Jacqueline nodded stiffly, afraid to say too much. “It wasn’t an accident that my mother’s plane went down, and I think everything was done to make sure the crash was fatal to her.”
“So this was murder, part of the plot by the Others to destroy us.” Gravity sat oddly on Charisma’s bright face.
“Especially to destroy Jacqueline. Irving said it. Killing our seer would do irreparable damage. That must be their main goal now.” Isabelle touched her throat and chest. “Today, they came very close.”
“It’s so weird. All my life, I’ve been saying I don’t want to be the seer.” The pain reliever must be taking effect, because Jacqueline was babbling.
“I don’t blame you. That was a pretty horrific vision you suffered,” Charisma said.
“But now I’m afraid the mark of the eye has been severed”—Jacqueline stared at the white gauze bandage that wrapped her hand—“and that murdered my gift, and I can’t be the seer. I feel . . . just . . . I feel at a loss. How dumb is that?”
“Maybe it’s about having a choice,” Isabelle suggested.
Jacqueline turned and faced the other two. “Or perhaps Irving is right—I can have different jobs, but a seer is who I am. I’m so scared that that’s the truth, and if my psychic ability is gone, then . . . who am I?”
“That’s deep,” Charisma said in awe. “I can’t help you with the answer, but that near-death experience really puts it all in perspective, doesn’t it?”
“I guess it does. I’m sorry to dump on you two, but who else is going to understand?”
“You mean who’s going to understand besides freaks like us?” Charisma slid into the middle of the mattress and opened her arms.
Jacqueline and Isabelle slid into her embrace, and the three of them hugged for one long, comforting moment.
A knock sounded at the door.
The three women jumped and looked in alarm. Then they laughed at themselves.
“Come in!” Jacqueline called.
Martha opened the door and walked in with a tray of finger sandwiches, with the crusts cut off and olives and pickles on the side. She looked at the three of them sitting together, and Jacqueline wasn’t sure, but she thought she saw approval on her sour face.
“Girl food,” Isabelle said with deep satisfaction.
“Yes!” Charisma pumped her fist.
“Thank you, Martha,” the women chorused.
Martha put the tray on the dresser. Wrapping her hands in her apron, she looked at Jacqueline, her eyes dark and still and calm.
Jacqueline had been waiting for this moment all evening. But even though she had seen the truth in her vision, even though she knew, she still wasn’t ready. Getting to her feet, she concentrated on her breathing, trying to comprehend the finality of this moment. “Is there news?”
Isabelle placed a supportive hand on Jacqueline’s arm.
Charisma leaned protectively close.
“Yes, miss. The news of a plane crash on the Turkish coast is starting to break.” Each word from Martha struck like doom.
“Then I have to call the authorities,” Jacqueline said in a voice that didn’t seem quite her own.
“Do you wish to call from here? Or would you prefer the privacy of the library?”
Chapter 25
For the second time that day, Caleb went into the attic, but this time, he was walking up the stairs slowly.
The first time, he’d been sprinting, guided by Jacqueline’s unearthly screams. He’d found her writhing on the floor, fighting something terrible, something that ripped at her flesh. A fall from an airplane, if she was to be believed.
Pausing, he called Zusane’s cell phone again. And again he got her voice mail.
He put his hand to his forehead. That just figured. He left the woman alone for twenty-four hours, and she disappeared from this earth.
Forever?
If Jacqueline was to be believed, she had.
Disaster piled on top of disaster. The Chosen Ones were inexperienced and bewildered. Caleb wasn’t sure whom he could trust and whom he couldn’t—right now, he wondered if Irving had sent Jacqueline up to the attic and into her vision in an attempt to kill her and Zusane at the same time. And he had a crime scene that had been contaminated by everybody. Because, despite the fact he worked for a seer, he wasn’t convinced Jacqueline’s injuries were the result of some mumbo-jumbo psychic experience.
Yeah, he was a suspicious son of a bitch.
Standing in the middle of the room, he donned his latex gloves and carefully looked around. The room was big, empty, with sunshine slanting in the windows in long, afternoon light. The dust on the floor had been undisturbed for months—until today. Now there were dozens of footprints, mostly leading from the door to the place in the middle of the floor where the crystal ball had fallen and shattered one of the floorboards, which was damned weird. One set of footprints led to the door at the far wall. A woman’s footprints, leading to the door and back. So . . . Jacqueline’s footprints.
He followed them to the door and opened it. The room beyond matched this one, except only one set of footprints walked through the dust—and they led toward the other door. Large footprints. A man’s footprints. Caleb knelt beside one and examined it, leaning backward and forward, using light and shadow to get an idea of what kind of sole it had been.
No visible tread. So a loafer or some kind of business shoe.
