Triple Moon Page 17

  Stumbling out into the parking lot, Molly kicked off her heels and stood barefoot, head in hands, trying not to puke. So, this was the underside of the Embrace. The effects of the drink were showing no signs of wearing off. But instead of keeping her on top of the world, with heady visions of boys submitting to her will, her buzz was going sour.

  Her head was filling with the recollection of the one boy back home she had never been able to control. Bret. She hated to pronounce his name, even if it was only in her head. And she hated the memory of his chiseled face from the night of the party in his Upper East Side penthouse. For as long into the evening as she could remember, he had toyed with her and Mardi alternately, never committing to one, driving them both crazy with jealous rage. They had never liked the same boy before, and it was awful.

  What a bullshit artist that boy was. A rich bullshit artist with bleached blond hair. Why was she thinking about him now? Was it the potion? Was Freya’s handiwork causing her to see all the boys she wanted to be with? Did she want to be with Bret?

  No, no, she told herself. Absolutely not. But even as she insisted inside that she had never wanted him, a new recollection surfaced to contradict her.

  It started out like that vision she and Mardi had had during Jean-Baptiste’s first memory session, the one where they were naked in a black swimming pool and being chased by some weirdo. As they slithered and swam away, the three of them were trapped in a dreamlike loop.

  The vision rose up again inside her, vivid and terrifying. Had Freya meant to do this with her cocktail? Molly heard powerful strains of opera blaring in surround sound from the black marble walls. She saw the guy with her and Mardi in Bret’s penthouse swimming pool. He was saying something, something hostile. It sounded like “bitches burn in Hell . . .” Feeling sicker and sicker, Molly strained her senses through time and space to catch his words. Bitches burn . . .

  Deep in a trance, she could finally hear him hissing through the steam of his overheated pool. The weirdo didn’t just look like Bret. He was Bret. She was sure of it now, as sure as she had ever been of anything. They were the same person—or the same creature.

  “Don’t touch us!” Mardi screamed.

  “You stupid witch. I have no interest in you or your sister. I hate you both. I hate all you bitches! It’s your gold I want! Give me the gold!”

  “Not our ring! Never!” Molly found herself yelling hysterically out into the emptiness of the North Inn parking lot. The sound of her own voice roused her from her nightmare.

  Now Freya was holding her, pressing a cool, wet washcloth to her forehead.

  “Whoa, relax, relax. Molly? Earth to Molly. Are you with me?”

  “I think so.” Molly thought she was speaking out loud, but she was so disoriented that she couldn’t be certain.

  “This is all my fault. I’m afraid I went a little too heavy on the absinthe. What were you screaming just now about a ring?”

  “I—I don’t really know,” Molly stammered. She was shaking, scanning the road for her cab. Ingrid’s house was only a ten-minute ride from here. She had never wanted so desperately to be in her bed. “Can—can I sit down?”

  “Sure,” Freya said, leading Molly toward the three stairs to the North Inn’s door.

  But just as Molly let herself collapse onto the bottom step, a pair of headlights pulled into the lot, followed by a Subaru wagon with Matt behind the wheel.

  “Your chariot has arrived.” Freya couldn’t completely repress a smile.

  “Evening, ladies,” Matt said pleasantly through his open window. He was wearing his detective uniform—a nondescript sport coat and tie. “Ingrid sent me to pick her up; she had a premonition she’d need a ride home,” he said.

  Molly frowned and glared at Freya. “If I throw up in his car, I’m never speaking to you again.”

  27

  RED, RED WINE

  So, my sister was so drunk when she got home last night that she told me Freya is basically seeing both of your brothers, and that supposedly Freya and Killian used to shack up right here in this cabin. Is it true?”

  “Which part?” asked Trent with a smile.

  “Any of it?”

  “I don’t know what’s going on between the three of them, and it’s none of my business. But this is Killian’s boat . . . my brother, the lady-killer,” He gestured with mock grandeur to the cherrywood and leather interior that was his home here on the East End. Then he put on a silly Dracula accent. “So prepare to be seduced.”

