Chapter 47
“The blaze swept through the Savannah Yacht Club at Whitemarsh Island in the hours just past midnight, destroying at least four yachts and a portion of the dock. So far, no word on possible injuries or the origin of the fire.”
In the Daffodil Room, Ingrid and Miles were lying side by side in Edie’s bed, snuggled under the chenille bedspread, watching the report.
They exchanged wide-eyed looks then turned back to the footage.
In fact, there was the Do Not Disturb on camera now, a smoking, ruined wreck with only the hull still intact.
The interior of it was destroyed, and most of the outside, a sad, charred skeleton.
Ingrid sat up and let out a high-pitched, manic giggle. “Oh my God—”
“Goddess,” Miles corrected.
“I did it!” she crowed. She grabbed Miles, squeezing him until he gasped for breath. “I can’t believe it! The hex worked! It actually worked!”
She released him and jogged in place like a maniacal sprinter, chopping her arms and pumping her legs, then stopped abruptly and lifted her face to the ceiling and yodel-screamed at the top of her lungs.
Miles laughed. “You did it.”
Ingrid’s eyes had gone blank. “She’ll let me back in her life now. It’s a done deal.” She snapped out of her daze and looked at Miles. “I’ve got to shower. Got a few appointments and then …” She inhaled deeply, with anticipation and waved her hands. “Tuesday night family dinner!”
She skipped into the bathroom and slammed the door.
She ran the shower and stared at herself in Edie’s gilt-framed mirror.
As steam billowed around her, the mirror fogged and her reflection blurred until she could no longer see her face.
She reached out with her hand and wiped the condensation away.
Her grandmother’s face looked back at her.
She flinched, but if there was a scream, it died in the back of her throat.
What was happening? She couldn’t move, but she wasn’t afraid.
Not anymore. One tear rose in her eye—Edie’s eye—and slipped down Edie’s cheek.
She reached up and touched it. She felt the wetness between her thumb and middle fingers. Edie’s fingers.
“Edie,” she said in a hoarse whisper. “You came. You’re here.”
Edie looked back at her with a soft, knowing expression.
I was always here, my little one. My Budgie …
Somewhere, from the Edie looking back at her in the mirror, came Ingrid’s voice. “I’m going to have everything, Edie. So soon. Everything I’ve always wanted.”
And what might that be, sweet Budge? Edie’s face looked amused now.
“Friendship, family. Enough money that I won’t ever have to worry again.” Ingrid made Edie’s head nod. Which, for some odd reason, made her laugh. Then Edie spoke again.
And what about the light? Will you have the light?
Edie’s eyes stared into the mirror. Into Ingrid’s eyes.
You’ve strayed from the path—
“I haven’t. I mean, not that far—”
Miles pounded on the door. “You okay in there?”
Ingrid sucked in a lungful of steamy air.
The mirror had fogged again, and she wiped it, but now it was only her own face she saw looking back at her.
White skin wreathed by light brown hair and ears that stuck out.
Spray of pale freckles over her slightly crooked nose and along the line of her upper lip.
This was all in her mind. Just a trick her own mind was playing on her. Edie wasn’t mad at her. She couldn’t be. She understood that Ingrid had done what she had to do.
“I’m fine,” she yelled, and turning, she headed for the shower.
Ingrid decided she would catch Sailor just after predinner cocktails, after she’d had one drink. One drink that would soften her up and lower her defenses and make her open to everything Ingrid was about to say.
But Ingrid had to be careful. If word had gotten out that Jude Etris’s yacht was one of the boats damaged in the fire, people would be hanging around the mansion. Reporters hoping for a comment on the record from him or one of the Loefflers.
She left her house, the straw hat nestled safely in a canvas tote bag. She practiced her speech silently all the way through Taylor Square, across East Gordan toward the Loeffler house. As she approached the house, her breath sped up and her heart hammered.
But there were no reporters. Just the house, rising from the mounds of velvety gardenias in bloom around it.
A queen on her majestic throne. Ingrid noticed, as if for the first time, the masses of jasmine that twined around the iron fence and foundation of the house.
The tendrils of glossy English ivy, which had made its way up to the second story.
She noticed for the first time the cracks there, in the plaster, one running almost all the way up to the roof.
Smaller cracks branched off it, and she thought of the old Edgar Allan Poe short story Edie had assigned her to read when she was a kid, The Fall of the House of Usher.
