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Laura's Willing Spirit ....(99k)    by Jocelyn Ryder

Chapter One

Above San Francisco the California coast is protected by forests and rugged terrain. Getting from the old U.S. 101 to the bluffs that overlook the Pacific means negotiating roads that would be attractive only to hikers or those who find manhood in their Jeeps. The tight turns and one-car width of the road to The Aerie made Bill sweat and kept me scrunched in the corner on the passenger's side of his car. Recalling the way his eyes had gleamed and he'd licked his lips when we'd plunged into the seclusion of the redwoods, I felt it was worth the tension.

Not that I'd have fought Bill off. The Buick would have been comfortable, whether we'd made love in the back seat or the front, and Bill was good. But the closer we got to The Aerie the worse my premonitions became, and I was in no mood for responding.

By the time we crested the last ridge and I saw the house that had meant so much to my mother-saw it for the first time, at that-the gloom and silence of the forest had worked its magic. I was prepared for anything, I thought. But I wasn't. . . not for The Aerie of the Valcouers. Even Bill felt the mood deeply enough to stop and set the handbrake. And he stayed behind the wheel and stared, a brooding expression on his angular features, rather than reaching for me.

"There it is," he remarked in a somber tone.

I'm sure there must be pieces of coastline in the world more rugged than that at Valcouer Cove. But I think you'd have to hunt a long time to find one. I know none will ever strike the note in me The Aerie's setting did that October afternoon. There had been clouds when we'd turned off 101 -dark-bottomed strips that looked like something was pulling thick puffballs out at one end-but the sun had been shining on most of the countryside. When we stopped at the top of that last ridge the sky was almost overcast. Hard-edged, rolling clouds scudded across the coast from the southwest, their undersides almost black and the narrowing spaces between them gleaming with a sinister, dirty-white threat. Where sunshine did penetrate their mass, it illuminated lower-lying mists, creating vast, glowing pyramids which suggested stairways into Hell.

The Aerie squatted on the tip of an arm of the land that jutted out into the ocean and then angled along the coast to clutch Valcouer Cove to the breast of the mountains, an ugly rectangular mass of stone capped by a low-pitched roof of red tile. The windows in the front faced north. They seemed to have an awful, corpse-like awareness-black holes in a darkening skull. The road vanished less than a hundred yards from where we had parked near a steep, wooded slope plunging to the level of Valcouer Point. Long and narrow, the point rested atop sheer cliffs, those on our right dropping to the spume of heavy, pounding surf and those on our left plunging into the still, black waters of the cove. Redwoods marched down the point, filling it from side to side, smaller than the giants we'd skirted on our way, but still big enough to make me feel insignificant. Then they stopped, leaving the last mile to the house barren and desolate in its mantle of storm-stripped rock.

I know I shivered. Almost six months' waiting and imagining had screwed my nerves into a tight knot, and that first glimpse just jerked it solid. As if the scene had burst upon me with a physical impact, I felt hot tingles racing over me, buzzing sensations settling in spots where I didn't dare rub them away. "God it looks grim!" I said. I didn't want Bill to guess how the weird, wild setting was affecting me; a woman needs to keep it to herself if she's the type who becomes excited under stress. There's something in my chemistry that makes stress an erotic stimulus; the more apprehensive a situation makes me, the more thoroughly it arouses me.

Bill chuckled, sounding not at all amused. "Don't let it fool you, Laura. Just our luck to get here at a time when it looks so damn gloomy. It's not really that way at all."

"A haunted mansion? Come on, Bill! I swear the ghost must be looking at us from one of those windows. If I had a pair of binoculars, I could probably see the 'Spirit of the Valcouer Women' right now!"

"Hermione?" Bill's laugh was short and sharp. "She's not that kind. She's one ghost nobody claims to see."

"I know . . . she just moans. Well, the way the wind's starting to gust, I can imagine I'm hearing her."

"Unh." He grunted. He was so sunk in the mood of the place he barely glanced at my bustline when I put my elbow over the back of the seat. But he did grin all of a sudden-a leering sort of grin "When you do hear her, you'll know it's not imagination." Then, "Hell, no use wasting time here. Let's get there before the storm hits." And he released the brake.

He was a dear kind of friend. There weren't many men who'd devote so much time to me without standing to get something out of it, I reflected. He'd come into my life so unexpectedly, too-and under the worst possible handicap. He'd come to me without introduction or recommendation. He'd sought me out on the one errand I could pretend no sympathy for. And in spite of my rudeness, he'd stayed to become a friend.

He'd come in behalf of my mother, he'd told me. She hadn't sent him-hadn't even know he was coming-but he'd wanted somehow to persuade me to change my mind. She did desperately want to see me, according to him. After a silence that had lasted from before my first birthday-after my growing up without even a word of acknowledgement from the mother who'd deserted me-she wanted to see me.

To hell with that, I'd decided. And I'd told Bill, mincing no words. "Why should I go?" I'd asked. "She didn't have time for me. What gives her the idea I ought to have time for her? Look, Mr. Sheldon, you've got some kind of business. Go take care of it. Caroline wrote to me two and a half years ago, when I turned eighteen. She asked me to come see her. I didn't answer then, and I haven't answered any of the letters since. And that's my business."

I guess it was the awful coincidence that kept me from shutting him out of my life. I mean, he found me in the morning, April thirtieth. I cut him off without a second thought. I refused even to discuss going to my mother. But he did have that angular, "All-American-boy" look about him and a predatory gleam in his eye. So when he promised not to bring up the subject of Caroline, I agreed to meet him for lunch. Only the telegram arrived at eleven-thirty; Caroline Mardel --born Valcouer-was dead. At the age of forty, she'd been killed in a fall from the cliffs at The Aerie. And I'd had to break the news to Bill at lunch.

So I'd brought up the subject of Caroline, not Bill. And he'd been as broken up as if she'd been his sister-or his mistress.

"I'd better level with you," he said when he got control of himself. "I've been associated with your mother professionally. She's got a ghost in The Aerie-that's where she's living-was living!-and I'm a parapsychologist. I specialize in so-called 'spiritual' manifestations. We were trying to learn the secret of that ghost. And I even know her will has you in it. You're going to need a friend. And even if you wouldn't see her, I'm going to be that friend for Caroline's sake."

Something in his manner suggested it wasn't entirely for my dead mother's sake. It was the way he kept looking at me, for one thing. If he saw me as game to be stalked, I was ready to let him pretend loyalty to Caroline. So he went with me to hear the reading of the Will.

Caroline's sisters were there, too. Nadine, haughty and cold and fiercely beautiful, but with contempt for me all too clear in her glance, and Willa, sweet and soft and sympathetic, as if she thought I was suffering.

Grumpy, skinny old Todd Ballard read the document to us in an office so musty and cluttered it had to be the one he'd started his practice in He mumbled his way through the formalities the way a priest mumbles through the mass. But he slowed and began to pronounce the words one at a time when he got to the heart of the matter. There was some enormous amount of money, to start with. I didn't even catch the figure, because I knew I wasn't going to get it-and because it was an amount I didn't even believe in. But that was where her assets were being described. Then there was the part about me.

"... my natural-born daughter and my only issue, to receive the entire estate, with the exceptions hereinafter noted as special bequests. She shall inherit contingent upon satisfying the following conditions ..." And the will specified I must spend a period not less than one week nor more than one month, commencing the first week of October following Caroline's death, in The Aerie. I was to spend that time with Caroline's sisters Nadine and Willa and "... such others as my sisters shall deem desirable to the purposes of this requirement ..." and to accomplish three specific feats.

With Nadine and Willa as sole and final judges, I had to demonstrate by the end of my stay that I was "possessed of the Valcouer spirit," that I had learned "... the secret of the ghost of The Aerie," and that I "knew" my mother. Nadine and Willa were to render their judgment according to the terms of separate instructions, of which I was to receive a copy after the decision had been reached. Caroline made two concessions. One was I could take any one person with me for help and advice. The other was that neither Nadine nor Willa could make any financial gain either by my failure to satisfy the conditions or by my success. If I failed, the entire fortune was to be turned over to The Western Foundation for Spiritualism.

From the beginning of May to the beginning of October is five months. Bill was in San Francisco often; his research group was headquartered there and he had a delightful bachelor apartment there he used when he wasn't out chasing down a ghost. I'd spent my entire life on the peninsula; my aunts had taken me to every decent place there was to see around San Francisco. And friends my aunts didn't know had shown me the rest. But Bill and I saw all of it again. And when we weren't seeing, or eating, or drinking, or riding one of the excursion boats, we were "doing" in his apartment.

That was best of all, I thought. With the lights of the city spread before us-maybe with a fog creeping slowly in to gobble them up, the bearskin in front of that picture window was the nicest place to make love I'd ever found. Even now, looking back, I tingle when I recall those hours and the words flood over me.

Bill insisted quietly the whole time I had only one intelligent choice when it came to help in The Aerie. By the time October came, I knew he was right. So he took me in his Buick, his knowledge of spirits and fraud my shield against a mysticism that I didn't for a moment believe in.

I remembered all that as we plunged down the slope and into the woods again. And the gloom heightened my apprehension and made an ache settle in my pussy so fiercely I had to clench my fists to keep from asking Bill to stop again. Somehow, then, we were there. In a last-minute panic, wind driving hard around the corner of the old house to whip my skirt clear up to my waist and Bill snatching at suitcases instead of me, we raced into the protection of the portico. Before either of us could reach the massive bell rope, one of the carved doors swung silently open and Willa cried out to us.

"Hurry! For God's sake get inside before the rain hits! It would wash you right over the cliff!"

There was a quick flurry of introductions involving Nadine's husband, Marsh, a good-natured bear of a man, and a friend of my mother's, saturnine, cynical-looking Vince Lamont. Willa didn't give anyone a chance to get long-winded; she seemed determined to let me get the right kind of start.

"Come on, honey. I'll show you your room so you can freshen up before anybody starts a conversation. One of you men grab her suitcases. Mr. Sheldon, you'll be in the same room you had when you were helping Caroline, if that's okay with you." And she led me from the foyer into a great, square hall with a stairway on either side.

We climbed the right-hand set of stairs, Willa laughing and saying it didn't matter which side we went up. On the second floor, we entered an enclosed hallway that seemed to form a square around the central open space, then she took me around the corner and along the hall to the northwest room. Marsh had followed us with my suitcase and overnight bag, and he set them on a low table next to the wardrobe. After he'd left, Willa briefly showed me my suite.

"You've got the master suite," she explained, giving me a confidential sort of smile. "Caroline used it, and you've got to get a feeling for the way she lived."

There were two rooms-the bedroom and a sitting room-and they occupied the entire west side of the second floor. A dressing room and bath divided them, the doors in the dressing room opening into each room. Without staying while I explored, Willa excused herself and left me by myself.

Although the storm was settling in fast and it looked more like evening outside than mid-afternoon, both rooms were well lighted and had none of the sinister gloom the house had shown as Bill and I had approached. I locked both hall doors and examined my temporary home.

If my mother had contributed anything to furnishing the suite she'd lived in, she'd had young, lively tastes, I decided. She'd liked comfort, too. Everything was bright. The bedroom was papered in panels that alternated, one a cheery print of lush foliage and the next a rich, textured solid color-crimson on half the solid-colored ones and a silvery blue on the other half. The bed was a four-poster, but the posts were graceful and light and there was no canopy. The spread was crimson satin, while the drapes echoed the restful foliage print of the wallpaper.

I undressed while I looked around me. The excitement that had mounted in me during the ride was at an intense pitch and my private self had come to the top. That private nature turned out to be a key element in my stay at The Aerie and I refuse to apologize for it, although I don't flaunt it. My father's sisters-Melba, a fifty-six year old spinster who comes on like a full-rigged sailing ship-of-the-line, and Frances, sixty-nine and a prune of an old maid with a mouth that looks like she's just had a glass of lemon juice-are both nasty-nice prudes, the kind of Victorians who get their kicks out of describing the most degenerate things and staying respectable by their vehement disapproval and shivery horror. They ruled my childhood with Puritan rigor and lost no opportunity to paint word pictures of all the horrible things I must never do. Somehow the inner delight they got out of that negative approach to erotica failed to satisfy me; the harder they worked at molding me after themselves, the more I rebelled inwardly and the further I got from their idea of propriety.

One of the simplest forms of rebellion was simply to lock myself in my room and, since nudity was one of the cardinal sins, to strip and admire myself. That was my first personal declaration of independence and it had become as irresistible as smoking (which they also deplored). So when Willa left me in my mother's suite and I realized I was on my own, I locked the doors, got out of my clothes, and lit a cigarette.

I didn't even waste time exploring the sitting room, except to glance in at its spacious, comfort-indulging arrangement, but started putting my things away at once. I didn't bother to parade in front of any of the mirrors, either-not then. I knew how good my figure was and had vivid mental images of myself as I worked. But my images of myself became increasingly vivid and self-conscious when the two cases were empty and I started to make a more serious study of the room.

It seemed like a childish vanity to me, but I was convinced where there was a ghost there had to be secret passages. And that was the first thing I looked for. The inside walls were obviously too thin to conceal any such thing and I concentrated on the outer ones. And that was when I finally had to face myself in a mirror. Between the bathroom wall and the first of the west windows was a wide, full length mirror framed with walnut. I studied the frame and the row of lights mounted on it and stuck my tongue out at myself.

There would come a time, I knew, when my breasts would grow heavy and round, but I was still young enough for them to have retained their proud, conical uptilt. I was excited enough for my nipples to be stiff, although their normal pink hadn't darkened. And I was holding myself tightly, so my belly sucked in and the silky red-gold of my pubic hair thrust out to form a thick pelt over my mound.

The switches for the lights were mounted right on the frame and a moment's experimenting proved there was an extra one. When I turned it, the mirror quivered and I knew the first Valcouer in the house hadn't really worried about hiding the "secret" passages. I pulled the mirror, frame and all, and it swung on noiseless hinges to reveal a dark cavity with rungs that led downward. Pausing only to slip my feet into thonged sandals, I stepped into the opening.

Chapter Two

The passage was simply a tunnel between the real and an artificial outside wall, of course. Its top was at the bottom of my windows and its floor had to rest on the tops of the first floor windows. There was no provision for lighting, so far as I could see, but the dim light that came through the opening enabled me to see holes in the floor and more ladder rungs, so I went back for a flashlight before getting any more adventurous.

There was something deliciously daring about venturing into the passage nude. As little effort as had been made to conceal the mirror entrance, other entrances were probably just as easy to find. Both Willa and Nadine surely knew all of them and, perhaps, so did the three men who were in the house. If any of them happened to be passage-wandering, I'd find myself face-to-face with them. The risk seemed more one of pleasant, remote possibility, though, than of real likelihood. So I went to the north end of the passage and descended the rungs that were mounted in the wall there.

I noted that the passage continued around the rounded corners on the same level and apparently ran the length of the north wall, but on the lower level it was simply a tiny chamber, barely ten feet long and still only about eighteen inches wide. But there were streaks of light coming through from whatever downstairs room occupied that corner of the house . . . and noises, I realized.

I turned off my flashlight and stepped out of my sandals. Tiptoeing, I approached the nearest light source and peeked through what appeared to be a coarse, thin fabric into what was either a study or a library. I heard what sounded like grunts of pleasure and a soft giggle, but I couldn't see anybody. I studied the furnishings-a massive, dark table and an equally massive desk, both highly polished, and two brocade sofas, one with its back to my position and the other facing me from the other end of the room. A bare foot appeared for an instant above the back of the nearer couch and the giggle was repeated. Quickly, I tiptoed to the far end of the secret chamber, where I peered through a similar type of fabric.

I had a glimpse of two half-clothed bodies before a sudden, weird sound behind me in passage made me whip around in terror. I saw nothing, but the sound came again. Pressed tight!;, against the outer wall, I strained to identify the noise. There was a woman somewhere, sighing tremulously. The sighs grew louder and became nearly continuous, and there was a sudden soft moan that sounded exactly like one of unbearable pleasure. I gulped and choked back a laugh.

I'd allowed my imagination and an acoustical trick of the architecture to fool me. I was obviously listening to the voice of a woman expressing her delight at the sexual attentions she was getting. The woman in the room before me was clearly far more excited than I'd supposed from her giggle; her sighs and moans were being reflected in a way that had fooled me into thinking they were being uttered right in the passage.

I leaned against the inner wall and spied on the busy couple. The tiny twinge of guilt gave way easily to the reflection that they must have known about the passage-and its viewing ports-and deserved whatever audience chanced to come along. But it took only a moment to realize I was watching more than a simple screwing. The man, his broad, powerful back to me most of the time, was Vince Lamont. His dark, deeply waved hair was distinctive and when he turned his head there was no mistaking the swarthy, lean features. The woman in his arms, her blouse open and her bra loose so her boobies danced openly in front of his face, was the haughty Nadine Wexler.

In the house less than an hour, I'd already found one of my mother's sisters was cheating. I grinned to myself, amused and somehow pleased to find the proud woman was even less conscientious I. Nadine's face was in full view and I watched it closely. She was a little flushed and her lips were parted. She appeared to be breathing rapidly and her eyes were laughing at Vince, but she just didn't look as far gone as the sighs and moans sounded. She bent her neck and kissed the top of Vince's head, then drew back and said something in a low tone. Vince chuckled and squeezed her and she said something else.

I dug my nails into my palms and swung away from the port, staring fearfully into the gloom of the passage. Even while Nadine had been speaking, her voice low and suggestive, the sighs had continued and an extra-loud moan of delight had broken through them. My easy explanation for the noises collapsed before the thrill of panic that burst upon me. For a time I paid no attention to the sporting couple. Instead, I winced at the deep passion evident in the other voice and tried to isolate its source. The trouble was, it seemed to surround me. And I could hear a strange kind of background under it now-a faint, bass chord that throbbed like the lowest notes of an organ-that I felt, maybe, rather than heard.

Nadine giggled again in the middle of one of the long sighs and I found myself drawn back to the viewing panel. The combination of stimuli was doing things to me. I tingled all over and my innermost fibers seemed aquiver with desire and excitement. Without quite knowing what I was doing, I pressed my breasts flat against the rough inner wall and let my feet slide apart while I crushed my belly and my pulsing mound to the cold wood. I was only dimly aware of the way I was writhing; Vince and Nadine had captured most of my attention.

He was already stripped to the waist. Where he'd been lying on the sofa with her at first, he was now kneeling before it. Nadine lay carelessly sprawled, one foot propped on the back of the couch, her skirt crumpled about her hips and the other foot on the floor by Vince's knee. Her panties were a pale green net and wisps of silvery-blonde pubic hair protruded through the material. Her breasts surged with the jerky movements Vince's caresses produced and she seemed fascinated by her own bobbing nipples.

"Listen, baby," she said in a low voice. "She's at it now."

"Poor old Hermione." Vince laughed softly. "What do you mean, 'poor'? Oh, listen to that one!"

I cringed at a half-sobbing moan that swelled around me in the passage.

Nadine shivered and closed her eyes for a moment. "If that wasn't a happy sound, I don't know what is! She's got the granddaddy of all peters in her, Vince, baby!"

"Think so, huh?"

"Sweetie, I know the 'I've got peter in me' moan! Oh, God, she's turning me on!" "And I thought I was."

She whispered fiercely. "You are! And don't stop! Come on, baby, make me sound like her!"

Vince caressed her thigh, his fingers exploring the dewy crease where it joined her crotch, and her hips twisted. He teased one of her nipples with his tongue while her fingers ruffled his hair.

"Yes, sweet," she said softly. "Oh, yes! Make it last and last."

There was nothing frantic or hurried about their play. Vince stroked one thigh and then the other as if he were memorizing them. His other hand gently kneaded the breast his tongue was teasing and Nadine's nipple tightened and puckered, long and dark and stiff. She rolled her head happily, lips parted and hissing with quick breaths.

I had a side view of Vince, now, and I couldn't take my gaze from the great bulge at the front of his trousers. He must have a terrible peter, I thought; only a real monster could make trousers tent like that. The tautness within me continued to grow and intensify. I realized I was going to rub my belly raw against the wall, so I slipped my hands between my flesh and the harsh surface. My fingertips rested in my pubic hair and an irresistible urge forced them slowly down into the warm moisture of my pussy. I didn't really mean to do anything-not at that moment. But the whole day's tension was boiling up in me and my skin was so alive and sensitized, it jangled with pleasure at the pressure of my fingers. As the contact of flesh on flesh heightened the pleasure, my fingers seemed to move of their own accord to make contact more intimate.

Inside the room I spied on, Nadine's pleasure appeared to be mounting even faster. Vince's hands were dark and strong as they manipulated the creamy smoothness of her body. The quivering of her muscles was plainly visible to me when he touched a sensitive zone; her pussy undulated constantly inside the taut panties. The pale green of the material had darkened at the crotch, dampened by the seeping juices from her swelling pussy-lips. I swallowed hard when Vince thumbed the garment aside to caress the naked, hair-covered folds.

In the back of my mind, grating under the overlay of excitement and desire, my awareness of the weird sighings in the passage was never quite lost. The "organ" background had grown stronger and made the fibers of my body hum in resonance. I felt as if the muscles under my skin were crawling to its urging and my deepest centers churned in response to its demand. The woman whose voice sighed and moaned sounded as if she were in the grip of a superb orgasm, but there was no sudden peaking and decay. Instead, she seemed to hover in the midst of a universe of pleasure and reaction, suspended in a timeless, ever-new mesh of ecstasy.

Nadine had risen to an awesome pitch of excitement. She thrust herself up from the couch, eyes dilated and lips pouting sensuously. She wasn't shy, not Nadine. She looked bold and impatient, as if she were driven by a force outside herself. Vince rose slowly to stand with her, his gaze fixed on the picture she made.

It was like a frozen moment in time, he staring at her body-and what she was doing-and she staring at his eyes and studying the way his face worked. Very slowly, but without any of the slinky movements a woman might make when she tried to look sexy, she slipped out of her blouse and pulled the dangling bra off. She squared her shoulders and drew her elbows back to make her breasts stick out at him, giving him a sort of triumphant, self-satisfied smile while he gazed at them. Neither of them moved as his glance traveled deliberately from one of her tits to the other and back.

He flicked his eyes up for a second and they exchanged relaxed grins. And Nadine gave a quick little shiver.

"It's working on me, Vince. God, just like "I can see it is." There was a note of-what? Gratification?-in his voice. "Yeah, I see it is."

She unzipped her skirt and began to work it over her hips. Vince continued to watch her breasts. The little flexings of her shoulders and the up-and-down bobbing of her upper torso as she worked at the skirt made her nipples jerk in small circles. Vince touched his lips with the tip of his tongue, his eyes bright. I realized how good-looking he could be when something had his interest. His skin was rather dark-an olive hue-and further darkened on his face and forearms where the weather had gotten to it. And he was lean-over six feet tall and lean enough to make the joints stand out and the planes between bones dip in a little. The bony structure of his face was prominent enough to give him the appearance of a bird of prey. His eyes were a steely sort of gray that heightened their similarity and his fingers kept closing and opening like talons while he watched Nadine undress.

As she worked the waist of her skirt down her panties came into view. I'd seen them from the bottom, but they were appearing from the top, this time. And it was obvious she wanted to be neat about what she was doing. She moved the tight material of her skirt so carefully no wrinkles showed in the taut, hugging panties. And when she finally got the garment free of her hips and let it slide off her thighs, the pants fit like elastic, their sheer mesh merely tinting the skin under them.

She stepped out of the skirt and bent to pick it up, folding it carefully and gathering up the blouse and bra. She laid them all neatly on the corner of the table, crossing to it with a natural, easy walk that seemed to affect Vince a great deal. And she simply turned, staying there while she slipped her fingers inside the waist of the panties.

"God, Vince!" She spoke in a low tone without a trace of a smile. "It's getting to me! I fell like I can't get any oxygen!"

It was true. She was breathing fast-shallow, uneven gasps-so her chest heaved and her breasts jounced. Even where I was, I could hear the air whistling between her parted lips.

"Get those pants off and I'll pump you up." Vince grinned unsympathetically.

It struck me maybe he'd given her some kind of drug. If he had, that might account for the fact she was cheating on Marsh. But he was certainly not concerned about any of the side effects. All he wanted was to get his peter into her.

She worked her panties down even slower than she had her skirt. I held my breath while she did, thrills bringing goose bumps out all over me at the thought that she was going to be standing before Vince in a moment as naked as I. Tightly clumped strands of her pubic hair sprang erect as they were released from the confining panties. She kept wiggling her hips from side to side, squirming to get the clinging garment over them. And then it was clear of her crotch and she was pushing it off her legs.

Vince stirred and chuckled. "Christ, baby! Here I stand like a goddamn dolt doing nothing!" He unfastened his trousers and let them drop.

It was so different with men, I thought. They didn't have to wiggle or squirm. All they did was let go and let their pants tumble around their feet. Some men might have been a little more concerned about wrinkles and dust than Vince, but he just let them fall. He stepped out of them with one foot and picked them up with the other, reaching down to pull them off that one. And he tossed them carelessly over the back of the chair that was nearest. He had on Jockey shorts; they made his hips look even leaner than they were, I think. His buttocks were hard, tight ovals under the white knit and his thighs were hard, tendoned columns. He didn't have very much body hair-just a scattering of curly, black strands in the lower center of his chest.

Nadine wasn't watching his face now. She was eyeing the bulge in the front of his shorts with a hungry expression instead. She grinned and moved out from the table.

And when she spoke, it sounded like a purr. "You don't ever get any older, do you, honey. You're just as flat and hard as you were the first time I saw you like this."

He laughed a little. "Maybe harder, puss. You keep looking better-and the better you look, the harder I get." He rubbed his hand over the concealed hard-on with a suggestive gesture that made me swallow with frustration.

It seemed to me the symbolic pass of his hand affected Nadine the same way it did me. She gulped and went to him with a quick, graceful lunge. Her hands closed at the top of his shorts and she looked intently into his eyes.

"Sometimes I feel like everything would go to hell if we forgot this one ritual," she said in a real low tone.

He rested his hands on her shoulders and returned her stare soberly. "It's unique, puss, the way you go about it."

She slid her fingers slowly around to the back under his waistband and edged his shorts down. I nearly yelled with my own impatience, she took so long. But she finally got them down to where only the front was staying up, hung up on the end of his peter. And all the words were chasing themselves around in my head, like a litany of love-making. His cock ... his hard-on . . . that rigid, waiting peter still hidden except for the awesome bulge it made in the shorts. She startled me then with the speed of her next movement. One moment his shorts looked like an envelope around his club; the next, they were around his thighs and a magnificent, dark, swollen hard-on had leaped out at her.