  They had repaired to the Dragon after mopping out the flooded wine cellar of Goose’s Landing. When no one was looking, they had resorted to a little magic to undo some of the more alarming red stains. Mario and Luis were going to start repairing the structural damage tomorrow morning.

  Trent told her he’d swiped a really good bottle of Bordeaux from the cellar at Fair Haven. As he uncorked it, he hummed the old reggae tune “Red, Red Wine.”

  “What else did your sister say about my family?” Trent asked.

  “Not much. She was pretty incoherent. Freya gave her one of her cocktails. But it was one she’d never mixed before, and it got a little out of hand. Poor Molly. I usually think she deserves what she gets, but no one deserves to be that sick. She spent half the night curled up on the bathroom floor throwing up. It was really a bummer.”

  “Is she okay this morning?”

  “She’s fine. Ingrid gave her a pretty radical hangover potion. I’m going to have to steal the formula from her. I’ve been thinking that if Molly and I ever have to go underground we could always support ourselves by selling the stuff on the black market. Seriously, it works wonders. Molly looks like she slept ten hours last night. She’s so happy that she’s not even a tiny bit bloated. It’s like Christmas!”

  “How come I haven’t met her yet? I guess I’ve been hanging at the docks too much. I hear she’s quite a stunner,” he said, his eyes twinkling.

  Mardi curled her lip. “Don’t worry. She’s not your type.”

  “Aren’t you guys really identical?” he teased as he handed her a full glass of dark wine, his eyes twinkling blue as a sun-kissed sea.

  She ignored him. “Yeah, but you wouldn’t be able to stand her for five minutes.”

  “And I can stand you for at least five minutes?” His eyes were definitely shining.

  “Besides, she has a boyfriend.” Mardi couldn’t help but feel jealous at Trent’s interest in Molly.

  “Oh, yeah?”

  “She’s been hanging out at Fair Haven. That’s why I thought—”

  “I think we’ve established it’s not me. So, then, who?” Although he was trying to keep his tone light, she could tell this was an important question.

  “No idea.” Mardi was suddenly concerned. Who could Molly be seeing? She’d never stoop to dating an employee of the house. Was there yet another brother lurking at Fair Haven? A stepchild? Some relative Trent didn’t want to acknowledge? Could she really trust Trent? She wanted to. More than anything.

  “So, cheers to cleaning up gallons of this stuff!” Mardi touched her wineglass to his and took a big sip. As if it fortified her courage, she put the glass down and stood up next to him. “This is great, but you know what could be better?” she asked huskily.

  He raised his eyebrows and put down his glass. “I think I do.”

  She leaned toward him but he was faster, and he pulled her into his arms. She closed her eyes and their lips met, slowly at first, then harder, and faster, more urgent, until they had knocked the wine off the table in a hurry to fall into bed, so that the red wine bloomed like a cut on the carpet.

  28

  PERFECT DAY

  Molly needed to appear innocent while delivering a message that could, potentially, make her seem pretty guilty. She had to look her best. She thumbed through the possibilities on the rolling clothes rack she had swiped from
Freya’s enormous attic wardrobe. She hadn’t wanted her beautiful stuff to get all mussed in Ingrid and Matt’s small minimalist guest room closet.

  She looked over the hangers out onto the beach and the sparkling bay. It was gorgeous outside. She had texted Marshall that she needed to take the day off for “personal reasons.” Velvet Underground was playing in the background, Lou Reed crooning about a perfect day, just like the one she was about to have.

  She toyed with the idea of a cap-sleeved orange sundress, but decided it would be a mistake. Yet the baby blue romper was too babyish. On the other end of the spectrum was a fitted navy button-down dress she had bought for a funeral. She tried it on with a pair of beige pumps and checked herself out in the full-length mirror that she had also borrowed from Freya’s stash. It was all right for a funeral, she thought, laughing to herself.

