The Taking (16 page)

Or would she? She wanted him, he had no doubt of that.

It was an entertaining what-if, to consider taking Regan to bed, burying himself inside her.

And the temptation to touch Regan distracted him from the memories of this house. Of coming in through the courtyard and being led up the servants’ stairs in the back. He had come up these main stairs only once, when he had gotten as bold as Camille. It had been that last night. He had knocked on the front door and walked in with all the arrogance of youth, the two of them addicted to defiance and danger.

“The family did die here,” Felix told Regan. “That’s pretty clear from the quick research I did.”

She stopped in her living room and turned to face him. “Really? Why? What did you find?”

“I looked up who owned the house in that time period then searched newspaper articles relating to the owner. Your house was purchased by a wealthy businessman named Francois Comeaux in 1867. Searching his name, I found several articles that show he died in the yellow fever epidemic of 1878, along with his wife and four daughters. Only one daughter survived, his youngest, Camille.”

Regan blanched, every inch of color draining from her face in a split second, her knees buckling. The change was so sudden and severe, he actually looked behind him to see if something or someone was standing behind him, but the stairwell was empty. So what the hell had he said to cause that kind of reaction?

“Regan?” he asked, moving forward quickly, his hand crumpling the papers as he grabbed her elbow to steady her when she looked ready to drop. “What’s wrong?”

“I think I’m going to faint,” she said, swallowing hard, her hands clawing toward him to find purchase.

“I’ve got you. You’re fine,” he reassured her in a soothing voice, using both hands to grip her, shaking her a little. “Look at me.”

She struggled for a second, her eyes rolling in and out of focus, but then she managed to lock her gaze with his.

“You’re okay,” he murmured.

Taking a deep, shuddering breath, she nodded. “I am. I’m okay. Sorry. I’m okay.”

“Lie down for a second.” He guided her to the sofa, which she sank onto without a word, looking intensely grateful to give up the fight to stay standing.

She lay on her side, tucking her hands under her cheek on the cushion. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry.” Felix sat on the sofa next to her waist, perching precariously. Brushing back some of her hairs that had fallen loose, he leaned over and set the crumpled papers he’d been holding onto the end table. “What happened?”

“You’re going to think I’m insane.”

Hardly. “Hey, no judgments, remember? You’re talking to a guy who sticks pins in dolls and dances with a snake.”

“You dance with a snake?” She looked intrigued by the concept. “Why?”

“Never mind. I’ll tell you later. Right now you’re going to tell me what it was I said that made you look like I’d kicked the wind out of you with my boot”

She took another deep breath. “Okay. I’ve been flipping through the journal, but I haven’t read most of it. In what I have read, the author never mentions herself by name, only those around her. Her initials—CAC—are on the cover, but that’s it. And with my moving in yesterday, I haven’t had a chance to do any research on the house. So I had no way of knowing what her name was.”

“Okay.” Felix wasn’t sure where this was going, and he waited for her to continue.

Biting her lip, she tore a piece of the tender flesh away with her teeth so aggressively a bead of blood appeared.

“I dreamed about her, that I was seeing things from her perspective. In the dream she left this house in a carriage and went to Mr. Tradd’s house, her suitor she referred to in the journal, and she spun in his yard nine times and threw a clump of dirt at his front door. That’s easy enough to explain because I had just read that entry in her journal, though it was odd how detailed it was in my dream, even beyond what she wrote. I didn’t realize I had that good of an imagination.”

Felix watched the blood on Regan’s lip trickle into the cracks and crevices of her abused flesh, mixing with the moisture already present and causing a red puddle to bead over her bottom lip. He had an idea of what she might say next, and he didn’t think he wanted to hear it.

“But the strange thing is, I knew her name was Camille in my dream,” she whispered. “When I woke up, I thought I must have just plucked some C name out of the ether. But what are the odds I would use the very same name in my dream? There was no way I could have known that was her name, I’m convinced of it. And there are dozens of much more common C names for my brain to pluck out at random. So when you said Camille... it freaked me out”

So Camille had managed to find a conduit through Regan’s dreams. Or maybe it was Alcroft under the guise of Camille.

Either way, it was much worse than he had imagined. He wiped the blood off of her lip with the pad of his thumb, unable to stare at it any longer.

“What are you doing?” She jerked beneath his touch, causing him to smear the blood on her chin.

“You’re bleeding.” Felix rubbed the new stain off her chin. Her skin was such a perfect, delicate shade of ivory, her tiny nose pert and delicate. Her dark eyes, framed by lustrous eyelashes, were clouded with confusion.

“Oh.” She sighed. “You think I’m nuts, don’t you?”

“No, not at all. I have no answers for you, but I believe you.” He definitely believed her. She was right—there was no way she could have known Camille’s name if it hadn’t been written in the journal.

Someone was clearly poking around Regan’s house and in her thoughts, but whether or not it was a long-dead Camille or a very much alive Alcroft, Felix just didn’t know.

What he did know was that it infuriated him that either one would pull someone as innocent and harmless as Regan into their games.

Which meant that despite all his reservations about getting involved, he was going to stick close to her until he knew exactly what was going on.

“So then you had another dream tonight”

“Yes. And this one was even more embellished. That journal had nothing about who Camille... I guess I can call her Camille... who Camille used that rash spell on. Or how she did it. Yet I had this very vivid dream about her visiting this girl, a Miss Janise, and gloating over the rash.”

In the deep recesses of Felix’s memory, the name struck a cord. Camille’s rival. “Did she mention Miss Janise somewhere else in the journal?”

