‘Screams.’
He tried to walk away, but Dee grabbed him. ‘What else?’
‘This is-’
‘What else, Danny?’
‘Jeering. Shouts. And those… screams.’ He’d lost some of his color, and his eyes looked stark. Dee knew.
‘You know those witches who danced on the mountain?’ she asked, her voice gentle, her hand holding him still.
‘Of course.’
‘This is where they were burned.’
Danny gaped like a landed fish. He threw off her hand as if it scalded him and stalked over to his bike. ‘That’s ridiculous.’
Dee didn’t move. ‘There is power out there, Danny. My mother had a great amount of it. My father didn’t have so much, but Xan made him believe he did. Xan can make you believe anything. She impressed you so much with her whispers you named your damn bike after her without ever even meeting her. She whispers, and what she whispers is believed. My sisters and I have power, and I think she wants it.’
‘Don’t be-’
‘Ridiculous? Xan wasn’t there this morning, Danny. Not in the room. But she made you see her. And believe her.’ Dee smiled, shaking her head. Although it seems she couldn’t do a complete job of it. She’ll use you to get to us. And then she’ll try and sap our power to strengthen hers. She’s a predator. A carnivore. A psychic vampire.’
‘There are no-’
‘Psychics? Yes there are. And you’d better start believing it, because you are one.’
For the first time she saw Danny James truly angry. ‘Oh, yeah, that’s what they told my mother. Every goddamn one of them. “Just believe. There is great power, and I have it. I’m a psychic. I can tell you… I can-”‘
Dee thought her heart would break. ‘“Communicate with your husband.” It was your mother who fell prey to the con artists.’
‘And they took every dime she had. It’s bullshit, Dee, and the sooner you get that through your head the sooner you might join the real world again and stop jumping at phantasms. That woman you’re so afraid of is nothing more than a standard-issue drama queen.’
She kept her voice so gentle. ‘And the voices you just heard in your head?’
‘My imagination! I told you. It’s very good.’
‘Danny, if you’d just listen…’
And then Danny James did the first rude thing Dee had seen. He simply turned away from her and climbed on his bike. ‘No,’ he said, kicking it into gear. ‘I won’t.’
And then, as she stood alone in a bare field that rustled with an incoming storm, he left.
‘Are you just going to let him go?’ Dee heard from behind her.
She didn’t even bother to turn. She knew that voice. It had haunted her nightmares for years.
‘Hello, Xan,’ she said, hoping her voice didn’t betray her. She suddenly felt like she was twelve again. ‘I was wondering when you’d show up.’
Right there in the middle of the Burning Field. How appropriate.
‘Darling, aren’t you even going to look at me?’
Dee couldn’t see Danny anymore. The sound of his bike had faded into traffic noise. All that was left was Xan. ‘I don’t look at snakes.’
For a moment there was silence, then a sigh. ‘Oh, Dee.’
Dee had to turn around. She had to face her worst nightmare, or she was never going to get past it: She just hoped Xan couldn’t see how shaken she was.
Ready or not…
Xan didn’t look a day different. Elegant and sleek, her thick raven hair caught in an effortless chignon, her maroon suit a Chanel, her ears hung with chunky gold earrings that gleamed in the sullen light. She looked as if she’d just stepped out of a salon on Madison Avenue – or from backstage at the Fortune Hour of Psychic Power. Dee wanted to run. She wanted to fight. She wanted, God help her, for her aunt to approve of her.
‘A little overdressed for the occasion, aren’t you?’ she said instead.
Xan held out her perfectly manicured hands with their bloodred nails, and all Dee could think of was talons. ‘Style is never out of place.’ She smiled. ‘You look lovely as ever. Always appropriate.’
Tilting her head, Dee motioned to the severe lines of her aunt’s attire. ‘Is that how you think I see myself? Appropriate? Like you?’ She shook her head. ‘I need to toss out some gray suits.’
Oddly enough, Xan looked as if she were amused. ‘I should have looked harder for you. I’m going to enjoy getting to know you again.’
‘Don’t put yourself out,’ Dee said. ‘And now, if you don’t mind, I have things to do.’ People to warn, pitch-forks and torches to collect…
Pretending she felt nothing but disinterest no matter how hard her heart was beating, Dee turned and walked away.
‘You’re not going to make this easy, are you?’ Xan asked.
‘Any reason I should?’ Xan didn’t need to know that her palms were sweating.
‘You really have nothing to say to me, Deirdre?’
Dee stopped, her focus firmly on the steeple of the Third Baptist Church that thrust through the trees down the block. ‘Besides “you two-faced, venomous murdering bitch,” no. I really don’t.’
‘You don’t want to know why I’m here?’
‘Nope.’
God, she could hear Xan smiling behind her. ‘Believe it or not, I’ve come to tell you that you won.’
Okay, that got Dee to turn around, if only to gauge the look on Xan’s face. ‘It wasn’t a game,’ she said.
Xan took a step toward her. The grass didn’t even seem to bend beneath her. ‘No,’ she said. ‘It wasn’t. It was a sincere difference of opinion. You never understood that I would never have hurt you, and I couldn’t believe you would shatter your family the way you did. But I can’t discount the fact that you did keep your sisters safe all these years. You did a good job, Dee. They’re exceptional women.’
Dee couldn’t even find the breath to answer. How did she do it? How, after all these years, did she know just where Dee’s weakness was? She was saying everything Dee had yearned to hear all these years, in those moments when she felt small and selfish and put-upon. Just to have one person appreciate what she’d done.
And it had to be Xan. Damn, damn, damn.