Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea (12 page)

I went through an intense Agatha Christie phase when I was fourteen. 

Luke glared at me.“Now you’re just pissing me off.Stop being eccentric,Vi.It wasn’t cute when you were younger and now it’s just plain disturbed.
This
is why you don’t have any friends.” 

“Speaking of,” I said, “can you clear some of your many, many friends out of the attic,Luke? It’s getting so crowded up here.” 

River leaned back into the couch and put his hands behind his head.He was grinning.My fighting with Luke amused him, I guess, though I felt a bit ashamed about it myself. Not that it would stop me the next time. 

“Wasn’t Robert Johnson the blues singer who brought his guitar to the crossroads at midnight and sold his soul to the Devil for the learning of it?”River asked a moment later. 

“Yeah,that’s him,”I answered.“Man makes a deal with the Devil. It’s a Faustian myth—a classic. Johnson said it was true, apparently. But I guess the Devil collected early and dragged Johnson down to hell before he’d even reached thirty.” 

“
Faust.
We all know you’re a smug bookworm, sister. Stop showing off.” 

“Stop
fighting,
” Sunshine scolded again. “Both of you. It interrupts my flirting.” 

“I wish people would spread a Faustian rumor about me.” I leaned over and knocked Sunshine’s hand out of Luke’s hair. “A Faustian myth,” I repeated. “It’s so much more interesting than just being that nouveau-poor blond girl who lives in a big house with nobody but her jackass brother with pecs bigger than his brain. Sunshine, if I ever disappear, please tell people that I ran after the Devil, trying to get my soul back.” 

Sunshine batted her sleepy eyes at me.“Whatever,Vi.” 

Next to me, River took off Jack’s cap and rumpled his hair. Jack slowly opened his blue eyes. 

“So . . . aren’t you supposed to be somewhere?” River asked him. “You’ve been running around a cemetery for the last two days. Doesn’t anyone care where you are?” 

Jack rubbed one eye,not looking at River.“My mom left when I was a baby. And my dad is . . . working. Nobody cares where I am.”Jack looked up at River then,his freckled face serious as usual. “Are you going to show me how you did the magic now?” 

River stood up. “Time to take this kid home.” 

I nodded. River leaned over me, wrapped his fingers around my neck, and pulled my ear to his lips.“I’ll make you dinner when I get back,and afterward,I’ll be answering questions,” he whispered. 

River kissed my earlobe. And my whole body started tingling with something exotic and foreign and bittersweet and kind of world-shaking. I went speechless from it, as I suppose he knew I would. 

R
iver and Jack left, and Sunshine followed Luke to his bedroom. I went outside to watch the night sky and wait for River to get back. 

I sat out there, listening to the waves beat themselves against the rocks below, and the pine needles rustle on the trees, and tried to ignore the chill that was building back up inside me. A suspicious, River-lying, Devil chill. 

And then a squeal pierced through the peaceful night sounds. 

It sounded like Sunshine. And it was coming from the direction of Luke’s bedroom window. 

I contemplated going up there and putting a stop to the squealing,but I didn’t feel like having my brother yell at me. 

The minutes passed. My River chill grew worse. So did the squealing. I got to my feet and followed the sound of Sunshine’s laughter to my brother’s room on the third floor. 

I opened Luke’s door without knocking. I didn’t even care that much what I would walk in on, which shows what kind of mood I was in.“What’s going on in here?”I shouted, loudly, like some stupid character in some stupid play. 

Silence.Luke and Sunshine were sitting on the floor of his bedroom, fully clothed. 

“We found an old Ouija board in the attic,” Sunshine said. She flipped her brown hair over her round shoulder.“Your brother is trying to convince me the Citizen is haunted.” 

Luke crossed his arms and glared at me. “Don’t you knock? You hypocrite.” But he wasn’t really mad. I could tell, because his green-brown eyes were sort of laughing. 

My anger fizzled. 

Luke’s bedroom looked like an Edward Hopper painting.It used to be our grandfather’s study.The Citizen had plenty of spare bedrooms (seven or eight—I could never remember), but Luke liked the study the best. Probably because of its inherent manliness,what with the wood paneling and the bookshelves and the art deco black leather couch and the hint of cigar smoke that never seemed to leave. So when Luke turned fifteen, he and Dad replaced Grandpa’s desk with a bed. 

