Amanda Stevens - Secret Sanctuary

Earlier, when the first raindrops had pelted the roof of her cozy cottage, she’d hurried over to the window to stare out, thinking with a fatalistic shrug that, naturally, it would storm tonight. It always stormed in Moriah’s Landing on momentous occasions—such as, she’d been told, on the night twenty years ago when Kat Ridgemont’s mother had been murdered. And fifteen years later, on the night Claire Cavendish had vanished from the old haunted mausoleum.

Claire had been found in the cemetery several days later, her body tortured, her mind so tormented she hadn’t been able to tell anyone what had happened to her. She’d resided ever since in a mental hospital a hundred miles west of Moriah’s Landing, and every time Elizabeth drove up to visit her friend, she was stricken with guilt.

Which wasn’t rational, she knew. There was nothing she could have done to save Claire that night. She and the other girls had never even seen who took Claire. To this day, the authorities still didn’t know how the assailant had managed to get inside that mausoleum, subdue Claire and carry her off without anyone having seen anything.

At first, the girls had been under a cloud of suspicion—a sorority initiation ceremony gone terribly awry. But they were all so distraught, so terrified that the police had finally believed their wild tale.

To think that any of them would have done such a horrible thing to poor Claire….

Rounding a sharp curve, Elizabeth was momentarily facing eastward, and in the distance, she caught a glimpse of the Bluffs, a towering stone castle perched on the edge of a steep cliff that fell sharply away to the sea. It was there, on the jagged rocks below the castle, that Tasha Pierce had met with a horrible fate of her own, only one month after Claire had been found. It had been storming that night, too.

First Claire and then Tasha.

There were only three of them left, Elizabeth thought. She, Kat and Brie. And poor Brie hadn’t exactly led a charmed life. She’d had to drop out of college after becoming pregnant, and she’d struggled ever since to take care of her fatherless child and her ill mother.

Elizabeth frowned. Sometimes she couldn’t help wondering if they’d unleashed something terrible that night. Something evil. Sometimes she wondered if she and Kat would be next.

But then, Kat had already suffered. Her mother had been murdered when Kat was only three years old, and the killer had never been apprehended.

That left only Elizabeth.

As lightning fired the eastern sky, the castle came into sharp relief for just a split second. It was miles away, but Elizabeth could have sworn she saw a dark figure lurking on one of the turrets.

David Bryson, she thought with a shiver. The man who might or might not have killed her friend, Tasha.

Pulling up in front of the Pierce mansion, Elizabeth waited as two valets came rushing toward the car to meet her. One carried an umbrella which he used to shield her from the rain when she stepped outside, and the other climbed behind the wheel to park her new Audi. Elizabeth winced as the tires squealed against the wet pavement, but to her credit, she didn’t look back. Instead, she wrapped her velvet cloak more tightly around her as she hurried up the granite steps.

As if of their own accord, the massive oak doors swung open, and Elizabeth stepped inside. Her cloak was removed from her shoulders, and she took a moment to arrange the shimmering folds of her gown. When she glanced up, she caught her breath.

She’d been to the mansion before, but it had been a long time ago, before Tasha’s death, and Elizabeth had forgotten the elegance of the place, the sheer opulence.

A set of inlaid marble steps led down to an immense, sunken hall with a chessboard floor of black and white. Directly across the foyer, a magnificent staircase was crowned by a ten-foot cathedral window through which sunshine would pour in the daytime. Tonight, however, lightning flickered through dark clouds as rain slashed against the glass.

Below the window, the staircase split, curving gracefully on either side of the landing to a spacious gallery, brilliantly illuminated by crystal chandeliers and wall sconces that danced like candlelight.

To the left of the foyer, another set of double doors opened into a ballroom, and Elizabeth glimpsed the dazzling swish of costumes as swaying bodies seemed to float over the dance floor.

It was like stepping back in time. The women were adorned in glittering jewels and swirling silk ball gowns from another era, another century, while the men were festooned in everything from military uniforms to brocade breeches and powdered wigs.

And the flowers! Every hothouse from Moriah’s Landing to Boston must have been emptied to accommodate such glorious arrangements, most of them done in red and white in honor of St. Valentine’s Day, although the celebration had very little to do with the holiday. Red and pink cyclamens hovered like butterflies around a colored fountain that had been set up near the buffet tables, and heart-shaped candles floated in the water among fragrant rose petals and gardenia blossoms.

A more romantic setting, Elizabeth couldn’t imagine, and here she was, dateless as usual.

As she lingered in the hall, reluctant to join the throng, a woman dressed in a gorgeous blue gown and an elaborate mask of peacock feathers drifted out of the ballroom toward her. The woman lowered the mask, and Elizabeth smiled, happy to see a friendly face.

Although she didn’t know Rebecca Smith all that well, the two had hit it off when Elizabeth had gone into Threads, a design shop in town that Becca managed, looking for her costume. Becca had gently but firmly steered her away from the more austere designs that Elizabeth had automatically gravitated to and talked her into a golden fantasy concoction with a tight-fitting bodice that laced up the back and a skirt that swirled about her ankles when she walked.

Elizabeth raised her own swan-like mask to her face and pirouetted for Becca. “Well,” she said. “How do I look?”

“Breathtaking,” a male voice said behind her.

Elizabeth whirled, her gaze going immediately to the man who stood at the top of the entryway steps. He’d just come in from the rain, and the shoulders of his black cape glistened with moisture. He shrugged out of the heavy mantle, handing it to the butler without a glance, his gaze never wavering from the two women who stood below him in the foyer. He was dressed all in black, like a phantom, and the golden mask that covered one side of his face was at once hideous and beautiful.

As he slowly descended the stairs, Elizabeth had to fight the urge to step back from him. There was something about him…

“My name is Lucian LeCroix,” he said in a voice as dark and liquid as the night. Before Elizabeth had time to catch her breath, he took her hand and lifted it to his lips.

“Pr-professor LeCroix?” she finally managed to stammer.

The brow on the unmasked side of his face lifted. “Why, yes. Don’t tell me we’ve met. I’m certain I would have remembered.”

“No, we’ve never met,” Elizabeth acknowledged. “But I knew you were coming. We’ve been expecting you.”

The brow lifted again. “We?”

“The staff at Heathrow College. You’ve come to replace Dr. Vintner, correct?” Ernst Vintner, the chairman of the English Department, had died suddenly from a massive coronary a few weeks ago. Instead of promoting one of his own tenured professors, Dr. Barloft, the college president, had hired the protégé of an old family friend. Professor LeCroix came with impeccable credentials, but Elizabeth couldn’t help feeling a measure of resentment. She had friends among the faculty who should have had that position.