The Mirror (The Lost Bride Trilogy #2)

Chapter Twenty-one

Chapter Twenty-one

May arrived and brought tulips, and fat buds on the twisty branches of the weeping tree. And May meant another Saturday in the village, at Bay Arts’ May Day event.

She loved seeing Anna’s work displayed, and her friend cheerfully talking to customers and other artists.

Maybe it was barely more than another week before Boston and the promised shopping trip, and maybe it was only May. But there was so much right here, so many interesting, unique things.

She started her Christmas shopping.

“Oh, those are beautiful wineglasses.” Cleo took one, studied it.

“I know. Handblown, and I love that pale green in the stem. I’m getting them for my aunt Summer, for Christmas. And this dragonfly bowl? My grandmother—Dad’s mom—loves dragonflies. And see that adorable birdhouse with the copper roof? My grandfather’s big into birds, so—”

“Christmas.” Cleo pushed the wineglass back at her. “Why didn’t I think of that? I’m going to get busy.”

By the time they drove home, with the back seat full of shopping bags and boxes, they’d decided to reimagine one of the third-floor rooms into a gift/wrapping room.

“I think the sitting room that faces the back. Still a terrific view, woods, gardens, but not as distracting as the water.”

Cleo hunched her shoulders in a happy sigh. “Great minds. It’s just big enough, has a small but decent closet. We should have shelves in there, though. And we need a good table for wrapping.”

Sonya tossed her hair, shot Cleo a grin. “Let’s go find one.”

An hour later, they stood in the sitting room with Trey and Owen.

“The sofa and the little side tables stay, but we’ll move them over there.” Sonya gestured as she talked. “Those two chairs would go into storage. We’ll switch out the art later, put some of our own up, we think. But there’s a cabinet—a wardrobe—up in the attic that can go over there, and a table—it’s just right—that’ll go by the windows.”

She sent Trey her most charming smile. “It’ll all fit. We measured.”

“How did we get to be weekend furniture movers?” Owen wondered.

“For beer and food,” Cleo told him. “I’m making shrimp étouffée. You’ll like it.”

“Well.” Trey scratched his head. “From that mountain of shopping bags, I get the concept. But are you sure you want to do all this up here?”

“Cleo already works up here, right across the hall. It’s a good purpose for this room, this space. And it’s another way to take ownership.”

“The last is more the answer to why here.”

“Maybe. Yes, maybe. She doesn’t get to dictate how we use the manor or anything in it. Except,” she had to admit, “the Gold Room. But that’s temporary.”

“Let’s get started. At least we’re not hauling stuff all the way downstairs.” Owen shook his head at the shopping bags. “I don’t even want to think about the insanity of buying Christmas presents in May.”

When they stood in the attic in front of the wardrobe they’d uncovered, Owen ran a hand over the wood. “She’s a beauty, and weighs about as much as my truck.”

“It’ll be perfect,” Sonya enthused. “The doors on the side have some shelves, and the drawers at the bottom are great. The center mirrored doors, just lovely.” She pulled it open. “If we just take out the hanging rail and—”

“No.” Owen cut that off like an axe through wood. “This doesn’t move an inch if you’re going to fuck it up.”

“We were just thinking of—”

“No.”

“He won’t budge on that,” Trey said.

“Then we’ll need more shelves. In the closet.”

“He can do that.” Owen jerked a thumb at Trey. “That’s grunt work he can handle.”

“Thank you very much.”

“Truth.” As if already feeling the pings and knots, Owen rolled his shoulders.

It might not have been as heavy as a truck, but it took the four of them to move, carry, maneuver it. The table Owen identified as a huntboard proved easier.

When both pieces sat in place, Sonya did a little dance, and Clover fell back on one of her favorites with Queen and “We Are the Champions.”

“They’re perfect. You’re the best!”

She kissed Trey, then Owen in turn.

“You need to clean them up some.” Not a suggestion from Owen, but an order. “Oil them.”

