The Dance by Barbara Steiner

Author:Barbara Steiner
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781497624467
Publisher: Open Road Media

eleven

And the demon Batraal tempted her, and she was pulled this way and that like a disputed bone until she made her choice.

ON SUNDAY MORNING Melanie woke and immediately her mind returned to the painting. Bryan’s explanation was too easy. He’d said it was a fake. Someone had used Nicol for the model and then doctored the painting so it looked old. Maybe lots of the things in the shop were fakes.

Hank had laughed. “I can believe that Nicol is a witch, all right. But I don’t think I can handle thinking she’s come back from 1633 to haunt us.”

Everyone had laughed at that idea, so Melanie dropped it.

What did she think? She had no idea. But she did think it was a strange coincidence. Maybe she could just flat out ask Nicol. “Did you pose for that picture in the Arbuthnot, Nicol? The one that’s supposed to be old?” Or, “Is that your painting in the antique shop, Nicol? Did it belong to some ancient ancestor?” Couldn’t Nicol look enough like an ancestor to mistake the woman in the painting for her? But then how many people kept stuff lying around for more than three hundred years?

She pushed herself to a sitting position, tugged off the warm covers, and headed for the shower. Turning the water on as hot as she could stand it, she let the spray pound down, clearing her head, her thinking. One hand searched for her shampoo. She lathered her hair with the lemon-smelling liquid and scrubbed, willing some answers to come to her rather than more and more confusing bits and pieces of this mystery—a mystery, it would seem, she had probably made up.

“Melanie? Melanie, are you in the shower? Guess who just now called?”

Melanie toweled her hair, then wrapped herself in the warm, pink bath sheet. “Bryan?” She stepped back into her bedroom, finding her mother perched on the edge of her unmade bed.

“No, not Bryan. Nicol, that girl from the troupe. She said she wanted to tell you how glad she was you came to the party the other night. And, she wanted to remind you that you said you’d go shopping with them this afternoon.”

That’s right, Nicol had asked her if she wanted to go into the city, but Melanie hadn’t said she would.

Katherine hopped up and practically ran to Melanie’s closet. “What can you wear? Oh, I wish we could afford some new clothes for you. I don’t have much cash. Do you have any money in your purse? You don’t want to let them know how poor we are right now. Maybe you can pretend you don’t like anything you see. You can say you just bought a bunch of stuff, or that you’re saving all your money for Christmas presents, or something.”

“Mother! Stop writing a script for me. I know how to talk to people. Is she still on the phone? Did you tell her I’d go?”

“Of course I told her you’d go.” Katherine looked at Melanie as if she’d lost her mind to think she’d say no.

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