Chapter Thirty-Nine
It was the throbbing in her head that told Willow she was still alive, a deep ache blooming from her left temple as her consciousness swam to the surface.
For a few minutes, she lay still, testing fingers and toes to see if they would move; that was when the pain began stretching its tendrils down to her lower back.
She was lying on her side, hands and feet bound by something thin and tight.
Everything hurt—head, back, wrists, and ankles too.
She felt woozy and slow, but she wasn’t sure if it was from the bump to her head or the needle jab in her neck.
She forced crusty eyelids to open, trying to focus on her surroundings.
There was not much to see; the wall of gray stone inches from her eyes blocked her vision.
Listening hard in the silence, she heard a woman’s voice, muffled and indistinct, from what sounded like a room or two away.
Trying not to groan aloud, she forced herself to roll over.
She was in the front room of Cameron House; someone had dragged her to the fireplace and left her there. Through the archway, she could see the foyer and the open library doors. She cursed inwardly; she’d forgotten to relock the library after leaving through the hidden second-floor exit.
Willow wriggled herself into a seated position, wincing every time she moved her head; now she could see the heavy-duty plastic zip ties around her ankles, and she guessed her wrists were similarly bound.
She was weak and exhausted. Sleep, she thought. Maybe I’ll go back to sleep, and this will all go away.
“You mustn’t, you know,” Peter Talbot said, seated cross-legged on the floor beside her, his gray fedora on the couch next to the brightly embroidered pillow. “You need to get free. You’re strong enough. You can do it.”
Willow gave her head a little shake, forcing herself to focus.
At first, he seemed a little hazy, as though he had wrapped himself in sea mist and carried it into the house with him, but then he stabilized and was fully there, gray pin-striped suit as neat as ever.
Handsome as any film star, with the saddest eyes she had ever seen. Sue’s father.
She opened her mouth to ask a practical question—something helpful, like how much time there was, or what Audra was planning, but instead, she heard herself asking softly, “What happened? That night, when you—the night of your car accident. What happened?”
She didn’t see him move, but now he stood next to Effie’s chair, looking out the window at the sea.
“That night.” He faltered, as though not wanting to push the words out, but continued.
“Marisa had told me that afternoon that we were going to have a baby. She hadn’t been to the doctor yet, but she knew; all the signs were there.
She told Geralt as well; he was like a brother to her, the big brother she never had. ”
He looked back to Willow. “We went out. To celebrate. My brother and me. We had too much to drink. Geralt was in better shape than I was, so he took the wheel. I remember a bright light and a crashing sound, and I don’t …
I don’t remember much after that. I remember Marisa’s tears; I remember trying to stop her when she frantically packed her things and left the island.
” He shrugged, almost apologetically. “She couldn’t see me, you understand. ”
Willow felt her heart breaking along with his. All this time, he was waiting for his Marisa to come back—his bride from Away. She couldn’t see him. And she never returned.
“Geralt could see me,” Peter continued, “and hear me, but he was convinced I was his guilty conscience tormenting him. In the end, I suppose I drove him away as well. He left the island for years, never coming home to this house. I think he still blames himself for what happened.” He shook his head sadly.
“I wish I could convince him otherwise.”
You might have the chance sooner than you know, Willow thought.
Peter said, gently but urgently, “Willow, there’s not much time. You have to get out of this. Don’t let her beat you.”
“But … she’s his daughter, isn’t she? Your niece? Doesn’t she have as much right—”
“Willow, listen,” he interrupted; he was seated beside her again, his face close to hers. “Understand. Joel explained to you, didn’t he, how the house needs a living Cameron heir to sustain the ongoing life of the family?”
She nodded.
“Here’s what Joel didn’t say,” he continued.
“In fact, I’m not sure he even knows himself; it’s not only about genetics and lineage.
It’s more than blood. It has to do with responsibility and understanding and acceptance.
” He looked at her sadly. “Susan didn’t know, you see,” he said sadly. “Who she was, that she belonged here.”
“Effie never told her?” Willow asked.
Peter glanced to the front of the room, to the rocking chair by the bay window. From it, a woman’s voice, quavery with age and self-recrimination, quietly spoke a single syllable: “No.”