“We will. We’ll do that tomorrow between addressing invitations.”

“You’re going to hand address a hundred and fifty invitations tomorrow?”

“Please.” Sonya laughed at Trey. “I have a program for that.”

“And we’re going to add some protection to this room, like in my studio. I have some things.”

“If you can do that,” Owen wondered, “why don’t you do the whole damn house?”

“Have you seen the size of this house? And honestly, I don’t want to press my luck.”

“But right now, we’re going to make dinner for a couple of strong, handsome men.”

“We?” Cleo said as Clover chimed in with Mary Wells’s classic “My Guy.”

“I’ll do the grunt work.”

It started at three with the chime of the clock, the trill of piano music.

In the nursery, a grieving mother wept. In the servants’ quarters, a young girl from Ireland cried out in pain. A boy lay dying of fever in his bed.

A man sat in a leather chair enjoying his post-dinner brandy and cigar while another split wood to add to the stack.

In the ballroom, people danced, ghosts among ghosts as time slipped. Musicians played reels, then waltzes, then fox-trots.

The dead raised glasses to the brides, the grooms.

A midwife delivered twins of a dying mother while another nursed hers for the first and last time.

The voices, the music, the weeping grew like a storm that had Sonya covering her ears.

“Do you hear it? Do you hear it?”

“Yeah.” Trey wrapped an arm around her. “I’m going to check it out.”

“No, don’t—”

The fire came on in a roar; the terrace doors blew open.

The dogs sat up, barking, and Sonya swore she heard dozens, inside and out. Barking, baying, howling.

She rolled out of bed along with Trey, and with him fought to secure the doors again.

And saw Dobbs on the wall, facing the house, arms lifted, her smile hard and brilliant in the moonlight.

“That’s not right. It’s not right. She sees us.”

“None of this is right.” Teeth gritted, Trey shoved the doors closed.

The room changed around them. Flowers with pink-tipped petals covered the walls. Wood logs crackled in the fire.

A woman wearing an apron over a gray dress, a cap on her head, stood by the head of the bed. A woman, her dark hair matted with sweat, labored in it while others knelt on the bed between her legs.

“Trey, God, Trey, do you see?”

“Yeah, I see. We need to get the others.”

Her heart broke as she gripped Trey’s hand. As the midwife said, “The babe’s coming!”

Then, even as they rushed out, unseen, the room changed yet again. She saw Clover, pale as the ghost she was, racked with the pains of labor.

“I have to help her.” Sonya broke away, and though her hands simply passed through the woman on the bed, she felt a jolt, like an electric shock.

“Someone’s here, Charlie.” Breathless, Clover tossed her head from side to side. “Someone’s here.”

“No one here but us, babe. It’s just you and me. I’m here. Don’t worry.”

“Sonya.” Trey gripped her hand again, pulled her back. “Sonya, stay with me.”

In the hall people scurried along or strolled. A couple shared a kiss outside a bedroom door before the woman giggled and drew the man inside.

A man in a stiff black suit carried a tray with two brandy snifters out of the library and turned toward the stairs.

Owen already stood outside his room with a growling Jones.

“Looks like we’ve got a lot of company.”

“Cleo!” Even as Sonya rushed toward the room, Cleo stumbled out.

“There’s someone in my bed. Jesus, there’s someone in my bed.”

“I’ll take a look.”

Before Trey could go in, Sonya grabbed his arm. “Together. Stay together.”

Not someone, but a couple, naked, lost in the throes.

Sonya couldn’t stop the laugh that bubbled up. “No. Just no.”

She turned to go out and the doorbell bonged. And kept bonging even as something beat against the front doors.

As they went back into a hall, a maid carrying a stack of linens walked straight through them. She stopped a moment, shuddered as she looked behind her.

Then continued on.

A woman in a green velvet riding outfit with a tall hat cocked on her head came out of another room and strode toward the stairs.

A man in a white suit, red bow tie, and spats jogged up to them.

