Serena's Magic (18 page)

Something suddenly alerted him to a presence behind him. He turned to see a man standing just inside the doorway.

“Who the hell are you?” Justin demanded, fear and annoyance making the words a growl.

The young stranger lifted sandy brows and walked closer to glare at Justin with rather incredulous, sky-blue eyes.

“I might ask you the same thing,” he replied dryly. “I’m Thomas Hawk, coowner of the inn. Who are you?”

He was a lot like his sister; his eyes were the same startling shade, registering both intelligence and wit. He lit a cigarette and puffed it nervously while he listened to Justin. Martha returned from the kitchen, hugged him profusely, then left the men alone in the parlor with sandwiches and coffee.

“It’s a surprise to see you now, Tom,” Justin said, munching a sandwich without tasting it, “but a damned good surprise. I’m worried as hell, and the police think I’m a crank idiot.”

Tom took a sip of coffee, and a slight blush colored his cheeks. “I don’t suppose this will make much sense to you, O’Neill—you being a psychologist with a doctorate and all—but It uh, came out today because I was worried about my sister. We … we can kind of tune in on each other sometimes. I’ve been thinking more and more about her the last few days, and this morning … well, I just had an urge—a compulsion—to come out and see if she’s all right.”

Marc suddenly burst in from the entryway. His eyes immediately lit upon Tom Hawk. “Tom, you’re here! Did Serena call you?”

Tom shook his head. Justin rose and stared across the room at Marc. “Have you got any ideas, any at all, of where she might have gone? Think, Marc, some place like the pond, anyplace she goes—”

“She’s in the house somewhere.”

Both Justin and Marc turned to stare at Tom.

He looked back at them both. “I’m telling you, I know. She’s in the house somewhere. Has anyone checked her room?”

It might have been a comedy of errors. They were like skyrockets—all three men taking a second to stare at one another stupidly, then bolting for the stairway. They crashed together at the landing, then Tom preceded Justin who preceded Marc.

“Serena?” Tom Hawk tapped at his sister’s door, then hearing nothing, tried the knob.

“Bolted,” he murmured.

“What?” Justin demanded incredulously. He stared at the door for a second. “Then she has to be in there—”

“I’ll get the extra key from Martha—” Marc offered, but Justin hadn’t heard him. A panic had welled within deeper than anything he had ever known. He charged his shoulder against the door. The wood buckled and splintered. He stepped back and plowed his frame against it a second time. The splintering wood gave, and the broken door groaned, hinges screeching, as it slammed to the floor. The three men bolted into the room, calling her name. Marc walked into the bathroom, then reappeared to shake his head in response to anxious eyes.

“But she has to be in here. …” Marc began, then fell silent. Justin was watching Tom Hawk, who had closed his eyes. They reopened. “The staircase,” he said quietly.

Justin rushed across the room. He ran his fingers down the paneling, but apparently the old lever and spring had jammed. He backed up a few paces and rammed the wood. It groaned but didn’t budge.

“Wait,” Tom murmured, “that stuff is reinforced and insulated. It’s a good foot thick—”

Justin glanced at him with glazed eyes, then glanced back at the paneling. He threw his body against it again and again. Tom and Marc both attempted to help, realizing from Justin’s glance that to get help would take time.

The wood finally began to splinter. Panting, Justin halted the others for a moment and gave himself a ten-foot runway. He hurtled his body against the paneling like a catapult.

The old wood crackled in something like a death groan and shattered; Justin found himself sprawled out on the landing and then hurtled down several steps without standing. There was something sticky on his head which had to be blood. His shoulder felt as if it were being stabbed by a thousand pins.

“O’Neill, you okay?”

Justin shielded his eyes with a hand as Tom shot the ray of a massive flashlight down into the darkness.

“Yeah, I’m fine,” he muttered, checking for broken bones as he struggled to stand in the confinement of the stairwell. “Get down here with that thing, will you?”

As Tom followed with the light, Justin carefully wedged his way down the steps. The light above shone on a bundle at the foot of the stairs, sunk against the wall.

“She’s here!” Justin called out hoarsely. He raced down the remaining stairs and slid on the last, but he was right, Serena was there. She felt terribly cold to his touch; his probing fingers could barely find a pulse.

He scooped her into his arms and started to swear as he realized the second panel too was jammed. He turned and started back up the stairs with his limp bundle in his arms.

