The Messenger: A Novel (18 page)

D
aniel put the broom away and took out the mop and bucket. He filled the bucket with a pine-scented cleaner and hot water, and went to work on the kitchen floor he had just swept. He repeated the process three times before he felt there was a slim possibility that he might eat in this room again.

The night after the small beetles arrived, it had been cockroaches. They were bigger than the other beetles—and faster. They had made a rattling sound, like a thousand castanets, as they surged together toward the cellar door.

Last night, he would have welcomed the cockroaches back. Crickets had been called to the house. Multiplied thousands of times over, their high-pitched chirps maddened Daniel and Evan. Cleaning up a big load of cricket frass was not the worst thing he had ever been assigned, but he wished his lordship would stop bringing insects into the house.

Daniel thought nearly constantly of escape, without being able to bring himself to make the attempt. Still, as each night went by, he knew “Mr. Adrian” was growing stronger. If he didn’t leave now, would he ever be able to evade his lordship?

He thought of Eduardo, who had been destroyed by the dog. Many times, Daniel wondered if Eduardo had intended it to happen.

The day of the attack, Eduardo had told Daniel a story, confided in
him as never before. He spoke of being hired on to the dive crew of a ship that worked mostly in the Caribbean. Treasure hunters.

He told him what had been discovered in the wreckage of the
Morgan Bray,
that the voice in the chest he’d recovered had ordered him to travel to the Turks and Caicos Islands.

The voice continued to speak to him, a voice he knew only he could hear. It said it was the spirit of a man who had been a pirate for a time, and sailed those seas. It guided him to a place on one of the Caicos and told him to dig. Just as the voice had said, he found a cache of jewelry and gold coins.

His discovery made him a wealthy man, and the voice led him to even greater wealth. But soon he began to realize that leaving was not an option. Any attempt to leave “his lordship” resulted in a crippling pain that ran down his spine like a rod of fire. If he was foolish enough to attempt further resistance, within seconds his testicles would feel as if they were being crushed by an iron hand, a vicelike pressure would be felt at his temples, and his throat would constrict. In less than half a minute, his lordship would easily have Eduardo on his knees, begging forgiveness.

So Eduardo did all he could to make his own life comfortable. He learned that if he was complacent and obedient, he could live in luxury. Although the tuition was often painful, his lordship taught him how to behave in a way that made him an acceptable guest in any household. In effect, he became a jet-setter.

For nearly a decade, his lordship urged him to travel, seeking a certain man who might or might not be calling himself “Tyler Hawthorne.” They began in England, researching old records, and then moved on to the United States. Eduardo spent a great deal of time describing the world around him, as if to a blind man, a blind man who had slept for two hundred years.

They searched for any mention of anyone named Tyler Hawthorne, and found many persons with that name, but none was the one his lordship sought. Eduardo found several graves bearing such a name, but his lordship insisted this man would be alive.

In the ninth year of their searches, they learned of a Tyler Hawthorne who had bought an expensive property in Los Angeles.

His lordship commanded that they move nearby. “Not too close, mind you—he may be able to sense my presence, and I want this to be something of a surprise.”

His lordship also required a basement, so it took Eduardo even more time to find a home that would suit his needs, because not many homes in Los Angeles had rooms belowground. Finally, though, they had found this house.

His lordship then told Eduardo to recruit two helpers, and described to him his necessities. These must be men who were strong in body but weak in integrity. They must be both desperate and greedy. They must be utterly unattached to family or friends. They must be able to fight, but also be capable of living peaceably in close quarters with others. They should be ignorant, but not stupid. They would, in fact, be much like Eduardo, he said, with one exception. They should have skills as burglars.

When Eduardo told him this part of his story, Daniel had felt angry. But by that time, all the fight had gone out of Eduardo; he took no offense at being called such names. A decade in his lordship’s company had left Eduardo as little more than a smiling, obedient husk.

A handsome husk, though, and able by then to make himself at home among the wealthiest in Los Angeles. He was still in his twenties and welcomed at parties. He befriended a young man who was visiting the house nearest Tyler Hawthorne’s. He could easily see that Bradley Clarke was insecure and troubled. He soon learned that Bradley had gambling problems. Nothing could be better. Eduardo quickly freed him from financial debt by putting him into another kind of debt entirely.

