Page 166 of The Seven Rings
“I haven’t even asked how everything’s been here.”
“It was fine. Cleo and I lit bunches of candles, had a girls’ night. Later? Well, there was later, and I’ll tell you. Cleo wants to use the grill, because September means not much more time for that. I’ll tell you while that’s happening.”
And once they’d moved to the deck, once the grill smoked, she told Trey and Owen about seeing Agatha.
Then about the portraits.
“Cold-ass bitch” was Owen’s opinion.
“She wanted to tear at you, and that was a surefire way to do it. She’s not going to win this.”
Grateful, she looked at Trey. “I don’t think she could’ve done anything that would have made me more determined to take her down. But it’s more. I’ve said before I don’t think she can really hurt me. I’m more sure of it. More sure that she can’t or she loses her hold here.”
“Because you’re not a bride.”
She nodded at Trey. “Because I’m not a bride, and that’s where she boxed herself in. And the portraits matter. Someway, somehow, and we’ll figure it out.
“It did tear at me,” Sonya admitted. “And going through that so soon after seeing Agatha, and feeling for her, for everything she lost. But that was temporary. She made a mistake using my feelings for those women, my connection to them. I won’t let her hold them hostage forever, and I sure as hell won’t let her take another.”
“She’s misjudged you, cutie.”
Smiling, Sonya lifted her glass to Trey. “That’s fucking-A right.”
Owen had never known anyone who slept like Cleo. When the woman was ready to sleep, she was gone in seconds. And once gone, slept soundlessly and still. So soundlessly and still, it bordered on spooky.
Yet, he knew, she’d wake in that same finger snap if Sonya walked down the hallway. Oddly enough, so would he.
But Sonya didn’t walk, and Cleo didn’t wake.
He didn’t know what woke him, not at first. Still shy of three when he checked, so not the chiming clock, not the music, not the weeping or the murmurs.
He lay for a moment, listening to the dark, the sea, the sighs of an old house in the night. He started to roll over, just grab onto the sleep again.
He swore he heard his name. Not a whisper, not a murmur of a call, but some low, smoky sort of sound inside his head.
But not.
He listened, and it came again.
Owen. Owen Poole. Owen. Owen Poole.
He wondered if what he felt was like Sonya with the mirror. But he wouldn’t have called it a pull. It was more of an… invitation.
Intrigued, he got out of bed, yanked on his jeans. Jones lifted his head, waited. He started to go to the window, to look out. But no, that was wrong, so he turned and walked to the sitting room, and the dog, as always, rose to go with him.
He went out into the hall, and the intrigue became a kind of dreaming. But he wasn’t dreaming. He knew himself awake, aware.
And yet, instead of turning to go down the hall, alert Trey, he turned the other way.
And walked to the stairs, then up into a kind of thin fog that spread through the third floor.
It smelled like secrets. Dark, female secrets. Irresistible. With every breath it aroused, sparked something in the blood so it ran hot under his skin.
His pulse began to pound.
Beside him, Jones growled, but he didn’t heed the warning. He didn’t notice or care.
The fog thickened over the doorway of Cleo’s studio, like a wall blocking the room, the windows. And like a wall it seemed to close behind him, so he heard nothing but the voice calling his name.