I sat down between Sunshine and Luke on the green Turkish carpet, right underneath a leather-bound row of Dickens novels (that I’m sure Luke had never opened) and in front of several blank canvases, all sizes. 

I looked at the Ouija board.“Where was it in the attic?” 

“At the bottom of one of the wardrobes.” Sunshine shivered, in an obvious way. “We contacted a spirit. A girl. She fell into the sea and drowned when she was ten years old,and now she floats around the Citizen,watching all of us.” Sunshine’s sleepy eyes grew large.“Scary, huh?” 

“Since when do you believe in ghosts, Sunshine?” I asked, allowing more contempt to sneak into my voice than I probably should have. Sunshine thought that boys liked girls who were easily scared. And hell, maybe she was right. If a boy could get a girl squealing, maybe she would crawl into his arms for comfort. And once she was in his arms, second base was probably right around the corner. 

“Vi,isn’t there a small painting of one of our dead relatives hanging in the ballroom, some blond-haired girl?” 

I caught my brother’s eye. “Yeah. Her name was True. She was Freddie’s daughter . . .Dad’s younger sister.Freddie never talked about her, but Dad told me that she drowned when she was a girl.” I paused. “Dad must have told you too. Apparently.” 

Luke threw his hands up in the air. “I’ve never heard of her before now. I swear. She spoke to us through the Ouija board.” He nudged it with his knee and the pointer shifted in an ominous kind of way. 

I stared my brother down, but his innocent expression didn’t falter.“Fine. Let’s go to the ballroom.” 

The ballroom was now the family art gallery. No one had danced on the gorgeous hardwood floors in years,excepting the time my parents brought down the record player from the attic late one night and decided to teach me and Luke some of the flowing debutante dances my mother had learned, back when she was a coiffed, rouged, beautiful southern belle, and not my long-haired artist mother who never wore makeup but always had paint underneath her fingernails and Degas on her mind. 

My parents started off teaching us the steps,but ended up dancing with each other, me and Luke sitting on the floor, watching them slide up and down the ballroom hardwood until dawn arrived. 

That was one of my good memories. 

“It’s over there,” I said, pointing to the portrait in the far corner. The walls were covered in paintings. Most had been done by my parents, or their artist friends, but a few had been around since the beginning.Freddie,being rich, intelligent, and charming, had known her share of paintsplattering people. There were over a dozen portraits of her, done by various men and women. Most featured Freddie when she was young, her bright blue eyes beaming with derring-do and looking like they’d shine forever. 

But, of course, they hadn’t. 

My dad hung Freddie’s portraits high up, almost too high to see. Probably because she was nude in most of them, and he didn’t dig looking at his mother naked, day in and day out. 

Sunshine, Luke, and I gazed at True’s portrait. I hadn’t turned on the ballroom lights, because the three chandeliers hadn’t worked in years, but the moon came through the windows, and Luke had a small flashlight in his pocket that he’d found in the attic, and we could see all right. The portrait was a small thing, only some six inches square, and stuck between an early Chagallesque painting by my mother and a stoic portrait of my grandfather Lucas White, complete with cigar and flowered lapel.True was very young.Just a girl,with yellow, yellow hair, like me, and fair skin, and pink cheeks, and a faraway, fairy-tale look in her eyes. The style was pastel impressionistic, down to the soft blue dress she was wearing, which exactly matched the color of her blue eyes, and which contrasted nicely with the two red poppies she clutched, one in each hand. 

“She said she was watching out for you,” Sunshine whispered. She took the flashlight from Luke and shined it on the painting. “The Ouija board spelled it out, plain as day. She said that she watches you and Luke.” 

I had goose bumps now. Big fat ones. Hell, I believed in Luke’s ability to bullshit more than I believed in ghosts, but still. I glanced at him and back at Sunshine. “Did the board say anything else?” 

River had found us by this time. He snuck into the ballroom like a shadow and came up behind me.“What’s going on?” he asked. 

I leaned into him,so my back touched his chest.“Luke’s trying to scare Sunshine with a Ouija board. It’s such a teenager cliché.I feel like I’m in an Agatha Christie mystery. Prepare yourself for the board to predict one of our murders next.” 

Luke turned around and glared at me. “I can’t believe you aren’t taking this seriously, sister.” He pointed at the painting.“True spoke to us.She’s trying to warn us.Something bad is about to happen.” 

