Forever and Always Read online

  “I thought you couldn’t read minds,” I said, my gloved hands massaging her scalp.

  “I can feel things and you are…” She twisted a bit to look at me.

  “So horny I could screw the crack of dawn?”

  “That’s about it,” she said, smiling.

  “This kid better be worth it,” I muttered. “By the way, this private plane that’s picking us up, is it a jet? With a flight attendant or two?”

  “Sorry to disappoint you but it’s an old fishing plane. Smelly, dirty, slow and loud. We can’t arrive in anything with the Montgomery name on it.”

  “Sure,” I said. “I don’t know why I didn’t think of that. Okay, stand up. You have to leave it on for twenty minutes. Here, let me do your eyebrows.”

  “Yuck. I’ll look horrible.”

  “Not to me,” I said, then smacked her on the fanny. For a moment I held my breath. Was she going to give me another nosebleed?

  She rubbed her rear end and said, “Save it for somebody who’s interested, and touch me again and I’ll show you what I did to those four witches in Connecticut.”

  With that, she left the bathroom to go to her closet to start pulling out clothes.

  Damn! I thought, but she was a weird little character. And damn me, but I was more intrigued by the minute.

  Darci

  Chapter Seven

  ALL THE WAY TO ALABAMA ON THAT DREADFUL PLANE Mike Taggert had sent, I thought about my mother—and tried hard not to think about her.

  Mike hadn’t asked me too many questions except whether or not I might be in danger. “None whatever,” I said, lying while using my mind to make him believe me. I think he did, but I wasn’t sure. On the other hand, I’m sure he knew he didn’t have much choice in the matter. Yes, he’d contacted someone he knew and got me a plane down to Alabama. He asked me some questions, but I didn’t answer him, because the truth was I didn’t know what was ahead.

  As the day progressed, I kept feeling that something was calling me to this place in Alabama. If I weren’t such a lily-livered coward I would have called my mother and asked her what she knew. But I was like those women—and men—who ran corporations but turned into weaklings in front of their mothers. I’d walk into fire for those I loved, but just the thought of calling my mother made me want to sit down and take some long, deep breaths.

  The plane ride was so noisy that there could be no conversation so I tried to concentrate on what I was feeling. “An object” was all that was in my mind. Some magic object was pulling me to it. Was it an object or was it a person? If it was a person, did it have a body? And if it was an object, what did it do? For a moment I closed my eyes and fantasized about finding Aladdin’s lamp. If the Mirror of Nostradamus existed, why not the magic lamp? I certainly knew what I’d wish for!

  The plane suddenly dropped in altitude and jarred me back to reality. I looked across at Linc and saw him cross himself. I could feel that he expected to die at any moment.

  It wasn’t long before we landed on a private landing strip where a long black limo was waiting for us. I’d told Mike that I needed to look rich when I arrived so he’d arranged it.

  We drove for over an hour before we reached 13 Elms, the place where the mother of Linc’s son was last known to work. Officially, she’d been a masseuse, but I felt that she’d done something else, something that involved the child.

  Maybe I was being paranoid but I wouldn’t talk to Linc inside the limo. I knew Mike had sent the limo, and the driver wasn’t from the plantation, but, still, I had the feeling we were being watched. Watched and listened to—and scrutinized.

  “What’s wrong with you?” Linc asked. “You’ve turned whiter—if that’s possible.”

  I smiled at him. Poor man. He was totally unable to suppress his sexual desires. Perhaps I should give him a talk about self-denial.

  As soon as I figured out how to suppress my own longings I was going to talk to him.

  “Holy Mother of—” Linc said under his breath.

  “Please don’t curse,” I said, but there was no conviction in my voice because I was seeing what he was seeing.

  The brochure about the place, 13 Elms, had been crazy. They hadn’t stated outright that they were a group of spiritualists, or that they held séances, or that anyone told futures. In the brochure they’d said they were “a place of rejuvenation.” They said that your worries would be taken away at 13 Elms. I’d felt the truth of what went on there.

  However, I’d not seen the actual, physical place as my visions aren’t perfectly clear. Sometimes they are, but most often it’s just glimpses of images. I’d seen bricks and trees, and I’d seen white columns. From this I’d drawn the conclusion that 13 Elms was an old plantation-type house, like something out of Gone With the Wind. The brochures had carefully shown only interiors and a cute herb garden with a sundial in the middle of it.

  But what Linc and I were seeing wasn’t cute, wasn’t little, and didn’t look very southern. It looked like a fortress more than a house, with two towers sticking up from it, one tall, one short. The whole thing was made out of bricks that I was sure were handmade. In front were the white columns I’d seen in my vision supporting a second story porch, but the porch area was narrow and looked as though it had been an afterthought.

  Turrets, a cone-shaped roof, and small round-topped windows were all over the sprawling façade.

  “Whoever built this was crazy,” Linc said.

  “I agree completely.”

  “Want to leave?” he said quietly so the driver wouldn’t hear.

  “Can’t,” I said and meant it. There was something in that house that was pulling me to it.

  “Darci,” Linc asked, making me look at him. “If you’re going to do things that are scary, I think we should leave now.”

  “You mean like wander around outside at night even though we hear wolves howling?”

  Linc didn’t smile. “There aren’t werewolves, are there? What about vampires?”

  “Not that I know of,” I said, trying to sound as though I really knew.

  I didn’t try to explain to Linc what I was feeling. All I knew was that the first second I had I was going to start searching that old place and see what I could find.

  The driver of the limo stopped in front of the porch and Linc and I got out, both of us craning our necks to look around. I wasn’t feeling evil from the place but it was definitely eerie. I wouldn’t have been surprised to see bats flying out of a tower—bats with little people faces on them.

  “This place gives me the creeps.”

  “Me, too,” I whispered back to him. The driver was unloading our bags and, as my assistant, Linc should have been helping him, but I didn’t think Linc would ever get the hang of being an employee. When the driver finished unloading, he jumped into the car and sped off, leaving us standing there. He was a local so maybe he knew things about the house.

  “Now that is scary,” Linc said, looking after the car.

  “That man didn’t even wait for a tip.”

  “Maybe my husband’s cousin took care of it,” I said, still looking at the house.

  As I reached for the doorbell, Linc said, “If that thing rings like a howling wolf, I’m outta here.”

  “Me, too.”

  “You’re supposed to tell me you feel this place is safe.”

  “But I don’t. I’m sure someone’s watching us.”

  “Usually, when I feel that way I like it,” he said. “But not now.”

  When I pressed the doorbell, we heard a pleasant chiming inside. A woman wearing a black dress and a white collar opened the door. She didn’t smile or greet us in any way. We stepped inside, she closed the door behind us, then she quietly left the room.

  Linc and I stood together, silently looking about the entrance hall. It was large, but not like the vast spaces Adam had shown me in the castles in England and Scotland. In fact, this room was rather nice. It was paneled in oak that had aged to a soft brown. A fir