She climbed the wide front steps that led to the looming double doors of the house and turned the knob, pushing open one of the heavy doors. The front hall was cool and dim, and the air smelled like roast chicken and … well, money.
She heard voices in the second drawing room to the right. Male voices. Rill. Cas. Jude. And now she heard footsteps coming into the hall. Sailor’s voice—“I’ll let them know”—talking to Freddie or Sarita back in the kitchen where she’d be collecting the limes and olives for the drinks.
Sailor stopped just at the carved newel post, tray of garnishes in her hand, and regarded Ingrid with a mixture of surprise and iciness.
She looked coolly elegant in white trouser jeans, crisp, blue button-down and loafers.
Ingrid straightened, smoothing her dress, pushing her hair behind her shoulders.
She held the tote bag in both hands like a shield.
“Who let you in?” Sailor asked, and then without waiting for a reply said, “Please don’t make me throw you out, Ingrid. I’m really not up for it.”
She looked tired, Ingrid thought. There were shadows under her eyes. In the light of the entry hall, Sailor looked eerily like Scoot.
“How is your mother?” Ingrid asked.
Sailor set the tray on a console table and began to mix drinks for her family. Rill’s Dark and Stormy first, Ingrid noticed. “I don’t know. I haven’t been to visit her … yet.”
Ingrid swallowed. “I’m so sorry.”
“Yes. Me, too.” She slumped, hands in her pockets, but she didn’t call out to everyone in the drawing room. Ingrid took this as a good sign.
“I could go with you, if you wanted. To see her.”
Sailor scoffed as she started on Cas’s drink. “No, thanks.”
“Okay, that’s fine,” Ingrid said quickly. “I just came here because I wanted to give you something.”
Sailor’s face took on a guarded expression.
“I heard about Jude’s boat. The fire.”
Sailor said nothing.
“Do they know who started it?”
Sailor cleared her throat carefully, pouring gin into a tumbler.
“They think it might’ve been faulty wiring in the boat next to Jude’s and somehow it spread.
The security system on the boat must’ve been destroyed in the fire and the security guy actually forgot to hook up the system last night so it didn’t record. ”
Ingrid straightened. Thank Goddess. She hadn’t even thought of that.
“He’s been fired. He might be charged with negligence.” Her voice was hollow.
Ingrid pushed away the jab of guilt and shifted, gripping the straps of the tote. “I need to talk to you about something. About the fire.”
Sailor cocked her head. “Do you know something about it?”
“No.” Ingrid took an involuntary step backward. “No. I just … well, that’s not true.”
Sailor’s face drained of color. “What?”
“I do … actually … know something about it.”
Sailor advanced on Ingrid, lifted a finger to her face. “If you had anything, anything at all to do with this, I will make sure you never, ever see the light of day again.” Venom dripped from her voice.
“Sailor, no. It’s just something very strange happened to me yesterday, and I think I should tell you.”
“What?” She had Sailor’s full attention now.
“It was around lunch, right after one of my appointments. I was in my altar room. I was doing a healing ritual. And that’s when I got this … sort of … download.”
“Download.” Sailor narrowed her eyes.
“Yes, like this intense knowing. It happens sometimes when—”
Sailor made an impatient face. “I remember, Ingrid.”
“Right. It’s just … this one was so strong. So powerful. I just knew that something bad was going to happen. To Jude.”
Sailor frowned.
“I didn’t know if it meant he was going to get sick or be hurt in some way. Maybe it was more that something bad was going to happen around him. I wasn’t sure, so I just kept meditating and calling in the light.” Ingrid looked at her expectantly.
“And?”
“Eventually I saw a boat. The Do Not Disturb. And I saw fire.”
Sailor’s eyes flashed fear, then disbelief. “You did not.”
Ingrid nodded. “I did. So I called you.”
Sailor was quiet.
“I left a message and then I called Jude. When I couldn’t get either of you, I went to the yacht club. To his boat, and took something off of it … the hat his wife—”
“Stop right there!” The finger was up again and dangerously close to Ingrid’s nose.
Sailor trembled with anger. “Ingrid? So help me, if I find out you are connected in any capacity to this fire—a devastating fire that destroyed three boats and damaged two more—and you haven’t marched your silly little psychic ass over to Bull and Habersham and told the police everything you know, then I will destroy you. ”
“That’s the thing,” Ingrid said quickly. “I didn’t know-know anything, I just felt it.”