“It’s not now,” Cleo murmured. “But not really then.”

“From the looks and sounds of it, it’s whenever. She was out there,” Trey said to Owen. “Dobbs, on the wall, and facing the house. She saw us. She waited to see us.”

“Let’s go see if she still is.”

The dogs raced ahead of them to bark at the door. The cat arched her back and hissed.

Screams and racing feet sounded from the ballroom.

“They’re dying,” Sonya said quietly. “The brides. They’re all dying.”

As they started down, Astrid Poole limped through them, her hand pressed to her bloody white gown.

Sonya’s heart shuddered as she fell. More screams filled the air. And as she looked down, Sonya saw not only Astrid, but Johanna.

And it all stopped, it all vanished.

Trey pulled open the front door to cool, clear air.

“She’s not there.”

“She finished.” Sonya stared out at the seawall as the animals raced outside. “She ended with the first and last bride. She killed them, showed us, and she finished.”

“Trey’s right about the whenever. Let them run around awhile,” Owen added as he closed the door. “The guy in my room was smoking Camels and there was one of those phones—candlestick deals. And when I first came out, there was a girl wearing bell-bottoms. It wasn’t Clover. She’s blond and this one had dark hair.”

“Not just people who died here. Whenever,” Sonya repeated. “All the music and voices from the ballroom. Servants and the rest. Not all of them died here.”

“Illusions.” Trey kissed the top of her head. “Most of it illusions, or memories.”

“The manor’s memories.”

“Yes!” Sonya turned to Cleo. “Yes, that’s it.”

Cleo rubbed her chilled arms. “Barely a peep out of her for two weeks so she could do this. Then we pissed her off, Son, taking another room on the third floor.”

“Good. Good! Let her waste her energy on bullshit like this. She can keep right at it because it doesn’t change what fucking is. This is my house!”

“Okay then,” Owen began, and she rounded on him.

“A Poole built this house. Pooles made this house! It’s our house. A house for the living.”

From the tablet in the library came Simple Minds and “Don’t You (Forget About Me).”

“Not now, not ever. This house is ours,” Sonya repeated, fury under every word. “And anyone who lived here and loved it. I don’t care if a thousand ghosts make their home here now, then, or goddamn whenever. There’s only one who’s not welcome.

“Reclaiming another room pisses her off? Just wait until we’re finished, and she can piss herself back to hell.”

Shoving at her hair, Sonya let out a long breath. “Now I’m going back to bed.”

As she strode toward the stairs, Trey grinned after her.

“I get why you’re gone over her,” Owen commented.

“Way gone. I’d better catch up. Call the dogs and Pye in, will you?”

“Sure. Go on up,” he told Cleo. “I’ll bring them in.”

“I will, but I want a good shot of whiskey first. Want a whiskey?”

“Now that you mention it. Look, the offer to bunk in your sitting room sofa still stands.”

“And is appreciated, very sincerely. But I’m fine—or will be after about a couple of fingers of Jameson’s. I can’t say I would be if I’d seen someone murdered in my bed. But sex? It’s healthy.”

“Let me know when you want to get healthy.”

Cleo got a bottle from the butler’s pantry and smiled. “You’ll probably be the first.”

After a late start all around in the morning, Sonya kissed Trey goodbye, waved both men off. She gathered what she needed and went to the third floor. After shooting up a middle finger in the direction of the Gold Room, she went into the new gift room to do as Owen instructed and clean and oil the furniture.

And found everything already gleaming.

“You beat me to it, Molly. A very big thank-you.”

Hands on hips, she turned a circle.

“It’s going to be perfect. I’m going to order supplies—after we get the invitations out, and probably after the trip to Boston. And you know what? After Boston, Cleo and I are going to pick another room, put our stamp on it.”

They spent the day dealing with invitations, going over the proposed menu—in detail—Bree sent them.

“I can run into the village and mail these tomorrow. Or”—Cleo wiggled her eyebrows—“we could see if Anna and Bree are up for lunch. Hang out, finalize the menu.”

