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"Is anyone here?" Leonora called softly. Nicky knew she wasn't talking to any living person. "Tara! Tara, are you there?"
Silence.
"Lauren? Becky?" Leonora's voice dropped into the husky, rasping timbre that told Nicky that she was once again in a dimension of her own. She was frowning, concentrating, as she called out to the spirit world.
"Yes, I can see you," Leonora said, sounding as if she were talking to someone only a few feet away. Her voice sharpened. "Who are you?"
She was looking at a point near where she had said the bed had once been located.
Nicky found herself looking there, too, although so far as she could tell there was nothing but empty room to see. But.... the draft moving around her ankles had turned icy.
A quick glance at the temperature told her that it had fallen to 65 degrees. And the magnetometer was showing unmistakable signs of activity as well. Soundlessly - she didn't want to disturb her mother when she was obviously on a roll - she indicated to the cameraman that he should pan the sensors. The camera's digital clock indicated that they were running out of time: only six minutes left. The way her night was going, the three dead girls would materialize right in front of them - exactly thirty seconds after they were off the air.
Ah, well. There was no speeding this up. No regulating it. Leonora, once set in motion, was like a runaway train. Nicky was on board now, which meant that all she could do was hang on for the ride and try to shape the experience so that it was as exciting for the viewers as possible.
"You don't like us being here?" Leonora's voice was barely audible now. "I understand. We're trying to help you. Can you tell me your name?" Leonora frowned, then glanced at Nicky. "Tara. It's Tara. She says she's looking for the other girls - Lauren and Becky. Are they here in the house with you?"
That last question was clearly addressed to the unseen Tara. Leonora nodded, as if she were listening to someone's reply.
Watching, Nicky discovered that she was holding her breath. She had witnessed her mother's interactions with the spirit world for so many years that they had long since ceased to be anything out of the ordinary. Leonora talked to the dead as regularly as some mothers baked brownies. But tonight something, some combination of the echoing emptiness of the room and her mother's deepening voice and the knowledge of the atrocity that had been committed in this house, combined to give her the willies.
Thank God. It had to be good TV if her mother was succeeding in unnerving her.
"You can't find them? You think they might be in the kitchen?" Leonora paused, seeming to listen intently. "Yes, I know it's Lauren's birthday - you think they're having birthday cake without you?" Leonora frowned, then shook her head. "Tara, wait. Don't go. Please, we want to talk to you. The other girls aren't in the kitchen now, Tara, they're...."
Leonora's voice trailed off. She turned as if watching someone go out of the room. Standing between her mother and the door, Nicky felt a rush of icy air go past her face. Eyes widening, she took a reflexive step back. Her hand flew to her cheek.
Spooky.
Her skin felt normal. Warm, dry.
Her heart, on the other hand, was suddenly racing.
"She's gone," Leonora said, sounding disappointed as she turned to look at Nicky. "Tara. She was here and now she's gone. I think - I think what's happening here is that she's re-enacting the events that occurred before she was attacked in the kitchen. I think on that night she got separated from the other two girls, for whatever reason, then came up to this bedroom - Lauren's bedroom - looking for them. When they weren't here, she went down to the kitchen and...."
She never finished speaking. Instead, the air was split by a woman's blood-curdling scream.
Excerpted from SUPERSTITION © Copyright 2005 by Karen Robards. Reprinted with permission by Signet Group (USA). All rights reserved.
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