Asking for Trouble - Leslie Kelly [73]
“I vote for sooner.” Then her smile faded and she got serious again. “But I mean, it’s possible, isn’t it, that you were just caught up in a moment and your eyes were playing tricks on you? Because you weren’t exactly concentrating on what you were looking at.”
Sure. It was possible. When taken with all the other odd things that had happened around here, however, he somehow doubted it.
Lottie didn’t know about those things, however, so he slowly began to tell her. Starting with the first incident, about ten days after he’d taken up residence in Seaton House, when every window in every room on the third floor had been opened.
“That’s freaking weird,” she muttered.
“It was just the start.”
Going into more detail, he told her about empty beds that bore the indentation of human bodies, the sounds, the locked doors that suddenly unlocked, and vice versa. She narrowed her eyes in deep concentration, not for a second looking as though she doubted him.
When he brought up the smells, she immediately said, “I remember. When I came in your office that day, you were so shocked that I smelled it, too.”
“Yeah, I was. Before that I’d figured it was some weird chemical warning from my brain about an impending migraine.”
“So it happened often?”
“Yes. Every time preceding a pretty bad episode.”
“Mmm…”
He wasn’t nearly finished, however. It was time to admit the rest, however crazy it might seem. “Tonight, on the cliffs, it wasn’t the first time I’ve seen her.”
“What?”
“That day when you came in here and I’d smelled that odor, I thought I saw a blond woman walking by the window out on the veranda.” Thinking back to the night she’d arrived, which almost seemed another lifetime ago, he added, “And the night you showed up in the storm—I was in here trying to fight off a migraine.”
He swallowed, remembering those moments when he’d felt absolutely certain that he was going insane. “I opened my eyes and saw crime-scene photos of the body on my laptop screen. I closed my eyes and they were gone a few minutes later.” Vividly reliving those moments, he glanced toward his computer, sitting on the desk. “At first, I thought I’d just dreamed the whole thing. But when I saw my own handprint on the screen from where I’d tried to block it out, knew I’d been awake.”
Lottie’s mouth was open, her eyes widened in shock. He didn’t blame her. Taken individually, the incidents were strange but easy to brush aside. Especially by anybody who simply didn’t accept supernatural explanations.
Like him.
But heard all together—experienced all together, as they had been by Simon over the past few months—it was a hell of a lot harder to laugh off.
Lottie obviously agreed because she was still silent, her eyes flashing, her jaw clenching. She looked over his shoulder, into the distance, her mouth moving a little as if she were speaking under her breath.
“What?”
“The attic…when I got locked in the attic.”
“I know. That was the first thought that crossed my mind.”
“And the buggy?”
“Sounds crazy, doesn’t it? It feels crazy to even be wondering about this shit.”
Lottie leaned back, dropping her head on the headrest and staring up at the ceiling. “You haven’t, by any chance, made my bed while I’ve been here, have you? Or sprayed some perfume around my room?”
Instantly curious, he shook his head. “Absolutely not. I don’t even bother to make my own usually.” Then, remembering when he’d gone up to move her things down, he added, “As for the perfume, I smelled it and thought you’d decided to take a bath in the stuff.”
She nodded, still looking straight up, not over at him. “Other than there being too much of it, did you like the smell?”
He didn’t want to offend her, but he had to be honest. “Not particularly.”
“Neither did I.”
“It wasn’t yours?”
“No.” She was still quietly contemplative, a million thoughts apparently leaping around in that beautiful head of hers. “Simon, do you remember what it smelled like?”
Nodding absently, he lifted his feet and placed