Haunt Me Still by Jennifer Lee Carrell Read Free Book Online Page A

behind her back, a length of cloth passed lengthwise around her torso, passing through her groin and knotted around her neck, smeared thickly with blood.
    It was Lily, and she was dead. Floating on the wind came another whisper.
    She must die. And then, drifting closer, a third: Nothing is but what is not. Whoever they were, they were closing in.
    The blue gown slipped from my grasp. Tightening my grip on the knife, I backed slowly for a few paces, and then I turned and ran.

4
    STILL GRIPPING THE knife, I stumbled through the mist, slipping and sliding down the ramparts and on down through the heather. A gorse bush loomed out of the swirling grayness. As I swerved to avoid it, someone grabbed me from behind. I swung around with the knife, but it was knocked from my grasp, thudding off into the heather. A broad hand clapped over my mouth, and I was forced to the ground and dragged from the path.
    “You’ve kent what you shouldna,” whispered a voice in my ear. Broad Scots for You have known what you should not. Twisting around to look at my captor, I saw a wild-eyed, gray-haired woman, broadly built, at least twenty years my senior.
    I lunged away, but she jerked my arms back so expertly that the pain nearly knocked the wind from me.
    “Lie still,” she said, “if you don’t want to get the both of us killed.”
    A few seconds later, I heard what she must have sensed earlier: hoofbeats coming fast down the hill. I twisted around to face the path, just in time to see a white horse emerge from the mist not five feet away. Spooked by the gorse, the animal whinnied and reared. The rider threw his weight forward, fighting for control, his focus so intent on the horse that I don’t think he ever saw us. But the horse did.
    Its hooves crashed down no more than a foot from my head. Backing a few paces, it bolted. But not before I’d seen the rider’s face. He was the dark-haired man. For what seemed like eons, my captor and I lay in silence beneath the bush. At last, she raised her head. I sat up, but she shook her head. “Hush,” she said, her head cocked, listening. Footsteps were coming back toward us, up the hill. Footsteps, not hoofbeats. This time, she did not have to pull me down; I crouched next to her, as small as I could make myself.
    Bent low to the ground, the man ran right past us. Then he stopped and looked back, reaching down to pick something up.
    My book. Hot panic flooded through me.
    Stealthily, he crept toward us and then stopped. Go, I prayed with every sinew of my body. Go, and don’t look back.
    He turned and took one step away, and then another, and then without warning his hand darted out, grabbing me by one wrist.
    Behind me, the gray-haired fury cried out. Shoving me forward so that I stumbled right into his arms, she darted across the heather, flapping like a broken-winged bird as she disappeared into the mist.
    I jerked away from the hands grasping me, but he held tight. “Hello, Professor,” said a voice I knew, and I realized that his hair, though dark, was curly, and his eyes were green. It was Ben Pearl, and he was laughing.
    “ You! ” was all I could manage to croak.
    Something in my voice cut through his hilarity. “Are you all right?”
    My breath came out in a sob. “Lily,” I gasped, pulling free at last.
    “Your friend?” He nodded in the direction the old woman had run.
    “ No. Lady Nairn’s fifteen-year-old granddaughter. On the hill-top,” I said. “Dead.” I bent down, scrabbling through the heather for the knife.
    “Whoa,” said Ben, crouching down with me. “Slow down.”
    I sat back on my heels, brushing away a hot squeeze of tears. “up on top of the hill. I found a knife. And then Lily, lying there dead, with her throat cut. And a voice, or maybe two voices. Whispers. I don’t know. So I ran. The woman you saw, the gray-haired woman—I don’t know who she is—knocked the knife away and dragged me off the path, and then the dark-haired man nearly rode