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“No, wait. Maybe this really is something she wants to do on her own. Besides, we’ll be right here if she needs us.”
“Then we have to do our part,” Brie said. “Are we all agreed?”
“Agreed,” Elizabeth murmured, but guilt washed over her because as frightened as she was for Claire, a part of her was glad she wasn’t the one inside that crypt.
“Once we join hands, the circle must not be broken,” Tasha warned. “Physically or mentally.”
Elizabeth squeezed her eyes closed as the girls joined hands, forming a protective circle as they summoned the natural forces of earth, air, fire and water to guard Claire from the ghosts of McFarland Leary and any other evil creatures who might roam the night.
But for just a split second, Elizabeth’s mind wandered, and she thought about Cullen Ryan, a boy she’d had a crush on for ages. In trouble with the law, he’d dropped out of high school the year before and left town in the middle of the night. Elizabeth had no idea where he’d gone, or if she would ever see him again. But she prayed that wherever he was, he was safe, too.
And at the very moment when her concentration was weakened, when the spiritual circle was broken, thunder cracked overhead and a scream ripped through the darkness.
Claire!
The girls scrambled to their feet and raced toward the mausoleum. The door was stuck at first, but Kat managed to shove it open. The beam of her flashlight chased away shadows and shimmered off cobwebs suspended from the ornate ceiling. The scent of death and decay permeated the air, but there was no sign of Claire.
Elizabeth’s heart started to pound with a terrible fear, a horrible premonition. She knew what had happened. While she’d been thinking about Cullen, the protective circle had been broken. The evil had been allowed in, and now Claire was gone.
And it was all Elizabeth’s fault.
Chapter One
Five years later…
Elizabeth peered through her rain-spattered windshield as she wended her way around the curving drive toward the lighted mansion. February-bare oaks reached skeletal arms across the narrow lane, entwining with one another to form a natural arbor through which only thin tendrils of light could creep. The night was very dark.
Comprising well over a hundred acres of landscaped grounds, the Pierce compound—hidden from prying eyes by eight-foot, ivy-covered stone walls and thick stands of evergreens—was a masterpiece of design and privacy. The focal point was a lavish brick colonial owned by William and Maureen Pierce, the town’s most prominent citizens.
A Pierce ancestor had founded Moriah’s Landing in 1652, and the descendants had lived there ever since. The family remained active in many areas, most notably politics and science. Rumor had it that William and Maureen’s lavish masquerade ball tonight was not only to continue the celebration that had begun on New Year’s Eve to commemorate the 350th anniversary of the town’s founding, but to help launch their eldest son’s first political campaign.
Elizabeth liked Drew Pierce well enough and she thought he’d make a fine mayor, especially considering she didn’t particularly care for the current one, Fredrick Thane. But in spite of the gossip regarding Drew and the potential for fireworks when Mayor Thane made his appearance at the ball, Elizabeth wasn’t looking forward to this night. She’d never been particularly adept at socializing, and a masked ball was a little out of her league.
But then, disguising herself as someone other than who she truly was might not be such a bad thing, she decided. A seventeenth-century noblewoman, dressed to kill in a lavish gold ball gown with a plunging neckline, might know how to seize the moment—should one present itself—as Elizabeth Douglas never had.
She tugged at that neckline, discomfited by the amount of cleavage showing. Her new WonderBra, she decided, was truly that.
A bolt of lightning temporarily blinded her, and she slowed the car. Dark, roiling clouds hung low on the horizon, and over the sound of her car engine, she could hear the ominous rumble of thunder.
Earlier, when the first raindrops had pelted the roof of her cozy cottage, she’d hurried over to the window to stare out, thinking with a fatalistic shrug that, naturally, it would storm tonight. It always stormed in Moriah’s Landing on momentous occasions—such as, she’d been told, on the night twenty years ago when Kat Ridgemont’s mother had been murdered. And fifteen years later, on the night Claire Cavendish had vanished from the old haunted mausoleum.
Claire had been found in the cemetery several days later, her body tortured, her mind so tormented she hadn’t been able to tell anyone what had happened to her. She’d resided ever since in a mental hospital a hundred miles west of Moriah’s Landing, and every time Elizabeth drove up to visit her friend, she was stricken with guilt.
Which wasn’t rational, she knew. There was nothing she could have done to save Claire that night. She and the other girls had never even seen who took Claire. To this day, the authorities still didn’t know how the assailant had managed to get inside that mausoleum, subdue Claire and carry her off without anyone having seen anything.
