Ghost Aria (5 page)

S
he nodded, feeling like the moment when you step off the high dive at the pool. When it's too late to change your mind and all that's left is the fall—and the rush of ecstatic panic that comes with it.

Only that feeling was bright—born of sunshine, squealing children, and cool water on blue tiles. This . . . this came of night-dark pleasure, enthrallment, desire, and a mysterious man holding a black silk scarf.

“Turn around.” He didn't smile, and the eyes behind the mask held a challenge. It was part request but mostly command, and she turned, body simmering, heart thumping with the intensity of the moment. Trust indeed. And more.

The black silk slithered over her eyes and she pressed her fingertips against it while he tied the scarf behind her head. Gentle but firm. It made no sense, but by giving up her sight, she felt as if she'd turned over something to him. It opened a door inside the depths of her soul, a long, shadowed hallway where she might hand over more and more. A kind of tension drained away, leaving a vibrant hum behind. She was underwater, floating in the dark.

He sighed, brushing the nape of her neck, sending shivers through her. A whisper of sound, and hot fingers caressed her skin. She pressed her lips together against a moan.

“Ah, Christine,” he murmured. “You undo me.”

His lips replaced his fingers, kissing along her spine, his tongue licking into the hollow at the base of her skull. Her breasts felt full, swollen with the ache to be touched, and moisture bloomed between her thighs. Had he said he wanted to seduce her? Breathlessly, she took in every sensation, listening intently to the rustle of crisp linen, the sound of him unbuttoning the shirt.

“All right.” Desire ran hot through his voice. “You may turn.”

She pivoted carefully, somewhat unbalanced by her blindness, but encircled by his protective arms. He took her hands and guided her, moving in a step so hot flesh met her questing fingers. She drew in a breath, sharp, astonished, as if being unable to see made the sensation of male skin all the more otherworldly. Moving her palms over his chest, she absorbed the feel of him, and he groaned, a shudder running through him.

“Did you mention torture?” he asked, his voice rough. “Perhaps I am the one to suffer it.”

“Do you want me to stop?” But it was a taunt, a flexing of her power over him. She found the change of texture where his nipples were and scratched them lightly with her nails. The skin puckered under her touch and his muscles tensed.

“Not yet.” He seemed to be restraining himself, a vicious tension running under his skin, his muscles nearly vibrating under her caress. Even blindfolded, a thrill of possessive triumph filled her, the beast tamed to her touch. She reached higher, thinking to run her hands over those broad shoulders. A ridge of twisted skin met her touch, a cicatrix of pain, and she faltered, her own internal wounds breaking open, oozing old and strange emotions.

With a harsh curse in a language she didn't understand, he stepped away, leaving her swaying without an anchor.

“Wait.” She reached out, feeling through the air. “Don't go.”

The sharp sounds of him buttoning his shirt and waistcoat answered her.

“What happened?” Her fingers found the knot in the blindfold and she tugged at it. So tight.

“Don't you dare.” His growled command froze her and then he seized her, taking her wrists again in his powerful hands, moving them inexorably away from the blindfold and down, behind her back, arching her against him. She struggled a little, but the movement pressed her aching nipples against him, nearly unbearable even through her shirt and bra. She couldn't escape him and the thought excited her beyond reason.

“Please.” She turned up her face, whispering the plea.

He adjusted the grip, holding her wrists with one hand, freeing the other to stroke her cheek, feather light. Warm breath flowed over her lips. He must be close enough to kiss, and she strained against the explosive need for more. But he held her tight, so he remained beyond her reach.

“Are you afraid, then?” The question came harsh, full of tearing emotion. “You are revolted by my scars. Admit it.”

“I didn't see anything.”

“But you felt it. You flinched as if burned yourself.”

“I didn't mean to.”

“Your honest reaction tells me all I need to know. Remember, Christine, I could see your face.”

“Then you saw surprise and nothing more.”

“Nothing more than that?” A gloved finger pressed against her lips. “I think you lie.”

