She found herself walking in the garden again, the moonlight giving the cascades from the fountain a soft, silvery glow. It was much the same as it had been with her sisters, but this time, she was alone. The roses were in full bloom. She could smell their intoxicating floral fragrance. Every single bush held a symphony of perfect blooms. “Roses of Yesterday” played on the organ again, the song drifting like mist across the darkened paths. Breezes blew through the pale green leaves on the trees, their hulks barely ebony brush strokes against the indigo night.
A quick gaze into the fountain revealed that she was wearing the same yellow taffeta dress trimmed with red roses she’d worn to the Frick Mansion a year ago. Scarlet roses and a topaz tiara adorned her auburn hair. She looked every inch the queen she knew she was. She always did think that dress flattered her. It was one of Jeff’s favorites.
She’d been so busy admiring herself, she didn’t hear his footfalls at first. When she looked up…there he was. “Jeff,” she barely whispered as he strolled out of the dusky shadows. He wore his black tuxedo with the white shirt again…and unlike Troll, he filled it out just fine. He’d never looked more handsome, with those wind-blown black-brown curls and the stunning high cheekbones that made him resemble more a young god than an attractive man. Her breath caught in her throat.
“Hilary,” he said in that beautiful, deep voice that always held her in its thrall, “I need to talk to you. This is the only place I could do it. Here, Mittens.” He handed her an enormous bouquet of scarlet roses, matching the ones in her hair. “I know these were always your favorites. They look amazing on you.”
“Jeff! Thank you.” She’d never been so happy to see him, even as she buried her nose in the soft flowers. “You have to tell me everything.” He led her to one of the stone benches, not far from where she and Troll planted those roses earlier in the day. “Where are you? We’ve been searching everywhere for you, and Scott and Victor and Foley. No one knows where you are! It’s like you vanished off the face of the planet!”
“Hilary,” he went on, his voice more urgent. “You have to believe me. I didn’t marry Pavla because I wanted to. I married her because I had to. Because I had to save them.” He looked away from her, lowering those thick, dark eyelashes of his. “And it didn’t work anyway. She still hurt them. Hurt all of us, including me.”
“But why?” Hilary did not like the near-whine creeping into her voice. “Couldn’t you have done something more sensible with her, like, oh, murder her? What is so all-important that she went after you? You’re an actor, not a spy or a military official or even a producer!”
He made a face. “I’m also a wealthy matinee idol with multiple connections to producers here and in Europe. She wanted to use me and my connections to land major roles here and in Europe.” He took her hands and squeezed them hard. “Hilary, you have to believe me! I never loved her! I love you! I always have!”
“Jeff,” she frowned. “I don’t understand any of this. What was so important that you married her to save lives? Even I don’t think getting roles in the US is worth forcing a man into unwanted wedlock. Maybe hypnotizing a few producers who probably deserve it, but not forcing someone.”
“You have to listen!” He pulled her into his arms. “Mittens, this is important. I’m the only one who can talk. She took their voices, Hilary…and by the end of the year, she’s going to take me.”
“What?!” Hilary grabbed hold of him and her roses for dear life, pulling him hard into her warm arms. “Take you? Take you where? What does that little piece of Eastern European poison ivy want to do with you?” She made a face as her eyes roamed over his lean, strong figure and that aquiline nose. “Other than the obvious.”
He leaned on her shoulder as the breeze that ruffled the leaves became a stiffer wind. “Hilary, I we don’t have much time left. She’ll be coming for me any minute now.” His beautiful almond-shaped eyes looked away from her, deeply haunted. “I never even got to give you my surprise. She took that, too. Said that anything of mine belonged to her.”
“What surprise? The one you told me about last July?” Hilary could barely hear her voice over the raging wind now. It drowned out everything. The fountain, the organ playing “Roses of Yesterday,” they all vanished. “What is it, Pumpkin? What’s the surprise?”
He leaned into her, clutching her for all he was worth. “You’ll love it, Mittens. I wanted it for us.” She chuckled as he nibbled her ear. “It has all the room for roses we could ever want.”
He was about to pull her into a kiss when she heard…her. “Well, hello there, husband.” That purr of an Eastern European accent managed to drown out even the raging winds and leaves rustling overhead. “Fancy finding you in the arms of another woman. Running away from me again, I see. You know you’re my property…and you’re on my property.”
“Pavla,” Jeff’s growl almost sounded familiar, “I’ve told you, I don’t want you. Hilary’s the one I love!”
She leaned over Jeff, stroking those tanned cheeks with those long blood-red fingernails. It matched her low-cut black satin gown with the mile-high slit and enormous, stiff red lace collar. “And I’ve told you, you are in a marriage contract. I’m not about to release you, or that information you hold, or my ticket to fame and fortune.”
“You’ve already hurt my friends, Pavla! You took their voices, their lives!” Jeff’s almond eyes nearly glistened with tears. “I’ll be damned if I let you hurt Hilary!”
“Oh, I wouldn’t dream of it, husband.” Hilary’s eyes widened as the same monsters from her sister’s dreams and their previous ones flanked her, snarling and foaming like rabid nightmares. “They, however, won’t be so forgiving.” Her very presence made the roses around them wilt and turn as black as the oncoming shadows.
“Oh no, you don’t!” Hilary glared at her. “I’m not like my sisters. I won’t let you take MY Jeffrey, no matter how much you pound on us!”
“Um, Hilary,” Jeff muttered, “I really wouldn’t encourage them right now.”
She glared at Pavla and stomped right up to her face. “Let my Jeff go, now! Or else I’ll find that information Jeff keeps mentioning and broadcast it to the world! I am an actress, after all. And unlike you, I’m one who has feelings.”
Her dark eyes flared. “You’ll do no such thing,” she snarled between her teeth. “You’ll never find that information. I locked it away, bound it with the heaviest darkness and hid it in the shadows. I silenced that voice, those voices. No one will ever know.”
“I’ll know,” Hilary hissed, “Pablum!” Maybe giving her a black eye wasn’t the smartest idea she ever had, but damn it, Pablum annoyed her! She deserved to look less pretty.
“Hilary!” Jeff leaped after her, but two of the monsters tackled him like linebackers taking down a quarterback. “Let me go, you damn beasts!” He struggled with them, giving them a few good right hooks of his own. She didn’t often get to watch him fight. He wasn’t the best fighter - Sherwood was better - but he certainly threw his all into it.
Unfortunately, not only were they outnumbered, but they were all three times their size. The largest monster held her to the ground screaming at the top of her lungs. She kicked and struggled, but it did her no good.
“Bring me my husband,” Pavla hissed. She glared at Jeff, who struggled in the sinewy arms of two more large creatures.
“Pavla, no!” His long legs kicked at the creatures, but they dodged him. “I don’t love you! I’ll never love you!”
“You’re mine, husband.” Her sharp white teeth glowed in that blood red grin as she yanked Jeff into her arms. “You know you belong to me.” Her fingers stroked his dark curls, then ran down the high cheekbones. “And at the end of the year, you will belong to me. You’ll be my slave, my pet, a monster like them.”
“NO!” Hilary and Jeff screamed at the same time. Hilary lunged for them…just as a huge troll paw came down hard on the back of her head. The last thing she heard before she blacked out were Jeff’s helpless screams mingling with the shrieking wind and the screams of the hoot owls in the ebony summer night.
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