The Witch of Stonecliff (4 page)

Maybe he wasn’t like that in Chicago. Maybe he was laid-back and easygoing away from Stonecliff. Maybe he smiled and the chill left his icy gaze.

She didn’t know what her sister saw in him. Broad, sharp features, hard stares and scowls, topped off with shaggy black hair, Reece looked too scruffy to suit her stylish, pretty sister.

No, if anything Eleri pictured Brynn with a man like Kyle Peirs—all fine features and smooth charm. Minus the scar, of course. She tried to picture Brynn with Kyle, but the image irritated her and she couldn’t say why.

As soon as Eleri stepped into the foyer her gaze landed on Warlow and Dr. Howard by the door speaking in hushed tones. Her stomach sank and she stopped in her tracks.

Had something happened while she’d been with Peirs? Could her father be…? Numbness tingled into her limbs.

“What’s he doing here?” Eleri asked.

“Nothing to be alarmed about,” Dr. Howard said, pushing back his round, silver-framed glasses. The man had always reminded her a little of a younger Father Christmas, but without the jolliness. He was squat with a round belly. His reddish brown hair, curly and laced with strands of white, had receded to create a horseshoe around the back of his head. A wiry beard, the same color as his hair, covered his cheeks and chin and neck. But unlike Santa Claus, his round features were usually impatient or annoyed. “My visits will be more frequent without Ruth to look after your father.”

Had she actually heard reproach in his tone? “I suppose you will, now that he’s no longer under the care of a murderess. How is he?”

Dr. Howard scowled. He’d always been suspicious of her, believing her stepmother’s stories that she was dangerous even as a child, that she had tried to drown her own sister. Even after Brynn had remembered Meris had in fact been the one who’d tried to drown her as a child, the man still hadn’t warmed to her. Likely because of the twelve dead men found in the bog.

“I won’t sugarcoat the situation. His health is deteriorating quickly.”

“Is there anything we can do?”

The doctor glanced at Warlow briefly. “He needs to be kept comfortable, stress to a minimum.”

He shot her a meaningful stare, and her spine stiffened.

“I’m sure in future, Hugh will be far more careful about who he hires.” If not his tenants. A grim sort of satisfaction welled inside her at the sight of Warlow’s mouth tightening.

“Be that as it may,” Dr. Howard continued, “there are some…alternative treatments we can explore. I’m going to do a little research and get back to you. I’ll be back in a few days, but if you need me sooner, ring. Day or night, I’ll come.”

Dr. Howard said his goodbyes to Warlow, barely sparing Eleri a glance before he left.

The minute the front door closed, the butler turned to Eleri. “Mr. Peirs settled, then?”

“Letting him stay is a mistake,” Eleri said, apprehension like an icy ball in her stomach. “You heard what the doctor said about unnecessary stress. What if Peirs vanishes like the others?”

“There’s no way around it.” Warlow waved his hand as if swatting her words away. “The estate needs the money.”

Eleri sighed and gripped the banister, but froze with one foot on the bottom step. The sconce at the top of the stairs was dark, casting long shadows up the wall. They rippled. Pulsed. Her breath lodged in her throat.

She wasn’t the only one who saw them. She knew that now. Both Brynn and Reece had their own experiences with whatever presence dwelt within Stonecliff. And they were certain Warlow had, too.

Eleri glanced at the man, but he merely watched her. A confused frown drew his thick, white brows together.She pointed to the top of the stairs. “Bulb’s burned out.”

The swirling shadows had taken on humanoid shapes—three of them—writhing over the ancient floral wallpaper.

“I’ll see it’s replaced.” If Warlow did see them, he gave no indication. His expression remained puzzled.

Could Reece and Brynn have been wrong about the man? Someone had tampered with the lights in Brynn’s room, leaving her vulnerable to the dark mass. But maybe Ruth had been responsible for that, too.

Eleri backed away from the stair, and Warlow’s frown deepened. No doubt she looked as mad as everyone suspected, but she didn’t care. There was no way she’d move closer to the shadows than she had to. Instead, she used the servants’ stairs off the kitchen.