I know I gasped. They'd have heard me if the sighing woman of the passage hadn't uttered a particularly enthusiastic moan at that precise moment. Vince had no foreskin on that great cock of his, and his cockhead looked like a purple handball. God, it shone!

Nadine pushed his shorts down his legs, sinking gently to her knees as she did. And she held them down while he lifted one foot, then the other, out of them. For a second, she leaned forward and rested her cheek against the side of his knee. Then she straightened, staying on her knees, and reached around Vince to grasp his buttocks. His hands still lay on her shoulders and he looked down at her while she gazed at the heavy peter jutting before her face.

I shivered violently and clutched at my pussy. I'd never had my face that close to a man's hard-on-hadn't ever thought of such a thing!-but seeing her made me wish fiercely I were in her place. She pressed forward and pursed her lips and touched the slit in his cockhead with them! The skin on my temples and at the back of my neck tingled as if my hair were rising, and I bit my lips. The backs of Vince's thighs quivered and his belly tensed visibly. Nadine kissed his peter again, reverently and gently, and then again.

Omigod! I thought. Omigod, how terribly, deliciously awful! Oooh, I want to do that!

While the signs and moans in the passage continued, Nadine did even more awful, delicious things. She parted her lips and seemed to be pretending Vince's peter was an ice cream cone in danger of melting. She sucked at little spots on it. And she stuck out her tongue and licked at it, still as she would have at an ice cream cone! The back of my jaw ached suddenly, tightening and puckering as I tried to imagine what that big knob would taste like. Nadine squeezed one of his buttocks hard, but let go of the other and closed her hand around the cylinder of his peter. All I could do when I saw her fingers clutch at that vibrant implement was to dig my own fingers into the wet flesh of my pussy and jam myself against the wall.

Nadine pulled Vince's cock-I couldn't think of it in terms of some cold word like "penis"-down horizontal and put her lips over the bulge of its head as greedily as if it were candy. She looked like a bugler for a minute, until I realized her cheeks were caving in from sucking. It seemed a horrible thing to do, yet my whole body was racked by savage jolts of excitement and desire. In the midst of the unnerving sounds around me in the passage, and my determination not to miss a single detail of the game before me, I tried to understand why it was affecting me the way it was. I decided at last it was simply the depth of sharing and willingness her actions revealed. She seemed to be saying that if you were going to fuck with a man you went all the way to make it worthwhile for him-to arouse every last bit of his excitement.

That was when it struck me about their ages. I knew Nadine was a year or two older than my mother would have been, and mother would have been forty. I didn't know about Vince, but he looked about thirty or thirty-one. But he wasn't doing Nadine any favors; he was getting as much pleasure out of this-and obviously was enjoying it as much-as she was. She didn't look like what I thought a forty-year-old-woman would, of course. God, she was beautiful! She had graceful, soft-rounded shoulders and a deep chest and breasts that were full and firm without looking gross. They weren't cone-shaped like mine, though, but more like overgrown teacups with big nipples. Her waist was so slender it was dainty, and her hips were full-rounded without appearing to have any fat on them. Her legs were tapered and long.

Kneeling as she was, her back straight and her head bobbing in and out as she sucked at Vince's cockhead, she looked like a blonde goddess paying tribute to the father of the gods. Vince didn't really take it that way, though. His hands shook on her shoulders and he clenched his teeth and gazed down at her with a wide-eyed stare, his belly and thighs trembling. She was arousing him to a higher pitch of excitement than I'd ever observed in a man before -and clearly doing as much for herself.

A frantic, garbled groan of delight and consternation bubbled out of Vince's throat and he bent over Nadine abruptly. I grunted and winced, certain she'd triggered an orgasm in him and wondering what she was going to do when that warm semen welled into her mouth. But I was wrong. He crossed his arms somehow and caught her waist with his hands, then swung her into the air. She didn't yell, like I think I would have. She just gobbled desperately to get his whole cockhead in her mouth and hung onto it while he rotated her end for end and held her in front of him with her feet pointing at the ceiling.

It scared me for a second. I saw her hair come loose and hang toward the floor and her breasts surge the wrong way on her chest and hang toward her face and thought he was going to slam her on her head. She surely knew better. She just sucked harder, one hand still clutching his cock and the other fondling his Grade AA-sized testicles. He pulled her to him and barred one forearm across her at the small of her back. Clamping her in place, he thrust her knees apart and let her rest the fronts of her thighs on his shoulders. Her pussy was suddenly gleaming pinkly and wetly in the light, inches from Vince's face.

He grabbed her buttocks and jerked her crotch to his chin, his tongue darting out to play over the pulsing, swollen surfaces of her pussy. She groaned in her throat, loudly enough for me to hear her. But she didn't let his cock out of her mouth. It began to look like a race to see which could make the other come first. Vince stuck his tongue into her vagina and made her squirm and jerk. And when she quieted a little he pulled it out and grabbed her clitoris in his mouth. That made a wild woman of her. She thrashed and kicked and her head drove back and forth like a hammer at his cock.

I felt a band of unbelievable tension tightening around my head and an awful dryness in my throat. I was too sex-hungry at that moment to have flinched if the ghost had suddenly appeared-or even to remember there was supposed to be a ghost. All I knew or felt was how gloriously excited I was and how wildly those two figures were surging in their lust. My aunt looked like a girl in Vince's grasp, her entire attention focused on his beautiful cock and her hips jerking furiously against the fierce mouthing of her pussy.

She pulled her head back for a moment and cried out in pleasure. "Vince! Oh, God, Vince! . . . I'm going to come, honey!" She clung to his cock with both hands and grabbed the head in her mouth. It looked for all the world as if she were stuffing it into her mouth like a great, meaty banana.

She sucked savagely, driving her lips back and forth on the thick shaft with her hair flying against his thighs. Her thighs clamped tighter against the sides of his neck and her buttocks began to flutter with a violent tremor.

"Oh, dear!" I whispered in the passage. "Oh, dear! She is! She's coming right now!" Unconsciously, I ground at the sides of my clitoris and felt the rush of heat low in my belly that signaled approaching orgasm.

Vince's knees bent and he sagged, his hips going forward and his shoulders back as he stiffened in his climax. I gazed fascinatedly at Nadine's throat as it contracted and swelled, alternately, with frantic swallowing. Her knees straightened and she pointed her toes, her whole body shaking with the force of her inner spasms.

Vince seemed to complete his orgasm first. He gave one mighty shudder and straightened, clutching Nadine's quivering body to him with both arms and gently licking at her pussy while her bottom continued to jerk in the small, fierce movements that betrayed continuing contractions in her vagina. She released his shrinking cockhead, sucking the moisture from it, and groaning deeply. And in another moment, she sagged and let her arms hang limp.

"Oh, Vince! Oh, darling Vince!" She sighed. "I've missed you so!"

"It's been awhile, puss. Quite awhile."

I shivered. They'd been lovers for some time, then. This was no sudden impulse, no drifting into an unexpected dalliance. I was perilously close to orgasm, myself, but I realized abruptly I didn't want it in this barren, dark passageway. Trembling, I pressed my hand against my pussy for a moment, then withdrew it and pushed my forehead against the wall. A low, tremulous sigh sent chills along my spine and I held my breath while I looked into the darkness at either end of the chamber. Vince and Nadine had found release in their climax, but there was another woman-was it Willa?-who was enjoying a more leisurely one.

I moved cautiously away from the grating I'd spied through. I didn't really want to spy on my other aunt, but I did want to know where in this network of passages she was making love-and with whom. I could only go another ten feet toward the south in this wall, and there was clearly no one there. I retraced my steps to the ladder I'd come down and climbed it. The upper level of the passage went around the northwest corner of the building and ran along inside the north wall. I tiptoed, groping my way to avoid giving myself away with the light.

The sighs came only at intervals, now, occasionally yielding to a long, shuddering moan. The trouble was, the sound seemed to be all around me; some peculiarity in the shape of the passage prevented me from narrowing down the direction of the ecstatic woman.

Suddenly one foot found nothing but air to step on. I clawed at the wall and swayed, fighting for balance. Slowly, I managed to pull myself back from the opening in the floor. I crumpled into a heap and struggled to keep from sobbing in my relief. A momentary flash of light from my flashlight revealed another shaft and ladder; it also convinced me how close I'd come to taking a serious fall.

I was being a fool, I decided. Finding the passionate woman of the passage simply wasn't worth the risk of feeling my way along in the dark, and if I had to keep the flashlight on I couldn't hope to avoid detection. Sobered, I pushed myself to my feet and returned carefully to my room. I waited for a few seconds with the mirror panel open, listening to another series of the woman's outcries, then actuated the control switch.

Even while the mirror was still swinging into place, someone knocked lightly on the hall door and called to me.

"Just a minute." I grabbed a robe from the closet and slipped into it. The mirror was fully in place when I opened the door.

Willa was there. "Everything okay?" she asked brightly.

I hesitated before replying. Then I asked, "Aunt Willa, who else in here besides you and Aunt Nadine and the three men?"

She smiled and shook her head. "That's all, hon. And I do hope you can forget about that 'aunt' stuff. It makes me feel so ancient."

"Okay." I mumbled, accepting that request without giving it any more thought than it deserved. "But who else is here? I mean, like a housekeeper or a cook or ..."

Her eyes positively twinkled. "Honey, we rough it when we come to The Aerie! It's a fun place to be, not a place for fancy living and servants and all. Besides," she giggled, "there isn't a domestic along this part of the coast who'd come out here with the ghost in the house."

I protested. "Willa, there's somebody else here! I know there is!"

She raised her eyebrows. "Really?"

"Yes. I. . . Look, I found the passage that goes off this room. And while I was in it, I heard a woman somewhere else in it. There is somebody else!"

"Must have been Nadine."

I had the feeling she knew as well as I that it hadn't been. Her eyes still twinkled and she seemed to be enjoying the situation.

"Not Nadine," I said. "She's . . . she's in the room right under us."

Willa chuckled with delight. "You found out the passage has a few peepholes! Delicious!"

"But the other woman ..."

"Hon, why do you keep saying woman? Could it be a man-or maybe a kid?"

"No. Come and listen."

She went to the mirror with me and I opened it. We held our breath and listened. There was a glad groan in the darkness, so close I started back. Grabbing my flashlight I shot its beam both ways in the passage, but nobody was there.

Willa laughed softly. "Okay, honey. Now you've met the ghost-the Spirit of the Women."

Cold thrills crawled over my skin and I gulped. "You ... you mean there's nobody making those noises?"

"Nobody alive, Laura."

"There's got to be! There's just got to be!"

Chapter Three

There wasn't anything in the world that could sound that much like a woman making love besides a woman making love. There was no such thing as ghosts, either; that was one thing I was sure of. But the look on Willa's face couldn't be denied.

"That . . . that's the ghost?" I asked. My lips felt stiff.

"That's Hermione, honey."

"Oh, Lord! If I'd known that while I was in the passage ..."

"She's not a bad ghost. She doesn't hurt people ... or want anything to happen to them." She touched my arm reassuringly. "Why don't I go into your sitting room and wait while you get dressed? Then I can show you the house."

She went through the dressing room and I hurried into my clothes. When I felt presentable I joined her in the sitting room. I hadn't really looked closely at it before, and I paused now to do so. It was a big room, as my bedroom was. It had the same window arrangement-three tall, deep windows overlooking the ocean to the west and one in the end wall. But the last faced south and commanded a view of the mouth of Valcouer Cove. I stood before it and gazed out at the black clouds that boiled up out of the sea.

"God, it's wild out there!" I exclaimed. "It's the right weather for a ghost!"

Willa chuckled. "It's Hermione's kind of day, all right."

Turning away from the window, I surveyed the room. The walls were paneled in lustrous, dark redwood. The ceiling was similarly paneled, supported by massive beams of the same material. The floor, highly polished oak, was almost completely hidden by richly hued oriental rugs. There were two couches, both backless and piled with colorful pillows, and three luxurious-looking overstuffed chairs. A great, low table-knee-height-rested in the angle formed by the couches. And in the northeast corner of the room was a sturdy, leather-topped desk. In the east wall was a shallow niche, some six feet wide and extending from floor to ceiling. A life-sized portrait hung in it-a wistful-eyed, slender beauty of a woman with her auburn hair streaming in the wind and her voluminous gown molded to her figure by the same force. There was a vibrant spirit in her expression that caught at my emotions and made me want to reach out to her.

Willa came to my side and stared at the woman in the painting. "That's Hermione," she said softly. "She was the first mistress of The Aerie. "

"Why does she haunt it?" I asked, interested in the story, even though I knew the whole thing was some kind of put-on.

"She came here when Ramon Valcouer selected the site . . . lived in a tent with him for a year while the house was being built. And they lived in the house for almost five years after it was finished . . . had four kids ..."

"Hermione Valcouer." I mused. "Boys? . . . Girls?"

"Two of each. Ramon was in the 'import' business. The ships used to slip along the coast and duck into the cove. There's a crude sort of landing down there where they'd bring his part of the cargo ashore after dark. And then before daylight they'd slip out to sea again and be on their way south to San Francisco."

"Smuggling!"

Willa shrugged. "At least Ramon wasn't interested in discussing his imports with the Mexican authorities. I suppose any displaced Frenchman might have felt the same. Anyhow, the story goes the government people-the governor's office, I guess-were interested enough to set up a place right across the cove where an agent tried to spy on Ramon. But apparently he was just operating a drop-and-pickup station, receiving the cargo from one ship and holding it for a few days until another came to get it."

"What about Hermione?"

Willa shivered and laughed. "The way the legend goes-the one that's been passed down through the family in whispers-the important thing about Hermione was her appetite for sex. Maybe that's one reason Ramon brought her out here so far from civilization. He had to have some kind of strong motives to settle in a no-man's land between the Russians and the Mexicans. But she was terribly in love with him and never completely happy except when they were making love."

"What happened to her?"

Willa shook her head. "Nobody ever knew exactly. Just like with Caroline, Laura. Ramon missed her in the house one day and turned out all the domestics looking for her. Found her, himself, finally. She'd fallen somewhere along the cliff above the cove. Her body was floating near the landing." She gazed thoughtfully at the softly lighted portrait. "I don't think he even knew whether she'd drowned or been killed by the fall. They buried her the next day. Even God must have grieved; there was an earthquake while they were filling the grave . . . knocked everybody off their feet. And that night a storm like this one blew in from the south . . . and Roman heard his wife's ghost."

"He hadn't ever heard it before?"

Her eyes round and innocent-looking, Willa shook her head. "Honey, how could he? She wasn't dead before!"

"Oh, Willa! You know what I mean!"

"Yes. Yes, I know what you mean. The story goes the woman of the passages had never been heard until the night of the day Hermione was buried."

"You said she died the way Caroline-my mother-did?"

Willa nodded and her expression clouded. "They didn't tell you?" she asked.

"No. Just that she'd died by accident."

"It. . . she . . . well, we missed her. We were all here for a sort of spring holiday. Caroline wanted to get to the bottom of the 'ghost' thing; she'd somehow met Bill Sheldon and had him out here, too. And then she disappeared. We searched half a day through the house and in the woods on the north side. Nadine and I kept thinking of the story about Hermione. Just couldn't bring ourselves to go down to the landing . . . like if we did, we'd make it come true. But we finally did. And she was there."

"In the water?"

"In the water, right at the edge of the landing. She'd fallen. Bruises all over her body. Didn't have anything on but a silk scarf and a ring. Even one of the stones in the ring had been knocked out. And the scarf was torn . . . part of it missing as if it had caught on something."

I shivered. "I don't suppose there was an earthquake at her funeral."

Willa looked at me sharply. "No." She didn't sound indignant as I thought she might. "No, no earthquake. And I don't think Vince heard her ghost that night."

"Vince!"

"They ... He was in love with Caroline, Laura. Desperately in love. But she wouldn't marry him."

"Maybe she knew him too well."

She gave me that same sharp look again and then got a queer expression on her face I couldn't interpret. "She knew him well," she said softly. "Vince was good to her. He lived with her for a long time. I never saw anybody hurt so badly as he was by her death."

Enough to find comfort making love to Nadine, I thought. But I was careful not to let the feeling show. "What was my mother like, Willa?"

"She was different after her marriage went to pieces. Before that, she was like a gypsy . . . happy and carefree and natural. I don't think I'd seen her unhappy in my whole life. And she was madly in love with Charles; she worshipped him! I think he was just a little stiff, but no Valcouer woman had ever let that worry her. We could turn a stone man into a lover. But when she married him and he took her home, she found it was his sisters' home.

And they hated her and ran Charles' life. He was just too easy-going to stand up to them."

I nodded before realizing what I was doing. That was the way Daddy had been with me, certainly. He'd let Aunt Frances and Aunt Melba raise me because it would have been too unpleasant to defy them. It wasn't really that he was weak; it was just that he didn't want the stability of his life ruined by fights with his sisters.

Willa continued, and I could see pain in her eyes. "They hated her. God, how they must have hated her! They were Victorian in the worst, nastiest-minded way, and Caroline was completely natural-and as hot-blooded as Hermione had been. They lied about her to Charles and finally managed to drive him into throwing her out. And they had enough influence in that miserable little town to win a court order so she couldn't even see her own daughter until you'd reached eighteen."

I didn't know what to say. She'd described my aunts accurately. She'd cut through all the other things she could have said about my father to pinpoint the one character weakness that had hurt me so much as a girl. But she'd certainly twisted the truth about my mother's abandoning my father and me; both my aunts had told me that story often enough to fill me with loathing for the tramp Caroline had been. Still, I didn't really want to make Willa feel bad by contradicting her.

She went on. "It would have killed me," she said in a low tone. "Or I'd have killed myself. Because she did love Charles. She never would say anything unkind about him. She was a lot stronger than most women I've known, to be able to find any good in life after that." She wiped her eyes. "I used to see the way she hurt inside, sometimes, right in the middle of something awfully fun we were all doing. And then she'd get control of herself and it would be gone. Laura, if it's in you to hate anybody, I hate those two aunts of yours!"

"But you only know what my mother told you," I reminded her. "That's not at all what Aunt Frances and Aunt Melba say."

"Of course, not. I'm sure they're convinced she was the worst possible influence on your father. I'm sure they felt they were justified in whatever it took to get rid of her." She didn't sound at all defensive, just understanding. But it was clear she bitterly resented what she thought Melba and Frances had done to my mother.

"I never did hear from my mother," I told her in a low voice. That had hurt me cruelly. "Never a letter or note. Not even a birthday or Christmas card."

"I can't believe that. Caroline thought of you so often, wondering what kind of a girl you were growing up to be. And I was with her more than once when she was picking out a card for you."

I could sense she wasn't suggesting I lied. To my surprise, all the girlish fantasies I'd dreamed came back to me. I'd pretended my mother was good-not evil like my aunts maintained-and that she was always trying to slip messages to me past wicked guards. I'd wanted her to be a good person, as any girl would. But I hadn't seriously believed my aunts to be real villains and I didn't now. Still, I was powerfully tempted to accept Willa's view of Caroline.

"I wish you were right," I said. I know I sounded wistful. "Oh, I do wish you were."

"Of course, you do!" she said in a rush of compassion. "But don't worry about it right this minute. Everybody here knew Caroline. You'll have plenty of time to learn how they saw her. Come on, let me show you the house."

I welcomed the change of subject and followed her willingly. She showed me the second floor first. As I'd seen when Bill and I approached, The Aerie had only two floors. The upstairs was built like the ground floor in that there was a great central open space like a square hall with furniture scattered about at random. Two stairways came up from the first floor, one on the east and one on the west side of that big square. The hall was enclosed, surrounded by halls that gave access to the bedrooms. My suite-bedroom and sitting room-occupied the west side. The east side had two bedrooms and there was a bedroom on the north side and one on the south. Nadine and Marsh occupied the southeast room, Willa the northeast, Vince the north and Bill the south. Except for my sitting room, every room on this floor had its own dressing room and bath.

Downstairs, the rooms were ranged around the central hall and its surrounding hallways, also. There was a combination library and study directly beneath my bedroom. The living room was a huge, L-shaped space taking up the remainder of the west side and over half of the south. The dining room was at the southeast corner, the kitchen and all utility space on the east, and a conservatory in the north and northeast corner.

When we'd explored the interior of the house, Willa took me back upstairs and showed me a steep, narrow stairway that led to an open deck on the roof. With the storm still raging, we stayed inside the tiny shelter at the top of the steps, but I could see the deck was furnished for lounging in the sun, with weatherproof deck chairs and lounges and a white railing all around it.

"Combination 'widow's walk' and sundeck," she commented. "And you've seen it all, except for the 'secret' passages. But they're not so secret. I think Ramon had them put in more for privacy than anything else; he probably wanted to be able to carry on his business without worrying about having to explain to guests."

We went back downstairs. Nadine was starting dinner and she and Willa shooed me out of the kitchen with a warning they meant to "put on the dog" for this first of my meals at The Aerie. That meant, I concluded, that I ought to change into something a little more formal. Without any hint as to how these two women were to judge whether I met the requirements in my mother's will, I'd sent a trunkful of clothes ahead nearly a month earlier, and I went through them that afternoon until I found a simple, red gown with a deep-plunging neckline. I got into it and caught the front together with a butterfly brooch, then returned to the library to wait.

The men came in, one by one, and Marsh brought drinks. I had a hard time following the conversation. It seemed trivial and I kept seeing Vince the way he'd looked with Nadine in this same room. Unfortunately, I was still keyed up sexually and ordinary things took on that kind of significance for me. But when Marsh mentioned the ghost he caught my attention.

"You were in luck, Laura. Having Hermione do her thing your first day here, I mean."

"The ghost?"

"Right. What do you think about her?" "I think there's somebody there. That was a person!"

He chuckled. "Sounds real, doesn't she."

Bill grunted and studied Marsh. "She's real enough when somebody takes a chance on the curse."

"What curse!" I didn't know there was a curse; Willa hadn't mentioned one.

Marsh laughed, but there was a note of exasperation in his voice and he shook his head. "That's something new. In fact, we owe it to Bill."

Bill explained, eyeing Marsh and Vince in a way that suggested there wasn't much good feeling wasted. "This ghost is essentially non-interacting," he said heavily. "That is, there's no link between her actions and the living occupants of the house. But four people, including your mother, have died the same way Hermione did . . . every one of them when they were trying to track down the ghost. So I hung a label on it." He gave me a reassuring smile. "Coincidence, actually. That and carelessness. This isn't a location where a person wants to get careless. The fact is, I wanted to make Caroline understand that when she started trying to find out what the ghost really was. I thought she'd be more likely to buy a 'curse' than a simple warning to be careful."

"How well did you know my mother?"

"Rather well, I thought. She was an open, honest woman. A guy didn't have to keep guessing what she really meant. I must say, I admired her enormously. I liked to feel she thought of me as a friend, rather than a paid consultant."

"But she did bring you here as a paid consultant."

"Well, yes. In my specialty."

"Which is 'ghost-chasing'," observed Vince. The gleam in his eyes convinced me he meant to bait Bill.

And Bill took the bait. "Parapsychology," Bill replied stiffly. "It's well known that ..." He sounded as if he meant to launch into a pompous lecture.

Somehow I preferred Vince's slightly sardonic willingness to accept things for what they seemed and make the most of the moment. To my discomfort, I caught myself wishing Vince and I were alone right now; we could do a far more interesting kind of exploration.

But Nadine swept into the room and put an end to the discussion. It was time to go to the table.

The dining room was truly beautiful that night. The storm had picked up new vigor and the wind roared around the corner of the house with such force as to make it shake. Inside, crystals in the chandelier sent lances of soft light stabbing through the room and a fire in the fireplace spread a glow of warmth over us. The dinner was a reasonably pleasant one, although I began to sense undercurrents of antagonism among my hosts. I'd already concluded Marsh and Vince had negative reactions to Bill; now I discovered Nadine was also the focus of considerable irritation. In spite of the frenzied activity in the library earlier, she and Vince seemed to be needling each other constantly. She and Willa disagreed on almost every issue, too, Willa tending to take the milder point of view while Nadine's was always crisp and uncompromising. In that respect, even her husband sided against her. He seemed almost as easy-going and gentle as my father, but he showed less reluctance to stand up for his opinions.

After dinner-and a round of after dinner drinks in the great living room-I realized how tired I was and excused myself. I could hear the low moans of the ghost from time to time and could see by their expressions the others heard her, too. "Non-interacting" or not, Hermione sent chills along my spine. And I could feel that deep, organ-like background sobbing through me.

I went to my room and changed, undressing and slipping into my robe, then went through the dressing room to relax and sort out my ideas in the informality of the sitting room. I'd scarcely settled myself when someone knocked at the door. To my disappointment, it was Bill rather than Vince. Scolding myself for the childish hope Vince would come to me in the night, I let Bill in. And when he caught me in his arms and kissed me I was glad it was him; he was a link to the everyday world outside The Aerie.

"Weird here, baby?" he asked with a chuckle.

"Oh, Bill! It's creepy!"

"Oh, not all that bad." He patted me.

"Worse! Bill, you know I don't believe in ghosts! We've talked about that. But what is this thing?"

"Hermione?" He shrugged. "I take ghosts as I find them, baby. Some seem genuine, some not. I sure haven't been able to find any trickery going on here."

Not only had the storm regained its full fury, but the ghost had returned to full voice. I could hear her moans clearly. While they seemed to come through all the paneling, they came most strongly from the panel in the west wall next to the southwest corner of the room. Without saying so to Bill, I studied that panel out of the corner of my eyes and decided I could see the release that would make it open.

The deeper tones were gaining strength, as well, and I felt myself tensing under their action and the unsatisfied hunger my spying had produced. Bill's warmth and the gentle caresses of his hands were all I needed to set me aflame with desire. He lighted a fire in the fireplace next to the south window and moved one of the backless couches in front of it. I sank onto the couch with him without protest, lying among the pillows and responding eagerly to his kisses.

In a token concession to the conventions my Victorian aunts had tried to instill in me, I reflected I should have worn a different robe. The one I had on was held together in the front only by its belt, and it was gaping shamelessly now. Bill's hand slipped under the edge and rested on the nakedness of my hip while he held me to him. I wanted his kiss and gulped savagely at his mouth. Lying on my side, I pressed tightly to him and thrilled to the sensation of my breasts flattening against his chest.

It was a strange thing. He'd seemed a bland, somewhat pushy "operator" during the past six months. We'd made love because it had seemed the logical ending to so many of our dates. But there hadn't been anything terribly out of the ordinary about those times. Tonight, everything seemed out of the ordinary.

"Bill?"

"Yeah?" He mumbled against my neck.

"Bill, did you ... I mean, was my mother He chuckled. "Your mother had an emotional nature, Laura. We made love in this room more than once when the ghost was sighing."