Sunshine nodded,unable to take her eyes off the painting. “Yeah.The board spelled out:
BE CAREFUL. SOMEONE IS COMING.
That was right before you flew through the door,Vi, shouting. Pretty darn scary.” 

Sunshine pulled her gaze away from the portrait and shivered again. Luke put his arms around her. She smiled, tucked herself deeper into his shoulder, and winked at me. 

I looked at Luke. “
Be careful? Someone is coming?
That’s just vague enough to be terrifying. Good job, brother.” 

Luke shook his head. His eyes were sort of keen, and restless. “It wasn’t me. I think we have a ghost, Vi. Seriously.” 

River looked down at me. “Maybe you
do
have a ghost, Vi. I think Luke’s telling the truth.We’d better go talk to the Ouija board again.” 

I nodded. “All right. You guys win. I’m intrigued. Let’s do this thing.”I turned and headed back to Luke’s bedroom.I had a couple of good questions for the Ouija board myself. I wanted to see how far Luke would take this. 

River, Sunshine, and Luke followed me. The four of us sat down by the game, River by my side. We put our fingers on the wooden pointer. 

And waited. 

I fidgeted. Sunshine giggled. Luke had taken off his pinstriped jacket, and he began to flex his pectoral muscles in the way I hated. River sat, one lean arm around one bent knee, and looked amused. Nothing happened. I shifted onto my other hip, wishing my little black attic dress was longer. I looked at the ceiling, looked back at the board, looked at Luke, and told Sunshine to stop laughing. And still nothing happened. 

“Is this True?”I asked,finally.I looked at Luke as I said it, but he was watching the board. 

The pointer skidded to YES, so fast and hard, I fell onto my elbow. 

I glared at Luke, but he seemed surprised. Was my brother this good an actor? 

“Are you the girl in the picture? The girl who drowned?” This from Luke. 

Again, straight to the YES. 

A few seconds passed. And the pointer moved. 

LOOK 

FOR 

ME 

BY 

MOONLIGHT 

The hair on my forearms rose. I could almost hear the girl saying the words as I read out the letters—slow and deep like they were being said under water. 

The pointer began to move again. 

SOMEONE 

IS 

COMING 

Luke and Sunshine were silent, staring at the board. River smiled his lazy smile and looked like this was all great fun. 

“Who is this?” I asked the board one last time. “Who are you?” 

The pointer shook back and forth under our fingers for a second, and then moved. 

D 

E 

V 

I 

L 

I put my hands on the Ouija board and shoved. It went flying into the wall. 

“What the hell, Vi?” Luke punched me in the arm. “That game is vintage. It’s probably eighty years old. Be nice to it.” 

“That crossed the line, Luke. Don’t joke about the Devil.” 

Luke locked eyes with me. “I didn’t. God, Vi, after all of Freddie’s talk,do you really think I would make it look like the Devil was talking to us through a Ouija board?” We stared at each other for a moment. 

“Take it down a notch, siblings,” Sunshine said, her voice relaxed and purring and completely unaffected by everything. She fell onto her back and put one foot up on Luke’s bed.The vintage yellow dress hiked up to her white inner thigh, but she acted as if she didn’t notice. “It’s too late at night to fight.” 

“Fine,” I said. 

“Fine,” Luke said. 

I swept my hand in the direction of Sunshine’s thigh. “I’ll leave you to it then, brother.” 

R
iver and I walked to the guesthouse. He had picked up more groceries in town after he dropped Jack off, and had made me a late supper of Caesar salad and sweet 

potato fries. The windows were open wide and the fresh sea breeze drifted in and combined with the earthy, clayish smell of old oil paint and good food to make something pretty wonderful. River still wore his peasant costume, and I was still in my black Audrey Hepburn dress. The electricity in the guesthouse stopped working for no good reason during dinner, so River lit candles and placed them on little plates all over the kitchen, and the atmosphere was so thick, you could taste it. 

River and I were alone for the first time since the tree house. 

I was unsettled about what he was going to tell me— the answers he’d promised in the attic.And the good food and the sweet breeze and the thick atmosphere weren’t really helping all that much, to be honest. 

“You ran off during
Casablanca,
”I said.My fingers were oily with salad and sweet-potato fries, and I wiped them on the little lamb towel.“Where did you go?”