At first, the girls had been under a cloud of suspicion—a sorority initiation ceremony gone terribly awry. But they were all so distraught, so terrified that the police had finally believed their wild tale.
To think that any of them would have done such a horrible thing to poor Claire….
Rounding a sharp curve, Elizabeth was momentarily facing eastward, and in the distance, she caught a glimpse of the Bluffs, a towering stone castle perched on the edge of a steep cliff that fell sharply away to the sea. It was there, on the jagged rocks below the castle, that Tasha Pierce had met with a horrible fate of her own, only one month after Claire had been found. It had been storming that night, too.
First Claire and then Tasha.
There were only three of them left, Elizabeth thought. She, Kat and Brie. And poor Brie hadn’t exactly led a charmed life. She’d had to drop out of college after becoming pregnant, and she’d struggled ever since to take care of her fatherless child and her ill mother.
Elizabeth frowned. Sometimes she couldn’t help wondering if they’d unleashed something terrible that night. Something evil. Sometimes she wondered if she and Kat would be next.
But then, Kat had already suffered. Her mother had been murdered when Kat was only three years old, and the killer had never been apprehended.
That left only Elizabeth.
As lightning fired the eastern sky, the castle came into sharp relief for just a split second. It was miles away, but Elizabeth could have sworn she saw a dark figure lurking on one of the turrets.
David Bryson, she thought with a shiver. The man who might or might not have killed her friend, Tasha.
Pulling up in front of the Pierce mansion, Elizabeth waited as two valets came rushing toward the car to meet her. One carried an umbrella which he used to shield her from the rain when she stepped outside, and the other climbed behind the wheel to park her new Audi. Elizabeth winced as the tires squealed against the wet pavement, but to her credit, she didn’t look back. Instead, she wrapped her velvet cloak more tightly around her as she hurried up the granite steps.
As if of their own accord, the massive oak doors swung open, and Elizabeth stepped inside. Her cloak was removed from her shoulders, and she took a moment to arrange the shimmering folds of her gown. When she glanced up, she caught her breath.
She’d been to the mansion before, but it had been a long time ago, before Tasha’s death, and Elizabeth had forgotten the elegance of the place, the sheer opulence.
A set of inlaid marble steps led down to an immense, sunken hall with a chessboard floor of black and white. Directly across the foyer, a magnificent staircase was crowned by a ten-foot cathedral window through which sunshine would pour in the daytime. Tonight, however, lightning flickered through dark clouds as rain slashed against the glass.
Below the window, the staircase split, curving gracefully on either side of the landing to a spacious gallery, brilliantly illuminated by crystal chandeliers and wall sconces that danced like candlelight.
To the left of the foyer, another set of double doors opened into a ballroom, and Elizabeth glimpsed the dazzling swish of costumes as swaying bodies seemed to float over the dance floor.
It was like stepping back in time. The women were adorned in glittering jewels and swirling silk ball gowns from another era, another century, while the men were festooned in everything from military uniforms to brocade breeches and powdered wigs.
And the flowers! Every hothouse from Moriah’s Landing to Boston must have been emptied to accommodate such glorious arrangements, most of them done in red and white in honor of St. Valentine’s Day, although the celebration had very little to do with the holiday. Red and pink cyclamens hovered like butterflies around a colored fountain that had been set up near the buffet tables, and heart-shaped candles floated in the water among fragrant rose petals and gardenia blossoms.
A more romantic setting, Elizabeth couldn’t imagine, and here she was, dateless as usual.
As she lingered in the hall, reluctant to join the throng, a woman dressed in a gorgeous blue gown and an elaborate mask of peacock feathers drifted out of the ballroom toward her. The woman lowered the mask, and Elizabeth smiled, happy to see a friendly face.
Although she didn’t know Rebecca Smith all that well, the two had hit it off when Elizabeth had gone into Threads, a design shop in town that Becca managed, looking for her costume. Becca had gently but firmly steered her away from the more austere designs that Elizabeth had automatically gravitated to and talked her into a golden fantasy concoction with a tight-fitting bodice that laced up the back and a skirt that swirled about her ankles when she walked.
Elizabeth raised her own swan-like mask to her face and pirouetted for Becca. “Well,” she said. “How do I look?”
“Breathtaking,” a male voice said behind her.