She wanted to tear off the damn blindfold. It exposed her to him in such a terrible way. He breathed a humorless laugh at her struggles. “Tell me the truth.”

She couldn't. She never discussed it with anyone. It made those nightmare days far too real. They were better kept locked away behind the fibrous walls of scar tissue.

Hot lips brushed her cheek. “I can't bear for you to hate me. If I thought you did, I would become a monster in truth and do what monsters do—lock up the fair young maiden and keep her imprisoned to feed their dark, depraved hungers.”

“Do you . . .” Her breath faltered. “Do you have depraved hungers?”

“Oh, my sweetly innocent Christine, you have no idea.”

“I'm not that innocent.”

“No?” The hand on her cheek turned her head and the hot lips moved to her ear, catching her lobe in a sharp bite that made her gasp. The little pain rocked through her, sparking a deep craving. “Does that mean you want what I offer?”

Maybe.
“I don't know.”

His hand dropped to her collarbone, caressing the skin where her sweatshirt revealed it. Fingertips catching the silver chain, he drew out the pendant, the metal whispering against her neck.

“What's this?”

“An old Indian woman gave it to me.”

“Interesting.” He caressed it, then let it go, leaving it outside her shirt. “Now, tell me.”

“I can't.” But the confession beat at the inside of her skull. If all of this was just a dream, perhaps she could open the door here, in this place of shrouding shadows. A protected truth.

“What else did you feel, besides surprise? You looked distressed, pained. If not revulsion, then what? Give me this piece of you.”

She hesitated, trying to frame the answer. To explain to him, her dark reflection in the mirror.

“It did pain me. Reminded me of something from long ago. I have . . .” She faltered. Took the simple way out. No explanations, just the plain and final fact of it. “I have scars, too.”

He softened, his arms enfolding her in a bearlike embrace, drawing her against his body while his hand cupped her head, like something infinitely precious.

“I know.” His voice rumbled under her ear.

“How could you possibly?”

“We know each other, don't we? I see myself in your eyes.”

“This is all a dream,” she whispered.

The hand cupping her head shifted. “Is it a good dream?”

“I'm waiting to find out.”

And his mouth captured hers suddenly, soft on the edges but steel hard in the center. He kissed her as if he were a man in the desert finding water. In answer, the heat simmering low in her belly flared up, lighting her blood, a spark to gasoline. She kissed him back, ferocious, starving in turn for something she couldn't name.

 

The phantom insisted she keep the blindfold on for the first part of the journey up and out.

“This is my way in and out—not yours,” he informed her, with no room for debate. She'd tried anyway.

Somehow he'd gotten her out of the seamless chamber, but he'd led her around it a dizzying number of times so she couldn't know where in the room she'd been. When he stopped to take off her blindfold, he'd turned away quickly, so she couldn't study his expression. Now they moved along yet another dimly lit and narrow hallway; with him leading the way. His light threw crazy flickering shadows against the walls, making him a deeper silhouette. She was more familiar with him now, and she could see the slight hitch in his stride, the catch in his hip as he walked. He continued on, holding her hand in his as he drew her along behind him, his thoughts far away, and she missed the intensity of his regard.

She had, perhaps, already become a little addicted to it.

He stopped so abruptly she nearly crashed into him.

“Listen.”

She thought he meant to listen to him, but he said nothing. The shadows stilled and seemed to fold their wings, settling around them with the quiet. Not entirely silent, however; in the singing distance of the acoustics, sounds traveled to her. Not the golden voice, serenading her, but the harsh vocals of police speakers, the whoop of a siren. The tromp of footsteps.

“Oh no.”

“Oh yes. The daylight world searches for you.”

Shit
. She really hoped her father wouldn't find out. All at once she felt thirteen again, getting caught after sneaking back into the house. Her father had accused her of staging the rebellion to make him let her live with her mother and showed her how very badly her plan had gone wrong.

“Have I been gone that long?” It hadn't felt very long. She didn't have her phone, so she couldn't check the time. “Where are my things?”

