Now You See Her (14 page)

“I see your lawyer told you about my new terms,” he said coolly, taking a seat and leaning back, hooking his hands behind his head. His dark eyes were unreadable.

She took a seat across the desk from him and cut right to the chase. “Sweeney's been having problems with her painting for quite a while now,” she said. “She finally brought some of her new work in yesterday, but she's very uncertain about it. I told her it was wonderful, of course, but the truth is, I may have a difficult time selling any of it.”

His expression didn't so much as flicker. “And you're telling me this because . . . ?”

Damn him, could she have been wrong? No, she couldn't have been, and she hated him for making her feel uncertain.

“I know you, darling. I saw how you were looking at her.” As if he wanted to fuck her right then, right in front of everyone, Candra thought with sudden viciousness. Jealousy seared her, and she pushed it away.

“With my eyes?” he suggested mildly.

“Don't be witty, please. I can destroy her career. I wouldn't enjoy doing it—I really like Sweeney—but if it's necessary ...” She shrugged.

“And I can replace you at the gallery tomorrow, if necessary.” Eyes narrowed, he leaned forward. His expression wasn't impassive now; it was so grim she
found herself drawing back from him. “If you do the slightest thing to harm Sweeney's career, hell will freeze over before you get a dime from me.”

“So I was right,” she managed to say, but inwardly she was alarmed. Somehow, she hadn't expected him to counter her threats with more of his own.

“Are you?”

“Why else would you care?”

“I can think of several reasons why I wouldn't give in to blackmail,” he said.

She wished he hadn't used that word. She paled slightly. “I wouldn't call it
that.”

“What would you call it? If I pay up, you'll refrain from ruining a career. That sounds remarkably like extortion to me.” He got up and seized her by the arm, forcing her up from the chair. “Get out.”

“Richard, wait!”

“I said get out.” He propelled her toward the door, past the astonished faces of his two assistants. Embarrassment turned her face dark red.

She jerked her arm free and whirled to face him. “I'll make you regret treating me like this,” she said in a voice clogged with angry tears.

“Sign the papers,” he said, opening the door and ushering her out.
“Or you'll
regret it.”

C
HAPTER
    E
IGHT

S
weeney moved restlessly around her studio, studying canvases without really seeing them. What did it matter anyway? She seemed to have lost the ability to judge her own work, but Candra was enthusiastic, so all she could do at this point was take the completed pieces to the gallery and go from there.

She had looked up the address for David and Jacob Stokes, attorneys-at-law, and mailed the sketch of their father to them, along with a note of condolence. Then she had spent the rest of the day working, just working, automatically applying paint to canvas and not even thinking about what she was doing.

A lot of disturbing things had happened to her in the past year, and for the most part, she thought she had handled them with remarkable composure.

Though she hadn't been able to find any logical explanation, such as having a near-death experience or being struck by lightning, for why she had suddenly become able to see ghosts, at least she had found references to countless other people who claimed the same ability. She had to believe them, because why would anyone claim to see spirits if they didn't? It wasn't exactly something you wanted on an application for employment.

But in all the books on paranormal subjects she had read, she hadn't found anything to explain that death scene she had painted. She didn't remember painting it, so she had to assume she had been sleepwalking and had done the painting in her sleep. When she had gone out to mail the sketch she had stopped by the library and checked out some books on sleepwalking, but she hadn't had a chance to read them yet. She had flipped through one, though, and found the explanation that people who walked in their sleep were often under stress.

Well, duh. Like seeing ghosts was supposed to be relaxing. But she had been seeing ghosts for a year, and the night the old vendor died was the first time she had ever sleepwalked. The books didn't even have chapters on sleep-
painting.

But that wasn't even what bothered her most. Guessing the questions to the
Jeopardy!
answers before she knew anything more than the categories was a little annoying, but not alarming. Anyone who had watched the show for years, as she had, was familiar with the categories and possible answers, and could guess right occasionally. Her success rate
was a lot higher than that, like one hundred percent, but at least she could rationalize that.

She couldn't rationalize painting in her sleep, especially not the death scene of a man she hadn't known had died. That wasn't just chance, that was ... weird. Strange. Spooky.

Who was she kidding? She knew the word that applied, having come across it a lot in her research on ghosts.

Clairvoyant.

She kept fighting down a sense of panic. This frightened her more than anything else that had ever happened to her. She had thought her situation was static, but instead it seemed to be intensifying, with new situations being thrown at her just as she thought she had a handle on the old ones. She had even adjusted to seeing ghosts, though that was neither amusing nor enjoyable, like her effect on traffic signals and the growth of plants. The constant cold wasn't enjoyable either, but she had decided that came with the ghosts.

Jeopardy!
she realized, had probably just signaled the beginning of clairvoyance. She was terrified that the ugly death-scene painting was just the next step in a progression that would have her foreseeing massacres, plane crashes, famines, and plagues. What did it matter that her plants were beautiful, when mentally she would live with constant death and suffering? The part of painting she loved most was the creation of beauty, and this development threatened to take that away from her.

She had always enjoyed her solitude, but now for
the first time she wished she didn't live alone. Even a cat or a dog would be better than this sense of being completely on her own, with no one to turn to for help.

She could always call Richard.

The temptation was almost overpowering. He would hold her as he had before, and she could sleep, warm and safe, in his arms. She had never before felt that way with anyone, certainly not her parents. She had grown up knowing she had to handle things herself, that there was no soft, comforting lap in which she could rest. Not that Richard's lap had been soft; she had a very clear memory of exactly how hard he had been. Nor had his lap been particularly comforting. But she had felt secure, and . . . and cherished. Or at least desired.