He sat up straight. Helpful. With a lawyer, a faith healer, a sophisticated thief, a gentleman servant, and Irving in the house, he’d eliminated exactly one man—the student in his athletic shoes.
Following the footsteps to the far wall, he opened that door. The footsteps led up the stairs, and hey, maybe someone had raced upstairs from the kitchen when Jacqueline started screaming. And maybe someone had sneaked up here when she was having her vision and beat the crap out of her.
He looked in the closets and cupboards in both rooms. Nothing. So he returned to the crystal ball and the broken floor. He picked up each shard of wood, and discovered, to his dismay, none of them had blood on them.
So had Jacqueline cut her hand on the broken glass bottle on a jet somewhere over Europe?
Briefly, he closed his eyes and concentrated on the idea of Jacqueline falling into a vision and being swept away into a blazing plane. . . . Opening his eyes, he stared coldly across the empty room.
In all his years with Zusane, he’d never seen a vision touch her. As he understood it, they were like movies that played across Zusane’s mind, carrying her away with the emotion of the events, but never physically affecting her. But she had said Jacqueline had the potential to be the greatest seer of all time. Did she realize that Jacqueline could be hurt by what she witnessed?
He knew Jacqueline better than anybody on earth. He’d viewed her struggles to avoid being what her mother was, what her mother wanted. He’d seen her soul torn asunder by what she desired to be and what she was. And he had wanted her to finally reconcile the separate parts of herself, to surrender to her fate—to grow up—because until she did, she would never be happy.
Had there been more to her resistance than he thought? Had she realized she could be injured? Had he urged her toward a goal that could kill her?
Was he really the smug bastard she accused him of being?
How could he be smug, when he couldn’t even do his job well enough to discover if someone had come to Jacqueline while she was in a trance and hurt her?
Using only his fingertips, he picked up the crystal ball. It was heavy for its size—but not heavy enough to have shattered the floor as it had. It was slick and warm and beautiful, with colors that slid across the surface and drew his gaze deep into its center. And as if it had been waiting for his touch, an image darkened the surface—a handprint took form, smoky white, with long fingers and a broad palm. A man-hand.
Clad in a latex glove?
Perhaps.
And on the other side, a small, dark red blot—blood?—materialized
and violently exploded, as if this ball had been used as the weapon to knock Jacqueline out of her vision. And kill her?
As he stared, the handprint and the blood spatter both disappeared.
That was all. The end of the show. The globe had shown him all it intended to show. The images shrank toward the middle and disappeared. The colors returned to play across the surface of the globe.
He was left with the conviction that he held the weapon that had given Jacqueline a blow to the head, and the knowledge that the perpetrator was a man.
Not McKenna; the stocky Celt’s hands were broad, but stubby. Not Aleksandr, if the footprints were to be believed. Oh, and Aleksandr’s burned and ruined hand made the crime impossible for him.
But every other man in the house was a suspect.
Sitting in that attic room, Caleb faced some hard truths. He had spent his adult life serving Zusane, and through her, the Gypsy Travel Agency. He believed in them, believed in their mission, and he, who had seen so much of the ugly underbelly of life, knew very well what could happen now that the fate of so much good work depended on seven gifted, inexperienced, and unallied Chosen. They desperately needed a seer.
But right now, he was of the opinion Irving and his Chosen, and the whole damned rest of the world, could depend on Tyler Settles. Because damned if Caleb was going to let Jacqueline risk her life for a shot at greatness.
Caleb walked back down to the bedroom he shared with Jacqueline, and stopped cold.
Isabelle and Charisma stood in the room, motionless and waiting.
At his appearance, Isabelle said, “She’s in the library, on the phone with Turkish officials.”
He turned and headed down the stairs. The door of the library was closed; he listened at the door, but heard nothing. He turned the knob and pushed into the room.
Jacqueline sat at the desk by the phone, hands in her lap, staring out the window into the garden surrounded by a stone fence. Her expression was pensive, thoughtful.
He knew without a doubt she’d been given the official word. “Jacqueline?”
She turned her head, a slow, graceful arc, and in a preternaturally calm voice, said, “I called. The plane went down—I get confused about the time difference, but I think it’s tonight there now—and the wreckage is scattered along the coastline and in the water. They found Zusane’s body washed up on the beach.”
He went to Jacqueline and knelt before her, picked up her hands and chafed them.
“I’m so sorry.” She passed her fingers through his short hair, and her beautiful eyes were wide and dry and terrible. “I know how close you were.”
Standing, he picked her up and cradled her in his arms, then sat down in the chair and held her tightly.
She started trembling, but still she spoke in that abstract voice. “There was a survivor.”
Startled, he said, “You’re joking.” But of course she wasn’t. “Who?”
“The owner of the plane. Her new boyfriend. He walked away from the crash.” Jacqueline wrapped her arm around his shoulders. “Did you know his name? Did you meet him?”
