The Girl in Blue by Barbara J. Hancock Read Free Book Online Page A

them. The Girl in Blue stood under the tree. Not laughing or burning. Only clutching empty air against her chest.
    But for long moments Trinity didn’t care about anything except Creed’s Scotch-flavored kiss.
    Then he moved back. Then several strides more. He pushed his hands up into his thick brown hair as if to hold himself together or tear himself apart.
    “Every time I kiss you I feel like I’m coming alive. Like I’m coming up out of that freezing water you pulled me from all those years ago,” Creed confessed. His voice was ragged and raw and shuddering.
    Then his meaning penetrated and chilled away the vestiges of heat his lips had left on hers.
    He was obsessed by his close brush with death. He might as well be soaking wet and shivering in her arms. They were still trapped in that moment and probably always would be.
    “And every time you kiss me I feel like I want to die,” she said.
    He could have easily pulled her into the lake that day. They could have sunk to the bottom, together forever in an icy grave. He hadn’t, but when she saw his haggard face and haunted eyes she knew the danger of it wasn’t past. She’d resisted the gloomy pall that held Scarlet Falls in its clutches. She’d fought against the idea that she had to be afraid of the dark forever.
    But Samuel Creed lived in the abyss. It was crazy for her to play along its edge, contemplating the dive while he dragged her down with him, kiss by heated kiss, disguising darkness with desire.

Chapter Five
    They didn’t stroll back together through the gathering dusk holding hands and gazing soulfully into each other’s eyes. She left Creed at the Chadwick plot with his lips swollen and his hands in his pockets.
    The Girl in Blue had disappeared, but Trinity wasn’t fooled. Not by Clara and not by Creed. Neither threat was past merely because they were no longer in sight.
    She walked back to Hillhaven alone with nothing but lengthening shadows to keep her company. As their dark amorphous tendrils seemed to caress her skin, she wondered if staying in Scarlet Falls would invite the shadows to come inside and dance on her soul.
    * * *
    Trinity put the old photograph back where she’d found it as soon as she arrived at Hillhaven. The house was echoing and empty around her, but she hurried because she wanted to be out of Creed’s rooms before his return.
    The ragdoll was gone.
    She stood inside the threshold where she’d stopped to scan the room out of habit. It was only an old toy. A bundle of cloth scraps and musty stuffing and…button eyes. Trinity scrutinized Creed’s collection bit by bit, but couldn’t spot the missing item. Crazily, her instincts caused the hair to rise on the back of her neck and a chill of adrenaline to flow down her spine.
    Creed must have moved it.
    That was all.
    He’d put the doll somewhere else.
    It certainly hadn’t slumped down from its perch to crawl across the floor…
    Trinity forced herself to step forward and put the photograph of Clara Chadwick back in its place. But she didn’t linger. Because if Creed hadn’t moved it and it couldn’t move itself, then maybe the Girl in Blue had come home to play.
    * * *
    That evening Trinity decided to study in her room. Even surrounded by comforting and familiar things, she was on edge. When Creed came home, his movements weren’t loud, but it was as if the house expanded and breathed around her, more full, with more potential for…something.
    He charged the atmosphere by simply being in it.
    Close to midnight, Trinity gave up trying to review coursework she might never have the opportunity to resume. She hadn’t heard Creed in a while and she thought he must have gone to bed.
    Of course, Hillhaven was never silent, but unlike an apartment building full of nursing students there was no concrete cause for the continuous rustling sighs and occasional ambiguous creaks. Unless the age of its timbers was cause enough.
    For all its size and its years, it should sit,