"Bill! Caroline?"

"She had a thing about Hermione. She said the ghost was the spirit of all Valcouer women lamenting because death had robbed them of sex."

I shivered. "It doesn't sound like a lament to me."

"No. That's what I told Caroline. It sounded more to me like they'd found the hereafter to be a perpetual orgasm."

That's what it sounded like to me, too. "What did she say to that?"

"She said she'd believe it when she could experience it. So there wasn't a hell of a lot more to say. But when the ghost would act up the way she is tonight, she'd insist on trying again."

"Trying! What do you mean?"

"Trying for prolonged orgasms. That was one way of 'tuning in to the ghost', she'd say."

"But how?"

"Really interested?" His tone implied he doubted it.

"Of course! How else am I going to get to know my mother?"

"That's right. The will says you've got to, doesn't it."

"Yes."

"Well, the first principle was, she had to be restrained from interfering with her own responses."

"I don't understand."

"You sure you want to?"

"Damn it, Bill! How many times do I have to tell you!"

"Okay. Look, we'll do a mild version for you. Okay?"

"Okay! Go on!" Whatever they'd done, it had been sex, and I was writhing inwardly now, seething with need and no longer even wondering why.

"Lie back and relax for a minute. I'll show you how she'd go about it."

Reluctantly, I rolled onto my back, giving up the heat of his body.

"It was like a game we'd play," he said softly, pushing himself to his feet. Going to the head of the couch, he knelt and caressed my shoulders. "Give me your hands, pet," he suggested.

I took his face between my hands and fingered his temples. My mother had done this, I told myself with a thrill. Caroline, as wicked and lustful as Frances and Melba had said, had done this with Bill. And I was just like her, as they'd so often bitterly added. He caught my hands in his and squeezed them. And suddenly I realized he'd looped something around my wrists and drawn it snug.

"Bill! What-"

"This was the way she liked it. So she couldn't disrupt her own reaction." He fastened my hands down, my arms above my head.

A terrible wave of excitement surged through me. At the moment, my robe covered me, but there was nothing in the world to keep him from laying it back to expose my nakedness. And fear boiled up in the midst of the excitement. Bill's glib story about my mother didn't alter the fact I was alone with him in a strange house, or that I was suddenly and utterly helpless. It didn't drive out the eerie chill of that bodiless moaning, either, and something about his expression stripped me of the last of my confidence. Perhaps it was the inhuman brilliance of his eyes as he gazed down at my taut figure. Perhaps it was the greedy clenching of his fingers and the way the tip of his tongue, played over his lips. I don't know. But at that moment I felt I was seeing a personality he'd concealed from me.

"Bill.. . please ..." I whispered, unable to speak aloud. "Bill, I don't want to-not tonight. Oh, Bill..."

He laughed. An hour earlier I'd have called it a sound of sophisticated amusement. Now, quivering and praying my robe wouldn't slip, I thought it sinister. I twisted my wrists against each other only to find the loops impossible to loosen. And I cringed when he bent over me.

"No! Oh, no!" I was still whispering.

He laid his hand on my shoulder and stroked lightly over me to cup it on my breast. Frightened and tense, I felt the intimate caress as keenly as if it had been electrified. Blunt fingers of pleasure probed inward and heat flushed my skin. My belly tightened while I clasped my knees desperately together. I knew if I twisted my robe would fall open, and I held my breath in my effort to avoid movement.

He closed his other hand over my other breast and began kneading persuasively. The soft thickness of my robe merely heightened my sensations as its material rubbed my nipples until I could feel them quivering to stiffness. Once more I jerked at the loops on my wrists, but the cords refused to yield.

He trailed his fingers down my sides to outline my figure. My flesh tingled and I flinched at the abrupt surge of heat to my pussy.

"Bill ..." I gasped. "Bill, you're not going to let me go, are you!"

"Not right now, pet. I think you ought to get a feel for what your mother liked."

I didn't believe him. What I'd heard about Caroline had made her sound fiercely independent. She just couldn't have willingly let herself be put in this kind of situation.

But Bill continued. "You're going to find out you like it this way, baby." Even while he was saying that he was unfastening the cord at my waist.

"Bill! Oh, God, Bill!" I protested, my throat tight with conflicting sensations. This casual liberty he was taking with my robe intensified my fear at the same time it inflamed me.

With total self-assurance, he turned back one side of my robe. And he had the effrontery to lift a thick lock of my hair and arrange it over my shoulder so its end, curling with the dampness, encircled one nipple and framed it in fine strands of reddish-gold.

"Please, Bill! You're making me look indecent!" And I raised my head to confirm my suspicion.

The one breast loomed full and pale, the lock of hair gleaming on its slope, while the other swelled under my robe. One side of my body was entirely naked, my waist drawn by the awkward tug of my upstretched arm and a patch of pubic hair visible at the edge of my robe. I let my head drop back and groaned faintly.

"Oh, damn it, Bill!"

He chuckled. "No reason you shouldn't look exactly the way I want you to, when you can't argue," he commented. He ran both hands the length of my body on the bare flesh.

I gasped and jerked convulsively. My awful helplessness made the intimacy of skin on skin feel as alien to me as if I were a virgin. And I winced and turned my face to the side when he laid back the other side of my robe to expose my entire form to his hungry gaze. He went to my feet after pulling my robe belt out from under me.

"For God's sake, what are you doing!" I cried out with real fright when he tied one end of the belt to my ankle.

The horrible truth flashed over me and I began to kick wildly. But I was in no position to interfere; in moments he had my knees widely spread and had hobbled my ankles under the couch. The tension on my thighs raised my hips until there was only the slightest pressure between my buttocks and the cushions and I knew how my pussy must be parting before his eyes. I sobbed with helpless rage.

"Goddamn you, Bill Sheldon! When I get loose, you're going to be in real trouble! You wait and see!"

He didn't respond to my anger, but he didn't seem gentle and thoughtful any more, either. He grinned. "Whatever you say, puss. But you're going to be a hell of a lot wiser broad by the time you do get loose. My guess is you're going to be counting the days to the next chance you'll have like this."

"You impossible creep!"

He ignored my storming, then. His hands roamed over me with utter disregard for even the most rudimentary elements of modesty. He toyed with my nipples, plucking lightly at them until they were hard as lumps of rock and puckered like raisins. He drew circles around my navel with one finger and repeatedly jabbed at it with his fingertip. He grabbed strands of pubic hair and pulled them straight, then let them snap back into their natural curl. And he grabbed at my pussy again and again, suddenly and crudely, without warning, so that my hips leaped out in reflex action and I had to bite my lip to keep from screaming.

The worst of the whole thing was the wild excitement that flooded me. I couldn't suppress it or turn it off. And every new indignity drove rational control further out of reach. I squirmed desperately to lessen the effect of his caresses, but every movement I made seemed to increase my sensitivity. I ached with the strain of my position and the violence of my writhing, but the ache combined with the swirling flood of pleasure to turn me into a shameless, begging bitch.

He played with my labia. At first, he just plucked at the hair that grew on their outer surfaces, then he rubbed them. But it wasn't a continuous, predictable thing. Instead, he'd let them alone for a time, while they pulsed and throbbed from his earlier touch. And when I'd begun to steady, he'd grab them suddenly and squeeze them as if they were the comer of a pillow. And I'd shriek and my hips would leap and fierce streaks of pleasure would rock me.

I flung myself from side to side and my belly jerked wildly. Bill dug his fingers into the gaping trough between my labia and fingered the rim of my cuntmouth. The word kept rolling through my mind- cunt, cunt, cunt-as if it were an incantation that would either free me of my fear or loosen my bonds. It didn't do either one. I grew increasingly frightened and the knots stayed as tight as ever. The only real change was that my excitement raced ahead of my fear.

He thrust a finger into my vagina-and then another-and I lashed about on them with savage hunger. The Victorian brainwashing my maiden aunts had attempted had spawned inner revolt; that night, lashed helpless on the couch, I learned for the first time how that rebellion was to shape me. It had conditioned me to find erotic pleasure in the unusual and unconventional. The very fact that I was spread helpless under Bill's groping hands aroused me because it would have horrified my aunts. Every needle of pleasure his touch created grew to a lance of delight through that conditioning.

I groaned and tossed while he twisted his fingers in my cuntmouth. Although the rim was pleasantly taut, however, there was a core of emptiness in my belly and I knew I needed a longer, thicker probe to satisfy me. I could hear the ghost moaning and her cries seemed to coincide with the surges of excitement Bill produced in me. My own sighs and groans echoed hers so that I imagined a real woman kept captive somewhere in the secret passages, bound and spread-eagled and subjected interminably to the fiendish caresses of someone like Bill. As my excitement rose, her noises again convinced me they could only be made by a living, breathing, writhing woman and I once more rejected the idea of a ghost.

But it was unimportant at the moment. The only important thing was the magnificent power of my lust.

Chapter Four

Violent spasms of delight were making my belly writhe and my thighs leap when Bill jerked his fingers out of my vagina. I continued to twist and moan, quivering with the intensity of my pussy's hunger and begging for him to stick them in again. Instead, he grabbed my thigh and began to massage it brutally with both hands. Where the manipulation would have been only mildly stimulating under normal circumstances, it was almost unbearably exciting now that I couldn't escape it or interfere by getting my knees together. He massaged until my flesh seemed to crawl, then switched his attention to my other thigh. And he bent over me to grab one nipple in his mouth and suck fiercely at it.

"Bill. . . omigod, Bill... I can't stand it!"

"Sure you can." He mumbled around the soft flesh of my breast.

"No! No, I can't! Oh, fuck me now, Bill!"

"Unh-uh. We got lots of time."

"I haven't!" I whispered frantically. "Oh, God, I'm not going to last much longer, Bill!"

But he ignored my protest and started massaging my belly, his fingers biting in and churning my internal organs until I could feel them beginning to knot. My excitement had subsided momentarily when he'd pulled his fingers out of my pussy; under the stimulus of his massage it was mounting again and I was once more approaching a climax. I tightened my thighs and buttocks and thrust my belly into the air, vicious tremors shaking my body.

Bill straightened and stood back to gaze down on me. I stared into his face in an agony of frustration, wishing he'd drive his peter into me and give me the fullness I wanted so badly and knowing he intended to prolong my excitement. The thought terrified me; I honestly didn't think I could stand the stress of further frustration.

To my amazement, he stooped and twisted the knot loose at my ankle. My feet fell away from each other to hang limply toward the floor, my legs too stiff to function. I was certain he was going to release me and finish our session with a more conventional fucking. But he lifted my feet onto the couch and rolled me onto my belly without untying my hands.

"Bill . . . what..."

Quickly and without explanation, he raised my hips and pulled my knees under me. I sagged, my belly resting on my thighs and my boobies still brushing the couch, but before I could comment on the lack of dignity, he parted my knees again until my feet and calves were off the cushion. It only took him another moment to pull the belt tight and tie my ankles again, so my feet were tugged toward each other under the couch. The angle of my thighs thrust my ass into the air and made me gape. I wiggled furiously, unable to help myself.

At the first touch of his hands on my buttocks, I was rocketed again into the fiercest excitement. My hips flailed the air and his hands, dragging through the wetness of my pussy, spread my thickening juice over the entire exposed zone. He squeezed my buttocks and jabbed his fingers into my cuntmouth and prodded my anus. I mumbled and cried at the indignity, but my body ached with pleasure and strained for more.

Bill backed away from the couch and I turned my head to watch him. I was too highly excited to make any comment; all I could do was struggle for breath, let my agonized muscles rest, and stare numbly. He stripped without taking his gaze off me. His cock leaped into view, white and Laura's Willing Spirit disappointing by contrast to the beautiful, dark shaft I'd seen on Vince, but I remembered how good Bill's had felt in me in the past and quivered with anticipation.

"Bill... oh, yes, Bill. . . get it in me quick, please!"

He returned to the couch and straddled my back, facing my upthrust buttocks. I groaned and surrendered myself to whatever new acts he had in mind. I could do nothing to influence his decision, I knew, and whatever he did was going to raise me to new heights of delight. It didn't matter how dreadfully improper or degrading the things he might do to me or make me do were; the more they defied convention, the more wildly I was going to respond, and I knew it.

He rubbed the inner faces of my labia with the fingers of both hands. My hips leaped and jerked from side to side. I could feel the weight and heat of his testicles slipping around on my back and, when he leaned over me and clamped his knees against my waist, the hardness of his cock sliding in its own wetness. He plunged fingers into my cuntmouth-it felt as if he'd driven his whole hand in-and began to finger my clitoris. For a moment I thought the savage pleasure was going to blow my mind. My waist and upper back were burning with the heat of his thighs and buttocks and my pussy raged with the sensations he induced.

He pulled his hand out and began to fumble at my anus, his fingertip wedging the taut sphincter open and shooting tongues of fire through me.

"Bill. . . Bill! . . . Jesus, Bill, not that!"

But my own slippery goo lubricated the straining ring and let it swallow his thrusting finger. Insane with delight now, I dimly felt him insert another finger beside the first. He had something in my ass and something else in my pussy and his cock was grinding against my back. I bucked frantically, conscious only of the tremendous desire that shook me in its grip. The knot that had been tightening in my belly seemed to explode as powerful spasms seized my vagina. I trembled and swayed in my orgasm, sobbing wildly and glorying in the degradation and helplessness of my position.

When the edge of my climax had blunted, Bill slowly pulled his hands away and again caressed the external surfaces of my pussy. To my horror, the tension my orgasm had relieved returned immediately.

"Bill! My God, Bill, what's happening to me! Oh, Lord, I'm going to come again!"

"I know, baby. Harder than the first time."

"Oh, dear! Mmm!"

He clambered off my back and I felt his weight behind me. He laid his cock against me and leaned on my buttocks.

"Mmm . . . oooh, Bill! Now, now! Now, fuck me!"

"I'm going to."

He centered his cockhead against my cuntmouth and lunged against it, driving it to its full depth in me. I had to groan with the immense joy of the penetration. And when he started pumping at me I matched his tempo, slamming my ass back and up to meet his blows. He laughed suddenly, an explosive burst of glee, and clutched at my buttocks with gouging fingers.

"Now you're ready, puss! Now you're ready!"

"Yes!" I gasped. "Yes, I'm ready! Harder, Bill! Harder!"

But he pulled back and I lost the fullness of his peter.

"Bill!" I wailed at him. "Bill, Bill! Stick it in! Please, Bill!"

I felt a great pressure in my anus and tightened my buttocks. Bill squeezed them and pried them apart as the pressure mounted.

"Now!" He grunted. "The time for something new is when you can't fight it, puss."

"Omigod! Oh, no, Bill! No, you can't!"

The brutal dome of his cockhead wedged my sphincter open; I could feel the throbbing ring engulf the impossible bulk, and still I continued to stretch. I resigned myself to the fact I couldn't stop him. With a great heave, I thrust myself onto the probing cock and felt the flared ridge burst into me. With a victorious lunge, Bill drove his cock deep into my ass, his belly slamming onto my buttocks. He dropped forward over me, his hands groping under my belly and feeling along my writhing flesh until they closed on my breasts. Clutching my tits like handles, he blasted at my ass until I was a senseless mass of white heat. I could hear nothing but my own shrieks of joy. Nothing was visible but the flashing lights that played behind my tightly shut eyelids. I was a single purposed receptacle for sensation, convulsed by an orgasm of such intensity I thought I was dying. My body went rigid. My thighs clamped to raise my ass and my feet strained against their bonds. I thrust my face into the cushion and straightened my elbows, my upper arms holding my head as if it were in a vise and my fingers splaying. A tremendous tremor seized me as contractions wrung my belly.

There was an eruption of heat in the core of my guts and a slow, insistent pumping at my rectum.

Bill's chin dug into my back and his knees ground against the inner slopes of my thighs. His fingers mauled my breasts. But the moment came to an end and I felt his bulk go limp. My own spasms gradually died to leave me weak and spent, sagging under Bill's weight. As the roaring inside my head quieted, I heard the soft, pleading moan of the mysterious woman again and awoke to the awful reality of my position. But it wasn't yet a time for regret. For the first time in my life, I felt a sense of complete emancipation from the commandments of my father's sisters. I could have done nothing that would have horrified them more than this. It was true I hadn't consented to it, but I'd enjoyed it fiercely. I'd do it again, now that I'd experienced it. And I'd gloat over my defiance.

"Bill ..." My voice was muffled.

"Yeah?"

"Bill, is that all? Are we through for this time?"

"Yeah. That's enough for one time."

"My legs are going to break, Bill. Would you untie them now, please?"

"Uh. Yeah, I guess so." He lifted himself off me with a tired grunt, his peter tugging hard before my sphincter released it, and untied the knot at one of my ankles. There was a pause and I twisted my neck with an effort to see what he was doing. He was kneeling on the floor, rocked back on his heels gazing at my awkward posture with an expression of enjoyment.

"My hands, Bill. Please?"

"Oh. Oh, yeah."

In a moment my wrists were free. Stiff and aching, I pushed myself erect and sat astride the couch. Resting my hands on the cushion between my thighs, I leaned on them and let my head hang forward while strength poured slowly through me.

"Whew!" I whistled. "How come you've never tried to tie me up before, Bill?"

"Think you'd have let me?"

I realized I wouldn't have. At least, I'd have fought him with everything I had. "But I really didn't let you tonight." I had to remind him. "I objected as soon as I saw what you were doing."

"Sure." He grinned. "But you let me get far enough so you couldn't stop me. I think you'd have been a little more alert if it hadn't been for the ghost and the talk about Caroline."

"Were you lying to me about her, Bill?"

"No. Fact is, she was trying for time. She wanted to hang in there just at the edge of her orgasm as long as possible. Couple of times she managed to hold out almost all night!"

"God!" I shuddered.

The ghost gave a long, tremulous moan and I stiffened. Bill never had gotten my arms out of the sleeves of my robe and now I pulled the crumpled garment around me and clutched the front of me.

"Bill, that's no ghost."

He cocked his head and studied me. "No?"

"No! That's a real, live woman! Bill, somewhere in this house there's a woman who can't get away from whatever fiend is torturing her!"

He chuckled. "She doesn't make it sound like torture."

"My God, Bill! She's been moaning like that for hours! If she's not having an orgasm, she's so close to it she's tasting blood. And that would be honest-to-god torture!"

"Look, pet. Suppose you were right. Where the hell could she be?"

"I don't know. But I'm going to find out."

"Let's assume she's real. Who's doing the work to keep her so excited?"

"I don't know that, either. Maybe Vince and Marsh are taking turns."

"She was making noises while we were all in the library, wasn't she?"

I had to admit she had been. "So there's got to be one more man around," I insisted.

He shook his head. "I wouldn't put it past those two guys. I don't trust them any further than I could throw the big one. But they're not holding anybody prisoner. If they are, they've had her for a hell of a long time."

"Why don't you trust them?"

"I just don't. It's a big part of my job, sizing up the people involved in one of these supernatural manifestation cases. Those two are up to no good. Neither are the women. Laura, I've got to warn you before it's too late."

"What!"

"As long as we're here, you be on your guard. For all you know, they might be your competition."

"Oh, come on!"

"The Foundation! Maybe they set it up just to keep the money from being 'wasted' on a relative they'd never seen."

I was busy untying the belt of my robe from my other ankle, so Bill couldn't see my face while his suggestion sank in. When I straightened I smoothed my expression. "I don't think it's very nice to say that, Bill."

"The ghost business isn't one in which you worry about what's nice to say."

"You're making a terribly serious accusation." "I'm not accusing. I'm simply saying it's a possibility you ought to keep in mind. It's something that ought to make you careful." His eyes narrowed and he seemed to be sizing me up. "As a matter of fact, I'm just not a hundred percent satisfied your mother's death was an accident."

"Bill! Good God!"

"You just be damn careful, that's all."

I recalled the moment when he was tying me up when I'd had that flash of distrust for him. It seemed ridiculous now, in the face of his concern, but the same distrust edged into my consciousness again. The difficulty was, I had no tangible reason for such a feeling. And I had to admit to myself that I was a little afraid of Vince, in spite of the way my pussy tingled when the picture of his peter came to mind, and that the haughty Nadine struck me as a dangerous, devious woman. I really wouldn't put anything past her. But the idea that they might have committed a murder was too far-fetched.

"I can't believe that, Bill. Why try to scare me that way?"

He surged to his feet and started to dress. My skepticism appeared to have irritated him. "I'm not trying to scare you. Hell, I like you, Laura! Like I did Caroline! And I don't want it to end that way again!" He finished dressing and I got off the couch and onto my feet.

"Bill, I'll try to be careful. I really will."

"Okay." He didn't sound convinced.

"I'm awfully tired now, though. Maybe we'd better talk tomorrow, after a good night's sleep."

He nodded brusquely and went to the door. "All I ask is, don't be a damn fool and go looking for a woman who's not there tonight, Laura. Promise?"

I hesitated. No matter what he said, I knew there was a woman somewhere in the house making those noises. And any woman was going to have some limit to her endurance. If they kept her at that level of excitement too long, she'd die. But the foolishness of my position suddenly became clear to me. If someone were really holding a prisoner and torturing her the way I thought they were, what would they do to me if I stumbled onto the scene? The idea shook me.

Bill frowned. "Promise, Laura. Look, I know damn well that ghost isn't a live prisoner. Your mother and I went over this place with a fine-toothed comb. And those sounds go on for two or three days, sometimes! You can't tell me there's a woman alive who could hang in there that long!"

"All right, Bill. I... I promise. No hunting tonight."

He went into the hall and closed the door behind him. I crossed to it and slipped the bolt quietly into place, then examined the corner panel where the moans seemed to be loudest. There wasn't an obvious control as there was on the mirror in my bedroom, but I finally found a knot in the frame that yielded to the pressure of my finger and made the panel swing open. The dark recess behind it echoed with the sighs of the ghost. I shuddered violently and pressed the control again. When the panel settled into place I struggled with the couches until both were lodged in front of it, then went to my bedroom and barricaded the mirror with the heaviest of the bureaus. Bill's suspicions seemed unreasonable to me, but I had to admit there were reasons for caution.

The size of the inheritance could tempt someone. I still didn't know any more about The Western Foundation for Spiritualism than the fact it did exist and was legally incorporated in the state. Ugly as murder sounded, people did sometimes kill for money and The Aerie was a long way from outside help.

I had trouble falling asleep. The storm showed little evidence of breaking; outside, the wind continued to shriek and the rain lashed at the old stone house. And the deep sob of organ tones persisted, humming through my body rather than in my ears. Punctuating the deeper tones and twisting my taut fibers, the ghostly woman's sighs came faintly to me, interspersed with occasional pleasure-pain moans. But I did sleep, because Willa's knock at my door in the morning awoke me.

After breakfast, Vince paid me a visit. In the daylight, gloomy though it was from the still raging storm, it wasn't possible to let Bill's forebodings isolate me. I was sensibly dressed in a wool knit skirt and warm sweater and there was plenty of activity in the house to reassure me.

Vince came to a dead stop just inside my sitting room door, his eyes wide with disbelief. "What the-" He stared at the couches, then at me. Slowly, he began to grin. "Figure Hermione might come to see you in the night?"

I was sure I detected a note of derision in his husky tone and I felt like bristling. "Not Hermione," I replied steadily. "But everybody in the house knows about the passages, and I prefer to have some choice when I have visitors."

He chuckled. The sound was like that of dry paper tearing. "Afraid somebody might try to rape you in your sleep?"

In spite of the whisper of unease that rustled through me, I determined not to let him put me on the defensive. "Not particularly. That might be easier said than done." And I was conscious of a sudden tingling as a fleeting vision of his peter flashed in my mind. "I just resent the idea of having doors I can't lock."

"Especially in a strange place," he added for me, his voice free of its earlier bantering note. "And where you're not sure if anybody can be trusted." "I didn't say that."

"I know. You're not stupid, though. You couldn't be, with Caroline as your mother. And she really set you up with that damn will of hers."

"Set me up!" I hadn't look at it that way.

"What do you know about The Western Foundation?"

"Why should I know anything? Except it exists."

"Why should you? Because that will's talking about one hell of a lot of money! And spiritualism is a field that attracts some real scavengers. Don't you realize who'd get that money if something happened to you before you satisfied your mother's terms?"

"Yes. Or if I can't meet the terms."

"Well, meeting the terms is something else. Nothing a Foundation could do about that. But the money-hungry charlatan could do something about making sure you didn't last that long."

"Vince, do you know anything about the Foundation?" I decided to challenge him.

"Not a whole lot more than you. But I'm having a check run on it. Ought to know quite a bit before long."

Or maybe he was the Foundation and would have some kind of false front ready to tell me about before long, I thought. I didn't believe he was the kind who would do anything to put me in physical danger, though; there was something in his eyes and the lines around his mouth that argued against that idea.

"No use worrying about that until you've gotten some kind of report, then, is there?" I asked. "I suppose I should get those couches back where they belong."

He grinned. "That's the spirit. I'll do it for you. I'll show you how to lock those secret doors, too."

I helped him, but he did most of the work of furniture moving. And he showed me a switch beside the fireplace that was supposed to disable the panel control. He even demonstrated for me.

"Caroline's father had all the controls and mechanisms up-dated about forty years ago," he explained. "He figured it was time they got rid of mechanical levers and counterweights and went to electricity."

"Why keep the passages at all?" I felt suspicious. "Why not just seal them off?"

He shrugged and his features took on a brooding expression. "A matter of family superstition or something, I suppose. The whole Valcouer life-style sort of hinges around the mystery of The Aerie. It's in the blood."

"It's supposed to be in my blood, too, then."

"That's why you're here ... to find out."

"Then I'd better start finding out about the passages, hadn't I?"

"You might as well. It's not going to bother you that Hermione's still at it?"

I shivered. "I've got to prove she's not a real woman. I've just got to!" I hesitated a moment, then asked, "Would you mind showing me the passages: He studied me and for just an instant I was aware of the interest in his eyes as his glance swept over my body. Even the knowledge that I could arouse a glimmer of physical response in him sent a thrill racing along my spine. I shook myself, irritated at the breathlessness I felt when I visualized myself in the position he'd held Nadine in the day before. Shocked at the intensity of desire that swept over me I turned quickly away. He mustn't see anything in my face.

"Let me get my flashlight," I mumbled and crossed toward the dressing room.

When I returned to him, we entered the passage. We had to descend a ladder to the main passage level, some four or five feet below floor level. He assured me we were at the south extremity of the narrow tunnel and we proceeded north, past the bathroom's location and through the outer wall of my bedroom.

