Timeless (4 page)

"And it was so nice seeing you, too," Mindy said, watching Alexandria run across the driveway. She turned and looked around the disheveled room shaking her head. "Kat, Kat, Kat…"

Bran heaved himself effortlessly over the banister, landing evenly on his two feet, t-shirt still in his hand.

"Well," Mindy said, watching him, her gaze like an accusation. "It looks like I got here just in time." She clicked her fingers and the barrier of trash tumbled noisily down the stairs.

"Mindy," Bran said, dragging the t-shirt over his tousled hair. He looked at the pile of trash at the bottom of the stairs. "That was you?"

She nodded. "I thought the girl could do with a head start."

"You look good," he said.

"For my age, you mean? Thirty isn't that bad."

He gave her a knowing look.

"Very well, then, forty."

"No, I—"

"Yes, I'm forty, and you are what, a sixty-something-year-old man forever trapped in an eighteen-year-old body—"

"It isn't everything it's cracked up to be," he retorted. "Look, if you are still angry about—"

"Me and you? Please, that was years ago. I was just a teenager, and as you can see, I'm not a teenager any more. And besides, there have been plenty of men that have turned my head since, lifted these skirts," she said, swishing her long skirts with her hands. "You, my friend, are nothing more than a forgotten childhood memory."

"I'm glad, Mindy. I wouldn't want there to be any bad blood between us."

Mindy looked around the room, shaking her head at memories that echoed the scene before her. "So, what have you done now?" she asked, shaking the girl on the sofa. "Or should I say, whom?"

"It isn’t like that."

Mindy raised her eyebrows. "Well, that would be a first, wouldn't it?" She shook the girl harder. "Wakey, wakey, sweetheart, the party's over. It's time to go home."

The girl moaned and sat up, wiping a string of saliva from her chin. "Really? Already?" She looked about her. "Do you know where my shoes are?" She felt her chest. "My bra. I'm sure I was wearing one…"

Mindy snapped her fingers and held out her hand. "These shoes?" she asked. In her other hand, she held a black bra.

"Yeah. Thanks." She looked up at Mindy. "Who are you, anyway? The cleaner?"

Mindy smiled. "You could say that. I'm forever cleaning up messes around here, it seems. But no, I'm the Aunt."

"Cool. My aunt's dead," the girl said matter-of-factly while slipping into her shoes. She shoved the bra into a bag beside her feet.

"How lucky for her that she doesn't have to see you like this," Mindy said, helping the girl to her feet and guiding her toward the door. Bran, of course, was already gone. "Typical," she mumbled.

"Will you say bye to Kat for me?"

"I will," Aunt Mindy agreed.

"How am I going to get home?" the girl drawled. "My ride's already gone home, with someone else, I might add. Bastard."

"Taxi is already here, dear," Aunt Mindy said, motioning towards the cab that was just pulling up in the drive.

"Oh, thanks."

"Don't mention it." Aunt Mindy closed the door behind her and looked around the disheveled lounge room of the Abbots' mansion. "Kat," she shouted. "Get your skinny butt down here. Now!"

Alexandria drove as fast as she dared, the tall trees that hemmed the road bowing respectfully in her wake as she passed. Turning around a bend in the road, she slowed the car as she passed a girl walking along the side of the road in the shadows cast by the trees. She wore a long, old-fashioned black dress with black leather gloves, and held a black parasol over her head while swinging an old suitcase in her other hand. The girl looked up at Alexandria as she drove past. Their eyes met, and held for a long moment.

Alexandria watched the girl in her rear vision mirror shrinking as the distance between them grew. Any other day, when tears hadn’t streaked her face, Alexandria would have stopped and offered the girl a ride. "I'm sorry," she said apologetically as she turned the next bend and the girl in black disappeared from her sight.

Moments later, Alexandria slammed her foot on the brake. Pulling a tissue from her bag, she dried her tears, blew her nose, then turned the car around. She drove back to the spot where she had last seen the girl, but she was nowhere in sight. She turned the car around again, driving more slowly this time as she headed for home.

Clamenza sat bold upright, waking from a peaceful, revenge-filled sleep, sending an army of flesh-feasting cockroaches spilling onto the ground around her bed. She rubbed her face in her crinkled hands and cursed. "Damn them to the depths of hell," she spat, dragging her old body out of bed. She walked across the small, cave-like room and came to a standstill in front of a painting of her younger self, a young, beautiful woman with long, straight hair the colour of obsidian. A string of marble-sized rubies, a gift from a long dead prince, adorned her forehead.