“No, to both questions. This romance came on fast, and she was unusually secretive. . . . Why?” He already knew he wasn’t going to like the answer.
“His name is Osgood.”
He was right. He didn’t like it. “Son of a bitch.”
“So you know who he is.”
“He’s famous in the underworld. Or infamous. Nobody knows what he looks like, but he owns half of New York City, and the rumors that swirl around about him are terrible. That he tortures and murders people who owe him money—or whoever he wishes; that he controls the politics all along the East Coast; that he smuggles in cigars, liquor, drugs, electronics; that everyone, even organized crime, pays him protection money.” Caleb held Jacqueline tighter. “Did you see him on that plane?”
“Yes.”
“Did he see you?”
“Yes.” She curled up into the chair, scrunching herself as close to Caleb as she could get. “Caleb, I saw him, and he saw me. He spoke to me . . . in that voice. And I saw his eyes.”
Caleb knew he didn’t want to hear this. “What about his eyes?”
“Deep inside, they were lit by a blue flame. Caleb, Osgood is every evil thing you said, and more. Osgood went one step further. He invited the devil into his soul. Because of Osgood, the devil was on that plane—and the devil walked away from the crash.”
Chapter 26
Jacqueline woke to the sound of a knock on the bedroom door. Memories of the previous day rushed in; for a moment, she clung to Caleb, and he stroked her head. “Okay?” he whispered.
“Yes.” Except that her mother was dead, and Jacqueline couldn’t feel anything except anger. And she could hear something dripping, slowly, constantly, like a Chinese water torture. And she was scared. Scared as she had never been before.
But she knew Caleb was scared, too. Last night, when she’d told him about the devil, she’d seen it in his eyes. Somehow, knowing he believed her and understood the significance of the devil’s hand in their affairs made her feel . . . braver. More capable.
Because no matter what he felt, he did what had to be done, and she would do the same.
She watched Caleb get out of bed, walk over to the door, and ask, “Who is it?”
“Tyler Settles.”
The sound of Tyler’s warm voice relaxed Jacqueline, and Caleb must have felt the same way, for he opened the door a crack. “Yes?”
“Just wanted you two to know we’ve decided to have our first official Chosen Ones meeting this morning at nine in the library.”
“All right. We’ll be there.” Caleb shut the door and turned to look at Jacqueline. “You up for it?”
“Of course.” She threw back the covers. “Should we tell Irving?”
“About Osgood?” Caleb watched her with warm appreciation, as if he liked her in that too short, too wide white nightgown and the jiggling charm bracelet Charisma had given her. “Why didn’t you tell him in the first place?”
She shrugged her shoulders uncomfortably. “Because . . . because . . . this is an awful thing to say, but I don’t know if I trust Irving.”
“I don’t know if I do, either.”
Caleb’s sentiment surprised her—and comforted her. “I hate feeling this way,” she burst out, “but I don’t know who to trust at all.”
“Except me.”
Startled, she looked at him. “Of course. I’ve always trusted you.” She shut the bathroom door on his half smile.
Because of Caleb, she had clean clothes to wear, which was more than the other women could say, and she was showered, dressed, and ready to go in fifteen minutes. It took Caleb five. Her leather gloves had made their way back to her via McKenna’s obsessive management, so while Caleb was in the bathroom, she carefully pulled the right one over her bandage, then easily donned the left one. The gloves gave her a sense of security, a knowledge that her hands, her tattoo, and her injury were protected. Today, more than ever, it was a feeling she cherished.
She felt the same way about the bracelet Charisma had given her. She donned it not because she felt the stones would protect her, but because her friend had given it to her. Friendship provided a protection all its own.
Together, Caleb and Jacqueline walked down to the dining room. They picked up breakfast from the buffet and headed into the library.
“Ah, the two lovebirds.” Irving didn’t sound as if he approved.
Jacqueline didn’t care that everyone thought they were a couple. She didn’t care what Irving thought at all. Her suspicions of Irving had tainted everything she saw and touched and heard. It was a miserable way to live, but right now, she was stuck.
Maybe the meeting would help.
The Chosen Ones were dragging chairs into a circle in front of the window, and chatting desultorily about the weather, the comfort of their beds, how much weight they’d gained on the good cooking. Irving was already seated. Martha and M
cKenna bustled around, refilling coffee cups and offering tea and juice.
Only Caleb stood alone in one place in the middle of the room, observing . . . everything.
Jacqueline accepted a coffee cup, with thanks, and let Tyler place a chair for her.
He touched her shoulder. “How’s the hand?”
She looked at the leather glove. “Good. A little tender.” A lot tender, but she refused to take any more pain relievers. Today, she suspected, she would need her wits about her.