Daniel and Evan had been easy to recruit. Both were eager to live the promised life of ease in exchange for a small amount of dirty work. If it seemed strange at first, comfort and enormous wages made them willing to overlook the odd requirements of their bizarre employer, a man who took them down to the basement, leading them by candlelight, telling them he was getting messages from an iron box.

Those misunderstandings were soon cleared up.

They learned from Eduardo that his lordship was not pleased with them, since he could not enter their minds as completely as he did Eduardo’s—it seemed that only a very few individuals would be subject to that particular horror. However, a new chapter in his lordship’s existence was about to begin. After a decade out of the sea, he had found a place where he could, as he phrased it, “begin regeneration.” Evan and Daniel were put to work removing the locks.

“Go to the stairs,” Eduardo said when the locks were off. “Take the candle with you.”

In the far corner, in the darkness, Eduardo opened the iron chest.

The stench was immediate and overpowering, so sharp that it made their eyes water.

“Leave me!” a voice shouted.

It didn’t have to ask twice.

Back then, Daniel was never sure what it was that Eduardo brought into the cellar every few nights, but the stench worsened. He mentioned to Eduardo that he was sure someone would call the cops about it.

“He’s shielding the house,” Eduardo answered dully. “Don’t you realize that you only smell it if you open the basement door? It’s the same with the screams. No one hears them outside the house.”

Daniel knew all about the screams. His, Evan’s, Eduardo’s.

Now that his lordship could address them directly, he had more power over them, it seemed. Daniel had tried once, when he had been sent miles away on an errand, to go even farther away, to make a run for it. He had not gone far before he felt a kind of craving unlike anything else he had ever known. It was as if his cells had become magnetized, and his lordship was exerting a pull on them. He could think of nothing else, do nothing else, but return.

He had paid an awful price for that experiment. He had not been able to leave his bed for three days.

He thought of that experiment now, of how this bargain had cost him his freedom in a way prison never had. Eduardo had taken the only escape route.

He would never forget the night Eduardo had been killed by the dog.
That dog had surprised Daniel and Evan, but now Daniel wondered if Eduardo had known about the dog all along.

His lordship had been displeased with them when they came back and reported what had happened, although what they could have done differently, Daniel did not know.

Just as now, he did not know what he could do—short of sacrificing himself to the dog—to leave his lordship’s employ.

No human could help him, although he found himself wishing one could. Earlier, he thought he saw a man standing at the top of the drive, smoking a cigarette, and he found himself wishing someone—anyone—would notice the smell of the basement or hear the sounds coming from it, or see all the damned bugs running toward it.

But in the next moment the smoker was gone, and he began to wonder if he had imagined him being there in the first place.

Late that night, the voice from the basement called to him, telling him to open the back door.

The spiders wanted in.

F
ive days after Rebecca’s arrival, she announced that she would be staying at “the family’s house,” and although Brad had berated her—saying that it was, as Rebecca knew, Amanda’s house, and that Rebecca should apologize and ask Amanda’s permission—Amanda quickly cut off what was bound to escalate into another prolonged battle between the two of them, saying that she needed to make a trip back to the house and would be glad to accompany Rebecca there.

Amanda told Tyler of these plans. After seeing that all his objections were having no effect, he said, “All right, then Alex will take you.”

“Rebecca will want her car.”

“Fine. Alex can drive you down, following her.”

Amanda hesitated, then said, “I’m going to make arrangements for a rental car to be delivered.”

“You may use the Cooper or the van anytime you’d like.”

“To go somewhere alone?”

He didn’t answer right away, and she wondered if she had angered him, but she saw no sign of this on his face or even in the way he held himself.

He said, “If you think about what Brad has been through, I doubt you will decide I’m being overly protective when I say that I would prefer—would beg you, in fact—not to go out alone until we discover
more about his attackers. However, I would never want you to feel as if you are imprisoned here. My deepest apologies if you have been eager to escape me.”

“Escape you! If anyone has been an escape artist lately, it’s you.”

“If you mean I haven’t been here much, I admit that’s true. And you know why.”

