Was she thinking about the lengths she went to in order to keep him happy? Or was she thinking about how Gavin had once protected her?
From one protector to another. That seemed to be her MO, and it rankled me to see her being such a victim. Or was she more of a chess player, like Amanda Lee?
James patted her back. “You don’t have anyone else who’ll understand you like I do. What other man is going to sympathize with you about what a bastard your dad is? Same with your mom, when she just stood by and let him sneak into your room at night?”
“Why do you have to talk about them?”
“We don’t.”
Manipulator. But Farah had to play along, didn’t she? She didn’t have a choice about dumping him, so why not make the most of it? Maybe she really did even have an odd, sexual connection with him, like in a Kathleen Turner movie.
They were quiet for a blessed moment, until James set Farah away at arm’s length.
“There’re some things we do need to talk about, though. You know that.”
She pushed out a sigh. “What is it this time? A hang glider? Another car? A newer house? My bank account’s going to start running low, James.”
“Secrets are expensive,” he said, tweaking her chin, acting like he was kidding.
I’d known from the get-go that he had no love for Farah. Maybe he liked her body—what red-blooded male wouldn’t?—but he liked her money more.
I could see Farah’s face going from the false security she’d just felt in his arms to betrayal. It was that fast. Didn’t James know what happened to people who betrayed her?
“Would you fight a ghost for me?” she asked.
He laughed. “Sure, Farah.”
Her smile was bitter. “You really do think I’m out of my head, don’t you? Maybe you always have.”
I was sure that my haunting had put everything in perspective for her, and she was desperate, scared.
Paranoia, the destroyer…
She was the one who was laughing now, softly. “When I came here for comfort, it didn’t take you but fifteen minutes to hold Elizabeth over my head. You couldn’t even do me the courtesy of pretending you believed I saw her outside.”
A man of little patience, the idiot said, “Maybe you should just call your therapist.”
“My therapist doesn’t know about Elizabeth. Are you insane? You wouldn’t even know about her, except you were creeping around the pool that day when I was talking on the phone.”
He didn’t ask to whom she’d been talking, so I assumed either that she’d told him about Noah’s part in the murder or that she’d lied her way around it.
“God,” she said. “I’ve been such a mess that I believed every promise you ever made to me. How pathetic is that?”
James chuffed. “What’s pathetic is that you suck the life out of everyone with your neediness.” Then he got real mean. “You’ve got to be crazy to think that I was in this for anything but what you gave me, and if that dries up…”
Farah’s chest was rising and falling. “What? Why don’t you finally say it? What happens if I don’t give you everything you’re always asking for, you greedy son of a bitch?”
His gaze traveled to a phone that was waiting on the nearby metallic bar.
“What’s Gavin’s number again?” he asked mockingly.
I don’t know how many times he’d used this line on her to get what he wanted, but he obviously couldn’t see that she was in unstable shape tonight after being traumatized by Elizabeth.
She sprinted toward the bar, but he was faster, beating her to the phone and holding it over his head, laughing all the while.
“You wouldn’t be able to stop me if you tried,” he said.
“Fuck you!”
“Oh, but remember? You’ve been doing that since I found out your little secret. And I have to say, the pleasure’s really wearing off.”
He was pushing Farah to her limits, and I don’t know what he thought he’d get out of this besides more anger.
As I said, Farah was not in the mood tonight. I’d broken her, and it’d been pretty easy, not to mention well deserved.
Tauntingly, he began to dial the phone, still raising it in the air, but she didn’t jump for it like a lot of women would. No, Farah calmly stared at him, and I could see the decision she made right then and there.
And when she reached to the end of the bar, where a vodka bottle was standing, I didn’t stop her from grabbing it.
“Oh, ho-ho,” James said. “What’re you gonna do with that, huh? Hit me wi—”
She’d already swung the bottle, and it crashed against his skull. It didn’t break, but it did make James drop the phone and stumble toward the bar.
“You fucking bitch.”
Then she used both hands to smash the bottle on the bar.
Liquid bled off the metal and dripped onto the shag carpet as she held up the jagged weapon and shoved it at him. Straight into his eye.
He dropped to the floor with a jolting thud, a long shard of glass sticking out of him as his other, intact eye locked onto the ceiling. Blood mingled with the vodka, running to the floor.
At first, Farah just stood there, staring some more.
I couldn’t believe I hadn’t done anything to stop her. But should I have? Could I have?
She began to laugh, relieved, hysterical. She laughed so hard that she sank to her knees by James and bent over, clutching her stomach.
I wasn’t sure I wanted to be in her mind anymore, but I had to go inside. I had to tie up all the loose ends. So I floated down out of my corner, ready to strike, but she must’ve felt me, because she yanked her head up, her gaze blazing with rage.
“You,” she said, her voice mangled. “You made me do this.”
I have to say, that pissed me off. I hated how she didn’t take responsibility for anything. I hated her right now, because I still remembered the look on Elizabeth’s face as she was being choked, the ultimate fear in her eyes as she realized that she was dying.
I was pretty sure I’d looked like that, too, when I was murdered.
Farah ticked me off so much that I did something out of my ordinary: my hand hardened, and when I reached for her side-braid, I made contact with her, pulling with everything I had. She screamed, her head rearing back, her hands reaching for her hair.
When I jerked it again, she flew off the floor, and I dragged her around the room as she’d dragged Elizabeth’s body into the tall grass that night.
Murderer, I thought as my own mind began to fritz with images of an old lady mask, an ax, a dark night in Elfin Forest…
As Farah squirmed on the floor, getting loose from my grip, my energy expanded. I liked her anger. Better than fear. More, more, more.
Lashing out at her, I made contact with her arm, and fingernail marks appeared.
She screamed again as I took another swipe, giving her more welts. Then I butted against her, and she went reeling a few feet, crashing into a metal table.
“I know what you did,” I yelled, not even pretending to be Elizabeth anymore. Not caring that communicating with her would sap me, because I was feeling strong. Feeling righteous.
I waved a hand through the air, manipulating the energy in it, and a standing battery-powered lamp sailed from one end of the room toward Farah as she struggled to get up. When it banged into her, sending her to the floor, I laughed, then summoned another skinny metallic lamp.
As its power cord pulled out of the wall, sparks zitzed and the light strobed. It caught Farah as she was rolling over.
“Stop!” she screamed.
“Stop?” I materialized to her for a blipping instant, then disappeared.