Regan shook her head. “No. And I’m starting to think I’m losing my mind.” She gave a nervous laugh. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have called you. You must think I’m a mess, but I... I just didn’t want to be alone.”

She wasn’t alone.

Someone was with her.

And it made Felix very, very worried for her and for her soul.

Regan had always thought she was an independent woman, but the dreams, this house, they were making her nervous, and that was both upsetting and embarrassing. Now she had almost fainted right in front of Felix, and she was clinging to her sofa cushions like she would float away without them as an anchor. She wasn’t sure he’d ever actually seen her when she wasn’t at her absolute worst.

“We’ve all had our moments where we don’t want to be alone,” he said, his light eyes darkening. “Stop apologizing. You do it constantly.”

She did. She knew that. It was ingrained in her from Beau, and maybe even from her mother. But did he have to make it sound like such a criticism? She was pretty sure there were worse flaws than saying you were sorry. “Okay, geez. I’ll never apologize to you again.”

“Petulance doesn’t suit you,” he said softly. “I didn’t mean it to sound insulting. I just think you should hold your chin up a little higher ... please yourself from time to time instead of worrying about everyone else. Don’t worry about what I think, what anyone thinks.”

Regan studied Felix’s expression. He looked concerned, nothing more. She did think he believed her about the dreams, about seeing the apparition, which was a huge relief. Her ex-husband would have scoffed and made fun of her for thinking such a thing, but Felix didn’t seem to think anything of it at all. But then, as he had pointed out, he was a voodoo priest.

An incredibly good-looking one. Now that the shock had worn off, Regan was altogether too aware of the fact that she was lying on her couch only a foot away from him. He was wearing jeans and a long-sleeved white shirt, with a gray T-shirt over it. He wore a large cross necklace on a leather string, which she found interesting given his voodoo religion, and a silver band around his index finger. Overall, there was an inherent masculinity, a rawness to him that was very appealing.

“Thanks for believing me,” she said. “I appreciate it.”

“No problem.”

His finger brushed her bottom lip again, causing her flesh to tingle and her nipples to harden under the unexpected touch. “More blood?”

“No.” He shook his head. “I just wanted to touch you.” Uh-oh. Regan sat up, panicked. That sounded flirtatious, and she had no clue how to engage in flirting with a man like Felix. Way out of her league, her comfort zone, her planet. “I’m feeling better. Thanks for keeping me from hitting the floor.”

The smile he gave her, the corner of his mouth tilting up, told her he knew precisely what she was doing—that she was bolting.

“Sure.”

So what if she was running? It was the smart thing to do. A man like Felix flirted just to flirt, it meant nothing, and she wasn’t savvy or experienced enough to play that casual game. She was too emotional, too easily attached to people. Or so her therapist had told her.

It was probably true. She was incredibly invested in the people she let into her life, and she wasn’t a good candidate for meaningless flirting. In retrospect, it wasn’t hard to see how she had wound up married after a brief six-month relationship. She sought attachments.

Tugging down the bottom of her shirt, Regan dropped her legs to the floor. “Are you sure you don’t want a drink? Just a soda or something?”

He shook his head. “I don’t need a drink.”

“It’s not a problem,” she protested, standing up. “I stocked the fridge this morning. I have water, all the soft drinks, beer, wine.”

“Don’t wait on me,” he said. “I’m not thirsty.”

Puzzled by his choice of words, Regan shook her head. “It’s not a big deal. What would you like?”

“Nothing,” he said through clenched teeth. “I don’t want anything.”

What the hell was that supposed to mean? It sounded like he was talking about much more than a stupid bottled water. “Okay,” she said, mystified. “I’ll be right back. I need a Diet Coke.” Then she thought about going downstairs to the kitchen by herself and hesitated. “But before I go, please tell me you don’t see a rash on my face.”

The corner of his mouth turned up as he reclined on her sofa, one arm up along the back. “No rash.”

“Maybe I was still dreaming when I thought I saw the rash,” Regan mused as she wandered back over to the photos she’d been hanging, deciding to forgo the soft drink. “They are really vivid dreams.”

“Most dreams are. We just don’t remember all those details by the time we wake up.”

Regan stood there, not sure what to do with herself. Or him. She had called him, he had shown up, and now she had no clue what to do with him. “That’s true.”

Then they fell into silence, the music she’d been listening to an obnoxious frenetic pulse surrounding them. It was only adding to the agitation of her mood and she hit the OFF button on her iPod remote.

“You’ve done some unpacking,” Felix commented, rising to his feet and strolling to the center of the room. “It looks good. Very black-and-white, but I suppose that’s no surprise.”

“What do you mean?” Regan frowned at him. She looked around. She did prefer neutral-colored furnishings, a lot of ivory with black and beige accents, but she went in for texture more than color. She had natural elements like a sisal rug, a chunk of coral on her coffee table, and white feathers holding a cluster of bird eggs under a bell jar.

“You’re very black-and-white. Your clothes. Your personality. It stands to reason that your decorating would be the same.”

“You make that sound like an insult,” she said, turning to pick up another photo to hang—black—and—white at that. “I think it’s soothing. The room is harmonious. And if I was totally black-and-white, I wouldn’t be scared of the weird things that are happening in my house. I would explain them away logically or I would embrace them. The fact that I’m both anxious and excited about it proves I look into the shades of gray.”

“I suppose that’s true,” he murmured, coming up behind her and taking the framed photograph from her. He studied it, and the one on the wall, and then flipped through the stack she had piled up to hang.

Felix did a small circle, looking at additional larger pieces of art she had propped on the floor against the wall, waiting to be hung. “You collect cemetery art. That I didn’t expect. Is death so very black-and-white to you?”