“Where you left them.”

“No—you moved them.” She remembered now. The strange sounds, the chandelier falling while she stood petrified below. What had really happened?

“I must go.” He still held her hand and now drew her closer. “Give me a kiss.”

“Tell me your name.”

“Call me Master.” He whispered it, like a secret, like a promise, and followed it with a searing kiss that chased the confusion and questions from her reeling mind.

He set her on her feet and she became aware she'd been clinging to him. A gloved thumb rubbed over her lip.

“Close your eyes for a moment.”

Rather than risk another discussion about the blindfold, she did. A sound like sandpaper and a whiff of dusty air. Then he pulled her by the hand a few steps and let her look again.

She stood on the very lowest level, outside the sealed door she'd seen on her first day. Feeling an odd sense of déjà vu, she traced the image carved into the door. The collar and whip that had instantly captured her attention.

“I don't understand all of this,” she whispered.

Her voice echoed back. She was alone in the empty hallway.

T
he martial thump of boots on metal jerked her from her daze.

She hurried down the murky hall to the central spiral staircase and peered up through the grate. The levels were lit up to three above where she stood. Voices created quite a din, with shouts, doors banging, and dogs barking. They'd brought out search dogs?

Creeping as noiselessly as possible, she skulked up one flight of steps on all fours, keeping her profile low. She made it to the next level up without setting off shouts of alarm and decided not to risk another. Being that far down would help with her story that she hadn't heard anyone.

Unfortunately she needed more of a story than that.

Why would she have come to this level—without her keys, dammit—and stayed down here when Carla needed her help? Could she fake temporary amnesia? The chandelier fell and she hit her head, can't remember what happened but miraculously sustained no injury. And somehow wandered off.

Had the chandelier really fallen? Or had she only imagined it teetering above her, one of its crystal pendants spinning through the air like a snowflake, then soundlessly shattering on the floor?

If it hadn't really fallen, then she'd sound insane.

If none of this had really happened, she had to consider that possibility.

She slid along the wall, trying doorknobs as she went, underneath the video cameras, out of range of their unblinking black eyes. No little red lights gleamed in the dark, however, so perhaps whatever happened to the one in the prop shop affected these, too. If that had happened.

It all whispered of mental imbalance, a thought that made her nerves cringe, the sensation of fingernails scraping sandpaper. The very worst part of being treated for mental illness was the way you learned not to trust yourself. Every thought could be a fraud, a decoy leading you away from reality and into the ever-shifting realm where everyone looked at you with sideways concern and believed nothing you said.

Every explanation for her behavior led back to that place, though. Christy didn't think she could bear to go through that again. The careful sympathy and casual dismissal. Worse—she began to wonder if she had dreamed it all up. That colorful carousel of a room and a masked man who intrigued and lured her.

Lights flared from the stairwell and the sounds of stomping boots came clattering down. A dog barked with excitement, his furry shape lunging down the tight spiral. He'd caught her scent and soon would be upon her. The game was up. She stepped out into the middle of the dark corridor and walked back the way she'd come, shading her eyes when the lights flashed on.

The German shepherd came leaping at her, full of doggy joy. She'd once read about how search dogs in major disasters became depressed, finding dead body after dead body. Their handlers would have to hide themselves in the rubble so the dogs could find a living person to restore their hope. She knelt down and scratched under her collar, letting the dog lick her face.

This, at least, was real.

“Christine Davis?” A man in uniform approached. She nodded, and he spoke into a radio. Better reception than her cell, she noted with some irony. Perhaps she should suggest them to Charlie. “Do you need medical attention?”

“No—I'm fine. I, um—”
Moment of truth. What excuse will you use?
“I'm afraid I got lost and, well, I fell asleep. All the noise woke me.”
Ah, yes. The too-stupid-to-live defense.
Never underestimate the power of seeming to be an idiot. Far better than crazy.

“Well, let's get you out of here. You worried a lot of people.”

“I'm sorry.” She tried to sound meek and sorrowful. If her hair were long still, she would have twisted a lock around her finger.