Willow turned her head in surprise. There was Effie Cameron at last, sitting in her chair, rocking gently; the embroidered pillow was somehow back on the floor beside her. “I meant to tell her; I wanted her to know everything, but there wasn’t time. I ran out of time,” the old woman said forlornly.
Willow looked at the dented pillow and understood at last. No, Willow thought fiercely, someone took away your time.
Peter said, “Susan didn’t know she was my child, my blood, so she never saw herself as anything more than a placeholder, someone whose job it was to look for the next, ‘real’ Cameron heir.
She never—” His voice choked a little; he cleared his throat and went on.
“She never let herself truly believe she belonged anywhere. We all hoped getting married would help her settle in and find her place, but…” Peter sighed again.
He looked back at Willow, his gaze reaching deep inside her.
“I wanted to be a proper father to her, but I wasn’t there. Just as—”
He broke off as, from the library, the sound of pacing feet and books being hurled to the floor grew closer. “There’s no more time,” Effie said sharply. She pulled herself to her feet and faced Willow. “We can’t help you much, not yet. But remember: You’re stronger than she is. You have to fight.”
Willow’s face clouded. “But I don’t know where—”
“Don’t you, though?” Effie interrupted. “I imagine you do; you just don’t realize it yet. But first, you have to stay alive.”
Peter nodded. Taking Willow’s shoulders in his strong hands, he said intently, “Aunt Effie is right. Fight for what’s yours. Claim it. Claim it, and no one can ever take it away.”
A sad smile, a quick nod, and he was gone.
Effie opened her mouth to speak but stopped when she saw the embroidered pillow on the floor, with its face-shaped depression in one side. She shook her head and picked it up, placing it almost absentmindedly back on the sofa where Willow had placed it only days ago.
She doesn’t remember, Willow realized. She doesn’t remember how she died.
Then Effie was gone as well. In the same instant, the pillow was back in its spot on the floor beside the rocking chair.
Effie might not remember, Willow realized, but the house did. She wasn’t sure whether that was comforting or not.
But Effie and Peter had been right—the time for thought was past; she needed to act.
Willow’s eyes darted around the room frantically, looking for anything she could use to break the zip ties; heavy-duty as they were, they were still plastic.
“Too bad they couldn’t have sent me a ghost whose talisman is a Swiss Army knife,” she muttered under her breath.
Her eye caught on the granite hearthstone, its sharp corner showing rough fragments of quartz and feldspar.
Not a knife, but it had potential. She shifted as quietly as she could, rubbing the plastic tie back and forth across the stone like a saw, scraping her hands several times in the process.
After what seemed like forever, Willow felt the edge of the plastic begin to shred; she continued until it broke, and her hands were freed.
She managed the same maneuver on her ankle ties, praying Audra was busy enough wherever she was to leave her a few more minutes.
Willow pulled herself woozily to her feet, bracing herself on the couch as the room spun around her; whatever drug Audra had injected her with—probably the same one she had used to subdue Sue—was still in her system.
She managed to make her silent way around to the foyer archway; she looked rapidly into the hall and up the steps, but there was no one there.
She tiptoed her way across the foyer to the library door itself.
She didn’t dare peek around the doorjamb, but she at least could hear better now.
Audra was at the other end of the library, far enough away that Willow could only catch a few words at a time: “What she’s doing here?
I have no idea, but…” followed by several seconds of obscurity.
The pattern continued: “—in the library now, but earlier … the desk. Yeah, Sue’s, and she left it a mess …
looking for the same thing we … I don’t know, love, the body count is starting to concern me …
wait, you think?” The footsteps were coming back in her direction, closer to the door.
“On her? How? She’s only been here four days. ”
Who was Audra talking to?
Audra was moving away again, her remaining words even more muffled. “—think she knows … Hank … revenge for … maybe…” Then a low laugh, warm and seductive, completely at odds with the mild-mannered persona that was all Willow had ever seen.
But whoever Audra’s partner was, he wasn’t here.
Yet. This might be Willow’s only chance to escape.
Audra had moved away from the doorway, and Willow took the opportunity to swiftly make her way down the hall, into the kitchen, and out the back door.
The wind gusted violently around her; she held up her hand against the nearly horizontal swirls of rain pelting the porch and threatening to blind her, and hurried down the back steps.
Where she ran headlong into a shadowy figure in a hooded raincoat, going the other way.