Amanda took a deep breath and let it out slowly. What was she complaining about? The people he helped were dying. He was their last chance to communicate with their loved ones. What need of hers could be greater than theirs?

The last few days had left her unsure of where she stood with him. Even though he was gone most of the day and until late at night, she continued to sleep in his bed, Tyler keeping watch beside her. Twice they had switched places—his work had caused him to become ill with fever and she had refused to let him sleep on the floor. She did her best to comfort him, although each time it passed within an hour or so. He said these episodes had been mild.

Occasionally he had been affectionate—taking her hand, putting an arm around her shoulders, giving her a light kiss on the forehead—and if beneath that affection she had felt some restraint, she only needed to think of her own restraint in the presence of the ghosts. She should be grateful to him—and to Shade—because, until now, the ghosts had made her doubt her own sanity.

But thinking this made her realize that it might be time to trust her own perceptions for once. She looked at him and thought about his past. And his expertise in keeping secrets. Over all those years, what chance did he have to get close to anyone, to confide in anyone?

“Tyler, what became of your valet, Merritt?”

Startled by the change of subject, he said, “He died.”

“I had assumed that much. One of the worst aspects of what has happened to you, I am sure. You’ve had to watch everyone you’ve loved or cared about die.”

“Actually, I have seldom been at the deathbed of a friend. I wasn’t at Merritt’s. I was in America by then.”

“He didn’t come here with you?”

“No. We spent almost a year together in England after Lord Varre’s death—the death of Marcus deVille, that is. By the end of that time, because of the papers Varre had left to me and the things he had said, I had given more thought to the complications of appearing to be twenty-four forever. To avoid some of those complications, Adrian had either dismissed or murdered his servants after they had been with him a few years—more often the latter. I didn’t want to become anything like him.”

“You
aren’t
anything at all like him!”

He smiled at her vehemence. “Thank you.”

Much as it comforted her to see that smile, she knew something had been bothering him lately. But what?

“So,” he went on, “having heard tales of this country, I decided to come to America, where English was spoken but I was not known, where I could move often and live without servants. A place with a vast wilderness to recommend it.”

“Merritt didn’t want to join you?”

“When I first mentioned it, he begged me to take him along. I’m afraid I was a bit underhanded. I purchased a home near that of Widow Makins. I sent him on many errands to ensure that she was being well cared for.”

“He married her?”

“Yes, when a decent period of mourning had passed. In those days, that was required. During that year, I considered what I must do regarding his employment. I had already realized that he was an excellent judge of horses and an expert in their care. So I asked him to stay in England as a business partner, and eventually he agreed to do so.”

“You never saw him again?”

“Oh, in the first few years, I traveled back to England fairly often.” He paused. “But after ten years or so, I heard more and more comments on my youthful appearance. I reached the point of realizing that I needed to say good-bye to my friends and family there. Merritt was happily married and had made a great success of our business, and my brother and his wife were happy with their family. I decided I wanted to remember them in that way, and stopped going to England until the twentieth
century, by which time anyone there who had known me had died. In the decades before that return, I wrote to them and tried to be content with staying connected to them through our correspondence.”

“That can’t have been easy.”

“The years when those people were dying were the most difficult time, I think, because I had to let go of relationships that I had formed naturally. By that I mean I had grown close to those people without knowing that I would become such a changed creature. Anyone I met after I first visited the estate of Lord Varre—well, if I met someone new, I was fully aware of what was at risk.”

He fell silent, and put his head in his hands.

“So you kept your distance.”

“That was for the best,” he answered absently.

“Did you grow homesick?”

“Hmm?” He looked up at her and said, “Sorry, I was lost in memories there for a moment. What did you ask?”

“Did you miss England?”

“For a time. When I returned, the England I had known was gone. People, times, places—the world does not stand still. Nothing remains unchanged.” He gave her a wry smile. “Other than yours truly.”

“I don’t believe that’s true. Physically, you may be the same, but you can’t tell me that you’ve remained unchanged.”

“You’re right, of course.”

“You’ve adapted remarkably, really—you know how to use a cell phone and computers and other modern things.”

He laughed. “It isn’t as if I’m a time traveler, you know. I wasn’t suddenly taken from the nineteenth century and dropped into this one. Besides, I confess to a fondness for gadgets. And you are forgetting the desert house.”

