For a moment, she thought she heard the echo of a voice. Max. Maaxx.
Her pulse raced. Oh God, please God, don’t make me go in there. Bad idea. Really bad idea.
“Go,” Cameron hissed behind her.
Even as she pushed the door all the way open, she wondered why the hell she always did what he told her. Inside, the house was pitch-black. After a few seconds, her eyes adjusted, and monsterish forms began to loom, than coalesce. The refrigerator. The stove. A butcher block table. The counters.
Her knees tingled against the cold concrete outside, and she shoved the rest of the way through without giving herself time to think. Until her hips got caught. Damn. She wiggled, then wriggled. Jees, maybe her hips weren’t as boyish as she thought. Then a chill rushed up from her exposed feet and legs. It was like having your arms sticking out of the covers on a cold, dark, scary night when you just knew something was hiding under the bed, breathing, waiting.
“Damn you, Cameron.”
“Think thin.” He sounded like an advertisement for Weight Watchers.
She pushed back and out. Her hips freed, and she tried once more, this time with her body turned at an angle. She slipped through like a greased pig.
Once on the other side, she stayed on her hands and knees until her heart stopped racing. Then she listened, picking up nothing but the rumblings of an old house. Sniffed the air. Sweet. Sickly. Her stomach rebelled, and it wasn’t the after effects of three jelly donuts. She opened her mouth, but that only allowed her to taste the odor as well.
For some reason, it hadn’t occurred to her that the essence of Bethany’s body would linger. Maybe she hadn’t thought of it because her subconscious didn’t believe she’d make it this far.
“Very analytical, darling. Now why don’t we move our little ass into the living room where Bethany’s favorite phone is?” She should have smacked him—metaphorically speaking—for his sarcasm. Instead all she thought of was the living room.
The place where Bethany had died. Where her body had lain half on, half off the stuffed sofa. Where her blood had congealed into the fabric.
Max. Maaxx.
“I can’t,” she whispered.
“The voice is only in your head, Max. She isn’t here.”
He was right. Bethany was no longer in the living room.
She was inside Max.
Max stood. The floor creaked beneath her feet as she walked. The house was old, perhaps from the forties. The scent of must and mildew permeated the walls. Old timbers groaned. Water rushed in the pipes, a toilet flushed or a tap ran in the other half of the duplex next door. It was a house that would never be quiet.
Through a swinging door, she moved from the kitchen into a small dining room. More freakish shapes turned into a seven-foot hutch filled with china against one wall and a sideboard along the other. The dark wooden table had four chairs. The extra leaf hadn’t been added. Moonlight streamed across the furniture through an archway leading to the living room.
Beyond the dining area lay the living room and the stairs leading to the second floor. In her dream last night, the drapes at the windows on both ends had been pulled, the room itself cozy and warm. The curtains at the front were now open, and the warmth had been leached from the entire house. Light from the window spread across half the room, leaving the other half in relative darkness. The half where Bethany Spring had died.
Max didn’t venture further into the front of the house for fear a neighbor might notice movement though the window. In the dim light, she could make out the phone on the edge of the coffee table, still within reach of Bethany’s hand. The cops must have put it back. A swatch of cloth had been cut from the couch, revealing stained white stuffing and black springs.
Bethany’s head would have lain right there.
The police had cut the fabric for samples. A piece of the carpet was also missing between the coffee table and the sofa. The rest of the room lay in total darkness. She didn’t want to see any more.
Max flexed her fingers inside the leather gloves, then glanced once more at her watch. Eleven-fifty. Time had never moved more slowly.
“Look around the place.”
“The police would have taken anything of interest.”
“Check in the sideboard drawer where she keeps the good silver.” Light from the window cut a path to that very piece of furniture.
“What’s there?”
“Something you’ll need.”
“How do you know?” she whispered.
“It’s a feeling, Max. Look. See what you find.” Cameron always said he didn’t know anything, or remember much about his life for that matter, but then he performed weird feats like this.
She backed up, suddenly afraid to turn her back on the living room. She pulled open the first and second drawers of the sideboard, but found nothing. The box of silver cutlery was in the bottom one. She opened the lid. Silver knives and forks lined up in neat rows against the velvet backing.
“I don’t see anything.”