Heroes are My Weakness by Susan Elizabeth Phillips Read Free Book Online Page A

was hardly terrifying. “You will die in seven days” seemed too specific. But she’d watched a lot of television when she was sick, including Apocalypse Now . . .
    She opened the door of the dumbwaiter, lowered her head, and uttered, in a soft, creepy moan, “The horror . . .” The words uncoiled like a hissing snake. “The horrrror . . .”
    She got goose bumps.
    Sick! Scamp exclaimed in delight.
    Juvenile, but satisfying, Dilly said.
    Annie hurried back the way she’d come and let herself out. Staying in the shadows where she couldn’t be spotted from the turret, she made her way to the drive.
    Harp House finally had the ghost it deserved.

Chapter Three
    A NNIE WOKE UP IN A slightly more positive frame of mind. The idea of driving Theo Harp gradually insane was so satisfyingly twisted that she couldn’t help but feel better. There was no way he could write those awful books without a powerful imagination, and what could be more well deserved than turning that imagination against him? She thought about what else she might be able to pull off and allowed herself a brief fantasy of Theo in a straitjacket, trapped behind asylum bars.
    With snakes slithering across the floor! Scamp added.
    You won’t get him that easily, Leo sneered.
    Annie hit a snag in her hair and tossed her comb aside. She pulled on jeans, a camisole, a long-sleeved gray T-shirt, and topped it all with a sweatshirt that had somehow survived her college days. As she left her bedroom for the living room, she took in what she’d done before she’d gone to bed last night. The small animal skulls Mariah had displayed in a bowl edged with barbed wire were now buried in the bottom of a trash bag. Her mother and Georgia O’Keeffe might find bones beautiful, but Annie didn’t, and if she had to spend two months here, she was going to feel at least marginally at home. Unfortunately, the cottage was so compact there was nowhere to stash the iridescent plaster mermaid chair. She’d tried to sit in it and been jabbed in the back with a pair of breasts.
    Two items she’d uncovered disturbed her—a copy of the Portland Press Herald dated exactly seven days earlier and a bag of freshly ground coffee in the kitchen. Someone had been here recently.
    She drank a cup of that same coffee and made herself eat a piece of jelly toast. She dreaded the thought of going back to Harp House, but at least she’d have WiFi access. She studied the painting of the inverted tree. Maybe by the end of the day she’d know who R. Connor was and whether his or her work had any value.
    She couldn’t put it off any longer. She stuffed her inventory notebook, her laptop, and some other things in her backpack, wrapped herself up, and began her reluctant journey to Harp House. As she crossed the eastern edge of the marsh, she eyed the wooden footbridge. Bypassing it made the trip longer, and she needed to stop avoiding it. She would. But not today.
    Annie had met Theo and Regan Harp two weeks after Mariah and Elliott had flown off to the Caribbean together and returned married. The twins were just coming up the cliff steps from the beach. Regan had appeared first, all golden tan legs and long, dark hair swinging around her pretty face. Then Annie had seen Theo. Even at sixteen, skinny, with a few breakouts on his forehead and a face not quite big enough to carry his nose, he’d been arresting, aloof, and she was instantly captivated. He, however, had regarded her with undisguised boredom.
    Annie desperately wanted them to like her, but she was intimidated by their self-confidence, and that made her tongue-tied in their presence. While Regan was easy and sweet, Theo was rude and cutting. Elliott tended to indulge them both in an attempt to make up for their mother’s desertion when they were five, but he insisted they include Annie in their activities. Theo begrudgingly invited her to go out with them on their sailboat. But when Annie arrived at the dock that jutted between