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  Darci Montgomery was stretched out on the blue damask bedspread, reading a People magazine and eating from a ten-pound box of Godiva chocolates.

  “You—” he said aloud, jaw clenched and pointing toward the door. “You can’t—” He was so angry he couldn’t get the words out.

  I can’t what? she asked and Jack knew she was talking to him without words.

  In spite of all the testing Greg had done yesterday, Jack refused to believe that he and Darci could…could…

  She smiled at him. “Someone had to clean and cook and I’m not good at either one. Besides, those two kids had refused to allow anyone to clean their rooms. They even had some rather nasty substances hidden inside books. I can’t bear desecration of books, can you?”

  “You have no right—” Jack said, then stopped. As he walked to the window, he willed himself to be calm. He needed to get himself under control so they could find his father and get out of here, get away from each other.

  “She’s afraid you’re going to fall in love with me.”

  Jack’s shoulders dropped. “You want to quit that crap? There’s no one around me. No one—” He broke off. He’d been through this all day yesterday. Turning, he looked at her, thinking that she looked very good on that bed. The next second, he felt a pain in his head and he rubbed his temple.

  Darci held up a piece of candy and studied it. “I think she’s afraid that I’ll take you away from her. No, send her away from you. She thinks I have the ability to send her away, but your anger keeps me from doing it. Does that make sense?”

  Jack didn’t answer. “Have you found my father?”

  “He’s all right. I can feel his spirit in this house. He’s a very powerful man. Like you. You two are a lot alike.”

  “If you’re trying to enrage me, it’s already been done.”

  “Yes. Your aura is a deep, dark red. Rather like the eyes of a bull in a cartoon.”

  Her attitude made Jack so angry that he took a step toward her.

  Darci dropped the candy and sat up on the bed, her eyes wide in alarm.

  Jack had never hurt a woman, but the fear he saw in this woman’s eyes made him feel good. Disgusted with himself, he stepped back. “Look, I think the best thing for us to do is to find my father, then separate.”

  “Yes,” Darci said, moving to sit at the side of the bed and Jack stepped farther away from her. Whatever she was feeling from him had wiped the smile off her face. “Your father left here of his own accord, but I’m not sure he can get away to come home.”

  “All I need is for you to tell me who and where and I’ll do the rest. What do you need? A piece of his hair?”

  “I’m not—” Darci began, then when she looked at Jack’s eyes, she stopped and took a breath.

  Jack could see that she was afraid of him and for a moment he smiled. Obviously she had no power over him. She couldn’t hypnotize him into cleaning and cooking—or into doing her bidding.

  Darci stood up, straightened her shoulders, and looked hard at Jack, and for a few moments he felt calmer. But in the next second the rage was back.

  “You’re going to kill him!” Darci said aloud, looking at the space above Jack’s head. “I don’t want him! I’m not your enemy!”

  If possible, the anger inside Jack grew. To control himself, he walked to the door and went into the hall. He was calm until Darci stood before him. He could feel his hands shape themselves into circles the exact size of her neck, and he saw her look down at his hands in fear.

  Darci took a step backward. “There’s a room in this house, a secret room, where some objects are hidden.”

  “I know of no secret room.” Jack stepped toward her. He could almost feel her neck under his hands.

  In the next second, Darci was running down the hall. She was small and light and quick. By the time he got down the stairs, he saw just her foot as she disappeared into his father’s bedroom. Inside the room, she was running her hands along the bookcase and she glanced fearfully at Jack as she searched for something.

  Jack was sure there was nothing there. As a kid he and Greg had explored the big old house endlessly. The bedroom of his often-absent father had been Jack’s favorite area as it had been the most forbidden.

  When Darci found a button and pushed it—then the bookcase swung back—Jack was stunned. He watched her walk into the dark space behind the bookcase and disappear.

  Inside him came a voice that he’d heard before in his life, a woman’s voice. He’d never told Greg about the voice he sometimes heard, had never openly admitted it to himself. He’d always thought of it as the “devil’s voice.” Now that voice was telling him to shut the bookcase and lock it into place. With Darci inside the room.

  Using all his willpower, Jack blocked the voice from his mind and walked toward the bookcase.

  “You don’t have a match, do you?” Darci asked from the darkness. “I think there are some candles here.”

  “Why don’t you use your mind to light the place up?”

  “Why don’t you ask your girlfriend to show herself? Maybe she could produce an eerie green light.”

  For an instant, Jack felt like leaping toward Darci’s voice, but he controlled the urge. Feeling along the wall, he felt a light switch and flicked it. When the lights came on, he saw Darci staring straight ahead. Jack started to comment on her inability to find a light switch, but then he looked at what she was staring at.

  They were in a small room with no windows, the plastered walls painted a dark red. Three walls were blank, but the fourth had a single shelf at waist level with a painting above it. It was a gruesome painting, old and cracked, of a man being tortured, sightless hands placing branding irons on his body. A saint perhaps.

  As though she were mesmerized, Darci walked toward the shelf. It was a four-inch-thick piece of wood, pure white and sanded smooth. On the shelf were four objects. There was a little blue glass ball on a marble base, a small ivory statue, what looked to be a precious stone the size and shape of an egg, and a small silver box.

  Jack watched in silence as Darci walked toward the box. She didn’t touch it, just stared at it, then, slowly, she reached up to her neck and pulled a green cord from inside her shirt. On the end of the cord was the key she’d had on her key ring. She was going to try to unlock the little box.

  Jack didn’t know what happened next, but one moment he was watching her and the next moment he could feel his hands around her throat. The only thing he wanted in the world was to kill her.

  Chapter Five

  “FEELING BETTER?” DARCI ASKED AS SHE PLACED the cool washcloth on Jack’s forehead.

  Looking up, he saw the coffered ceiling of his father’s bedroom, and he realized he was lying on his father’s bed. He tried to get up, but dizziness made him lie back down.

  “Ssssh,” Darci said. “You need to rest. Besides, I’ve given you a tranquilizer.”

  “A tranquilizer?” he asked, feeling too befuddled to understand the term. There were bruises on her neck.

  “Yes. Your family has an arsenal of drugs so I dissolved three little pink pills in a glass of water and got it down you.”

  She said all this happily, as though it was an everyday occurrence to give someone pills to knock them out. She removed the cloth from his head, then dipped it into a basin of cold water. When she turned back, she winced from pain in her neck.

  “Tell me what happened,” he whispered.

  “Later. You should sleep now. Those pills—”

  He caught her wrist in his hand. “Tell me. I tried to—”

  “Kill me,” she said. “No, you didn’t, but she did. She seems to know something that I don’t, which I think means that she knows I know how to get rid of her. I just wish I did know. I mean, know what I know that I don’t know that I know.”

  “That’s clear,” Jack said and was pleased when he saw Darci smile.

  “When you’re in this half-drugged state, she can’t make you angry. She needs you alive a