“Never mind that. Though Detective Sanchez will want to talk to you.”

Upstairs, the prop shop had been taped off and crime-scene types were closing up their equipment cases. No need to check for evidence now. Detective Sanchez met them outside the door, arms folded, suspicious eyes looking her up and down as she repeated her story. He didn't buy it for a moment, that much was clear.

As she spoke, she desperately wanted to see past him, to crane her neck to peer around the corner, to see the chandelier. Would it be perched high on the shelf, covered in dust? Or would it be a jumble of broken crystal on the floor?

Her heart pounded with the need to know, her neck tense from restraining the urge to push him aside so she could see for herself what was real.

“So, even though Ms. Donovan expressly told you to wait for her return, you decided not to?” At Christy's frown, he clarified, “Carla Donovan, your boss.”

As much as she wanted to say that Carla wasn't her boss—and who knew her last name was the same as Charlie's?—she bit her tongue on that and concentrated on being silly. Surely they would have mentioned the chandelier?

“I was worried about her. She was gone a long time, so I went looking for her.”

The detective checked his notes. “Ms. Donovan says she returned in five to seven minutes.”

“Oh.” Christy turned big eyes up at him, pleading. “It seemed longer. And with all the scary stuff going on, I . . .”

“Your story doesn't hold water, frankly.” Detective Sanchez kept his hard gaze on her. “If you were frightened, why would you go down to the same level where a murder victim's body was found?”

“I—” It was a good question. “I wasn't thinking.”

Sanchez sighed. “Is that the only thing you were afraid of, Christy? Did something else happen?”

Did the chandelier fall or not?
She wanted to shriek the question. She clamped down on it, keeping her voice even. “Like what?”

“I understand you're seeing Roman Sanclaro.”

It took her a moment to adjust her thoughts. Roman? “Um, yes. He's an old family friend. What does that have to do with anything?”

“He's waiting for you outside. He's been quite concerned about you. Is there anything you need to tell me?”

She no longer had to fake being confused and a little dumb. She had no idea what he meant. Sanchez drew her aside, farther away from the prop shop doorway. “Did Roman Sanclaro hurt or threaten you?”

“What? No.” Her thoughts lost some of the fog and she focused on him. “Is he a suspect in the murder?”

His face stayed impassive. “The investigation is ongoing. Do you have information to share with me?”

“Ah . . . no. No! I've known Roman practically my whole life. He would never hurt anyone.” Her voice shook, everything catching up with her.

Sanchez's gaze flicked away and, despite his professional poker face, she could practically read his thoughts. They all said that kind of thing, the families—even the wives and girlfriends—of serial killers. She sounded just like those poor people on TV, bewildered, unable to believe the evidence before their eyes.

“I know you have my card already—here's another,” Sanchez was saying. “Call me anytime you want to talk.”

Christy nodded, folding his card and sliding it into her jeans pocket. His intelligent gaze held both a plea and a warning.

“Even if you feel afraid for no reason, I want to hear about it.”

That was a laugh. He had no idea the things that currently frightened her. “Could I ask a favor?”

Sanchez raised an expectant eyebrow.

“I'm really sorry I caused so much trouble, but could you not call the owner of the theater about this?”

“Carlton Davis? Typically I wouldn't, unless there had been an actual crime.” Christy breathed a sigh of relief, which the detective didn't miss. “I'm aware he's your father, Ms. Davis, so let me give you a word to the wise. Honesty is always the best policy.”

With a little salute, Detective Sanchez pulled down the tape and went into the prop room, asking someone to release Christy's belongings to her.

With trepidation, she followed him. All of her desperation to see had fled, and now she almost couldn't bear to look. Like the girl she'd been, she wanted to cover her eyes and peek through her fingers.

There were her things, sitting on the workbench where she'd left them. Up above, the chandelier rested, regal under its thick coating of dust and cobwebs. Underneath, the concrete floor was bare and clean.

But in the corner, catching her eye, a shard of crystal glittered.