The Taking (Seven Deadly Sins #3)(26)
Author: Erin McCarthy

“Camille,” Annabel said, her body slumping down lower on her bed, her hand fluttering in front of her pocked face in embarrassment. “Whatever are you doing here?”

Annabel shot her maid a look of distress, but there was nothing a servant could do, and the girl just stared at them with wide eyes.

Coming around the side of the four-poster, Camille came right up to Annabel and took her hand, so that she could get a proper look at the witch’s splotchy face. It was thoroughly disgusting, the sores open and weeping, covering at least 50 percent of her face and neck, and Camille was very, very pleased. It had been difficult shaking the potion onto Annabel’s scones without detection the week before, but this was so worth the effort.

“You poor thing, I am most distressed for you. I heard you were ill and I had to ascertain for myself that you were not in any real danger, and also I thought to offer my assistance.”

Annabel was trying to discreetly remove her hand, but Camille held on tight. “That is so thoughtful of you, but I am expected to recover. There is nothing that can be done but wait for the… ailment to recede.”

“I see. Well, then I am much relieved. Though you do look very uncomfortable.” Camille made a slight gesture to Annabel’s face. “Do they hurt?”

Tears were in her foe’s eyes. “No. They itch a little, but mostly it’s just a huge inconvenience. I am beyond bored.”

“Oh.” Camille waved her hand in the air in dismissal. “Absolutely nothing of interest has happened in society this week. Only that Mr. Perkins became engaged to Miss Hanson at her family’s ball last night.”

Watching Annabel’s face contort in shock as she realized she had lost the battle for Mr. Perkins’s affections would have been worth two hundred dollars, let alone the measly two Camille had forked over to Felix. A sob of distress came from Annabel.

Camille leaned in and studied the lesions on Annabel’s face. “My dear, I hope these won’t scar,” she said with false concern. “What a tragedy that would be for one so lovely as you.”

And she would learn the pain of social ostracizing just as Camille had.

Annabel began sobbing in earnest, and Camille thought it was such a pretty, satisfying sound. Perhaps she should make people cry more often.

Regan sat up straight in bed. Blinking, she looked around the room, disoriented. God, another dream so real, so intense, she felt like she had been there. She had seen the crusty, oozing sores on Miss Janise’s face, and smelled the bitter medicinal lotion that had been rubbed over the girl’s skin. She had heard the rap of Camille’s boots on the floor, and felt her sick satisfaction at having reduced her enemy to tears.

How could Regan feel those emotions, ones that didn’t belong to her and that she, frankly, found offensive? And what was rolling around in her subconscious that she could take a simple entry in Camille’s journal for creating a rash and spin it into such a detailed story? There had been no indication why the author had written it down, other than the cryptic remark that it had worked, though she had never mentioned on who it had been used. Regan still didn’t even know why she kept giving her the name Camille. It was an odd name to pluck out of thin air and it made Regan nervous.Kicking back the covers, Regan stood up. She needed a glass of water and a new T-shirt to sleep in. The one she was wearing was damp with sweat, another disgusting side affect of these new vivid dreams. Regan flipped open her cell phone on her nightstand and sighed. Two A.M. She had to work the next day and she was wide awake and then some.

Padding to the adjoining bathroom, she flicked on the light and squinted, the bulbs blinding. She leaned over the sink to splash some water on her face, the cool liquid hitting her hot skin and flushing away the perspiration. When she stood back up she glanced in the mirror.

And screamed.

Oh, my God. Her face was covered in a rash, open sores oozing fluid, a patchwork of lesions all over her cheeks, forehead, chin, and neck. Regan fell back, knocking the towel rack, her hands flying to her face. She could feel them, the sticky wetness of the rash beneath her fingertips.

It was everywhere, a road map of a rash, one she’d had no indication could be appearing when she’d gone to bed.

Stepping forward cautiously, she studied her face in the mirror, droplets of water still clinging to her chin and eyelashes. “Holy shit,” she murmured, every hair on her arms standing at attention.

Where had it come from? And if she had just had an allergic reaction to something, how could she have dreamed about the very same thing? Could her mind somehow have known even asleep what was bursting forth on her body?

A whoosh of air from behind her, the prickling sensation of eyes on the back of her head, had her whirling around.

What she saw in the doorway had her knees buckling.

It was a young blonde woman in a black Victorian mourning gown, a small smile on her pretty and delicate face.

The vision wasn’t solid, more like a projection of a picture into the air, her tiny feet in high boots hovering just above the floor.

Regan couldn’t speak, couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe. She just stood there, suspended in the surrealistic timeless moment, she and Camille.

It had to be Camille.

It was Camille.

The dress, the strange smile, this was how she had pictured Camille heading to Miss Janise’s house. Only that had been a dream. Just a dream. There was no Camille or Miss Janise.

Maybe this was a dream, too.

Yet it didn’t feel like a dream, but a frightening and strange reality she didn’t understand, she and a ghost, an imprint on this house, who was somehow now reaching out from the other realm and connecting with Regan.

She wanted to ask the woman what she wanted, why she was there, who she was, and how she had died, the questions streaming through her mind rapidly, but her mouth remained closed. It felt like the violence of her voice breaking the silence of their assessment of one another would be inappropriate.

It was Camille’s move to make, not hers.

Regan had no idea how long she stared at the unmoving translucent figure, but she finally succumbed to the irresistible urge to blink, and when her eyes opened there was nothing in the doorway. Regan shot forward and glanced into her bedroom and in the other direction, toward the hallway. Nothing. Obviously.

Goose bumps dancing all over her arms, she went back into the bathroom, realizing that with the light on behind her, she shouldn’t have even been able to see anything in the shadowy darkness of the doorway.

Not that such details mattered to a ghost, she supposed.