"They built the passage in the space between the tops of the first floor windows and the bottoms of the second," Vince told me. "Stairways would have taken too much space, so they used ladders. The main thing to watch out for is the openings between levels. Go charging through here without a light and you could get a nasty fall."

We descended at the northwest corner of the house and were in the passage I'd spied from the day before. Vince stopped me.

"The passage runs along the north and west walls down here," he said. "It's got entrances to the living room, the library and the conservatory. Ramon had observation vents built in so he could see who was in those rooms before going into any of them."

"I know ..." It slipped out before I realized what I was saying.

Vince gasped and stared into my face. I started violently at what I'd revealed and my hand jerked, making the beam from the flashlight waver. I expected a rush of angry resentment from Vince, but he grinned slowly and nodded.

"You've seen something of the downstairs passages already, then." He chuckled gently.

If he wasn't going to bring up his meeting with Nadine, I wasn't.

"Yes. And I almost killed myself. I almost fell through one of the ladder holes."

"Don't ever move in here without a light," he said soberly, reiterating the warning he'd implied upstairs.

"But where does that ladder go? Willa said there were only two stories. She didn't mention a basement."

"There's no basement. The Aerie's built on rock. But there is a wine cellar. And there's a natural vent in the formation that Ramon managed to rig for climbing up and down. I suspect he wanted a way to get down to the landing without being seen. It's a hell of a hard climb, though, and just about as dangerous as the outside stairway."

"What stairway?"

"An old wooden set of stairs they hung on the cliff over the cove. There's one landing that's plain suicide if you get caught in the wind. Gusts whip around a rock shoulder and focus on it hard enough to knock a big man off."

"Brrr! Is that what happened to Caroline?"

He winced and stirred. "I'm not sure. That's what the coroner decided. Come on, I'll show you the door into the conservatory while we're talking." Using the flashlight and holding my hand, he led me across a narrow plank that bridged the shaft I'd so nearly fallen into the previous day. "The trouble with that explanation is she didn't have any clothes on. And it wasn't the kind of day you'd go climbing down a cliff naked. Of course, the coroner had a song and dance about rough water doing strange things to a body, but even in a bad storm the cove doesn't get really rough."

"You and my mother were close, weren't you."

For a moment he didn't reply. He shined the light on a switch and actuated it, waiting for the panel to swing back. And he stepped through into the conservatory before saying, "More than close, Laura."

The ghost moaned again, her emotion thick in the low, sobbing tones, and I turned instinctively, cringing at the sense of her nearness. In the darkness we'd come through I saw a faint, bluish figure rising where the shaft should be and floating toward me. My throat swelled with terror and a scream tore through the constricted tissues. I shrieked again, paralyzed by the impossible horror of seeing what had to be a ghost.

Vince leaped back through the opening and grabbed me. "Laura! Laura! What's wrong!"

"That! Vince, Vince! It's her! Oh, God!"

But the wraith was gone and the passage was dark and apparently empty. Vince held me, saying nothing, and I collapsed against him and sobbed hysterically.

"Omigod, Vince! I did! I saw her! Get me out of here! Get me out of here!"

He half dragged, half carried me into the conservatory, pausing only to energize the mechanism to close the panel. I was shivering violently and he took me to one of the steam radiators, where he held me tightly while I regained control of myself. And from the walls came the hollow moaning of the ghost, still ringing with the ecstasy of near-orgasm. Even in my panic, I was aware of the hunger that tugged at me and the awful nearness of that beautiful peter of Vince's.

Chapter Five

I clung to Vince, my face buried in the softness of his shirt and my fingers groping at its folds. He held me with one arm and stroked my hair as if I were some kind of frightened animal. His voice was gentle and soothing.

"There, there. Everything's okay. Nothing's going to hurt you. You're okay."

"On, Vince! Vince!" I mumbled against him.

"There, there. You're okay." Then, "What was it, baby? What happened?"

"Oh, God! I saw her, Vince! I saw the ghost come up out of the shaft!"

"Easy. Easy, Laura. What did you see?"

"The ghost, I tell you! I saw her, Vince!"

"Shhh, shhh. Baby, she's not a seeing kind of ghost. Nobody ever sees her."

"I did! Vince, I did!"

"There, there." He was kissing the top of my head and as I looked up at him in my determination to make him believe me his lips brushed my nose and then my cheek.

They were warm and firm-strong lips-and a sense of security washed over me. I pressed closer and thrust my mouth up. I forgot the sardonic lift at the corners of his eyes and the veiled resentment around his chin, aware only of his warmth and strength and tenderness. His lips touched mine and rested lightly for a moment. As if the contact had closed a circuit, a powerful current of emotion surged through me. I drove myself against him and crushed my mouth on his, my lips working hungrily.

He made a strange, muffled sound in his throat, half sob and half growl, and smothered me with a sudden, greedy gulping. The terror that had welled so powerfully faded and swirled away, tenuous as the figure I'd seen. Dry heat whispered over my skin in prickling waves and tugged at my inner fibers. I squirmed to get even closer to him, my softer curves molded to the angular hardness of his frame. His scent was one of tropical muskiness, subtle and heady, and his breath smelled like spices. I strained upward to gulp at the hot, firm mouth and let my lips part with eagerness.

After a long silence, broken only once, when a strange whimper formed in my throat and warned me how deep my hunger was growing, our faces separated and I lay back on his arms.

"Vince ..." I whispered. "Oh, Vince, I didn't mean to ..." I stopped. I couldn't come right out and say I hadn't meant to suggest he make love to me. I didn't dare even admit my response to his kiss had been that kind. But I knew it had. I knew I'd ground myself on him shamelessly, hopefully.

I tried again. "Vince. Oh, Vince, I was so scared! I wasn't trying..."

A faint, gentle smile touched one corner of his mouth and he gazed quietly into my eyes. With a slow nod, he bent and covered my mouth with his lips again in a kiss that was recognition and tenderness and forgiveness for anything I might have said or thought. I heard a little cry of happiness slip from me as I sank into the luxury of his embrace.

Kissing him that time was like drinking his strength. In a rush of joy, I thrust my tongue against his lips, playing it over their firm contours and thrilling at the sensation when the tip of his tongue met mine. My head rocked and my lips flattened with the ferocious pressure as I forced my mouth harder against his. And I wriggled, trying to fit the angles of his body with my gentler curves.

When we ended that kiss and I lay back a second time, I was relaxed and glowing; I smiled joyfully up at him. I thought there was a light of wonderment in his eyes and a twist of surprise around his mouth. He held a handful of my buttocks, his fingers kneading thoughtfully, and I recognized the urgent throbbing in my pussy. Something had happened between Vince and me; whether it turned out to be hate or tenderness, there was a bond deeper than that of physical attraction. And I knew I had to have him.

I smiled as I told him. "Vince .. . Oh, Vince, I need you to love me."

He grinned sympathetically. "Don't over-react, baby," he said softly.

"Do you really think I'm over-reacting?" I asked. "Really?"

He chuckled, then, and touched my nose with his lips. "No, I don't. Not really." He caressed me, his hand passing lightly upward from my hip to my shoulder. "No, I don't think you are."

"Vince, will anybody come in here? Are we going to get interrupted?"

He held me at arm's length and studied me. "God, you're direct! Laura, I've got to hand it to your generation!"

"I... I can't help it, Vince. I just can't help it! It's got to be the way Hermione keeps coming day and night!"

He kissed me again, lightly, then released me. "Nobody's going to come in here while we're here. Just a minute." He went to the door and locked it, then actuated a switch to lock the entrance to the secret panel.

"Okay?" he asked.

I wasn't sure. "What about the observation vents, Honey? They ..."

He grinned broadly. "You can see a hell of a lot through one of those, can't you."

I know I blushed. I let my glance fall and nodded. "Yes. Yes, you can see a lot."

"I doubt anybody's going to be spying on us. Nobody's got any reason to be in the passage but you."

I believed him. I don't know why, but I believed him implicitly. I felt somehow as if I'd gotten into a world where everything was being run just for my benefit. I don't think anybody feels that way very often, but it s a glorious sensation. I stretched happily and laughed.

"What is it, Vince? Why do I feel so free, all of a sudden? As if everything were perfect?"

"Damned if I know. That's the way Caroline used to act in the springtime. Funny it would hit you in the middle of the first fall storm."

"Could you light a fire in the fireplace? Would that be all right?"

I could see the fire was laid, and Vince grinned and turned to touch a match to the kindling at once. Tiny yellow tongues of flame licked through the jumbled twigs and shavings and ran together and grew and clutched at the logs. Vince dropped onto the bearskin in front of the hearth and stared into the flickering light and I went to his side. I curled up next to him and ran my fingers through his hair.

"Thank you, Vince. It's a lot cozier this way." And I asked one more question about my mother. "Did you really love her, Vince? Was she the kind of woman who made you really love her?"

He nodded and gazed deep into the glames. "She was that kind of woman, Laura. I loved her. Funny thing about that, there was a good ten years difference in our ages. But all the time I knew her, it seemed to me she was the younger and I, the older. She was so damn innocent and open about things it was impossible to believe she was actually a mature, experienced woman. I never knew anybody else so free of pretense."

He'd volunteered far more than I'd asked for. He seemed anxious for me to understand what an unusual person my mother had been. But the tender note in his voice didn't sink into self-pity. Rather, I thought his tone was one of pleasure in the memories my question had stirred. He stretched out and looked at the ceiling, then at me.

"What about you, Laura? You put up a front?"

I started to tell him I didn't, but a quick image of my father's sisters crossed my mind and I had to laugh. "I'm afraid so. Around Aunt Frances and Aunt Melba I always try to be quite proper, you know. They're so prissy."

He grunted and scowled. "Uh-huh. So I hear." But he brightened, then. "The Valcouer heritage must be pretty strong in you to overcome the way they tried to bring you up."

I had to giggle. "Poor dears. They did try. But there was this streak of perversity in me. The more they tried to make me be proper, the more I sneaked off and tried the things they forbade."

Vince laughed, an easy, pleased laugh. He looked so utterly relaxed and contented that I bent over him on impulse and kissed the hollow of his cheek. He caught me in his arms and I sprawled across him, feeling as carefree as a child.

"Vince, Vince!" I whispered.

He laughed again. "God, I feel wild!" he exclaimed. "I don't dare shut my eyes!"

"Why?" I kissed first one eyelid, then the other, forcing him to close them.

"Because you feel so damn much like your mother! You even smell like her!"

I twisted, rubbing my breasts on his chest. "I'm not that much like her. I'll bet there's a lot of things different."

"Yeah. Details. It's just the feeling, honey. The way you react."

"Anybody would! I'm just hungry, Vince!"

"The Valcouer spirit?" he asked in a teasing tone.

"You'd know better than I." Again I'd blurted out without thinking how it would sound.

"Honey ..." He sounded patient. "You mean the library?"

"Oh, Vince, I didn't mean to spy. Not really, But Willa said you and mother had been in love. And Nadine .. . well..."

"That wasn't our first time, baby. It didn't mean anything about how I felt toward your mother."

"But, Vince ..."

"Honey, that was one of the glorious things about Caroline and her sisters. I mean, we shared! Caroline . . . Nadine . . . Willa . . . Living with Caroline was living with all three."

I didn't believe him. It did him credit, I felt, to care enough to invent something less sordid than sneaking off with Nadine where he'd once made love to my mother, but he wasn't going to convince me those three women had shared their men. Willa's husband was in the middle of some important business deal right now, she'd said. That was why she was here without him. But from the way she'd spoken of him I knew how deeply she loved him. I couldn't imagine her willingly accepting his making love to either Nadine or, before her death, my mother. It was even less likely Nadine would tolerate either of her sisters' having a sexual bout with Marsh.

I shook my head and brushed Vince's lips with mine. "I don't believe you, darling," I told him softly.

He sighed and ran his fingers down my side, my skin tingling under the rustling of my sweater. "It's true, just the same, puss. It was one of the two things Caroline insisted I understand before the first time she went to bed with me." He grinned. "Good thing she put it the way she did, or I might not have bought it."

"How was that?" I asked, ready to let him fill out the harmless deception.

"Like telling me I couldn't have a bite of the first candy bar unless I was willing to taste the other two. Somehow it took awhile for it to sink in that there were going to be two other guys taking bites out of my candy."

I had to laugh at the image he'd created. I had to shiver, too; his choice of metaphors brought me a vivid picture of the scene I'd watched in the library. As if he sensed the surge of desire that burned through me, he rested his hand on my breast and squeezed gently. My breath caught in my throat and I pressed forward, lowering my head to watch the dark, strong fingers as they kneaded.

"Oh, Vince!" I whispered. "Vince, darling!"

I kissed him, my head thick with confused thoughts of my mother's relationship with this swarthy man. Our lips were wet and greedy, this time, and I squirmed while I worked my mouth on his. I was aware of the fumbling of his fingers as they unfastened the upper buttons of my sweater and I flinched and twisted my shoulders when his fingertips slipped inside and touched the flesh on the inner slope of my breast. Quivering, I rolled to lift that side and make it easier for his hand to plunge under the tightness of my bra and close around my nipple. I gulped at his mouth, sucking fiercely when he drove his tongue between my teeth.

I made no effort to pretend we were just petting. I knew he was going to fuck me and I desperately wanted him to. I hoped we'd build up to it and make it a happy, glorious thing, but if he'd rolled me onto my back at that moment and thrust himself between my knees, I'd have clasped him to me and submitted gladly.

He didn't. His tongue explored my mouth insistently while he continued to fondle the yielding mound of flesh that was growing so terribly sensitive. His other hand was stroking my body-long, urgent strokes that started on my buttocks and ended at my shoulder-and had worked the back of my sweater well up my back. At last I raised my head to stare down at him, breathless and flushed with my need. He finished unbuttoning the sweater and worked the catch of my bra loose.

I let myself fall onto him while he eased the sweater sleeves off my arms, then squirmed out of the bra and pushed myself up again, stiff armed. My breasts hung toward him, swollen cones with hardening lumps of nipples. He smiled and nodded.

'There's a difference," he conceded. "Your mother's tits were more like big oranges . . . round like. But yours are going to make a good mouthful."

"Vince! For heaven's sake!"

He caught me by my waist and pulled me along his body until one boobie hung over his mouth. Opening his lips, he lowered me and engulfed the quivering flesh.

"Ahhh!" I gasped at the hard thrust of excitement that drove through me. Lowering myself to my elbows, I let my breath hiss between pursed lips while I watched his rhythmic sucking.

He felt of the backs of my thighs, his fingers nimble and strong. I felt the edge of my skirt slide upward and the silky friction of his fingertips on my stockings. With one quick motion he turned the skirt up and let it drape at my waist. His fingers caressed my flesh through my stockings, then abruptly rubbed in light, small circles on the bareness between stockings and panties. The thrill was so intense it brought a gasp to my lips. I pressed my knees together for a moment, then let them fall away from each other while he felt the warmth between my thighs.

"Oh, Vince! Omigod, Vince! Oooh!" I stiffened in the grip of an involuntary tremor and groaned with delight.

He played with the backs and inner slopes of my thighs with both hands while his tongue mauled my nipple and his sucking convinced me the tissues were going to squirt into his mouth. I writhed against him, as helpless as if he'd tied me the way Bill had. My pussy ached with desire and I felt as if my skin were crawling over my belly.

Shuddering wildly I groped along his body until my hand reached the bulge of his hard-on. I squeezed his cockhead, closing my fist over the hard knob and pushing it against the firm flatness of his belly. Impatient, then, I struggled with the zipper of his fly and freed his peter. The shaft was dry and hot in my hand, ribbed and veined and pulsing, and I slid my palm onto the head. There was wetness there, slippery and warm, and I spread it over the swollen bulb and rubbed it in with frenzied strokes.

"Vince, darling!" I panted. "Let go of my breast, darling, please!"

He released the inflamed breast and tightened his grip on my thighs. I twisted around, mouth puckered and the image of Nadine's assault on his peter vivid in my mind. Grasping the thick, dark shaft with both hands, I thrust my open lips against the wet cockhead. I sucked at the wetness, shivering with anticipation and uncertainty. The flavor was so subtle it almost eluded me, but I was suddenly aware of the faint metallic taste at the back of my tongue. I swallowed and licked the velvety dome dry. His slit opened under the pressure of my squeezing and another drop of the clear fluid oozed into view. I held my breath with excitement; never had I looked so closely at a cock before, and curiosity overwhelmed me, blending with my desire and fanning my excitement. With infinite care, I placed my lips to the slit and extracted the shimmering droplet, rolling it in my mouth and lingering over the delicate aroma.

"Mmmm! Oooh, darling!" The tip of my tongue probed the shiny walls of the slit and teased another drop into the open to be robbed.

Vince pulled me around so my legs lay beside his torso. His hands slipped inside my panties through the legs and massaged my buttocks. I felt my hips undulating and gasped at the thrill of his powerful hands on the eager roundness of my asscheeks. With a quick thrust of my head, I caught his cockhead in my lips and started to suck. His hips jerked and his legs stiffened. Wild with desire for him, I unbuttoned the waistband of his trousers and wrestled with them. He raised his hips, his cock jabbing deeper into my mouth, and I worked his trousers and shorts over the hard swelling of his buttocks. Reluctantly, I released his cockhead long enough to disengage the magnificent organ from his shorts, then captured it again. While I struggled to get trousers and shorts off his legs, he pulled off his shirt. And in a moment he lay naked under me, his body nut-brown and muscular against my creamy complexion.

He chuckled contentedly and began to remove my skirt. I felt the coarse material scrape my buttocks through the thin protection of my panties and squirmed as it dragged over my thighs. He left it around my knees and worked my panties down to it, their wet crotch feeling suddenly clammy as it pulled free of my pussy and touched the hot surfaces of my legs.

I was thankful I used self-supporting hose instead of a garter belt as I drew my knees free of the skirt and panties. When both garments were clear of my feet, Vince thrust one hand between my thighs and teased my pussy. I clamped my thighs on the bulging knuckles and sucked ferociously at his cockhead. Waves of pleasure pulsed through me and I felt giddy.

I let go of his peter again. "Vince?"

"Hmm?"

"Vince, darling ..." I hesitated, then blurted out. "Would you ... I mean, just for a minute would you hold me like .. . like you did Nadine?"

He gave a gusty laugh. "I'll be damned! You really are gutsy, aren't you! Okay, come on, baby!"

He rolled to his knees and spilled me onto my back. Before I knew what he was doing, he stood me on my shoulders and knelt astride my face. Grasping my waist, he lifted me while he thrust himself to his feet. I hung in his hands and lowered my legs until my thighs rested on his shoulders. It was a novel sensation and I let my arms dangle loosely while I soaked up the weirdness.

Vince's peter stood stiffly before my face. When he pulled me to him and clamped his arm across the small of my back, my breasts hung against his belly and my face lay against the shaft of his hard-on. I shuddered at the way his neck levered my thighs apart and then cried out with pleasure at the new experience of his tongue licking at my labia.

"Oh, yes, darling! Oh, Vince!" My head felt heavy and my excitement had a jagged edge. "Oh, I like it, Vince!"

I caught his cock in my hand and worked the head fully into my mouth. Its bulges flattened my tongue and shaped themselves to the roof of my mouth as I began to suck. In a surge of affection for this lean man, I flung my arms around his hips and clung fiercely to him.

I could feel my labia swelling and separating. He lapped at their inner faces, the blade of his tongue warmly rough on their slippery smoothness. It was a strange, beautiful sensation and it made my hips twist and writhe. The room seemed to whirl around me while I fought to engulf more and more of the hot peter. I knew dimly that my feet were pedaling at the air, but the only important things in the world were the magnificent cock in my mouth and the greedy lips and tongue at my pussy. Nothing in the world had ever felt exactly like that tongue. It molded itself to fit the shape of my cuntmouth, yielding in its outer layers and hardening at the core simultaneously. It thrust deep into my cunt and curled to probe at the walls of my vagina. Even while it explored, Vince's lips gathered the soft membranes of my inner labia and sucked them in. Pleasure thrills surged through me in vibrating waves from the mauling. My buttocks winked furiously and only Vince's tight grip held my hips in position.

I clawed at his asscheeks and gobbled at the meaty cockhead. His testicles looked enormous as they swung before my eyes and his pubic hair curled around the base of his peter like a mound of brush. His thighs were twitching and his hips jerked. His cock leaped forward again and again, as if he were fucking my mouth. I tried to hold my bobbing head still so his thrusts would work the huge knob further into my throat, but the end continued to batter at membranes that refused to give way.

I tensed with disappointment when his tongue withdrew from my cuntmouth and then bucked savagely when he seized my clitoris in his mouth. Nowhere in the universe is there such sweet agony as that. The gentle squeeze of teeth on the hard little cylinder-the persistent scouring of an eager tongue on the inflamed, trapped head-the hot intimacy of pursed lips around the writhing base-the insane reverse pressure of suction on the entire body of the jangling nerve-bundle-together they streak body and mind with impossible ridges of sheer lust and unbearable delight. My knees flung outward, then snapped toward each other. My thighs clamped on the column of his neck until they threatened to dislodge my hips from their joints. Pivoted at my waist, where his forearm crushed me to him, I lashed from side to side with my upper torso. My breasts, flattened on his body, scrubbed across his while my nipples echoed the jangling responses of my clitoris. I felt a giant knot of ecstasy gathering in my belly and knew he was going to make me come more violently than I'd ever come before. But I knew, too, that I was going to pass out from the intensity of my reaction and might miss the most spectacular experience of my life.

At the last moment, when I was already going rigid, Vince released my clitoris and jerked his hips back. He took me by surprise; his cock escaped from my mouth and he whirled and deposited me on the bearskin. As he let go and stood, I writhed on the floor protesting.

"Vince! Please . . . oh, Vince, don't let me down now! I need you so! I want you, Vince!"

He dropped to his knees beside me and pulled me up. Kneeling, I flung myself against him and caught his thigh in my crotch. I ground my pussy on the hard, bulging ridge and crushed my belly against his peter while I clung to him.

He growled softly. "I'm not going to let you down, baby. Not you. You think I could turn my back on you now without fucking you?"

"Darling, I want you so much I can't even think!"

He fell sideways and pulled me down with him. We rolled on each other and grappled with wild, delicious abandon. When I found myself suddenly sitting astride him, his cock trapped under my pussy, my longing boiled over. I grabbed the heavy cylinder and held it so it pointed up, then settled onto it. His cockhead felt like the end of a telephone pole at my cuntmouth and my rim strained when my weight sagged on it. But it stretched and gulped and the massive bulb nestled inside my belly, the shaft driving it upward between the clinging walls of my vagina.

"Omigod, Vince! Fuck, Vince! Fuck!"

His hips leaped, driving his cock deep and hard and slamming his bony pelvic arch against my pulsing clitoris. I bounced my own hips up and down, stroking myself the length of the buried shaft and battering at him at the bottom of every stroke. In the fury of our fucking, life was reduced to a chaos of sensations. Heat from the fireplace played on my back. Thick fur on the bearskin warmed my knees and my feet. The inner surfaces of my thighs scrubbed violently on the hairy ridges of his. His pubic hair jabbed into the distended tissues of my pussy like a thousand needles. And his fingers bit deeply into my waist, kneading as I flogged myself against him.

"My God, darling!" My voice came out as a choked whisper. "Fuck me, Vince! I'm going to come!"

With a violent heave, he reversed our positions, pinning me on my back and fucking like a madman, his cock driving like a great piston and his hips blasting against me with blows that made my body surge on the bearskin. The tension and desire in my belly wrenched savagely at me. My orgasm surged over me in great, roaring waves and I felt myself caught up in their currents, tossed and whirled in nameless sea of passion. Reality was a giant pole of a cock that held me in place and spewed its lava into my belly. Reality was the fierce-clutching fingers that clamped onto my shoulders and held me in their vise while the spurting cock filled me and churned in my guts. Reality was the powerful, milking contraction of my vaginal walls as they convulsed around the boring cylinder. And reality was Vince's deep rumble beneath the groan of delirium that forced itself from my throat.

I sagged, the awesome violence of my hunger yielding to the warm afterglow of satisfaction, and Vince collapsed in the grip of my thighs. Weak though I was with exhaustion, I had the strength to get my legs around him and lock my ankles. He stiffened briefly and twisted to kiss the side of my face.

"Baby, I'm not worried about shutting my eyes, now," he muttered. "What do you mean?"

"I'm not about to mistake you for Caroline. You're you-Laura . . . nobody else." He sighed. "There's a quality about you that's like your mother, but there's more difference in reaction and style than there was between Caroline and either of her sisters."

"I . . . Vince, you're not sorry we made love, are you?"

"Good God, no! Look, baby, you're going to have to run me off with a gun if you think this is a once only thing!"

I squirmed happily in his warmth, acutely conscious of the big, soft peter still buried in me and the thick pool of perspiration between us. "I'm not going to run you off, darling! Not ever!"

Chapter Six

We lay in front of the fire a long time. If I'd considered myself a sophisticated member of my generation, sexually liberated and well-experienced in sex practices, before coming to The Aerie, the first twenty-four hours there-and I hadn't really been there that long yet-had humbled me. Lying quietly with Vince on the bearskin, I began to appreciate how dreadfully naive I'd actually been. My only claim to sexual maturity was that I'd let an awful lot of boys lay me. Looking back, I realized how much one experience had been like another. Even the times with Bill Sheldon had been unusual only for their exotic setting-for the fact I could look down on San Francisco's traffic while Bill screwed me.

Here at The Aerie I'd begun to experience things I found fun and exciting. And I knew already that they'd been relatively tame, so far. Such a simple thing as staying interlocked after our orgasms was, itself, new to me. In the past there had been an atmosphere of nervous haste. The moment the climax had subsided, my partner had torn himself free and we'd both raced for the bathroom. Of course, I hadn't been so naive as to suppose that was a universal practice, but I hadn't realized either how intensely satisfying it was to stay coupled afterward.

There was a quiet sort of excitement that seemed to hold steady, neither rising to threaten the restfulness of our intimacy, nor sinking to diminish my awareness of the live captive in my belly. I could feel my pulse on the insides of my thighs where they crossed Vince's hip and the prickly movement of his pubic hair where it was trapped by my shrinking labia. I was conscious of the light pressure of his chest on my nipples and the wetness between our bellies. Every word-each breath either of us drew-caused movement that accentuated the completeness of our merging.

We talked softly about my mother-my lack of communication with her and my resentment over what I considered her abandonment of me-and about Vince's relationship with her. He told me of her growing obsession with the ghost and her decision to resolve her uncertainty about the sensuous cries. He and the others had objected to Bill Sheldon's entry on the scene, he told me; they'd worried about the prevalence of fraud in the nebulous world of spiritualism. But Caroline had insisted.

"How do you feel about him now?" I asked cautiously.