“No, I don’t think I’ll ever forget the desert house.” She moved closer to him.

He watched her, almost warily, she thought. She took one of his hands.

She stroked his fingers. He seemed to relax a little.

She studied those fingers, and said, “In the papers you gave me, your history—you said you couldn’t remove the memento mori—the mourning ring.”

“For a long time, I couldn’t. Then I found a way.”

“How?”

He hesitated, then said, “Colby hinted to me that it was possible. So I started to search for a method. Among Adrian’s papers, I found a great many works on sorcery and necromancy. Most of those writings seemed to me to be utter nonsense. But now and again—very rarely, mind you—I came across something that…”

She waited, trying to make herself still and quiet so that he would continue. After several moments, he said, “Now and again I would find a passage that almost seemed to call to me. Whatever language it was in, I could read and understand it. You might show me another page in the same work, and I would find it unfathomable.

“One of these passages concerned the removal of the ring. I said the chant, not knowing exactly what might happen once the ring was off. Would I age? Fall down dead? I would have considered either a good outcome. As I said the final words, the ring slid easily from my finger. I felt a great relief—but I was dismayed to learn that removing the ring did not change my situation in the least.”

“Did you destroy it?”

“No. It’s hidden.”

Before he could say more, she held up a hand and said, “I won’t ask!”

“Thank you, Amanda. The ring is so dangerous, you see.”

“I understand.”

He smiled. “As no one else does.” He studied her for a long moment, then said her name as a whisper.

They heard Shade growl and they broke away from each other.

“The chaperones?” Tyler asked, looking in the direction the dog was staring.

“Yes,” she said. She sighed and stood up. The ghosts disappeared.

“Maybe we should have a talk with them,” Tyler said, standing beside her.

“I suppose you’re right. Tonight?”

“Yes—although—”

“If you have to work, I’ll just wait for you.”

He looked toward the dog. “Shade’s not growling now, so I take it they aren’t looming too close?”

“No. They’re over by the fireplace now.”

“Just being protective, I suppose.” He seemed lost in some kind of troubling thought.

“Tyler?”

“You won’t mind if Alex drives you down to your house today, will you, Amanda?”

“No, not if it will make you feel better.”

“Thank you—I would be worried otherwise.”

“You still seem kind of tense to me. What else is on your mind?”

She heard him swallow hard. “Once you’re there—you will come back?”

She looked up at him. Was he oblivious to how she felt about him? She wasn’t the one who had become distant.
Men.
“Yes, I’ll come back.”

She saw the relief go through him, but then he said, “I—I understand that I’ve seemed, well,
reticent
. And if that reticence has hurt you, Amanda, I’m so sorry. It’s just—this is something new for me. I wasn’t expecting this. I want to be sure I’m not putting you in danger.”

“If you think I’m going to let those thugs who beat up Brad rule my life—”

“No, no. Of course not.”

“Well, I don’t mean to say you’re afraid of them either.”

She saw him tense.

“I’ve said something wrong, haven’t I?” she said.

“No, but remember—courage is one of the many virtues I can’t lay claim to.”

“Listen to me, Tyler—I’m serious about this. How many people could cope with half of what you encounter in the average day? Or have the strength of mind to adapt over centuries, or to face loss after loss,
and solitude, and all the other things that are part of your life? So don’t ever tell me you lack courage.”

He smiled. “See what comes of knowing my secrets, Amanda? You’ve been burdened with my complaints.”

“Not at all. I like learning more about you.”

He traced a finger over her eyebrow. “Just be patient with me, if you can.”

“Likewise.”

“I want to learn more about you, too. Perhaps we could use this time—until we can figure out how to rid ourselves of our chaperones—to get to know each other better.”

“Yes. I like that idea.”

“Good.”

He was, she thought, caught between his attraction to her and a nearly two-hundred-year-old habit of not allowing himself to get too close to anyone. Talk about commitment challenged! This was not going to be easy, but hell if she was going to give up on him.

The intercom buzzed. Tyler answered and listened. “Excellent. We’ll meet you in the library.”

When he hung up he said, “Alex has a report for us on Eduardo Leblanc.”