“I like that or.”

“I thought you might. Plus, you’re starting to count down the days to Boston.” She tapped Sonya’s head. “And this’ll distract you in a fun way.”

“It will. I’m telling myself I can be as nervous as I want now, so I’m finished with it before Boston. I’ll go text both of them.”

It did distract her, and in a fun way. And likely reading her nerves and her countdown, Trey took everyone out for pizza the next night, showed up for dinner the rest of the week.

And one night he arrived with shelves for the closet.

“These are perfect. Thank you.”

“You got very specific about spacing when I asked.”

“I did. We measured.”

“We’re about to find out if we’re both right on it.” Before he picked up the first shelf, he took a look around the room. “You’ve added some things in here.”

“Cleo mostly, seeing as she’s on sabbatical. Crystals, candles, the suncatcher in the window—hers. Protection, apparently.”

“And you switched out the art. Nice choices. Cleo’s work?”

“Most of it.”

“Wait a minute.” He walked closer to a meadow of wildflowers, hills shadowed in the distance. “S MacT? This is yours.”

“Just something I did in college.”

“It’s great.”

She sent him an indulgent smile. “So says the man who sleeps with me.”

“So says the man looking at something beautiful. And this one, too. Boston, right? The river. I didn’t know you could do this.”

“It’s not what my mother calls my passion, and she’s right. I enjoy it now and then.”

“Only now and then?”

She lifted her shoulders. “Artistically, I guess my interests and talents fall into the more practical areas. So graphic art suits me, and satisfies me.

“Cleo dug them out, hung them up. And it is nice having our work here together, like our personal gallery.”

“Any objections from down the hall?”

“Not so far. They’ll come.” She glanced behind her. “Let them come.”

Bells rang, windows rattled, the doorbell bonged now and then when no one was there. Sonya brushed those off as she did the occasional slamming door or cold wash of wind.

She had more important things to deal with than the tantrums of a dead witch.

Top of her list as she packed for Boston: what to wear for her presentation.

Trey looked both wary and aggrieved as she held up yet another choice.

“It’s nice.”

“Nice? God.” She immediately hung it back in her closet and reached for another.

“I don’t know why you’re asking me. It’s a trap, it’s a classic trap.”

“I’m asking you,” she began as she studied the navy suit in the mirror, “because you’re a professional, a man who takes meetings, goes to court, and…” The suit joined two previous choices on the fainting couch at the foot of the bed. “I don’t know why I’m asking you either.”

“Whatever you wear, you’re going to do great.”

She could only sigh at him. “This is not the answer.”

“Right. I’m going to go let the dogs out.”

When he escaped, she texted Cleo.

Wardrobe help. STAT!

By the time Cleo came in, Sonya had three more choices draped over the couch.

“I sense a crisis. Presentation day wear.”

“Trey was no help, at all.”

Cleo shot her a look between baffled and amused. “Well, of course not.”

“Of course not,” Sonya agreed. “Which shows how screwed up I am at this moment to have even asked him in the first place. He ran away.”

“Because he’s nobody’s fool. You’ve got to respect the tactical retreat.”

Cleo, dressed in rainy day painting gear of an oversized shirt and leggings, perused the pile on the couch. She picked up three suits, the navy, the black, and a gray.

“No, no, and no. Put them back.”

“But—”

“Too expected. Great cuts, excellent fabric—you’ve always had exceptional taste in clothes—but you don’t want the expected.”

“I don’t? No,” Sonya realized. “I don’t.”

“This sage green’s lovely, and it looks great on you, but again, no. Go a little bolder. No prints,” she decreed, and walked into Sonya’s closet herself.

“No, possible, I wish I could wear this, but no.”

“Maybe separates.”

“And no. This one.”

“Oh, but Cleo, do you really think pink?”

“It’s not pink, it’s coral. It’s warm, feminine without fuss. I remember this hits you right at the knee, so the right length for this, good neckline. You want my necklace, the tiny gold beads.”