Vince grunted and the tightening of his abdominal muscles made his peter do a funny little jump in me. "Worse. The bastard not only contributed to Caroline's death, but I know he was getting a piece from her just about every time she turned around. And I'll bet he's already trying to make out with you ... if he hasn't cut it yet. I still think he's a goddamn fake looking for an easy fortune."

"But I did invite him here." I reminded Vince. "The will said I could have one person who was on my side and I brought Bill."

"Okay. Two things wrong with that picture. First, if you think back you're going to discover he made the first move toward that. I'll lay odds on it. Second, what makes you think we're not on your side? As badly as Caroline wanted you to know the Valcouer side of your heritage, all of us are pulling for you."

"Oh, Vince. Really! Not Nadine! And why should the rest of you? Besides, I didn't know any of you until I got here. Nobody offered any friendship before."

"I'm pretty sure Nadine and Willa both sent invitations for you to visit during the summer. I know they thought you ought to get familiar with The Aerie before you had to fulfill the terms of the will."

"Vince! They didn't! Not a single word!"

"Hmph! Who takes in the mail when you're at home? Don't answer that, but think about it.

"That's a horrible thing to say!"

"Yeah. I know. Might as well put in anything else horrible I think needs saying. I think you'd better watch Bill damn close. I think he's a devious son of a bitch. You're going to wish you'd never met him before this is all over."

"Vince . . . Vince, darling..." I knew I should resent his criticism of Bill. Out of loyalty, I ought to rebuke him sharply. But I couldn't. I was disappointed and pleased by his performance. Disappointed because it seemed a little mean of him, but pleased because it sounded like jealousy. I decided that might be the best way to jar him out of his unreasonable stand. "Vince, are you ... are you jealous of Bill?"

He stirred and grinned at me. "Damn right. I was jealous of him when he was supposed to be helping your mother, and I'm more jealous of him now. But don't confuse my jealousy with the fact that I distrust him. Those are two separate things."

"You sure they are?"

"Absolutely. Please, baby, be on your guard around that guy! I don't think I could take it if something happened to you like it did to Caroline."

"God, Vince! You're suggesting he killed her!"

"Not really. If I thought that, I'd kill him! But I do know it can get dangerous poking around, trying to find out what the ghost really is. And he damn well egged her on in that. It was like urging a kid to grab the pretty flames."

"I'm not sure if I'll do any more 'poking around' at all, after seeing her this morning." I shivered at the thought of the apparition.

As it happened, I'd made a happy choice of subjects to get Vince's mind off Bill. We talked about what I'd seen, Vince sounding puzzled, but quite certain it hadn't had any connection with Hermione, and I equally certain that if the ghost existed, I'd seen her. I did my best to describe the figure to him, only to realize I couldn't even visualize her for myself; she'd been too vaporous and unstable to impress her shape on me. The best I could manage for Vince was to say she'd sort of boiled, her outline and features changing constantly as a fast-growing cloud does, and that she'd seemed to glow with her own light.

He groaned. "Not much to go on, baby.

Nobody's ever seen anything like that at The Aerie to my knowledge." He fell silent and I held him, satisfied to bask in the warmth of his body while he pondered. But he gasped suddenly. "Jesus, Laura! What a stupid bastard I am! Come on, I'll show you your 'ghost'."

"Hermione?" I couldn't believe that.

"Hell, no, not Hermione! But I'll show you the 'ghost' you saw!"

"Honey . . . Vince, darling ... Do we have to? Right now? Oh, Vince, I'm so happy right now. Let's not move yet."

He chuckled and subsided, petting me and crooning to me. It was another very long time before I was ready to let him get off me.

We dressed and went to the secret panel, Vince killing the locking circuit first. He opened the panel and led me into the passage.

"I'm not the clinging type," I told him as I clung tightly to him. "She just scared hell out of me, honey."

"I won't let her get you. Now, let's see if she shows up."

We waited. Hermione's sighs came at frequent intervals-panting, irregular gasps that could only be made by a woman in the deepest state of sexual enjoyment. And she moaned twice. The sound I compared to an organ chord undulated in and out of the audible range continuously, pressing at us with relentless tugging notes.

I heard a faint hiss, clearly unrelated to the ghost sounds, and a twisting, seething column of vapor rose out of the shaft halfway down the passage. I started, then steadied.

"Vince! What is it!"

He chuckled gently. "There's a little cubby-hole off the wine cellar where the steam generator's located. The pipes run up the side of that shaft before they branch off under the floor. There's a relief valve or two down there that pop off every so often."

"But... but... "

"That's what you saw. Right? The beam from the flashlight bouncing off that."

I hesitated. The explanation just didn't fit. "No, Vince. It wasn't a beam from the flashlight bouncing off steam."

"Sure it was."

"Honey . .. you had the flashlight. Remember?" I watched his features stiffen. "And you'd just stepped into the conservatory."

"You're right," he whispered. "By God, you're right!"

"Besides, she was a sort of bluish light. And she had a real shape, even if it did keep changing. I mean, I could see drapes in what she was wearing. . . and a head. Darling, she might have been light reflecting off steam, but the light came from something besides that flashlight."

He pulled me back into the conservatory and actuated the panel closed. Crossing to the grand piano that filled the middle of the room, he drew me onto the bench beside him.

"If there was another light source, there was somebody operating it," he said in a tight voice. "There's no way that could happen by accident."

"A projector!" I exclaimed. "Oh, no, Vince!"

He nodded. "Got to be. It could have been a practical joke. They're not unheard of in The Aerie. Seems like damn poor taste to me, though."

"Brrr! What an awful sense of humor!"

He turned and idly fingered the keyboard. I recognized the skill of his touch and begged him to play for me. He acted reluctant, but when he saw I was serious, he faced the piano and began. It was a sweet, haunting theme I knew I'd never before heard. It poured over me in a cascade of loveliness that made my throat ache. I watched the brown fingers through a shimmer of tears. And when he finished, Vince took me in his arms and held me tightly while he whispered things I didn't hear or understand. We were still in the conservatory when we heard Nadine ringing the chime to announce lunch.

After we had eaten, I excused myself and returned to my sitting room alone. I felt I'd done nothing toward meeting the conditions of my mother's will, and success had suddenly become very important to me. I knew I would have to demonstrate to Nadine and Willa's satisfaction. In spite of Vince's reassurances I considered Nadine essentially hostile to me. And I knew there was no use in convincing Willa if I couldn't convince her older sister.

A storybook heroine would either give up at this point and wait to be rescued, or turn her sweetness and charm on the wicked aunt, I reflected. Unfortunately, neither course of action was consistent with my make-up. Nadine represented a challenge; and I had to know her better if I hoped to overcome her opposition, so I searched her out.

She was in the library, reading, and I thought she looked exasperated about being interrupted. But I ignored that as simply another obstacle. Still, it wouldn't hurt to be civil.

"What a lovely shawl!" I exclaimed.

She fingered the colorful piece of handwork and smiled briefly. "It was a favorite with Caroline," she said. "I've found it cuts the draft when I'm reading or doing something inactive." She gazed through the window at the low-scudding clouds. "She did have good taste about some things."

Like shawls and men, I thought. I resented her patronizing tone, even though I wasn't sure my mother deserved my support. Still, I hadn't come down to pick an argument with Nadine.

"What was she like?" I asked.

"Caroline? She was a strange girl, Laura. We were close as children, although I was two years older. I remember her as strong . . . strong-willed and impossible to put down. I didn't think there was a weak spot in her anywhere." She paused for a moment and shook her head, her lips set tightly. Her voice was harsh when she continued. "It turned out she was weak the one time it counted."

I waited for her to go on, but she didn't seem to remember she was talking. "When was that?" I asked.

"Hmm? Oh! Yes. Well, she married the man she wanted. I tried to prevent it, but ..." "Nadine? Why?"

"He was a nobody, in the first place. And she wasn't being honest with him in the second."

"Wait a minute! Daddy wasn't a nobody! He practically owned Bergenville, and he did even then! He was rich!"

"Worth what, dear? A few hundred thousand? Not that much, I suspect."

"It was a lot more than anybody else around him had! Aunt Frances and Aunt Melba were proud of him!"

"That came closer to being the problem, Laura. It didn't really make any difference to any of us whether he had any money or not. But he was proud of being 'rich'. . . and he was even prouder of the fact his sisters were so proud of him."

"You said there was a second thing-that my mother wasn't honest with him."

"That's true. And I felt that was dreadfully serious."

"What did she lie about?"

Nadine gave me a haughty look of reproof. "My dear, I never knew your mother to lie. Never." "But-"

"She simply failed to make your father understand the nature of her own financial position."

I gasped. "She had money before they were married?"

"Of course! Daddy was still alive then, so she hadn't inherited her share of his estate, but she was already worth at least ten times what Charles was!"

"Omigod!" I whispered, stunned at what she'd told me. "She was ... I mean, I thought she was from one of those families who'd lost everything they had in the depression! My aunts ..."

Nadine smiled with a frosty grimace. "Exactly." Her voice had a vicious edge. "They were so damn impressed with their own money I knew they'd have nothing but scorn for anyone they thought was poor. And Caroline let Charles take her home to them with everything against her! She was young and beautiful and completely vibrant. She had no notion at all of prudery-she simply loved life and lived it. And she was a lady in the very strictest sense of the word. Any woman who didn't have that naturally was bound to hate her guts."

"But they said ..." I whispered again, more to myself than to her.

"I know what they'd say. I'm not the lady Caroline was-and I hate petty, narrow-minded bigots with a passion. That's what Charles' sisters are, Laura. If they'd tried to do the things to me they did to Caroline, I'd have fought. I'd have taken Charles and kept him, no matter what it did to those two witches. But Caroline was weak. She couldn't stand the upheaval that would have meant for Charles. She simply gave up! When he believed his sisters instead of her, she gave up!" She glared at me as if I'd contributed to my mother's defeat. But her expression began to clear as she finished. "She was a good, lovable woman, Laura. I'm sorry you couldn't have seen what it did to her when you failed to answer her invitation to visit her when you turned eighteen."

There was venom in those last words. And I had no defense. Obviously, she wasn't going to do me any favors when the time came to decide whether I'd met the terms of the will.

"I grew up believing she'd left my father and abandoned me," I said slowly. "I didn't think of her as deserving anything from me."

"Not even the courtesy of a reply?" asked Nadine sharply.

"The courtesy of a reply!" I flared. "For seventeen years neither my father nor I heard so much as a whisper from your noble sister! Why should I owe her the courtesy of a reply?"

Her eyes widened and white spots appeared in her cheeks. "You didn't hear! I know that's a lie!"

Thoroughly angry, I returned her stare without blinking. "I don't care what it costs me," I told, her grimly. "I don't lie and I won't be called a liar. Never, to my knowledge, did either my father or I hear one word from my mother. I can remember hearing my father, years after she'd left, complaining to Aunt Frances or Aunt Melba that he didn't even know whether Caroline was alive or dead."

Her eyes lost their expression of startled disbelief and she pursed her lips. Rising from her chair, she crossed to a table beside one of the windows and dropped the shawl over a leather covered case. "Who handled incoming mail at your house?" she asked.

But something about the case she'd covered had caught my attention. I went to it and lifted the shawl. For a moment I studied the leather, then I saw a small metal plate and bent to read its inscription.

"Nadine! This is a projector!"

She raised her eyebrows and nodded, taking the shawl from me and dropping it again onto the projector case. "We've taken home movies and made slides occasionally," she remarked. "The library seems a reasonable place to store the projectors."

And right by the panel to the secret passage, I reflected. I told her of the hideous fright somebody had given me. I thought the corner of her mouth lifted momentarily, but she recovered her impassive expression at once.

"I trust you were amused when you realized what had happened."

"No, I wasn't. I don't really believe it was meant to amuse me. It nearly scared me to death."

"If anyone's seriously trying to discourage you from getting to know our ghost, I'd suggest you be very careful," she said softly. "Those passages can be deadly. A person could even get sealed into one of the branches and never get out."

There was a note of concern in her voice that puzzled me for a moment. She sounded as if she actually cared. But I realized suddenly that she was merely covering up for the fact she'd been the one who'd used the projector. In fact, I decided, she was taking the time to give me a hint as to what she'd do if I got too close to the secret of the ghost! I felt a chill of fear and anger.

"I'm not going to be scared out of doing what I came here for," I told her. "I don't know how strong my mother was, but I won't give up just because of somebody's sister."

"No, I suppose you won't."

"I'm keeping a log of everything while I'm here, too," I remarked, resolving on the instant to do so. "It seems to me it ought to be interesting to read afterward."

She studied me silently. Finally, she nodded. "I'm sure it will be," she said.

I couldn't stand to be in the same room with her any longer. I left the library and went back to my sitting room, where I tried to calm myself. When I found that impossible, I slipped into the passage and followed both the upper and lower runs, knowing I'd soon have to extend my explorations to the branch that led to the cove. At the conservatory, I heard sounds that reminded me of those Nadine and Vince had made the day before. It took but a moment to discover Marsh and Willa vigorously screwing on the piano bench. I was shocked at Willa; I'd believed her to be above such an affair. But I couldn't blame her. Marsh was a huge man in his clothes. Naked, he looked like a gladiator of old Rome. Willa straddled his lap with an expression of bliss on her features while he jounced her on his cock. I fought off the sudden surge of lust the scene aroused in me and hurried away. It was good enough for Nadine to be getting a little of her own medicine, I thought, even if dear Willa was turning out to be a rat.

I secluded myself in my sitting room and started the log I'd told Nadine about. I carefully noted the events I'd experienced, what I'd been told, and what conclusions I was tending toward. Nobody would read the thing unless something happened to me, I decided, and if anything did, it might be important for all the tangled relationships in the house to come into the open. I wasn't writing a 'dirty book,' but I didn't hide things behind Victorian camouflage, either.

I didn't say much at supper. After their splurge of formality the night before, Nadine and Willa contented themselves with a simple meal this time. And there was enough cross-talk to protect me from a great deal of attention. Vince's glances were warm and knowing, but I avoided returning them too eagerly for fear of giving too much away. Nothing could have saved me from betraying the way my system heated when he did pause to exchange looks with me.

I knew I'd lose control of myself if I had to be around him after supper. So I excused myself and went back upstairs. I was certain Nadine would be the jealous, possessive type; she'd practically said as much in discussing my mother's weakness where my father had been concerned. And there was no point in further antagonizing her by letting her see that Vince and I might have something going.

I was horrified when Marsh came to me in my sitting room. If he wanted to cheat with Willa, that was his problem and hers. Cheating with me was a hell of a lot different! It could ruin me with Nadine faster than my relationship with Vince. But I scolded myself for over-reacting; the fact that Marsh had come to visit with me didn't mean he planned to lay me. Shacking up with Willa had probably satisfied him for one day. What little I'd seen of him, not counting the brief glimpse in the conservatory, had made me picture him as the same easy going, stable type as my father, so I couldn't help feeling warm toward him.

"Marsh! Where's everybody else?"

"Busy, I guess." He shrugged. Peering at me like a country doctor, he smiled sympathetically. "Couldn't help seeing you were on edge at supper. The ghost getting to you?"

"Maybe that's it," I replied. I listened for a moment and heard the familiar sounds. "She goes on so long she gets to be part of the background."

He grinned and nodded. "But she could get to a person's subconscious after awhile."

"How long will she keep going? And isn't this storm ever going to stop?"

"A storm like this is usually good for about three days. Hermione . . ,well, this time of year she'd likely to be around a week or two at a time."

"Ugh! When I do listen to her she scares me! She sounds so real!"

"Something about storms gets to her, Laura. The only time she goes on continuously like this is in a bad storm. Other times she comes and goes. We'll hear her maybe a couple of times a day, two or three hours each time, once the storm lets up. And if you listen to her long enough you quit trying to know she's unreal. You get so you call her Hermione and visualize her as a real woman. You even accept the fact you can't ever quite see her." He smiled as if savoring a pleasant notion. "It sure would be something to meet her, though!

Imagine a woman who could keep going that long and come back for more!" He sighed.

"My God!" I exclaimed, awed. "I don't even want to imagine it! Not that long without a chance to rest!"

He gazed closely at me and I saw awareness shaping his features. "Woman like you wouldn't have to go that long to make it worthwhile," he remarked gently. "Not you."

I knew I was on edge. I knew Hermione's sighing was keeping sex consciousness at a high level in my system. I knew it didn't take much of a signal from a man to arouse me under the circumstances. But I was still startled at the violent rush of desire that washed over me at his comment. Nothing-not even a hasty mental appeal to Vince-could stifle the heat that poured into my pussy and knotted my belly. I stared at Marsh, feeling as naked and defenseless as if he could read my thoughts.

Chapter Seven

I had to do something-anything-to dampen the awful craving I felt when I looked at Marsh and imagined him naked and massive, jouncing me on his peter. Swallowing in a vain effort to ease the dryness of my mouth, I forced a smile.

"Marsh ..."

"Yes?"

"Since you're here . . . would you mind terribly going into the passage with me? I mean, I get awfully nervous in it, but I've got to know all about it and there isn't a lot of time. I thought with you going I wouldn't get scared."

He shrugged. "No harm, I guess."

"Could we go as far down as the wine cellar? Or doesn't the passage connect with it?"

"It does, and we can. Sure, that won't take long."

"Okay if I change first? It'll only take a minute." "Sure."

I hurried into the bedroom and changed into Levi's and a blouse and sneakers. I think Marsh was surprised when I got back to him so quickly. Together, we went into the passage and made our way to the shaft where I'd seen the projected apparition. I hadn't meant to, but I told him about the figure. He reacted to the story with more concern than his wife had.

"I don't like that," he said soberly. "I've never heard of a trick like that being pulled here. I don't like it at all."

"What don't you like about it?"

"I don't like to see people going around scaring other people, in the first place. I especially don't like it when they're scaring a guest. But what bothers me most is the idea that somebody might be trying to scare you out of meeting the terms of that will. If that's the case, you could be in serious danger."

"There's a difference between trying to scare me out and doing anything to hurt me."

"Maybe. But there's not much point in starting something unless you're ready to follow through. If there is somebody who wants you to fail, he'll likely be ready."

"Or she," I murmured.

I couldn't see his face; the flashlight was directed at the floor ahead. But I could hear his grunt.

"I wouldn't even consider either of the women." His tone was confident. "I'd be surprised if Vince were involved, too, although he and I don't always see eye-to-eye."

They'd see even less eye-to-eye if Marsh knew Vince and Nadine were shacking up on the sly, I thought. And then it hit me: He'd narrowed it down to Bill Sheldon. He and Vince did agree on that point, apparently. I asked Marsh what would make him suspect Bill.

He chuckled. "Process of elimination if there weren't anything else. Fact is, I don't buy ghosts-and I figure anybody who makes his living off people who do is a crook. So that makes Sheldon a crook on my list."

"Hm." It seemed to me he'd sliced through miles of twisting complications to lay the core of the matter in the open. He'd expressed precisely the way I'd have felt if I hadn't been psyched by the whole situation. "You think he was probably planning to take my mother," I suggested.

"Planning, hell! I think he did! Who else put it in her head to name the Foundation as contingent beneficiary in her will? Christ, Laura, I'm convinced she didn't even know who or what the Foundation was!"

"Do you?"

"Not really. I made some checks as soon as I heard the contents of the will, but they didn't produce much. All I could find out was who the officers of the Foundation were and what its charter and by-laws were. And the officers weren't talking."

"But Bill wasn't one of them."

"Not an officer. That doesn't prove he's not on the staff."

We stopped talking and started down the ladder in the apparition's shaft. I saw the steam pipes before we'd descended ten feet, and Marsh pointed out the relief valves Vince had mentioned. We went further down than I'd anticipated. Marsh explained.

"They didn't dig or blast. There was a natural cavern-a sort of chamber this shaft went through-and they smoothed it out and used it."

"What made the shaft, Marsh? Do you have any idea?"

"The geologists tell me an earthquake. There was a time when a quake cracked the rock that makes up this formation. Erosion widened it to what it is now. They figure the cavern-and the others that open off the shaft at different levels-were probably natural voids that somehow occurred when the rock was forming. They set up a zone of weakness the earthquake fractured to make the shaft."

He sounded so matter-of-fact about it that I believed the explanation at once. He chuckled about "educated guess-work", but it didn't matter so long as I could see there was at least one logical way it could have happened.

There had been little effort spent on hiding the connection between the passage and the wine cellar. We had to stoop to negotiate the short horizontal tunnel, but inside the cellar we found more head room than even Marsh needed. And there was electricity. Marsh switched the lights on to reveal a room that was reasonably spacious and surprisingly well finished. Where I'd expected rough walls of the native rock, there was smooth, painted plaster. The floor was of wooden planks aura's Willing Spirit that felt and sounded solid and the ceiling was roughly paneled. In one end there were racks that were full of bottles. Along both sides were long, parallel timbers at the height of an average man's hips, and a few barrels lay on their sides, supported at each end by one of them.

Marsh pointed out a number of rings set high in the walls. They looked extremely old and crude when I began to study them and I asked Marsh why they were there.

He half-smiled and half frowned. "I get the idea Ramon Valcouer wasn't the most savory individual on the coast. I think these chambers might have been used as temporary holding cells for people who were being transported against their will." "Not slave running!"

"Of a sort, maybe. Remember, Ramon had this place built only a few years before the Mexicans lost California. I suspect he was shrewd enough to see some of what lay ahead and got ready for it. Or maybe he started out with ordinary smuggling and adapted to changing times."

"Brrr!" I shuddered. "How awful!"

"Apparently he didn't pass his smuggling business on to his sons. They took the legitimate part of his empire and built their own fortunes on it."

Nevertheless, I shrank closer to him, a mental image of despairing prisoners flashing before me. At that moment, Hermione's sighs were interrupted by another low moan. I started and glanced around, fully convinced she was somewhere in the room with us.

"Marsh! Marsh, there really is a woman!"

He smiled and shook his head. "Not if you mean that moan, Laura. This room hasn't heard a flesh-and-blood woman make that kind of sound for a long, long time."

The tone of his voice and the way he looked down at me when she said that gave me the same kind of reaction I'd experienced in my sitting room. I sagged against him, giddy with desire and aware that I couldn't escape this time the way I had before.

"How long, Marsh?" I asked, hoping to claw my way back to sanity.

"Since before Caroline died, at least." Somehow his arms were around me.

"Oh." I'd already lost track of the conversation. My thighs rested against his legs and one of his thighs bulged against my crotch. At the side of my abdomen I could feel the length and thickness of his hard-on-knowing as I felt it that it meant he was thinking sex as I was-and my breasts lay against the upper part of his belly, right at the edge of his ribs.

I turned my face up and met his mouth with mine as if we'd talked it out beforehand. It was a hot, hungry kiss. It shook me and made me grab at him with fumbling hands. He sank back to sit on one of the timbers; as his knees bent I found myself astride one of his giant thighs, still plastering myself against him. A hard tremor passed downward into my legs and I clamped my thighs savagely on the one they held. My weight settled on my pussy and I felt as if someone were pumping liquid fire through me.

"Oh . . . my . . . God," I gasped. "Marsh, Marsh!" As full realization of what I was doing burst upon me, I wailed, "Love of God, Marsh! What's going to happen to me!" If I got so I couldn't be alone with a man for a half hour without making him shack up with me, the future was going to get grim!

But Marsh chose to interpret my demand in the immediate sense. "You're going to make flesh-and-blood noises for the cellar, aren't you?"

I couldn't help it; I moaned with pleasure at the impulses that were striking inward from my pussy. My hips undulated in spite of me and I groped with my mouth for another kiss. Breaking away from the second kiss, I made a last attempt to salvage my self-respect. "Marsh! Marsh, please don't let me! I don't want to steal something that's Nadine's!"

"It isn't stealing, love. It's more like sharing." "She wouldn't share you with me. Not knowingly." "Why not?"

"Because she hates me, for one thing."

"I don't think so. Not now."

"She hates me because I wouldn't answer when my mother asked me to visit her."

"Not now." He repeated himself.

"She didn't share you with Mother. Why should she with me?"

"Yes, she did."

"Marsh! Did you and Caroline ..." "Of course. And sometimes with Nadine right there."

I didn't believe him any more than I had Vince. Men would say anything to get a woman to let them make her; Marsh and Vince were evidently just like all the rest. Oh, I believed he'd shacked up with my mother; I simply didn't believe Nadine had known.

But thinking about his making my mother reminded me of what Bill had said about Caroline's obsession with the ghost and the endurance the happy spirit displayed.

"Marsh?" I was still grinding my pussy on his thigh.

"Huh?"

"Was Mother the same as anybody else?"

He grinned. "She had a notion about tuning in on the ghost, if that would qualify as a difference."

"How?" I asked, my belly tightening.

"Endurance. It used to irk her that a ghost could enjoy herself for so long when she couldn't."

"Oh, my!" I faked surprise. "I suppose she tried to think of ways to make it last longer."

"As a matter of fact, she did. God, Laura, she got so she had a fantastic capacity for staying just short of her climax!"

"H-how did she do it? Was there anything special?"

"Took herself out of the decision-making loop." "What?"

"She knew there was a point where she couldn't stop . . . where she'd be so excited she'd do whatever was needed to bring on her orgasm. So she insisted on being prevented from doing that."

"I don't see how," I did, of course. Excitement was welling up so fast in me I was afraid Marsh would sense it and know I was leading him on.

He appeared not to notice. "Are you suggesting I show you?"

"Marsh ..." I tried to be more nearly honest with him. "Would it help me understand Caroline?"

"It might. Going through the 'knowing' process in reverse-it might."

"Then show me!" I couldn't speak above a whisper.

"Want to take off your blouse and bra first?"

I gulped and nodded. My fingers half numb, I unbuttoned my blouse and dropped it on the timber. Marsh unfastened my bra for me and I took it off and laid it on the blouse. He held me by my shoulders and gazed at my breasts. The chill of the cellar gave way to inner heat that grew in me under his stare.

"What beautiful cans!" he exclaimed softly. "My God, how long has it been since I played with a pair like that!"

While he continued to study my breasts and goose-flesh began to form on them, I wondered just how he'd position me. He'd have me lying on the timber, I was sure. He might put me on my back, hands and feet tied together under the wood. Or he might prefer to have me face-down, hugging the timber. There wasn't much else we could do down here.

Marsh had made love to my mother in this cellar; he knew its potential better than I did. He secured my wrists to two of the rings in the wall, using strips of his undershirt for the lashings. I gasped at the icy sensation of the wall touching my back. Marsh ran his hands slowly and tenderly along my arms and over my ribs and every second of contact made me warmer. My belly caved inward below my ribs and his fingers caressed the concave surface lovingly while I squirmed. I bit my lip to keep from urging him to play with my breasts; he was clearly postponing that in order to heighten his own anticipation.

