Shadows At Sunset - Anne Stuart [39]
At least, until she passed the hedgerow of tangled roses and reached the top of the path leading to the pool. There was only a sliver of moon that night, and right then it hid behind a cloud, making the path barely visible. The water looked thick and black, even though common sense told Jilly it was fine. She could no longer smell the chemicals they’d dumped in that very afternoon. No stench of chlorine—instead there was the smell of rotting vegetation.
When she reached the edge of the pool she paused, suddenly unnerved. Even up close the water was dark, threatening and impenetrable. But the air surrounding her was like a cocoon of humid heat, and if she chickened out she’d be even hotter, sweatier, more miserable.
She took a step forward, ready to dive into the water, cotton pj’s and all, when the moon slid out from behind a cloud. Suddenly it was another time, another night, long ago before she’d ever been born. Just as Jilly dived, a face appeared in the water beneath her, a face from a dream. It was the face of her sister.
She screamed, but it was too late. She twisted in the air, hitting the water with a belly flop, and the water was warm, thick, fetid around her. She went under, swallowing some of the dank stuff, and then pushed herself to the surface again, swimming toward the edge with a panicked strength. It felt as if the water were full of weeds, clinging to her, wrapping around her wrists and ankles, tangling in her hair, trying to pull her under with the woman who lay beneath the water. The woman who was Rachel-Ann, and yet who wasn’t. With a final burst of terror Jilly reached the side of the pool, vaulting out of it with a strength she never knew she had.
She didn’t dare look back. She simply ran, screaming, up to the house, no longer caring whom she frightened, who was torn out of a deep sleep. Her sister was dead in the pool, someone had tried to kill her, and a stranger was in the house.
The lights were flooding the wide stone terrace as Jilly stumbled toward the house, and Grandmère was already standing in the doorway, with a rumpled Consuelo and Jaime beside her. Jaime had a gun, and for a brief, hysterical moment Jilly thought he looked like something out of Viva Zapata! with his bristly mustache and his pajamas.
“It’s Rachel-Ann,” she sobbed, stumbling into the house. “She’s in the pool. She’s dead….”
“I don’t know what you’ve been smoking, Jilly, but I’m right here.” Rachel-Ann moved from behind Grandmère’s disapproving figure. “And you’re the one who looks like a drowned rat.”
With a cry of relief Jilly threw her arms around her sister, who immediately shrieked and shoved her away. “You’re alive!” Jilly cried.
“And you’re cold and wet!” Rachel-Ann said.
“You saw someone in the pool, Jilly?” Grandmère demanded. “Jaime, you’d better go down and check. I can’t imagine who could have gotten on the grounds—you locked the gates, didn’t you? But stranger things have been known to happen. I hope to God we don’t have a corpse floating in the swimming pool. This house has seen enough scandal.”
Her grandmother’s prosaic tone had its usual bracing effect, but Jilly discovered she was still shivering, whether from the damp cold of her soaked clothes or the memory of that face. “She wasn’t floating, Grandmère. She was lying on the bottom of the pool, trapped in the weeds.”
“There are no weeds in the swimming pool, Jilly,” Grandmère said patiently. “No bodies, either, I expect. It’s simply not possible. You must have been dreaming. I want you to go upstairs, take a hot shower and get into dry clothes. I’ll bring you a sleeping pill to help you calm down.”
“I don’t need a pill.”
“It’s that or a glass of brandy. I don’t fancy having my sleep disturbed by another of my impressionable granddaughter’s nightmares.”
“It wasn’t a nightmare,” she said. No longer trusting her own memories. It hadn’t even felt real at the time,