in all evening, and
worried about the effects of her concussion, Carter worked hard to be tender and careful with Jules. He didn’t push to speed-walk like he liked to do and instead strolled next to her, gauging the pace by the pressure of her hand in his. When he felt her growing tense, he’d pause and put his arm around her hip and kiss her lightly on the lobe of the ear.

The closer they got to the heart of town, the thicker the crowds became. It started with corner open-air bars—Braves games on the TVs, college kids in cargos and backward baseball caps hovering around pitchers of beer. Then the bars became more crowded, people spilling onto the street, the music getting louder, the distance between each bar shrinking. There were restaurants everywhere. The crowd waiting to get into Paula Deen’s place stretched in an unruly line halfway down the block.

Carter steered Jules to the other side of the street, where tourist families with children wandered in a daze, unsure of where to go, where to look, what to do.

“It’s like Harpoon Haven, but classier and more real,” said Jules. “Like, part museum, part tourist trap, and part real living city just going about its business.”

“Yeah. It can get pretty crazy here. You have to teach yourself to look through the mob and see the place itself.” Carter thought for a second. He studied Jules for signs of weariness.

“Is it too much for you tonight? How’s your head feeling? We can find somewhere more out of the way to go, if you want.”

“No, I’m good. I’m fascinated.”

“You’ll let me know, though, yeah? If it gets to be too much, you’ll tell me so I can take you home?”

“Relax,” she said. “I’ll tell you. I promise.”

She let go of his hand and forged on down the street.

When they reached City Walk, they found themselves in a dense throng of people packed so tight that it was almost impossible to walk. The smell of grilled meat and popcorn filled the air. The din of a thousand conversations, all being carried out at two or three decibel levels higher than they needed to be, crashed over their ears. Packs of drunken college kids collided with moony middle-aged couples and families struggling to herd their children in and out of shops.

Jules paused in the middle of the street to study the ornate facade of a bright-yellow building. It seemed slightly more special than the others near it, like whoever built it had taken just a bit more care. There were curved shingles along the top three feet, and mounted lamps next to each window. If she pretended that the mob of tourists wasn’t there, she could almost imagine that she was standing here on this street in 1845.

“What’s that place,” she said. “Do you—”

She turned toward Carter and found he wasn’t there.
He’d been swallowed up by the crowd. She told herself that he couldn’t be far, but there were so many people, so, so many people everywhere, moving like rivers in every direction.

Turning in a circle, standing on her tiptoes, Jules searched for Carter’s flop of hair, the pale-green, short-sleeve oxford he had been wearing. Her view was blocked everywhere. There was one guy in particular—he was like seven feet tall—who seemed to be in her way at every juncture. Carter had to be somewhere, if she could only see. She hopped in place, and strained to see over people’s heads. It was almost like the guy knew where she was going to look, and he was bobbing and weaving to make sure she couldn’t see.

She sent Carter a text—WHERE’D YOU GO?—and when he didn’t write back immediately, she called him. No answer.

She pushed past the tall guy, deeper into the thick of the crowd, and retraced her steps up the block. Maybe Carter was back there somewhere waiting for her. She wove and dodged through the masses of people but she felt like she was getting nowhere.

Her head began throbbing—the racing of her heart sent blood to her brain, reigniting the effects of her concussion.

There were stalls set up in the ped mall, people selling sunglasses and cell-phone covers and bottles of water.
She circled around them, calling out Carter’s name.

She turned a corner.

Then another.

No sign of him.

She wasn’t sure what street she was on and she didn’t know Carter’s dad’s address and she was positive that, if she didn’t find Carter, she’d have no idea how to get back to the house.

She stopped for a second. She found a street sign. Bay Lane and Jefferson, whatever that implied. She sent him another text telling her where she was. Maybe if she just waited here, he’d find her.

Standing under the streetlamp, she tried to have patience. She could feel something behind her. The heat of someone’s eyes focused on her. When she turned, she saw nothing, just the throngs going their way. Or wait—was that a woman ducking her head, deflecting her gaze so she wouldn’t be seen?

Jules moved twenty feet down the street. She leaned against a potted plant. She glanced back. There was definitely a girl back there staring at her, but the mass of people pressing toward her closed in and the girl disappeared before Jules could see who exactly it was.