  There had to be a happy medium. She went back to her rack. Her solution jumped out at her in the form of a lightweight Chanel suit. Freya had had the hemline taken up, but not too much. The jacket was cropped, but she had a great silk tank that would cover her belly button. And she could finish it with some cork wedges that were fun yet discreet.

  As she put the final touches on her hair and makeup, she smiled at herself in the bathroom mirror. “Perfect for a perfect day,” she whispered.

  Molly’s mission was a delicate one. She had decided to seek out Jean-Baptiste and tell him about the vision she’d had of Bret chasing her and Mardi around because he wanted their ring. She was starting to think that the scene she had relived in her absinthe delirium in the parking lot of the North Inn wasn’t a simply a paranoid vision, but a memory. Hazy as it was, it had a feel of truth to it.

  Slowly, painfully, the night of the accident was coming into focus. And she had a feeling that the ring, missing now, had also briefly gone missing that night.

  Molly realized that she could potentially incriminate herself—and her twin—by telling Jean-Baptiste that she had recalled events leading her to believe that her and Mardi’s ring was a factor in the killings. Maybe this would make her look guilty. But maybe she was?

  No way. They were being framed—she was sure of it. Someone knew that they were considered troublemakers at Headingley and in bars and clubs all around the city, that they were constantly on the verge of being expelled but always managed to charm their way out of trouble at the eleventh hour. And this same someone was well aware that the White Council wouldn’t mind having an excuse to put the Overbrook sisters out of harm’s way for a few thousand years.

  Could it actually be Bret who was trying to banish them to the Underworld? That phrase, “bitches burn in Hell,” pursued her and Mardi like an echo through time. First the night of the party. Then on the windshield of the Ferrari while a freak fire raged in the night. Could it all be Bret? Who was Bret, anyway? The sisters had always guessed he was paranormal. But how? And why would he have it in for Mardi and her? What had they ever done to him?

  If she could get Jean-Baptiste to see through her eyes, perhaps he could shed some light on this thicket of images and impressions. Perhaps he could help her to remember a little bit more, and more clearly, so that together they could unravel the facts, clear the Overbrook name—find out what really happened that night and what was going on right now in North Hampton.

  • • •

  Briskly and purposefully, Molly knocked on the pale pink door of Rose Cottage, the bed and breakfast where Jean-Baptiste was spending his East End summer.

  In seconds, as though she had been lying in wait for a visitor, Mrs. Ashley Green, a pleasantly plump woman in her late fifties, wearing a flowing lavender-and-white batik dress, opened the door with a gracious smile.

  “Well, don’t you look lovely,” she said. “I believe I recognize you from the Cheesemonger. I buy all of my scones from you for my guests. I used to bake them myself, but yours are so much more divine than anything I could produce. My favorites are the apricot currant. Do you have a favorite?”

  “Um, I really like—”

  “You also do wonderful soups. At first I was skeptical, like everyone else in town, of the New England chowder, but I have to say that I’m now a convert. An absolute convert!”

  “Yes, it was a big risk, but it paid—”

  “It paid off. Why, yes it did! Come in dear. What can I get you?”

  “Actually—”

  “No, don’t say it. I can read it in your eyes. Such pretty dark eyes. And what lovely dark hair you have. I can see exactly what you want. I have a gift for reading people you know. I can say beyond a shadow of a doubt that you would absolutely kill for some lemonade and shortbread right now.”

  “Excuse me, but—”

  “This way. Come this way.”

  Before she could object, Molly was led through a fever dream of chintz and Victorian antiques into a kitchen whose walls were covered in mounted floral china plates. She was seated at a table and presented with a tall glass of lemonade and a plate of shortbread.

  “This is really lovely of you, Mrs. Green, but I’m not—”

  “Now, don’t you try to be polite. I’m sure your mother taught you never to act hungry in a stranger’s home, but I’m no stranger to anyone in this town.”

