Dark Moon

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Just being near her, even without touching, the feelings, the images were gathering, and he didn’t know what they meant, what was going to happen next. He’d been right. Josie Birdsong held the key.

But unlike her, he hadn’t lied. He was afraid.

Because he didn’t know what door the key would open.

“I didn’t have anything to do with the disappearance of that boy,” he said finally, not expecting her to believe him. “No matter what you think.”

“All right. Fine. You’ve told me. Now leave.”

“I can’t.” He’d been right about that, too. There was loneliness in Josie Birdsong Conrad. It lay underneath the breathiness, underneath the determination not to let him frighten her. He admired her courage, admired it while recognizing that her courage might not be enough to save her. “Can’t leave, Josie. Not yet.”

“Of course you can. It’s easy. You just stand up and walk away. Easiest thing in the world.” Her voice trembled.

The air around her rippled with her movements. He could feel those minute vibrations against his own skin. Even with his back to her, he knew what she was doing. He didn’t have to see her.

“You don’t need your hoe, Josie. I’m not going to breach the sanctity of your porch.” He shifted so that he could look at her now, could rest in the play of candlelight and shadows on her smooth, tanned skin.

She was a woman of sunlight and earth, rooted in the realities of life.

While he—

“I know you’re not. You’re going to leave. And then I’m calling the police.”

Steel in that magnolia voice. He liked that, too.

“Oh, Josie, if I wanted to, I could have already been in your house any night now for the past two months.” He flattened his hand against the screen. It bulged toward her. “You leave your windows open, your locks are a joke and you sit out here on this porch half the night.” He shook his head, and the effort to move was almost too much. “Your locks aren’t even worth my trouble.” He’d mastered locks and tumblers so superior to her pitiful pieces of steel and rusted metal that even if she’d shut her windows and locked them, too, he could have been in her house in the space of a breath.

“You’re a locksmith?”

Ryder almost laughed, but the need pouring through him left him without even the energy to smile. He felt as if he were dying of the need to touch her, to feel just once more that satin skin against his fingertips.

He wouldn’t, though. He didn’t dare. He thought he still had that much control.

But still he lifted his right hand and grasped the scratchy metal door handle. “No,” he said. “Not a locksmith. But I could be. Could have been,” he corrected himself. Too late now for that kind of life. “I’m an illusionist. I make my living with tricks.”

“A magician?” she asked in a thin, high voice.

“No. An illusionist. There’s a difference. But possibly only in my mind. At any rate, will you sit down? Please? It tires me to look up at you.”

She stiffened, ready to say something scathing, he was sure.

“Besides, the view from where I am is…well, I appreciate it, lady green eyes. I’m not sure you would, though,” he concluded and leaned against the thick wooden support of the door. “No, don’t go, not yet,” he said as she backed up toward her kitchen door. He knew it had a heavier wooden door, cheap stuff, really, like her front door. No real obstacle.

She stopped.

“Josie, come here, I want to show you something.”

“I’m fine where I am,” she said in a muffled voice. “No, stay there. Outside!” Her voice pitched higher as he rose.

But she needed to understand what was happening, needed to comprehend why he was afraid, and he didn’t know how to make it clear to her except by showing her. He’d told her he wouldn’t open her screen door. He wouldn’t.

But she would.

And so he looked at her, stared deep into her eyes that were the cool, restful gray-green of moss. He saw her eyelids droop, open, droop. “Josie,” he whispered, “open the door. Take a step closer and open the door. I won’t hurt you. I promise,” he whispered, his voice dropping lower and lower until it was only a drift in the air, a touch against her skin, her will.

Just as her movements, her breath, had been against him.

“Another step, Josie, one more. And then unlock your door. Lift the latch, Josie, slowly, sweetheart,” he breathed, coaxing in words that weren’t words, that he wasn’t even sure he spoke aloud, but he knew that she heard.

She lifted the latch and opened the door. Her silky hair swung forward, a curtain over her wide eyes and full mouth as she bent to the latch.

“One more step, Josie. One more,” he urged, luring her with sound and whispers onto the porch step, luring her outside her porch.

The screen door whispered shut behind her. She blinked and her eyes lost the dazed, unfocused look they’d had. He’d wanted only to give her a hint of the power that pulled at him, and now she was standing next to him, but he didn’t touch her.

He wanted to. Wanted to take that last, small step forward and touch her mouth, wanted to bend his mouth to the curve of her neck and savor the scent of roses that lingered there.

He didn’t, though. He reached down inside and dragged up enough control to stay those inches away from her.

“What happened?” Bewildered, she swayed and reached out for his arm.

He stepped back. Too quickly, perhaps, because she jumped and gasped, her eyes growing clearer by the second.

“I asked you to unlatch the door. You did,” Ryder told her. He wasn’t ready to tell her anything else. “I asked you to come off your porch. You did.” He let his voice fall into a lulling rhythm and watched her swaying slowly. “I told you I wouldn’t come onto your porch, Josie. I kept my promise. All right?”

“All right,” she echoed, but her eyes were enormous, focused on him. “You said you wanted to show me something?”

He jammed his hands into his back jeans pockets. “Josie, I heard a child crying when you were at my house yesterday. You heard that sobbing, too. But you saw something. I want to know what.”

“You heard the child?” Her face grew luminous, glowed like the warm candles lined up on her porch, dimmed. “But there was no one there. The police searched your house.”

“What did you see, Josie?” He flexed his fingers, lifted them free of his pockets. “Tell me exactly. What did you see?”

“Nothing.” Her voice was flat. She was lying again.

“Tell me,” he insisted. “I have to know. There was something there, wasn’t there? In back of me?” The last of his energy swirled through him, draining away with each second he stood in front of her.

Ryder hoped she would answer quickly, while he had control. “Please, Josie, tell me,” he said, and touched her, the tip of his hand brushing against her arm as she stepped away. There was heat and warmth in the slide of her skin against his, the texture of her skin like a warm nectarine, that silky smooth.

And with that skim of his hand against her, she was there with him in that fast-moving cloud, the images twisting around him, torturing him. Faces, faces, anguished, blurred.

But her face was distinct, the restful green of her eyes calling him, and he wrapped his arms around her, holding on for dear life, for sanity, for his soul’s sake. And, touching her, breathing in her scent, he lost control.

The images sharpened, piercing him. Children’s faces. One face, clear, bright, and he could see it while Josie was in his arms. A boy’s pug nose. Blue eyes wide and terrified. “Oh, God,” Ryder said, praying and swearing, the images ripping him apart. “God in heaven.” Or hell.

Sand. Muddy. Blood, a thin red line that turned to black against the sand.

Like a thousand razors raining down, the pain sliced him apart. He couldn’t bear the pain tearing at him.

And he couldn’t turn Josie loose.

Lost in that darkness with her, he knew somehow that she was his anchor, that she was safety, but he was afraid for her because she felt what he was feeling and didn’t understand anything that was happening to them.

And then, as the child screamed, Ryder felt Josie’s hand brush against his forehead, felt her touching him, willingly, even as she, too, heard the terrible cry.