who it was in an instant.
Rodney. Next to him was an old-fashioned tea-cart, like the ones they sold in the shop where her mother worked, and on it stood two glasses filled with something Laurie couldn’t identify.
The doorman was peering down at her, and when he spoke, the stench of his breath made her turn her head away.
“Don’t do that,” Rodney said, his fingers closing on her chin and forcing her face back so she was facing him once more. “I like to look at you. Don’t turn away when I look at you.”
Laurie tried to cry out, but her voice failed her, and all she could do was stare up into the doorman’s eyes.
“Time to eat,” he said, his grip on her jaw relaxing. Then he uttered a strange sound that wasn’t quite a laugh. “Can’t have you dying on us, can we?” he asked. “Oh, no — can’t have that. Not yet, anyway.”
Then Rodney slid an arm under her shoulders, his touch cold and clammy against her skin, and raised up, almost causing the sheet to fall away. Supporting her with his arm, he picked up one of the glasses with his free hand and held it to her lips.
Too weak to resist, Laurie let her lips open and a moment later her mouth filled with a foul-tasting slime that made her stomach convulse in rebellion.
“Swallow it,” Rodney instructed, holding her mouth closed to prevent her from spitting the stuff out. His head bent closer, and his foul breath washed over her as he spoke into her ear. “Go ahead and swallow it. Or would you rather die right now?”
Her stomach knotting with nausea, her throat constricting against the disgusting concoction, Laurie forced the mouthful down.
It was followed by a second mouthful, then a third.
By the fourth, Laurie was sobbing, and by the fifth she was certain she would die if she had to drink any more of it.
Then she began to be afraid of something even worse.
She began to fear she might not die.
CHAPTER 36
“I want to know where Laurie is!” Ryan demanded. His fists on his hips, he glowered furiously at Melanie Shackleforth.
“I’ve already told you,” Melanie replied, putting far more patience in her voice than she felt. “She’s spending the night with one of her friends.”
“Who?” Ryan challenged.
Melanie’s eyes narrowed and her lips compressed. There was a time — a time she still remembered very clearly — when children were to be seen and not heard, and children like Ryan Evans were given a sound thrashing until they learned to mind their manners. But that was a different time, and Anthony Fleming had given her strict instructions that she was not to strike the boy, no matter how offensive he became. But if the boy kept this up much longer—
“You don’t know, do you?” Ryan taunted, seeing the anger in her eyes. “You don’t know because you’re lying!” He moved closer, and raised his voice. “Liar! Liar! Liar!”
Melanie’s fury, which she’d carefully held in check all through the long afternoon she’d stayed with Ryan, was on the verge of boiling over. She should have left him locked in his room — as Anton had instructed — but when he’d begged to be allowed to go to the bathroom, she’d decided that Anton could be overruled. And until a few minutes ago, he’d behaved himself. But now it was becoming apparent that Anton was right — she should have left him locked in his room to sulk all afternoon. That’s what Virginia Estherbrook would have done. But Virginia was gone, never to return, and Melanie Shackleforth — a name she was starting to like even better than ‘Virginia Estherbrook’—intended to be much more modern. But Ryan Evans was making it very difficult.
“Liar, liar, liar!” Ryan chanted now, his voice taking on a mocking lilt that pushed Melanie’s rage past the boundaries Anton had set. Before she could even think, her arm rose up then arced downward, her hand slashing across Ryan’s face so hard it stung her own hand.
With a howl of rage, Ryan threw himself at her, his nails gouging into her skin before his fingers grabbed her hair and began tearing at it. Melanie screamed as bits of hair tore loose from her scalp, but a second later her own fingers found his, and with far more strength than she’d felt in years, she began peeling his fingers loose from her hair. “How dare you,” she hissed. Her hand closing on his wrist, she dragged Ryan upstairs and down the hall, shoved him through the door to his room, pulled it shut, and locked it. “You’ll come out when you’ve learned some manners, young man!” she said through the thick mahogany door. “Your stepfather was right!” Not waiting for a response, she went back downstairs, then into the powder room next to the library. Turning on the lights, she stared at herself in the mirror.
Her cheeks — the bone structure looking more perfect than ever under the young supple skin that had been her share of Rebecca Mayhew — showed deep scratches where Ryan’s nails had sunk into them. For a moment she felt a flash of panic, but then reminded herself that this was fresh, young skin that would quickly heal. It would be decades before her face once more began to show the ravages of time. But when she shifted her attention to her hair — the wonderful, thick hair she hadn’t had in twenty years — her eyes glistened with tears. The boy had torn at it, and now her scalp was bleeding.
But next time, she would choose the children herself. She’d known these two were a mistake — she’d told Lavinia and Alicia as much when they’d first arrived. They, and their mother.
That had been the real mistake — using children with a mother. How long did Anton think they could get away with that? Last time, when he’d been so happy to find twin boys so close to being ripe that neither he nor any of the other men had been able to resist the promise of a feast, it might have been worth the risk. But this time it had been a mistake. Even though Caroline was locked away, Melanie was certain the police would be back, and though Anton could probably handle it, every decade it was getting harder and harder. But as she gazed in the mirror, Melanie knew that no matter how hard it became to find the children, it was worth it.
Even with the scratches in her skin and the bits of hair missing from her bleeding scalp, she looked better today than she had in decades.
Perhaps even centuries…
Ryan listened to the lock click into place, then looked at the clock on the table next to his bed. Just a little after three-thirty. Tony Fleming had said he wouldn’t be back until five-thirty or maybe six, which meant that Ryan had two hours to explore the maze of secret passages, since he was pretty sure he’d made Melanie Whatever- She-Said-Her-Name-Was mad enough that she wouldn’t come near his room until his stepfather came home.
Which was exactly what he’d planned ever since she’d arrived to watch him while his stepfather went out to do whatever it was he did. He’d known right away that she wasn’t there to stay with him at all — she was there to make sure he didn’t get away. But it hadn’t been hard to sweet talk her into letting him go to the bathroom, and be nice enough that she let him stay out of his room long enough to find what he needed. That had been easy — he’d found a whole stash of batteries in the bottom drawer in the kitchen, and taken enough so that he shouldn’t run out if he was careful.
The second thing he’d decided to take was the ring of keys that his mother had swiped from the store yesterday. That had been a little harder, since his mother’s purse hadn’t been on the table in the front hall where she usually left it. He’d been afraid she might have taken it with her to the hospital, but then he’d decided to try to find it anyway. That had taken almost an hour, and finally he’d had to sneak into the dressing room off the big bedroom and go through most of her drawers before he finally found it. Melanie — or whatever her name really was — had almost caught him that time, but he’d gotten back to his room just as she’d come to the top of the stairs,