“Christ!” Tom Hawk muttered as he saw his sister. Justin laid her out on the bed and raced into the bathroom for a cold cloth. “Get Martha,” he said as he began to bathe her face. Her lip was puffed and an angry blue bruise was spreading beneath her left eye, but Justin worried more about her color. She was shockingly white. He glanced at her hands and choked back a cry of pity; the palms and fingertips were raw and bloody from her pounding against the panels.

Martha, commendably calm, walked into the bedroom with a brandy bottle. She sat next to Serena and forced a sip between her lips. Serena coughed and swallowed. A more natural glow of pink slowly began to spread across her cheeks. Martha gripped her wrist and smiled to the three anxious men who hovered above her. “Pulse is strong now, poor little thing; she just must have scared herself half to death.”

Tom Hawk avoided Justin’s eyes. She should have been scared, he thought; no one can hear a thing from that stairway.

Justin came around the bed and slipped his arms around Serena, bringing her head to rest against his shoulder. He grabbed the cloth and bathed her face again, then motioned to Martha for the brandy. He managed to get her to accept another sip.

Her eyes began to flicker. And then they opened.

And stared into his, the sapphire pools seeming to grow larger every second.

And then she screamed, a bloodcurdling cry that echoed and riveted and echoed again around the room.

“Serena!” Justin attempted to soothe her, but she was fighting him madly. “Serena, it’s me.”

“Don’t touch me!” she shrieked. “Don’t touch me! Don’t you ever touch me again, Miles Grant!”

Justin froze in pain and disbelief. Her eyes were brilliant with wild desperation; she continued to beat against him, nails clawing, arms and legs flailing—until she suddenly went limp again, her beautiful sapphire eyes closed.

Justin carefully placed her frame back onto the bedding. Then he stood and left the room, his face a mask of bewildered agony.

Sensations came to Serena before she opened her eyes. Her head felt very cool, and there was light; she knew it because the oppressive blackness was no longer with her.

The light actually hurt for a moment as her lashes lifted, and she tried to focus her vision. She reclosed her eyes immediately with gratitude. She was in her own bedroom, and her bed felt delicious. And not far from the bed, Tom was sitting cross-legged in a chair, munching on an apple and reading.

She opened her eyes a second time to find her brother watching her. “Hi,” he said, leaving the chair to sit beside her on the bed and pick up her hand. “How’re you doing?”

Serena smiled and nodded to his anxious inquiry. “Fine,” she murmured. “Really fine.” She hesitated a minute. “Oh, Tom, I’m so glad you … that you knew … that …”

“Ssh …” he murmured, exchanging a special glance, “They would have found you anyway, Serena. Your Dr. O’Neill had already called the police by the time I got here.”

Serena frowned, unable to stop her bottom lip from trembling. “Oh, Tom. …”

Tom frowned in return. “What is it, Serena?” He paused a second. “O’Neill tore down half the house to get to you, Serena, and then you screamed your head off at him. Do you remember?”

Serena began to tear at the bedclothes with her fingers, not looking at her brother. “I’m scared, Tom,” she said her voice barely a whisper. She finally looked at him. “Have you seen the painting in the parlor? Marc found it; it’s Eleanora Hawk.”

Tom lifted a sandy brow and bit into his apple. “So?”

“Tom, that picture could be me.”

Tom shook his head in confusion. “I wouldn’t quite say that, Serena. There are similarities, but that really isn’t a great shock. We are Hawks.”

“Yes, but there’s more, Tom. Marc found a diary—”

“Yeah, I know,” Tom interrupted, rising to throw his apple core into the trash and walk back to her with his hands stuffed in his jeans pockets. “I’ve been reading it while I was sitting here. What a great find!”

“Yeah, a great find,” Serena muttered bitterly.

“Serena.” Tom sat again and took both her hands. “I realize that finding yourself caught in that stairway must have been terrifying. We should have ripped those damn panels out long ago. But I can’t believe you’re getting all upset because of the painting and the experience! You have too level a head for all that rot!”

Serena chewed furiously at her lip. “It’s not just the painting … or even the stairway … I mean, oh, God—I was terrified! I don’t remember shrieking at Justin, but I was so scared. …” Her voice died away as Tom anxiously clutched her hands, worried sick to see his so-reasonable sister such an unreasonable wreck. She wet her lips, not looking directly at him, and asked, “How far have you gotten into that diary, Tom?”

“Skimming—all the way through.”