At last he got to them. He fondled them the way a jeweler fondles a gem, at first, using sense of touch to verify the shape and texture his eyes have seen. He placed his fingertips on them as if to draw them out, stroking outward while the space between fingers decreased and letting his grasp pluck gently at the nipples for an instant. He cupped his palms around them next, careful not to remold the soft flesh as he did. And maintaining the lightest possible pressure, he twisted his wrists so his cupped hands rotated slowly around the entrapped flesh.

I panted and writhed as his delicate exploration aroused my already fierce excitement even further. I was at a stage where I wanted more vigorous stimulation, but my very frustration served to inflame me. I sighed and moaned more than the ghost and it sounded as if there were two of us being assaulted there simultaneously.

Marsh satisfied himself as to preliminaries and began to massage the sensitized mounds of flesh with deep pressure. He sucked at my nipples, holding one between his lips and with quickly alternating puffs and inhalations popping it back and forth through the opening until the hardening lump felt like a hot coal to me. My shoulders rubbed against the wall as I twisted frantically in my excitement. And I crossed one knee over the other and ground my thighs together, their pressure massaging my aching pussy.

I thought I'd go out of my mind with impatience before Marsh finally unzipped my Levi's and removed them. I sagged on the wrist lashings and groaned incoherent phrases while he stood back to survey the form my sheer panties so poorly concealed. Looking down, even I could see the reddish tint that showed through the material at my pubic thatch.

"You're great for this," Marsh told me with a smile. "God, how you excite a man!"

"Enough to make him hurry a little?" My teeth chattered.

He laughed happily. "You've no idea how much I'm hurrying!" He came back to me and began rolling my panties down from the top.

I rested my chin on my chest and watched. The waist of the garment had cut across me immediately below my navel. I could see the reddened line on my belly where the elastic had bitten. Below, smooth, creamy flesh bulged faintly and my torso flared toward my hips. Taut as my belly was, my hip bones were starkly prominent. The uppermost strands of my pubic hair appeared, springing erect as the pressure of my panties was relieved. Two more rolls of the material-Marsh's hands behind me as the roll passed the maximum swell of my buttocks-and the whole patch of hair was visible.

Marsh had to push the tight roll down my thighs, then. I felt the crotch of the panties come away from my pussy. Heat betrayed my blush as I realized how wet the garment was where it had lain against the swelling lips, but the wetness was dragged past my knees and fell to my ankles too quickly for Marsh to notice my embarrassment. I lifted each foot out of the panties and watched the bear-like man lay them with my other clothes. And I glanced down the length of my body again. Somehow there was a touch of the obscene in the nakedness that ended at the dusty sneakers.

Marsh returned to me and ran his hands happily down my torso. They lingered on my hips, then worked around me. One fondled my buttocks, squeezing and probing. The other plunged into the tangle of my pubic hair and the fingers curled through it and slipped into my crotch. Out of reflex, I jerked my hips backward, jamming Marsh's hand against the wall. He caressed my labia while I gasped and struggled.

Having driven his hand between my thighs, he held it there with his fingers probing at the inner surfaces and his thumb teasing my clitoris regardless of the frenzied movements of my legs. And I cried out hoarsely and felt my excitement mount by ragged leaps toward orgasm.

"Good God, Marsh! Good God, I'm going to come!"

"Not yet, baby. We can't have that." He withdrew his hands and let me sag, hanging by my wrists while my knees rubbed over each other and my excitement subsided. When I was calm enough to bear my weight on my legs again, he used leftover strips of his undershirt to tie my ankles, securing them to rings near the floor I hadn't noticed before and spread-eagling me against the wall. I groaned helplessly, my pussy swollen and exposed where nothing I could do would protect it from his manipulations.

He knelt and began to play with it. His fingers traced patterns in the thickening wetness on the inner lips and passed in circles around the rim of my cuntmouth. My hips jerked erratically and my buttocks slapped the wall. Marsh thrust a bulky finger into my cunt and began to rub my clitoris with the fingers of his other hand. I yelled and writhed, but there was no way to dislodge the punishing hands.

Again I rocketed toward a climax. I bit into my shoulder and thrust my hips forward, my body arched away from the wall. My muscles fluttered and my pussy rotated in tight, slow circles. Marsh pulled his hands away again, and again the climax eluded me.

"You're doing fine," he murmured. "You're working on a hair-trigger appetite! Christ, you're as taut as a hard-on!"

He was at me again, his hands wandering all over me. They probed and pinched and rubbed while I gasped and jerked. There was no way either to escape their intimacy nor to make them stay where I wanted them. My flesh felt raw with its growing sensitivity and I felt I was approaching a stage where my entire consciousness would be focused on the desire for a peter in me.

After another brief rest-Marsh jerked his hands away from me with an exclamation of chagrin when it dawned on him I'd actually started to come-he freed my ankles. The abortive orgasm had left me almost raving for his peter.

"Marsh, darling! God in heaven, Marsh, I want your hard-on! Fuck me, Marsh, fuck me!"

While I moved my legs to restore their circulation, Marsh took off his trousers and shorts. It didn't seem to me his peter was any larger than Vince's, but I was sure it was as large. And I knew that was big enough for me. Marsh was an entirely different kind of man, though. He was taller than Vince and bulkier. His skin was pale where Vince's was brown by birth. He was a hairy brute, while Vince had very little body hair. But in the final analysis, only two things counted-his gentleness and his peter-and so far the two men seemed to come out even on those two scores.

"Laura, baby. Can you get hold of those strips of cloth with your hands? Can you hang onto them to take some of the strain off your wrists?"

By twisting my arms for a moment, I found I could. He nodded his approval.

"Now. You want a pussyful of cock, baby?" "Oh, yes!" My voice shook. "Oh, yes, Marsh, yes!"

"Hang on, then!" He caught my hips and pulled my ass away from the wall.

I kept my feet under me as long as I could, but he continued to move my body out until they wouldn't reach and I was suspended between the wrist lashings and his grip on my hips. His knee thrust my legs apart and he stepped between my thighs. Raising my hips until they were at the same level as his, Marsh pressed closer, his cockhead lodging in the center of my pussy and nudging at the rim of my cuntmouth.

With an effort, I swung my legs up and around his waist. I locked my ankles and jerked at his body to drive myself onto his cock. The head plunged in and he jammed me down on the shaft, burying his cock to the base in me. Still firmly gripping my hips, he jerked his cock back and forth, fucking with carefree abandon.

I felt as if there were a fire in my pussy. Every fiber glowed with the heat of my pleasure. But the bulk that dislodged and displaced my guts had nothing to do with fire. It had to do only with a swollen, rigid cock that plunged back and forth in the grip of my vaginal walls, its head encased in the sheath at the end of my channel. I started crying out to Marsh. I was torn between the desire to come and to prolong the delights of our adventure. My legs tightened around him and I pulled my pussy down hard on the base of his hard-on.

"Oh, Marsh! Please, Marsh, let's not try for a time record this time? Let's come!"

"You sure, baby? Sure you want to make it so quick?"

"God, yes!" "Okay!" He grunted.

He let go of my hips. I was locked to him so firmly by the grip of my legs it didn't matter. He mauled my buttocks and fingered the wet seal between my cunt and his peter. His juice-coated fingers played in the crack between my buttocks and probed at my anus. Wild-with desire, I bucked against the impertinent pressure and felt the fiery distension as he thrust his finger up my ass.

"Unh! Unnnh! . . . Jesus Christ, Marsh! . . . Fuck . . . fuck me hard! . . . aghhh!"

He blasted against me. There was a sudden gush of heat in the core of my belly and my passion spilled over into a raging orgasm. We groaned and laughed and strained against each other. My legs trembled with the force of my hold on him and the sensations his cock and the buried finger produced blended into one glorious explosion of unbearable ecstasy for me. I flung my head back and lost myself in the sweet agony of total pleasure.

Abruptly the spasms quieted and the stiffness of my muscles drained away. I sagged and panted for air. The pumping in the shaft of Marsh's peter ceased. His hard-on collapsed and he groaned softly.

I squirmed, deliberately making my cuntmouth tighten on his soft peter. And I giggled. "We didn't last as long as Hermione, but I made a lot more noise," I said.

Marsh grinned at me. "Damn well did, baby! You take your fucking seriously, don't you!"

"I make the most of it, anyhow." There was no harm in making that admission. "It's a pretty intense experience. And it isn't often I hang by my wrists while I'm coming."

"Which is maybe just as well. They could take an awful beating that way."

"But I'm glad you showed me, Marsh." I told him softly 'Thanks. Thanks a lot, Marsh."

Chapter Eight

Marsh held me tightly against the base of his peter and stepped forward until my back rested against the wall. I shivered.

"My god, that's cold, Marsh!"

He laughed sympathetically. "I'll get you off it in a couple of seconds, Laura."

While I kept my legs clamped tightly around him he reached up and untied my wrists. I flung my arms around his shoulders and hugged him fiercely.

"Thanks again, Marsh. I hope Nadine won't kill me if she ever finds out."

"You just aren't about to believe that business about swapping, are you." He chuckled and went back to the timber, where he lowered himself until he could sit on it.

When he extended his legs before himself I knew it would be safe to relax mine. I uncrossed my ankles and stretched my legs behind him-and on the other side of the timber. He chuckled again and twitched his hips.

"Marsh, what was my mother like? Besides the 'swapping,' I mean." And I grinned to show I was willing to share his little joke.

"Well, it's more to the point to ask what your mother and father were like. It's what they were-and could have been-as a couple that counts, rather than what either of them became alone."

I wasn't sure that was what I wanted to know. Besides, I didn't think anybody at The Aerie could legitimately tell me anything about my father. But I waited.

"It happens I knew Charles. We had business together for some time before he met Caroline Valcouer. Used to have dinner together when he came into San Francisco . . . that kind of thing. And we still meet three or four times a year to go over accounts and maybe do some buying and selling. So I had a chance to see a little of the action from both sides."

"Marsh! Why didn't you tell me sooner?"

"What for? Anyhow, I'm telling you now. If Nadine's told you the story of how Charles met Caroline and decided to marry her, you already know all that matters about that. The fact is, he was so impressed by the financial success he'd achieved, Caroline couldn't bring herself to mention the fortune she'd already inherited from her grandparents. He married her and took her home thinking she was from a family that had lost its money. To him, what mattered was the girl, not her family's current finances."

"Of course! Daddy would be like that!"

"Mm-hmm. But not his sisters. According to Charles, they disliked and distrusted Caroline from the beginning. But he and Caroline had a beautiful thing going and he was certain his sisters would fall under her spell in time. He'd never been put in a position where he'd had to argue with either of his sisters. They hadn't interfered with the way he ran his business and he hadn't questioned the way they ran the house. They lived together because neither sister had ever married-and Charles was financially wealthy enough to live in a house big enough for a dozen people."

"So there was room for his new bride without having to break up the old household?"

Marsh nodded grimly. "That's about the size of it. The way Charles put it to me, he couldn't stand to hurt his sisters by moving them or moving out, himself. And he was confident the three women would soon love each other. But one of the things he hadn't counted on was the fact Caroline had missed the whole show when it came to a Victorian up-bringing. The Valcouer line never fell into that gruesome farce. Charles knew he was experiencing something amazingly exciting in his sex life with his bride, but he was having trouble getting over the taboos and prejudices he'd learned as a kid."

"He never did get over them, I'll bet," I volunteered.

"He didn't have time. Victorian attitudes show up in conversation even more than in action. Thee Mardel sisters recognized Caroline's non-conformity almost faster than their brother. I suppose it looked to them like a threat. So they started reporting everything she said or did that was off-color. Charles shrugged it off. And after you were born they started reporting things she hadn't done."

"Wait! Wait a minute, Marsh! You haven't any way of knowing that."

He stared into my eyes without smiling. "I do. I married Nadine shortly before you were born. She hadn't been happy about Caroline's marriage from the beginning, and it didn't take long for her to sense what was happening at the Mardel house. So she used to drive up to Bennetville every week or so for a day and take Caroline and her baby away from the place. Sometimes they'd have a picnic and sometimes they'd go back down to San Francisco to a show or for some shopping. Charles came down on business right after one of those times-and Nadine had brought you and your mother to our house for the day on that occasion-and he was all torn up. We had a few drinks after our business was out of the way and he told me his wife was being unfaithful. It seemed, according to his sisters, that there was a strange, handsome young man who was calling for Caroline every week or so and spiriting her away. Melba and Frances had told Charles they'd hired a detective-for Charles's own good-and had him investigate. They said the detective had reported Caroline had spent the day in unnatural sex acts with the man . . . and remember, that was the day she spent with Nadine in our home."

I couldn't resist making him eat the swapping thing. "Maybe they were telling the truth. You told me you and Nadine and my mother swapped."

He grinned. "Not while Caroline lived with Charles. She said he'd get there someday, but it was going to take a while. And she wouldn't cheat on him, no matter what. So we didn't push it, of course. No, your aunts were apparently convinced Caroline was bad enough for Charles that no kind of he was too bad if it enabled them to rescue him from her clutches. The minute Charles told me that story I knew Nadine and I had to do something. But I knew Caroline had a funny idea about that, too, and I discussed it with Nadine and her before setting Charles straight."

"What happened?"

"Caroline vetoed everything. She was determined it was going to work itself out. If Charles was going to take his sisters' word instead of hers, then what she and Charles had wasn't firm enough to build a life on. What kind of woman was she? Laura, she was the closest thing to the perfect, unspoiled woman I think I'll ever see. She was good and she believed there was good in the world. She believed if she trusted the world it would treat her right more often than wrong. And she couldn't see any need for more than that."

As he lifted me off his shriveled peter and stood me on my feet I felt a dull sort of pain in my chest, knowing there couldn't be many people in the world who would merit that kind of praise. I'd never qualify, and I didn't know anybody who did. My thoughts drifted to my aunts while I was getting dressed. I'd hated them with the childish venom generated by unreasonable, inflexible repression. I'd rejected their sanctimonious preaching and privately loathed the way they'd used their prudishness to get their dirty minded kicks. But as I'd matured I'd learned to feel guilty for the way I hated them and had attributed it to bad heritage. If Marsh had told me the truth-and I had a strong feeling he had-no amount of loathing could be enough for those vindictive hypocrites.

Marsh touched my arm. "You seem depressed, Laura."

I admitted it and told him why.

"It's too late to do anything about it," he said softly. "It's even too late for Charles. I saw him about a month after Caroline died. He told me in confidence he'd never stopped loving her. Misjudging her in the first place and then losing her had been the tragedy of his life, he said."

"Oh, no! Poor Daddy!" I shuddered. "Poor, poor Daddy! They might as well have killed him!"

"What they stole was more to him than his life would have been." Marsh agreed. "I'll show you where the passage goes out of here and then we'll go back up. Okay?"

He was trying to get my mind off my aunts, I realized. I squeezed his hand and nodded. He showed me the top of the lower section of the passage, a steep, hazardous-looking natural shaft through the rock, and then followed me back up the ladder. When we got back to my sitting room, Marsh left me alone; he appeared to sense I needed to sort out my thoughts.

I brought my log up to date and reconsidered the people I was with. I was still reasonably sure Nadine had tried to scare me with the apparition. Marsh would deny it if I were to mention it to him, but he was so much like my father he probably had a blind spot where Nadine was concerned. On the other hand, the fact Marsh had his doubts about Bill disturbed me. The fact that he and Vince both thought Bill to be a bad risk suggested I ought to give the possibility serious thought.

Something about the apparition and the projector bothered me. I left the desk and sprawled on one of the couches to think about it. Nadine-or somebody-had produced a figure for me ... a ghost I could have walked through. Vince had known the ghost wasn't a visible phenomenon and had come up with the real source of the apparition. If I assumed the voice was something besides a real ghost, what kind of source would I have to look for? A tape recorder and some modern sound equipment would do the job, except Hermione was supposed to be a lot older than some of that equipment. The organ chords would have been easy to produce a hundred years ago, but the vocal effects would have been harder. Still, Ramon Valcouer might have been so deeply disturbed by his wife's death that he'd interpret the moaning of the wind as his wife's lament. And the phonograph had been invented sometime in the eighteen seventies. One of Ramon's son's might have decided his father's eccentricity deserved to be perpetuated. There must be ways of setting up a recording so it could run continuously. There must be ways to make it come on under predetermined conditions and to provide power to run it-like tides or wind, for example.

With Hermione having become such an integral part of the Valcouer tradition, some recent member of the line might even have isolated the mechanism and modernized it. There might be electronic boxes and modern speakers and sophisticated controls, after all.

I stumbled to my feet, excitement of another kind surging for the first time since I'd come here. If there were controls, they ought to be right in this suite, and probably in the sitting room. Since I didn't see any controls or any place to hide them, I needed to guess where the next most logical place would be.

I laughed at myself. I was playing a game, after all. I had no way of knowing Hermione was a hoax or even any reason to suspect she might be. I was simply trying to eliminate one possibility, perhaps. But I'd found a challenge; meeting it ought to help me meet part of the will's terms.

It seemed to me no other room in the house would be suitable for controls . . . too much danger of discovery. The nearest logical point, then, had to be the wine cellar. And with my game having restored my courage, I took my flashlight with me and went back to the timbers and racks and rings in the walls. A long, careful search revealed the furnace room, a cavity hardly larger than the furnace itself, with the boiler and plumbing. Although there were valves and gauges there, it looked to me as if they were all part of the furnace system. I gave up, concluding there was no control center at that level-and then, by accident, I noticed a poorly concealed door in the gloom behind the wine racks.

Excited again, I found the switch and opened it, finding another dark horizontal passage. I stumbled along it over uneven, rough stone and around numerous bends. It was easy to see the passage simply took advantage of a crack in the formation; nothing had been done to make it easier to negotiate. I reached the end quickly, only to find myself in a tiny, bare chamber that looked like the inside of a bubble in the rock. When I was satisfied there was nothing to see, I returned to the wine cellar.

I was horrified to find the door closed. My horror turned to panic when I found there was no control inside the passage for opening it, and Nadine's grim warning came screaming back into my consciousness. Marsh hadn't shown me this door; he might not know it existed. Somebody had followed me into the passages and locked me into this one. With no way out and no hint to anyone that I was coming back down here, it was unlikely anyone would look for me here. My flashlight would burn out and I'd go out of my mind. And then I'd die. It was that simple.

I wasn't going to run out of air. I could feel a faint draft and smell damp earth. I retraced my path, examining every foot of the way-floor and walls and top. There were cracks here and there but none were wider than a few inches. There was no last-minute, dramatic escape route. There were creeping things, too. They scurried out of the light so I couldn't identify them, but when the batteries were dead I'd probably get to know them.

It was hard to keep from getting hysterical. It wouldn't really matter, I knew. Staying calm wasn't going to save me. But getting hysterical was the first step to losing my mind, and I wanted to put that off as long as possible. I went back to the fatal door and slumped to the floor beside it. For what little good it would do, my only chance seemed to be there. By pounding on the wood with my shoe from time to time I might be lucky enough to be heard-if they looked down here for me before it was too late. So I took one shoe off and set up a crude schedule of pounding.

I hadn't noticed the time when I'd left my sitting room, so I never will know just how long I was sealed in the forgotten passage. All I know is it wasn't very many hours, although it seemed an eternity. My flashlight hadn't even burned out when the door swung silently open and I heard Marsh's voice.

"Laura? Laura, are you there?"

"Marsh! MARSH!" I screamed, then. For the first time since discovering I was trapped, I screamed. And I made up for the tight self-control I'd maintained at such cost. It took a long time in Marsh's fierce bear-hug before I felt rational again.

"Jesus, Mary and Joseph!" Marsh said at last. "Baby, everybody's looking for you! Good thing I play hunches!"

"Marsh . . . oh, Marsh, somebody meant to kill me!"

"Oh, I don't think so."

"Why else would they shut me in there?"

"Huh?" He stared at me with a puzzled expression. "Wait a minute!"

It turned out he'd assumed this door to be like all the others-capable of being operated from either side. Door controls had been known to fail from time to time and he'd thought that was my problem. He disabled the outside switch and we searched the passage and chamber once more.

"I'll be a son of a bitch!" He said softly when we finished. "Somebody did try to kill you ... or scare hell out of you."

"They scared hell out of me," I assured him. "Where's Nadine been since you and I got back from our exploration?"

He shook his head. "I don't know where anybody's been. Vince came prowling around looking for you about an hour after I left you in your sitting room. By the time we'd found everybody else, we decided you were lost."

"And you had a hunch about the wine cellar and heard me pounding."

"Pounding? Hell, I didn't hear anything but Hermione! I tried this door as one of those futile gestures you read about!"

"Marsh, you had to hear me! I could hear Hermione, so sounds went through the door!"

He shook his head. In the end he took my flashlight into the passage and had me shut the door behind him. At the end of one minute I opened it again and confessed I hadn't heard his pounding.

"Hermione's voice was coming through cracks," he suggested.

We went to the top of the lower shaft and he shouted down it-not nearly loud enough, I thought-that I was safe. I heard Vince reply in hardly more than a conversational voice, acknowledging the information.

"He didn't get far," I remarked.

Marsh grinned. "I'll bet he was within a few feet of the bottom, if he wasn't already there. You can damn near use this shaft as a telephone. Fact is, someone on the landing can talk to people in the house and be understood perfectly. Fantastic acoustics in the whole passage network."

That had to be important, I reflected. It was a fact I'd have to record in my log. The next time I set off to follow a clue, I'd record the fact I was going, too.

When everyone was assembled in the library, I found it impossible to pinpoint anyone who could not have sealed me in the passage. I also realized, belatedly, that if I'd screamed my voice would have gone through the same cracks Hermione's had reached me through. I'd almost certainly have been heard in the house.

Reactions to my adventure varied. Marsh and I had agreed it might be best not to go into detail, but to tell the others merely that I'd accidentally gotten trapped in a blind passage.

Willa acted exactly as I'd have expected. She was too gentle and soft-hearted to act any other way. Nadine seemed cool and not too surprised. She pretended to be concerned over the fact that I'd take the risk of exploring by myself.

"Counting your mother, four people have had fatal accidents trying to find out what or who Hermione is," she reminded me. "It's just too easy to fall or get stuck somewhere. I think you need to make it a rule to have someone with you when you go investigating."

Vince didn't say much while we were in the library, but his concern was obvious in spite of his habitually sardonic expression.

Bill grumbled that I'd taken a damn fool risk and glowered suspiciously at all the others. I judged he wasn't taken in by the 'accident' story.

And it was Vince who went upstairs with me afterwards to "make sure everything was okay". He insisted on actuating the locking circuits in both rooms for me.

We sank into chairs in the sitting room and talked while I added notes to my log.

"That was no accident, puss," he said quietly. "Somebody's trying to kill you or give you one hell of a scare."

"Yes."

"It's not Marsh. He could have left you in there until hell froze over."

"It wasn't you, was it, Vince?" I asked the question lightly, knowing the answer.

He didn't even say "no"; the look in his eyes gave me the answer I expected.

"And it couldn't have been Willa, could it?"

He shook his head and grinned. "Not Willa. I know where she was."

"So that leaves Nadine and Bill."

"And Nadine wouldn't," he said.

I didn't argue, although I didn't share his conviction.

"Tell you what, puss." He looked into my eyes. "Let's go to bed."

"Together, Vince?" I asked softly.

He nodded.

Chapter Nine

Vince and I left the sitting room and went into my bedroom. I had a curious sensation in the pit of my stomach I couldn't remember having felt before. Maybe it was what they called "butterflies", I thought. I'd never shacked up with anyone in my own room; seeing Vince in mine now seemed to have some kind of symbolic significance. And it came to me I'd be finished as far as inheritance went if Nadine found out.

"You go ahead," I told him. "I've got to take a quick shower." I took my robe into the dressing room and undressed.

When I was ready for bed I pulled on the robe and, holding it closed in front, returned to the bedroom. Vince lay on the great bed, naked. He'd turned the covers down, but hadn't pulled them over himself. He smiled wickedly at me.

"Come on in, Cinderella," he said. "It's almost midnight and time for your coachman to turn into a lizard."

I giggled and knelt beside him. A vast, frightening sense of tenderness filled me and I threw myself onto him, my robe sagging open and letting our nude bodies meet. His arms closed around me and his mouth accepted the pressure of my lips. I heard myself making a funny crooning sound in my throat as I gulped at him and my body quivered where it touched his. I knew something must be wrong with me; there was so much pressure in my chest it threatened to suffocate me and there was no way I could get close enough to the warm body under mine.

I was startled to feel tears in my eyes, and I raised my head and gazed through them at Vince. "Oh, Vince!" I wailed in a small voice. "I'm scared, Vince!"

"Nobody's going to hurt you, puss," he replied grimly. "Somebody's going to have trouble, but he's not going to hurt you."

"Not that," I whispered. "I didn't mean that was scaring me. It's you!"

"Good God! Me!" There was a hurt expression in his eyes.

"I'm scared of the way I feel about you,' confessed in a whisper. "Oh, Vince, darling, I. . . Vince, I love you!"

"Oh, God!" He groaned. "Laura, not that."

I nodded miserably. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry, Vince! But I won't get sloppy. I won't try to make a big deal of it."

"Just don't be in a hurry, pussy. Don't get the idea you've got to be in love just because you find yourself wanting the same guy to screw you more than once."

"Okay, Vince. I won't." The pressure in my chest persisted. I'd had crushes. I'd been infatuated more than once. I'd even felt so strongly about one of them I'd been ready to marry him. But I hadn't ever felt this way about a man . . . never.

What I felt for Vince was love. Some instinct that might have been a legacy of the Valcouer heritage told me it was. I wanted him; God, how I wanted him! My whole body flamed with desire to engulf his hard-on and make it the nucleus of my belly. Every square inch of my flesh ached to be crushed against him and my throat and mouth had never felt as dry. But I knew there was an aura about him that would have made me desire sex with him just as much if I'd hated him. The love feeling was something else. I'd analyze it when I was alone. For the moment it was enough to know I loved him the way my mother had loved my father, so that no other man could ever occupy my emotions the way Vince did.

The tears smarted and I pressed my face to his shoulder while I tried to blink them away. He slipped his hands inside my robe at the waist and slid them slowly and gently around onto my back. For a time he let them lie in the hollow at the small of my back, then slid them again until they were cupped over my buttocks. With a light pressure, he urged me up along his torso until my face was directly over his. I stared at the peaceful composure of his features and kissed his mouth again, cheating by making it the first kiss to acknowledge the fact of my love, rather than another hungry, fiery one.