Sailor rolled her eyes. “You need to get out, right now.” She spun Ingrid around and pushed her toward the door. Ingrid stumbled and turned back.
“Sailor, just let me—”
“Get out!” Sailor pushed her again but this time, Ingrid shoved her back. She dropped the tote, more in an effort to fend off Sailor’s swinging hand now, when Jude, Cas, and Rill ran into the room.
Ingrid felt a sting and she stumbled, stars swimming into her vision. She caught herself and straightened. Touched her cheek and looked at Sailor. Sailor was panting, red-faced.
“I swear to God I’ll do it again if you don’t leave,” Sailor gasped. “Don’t push me, Ingrid!”
“What the hell—” Rill shouted.
“Sailor!” the voice boomed.
Everything slowed down as all eyes turned to Jude. In one hand he was holding the canvas tote that he’d picked up off the floor. In the other, the straw hat. He was looking at Sailor. “What is this?” Jude faced Ingrid, holding out the hat. “Where did you get this?”
Ingrid was suddenly breathless. Her cheek burned where Sailor had slapped her. “I …” She looked quickly at Cas, then Rill. They both stared at her, uncomprehendingly.
Sailor cut in. “She says she saved this from the boat. Before the fire. Because she had some kind of psychic feeling.” Her voice was disdainful.
Jude turned to look at Ingrid. “Is that true?”
Ingrid nodded wordlessly. “I don’t know how to explain it, but I felt like I was supposed to save it. Before something bad happened.”
“Bad like what, specifically?” Jude asked.
Ingrid shook her head, feeling everyone’s eyes on her. “I didn’t know for sure, but when I was doing a ritual, I saw fire.” She held his gaze. “I tried to call you, but you didn’t answer.”
“Why didn’t you leave a message? ‘Um, hello there. Your boat is about to catch fire.’”
“I did.”
Jude pulled out his phone and scrolled then tapped a button. Ingrid’s voice, hesitant and tinny, came from the phone.
“Hi, Jude? I’m sorry to bother you. It’s Ingrid …
White. I know this is going to sound really strange, but today I had this feeling …
this sense … that something might happen to the boat.
Your boat. It’s just that … I saw fire, is the thing.
And I don’t know if it’s like literal fire or something else, but I couldn’t just ignore it.
I had to let you know so you could … I don’t know …
go check on things maybe? Okay. That’s all. Take care. Bye.”
The room was silent. Ingrid glanced quickly at Cas. He caught her eye then looked at the floor.
Sailor glared at Jude. “You could’ve told me.”
He shrugged. “Sorry. I don’t listen to voicemails from numbers I don’t recognize.”
Ingrid held her breath.
Sailor turned to her, arms folded. “Did you also happen to get a download about how the fire started?”
“No. I’m sorry.” Ingrid hesitated. “When I went to get the hat, I didn’t see anything unusual. I just … knew I had to save something that important … to you both.”
Jude turned back to Sailor. He held the hat out to her. “I think it’s pretty obvious what’s happened here, darling. Ingrid took a risk here and did something really meaningful for us.”
Sailor stepped to him. She took the hat, turned it around in her hands. She seemed to be fighting something within herself, but then she made a snuffling sound, and Ingrid realized she was trying not to cry.
Jude draped his arm around Sailor. “Let’s calm down, why don’t we? Invite Ingrid in for a drink and supper. You two can kiss and make up and be friends again, yeah? And I can get my fiancée back.”
“Sounds good to me,” Rill said mildly.
Jude gave Ingrid a saucy wink, but she saw something more behind it. A real, deep gratitude. She turned questioning eyes to Sailor, and, after a moment of hesitation, all the anger and resistance seemed to seep out of her. She moved to Ingrid and took her hand.
“I’m sorry,” she managed. Her eyes were red and now swimming in tears. “Thank you. I’ve missed you.”
“I’ve missed you, too.” Meeting Sailor’s gaze, Ingrid’s eyes filled reflexively.
Sailor didn’t say any more, but she held tight to Ingrid’s hand as they walked toward the sitting room. And at last, Ingrid allowed herself to catch Cas’s eye. He was smiling.