She couldn't call him. She had been right to send him away, and her reasons for doing so still existed. She knew her views on morality were much more stringent than was generally held to be normal, but after seeing the harm done by her parents' indiscriminate infidelities, the wonder was she hadn't entered a convent. She was more than a little startled by Richard's desire for her, but she was absolutely astounded by her own desire for him. That had never happened before, and she wasn't certain of her ability to resist it. The urge to lie down with him was so potent she could feel her insides tighten now, just thinking about him. With Richard around, she thought, she would never be cold again. Every time she felt a chill, she could crawl into his lap and let him warm her, maybe from the inside out.

Whoa! She had to stop that line of thinking right now, or she'd be on the phone before she knew it. But she had a very clear vision of herself astride him, his mouth spreading kisses over her breasts and his big hands gripping her hips as he moved her up and down—

Oh, damn. Stop it, she admonished herself. There were serious problems in her life, and she was letting herself get distracted into thinking about Richard. Mother Nature had rigged the game in her favor, making sexual attraction so damn fascinating that once you felt it, you couldn't tune it out. On the other hand, thinking about Richard, picturing him naked, was a lot more pleasant than thinking about death and clairvoyance.

She admitted to herself that she had half-expected him to call or stop by that day. If she read him correctly, and she thought she did, his middle name was persistence. Even though he had agreed to lay off, he had also promised that this thing between them, whatever it was, wasn't over.
I'll be back,
he'd said, and she knew he meant it. The question was, how long would he lay off and when would he be back? To her shame, she had hoped to see him today.

But no one had rung her doorbell all day long, and bedtime was fast approaching. She hadn't slept well the night before—she'd been edgy after the morning's encounter with Richard and the afternoon's encounter with the vendor's ghost—but even though she was tired, she didn't want to go to bed. She was afraid to sleep, she realized, afraid she
would sleepwalk or go into a trance, or whatever had happened, and paint another death scene. She had always loved sleeping, and now that pleasure was being stolen from her. That thought made her mad as hell, and it scared her. Most of all, it scared her.

Fear was something she had seldom known in her life, at least as an adult. Once as a child she had spent two days alone, because her father had taken her brother with him on some shoot and her mother had gone to a party and forgotten to come home, and she had been very scared then. She had been only nine years old and afraid they had all left her behind and were never coming home. And once, when she was fourteen, one of her mother's many lovers—his name was Raz, she would never forget that name—had agreed with her mother that Sweeney was old enough to learn about sex.

Fortunately they had both been so drunk that Sweeney was able to pull away and run, her heart pounding so hard in her chest that she had been afraid she would pass out and then they would have her. She had run down to the basement of the apartment building and hidden in the laundry, knowing her mother would never think of looking there, having never set foot in the place. She huddled between a washing machine and the wall for what seemed like hours, afraid to go back go the apartment in case Raz was waiting for her. Finally, growing more disgusted than afraid, she had loosed the handle from a mop and, armed with the handle, returned to the apartment. She didn't like hiding in the laundry; she was going back to her room and the comfort of
her books and paints, and if anyone bothered her, she would hit them on the head as hard as she could.

Over the years she had developed the habit of confronting problems rather than hiding from them, but in the current case neither seemed to do any good. How could you confront something so nebulous? Clairvoyance wasn't something you could see, or touch. It was just
there,
like blue eyes; you either had them or you didn't. Same with clairvoyance.

Having blue eyes didn't frighten her, but clairvoyance did. In itself it was scary enough, but now, looking back, she saw everything that had happened in the past year as a progression, from plants to red lights to ghosts to clairvoyance. Looking at it that way, she didn't dare try to guess what would be next. Levitation? Or maybe she would start setting things on fire just by looking at them.

She tried to be amused, but for once her sense of humor wasn't working.

But wandering around the studio afraid to go to bed did remind her of hiding in the laundry when she was fourteen, and she growled aloud at herself. Nothing had happened the night before, and just because the more she thought about the trance painting the more worried she became didn't mean it would happen every night. It might not happen again for a long time, until someone else she knew died—

That was it.
A lot of people died every day in New York, but none of their deaths had caused sleepwalking forays. She had known the hot dog vendor, however,
so his death had disturbed her on a subconscious level.

For the first time, she wondered how he had died. After she had seen him yesterday, she had been too shocked to think about it, and he had looked as healthy as any ghost she had ever seen. But in the scene she had painted, blood had been coming from his nostrils, and he had clearly suffered a head injury. Had he been hit by a car or maybe fallen down some steps? Just how accurate was that painting?

Sweeney shivered. She didn't want to know the answer to that last question.

She shivered again and realized how cold she was. She was also very tired, very sleepy, and she was not going to stay awake a minute longer worrying about things she couldn't control. She put on her pajamas and crawled into the warm bed, curling into a ball and waiting for the heat from the electric blanket to seep into her flesh.

Just before she slept, she had the drowsy thought that if Richard were in bed with her, she wouldn't need an electric blanket to keep her warm.

*   *   *

Just after midnight she gasped, pulling in a hard, fast breath. She pushed restlessly at the covers, fighting the blankets. She muttered, the sounds indistinct, and rolled her head as if trying to escape something.

In the silence of the night her sudden cessation of breathing was as noticeable as her gasping had been. For a long moment she lay utterly still, then breath returned on a long, slow, gentle inhalation.

She opened her eyes and sat up. Pushing the heavy cover aside, she got out of bed and walked soundlessly through the apartment. When she reached her studio, she put a blank canvas on an easel, stood for a moment with her head cocked to the side as if pondering her next step, then selected a tube of paint and began.