Gradually, though, the fire crept in. I couldn't have excluded it if I'd wanted to. My physical hunger for him was too powerful and all-consuming to be thrust into the background. Even in the first sacred moments of that kiss I was aware of my body and his, as intensely as if my brain had computers focused on every zone of my structure.

My breasts lay on the upper slope of his chest, pushed upward by the curve of his chest toward his shoulders. The pressure was all on their undersides and I knew I'd see my nipples peeping at me if I turned my head to look between us. My pussy was almost over his navel, the difference in our body lengths was so great, and the bulge of his cockhead filled the triangular hollow between my thighs and my pubic mound. There was a steady, warm force between the end of that cock and my hooded clitoris. And his hard, strong fingers were gently kneading the tingling flesh of my buttocks.

I drew my mouth away from his and studied his face. He seemed to be utterly at peace with himself. I could detect no sign of inner conflict in his expression. But there was no mistaking the eagerness he felt. His eyes were alert and his nostrils flared while he smiled at me. He seemed to exude a fierce joy that was untroubled by cares or doubts. And an answering joy welled up in me and made me laugh suddenly out of sheer delight at being alive and on the threshold of getting fucked by the man I loved.

The restless massage of my buttocks stirred a responsive restlessness within me and made my hips undulate slowly. With their movement my pussy rose and fell a fraction of an inch and caused a minute rubbing between my clitoris and his cockhead. A secondary stimulus resulted that was far more devastating than the first and reinforced the involuntary squirming. And under and over it all was the heat that grew between us, radiated through our skin and becoming more and more intense until I felt a layer of perspiration forming to let us slide on each other.

The sea of sensuous signals overwhelmed me and I caught his head between my hands and ground my mouth savagely on his. The sound in my throat was a growl, and I heard an answering growl rumbling in his throat. The kiss was so fierce my teeth dug into the tissues of my lips and forced them apart. I touched his mouth with my tongue, only to find his tongue emerging to meet mine. The two organs writhed and probed at each other before his drove past and filled my mouth with its wetness. I swallowed and started to suck, my own tongue playing over his like a doe over a buck.

His fingers gouged my buttocks and spread them and plunged intimately into the crack between them. I clamped my asscheeks together to trap the impudent digits and-hold them; my thighs parted and my pussy thrust down hard on his cockhead.

At last we broke out of the kiss for air, gulping noisily and groping at each other.

"Oh, Vince, honey!" I exclaimed breathlessly. "Oh, darling, I feel like I'm going to burn up!"

"There's something about us, puss. We generate heat like it was going out of style! If I didn't know better I'd say we both had fevers!"

I laughed giddily. "Can't be a fever, darling. We're both perspiring."

"Perspiring, hell! We're sweating!"

"Oh, God, I do want you!" I let my knees slip off his thighs and straddled him, driving my pussy hard against his cockhead.

He let go of my buttocks and caught me in his arms. They crushed me to him while his lips ravaged my face. I twisted in his grip, rubbing my breasts on him and covering his face with wet kisses. My hair had come loose and it fell around our heads like a curtain to shut out the world.

Vince laughed contentedly. "I don't think there's anything in the universe important enough to interrupt something like this, puss. I could spend the rest of my life like this and not feel I'd missed anything."

"I wish we were made that way! Oh, Lord, I wish it were possible to live a whole life pushed together like this!"

"Now that's what I call a driving ambition," he said with another laugh.

I pushed myself up and drew my knees along his body, pressing them to his sides. Rising on them, I snuggled my pussy over his cockhead and squirmed until the fat dome was centered like a plug at my cunt. Little by little I forced the tight rim over the broad slopes and gulped his cock into the embrace of my vagina. When the head was inside, I braced myself for an instant, then lunged back and down. The hard knob plowed inward along my vaginal barrel, shoving my organs aside and filling me with its bulk. I crashed against the base of his cock and gasped at the flash of sensation that shot inward.

Vince clutched at my thighs and grunted. "Ride, puss! Ride it hard!"

I knew what he meant. I ignored the grotesque leaping of my breasts as I bounced on him. His hips jumped to meet me and we smashed at each other with a fast, violent rhythm. As the pace grew wilder he thrust himself up from the bed and sat, leaning back on his hands. Awkwardly, I straightened my legs and settled onto the base of his hard-on, waiting for him to take the initiative. He sat up and pulled me to him. I clutched at him as our moist bodies pressed together again, and I clung tightly when he swung sideways and pulled himself to the edge of the bed.

Holding me, he rose to his feet and let me clasp my legs around his waist. When he slid his hands onto my back I leaned back, my weight concentrated on my cunt and the shaft of his cock. He used his hands to swing me in and out, stroking me the length of his buried cock. I clutched his upper arms to steady myself and locked my ankles. Extending my feet behind him, I scissored my thighs on the tops of his hip bones and tilted my head back to let my hair cascade beneath me. His hands shifted to grip my waist and the stroking grew more powerful.

"You're so light I could almost let go with my hands and let you dangle on my cock, puss," he said.

"It feels big and strong enough! Oooh, it goes deep!"

"You like deep?" he asked curiously.

"Yes." I shivered. "Nobody's ever gone deeper than you in me, Vince."

"Really?" He sounded surprised and pleased. "Hell, we could get quite a bit deeper if that does something for you."

"Oh, no! Deeper than this, honey?"

"Christ, yes!" He paused for a moment, then asked, "You shy about using different positions, puss?"

"Not shy. I just haven't had very many tried on me. More here in the last two days than all the rest put together!"

He laughed happily. "God, what an opportunity! Puss, don't be in a hurry to leave."

"I'm not, Vince!" I tried not to sound too emphatic. I didn't want to leave him, ever, but I didn't dare say so-not tonight.

"There are a couple of positions that are just designed for going deep," he remarked, crashing me onto the base of his cock again. "Want to try one of them?"

"Let's! Oh, Vince, let's do!"

"Okay."

Without letting me off his peter, he turned toward the bed. He bent forward with me, holding me under him as a raccoon would hold its young. Bracing himself with one hand on the mattress, he lowered himself until I lay on the bed, my ass at the edge. He forced his arms into the circle of my legs and raised my knees. As I unlocked my ankles he pushed my knees back over my chest, spread them, and forced them down so they rested against either side of my body. He turned me, then, and climbed onto the bed with his cockhead still buried in the neck of my vagina. "Ready, puss?"

I grunted, breathing with difficulty. "Ready!"

"I'm going to go in slow. Some women just don't have the capacity for a whole cock in this position."

I thrilled with anticipation and apprehension. I hadn't guessed a position could make that much difference. I hadn't believed the whispers about cocks too big for some pussies, either, and the idea some women couldn't take any man's peter all the way in caught me unprepared.

Vince pressed forward, bending over me and sliding his massive shaft in. I was startled to find I could actually see the taut, shiny rim of my cunt where it squeezed the huge cylinder. I was awed at the tremendous size of the hard-on that was disappearing into me and half unbelieving that it could be forced in among a bellyful of organs. The head felt like an enormous ball thrusting its way toward my diaphragm. I cringed as I realized how much further it was going to penetrate before I'd engulfed his entire shaft. But the brown pole vanished inch by inch and I felt a thrill of pride when the brush of his pubic hair flattened on me and I had his whole peter. I had a sensation similar to the over-full feeling of having eaten too much, except that this sensation stretched from my pussy to my stomach. And this time it was all good.

"I did, honey! I took it all! Oooh, fuck me a little!"

He pumped carefully. An astonishing wave of excitement shook me and I grabbed my thighs and pulled them tighter against my sides.

"Oh, Jesus, Vince!" I yelled. "It's so goddamn good! Fuck me hard! Give it all you've got!"

Supported only by his hands and feet, his body in the classical push-up position over me, he blasted with his hips, his cock pounding and churning my guts in a savage flurry of thrusts. My feet jerked back and forth in the air as I bounced under his blows. Searing tongues of pleasure licked at me as my excitement overshot any peak I'd ever imagined possible. My sensations were far richer than I could remember even though I still hadn't come. But I knew my orgasm was almost ready to explode with me.

"My god, Vince! It's now! I'm going to come now! Hard, darling, hard!"

He heaved his shoulders up and seized the iron-hard backs of my taut thighs and drilled into me furiously. The incredible tension in my belly unloaded its pent-up force in me and my belly was convulsed by orgasmic spasms. I heard myself, as if it were someone else, uttering a long, undulating yell. Vince's face hung over me, shaking and sweating while his hot foam pooled in my vagina. The room faded in and out of view as consciousness came and went. I held my breath as my contractions diminished and the rigid cock in me began to soften and shrink.

Vince sank onto me and I let go of my thighs, wrapping my legs around him again and putting my arms around his shoulders. We kissed each other, touching our lips everywhere we could reach, and fingering each other tenderly.

"Vince ..."

"Hmm?"

"I do, Vince."

"Do what?"

"Do love you. I do."

"I'm not going to make anything of that, puss. Not yet. There's not that much difference between one end and the other of a good fucking."

"There's a lot of difference, and you know it!"

"Not that much. There's still a hell of a sex-glow. There's emotions that take a while to wind down."

"There are some that don't ever wind down," I told him gently. "Vince, I'm not asking for anything. Nothing! I'm just telling you in case it gives you any kind of feeling. I love you!"

He grunted as if contemptuous of an immature judgment. But he held me tenderly. And he kept holding me that way a long time after any other man would have tugged his peter out wearily and rolled away.

His weight threatened to smother me, but as if he sensed the discomfort I wouldn't hint at, he rolled with me, keeping his peter engaged and reversing our positions. Somehow in our early action my arms had come out of the arms of my robe and I was as naked as Vince. But in changing positions he caught at the covers and pulled them over us. I snuggled on him, aware of a sense of security and completeness I'd never before experienced.

Some time later, I awoke to find Vince snoring lightly beneath me. The light still glared and the air in the room was motionless and heavy with the scent of our exertions. I shivered happily and pressed my face to Vince's shoulder. Although I still straddled him, his peter had slipped out of me while I'd slept. It poked against me now, semi-erect and invitingly firm, but even as I toyed with the idea of working it back into my pussy I resolved to finish doing the things I ought to do for the night.

I crept off Vince without awakening him. The storm still shrieked outside and a frigid blast of wind struck me when I opened the window a crack. I scurried to the light switch and plunged the room into darkness, then returned to Vince. Cautiously, I squirmed into place on top of him again. Fearful every second that he'd wake up, I slid back onto his cock, settling it firmly inside me before snuggling tightly to him and letting myself drift back to sleep.

It was Vince who awoke the next time. And he awakened me by the gently persuasive fucking motion of his hips. The friction of his sliding peter had aroused me in my sleep and I already tingled pleasantly. Instead of the windows being invisible in the dark they were gray rectangles in the walls-morning had arrived.

I sighed happily and jerked my hips in response to the continuing pumping of the buried hard-on. Vince chuckled and thrust harder.

"First goddamn time in my life I ever slept the whole night and woke up in the morning to find my cock still in," he commented. "You got a special gripper there, puss?"

"Just me," I told him gently. "Maybe it's just that I didn't want to let it go."

"It's not going to try to run away from you. You're too good a fit for that." His fucking grew more agitated and his thrusts deeper.

As if I'd hovered in an intermediate state of wakefulness, I was suddenly wide awake and ferociously eager. My hips flailed and I gripped his arms fiercely as I pushed the upper half of my torso into the air and responded to the urging of his cock. My excitement boiled up and I panted heavily. My hair danced with my breasts.

Vince slipped his arms between mine and fingered my nipples while his hips continued to drive his peter back and forth in my vagina.

"Vince! It's coming on so fast this time! Oh, dear, it's going to be over too fast!"

"Don't fight it, puss. It's not something with a quota."

I laughed raggedly at the idea and let myself rage toward the orgasm that was building so rapidly. At the last moment I extended my legs along his, my knees and ankles pressed tightly together and my body arched, resting only on the base of his penis. My clitoris was trapped between our pelvic arches and the violent contractions of my climax milked his peter. His jism heated and swelled my belly again and we groaned together.

Afterwards I dropped onto him and hugged him possessively. And when we'd kissed for a long time and squirmed and laughed and for the moment satisfied the hunger for contact, we got up and took a shower with each other. We had to take two, one right after the other, because we got too excited with the weird slipperiness of the soap and the heat of the rushing water and fucked again just before the first would have been finished.

Vince laughed with me while we scrubbed for the second time. "Take it easy, puss! You keep handling me that way and we never will get out of this cubicle!"

"Oh, God, Vince! Imagine! They'll have to serve our meals over the top of the door!"

But we did get out. He toweled me and I toweled him. And I actually managed to get dressed while he watched me critically. When I smoothed my dress he nodded his approval.

"You pass, baby. Any broad who can look graceful and sexy while she's getting dressed makes the grade in my book."

He dressed then, quickly and without concern for grace. "I'm going to have to change for breakfast," he commented, surveying his lounging clothes with distaste. "Look, I'll get over to my room and do that. Want me to come by and go down with you, or shall we just go on down separately?"

If we could avoid antagonizing Nadine I wanted to do it. I suggested we go separately.

Chapter Ten

I wanted to update my log before breakfast. Straightening the bedroom could wait. I laid the little notebook before me on the desk in the sitting room and reviewed what I'd already written. It seemed complete; in Nadine's or Willa's hand it would kill any chance I might have for getting the money my mother had left, but it presented a clear picture of the strange web of relationships in the house, a skeleton set of notes on how Caroline had looked to those who had known her, and a detailed sequence of events and conclusions concerning the ghost.

I had two entries to make. One was the fact Vince and I had spent the night together. / love him, I added in clear script. / think Nadine would disqualify me for the inheritance if she were to suspect; I don't think she could forgive another woman for cutting into her territory, whether it involved her husband or a lover. I've a sort of premonition I'll blow the whole thing over Vince.

The other entry was simply to tidy up. With no "ghost controls" either in the master suite or the cellars, maybe I ought to go on the assumption the sounds are triggered on and off by some natural mechanism. Note reference to tides and wind earlier. With the fact the passages have such unusual acoustical properties, all equipment including speakers might be at lowest level. Ought to check that out while Hermione is still carrying on.

Just as I was closing the notebook someone tried the handle of the door. I'd forgotten to lock it when Vince had left and the door opened to admit Bill.

"Bill!" Resentment overcame hospitability. "Forgotten how to knock?"

"Shit! Free-fuck colony like The Aerie, who knocks?"

I had a distinct impression he was trying to rattle me with his unusually crude language. If he was, I didn't intend to bite.

"Okay." I shrugged. "You wouldn't have seen anything you hadn't touched before, no matter what I'd been doing."

He laughed, an explosive burst that showed I'd scored. "Christ, Laura! I've seen so little of you since we tried out the couch I thought maybe you'd turned yourself off!"

I realized my attitude toward Bill had changed without my being aware of it. I didn't trust him this morning and I didn't really want to waste time on him. But the strange, persistent sexual excitement that had hung on like an infection since I'd come to The Aerie was still seething in me and it broke through the surface with his reference to that game. I knew I'd hold out my wrists for the bonds without objection if that was what he wanted. Fortunately for my peace of mind and the breakfast schedule, it wasn't.

"You still feeling your way around, or are you settled enough to give some thought to that second condition of Caroline's will?"

"The secret of the ghost?"

"Right. Don't see how I'm going to be much help on the other two points, but sooner or later we've got to have a shot at good old Hermione."

"Let's hold off one more day. I still feel a little strange here. Okay?"

"Sure. Tell you what, though. Might set aside an hour or so to renew acquaintances. I've got-an awful hungry feeling for you this morning."

I nodded woodenly. "When you say, Bill. You know I'm always ready for you."

He smirked. "Going down for breakfast now? Come on, we'll make it together."

I left the desk and went downstairs with him. In one respect, that might gain a little ground for me; Nadine wouldn't mind seeing us together. But I was greatly relieved to find we'd gotten down before Vince.

Breakfast was surprisingly cheery. Marsh predicted the storm would blow itself out within the coming thirty hours. ("Barometer's gone up a few hundredths since last night," he said by way of back-up.)

Willa flattered me. "Laura! What's happened to you? You look like a different woman today ... all bubbly and shining inside!" And she furnished her own answer. "Good night's sleep probably got all the cobwebs about the ghost swept away. I think maybe you're going to be even prettier than Caroline was!"

Marsh chuckled and Vince eyed me with a cool, knowing glance. Nadine was as blunt as ever.

"Good color all right," she conceded. "Lively expression, too. Looks more like a good night of exercise than of sleep to me."

It sounded to me like one of Aunt Frances' pronouncements and chilled me thoroughly. But another furtive glance at Vince restored my spirits. Nobody could really dampen them for long this morning, I decided.

I managed to evade Bill when the meal was finished and hurried upstairs. If I started right away I could complete the next phase of my search for the ghost source before Bill could hold me to my promise, as he definitely would. If I spent that hour or so with him first, I'd likely be too weak and exhausted to risk the difficult climb down the shaft.

With an extra set of batteries in my pocket and my flashlight in my hand, I entered the passage. I hadn't dared take time to change clothes. But the front buttoning, flare skirted denim play dress I had on would be all right. There wouldn't be anybody to see if the skirt did fly up and give away the fact that I'd gotten daring and gone pantyless to breakfast. Braless, too, I reflected with a shiver, although the skirt couldn't fly up far enough to reveal that.

Down to the wine cellar the path was getting to be as familiar as an old friend. Below that point I found the going rougher and quite frightening in spots. The shaft followed what had been a natural weakness in the rock formation and was anything but regular. It changed height and width and steepness continually. At some points it deteriorated to a vertical chimney, where I had to climb down ancient iron rungs. Only the fact that I knew Vince had come down the night before gave me courage to trust their strength.

That courage nearly got me in trouble, too. I stepped lightly down from one rung to the next only to find there was no next. . . nor next after that.

Shaken, I turned the light beam downward to see where two adjacent rungs had fallen away. Lowering myself past the blank space was no great feat, but it did little to buoy up my spirits.

The non-vertical descents were worse than the vertical on most counts. The footing was totally unpredictable. There were shallow, gouged-out footholds, crudely fastened chunks of iron or wood and, in some places, nothing but the rough surface of the rock. I traversed much of that kind of passage sitting down. And at least half of the sitting down part was a matter of bare buttocks getting acquainted with bare rock, as my skirt made a treacherous seat. Two or three times I paused at the top of one of those slopes and wavered on the verge of stripping and leaving the dress behind. But I kept it on, troubled by some subconscious reluctance to trust myself naked to the unknowns that lay below.

There were two shallow chambers I explored on the way down. They were both empty, but both had rings mounted in them that reminded me of those in the wine cellar. And I finally reached a depth where I could hear a whisper of rushing water through the ever-present sighing of Hermione. I thought I caught a faint scent of salt water along with the earth smell, too, and I hoped I was nearing the bottom of the shaft.

But there was another chamber. At first glance I wasn't sure of that; it looked like a horizontal branch passage. But when I shined the light beam into it I thought it widened some distance in. I felt my way in, aware that the looks of the footing could be deceiving. And I felt proud of the fact that I'd taken the trouble to improvise a wrist loop for the flashlight after my first trip into the passages. There were places where I needed both hands to steady myself because of the steep side-to-side slope of the "floor".

I smelled wetness and felt it on the walls. As the crevice widened to form the mouth of the chamber, I stepped onto a shiny section of rock and felt my feet slide from under me. With the walls too far apart for support, I braced myself for the fall. The flashlight swung and I saw that a wide crack extended along the base of the lower side of the passage. Before I could digest that, I landed flat, my feet sliding into the crack. Horrified, I found the rock surface wet and slimy-too slippery to slow my motion-and the crack high enough for me to slip through. My feet and then my legs shot over the edge of a drop-off and I flung my arms out to the sides in a desperate effort to save myself. At the last moment, when my body tipped over the rounded edge, each arm encountered a vertical bar-like object.

With a low cry of hope, I caught at the bars and stopped my fall. I lay against the curved, wet surface for a time, panting with fright and weak with relief before I could begin to pull myself out of danger. That proved to be no easy task, itself, but after another bad fright and considerable profanity I worked myself up to where I could lie side wise on the slick surface with my body resting against the bars.

I didn't dare climb away from them without having a better idea what I faced. The flashlight still burned, though, and I swept the beam slowly around me.

I lay in a steeply sloped crack between two masses of rock. The sloping section extended perhaps six or eight feet from the passage I'd been using to another wide, vertical chasm I'd nearly fallen into. As my breathing quieted I began to hear new sounds. From the crevice below me came the distinct periodic roar of channeled surf. From it, also, came the sighs of the ghost and the throbbing tones of the organ. But there was another sound that came from where I'd been. It sounded like the sliding, scraping progress of someone coming down the passage.

I stiffened and shuddered. It was Nadine, I thought wildly, following me to finish the job the little blind passage hadn't done. I lowered the light, glancing at the bars that supported me before extinguishing the beam. A splash of color arrested my attention and I picked a tattered, bright yellow remnant of some flimsy cloth off a jagged projection at the base of the bar. I turned off the flashlight, then, and after fingering the mysterious scrap of cloth briefly, stuffed it into my pocket.

In a matter of seconds, it seemed, I could see a glimmer of approaching light. I prayed for my follower to by-pass the chamber, but the light shone directly in and I had to listen to cautious footsteps coming the way I had. As the intruder passed me I realized it wasn't Nadine, but a man.

"Don't slip!" I called. "For God's sake don't slip!"

The light wavered sharply, then the beam swept into the crack I lay in.

"My God, Laura!" It was Bill's voice. "What the hell happened to you!"

"I lost my footing on that slimy stuff!"

"You didn't see the steps along the upper side of the slope?"

"No! Oh, Bill! Can you get me out of here?"

"Sure, Honey. Just don't panic."

"How come you came down?" I asked with a momentary return of caution.

He chuckled. "After you! What else?"

"After me?" My spirits plummeted. It was Bill after all, rather than Nadine.

"Hell, I went charging up to your suite after breakfast all hot for another lesson on your mother's favorite games! And I'm a son of a bitch if you hadn't taken off! But the passage door was open so I figured you wanted to have a crack at it down here. Caroline liked it that way."

I was vastly relieved at his explanation. It was comical, too, in a way. I mean, that he'd made a brutal trip like that just to play sex games for an hour in a wet crack in the rocks. But even that was a lot better than having a killer at the other end of the flashlight.

"Do you really think you can get me out, Bill? Or are you going to have to go for more help?"

"No sweat, sugar. Just do exactly what I tell you."

"I will!"

"Okay. See the upper surface of the crack? Rough and dry, right?"

"Mostly dry. Yes, it's rough."

"Right. Okay, roll over on your back. Slow and easy."

It was terribly scary. But it was safe enough if I didn't bend in the middle and slide between the bars. Recognizing the danger, I avoided it and got into the right position.

"I made it," I told him.

"So I see. Okay, what you've got to do is use the upper surface to claw yourself around to where I can reach you."

"Oh, Bill!"

"No, no! It's no big deal! Keep your legs braced on that one bar. There's plenty of good handholds above you. Just rotate yourself slow and easy and reach out with one foot to brace yourself against the other bar. That way you'll have one foot on each one and you're not going to spin back around and go through. Understand?"

I understood. I was scared as hell! But he talked as if he'd had practical experience and I had no choice. I paused to unbutton my skirt to a point just below my crotch. I couldn't afford to have my legs hobbled. And then I began groping for handholds. They were there, as he'd said. They were easy to find and prominent enough to instill confidence. I twisted myself around slowly until I dared shift my leg and feel for the second bar. My feet were well separated but not painfully so. And I felt solidly braced.

"I made it, Bill."

"Splendid. Now, do me one favor and we'll get on with the rescue."

"What favor?"

"Finish unbuttoning your dress."

"Oh, Bill! For God's sake!"

"That isn't really asking too much, is it?"

"Oh ... oh, I guess not." Then, "Of course not, Bill! When you're saving my life?"

"It's not that dramatic. There's no real danger. But we can pretend."

My feet supported me securely enough, so I wasn't afraid to let go with my hands. It took only moments to unfasten the rest of the buttons and I turned the dress back for good measure so he could get his voyeuristic kicks while I was still helplessly trapped.

"Goddamn!" He whistled softly. "That pussy of yours shines like a pile of real gold!"

"Bill! My goodness!"

It occurred to me that I might lose the dress through tearing when he pulled me up. I jerked my arms out of the sleeves and squirmed enough to work it out from under me. Carefully, I let it slide along my body while I clung to the handholds. When it reached my foot I managed to kick it into position across the bar, where it would stay until I was ready to fish it out.

Bill spoke again. "Okay, Laura. Give me a hand."

I extended my left arm as far as I could reach. His fingers closed over my arm and I felt a loop of rope tighten on my wrist.

I protested vigorously. "That's carrying things too far, Bill!"

"No it's not. Not really. Too much danger of my losing my own balance if I try to pull you out by hand. Give you a rope and your hands might slip. This way's unorthodox, but it's pretty safe."

"Damn smooth rationalization," I muttered.

He laughed with delight. "Other hand."

I couldn't do anything else. And the rope he'd tied to my wrist was evidently fastened somewhere, because I couldn't move that arm. He tied the second wrist in a matter of seconds and my arms were stretched almost parallel to each other.

"There's pulleys up here," he remarked in a conversational tone. "Makes it an easy haul."

The ropes tightened and I began to slide up the slimy slope. I groaned at what my hair would look like. Bill asked what the problem was and I told him.

"No sweat. That lichen is slick as snot, but it sticks to the rock."

He soon had me completely out of the crack. I still lay on the slimy surface of the rock, and I was naked and he was gloating over me, but I was safe. He bent over me, kneeling on a pad of some sort that I judged was fastened at the upper side, and ran his hands over my taut figure. When he fondled my breasts I felt a surge of desire and eagerness.

"Bill, this is still scary. I can't help thinking of that drop-off."

"It's not near as bad as the dark makes it seem, baby. And the edge isn't half as sharp as you think when you hit it the first time."

"It. . . seemed bad enough to me."

He tied my ankles together and then my wrists. But I was still lying in the chill of the wet slope. Suddenly I felt myself slipping back into the crack.

"Bill . . . Bill? . . . BILL!"

He didn't answer. Still suspended by the ropes at my wrists, I was being lowered into the darkness he'd rescued me from-except that it wasn't quite dark. He had the flashlight trained on me and was watching me as he let me slide.

For the second time my feet went over the hump of the drop-off, followed by my legs. Bill continued to lower me while my hips lost support and the rounded edge pressed into my back. I stopped sliding, then, and hung motionless. He took the light beam off me and left me suspended in the dark.

I whispered to myself. "Goddamn you, Bill! If you think you're going to make me like this, you're crazy as hell! When we get back to the house, you'll be on your way out of The Aerie so fast it'll make your head swim!"