Elizabeth whirled, her gaze going immediately to the man who stood at the top of the entryway steps. He’d just come in from the rain, and the shoulders of his black cape glistened with moisture. He shrugged out of the heavy mantle, handing it to the butler without a glance, his gaze never wavering from the two women who stood below him in the foyer. He was dressed all in black, like a phantom, and the golden mask that covered one side of his face was at once hideous and beautiful.
As he slowly descended the stairs, Elizabeth had to fight the urge to step back from him. There was something about him…
“My name is Lucian LeCroix,” he said in a voice as dark and liquid as the night. Before Elizabeth had time to catch her breath, he took her hand and lifted it to his lips.
“Pr-professor LeCroix?” she finally managed to stammer.
The brow on the unmasked side of his face lifted. “Why, yes. Don’t tell me we’ve met. I’m certain I would have remembered.”
“No, we’ve never met,” Elizabeth acknowledged. “But I knew you were coming. We’ve been expecting you.”
The brow lifted again. “We?”
“The staff at Heathrow College. You’ve come to replace Dr. Vintner, correct?” Ernst Vintner, the chairman of the English Department, had died suddenly from a massive coronary a few weeks ago. Instead of promoting one of his own tenured professors, Dr. Barloft, the college president, had hired the protégé of an old family friend. Professor LeCroix came with impeccable credentials, but Elizabeth couldn’t help feeling a measure of resentment. She had friends among the faculty who should have had that position.
Professor LeCroix was still holding her hand, and Elizabeth pulled it away. She lifted her chin slightly. “My name is Elizabeth Douglas. I teach courses in criminology at Heathrow.”
“Dr. Douglas,” Becca said.
If he was surprised by Elizabeth’s title and her age, Lucian LeCroix managed to conceal it. “I’d say this is certainly my lucky night then. I was hoping to meet a colleague or two at this gathering, and here you are, the first person I see. Now if I can convince you to take pity on me and show me around campus tomorrow, I will, indeed, be a fortunate man.”
When Elizabeth hesitated, he rushed to add, “If you’re free, of course. I realize I’m being presumptuous, but I’ve just driven up from Boston today, and I haven’t had time to get my bearings.”
Elizabeth still wavered. She didn’t much want to commit her whole Saturday to a complete stranger, and yet professional courtesy demanded that she grant him the favor. He was new in town and a colleague. And after all, did she really have anything better to do with her weekend? There was laundry, of course. And papers to grade.
And Elizabeth had to admit that Lucian LeCroix, from what she could see beneath the mask, was a very handsome man. He looked to be about thirty—ten years older than she—with black hair and dark, piercing eyes.
She could certainly do worse than be seen around campus with the charming new professor, she decided. Maybe then her students would stop calling her Sister Elizabeth behind her back, a reference not so much to her saintly qualities but to her lack of experience in earthly pleasures. How teenage girls could so quickly and accurately—and quite often viciously—size up their teachers remained a mystery to Elizabeth.
But then, so much of life was a mystery to Elizabeth.
Chapter Two
Over his shoulder, Cullen Ryan watched the rain batter the plate-glass window in the Beachway Diner as Brie Dudley topped off his coffee.
“Thanks,” he mumbled absently, then turned back to the counter when she said something in response. “I’m sorry?”
She held the steaming coffee carafe in one hand as she gazed out the window behind him. She was a slim, pretty woman with curly red hair and the most amazing green eyes Cullen had ever encountered. “I was just commenting on the weather.”
“Yeah,” he agreed gloomily. “Not a fit night out for man nor beast, as they say.”
“It’s been an odd winter,” Brie mused. “No snow, just rain. And now this thunderstorm. But what else would you expect on the 350th anniversary of this town’s founding, right?”
Cullen shrugged. He wasn’t given to superstition, and he didn’t put a lot of stock in the supernatural tales that had been passed down for generations in Moriah’s Landing. But he was glad anyway that he’d turned down the moonlighting gig as security guard at the Pierces’ big bash tonight. He wasn’t afraid of ghosts, but he’d hate like hell to be patrolling the perimeter of that huge compound, chasing away gatecrashers and sightseers and probably more than a fair share of local hoodlums looking to have a little fun and put a damper on a celebration that had excluded them.
And he should know about that type because he’d once been there. He’d been a founding member of the gang of misfits who hung out down by the wharf, decked out for trouble in their chains and chin studs and serpent tattoos. He’d once worn some of those same badges of rebellion with a fierce, misplaced pride that had almost been his downfall, but now he wore a different kind of badge. And no one was more astounded by the way he’d turned his life around than Cullen.