“I love that necklace.”

“It’s just right for this, and your twisty hoop earrings I covet. You could pair it with this cream-colored jacket, but I say no jacket. Having your own home gym and using it’s given you happening shoulders and arms. Let them see a strong woman. But in these.”

She pulled out a pair of cream-colored stilettos.

“Those kill my feet. They killed my feet when I tried them on. I should never have bought them.”

“They’re gorgeous, you’ll suffer, but you’ll look fabulous. Strong, capable, feminine, professional, and fabulous. I’m going to do your hair in a fishtail braid. I’ve got a lipstick that matches this dress. You’ll wear that.”

“I love you, Cleo.”

“How could you not? Crisis averted.”

Cleo’s phone sang out with “Count on Me.”

“And Clover agrees. Pack it,” Cleo ordered.

On a cloudy morning, Trey loaded suitcases in the car. If he wondered why they needed so much for a two-day trip, he wisely said nothing. And valuing his life, he didn’t suggest, with the load they had, they take the truck Sonya had yet to drive.

Both women had dressed for the road in jeans, T-shirts, and light jackets. Sonya wore a Red Sox fielder’s cap.

He thought she looked adorable.

And she stroked and cooed and fussed over Yoda as if she and Cleo were headed to the South Pacific instead of Boston.

“We’re going to be fine,” Trey assured them as Sonya continued to coo to Yoda and draped an arm around Mookie’s neck. Cleo cooed, too, and cuddled the cat, who appeared mildly interested.

“You have the keys and there’s plenty of food if you decide to bring them back and stay at night.”

“We’ll see how it goes.”

“I’m going to check my list one more time.”

“Sonya, you’ve checked it three times. Everything’s in the car.” Swinging her to him, he kissed her. “How can I miss you if you won’t go away?”

“Funny,” she said, but she did laugh. “Thanks, really, for looking after Yoda. You be a good boy. You’re going to have so much fun. Trey, don’t forget to—” She broke off, laughed at herself. “You won’t forget. You never forget.”

“And you’ll take Pye to Owen.” With some reluctance, Cleo passed the cat to Trey. “He’s expecting her.”

“I will, and he is.”

“Okay, all right.” Sonya took a last look around the foyer and couldn’t think of anything else to delay the start. “We’re ready.”

She wrapped her arms around Trey. “Miss me a little.”

“I already do. Text me when you get there. You’re going to kick ass tomorrow.”

“That’s the plan. Let’s do this, Cleo.”

As they walked to the car, got in, and he stood in the doorway with two dogs and a cat, his phone played Fleetwood Mac’s “Go Your Own Way.”

“Looks like they are.”

Since he’d juggled his schedule just enough, he closed the door and went back for another cup of coffee.

And to give the manor and its residents time to get used to having him in the house alone.

After Collin’s death and before Sonya’s arrival, he certainly had been. But everything changed with that arrival. Activity at the manor had certainly kicked up.

Barring emergency, he had every intention of staying there for the two nights Sonya and Cleo were gone. He expected Owen would join him, but either way.

He wanted to see what Dobbs might have in store when the current object of her wrath wasn’t around.

As he sipped his coffee, three doors above slammed in sharp, rapid snaps.

He just smiled. She’d have to do a lot better than that.

He finished off his coffee, rinsed out his mug.

“Okay, gang, we’re going for a ride.”

Knowing cats, he picked Pye up in case she decided to make herself scarce, because cat.

Outside, the dogs jumped—or in Yoda’s case, more clambered—into the back seat of his truck. The cat settled down to curl in the front. He glanced back, saw the shadow move in the library window.

He thought, what the hell, and waved.

He half hoped the window would open, that Clover would once again lean out. But the answering wave struck him as too hesitant and shy for Clover.

As he drove away, the manor fell silent, like a breath caught and held.

Then, from the Gold Room, came a peal of wild, triumphant laughter.