Suddenly I was bathed in light. I strained to look past my bulging tits at its source. Barely an arm's length beyond my straining belly I saw Bill and at least two battery-powered floodlights.

"There's a nice, dry ledge over here, Laura. Lots of room and everything. Matter of fact, it's a room about a half a level below the chamber we were just in. You're hanging against one wall. Of course, there's a big crack at the base of that wall. Drops about forty feet into a surge-channel. But we don't have to worry about that. And you're in an excellent position."

He untied my ankles and tied each to a separate something, my legs spread to a painful angle. The position was extreme, I felt. My back was arched about as deeply as I'd dare arch it. Part of my weight did rest on a gentle slope, but enough of it hung from my wrists to keep my arms taut. And I couldn't see what Bill was doing without putting a terrible strain on my neck.

He started to finger my pussy and the waiting excitement flared. I struggled to keep my movement to a minimum while he poked and rubbed, but nothing could prevent my hips from twisting and jerking when he thrust fingers into my cuntmouth and up my ass and mauled my clitoris.

"Bill?" I pleaded. "Bill, I'm going to break my back this way."

"Yeah. Wouldn't want that to happen."

He left the floods burning, but disappeared from below. I realized he'd untied my feet and left them dangling; they were already so numb I hadn't felt the difference until I noticed the heat building between my thighs.

The pressure on my wrists increased minutely and I started to slide upward along the slope. Bill pulled me into the open and helped me roll onto the mat he knelt on. We crossed it to the nearly level floor of the main chamber, where I saw the inevitable rings mounted on the walls, ceiling, and floor.

He spread-eagled me in the middle of the chamber, standing. The ceiling was low enough that I could almost drop to my knees before my arms were pulled taut, and I wondered at being left so loose. But there was no way to free myself.

Bill stepped behind me and reached around to fumble at my breasts. I twisted and gasped, and when he twisted my nipples I jerked sharply. He chuckled and stopped. I turned to see him stripping, and in a moment he resumed his position, his hard-on pressed to my back while he played with my breasts again.

Clutching me to him as if my tits were fat handles, he started to talk. "Glad you came down when you did. Would have meant a delay if you'd brought anybody with you."

"What?"

"Well, I've got a feeling you're about to make it with those bubble brained twats up there. Another day or two and they'd be ready to say you qualified for that inheritance. And I can't have that."

"You're teasing, BUI. You just think I'm going to get hotter if I'm scared."

"Oh, you're going to get hot enough. I'm going to fuck the hell out of you! But I'm not teasing. I'm going to have to kill you just like I did your mother."

"BILL!"

"That's right. Christ, was that a day!" I could hear his voice shake with excitement. "I don't know how long we spent in here. And then I hung her over the edge of the drop-off like I did you and kept her there for about three hours. When I'd had all I could stand, I pulled her back up here and untied her and dumped her down the slope. She didn't have the strength to whisper, let alone grab onto those bars. And that's all she wrote."

"Oh, Bill!" My horror was so powerful I could only whisper. "You bastard."

Chapter Eleven

In spite of the loathing I felt for him and the terror that drained my strength, I ground my back on his peter and twisted my shoulders while he molded my breasts to his hands. At this depth Hermione's sighs were even more realistic than they were in the house above. But there was an amazing increase in the strength of the organ tones. I was again struck by how much of the chord was below my hearing range but perceptible by the way it vibrated in my chest and belly. It seemed to pick out those fibers in me that possessed erotic sensitivities and force them into resonant vibration, as if it were designed specifically to attune me to sex. It affected me more strongly in this chamber than the crude pawing Bill was giving me.

I couldn't restrain my cries of lust. Bill dropped one hand to grope at my pussy and my hips lashed back and forth while I tried to spear my cuntmouth on his probing fingers. He chortled with glee at my insane lust and mauled my clitoris without mercy. When I was screaming for his cock, he grabbed my hips and stepped in front of me. Pulling hard, he made me arch my body again. Before I could resist, I was strung like a bowstring between my wrist bonds and those at my ankles, and his greedy hands clawed at my ass and arched me until I was resigned to the broken back I'd warned him of.

"You're . . . breaking ... my ... back!" I gasped.

"Who the shit cares!" he demanded. "Won't hurt your cunt!"

I groaned with agony and felt his cock drive through the rim of my cuntmouth. He sawed back and forth with savage blows while my lust and my agony battled. And when the lust became the stronger because the agony began to turn to numbness, he held my ass with one hand and slapped my protruding belly like a drum with the other. He didn't hit me hard. It didn't even sting. But it produced a ringing tone as clear as that of any bongo drum.

In time he tired of the sport and let go of me. My body sprang away from him, tearing me off his cock and settling to the vertical. The agony came back ferociously. I hung by my wrists, my legs no stiffer than water. But strength flowed slowly back into me and I regained my feet.

Immediately, he jerked me the other direction. Again my weight was suspended by wrists and ankles, but my ass protruded this time and there was no hazard of a broken back. His cockhead nudged my anus and I braced myself for a brutal lunge from him that would bury his cock in one violent blow. To my surprise, he increased his pressure moderately by degrees, while my ass stretched and relaxed and gulped his cockhead in. Only then did he lunge, and the swift stroke of the bulb into my gut was as pleasurable as I had expected it to be painful.

He fucked violently. My ass rang with the sound of his blows and my breasts leaped crazily. Somehow it seemed more appropriate for him to be fucking me in the ass and excited me to a greater degree. I surged against him and swung from side to side. For the moment it was almost possible to forget he was a killer and remember only how many other times we'd fucked. But the margin that prevented that lapse of awareness was the margin between life and death. I would respond with total commitment so long as he kept me in bonds and the weird "super-organ" chords continued to arouse me. But if I survived today, he'd never get a finger on me again, and he'd pay for my mother's murder with his own life.

Even while I made mental threats of death, my body stiffened in minor orgasm. With each contraction of my vagina, my ass clamped savagely on the buried cock. Bill yelled the first time, laughed the second, and started to pull free with the third.

While I sagged in the ropes, he wiped his peter and boasted about how long I was going to keep going this time. I began to suspect he might be under the influence of one of the pep drugs, the way he talked, but even that didn't matter. He untied my wrists from the ceiling rings, pushed me onto my back and secured my hands to rings in the floor, spread-eagling me. He knelt astride my neck, his calves under my upper arms, and jabbed his cockhead against my lips.

Helpless to resist and racking my brain for some scheme that might enable me to escape, I began to baby the hot bulb. I lipped it gently and teased it with the tip of my tongue. Bit by bit, I enveloped it with my lips and sucked it dry. And I finally sucked the entire cockhead into my mouth and scrubbed it with the back of my tongue. My suction failed to extract any of the subtly flavored fluid I'd gotten from Vince. Perhaps, I reflected, the speed Bill must have taken had dried him up.

But it hadn't destroyed his ability to enjoy stimulus. His hips jerked and his cock jabbed rhythmically in my mouth. He fucked as hard as I sucked, and my head had nowhere to bob under the force of his thrusts.

I heard a curious sound in the rock under my head. Careful to continue sucking I concentrated on the new noise. It came to me that it was the sound of cautious footsteps. Hope gushed through me and I sucked harder, jerking my head from side to side to intensify Bill's excitement and distract his attention from anyone who might approach.

He grinned fatuously. "Man, Laura! You've got a real taste for pecker, haven't you! Wish I'd known that a lot sooner! But a guy can't have everything, I guess." He drove his cock into my throat, slipping it past the resisting constriction so suddenly I didn't have time to tighten or panic.

I swallowed and saw an expression of sheer bliss light his features.

"Oh, Jesus! Sweet Jesus, Laura! What a sensation!" He gazed down at my laboring throat. "When the Foundation gets that money and I move into the head chair in the Foundation, I'm going to grab off the first real gone believer and bring her up to suck me off the way you're doing it. Son of a bitch if I don't!"

Out of the corner of my eyes I saw another pair of legs. And behind that pair was another.

Bill continued to prattle. "Goddamn sin to kill a broad who can suck like you! Just a lousy goddamn sin! Wonder if I could hide you out." But he shook his head in a moment. "Naw. That would be too much trouble."

Vince stood over him. I could feel one of Vince's bare feet against my waist and the other touching my pussy as if to reassure me. He reached down slowly and his hands closed around Bill's throat. A stricken expression flashed into Bill's eyes before they started to bulge, but Vince's arms stiffened and he lifted my captor off his knees and stood him on his feet.

I gagged briefly when the heavy cock was jerked from my throat. But I managed to croak out a warning to Vince.

"Not you, Vince! Don't you kill him! Let some court have the first chance!"

I heard Nadine's voice, clear and cool and unhurried. "She's right, you know, Vince. You've got too much to lose to do what you want to."

A knotted vein throbbed at Vince's temple. Sweat broke out on his face and he opened his fingers as slowly as if he'd been prying steel bars apart. Bill sagged to the side. Even in his terror he avoided falling on me.

Vince dropped to his knees and jerked the knots loose from my ankles. Shuffling past me, he released my hands. And I heard him exclaim.

"Holy Mother!"

I twisted around and saw him peering intently at the soft rock where my left hand had rested.

"Nadine! Laura! Look at this! Shine that light a little closer, Nadine!"

My own flashlight was still dangling from my arm and I turned it on and directed its beam where Nadine's was shining. She and I touched heads as we bent to look. A tiny gem glittered in the light, wedged in a minute crack in the floor.

Nadine gasped. "Out of Caroline's ring!"

Vince nodded. "She had her hand right where Laura's was when we got here. That stone got caught and stayed there." He turned to stare at Bill. His face was as hard and cold as the rock we knelt on. "Bill, Laura's the second woman you've had down here, isn't she."

Bill shrugged. "So? Like mother like daughter. They both got their kicks out of being pegged out on the floor."

"I gave Caroline a ring, Bill. When we found her body, there was one stone missing from it."

Bill laughed. It chilled me to see his poise in the face of the damning evidence. "I had her down here two days before she died," he said with a sneer. "If that's out of her ring it happened then."

I slipped in a question before Vince could say whatever he meant to. "What was she wearing the day she came down with you?"

He gave me a fleeting glance full of hate. "Not a goddamn stitch. She came all the way down the passage from her suite with me naked." "What about her scarf?"

"Shit, no! Not that day! First time I ever saw her wear that was the day she died."

"But she didn't come down here that day?"

"Absolutely not. I was running tests down here all day with an acoustic meter. Remember, Vince?"

Vince nodded. "We had to come down here to ask if you'd seen her."

"That's right. And I wouldn't let her come down because the tests were too sensitive-and boring."

Nadine frowned. "I remember about the scarf. I'd never seen it on her before that day."

I drew a deep, shaky breath. "Vince, what's the lower room for?"

"What lower room?"

Bill was staring stonily at a thick slab of rock in a corner of the chamber, but when I asked Vince about the lower room he jerked his head around.

I replied to Vince's question. "The chamber beyond that crack." I pointed to the crack I'd fallen into.

Both Vince and Nadine looked totally blank.

"There's one there," I said softly. "Bill lowered me part way into it."

Bill spat on the floor. "Lying slut!"

"Any other way to get to it?" asked Vince slowly.

"He got down there some way." I went to the slab Bill had been looking at and examined it.

The wall behind it was rough and shadowed. Looking closer I saw the exit-a crawlway too low to negotiate on hands and knees.

"Here it is," I told Vince. "Miserable, but it's the passage."

Vince lashed Bill's wrists together with the end of one of the ropes he'd taken off me, then hobbled his ankles with another.

"I'm going into that hole first," he said to Bill. "You're going to follow me. The women will be behind you. I'm going to have the end of this rope with me, so you'll come with me one way or another."

The tiny crawlway opened into a fine passage after the first six feet of tunnel. And we found ourselves in the floodlit room a few steps further on. Both Vince and Nadine looked astounded. Vince crossed the level floor and peered into the black chasm at the foot of the three-quarter wall, then up at the sloping crack. He whistled.

"How did you say you found out about this?" he asked me.

I explained in a low voice. Nadine gasped and cast a murderous glance at Bill. Vince put his arm around me and pulled me to him. Bill continued to sneer.

I shined my flashlight up the slope to the bars and Vince saw my dress.

"Can you reach that without falling into the crevice?" I asked.

He nodded, let go of me, and leaned across to retrieve the garment.

"There's something in the pocket I found hanging on that same bar," I told him.

He took my batteries and the wisp of scarf out of the pocket. Nadine bent closer, then groaned.

Vince whirled on Bill. "You son of a bitch!" He snarled. "So the last time she was down here was two days before she died! And you were down here the whole day the day she did die. You've got a problem!"

With a choked cry of rage, Bill hurled himself at Vince. I screamed, visualizing Vince dropping into the chasm. He sprang aside and Bill catapulted against the partial wall and vanished at our feet. He screamed once.

There was a long moment of silence. Vince pulled me to him and held me tightly.

At last, Nadine observed, "We'll find him in the cove, I should think."

"Maybe." Vince nodded. He handed me my dress.

I put it on slowly and buttoned it. As the last button went into its buttonhole, my fingers began to tremble. My knees seemed to turn to water and crumpled under me. I huddled on the floor and cried. Vince dropped beside me and held me, whispered softy. My reaction to the terror I'd struggled against subsided gradually and I felt a measure of self-control returning.

"How. . . how come you two came down?" I asked.

"I went to your sitting room and you weren't there," replied Vince. "I didn't think you'd try the passage again by yourself, but I was worried. And Nadine remembered you'd told her you were keeping a detailed log. So we looked for it."

"Oh, no!" I gasped.

Vince squeezed me. "Yeah. Found it on your desk. I read the last page ..." (He emphasized the "I".) "... and Nadine agreed we'd better see if you needed a hand. We weren't happy about Bill's being out of sight at the same time."

I had a certain amount of reshaping of attitude ahead of me, I reflected. It had been so easy when I could think of Nadine as the villain. I'd either have to find other excuses to dislike her, or put my emotions through an overhaul.

I'd watched her since they'd rescued me. Again and again I'd seen her look at Vince. And she'd had an expression that hadn't fitted her haughty bearing. It dawned on me that I might have selected the wrong term for her bearing from the beginning. Reserve or withdrawal could be mistaken for hauteur; so could shyness in a very proud woman. The way she'd looked at Vince could only mean she loved him-and, with the breathless look of her mouth and the extra brightness of her eyes, that she was desperately hungry for him right now, maybe as hungry for him as I was.

I had to have Vince. I did love him; there wasn't a shadow of doubt in my mind. I loved him so much I didn't care what he did with anyone else. If he really liked making love to Nadine, I'd let her sit in my lap while he fucked her. Just so he'd let me keep on loving him.

I turned to Nadine. "Nadine?"

"Yes?"

"Do you really love Marsh, Nadine?"

Her expression softened and she seemed to glow. "Yes, I do," she said with a warm note in her voice. "I love him."

"And . . . and you love Vince!" I didn't let it sound like an accusation.

"Yes." Her answer was quiet and simple.

"So do I, Nadine. I love him so much I think I'll die if I have to leave him." She could accept the fact that she loved two men. She wasn't likely to accept the reverse. I was cutting myself out of my mother's will. But it couldn't be helped; Vince was more important to me than anything my mother's estate had to offer. I continued. "I ... I don't care who else he loves or makes love to. I just don't care how much sharing I have to do, so long as there's some for me."

Nadine studied me soberly and silently. She nodded without changing expression. "I suppose so," she said slowly.

If I'd cut my throat it was done, I decided. But I knew something about Hermione I hadn't know an hour earlier. And I might as well put that to bed.

"Can you two help me finish looking for Hermione? I know where she is. All we need to do is get there."

They both agreed.

But I warned them. "That other sound . . . the one like a organ . . . that does something to my sex drive. If we get much closer to that I don't think I'm going to act much like a lady."

Nadine smiled gently and took my hand. "Let's take one thing at a time. Where's Hermione?"

Chapter Twelve

Vince smilingly applied the brakes to our haste. "I'd rather wait for a few minutes," he remarked. "Marsh and Willa were going to come down as soon as Willa could break away from what she was doing..." He grinned briefly at Nadine. "And I think they ought to be here before we pay any visits to Hermione."

So we went back to the "dungeon" chamber and waited. Vince was right; the other two arrived before we'd waited five minutes.

Marsh's first question was about Bill. Vince explained. And after the reaction had subsided he suggested we go to the new room. When we were in it he asked me about Hermione.

"She's down there," I said, pointing to the chasm. "But she's over there, too, and maybe we can get to her that way." There was clearly another steep shaft like the one we could have followed to the landing.

But Vince was still in no hurry. "You know more about her than you're saying," he suggested. "I think so."

"Let's hear it." He insisted.

"What's a surge-channel, Vince?" I asked.

"That's a channel where surf is funneled through. Here, the foot of the point has some big tunnels where water can get from the ocean to the cove. Surges through with every breaker. Of course, some of them don't have water in them except at high tide or during a storm tide."

"But there's a surge-channel down there?"

"Yes. You can even hear the water surging."

"I know. I listened to it quite a while.""Uh-huh. What did you hear?"

"Every time I heard a surge, I heard one of Hermione's sighs start about two seconds later. Every time!"

Vince stared at me for a long time. Marsh stirred and started to smile.

"You're sure of that?" said Marsh quietly.

"Yes. But it wouldn't take long to see for yourself."

There was complete silence among the five of us for two minutes. The only sounds in the room were the sighs and the organ chords and the mutter of water in the surge-channel forty feet below.

Finally Marsh and Vince exchanged nods.

Marsh added his sigh to Hermione's. "You're right, you know," he told me. "But you knew you were."

"Yes. And I think we can get down to 'her'."

"We don't really have to. We're at one end of her vocal chords." He led us to the passage Ed suggested to Vince and Nadine. Shining his light down it, he convinced me at once it would take climbing equipment to descend the shaft. "But listen." He held his hand up.

The sighs came up the shaft so loud and pure they sent shivers along my spine. I felt a faint breath of air stirring against my cheek with each sigh.

"Is there air moving, Marsh?" I asked, not certain my imagination wasn't tricking me.

"Yes. Look, there's a pot-shaped chamber down there. The mouth opens on this surge-channel. The upper end is real tightly restricted-hardly more than a pipe-and when a big surge of water submerges the big end, it compresses a hell of a lot of air inside. The only place for the pressure to bleed off is through the pipe. This shaft is the upper end of the pipe, after it's widened out, you see."

Vince nodded thoughtfully. "The sigh is air bleeding through constrictions in the pipe under pressure?"

"That's right. Right kind of surface texture . . . right diameter . . . right pressure and volume . . . right flare above the constrictions . . . Makes a hell of a good vocal box and amplifier."

"But it's a passage of air and not a tonal resonance," muttered Vince. "That doesn't cover the moans."

"Nor the organ," I added in a small voice.

Marsh grinned broadly. "One of you gals give us a few sighs and then a moan. Okay?"

After a moment's hesitation, Nadine began to sigh. It really wasn't the "I've-been-had" kind of sigh, of course. Instead, she pursed her lips and her breath made a sighing kind of sound as it puffed out or got sucked in. She sounded exactly like someone was rubbing her clitoris. And then she moaned-a long, soft, emotion-packed oooh! I shivered and felt my pussy start tingling.

Marsh gulped. "God, that's almost too real! Anyhow, the difference in the sigh comes when air gets pushed through a narrow passage so there's plenty of turbulence when it gets to expand. The moan's a resonant condition in an air column. Down that shaft, the moans come when an extra big surge of water builds the air pressure enough to make the whole column of escaping air resonate."

I was disappointed. I'd been so sure there was some kind of recording. . . that the surges were activating a playback of some kind. But he hadn't explained the organ. I asked about it.

"That's something different. Sheets of semi-flexible mineral. Moving air again, but it's moving past those sheets fast. And it's got one hell of a lot of pressure behind it. Depending on the pressure and speed, different sheets vibrate."

Vince cocked his head. "Marsh, how come? How come you know all about it and how come you never got around to telling us?"

"I used to be a spelunker-caves and tunnels were my hobby. And I got to know a lot of damn good geologists. Got into a lot of caves with special sound-effects, too. So when I married into the Valcouer legend I ran into a challenge I couldn't pass up. It didn't take any more than a quick look at the passage set-up and the base of the cliff to tell me what was happening. But I managed to have the right house guests out from time to time when Nadine and I came out for a week or two." He looked suddenly haggard. "I didn't tell what I knew because people got too much fun out of the legend. I guess Caroline would be alive right now if I had."

"One minor nit to be picked in all that." Vince probed again. "How come the ghost just happened to show up for the first time the day of Hermione's funeral?"

"Earthquake. There really was one. It was even recorded. And take a look at that shaft. Looks positively raw. Right?"

It did; we could all see that.

"No weathering since the house went up. So it hasn't aged. But that broke open to form a through-vent during that earthquake. Okay?"

It was okay so far as I was concerned. I understood the ghost. In fact, I understood something he hadn't mentioned about Hermione. I mentioned the sex-drive effect of the chords.

Marsh looked at me respectfully. "You're lucky. There's never been a man in the house who could get that out of those tones. Damn few women, too, from what I've observed."

"My mother did," I said softly.

Marsh and Vince nodded while Nadine and Willa both glanced sharply at me.

"What about your mother?" asked Nadine.

"Nothing about her," I said miserably. "I just wish to God she'd had a chance to make me the woman she was!" And I set my jaw stubbornly. "But they didn't grind it all out of me. Nobody ever will!"

Both women were studying me thoughtfully. I'd killed my chances of earning Nadine's approval earlier, I reflected. I might as well earn my own now, that being the case.

"I think I ought to say one more thing. It's really about me instead of my mother. But I'm going to spend as much time here as you'll let me. And you've got to know me before you make any decisions about that. I think you know about Vince, Nadine. I love him and I've slept with him and I will every chance I get. I love Marsh, too. Different way, maybe, but I'll never pass up a chance to let him make love to me. I don't know your husband, Willa. But I'll bet you've got just as good taste as your sisters. If you do, I know I wouldn't say no to him."

Neither of them replied. They continued to watch me as if they expected me to say something else.

I concluded my speech. "As I said earlier, I love Vince so much I can't demand anything. If he brings another woman in the same bed I'm in, I'll. . . Well, I'll simply wait for him to be ready for me." I had to grin. "If he says to, I'll even help him keep her warm. I don't care who I have to share him with, or when. I just know he's the only man I'll ever love the way I love him."

Nadine nodded gravely. She and Willa exchanged searching glances. And she turned back to me.

"Maybe this is a good time to take the pressure off, Laura. You meet the conditions of your mother's will. Willa and I agree."

"What! But I thought-"

"You had to show you were possessed of the Valcouer spirit. You did that with Marsh and Vince." The corner of her mouth twitched. "And in what you just said about sharing and loving. You had to understand the 'secret' of the ghost-that meant understand what those chords were doing to you." She added, hastily, "Of course, you had to be Valcouer enough to have the reaction in the first place!" And then she finished in her more deliberate tone. "Finally, you had to know your mother. We think you've done enough living in her footsteps that you can't help knowing her. We think it's obvious you've got a sympathetic rapport with the part of her that's still here."

I tried to say something, but I couldn't make my voice work. I'd misunderstood every one of the three conditions of the will. In every case I'd been knocking myself out to achieve something different from what my mother had meant. And yet I couldn't have failed the real conditions and still have been me. I had a comfortable sense of understanding, suddenly. That, after all, had been what my mother had meant. If I turned out to be predominantly like the Valcouers, I belonged and she wanted me to inherit. If I had been mostly like my Mardel aunts.. . well, there was little point in encouraging that kind of sick attitude with money. More money would just mean more opportunity to spread the sickness.

Hermione's sighs were interrupted by a tremulous moan that begged to be imitated. I gasped and clenched my hands.

"If somebody doesn't do something about what's building up in me, I'm going to make a spectacle of myself right in the middle of the floor," I said between tight-set teeth.

There was a soft, general laugh and Vince came to me. Calmly and confidently, he unbuttoned my dress from neckline to hem and opened it. He placed his hands on my naked hips and pulled me to him, his head bent and his lips reaching for mine. I swayed into his embrace and settled my pussy on the ridge of his thigh, sighing happily.

Nadine and Willa moved on Marsh simultaneously, smiling gently at each other. Quietly, they began to undress him. When he stood naked before them, they laid their own clothes aside and pressed themselves to him, naked, glorious bodies molded to a hairy, massive creature whose whole carriage bore the stamp of sweet good nature.

When Vince released me from his kiss, I unfastened his shirt and pulled it off. I knelt to remove his trousers and shorts. In the tide of tenderness that rose over me as I gazed upward along his lean, brown body, I held his hard-on between my hands and leaned forward impulsively to kiss it. The aromatic flavor ignited my read embers and I flung myself against his legs, gulping the magnificent bulb into my mouth and caressing it with my tongue. His hands rested quietly on my shoulders and his thighs quivered.

There came a time when he interrupted my excited, greedy sucking by gently disengaging his cock from my mouth and lifting me to my feet. He held me against him, warming me and petting me.

"Laura . . . puss ..."

"Hmm?" I pressed my cheek to his chest. I wondered briefly if I would come just from leaning against him.

"Laura, baby ..." He whispered. "Laura, I do love you."

"Vince! Oh, Vince, darling!" I wept.

There was a long, long time we spent fucking. And I'm not sure how long it was before any of us remembered we'd left our clothes in that chamber at the heart of Hermione's home.

I do know we telephoned the county authorities and they sent men who did recover Bill Sheldon's body. We notified The Western Foundation for Spiritualism-or whatever they called themselves at the time-that the windfall they might have counted on wouldn't be arriving. In the course of the discussion we informed them about their Mr. Sheldon and they intimated he'd been involved in a power play based on the expected success of a venture of his. If he delivered a certain amount of money and/or negotiable assets, they understood, he was to have advanced to one of their directorial positions.

I turned out to be more like Nadine than like my mother in some respects. I subpoenaed certain letters and cards, which had been posted by U.S. Mail over a seventeen year period from a Miss Frances Mardel and a Miss Melba Mardel, jointly or severally. The two pious old hypocrites delivered the required mail to the U.S. Marshal meekly and without demur. Fortunately, considering their ages, the Postmaster refrained from bringing charges against them.

Daddy came to visit me at The Aerie almost immediately. He met the same cast of characters I had. He had a choice between two bedrooms, inasmuch as Vince Lamont and I were sharing the west suite. Daddy had some question about having missed a wedding, but I assured him we wouldn't think of having one without the bride's father.

I think he understood, dimly.

End
Laura's Willing Spirit ....(99k)    by Jocelyn Ryder




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