After closing herself in her room, she switched on every light to keep the shadows away, crossed to the window and looked out over the sea. White caps dotted the slate waves, black clouds rolling toward her. Wind whistled and moaned through unseen cracks and rattled the glass in its frame.

A storm was blowing in.

She turned her head to the left, her gaze almost magnetically drawn to the high roofline of the lodge peeking out between the branches. She sincerely hoped Kyle Peirs would be all right tonight. If anything happened to the man, Detective Harding would have her in cuffs before the sun set.

Chapter Three

He’d started for The Devil’s Eye, but changed his mind five minutes in. Instead, Kyle turned and walked the opposite way, seemingly without direction, but the farther away from The Devil’s Eye he went, the clearer it became that he was retracing his escape route.

A phantom ache gripped his throat, and Kyle swallowed hard. Memories played in his head, turned his skin clammy and chilled him to his soul.

His terrifying run through the trees, naked and bleeding. There’d been no pain, then. Not yet. Adrenaline had been pounding inside him. There’d been a vague sort of heat where his throat had been slashed. A sticky stream down his neck and chest. He had no idea how much damage had been done—not as much as there could have been had he not managed to free his hands and jerk forward as the blade pierced his skin. Later, he’d learn how much damage he’d done to his feet. Running barefoot through a forest had shredded them.

Now the trees fell away and a field of tangled, yellow grass stretched out before him. Kyle spotted a stone cottage in the distance. It looked smaller in the day than it had that night—even as he drew closer—but his memories were blurred. The drugs pumping through his system then had distorted the world around him.

At the time, he’d barely been able to make out more than a yellow glow from the window. For the first time since he’d regained consciousness next to The Devil’s Eye, Kyle had actually believed he could survive.

He stopped walking, closed his eyes against the anxiety swelling inside him. The line between past and present was becoming more difficult to maintain.

That night had changed everything. He thought of the man who only hours before had been drinking and doing his best to charm some tourist girl into going back to his room with him.

Kyle might have survived that night, but that man had died, and only a few fleeting memories remained.

“Good Christ, is that you?”

Kyle opened his eyes. The squat farmer who had found him that night stood a few feet away, eyes rounded, face pale as though he’d just seen a ghost. But in a way, Mel Barber had.

Kyle forced a smile. “In the flesh.”

Barber didn’t return the smile. “What in God’s name could you be thinking coming back here? They’ll kill you this time. Mark my words. You got away once. They won’t let you escape twice.”

Kyle held his grin in place, pretending the man’s predictions didn’t turn his insides to ice. “I’m counting on it, as a matter of fact.”

Barber lifted his worn gray cap from his scalp and scratched what little hair remained on his round head. “You’re out of your bloody mind, you are. D’ya remember nothing of what I said to you that night?”

He remembered only too well the man’s furious instructions. The story he’d concocted and insisted Kyle memorize while driving him to the nearest hospital. Kyle had been leaning against the passenger seat of Barber’s truck, holding an old towel the man had given him to staunch the bleeding at his throat. A rough horse blanket wrapped around his lower half to shield his nudity.

“If you say anything about where this happened, they’ll find you,” Barber had said, his words clipped. “If you’re a threat, they’ll finish what they started. But say you don’t remember anything from me finding you out here in the ditch, they might leave you be.”

By then, Kyle’s throat had been white fire, he’d hovered on the brink of unconsciousness, but every word the gnome-like farmer had spoken stayed with him. Haunted him.

He’d had questions, of course, despite the haze of agony spiking every time the truck, with its piss-poor shocks, hit a bump in the road. He’d wondered if this man had known who
they
were—these faceless monsters he feared still. But he couldn’t speak to ask; even breathing had turned into an alarming gurgle, the tinny taste of his own blood thick on his tongue.

Looking back, Kyle still wasn’t certain how he’d survived. Only that he wouldn’t have if not for the scowling man facing him. “I remember everything.”

“You’ll get us both killed.” Barber waddled closer, waving a chubby hand. “You need to go. Now!”

“I owe you a thank you. I wouldn’t have survived that night, had it not been for you.”

“If you want to thank me, leave and never come back.”