  At the mention of a mother, Molly’s heart sank a little. No one, except a couple of unfortunate and short-lived nannies, had ever attempted to teach either of the twins manners of any kind.

  She suddenly grew impatient with the aggressively friendly Mrs. Green and whispered a spell that stuck the dowdy woman’s lips together long enough that she could get a word in edgewise.

  “Listen, I’m not hungry, and I don’t eat cookies that are pure butter anyway, and I need to see one of your guests. A Mr. Mésomier.”

  Frightened and confused, Mrs. Green stared bug-eyed at Molly, as if from underwater, making the faint guttural sounds of the gagged and the drowning.

  Molly released the poor woman, who immediately went off on a tangent about how the strangest thing had just happened, and had Molly noticed that her mouth wouldn’t move for a few minutes there?

  Just as Molly was ready to turn Mrs. Green into a gingerbread woman, take a bite out of her, and put her remains on the hideous china plate next to her vile shortbread, Jean-Baptiste stuck his elegant head into the kitchen.

  “Why, Molly, how wonderful to see you,” he purred, not appearing remotely surprised. Within moments, he had dispatched his annoying hostess and was seated across from Molly, shrink-style, on a brown velvet settee, while she was perched nervously in a toile-upholstered window seat.

  “You look smashing,” he opened.

  “So do you,” she replied. She meant it. He was wearing an impeccable canary yellow linen suit. And his pocket square today was kelly green. “Do you always do solid-color pocket squares?” she asked, genuinely curious.

  “I do,” he answered. “If you ever see a man who looks like me but is wearing a patterned pocket square, you can be sure he’s an imposter.”

  “Good to know.” She smiled.

  “But I don’t think you came here to ask about my sartorial preferences. To what do I owe this pleasure?”

  With that, it all came pouring out of her. The images of the pool, the ominous sounds of the opera overhead, the bitches burning in Hell. The shared ring that Bret had been after, which she thought went missing briefly that night; the fact that it was now missing again; all the intertwining themes and variations.

  She tried to describe the wall of secrecy that was coming up between her and her twin. The two of them had always butted heads, but they had never been such bitter rivals as on the night of the party. And every time they tried to get close here in North Hampton, they inevitably started to argue.

  “It’s weird. I don’t know what’s going on with us. I mean, we’ve always fought, but we’ve also always known what’s up with each other. I feel like some
one’s using our competitiveness to keep us apart. Is that weird?”

  Jean-Baptiste nodded. “Yes, you and your sister must make every effort to unite your powers. The two of you must tell each another everything that you recall, even if it feels like nothing more than a dream. I believe that the ring may hold the answers we are seeking, although truly it is the power of your memories that will ultimately uncover the fates of those poor murdered children and prove your innocence.

  “Whoever is behind these crimes is trying to divide the two of you—and I have to say you are easy targets for discord—so that you will not combine your recollections and come to the solution. You are being kept in the dark by your own inability to work together. If you and Mardi can find the strength to work together, you will be able to remember exactly what happened that night.”

  “And do you think that remembering what happened will help us understand what is going on here, now? All the random acts of evil and hate?”

  “I’m afraid they aren’t so random, Molly.”

  “There is a pattern. Whoever is behind this craves power. And hates women.”

  “Yes, Molly.” He closed his eyes to concentrate. “You are beginning to see clearly now. I believe that, united, you and Mardi have enough clarity to combat this evil.”

  With Jean-Baptiste’s wise words ringing in her ears and heart, Molly rushed from Rose Cottage, leapt onto her shiny red bicycle, and began to ride toward the docks, where she hoped to find Mardi and come clean. But she had only pedaled for a block when she heard her phone beep.

  A text. Could it be Tris? Was he finally going to tell her why he had vanished from the dunes the other night? Although she knew she should be furious, she wanted more than anything to give him the benefit of the doubt, to join him again among the cashmere blankets. And maybe even to confide in him about all the crazy stuff that was going on in her life. He was, after all, her kind.