Deceptions (Cainsville 3)

. Tried calling, but it keeps going to v-mail. Can you meet me? Sorry to be cryptic, but I don't want to put this in an e-mail. I'll be at the address below in an hour. I'll owe you. You can even bill me if you want. :)

I checked the address, expecting to see it was spoofed. It wasn't. I could hear James telling me he hadn't hired those deprogrammers, and my mocking reply.

"Get in the car," he said.

We got in, but Gabriel didn't start the engine. He peered out. When I caught a glimpse of something moving outside, I twisted to peer awkwardly through the back window as a raven settled onto a dead oak.

"Cwn Annwn," I murmured.

Gabriel adjusted the mirror to look. "A hound?"

"No, raven. They're with the Huntsmen, owls with the fae. That's my theory anyway. There was a raven in Cainsville shortly after I arrived. It attacked TC. Veronica helped me scare it off. She said ravens weren't supposed to be there. I thought she meant in the region, which is true, but I think she meant the town. I remember laughing when the raven avoided the gargoyles, like it thought they were alive. That night, when I came out of work, I found it dead, killed by a couple of owls."

"So the Huntsmen send the ravens to watch you?"

"And, more rarely, the fae send owls. I've even seen both birds in the same place. At the abandoned psych hospital and in the gully after our car crash."

"Did they attack each other?"

"No. They just watched me."

I looked around again. Then I spotted something through the trees.

"Shit," I said. "Do you know where we are?"

"The middle of nowhere?"

I smiled. He'd been in a bad mood when I left this morning. Cool and distant, bordering on impatient. I'd practically been hovering at the door, overnight bag in hand, when Ricky arrived, like a kid waiting for parent #2 to pick her up for the weekend because parent #1 had had quite enough of her, thank you very much.

Now we'd been summoned to a deserted country road, for unknown and almost certainly nefarious reasons, and he had relaxed, was even joking. Because, let's face it, a dangerous and potentially deadly situation was so much easier to handle than an emotionally distraught houseguest.

"We're at Villa Tuscana."

His look said that didn't help.

"It's an estate," I said. "Built by Nathaniel Mills for his wife, Letitia Roosevelt, at the turn of the century. She was his second wife, a third his age, and a distant relative of the presidential Roosevelts. The rumor was that he married her for that political connection. To prove otherwise, he built her this house, modeled after one where they first met in Tuscany. It's said he built it from memory, because he remembered every moment of that night."

A terribly romantic story, and when I paused for effect, Gabriel motioned for me to get to the point.

"She never spent a night in it," I said. "He threw a ball to welcome her, and as the guests were leaving, they realized no one had seen her for a while. They found her in the lily pond, drowned. Accident, suicide, murder . . . no one ever knew, but Mills walked out the front door that night and never returned. He let the house fall to ruins. Which is how it still stands."

After I finished, there were about ten seconds of thoughtful silence where I thought Gabriel was actually experiencing some emotional reaction. Then he said, "Mills? Any relation to . . . ?"

"James Mills Morgan? Yes. Nathaniel was a distant cousin."

"Which is how you know the story."

"Um, no. Plenty of locals know the story. You've seriously never heard it?"

He shook his head. "If this house is connected to James, then the obvious answer is that he lured us here. The e-mails would be easy enough to fake with his technical skills."

"His team's skills. James himself isn't much of a techie. But yes, he could have convinced someone to do it. He doesn't have any direct connection to the property, though. I'm thinking of someone else who lured me to an abandoned building under false pretenses."

"Tristan."

I looked at the weed-choked lane leading to the ruins. "We should take a look."

The proper response at this point would be: Are you kidding? Or, Are you fucking shitting me? Gabriel would never be so profane, but the sentiment held. We'd been lured to an abandoned estate, and I wanted to go check it out? Clearly madness. But Gabriel only sat there, gazing down that lane, considering.