Now You See Her Linda Howard(33)

Whoa! She had to stop that line of thinking right now, or she'd be on the phone before she knew it. But she had a very clear vision of herself astride him, his mouth spreading kisses over her breasts and his big hands gripping her hips as he moved her up and down—

Oh, damn. Stop it, she admonished herself. There were serious problems in her life, and she was letting herself get distracted into thinking about Richard. Mother Nature had rigged the game in her favor, making sexual attraction so damn fascinating that once you felt it, you couldn't tune it out. On the other hand, thinking about Richard, picturing him naked, was a lot more pleasant than thinking about death and clairvoyance.

She admitted to herself that she had half-expected him to call or stop by that day. If she read him correctly, and she thought. she did, his middle name was persistence. Even though he had agreed to lay off, he had also promised that this thing between them, whatever it was, wasn't over. I'll be back, he'd said, and she knew he meant it. The question was, how long would he lay off and when would he be back? To her shame, she had hoped to see him today.

But no one had rung her doorbell all day long,and bedtime was fast approaching. She hadn't slept well the night before—she'd been edgy after the morning's encounter with Richard and the afternoon's encounter with the vendor's ghost—but even though she was tired, she didn't want to go to bed. She was afraid to sleep, she realized, afraid she would sleepwalk or go into a trance, or whatever had happened, and paint another death scene. She had always loved sleeping, and now that pleasure was being stolen from her. That thought made her mad as hell, and it scared her. Most of all, it scared her.

Fear was something she had seldom known in her life, at least as an adult. Once as a child she had spent two days alone, because her father had taken her brother with him on some shoot and her mother had gone to a party and forgotten to come home, and she had been very scared then. She had been only nine years old and afraid they had all left her behind and were never coming home. And once, when she was fourteen, one of her mother's many lovers—his name was Raz, she would never forget that name—had agreed with her mother that Sweeney was old enough to learn about sex.

Fortunately they had both been so drunk that Sweeney was able to pull away and run, her heart pounding so hard in her chest that she had been afraid she would pass out and then they would have her. She had run down to the basement of the apartment building and hidden in the laundry, knowing her mother would never think of looking there, having never set foot in the place. She huddled between a washing machine and the wall for what seemed like hours, afraid to go back go the apartment in case Raz was waiting for her. Finally, growing more disgusted than afraid, she had loosed the handle from a mop and, armed with the handle, returned to the apartment. She didn't like hiding in the laundry; she was going back to her room and the comfort of her books and paints, and if anyone bothered her, she would hit them on the head as hard as she could.

Over the years she had developed the habit of confronting problems rather than hiding from them, but in the current case neither seemed to do any good. How could you confront something so nebulous?

Clairvoyance wasn't something you could see, or touch. It was just there, like blue eyes; you either had them or you didn't. Same with clairvoyance.

Having blue eyes didn't frighten her, but clairvoyance did. In itself it was scary enough, but now, looking back, she saw everything that had happened in the past year as a progression, from plants to red lights to ghosts to clairvoyance. Looking at it that way, she didn't dare try to guess what would be next. Levitation? Or maybe she would start setting things on fire just by looking at them.

She tried to be amused, but for once her sense of humor wasn't working.

But wandering around the studio afraid to go to bed did remind her of hiding in the laundry when she was fourteen, and she growled aloud at herself. Nothing had happened the night before, and just because the more she thought about the trance painting the more worried she became didn't mean it would happen every night. It might not happen again for a long time, until someone else she knew died—

That was it. A lot of people died every day in New York, but none of their deaths had caused sleepwalking forays. She had known the hot dog vendor, however, so his death had disturbed her on a subconscious level.

For the first time, she wondered how he had died. After she had seen him yesterday, she had been too shocked to think about it, and he had looked as healthy as any ghost she had ever seen. But in the scene she had painted, blood had been coming from his nostrils, and he had clearly suffered a head injury.

Had he been, hit by a car or maybe fallen down some steps? Just how accurate was that painting?

Sweeney shivered. She didn't want to know the answer to that last question.

She shivered again and realized how cold she was. She was also very tired, very sleepy, and she was not going to stay awake a minute longer worrying about things she couldn't control. She put on her pajamas and crawled into the warm bed, curling into a ball and waiting for the heat from the electric blanket to seep into her flesh.

Just before she slept, she had the drowsy thought that if Richard were in bed with her, she wouldn't need an electric blanket to keep her warm.

Just after midnight she gasped, pulling in a hard, fast breath. She pushed restlessly at the covers, fighting the blankets. She muttered, the sounds indistinct, and rolled her head as if trying to escape something.