Stella Cameron - Out of Body

Eric nodded, backing from the room, and Marley followed on feet that tingled.

“You, too,” she heard Mr. Fournier say, and Sidney caught up.

Neither brother nor sister would look at Marley. They walked into a circular, white marble entry hall. As soon as they were alone, Eric and Sidney hovered, looking at each other.

“Hi!”

Marley turned to see Pipes Dupuis running downstairs.

“We’re taking Marley to meet Erin,” Sidney said through lips that barely moved.

“She’s downstairs. I was on my way there.” Pipes’s voice shook. She couldn’t get any paler.

Marley glanced at Eric to find him staring at Pipes with complete absorption. What glowed in his eyes resembled possessiveness. It also spoke to lust—and perhaps frustration.

“Hey,” he said. “Great. We’ll come with you.”

Pipes looked blank. She stood in the impressive hall with its marble busts and looked from Eric to Sidney, as if waiting for instructions.

Eric laughed into the silence and Marley’s stomach turned at the sound.

“We’d best get on,” Eric said, but he smiled at Pipes and touched her face lightly.

Marley’s skin crawled. He was obsessed with the singer.

‘“This way,” Pipes said and sped on behind the base of the other staircase and along a corridor. Marble gave way to dark paneling and still they kept hurrying along.

The nerves in Marley’s spine jumped. She got an impression. She remembered it all because she’d been there before. Then she heard what she’d longed for, the whispers that were beloved now. Nothing she could actually make out, but the familiar excited tumbling of sibilant voices.

She kept moving, but she concentrated hard. Her inner awareness was opening wider by the instant. Deliberately, she brought Gray’s face into focus. They were Bonded. It was to him she should turn now. Together they had the promise of enormous strength.

His scars showed and she felt the impact of a blow. He was hurting and that’s why she could see those hateful marks.

The vision of his face turned toward her so that she looked directly at him. Slowly the shades of gray turned to color and his brilliant eyes pleaded with her. His mouth moved.

“Gray?” She tried to reach him. He showed no sign of hearing her and no answer came.

A door lay ahead. Pipes pushed it open and Marley followed into a kitchen with Eric and Sidney.

She shrank back, head light, sweat breaking out on her neck and brow.

“Where is she?” she managed to say. “Erin?”

“You don’t look well, my dear,” Eric said, pulling a chair forward.

Marley slumped onto the seat. She had to, that or perhaps fall. “Where’s Erin?” she mumbled, keeping her gaze on the floor, the white, tiled floor, the bottoms of cabinets, the legs of a table.

“Erin’s playing,” Pipes said, her voice faint.

“In the basement, I expect,” Eric said and gave another barking laugh. “What is it about basements that encourages play? Let’s go and find her.”

Marley heard another door open and looked sideways, her eyes still downcast. Inside a room, like a cupboard, she saw string-tied brown packages piled on the bottom of a stack of shelves.

“Come on,” Eric said. “I’ll help you, Marley.”

The last time she heard him talk in this room, she had been in Liza’s mind. This must be the madman who had terrorized New Orleans.

Pillars had been removed from the facade and balconies. This had started as a stuccoed dollhouse, not a piece of chinoiserie.

Gray worked with the little chisel he’d found on Marley’s bench. The lacquer peeled quite easily, but took some of the underlying coat of paint with it.

There had been writing on the wall in the center of the front wall, where the door must once have been. He had taken most of it off with the lacquer.

A magnifying glass hung on a hook and he used it to peer at what was left of black, fanciful words. There wasn’t enough. All he made out was “Eau,” which meant nothing.

He turned the piece around, but stopped when the house started to shift off its base. Carefully, he tilted it sideways and revealed what was covered by the mound of lawns that sloped up on all four sides.

A web of pipes opened to show how a basement—not really a basement but the lowest floor hidden with earth and grass—was reached by a staircase. In a corner, another compartment puzzled him, until he saw little dolls wrapped like mummies and hanging from hooks.

Marley had talked about a cold room with hooks.

That’s where she said Liza and Amber had appeared to her.

His belly felt rigid and he stiffened, willing himself to stay calm. Righted again, a panel at the back of the house had obviously been pried open, then put back. Gray opened it again and followed the floors up with the tips of his fingers.

The lower room was accessed from the kitchen, from a pantry off the kitchen. And to reach the kitchen you would walk behind a curved staircase and along a corridor.

A curved staircase, one of two rising up through a circular white entry hall.

“Gray?”

He dropped the chisel. Marley’s voice was distant but clear. He squeezed his eyelids together and concentrated. “I’m here,” he said aloud. “Marley, where are you?”

Nothing.

Then, with concentrated inner will, he saw her face and the shadows of people moving around her. “Marley,” he whispered. Why couldn’t he talk to her with his mind as he had before?

He hammered the bench with both fists. He couldn’t because he wasn’t practiced enough, but they were Bonded. They were one. He must be able to go to her.

Of course he had seen this house before, a real one just like it—minus red lacquer.

“Eau,” he said. “Water. L’Eau.”

Knocking a picture frame over as he went, he dashed from the workroom, but was cautious going down the stairs. He didn’t have time or inclination to explain where his thoughts were going and if these Millets were all so talented, they should already be on their way to finding one of their own in trouble.

The shop was empty. He looked back, expecting to see Winnie, but she hadn’t followed him. She would be safe where she was.

He caught sight of Willow through the back windows. She was hauling a box to the garbage.

The shop door wasn’t locked. He opened it and stepped onto the sidewalk—and walked into Pascal’s trainer, Anthony, who carried loaves of French bread under one arm and a bunch of cut flowers in the other hand.

“Who died?” Anthony said.

Gray figured he looked desperate. “Nobody. Yet. I’m looking for Marley.”

“She left,” Anthony said, pushing open the shop door.

Gray gripped the man’s brawny arm and Anthony’s expression immediately mirrored Gray’s concern.

“Did you see which way she went?”

“Sure.” Anthony came back from the door. “She left with a woman I don’t know. In a black BMW.”

“I gotta get a cab.”

“Want my car?” Anthony asked, wrestling to pull keys from his pocket. “The green MGB back there. I was just dropping these off, but I don’t need the car.”

Gray hesitated, but only briefly. He took the keys. “Thanks. Thanks a lot, buddy.”

The top of the MG was down and Gray vaulted into the driver’s seat.

Sidney Fournier had left in her BMW—and Marley had gone with them. When he opened that dollhouse and recognized it for what it was, that’s when he had heard Marley trying to reach him.

Bord De L’Eau, the Fourniers’ home. He had never felt anything as strongly as he did the presence of Marley. She was there and she was calling for him.

Eric’s grip on Marley’s arm was not gentle. His fingers dug at her and he pulled her to her feet. “I’m tired of pretending,” he said. “We’ve got things to do.”