Serena kept chewing studiously at her lip. “How much have Justin and Marc said to you?”

“Not a lot,” Tom said, laughing, “but enough for me to get the picture. You’ve broken off with Marc, and it’s damned obvious that Justin O’Neill is madly in love with you. And you know, Serena—not that you need my approval—I think he’s more the man for you than Marc. You’re too independent for Marc, and he’s not quite as secure a man as you need. You just might have found the real thing, sis.”

Serena shook her head miserably. “Tom, you still don’t understand. Didn’t you read those descriptions of Miles? Damn, Tom, someone might have looked straight at Justin to have written those things! The eyes, Tom—”

“Actually, Serena,” Tom interrupted with dry humor, “I haven’t had a chance to stare deeply into Dr. O’Neill’s eyes as of yet. But if they are hazel, so what? I would assume a good sixth of humanity—alive and dead—have, or have had, hazel eyes.”

Serena shook her head again. “Oh, Tom—it’s worse than that.” She colored slightly. “Tom—I met Justin at the pond. And I—I—”

Tom stared at her curiously, knowing exactly what she was hedging around saying, and finding it hard to believe. He had been overly protective as a younger brother, but it had never really mattered. Serena had fallen in love with her husband, and that had been it. She had barely dated otherwise, and as a brother, he had often found Marc’s frustration amusing.

And now she had met and made love to a man at a pond.

“Serena, if I hadn’t discovered already that I like O’Neill, I’d probably want to bash his face. I’m glad I like him—’cause chances are good I wouldn’t have a face left if he bashed back! But, words of wisdom from a younger brother. You must be as much in love with him as he is with you. There’s nothing spooky about that, Serena, just wonderful.”

“Oh, Tom, I don’t know! Everything seems to be following a pattern. I met him at the pond. Then he came … here. Through the stairway. And I was so crazy in love, Tom. And then I wind up in the stairway! After four hundred years, two panels break! I can’t help feeling that … that … something is strange—”

“Serena! You can’t possibly believe in—”

“Tom, how can you, of all people, say that? Tom, I thought you would surely be the one to understand me! Okay, it’s not like ‘think black’ and we know the color, but we do know things about each other.”

“It’s a form of ESP, Serena,” Tom said softly. “A mind science, one not completely understood, but they have millions and millions of things left to be discovered about the complexities of the mind! That’s different than avenging ghosts or reincarnation or things that go bump in the night.”

Serena searched her brother’s eyes and then sighed. “I know all that, Tom—”

“And you came out of the stairwell safely.”

“I know that, too, Tom. But what about Justin? What if something happens to him because of me?”

Tom stood and smiled at her. “You’d better discuss that with Justin. He’s been pacing the floor downstairs for two hours now. If I don’t stop him, he’ll wear through boards that have withstood centuries!” He paused a second. “Can I send him up?”

Serena touched her face nervously and then nodded. Tom paused only another second to ruffle her hair. “You sure you’re okay? We thought about calling a doctor, but Martha said there was no real damage.”

Serena tried to smile with assurance. “Yes, I’m really okay, Tom. And … I do want to see Justin … if just to talk. …

Tom found Justin in the kitchen, staring blankly out the window as a cup of coffee grew cold in his hands. The intense hazel eyes immediately riveted to his.

“She’s okay,” Tom assured him quickly, pulling up a chair across from Justin at the small kitchen table. He hesitated a moment. “She wants to see you, but I think you should know a few things first.”

Justin raised his brows.

“It’s that damned picture, I think!” Tom exploded. “And then Marc found an old diary—Eleanora’s diary. He was trying to do something special for Serena, and he had it transcribed and left it for her to read. It seems everything that has gone on between the two of you kind of happened before. And then Serena wound up in the staircase.”

“Oh, Christ,” Justin muttered, “Like Eleanora Hawk? Is that what you mean?”

Tom nodded.

“And that’s why she shouted.” It wasn’t a question. Justin sat lost in thought for a moment and then looked back to Tom. “Is she over it all now?”

Tom winced. “Yes—and no. She’s still scared of something. I tried to reason with her. It’s just that … well, dammit, O’Neill, you do fit the bill for Captain Miles Grant. And”—Tom paused to clear his throat—“hell, O’Neill, you have to read the damn diary. They, uh—Eleanora and Miles, I mean—they met at the pond. And Miles found the way to her room through the staircase.”