"Another witch has arrived," she croaked, pulling a shawl tightly around her shoulders. A large, shiny black cockroach scurried onto her foot and she kicked it away. "Not now," she spat.

"That makes three," the painting hissed. "This is becoming a problem."

"Yes," Clamenza agreed. "Two more and the Saken Circle will be complete, and the girl will be more powerful than all her ancestors before her."

"Then I suggest you stop buggering around, or you will be trapped in that decrepit, God-awful body forever."

"And you, the painting," she mumbled, turning away and squashing a slow-moving cockroach under her foot.

Chapter 3 – The Girl In Black.

Alexandria pulled up outside Witchwood, squinting through the windshield at the roof of the house in utter disbelief. She rubbed her eyes, then looked again. Still there, so she was not having a full-blown hallucination; surely that had to be a good thing. There really was a girl sitting up on top of the roof, waving at her in a morose kind of way, and she looked exactly like the girl she'd seen walking along the side of the road.

Alexandria climbed out of the car and shielded her eyes with her hand, Bran momentarily forgotten. "What are you doing up there? Please come down," she shouted in a panicked voice.

The girl stood, her long black dress billowing around her legs. On her lapel was pinned a blood-red rose. She walked confidently down the slope of the roof with ease, not bothering to watch where she was putting her feet.

Alexandria began to relax. "Good. You are doing great."

Suddenly the girl lost her balance and she gasped. Her left foot slipped on a loose tile and she began sliding down the roof at an alarming pace. Alexandria clutched her throat, her heart bounding. "Nooooo," she shrieked.

Then just as suddenly, the girl came to an abrupt halt on the rusty guttering of the house.

Alexandria caught her breath.

Then to Alexandria's complete horror, the girl in black bent her knees, as though she were preparing to jump.

"Nooooo," Alexandria shrieked again, louder this time.

Andrew came storming through the front door, disappearing as soon as the sunlight hit him.

The girl in black smiled, then promptly jumped off the roof...

Alexandria's heart stopped beating, her hands flying up instantly, creating a mountain of white, fluffy pillows to break the girl's fall.

The girl in black dropped like a stone, landing in the centre of the pillows. On impact, an eruption of white feathers exploded into the air, then floated down to the earth like soft snowflakes, obscuring the girl.

"No, no, no, no," Alexandria repeated over and over. She ran through the plume of feathers. Kneeling down, she searched blindly with her hands, feeling for the girl but finding nothing.

Behind her, someone cleared her throat, and Alexandria stood, turning around.

The girl in black stood there, a tight smile on her face.

Alexandria glared at her. "What the hell were you thinking? Why did you do that? You scared the bejesus out of me." She folded her arms, waiting for an answer.

"
B
ejesus, really?" she asked, taking the rose from her lapel and twirling it in her hand.

"Who are you? What are you doing here? What do you want? Did you really try to kill yourself just now?"

"You know all the questions are going to be really annoying, really fast if we are going to reside together? And no, I was not trying to kill myself. The thing is, I've never been afraid of heights. I was in the circus, once, you know. A trapeze artist, in fact, so I am quite adept at landing on my feet from a great height."

"Annoying? Reside together? What are you talking about?"

"Just for your information, repeating everything I say is going to get really annoying, too. Now, let's try this again. This is a boarding house, is it not?"

Alexandria's arms dropped to her sides. "Well, yes. That is the plan. But—"

"But nothing. It is either a boarding house or it is not. The sign in the town centre said it was, so here I am. Do you have an available room in this boarding house of yours?"

Alexandria nodded. "I do. I have one room, but—"

The girl in black glared at her.

"Yes. I have a room," Alexandria said.

"Good," the girl in black said, toying with an antique silver cross hanging on a long chain around her neck. In the center gleamed a blood red, heart-shaped ruby. "I will take it immediately. My name is Nina
Rosenberg
."

"Nice to meet you," Alexandria said with a questioning look. "My name is—"

"I know who you are," Nina said, dismissively. After a short moment she added. "It was on the advertisement. I don't suppose you would be kind enough to show me to my room. I am quite exhausted, and this sunlight is not conducive to my health."

"
You're
exhausted. I'm a wreck, thanks to you and your parlour tricks."

Nina said nothing. However, Alexandria did notice a look of regret on the girl’s face.

"Very well. This way, then," Alexandria said, leading the way to the front door. "Were you really a trapeze artist?"