Chapter Thirty-Four #2
Leaning forward, Alexandra put her hand to Lisa’s forehead, fear climbing up her throat.
Her aunt was still hot—a dry, settled heat that hadn’t shifted since evening and gave no sign of shifting before morning.
But she was quiet, at least. The wet catch had gone out of her breathing and left something shallower and steadier in its place, and Alexandra made herself take that for the small thing it was.
She sat a moment longer with her palm where it was, then stood slowly, not wanting to wake anyone.
She crept out of the room, stepping lightly on her stockinged feet, wincing every time the floor creaked or groaned.
She made her way down the hall, peering in the empty rooms. She wasn’t sure what she was looking for; she just knew that it was something.
It was a sensation like just before a terrible storm would blow in off the water, a kind of prickling all over her skin.
She hadn’t bothered taking a light with her, not wanting to announce her presence and trusting her eyes to adjust. With the house sighing as it cooled in the night air, Alexandra regretted this decision.
Every little noise was an intruder, a burglar, Kevin Black, no, Kevin Black and a dozen of his henchmen…
Hesitantly, Alexandra put one foot on the top of the stairs and bent forward as much as she dared, clutching the banister. She didn’t see anything amiss; the house seemed shut up tight. Even so, she couldn’t shake the cold fingers of fear that had her by the spine.
She came down another step. “What kind of ranch doesn’t keep a dog?” she muttered. “A big mean one that barks at every little twitch.” Speaking aloud seemed to help; it was something to fill the space at least.
She made her way down the rest of the stairs quickly, gripping the banister with both hands, and stood a moment in the silence at the bottom.
She wanted more than anything to tell herself that she was being foolish, but the feeling of being watched would not leave her.
On the tips of her toes, she padded softly around, checking the locks on the doors and the latches on the windows.
By habit, she migrated to the kitchen. The range still gave off slight warmth, not having fully cooled from the day’s work. Alexandra shuffled to the wash basin, not really intending to do anything, but because it was a comforting place to be.
Placing her hands on the rim, she leaned on it, sighing. “You’re just being silly, you know,” she told herself. “All that you’re going to gain from all this creeping about is a sore head in the morning and even more fatigue. You ought to go upstairs and go to sleep, right this instant.”
She didn’t move.
Sighing again, she rolled her eyes. If she was going to be awake, she might as well get a head start on the day’s chores. As she was about to turn from the basin to put on her apron, intending to black the range, something caught her eye out the little window above her.
It wasn’t anything in particular, a flash of something reflecting in the dark between the chicken coop and the goat pen.
There was scrub out beyond that, rough bushes that marked the vague boundary between her domain and the rest of the ranch.
Alexandra stared at the spot, her eyes straining in the dark.
There was no wind, nothing to move the bushes about.
She stared and stared until she thought her eyes would bruise from the effort.
She blinked at last. There it was again—a small, hard glint, there and gone, the moon catching on something out past the goat pen that had no business catching moon.
Metal. And low—about the height of a man’s belt.
The children’s insistence on seeing a ghost took on a whole new tenor.
Then it was gone.
“It could be a bit of tin blown into the scrub,” she told herself. She forced a hard breath into her lungs. “Or a bottle somebody left in the grass. Or a coyote.”
A coyote wearing a belt buckle? the skeptical part of her brain retorted.
“It’s nothing,” she told herself, again and again, like it was a liturgy against anything scary in the dark.
She continued to tell herself that as she lifted Antony’s rifle down from its pegs by the back door and took a seat at the kitchen table with it across her lap, her eyes fixed on the door.
She wasn’t a great shot like her aunt, but she was reasonably confident that she could squeeze a trigger well enough.
She kept her post as the sky lightened. When the sun was peeking up over the horizon, she finally relaxed a little. Stiff from sitting in one attitude for so long, she stood with a groan and laid the rifle on the table. Putting her hands on her hips, she stretched her back.
I’m not sure my nerves were worth a sleepless night, she admitted. You’re going to be a right picture when Aidan comes home. Imagine having to explain to him that you got spooked by a children’s ghost story.
Chuckling at herself, she pulled her boots on at the back door. It was easy to think herself foolish in the light of day. Humming lightly, she stepped outside and took a deep breath. She headed toward the wood pile, then stopped.
Once again, her body knew that something was wrong before her sleep-addled brain could process it.
Slowly, she looked down at the ground. She was very, very familiar with the way that the dirt around the ranch worked these days.
It was soft and dusty, loose except for where it had been packed tightly by constant walking.
Footprints were easily blown away, as happened nearly every night.
She knew a lot about the boots worn around the ranch, too, as she cleaned them pretty regularly.
In the space between the wood pile, the chopping block, and the chickens, the ground was crisscrossed with footprints from a pair of heeled riding boots.