That’s when the unease settled over her—and she was certain she was being watched.
Kimball—it was creepy Marc Kimball! she thought.
But it was a different kind of feeling.
She looked over to the log-framed kitchen doorway.
She was grateful she wasn’t holding a cup of scalding water; she would have dropped it.
She almost screamed.
But it was as it had been earlier; she was too stunned, too bone-deep terrified, to make a sound.
Amelia Carson was standing there. She was wearing jeans and a fluffy pink parka, the hood over her dark hair. She reached out a hand, as if she were trying to touch Clara.
“Please,” she said simply.
Clara blinked.
It had to be a joke; the whole thing was still a joke, and somehow they had gotten Jackson Crow in on it. She was being filmed. Amelia hadn’t really been dead in the snow...
She heard a sob.
And then, she heard the officer in the hallway call out to her. “Miss? Everything all right?”
The vision before her evaporated. Clara didn’t look away.
She didn’t blink.
The image simply...disappeared into mist and then into nothingness.
Where Amelia Carson had been, there was just air. Beyond that air, his face obscured by the living room shadows, was the FBI man, Thor Erikson.
She just stood there, afraid to move, afraid to give away any indication she had just seen a dead woman before her.
But Thor Erikson came striding toward her then and she saw the intensity in his ice-blue eyes. He caught her by the wrist and spoke with a deep, ragged voice. “You saw her, too.”
Clara blinked at last.
They’d said that the Destiny was filled with ghosts. Clara knew that Alexi had seen them.
And maybe Clara had sensed things or thought that she had, but...
Alexi had seen and spoken with the dead—so she had sworn. And when she had talked about it, sometimes, Clara had actually believed in ghosts...
But...
She had never seen a full-blown image such as this, as if the dead woman in the snow had come back to life.
In one piece.
“I saw her. But you saw her—I know that you did. I saw your face. She spoke to you. What did she say?”
Clara shook her head. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Amelia Carson.”
“Amelia Carson is dead. We saw her—both halves of her,” Clara said.
His eyes really could be so cold, and like ice, they could burn.
She was afraid. Afraid as she had never been before.
And too afraid to admit what she had seen.
“Let me go, Agent Erikson. Let me go, please!” she said.
He released her instantly. She forgot all about tea and hurried back to her room, closing the door behind her.
Then, just as quickly, she opened her door.
If she saw anything again, anything at all, she was going to scream. She was happy to have the door open, knowing a police officer walked the corridor.
But could a police officer save her from the dead?
Or was Amelia dead? That was it—the whole thing was a hoax. A massive hoax. She’d seen ridiculously expensive things done by Gotcha before. They’d hired a whole crew of actors to pose as police officers; Jackson—hard to believe as it was!—had been coerced to come in on the prank; and in the morning, Amelia and Natalie would be there, laughing at a prank done in the worst taste known to man!
She was overtired; her nerves were completely on edge.
They couldn’t get Jackson Crow in on such a ridiculous scheme, could they?
Jackson was head of the Krewe of Hunters. The Krewe stepped in when the unusual seemed to be part of the horror that was happening.
The unusual...such as ghosts.
No, no, it couldn’t be real. It was smoke and mirrors, it was trickery—it was the magic of film.
She wasn’t even sure what she was doing when she went back out.
The officer in the hall spoke to her. “More tea?” he asked sympathetically.
She ignored him and returned to the kitchen. Thor Erikson was sitting on a rustic stool by the island counter. He looked at her, frowning.
She walked back over to the stove area, tired, and yet suddenly determined that she was going to have the truth—whatever it might be.
“I have to admit, you look good. And them getting Jackson in on it—coup d’état!” she said.
“What?”
“You know, trust me, I’ve been acting for years. I am not a household name, but I love what I do, and I survive at it. If that’s what you’re looking for, there are much better ways to get ahead. How did you come into doing this? You’re really in great shape—that usually means a stripper trying to break into movies. Hey, I have plenty of friends who have tried it for a while—good money, I’ve been told. Allows you lots of time for auditions. But, honestly, using this Gotcha thing to try to break in? What, you’re trying to be a television personality? Whatever, I have had it! This is it—it ends here!”
He stared at her, frowning, his expression confused at first, then incredulous, and then hard and angry.