Funny what sleeping on the street could do for a man’s perspective, he thought ironically. He’d learned a lot during his years in Boston, some of which had changed him forever and some of which he didn’t much care to dwell on. It was the kind of person he was today that mattered, he tried to tell himself.
“We used to call a storm like this a widow-maker,” Shamus McManus said as he turned to glance out the window. Shamus was a seasoned fisherman who’d once worked on the same boat as Cullen’s father. Cullen had known the old geezer for years, and he knew better than to sit next to Shamus if he didn’t have time for a story or two.
Besides Cullen and Shamus, the only other patron in the diner was Marley Glasglow. Dressed in a yellow rain slicker, he sat at the end of the counter, hunched over his coffee as if totally absorbed in his own thoughts. Glasglow was probably around forty, but he looked much older, a big, burly guy with a sour disposition and no visible means of support other than the few odd jobs he picked up down at the docks.
“We lost many a good man at sea on a night like this,” Shamus was saying. He paused, then gave Cullen a sly glance. “A night like this can bring McFarland Leary out of his grave.”
Cullen laughed. “Oh, come on now, Shamus. Don’t tell me you believe in that old ghost story.”
Shamus’s expression turned dead serious. “I’m sixty-five years old, lad. When a man lives as long as I have, he sees things.”
“You’ve seen Leary’s ghost?” Cullen challenged.
Shamus shrugged. “I might have. They say he rises every five years. It’s been that long since anyone’s seen him.” He glanced over his shoulder, as if expecting to see Leary’s ghost peering in the window.
For the first time all evening, Glasglow looked up from his coffee, his eyes burning with an intensity that made Cullen wonder about the man’s sanity. “Leary fell prey to the evil that’s been the downfall of man since the beginning of time.”
“And what evil is that?” Cullen asked skeptically.
“He was seduced by a woman.”
Behind the counter, Brie bristled. “I hope you’re not implying that all women are evil.” When Glasglow refused to deny it, she said, “If women are so evil, why are most of the truly awful things in this world perpetrated by men? Why are the most vicious killers on death row almost always men? How do you explain that?”
Glasglow eyed her for a moment. “Most men kill because of a woman.”
“That’s ridiculous!” Brie exclaimed. She glanced at Cullen who shrugged.
“Leary was suspected of being a warlock so he was hanged on the town green,” Shamus put in. “He comes back every five years because he has unfinished business in this town.”
“Yeah,” Glasglow muttered. “Revenge.”
“Not revenge,” Shamus said with a frown. “He’s searching for the offspring of his unholy union with a witch. And the offspring of their offspring.”
Cullen shook his head. “You’ve lost me, Shamus. Leary haunts this town every five years because he’s looking for his great-great-great-great-grand-children?”
“Aye, and he’s not the only one searching for his kin,” Shamus said. “Have you never wondered why so many scientific types settle here in Moriah’s Landing?”
Amused by the old man’s ramblings, Cullen swiveled his stool to face him. “No, I can’t say as I have. Are you suggesting it has something to do with McFarland Leary’s descendants?”
“Aye, and the witch’s.”
“Be careful, old man,” Glasglow warned. “You go sticking that nose of yours where it doesn’t belong, you’re apt to get it chopped off.”
“Is that a threat, Marley Glasglow?” Shamus squared his shoulders, as if preparing to throw down the gauntlet. Glasglow was at least twenty years younger and thirty pounds heavier than Shamus, so Cullen decided he’d better step in before things got out of hand.
“The storm’s getting worse,” he commented. “Maybe we’d better all call it a night.”
Brie threw him a grateful smile. “I think you’re right, Cullen. I was thinking about asking my boss if we could close early.”
“You’re throwing us out on a night like this?” Glasglow glowered at her.
Brie shrugged. “It’s only an hour till our regular closing time at ten. You’d have to leave then anyway.”
“And if I refuse?”
Cullen walked over and put a hand on Glasglow’s shoulder. “If you refuse, I have a nice cozy jail cell you might find to your liking.”
Glasglow shoved his cup aside and stood, facing Cullen. At six feet, Cullen was tall enough, but Glasglow towered over him by a good four inches. And like Shamus, Cullen was outweighed by the man, but he knew how to deal with thugs. He’d dealt with plenty of them on the streets of Boston.