Kyle snorted. “Believe me, I wish I could. You did a brilliant job, by the way. Moving my car from the pub so no one would think I was anywhere near Cragera Bay, and I suppose that’s why you took me to a hospital on the other side of the island.”

The man’s careful attention to detail had been instrumental in the police not believing Kyle’s version of events.

“I did that for you. The further away, the safer you were.”

“I never doubted it. Was it her, Eleri, you were keeping me safe from?”

The man’s round face paled so his sagging cheeks looked disturbingly like cottage cheese, and he took a step back. “Who else?”

“That’s the question I’ve been asking myself. You said ‘them’ in the car that night, and again just now.” Kyle held himself rigid, watching the man’s expression morph from surprise to irritation in a nearly single fluid motion.

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“While you were driving me to the hospital, you told me if I kept my mouth shut with the police, I might be safe from them—not
her
,
them
.”

“Bah!” Barber waved a hand and stalked off toward a small barn, its brown planks weathered and sloped. The rickety structure looked ready to collapse at any moment. “You nearly bled to death in the cab of my truck. You can’t remember anything clearly.”

Kyle fell into step behind him. “I doubt I’ll ever be able to close my eyes and not see that night in my head. You said them, and there
was
more than one. If you—like the rest of this village—believed I’d fallen prey to one small woman, why
them
?”

“I’ve work to do,” Barber said, hauling open one rough weathered door. “I don’t know what happened to you before I found you. I saved your life, isn’t that enough?”

“It should be.” Kyle wished it were. But he’d spent the better part of two years haunted by memories of that night, fear building to a crippling paranoia until he wondered if he wasn’t slowly going mad. “Who are
they
?”

Barber took a pitchfork from the corner of the barn and started mucking out the nearest stall. “You know as much as I do, I’m afraid. They say it’s that woman, that she’s wicked.”

“That may be, but she’s not alone.” There were at least three—two holding him down, a third binding his hands while his consciousness ebbed in and out. A shudder rippled over him. “Who are the others?”

Barber tossed the pitchfork aside and stomped over until he was inches away. The top of the man’s head barely reached Kyle’s chin, and the farmer had to tip his head back to meet Kyle’s gaze. “If I knew for certain what in the hell went on at that place, I’d be as dead as you’re sure to be if you stay here. Maybe Eleri James acts alone, maybe she has a coven of minions carrying out her evil tasks, but I tell you this: death follows that girl like a shadow. Get away while you still can.”

* * *

Eleri dragged the scrub brush across the fading lettering. The stringent cleanser’s acrid fumes wafted to her nose and churned her stomach. Her shoulders ached with the repetitive motion and her knees cramped from kneeling on the damp ground.

She leaned back to look at her work. The brilliant red lettering had faded to dull grayish pink, but the words were still visible.

Witch.

Murderer.

If she found the bastard who did this, she might just live up to the epitaphs, after all. The last one, at least. With a gloved hand, she opened the tin and poured more cleanser on the stain before returning to the monotonous task.

As uncomfortable as her job was, at least she was out of the house, her mind busy. Though, her thoughts did have a habit of wandering, and usually down the same track. Her gaze, almost involuntarily, darted to the trees in the direction of the lodge.

She still hadn’t seen Kyle today, and she wished she’d catch sight of his car on the road behind her or the man himself walking through the woods on the opposite side of wall where she worked. Anything to let her know he was alive and well so her knotted insides would finally loosen. Though, the sensation would be short-lived. Every time the man was out of sight, all she could think was that it would be the last time she saw him.

Eleri had even gone to her father that morning; a last desperate attempt to override Warlow. She hated visiting her father, hated the stink of illness in the stale air, hated the way he looked at her like she was some foreign object he couldn’t quite understand. Like she was all the things people said. For all the good it had done her, anyway. Her father had merely stared at her with dark eyes, a scowl etched into his skeletal face. He was little more than taut skin over bone these days, the outline of his limbs beneath his bed covers barely discernible from the wrinkles. When she’d finished speaking, silence had stretched between them in the dimly lit room except for the steady hiss of the oxygen tank. Finally he had said, “Hugh has given you my decision. Stop wasting my time.”