Page 89 of Ghost Walk
“Ididn’t do anything. It was allthem. Those other trollops, who wanted to steal him away.” Eugenia slapped apalm against her demurely-covered chest. “We have aconnection. We’remeantto be together. Everyone knew it, but those bitches distracted him.”
“So you decided to get rid of all the competition? All his other dance partners from that night, so it would just beyou?” Grace edged backwards. “You murdered your own sister!”
“I tried to deal with Lucinda in a reasonable, civil, and ladylike way.Shewas the one who went and made it difficult.” Eugenia’s tone suggested that committing a gruesome homicide had been nothing but an inconvenience for her. “I went to her room that night and I explained that she needed to give me Jamie. Iknowthat she stayed home from church last Sunday to seduce him. I saw him sneaking from the house. You think I could just allow that kind of behavior to continue?”
“I’m not thrilled with the mental picture, either.” Grace admitted honestly.
“Lucinda wouldn’t listen to reason, though. She laughed when I told her that Jamie belonged to me.” Eugenia’s pinched lips pinched even tighter. “Laughed!” She shook her head. “She had the gall to tell me that Jamie and I would never be together. That even the two ofthemweren’t together, in any significant way. That he waswaitingfor someone.” Her voice sneered over the word. “Fool. He waswaitingfor me!No one else.”
“No.” Grace said quietly. “He was waiting for his Partner.”
Eugenia didn’t even hear her. She was lost in her memories, happy to have a captive audience to admire her brilliance. After years of living in Lucinda’s shade, it must have been liberating to finally shoulder her way into the spotlight. “Well, you can imagine, the discussion turned a great deal more unpleasant, after that. I had no choice but to tell Lucinda that shemustleave my beau alone or I would expose her scandalous behavior to our parents. And do you know how she replied?”
“Um… with a four-letter word, I’m guessing?”
“Worse! With threats of her own. She said she’d go to Jamie and tell him that I’d been spying on them. Watchingthemin flagrante delicto, through a small peephole between our rooms.”
“You watched Jamie and Lucinda have sex?” Grace echoed incredulously. “Ew!” Jesus, it was like time traveling into a rerun ofMelrose Place.
Eugenia gave a prim sniff. “I was merely keeping an eye on him. Making sure my sister didn’t do anythingtoovile.” She wrinkled her nose in distaste. “In any case, after her threats, I knew then what I had to do with Lucinda. She wasn’t going to stop until she had ruined me! So I pretended to go to bed, at the usual time.” She smiled at her own cleverness. “But really I was just waiting half an hour, for the rest of the house to fall asleep.”
“Waitingnaked.” Grace surmised.
“Well, I wasn’t about to get blood on my nightgown. I’msurethe servants would have noticed when they did the wash.” Eugenia rolled her eyes as if it was only logical. “Anyway, it was all very simple. I got a knife from the kitchen and snuck into Lucinda’s room. I’m not sure she had any idea what happened, until after she was dead and roasting in whatever ring of hell is saved for man-stealing whores.”
“What about your parents? Did you even think about them?”
“Myparents?!” Eugenia chortled. “They despised Lucinda. They’ll probably thank me for ridding the family of her brashness.”
“They’d prefer her dead on the bedroom floor?”
“Well, I wasgoingto make sure they never knew she was dead.” Eugenia shrugged, as if it was the thought that counted. “I planned to push her body out the window and then hide it in one of the marshes around here. I’d tell everyone that I heard her sneak out and they’d think she ran off with some man.” Eugenia paused, still pissed that her plans had been ruined. “…But thenyouinterrupted me.” She frowned. “How did you even suspect what I was planning?”
“I first read about the murders when I was a kid. My aunt had a book calledHorror in Harrisonburg.” Which she wasguessing Eugenia had a hand in writing. She craved attention and the smug sensation of knowing something nobody else did. “I just had no idea Lucinda’s killer was going to be her own little sister.”
Eugenia seemed confused by that explanation and offended by the phrasing. Both emotions had her temper flaring. “Itoldyou, I didn’t have a choice! Lucinda wouldn’t leave Jamie alone! She didn’t love him like I do!No oneloves him like I do!” Eugenia advanced on Grace, refocused on her mission. “Especially notyou.”
Grace gave a high-pitched laugh. “Well you’re right about that! My love for Jamie isnothinglike your crazy fixation. It’s real and so is his love for me.”
Eugenia barely heard her. “I thought Clara and Anabel were going to be problems for me. I planned to rid myself of them, once and for all. …But thenyoushowed up and I realized they werenothing. Even Lucinda was nothing, compared to you.”
Somehow Grace didn’t think that was a compliment. “Umm…”
Eugenia made an emphatic gesture with the knife, indicating that she wanted silence. “After all I’ve been through, my slut of a sister was actually right. Shewasn’tthe one he was waiting for.” Her eyes narrowed. “You’reall he can think about now. I see it in his eyes when he looks at you. He wants to marry you.You’rethe one I have to stop.”
This was seriously not going well. “You can try to kill me, but it won’t do any good. Jamiestillwon’t be your Partner.” Grace surreptitiously fumbled with her apron. “He belongs to me and he always will.”
That was not what Eugenia wanted to hear. “Sooner or later, he’ll see thatI’mthe one who loves him! Deep down healreadyknows it, butyou’rekeeping him from me!”
“At least I didn’t let him hang for crimes thatIcommitted. That’s how much you loved him. You’d rather see him die than fess up to being a lunatic.”
Eugenia had no idea what that meant, but it didn’t seem to matter. Her eyes were wild. “I think Clara saw thetruth about you from the start. I think youarea witch! I think you’ve put a spell on Jamie to lure him from me!”
Grace’s hand curled around the small vial that she had hidden in her pocket. She’d taken it off Loyal’s shelf in case Plan B was the only option and they needed to kidnap Clara, but now it was about to save her life.
“I’m not a witch.” She told Eugenia very clearly. “I’m a Rivera.” She threw the knockout powder, feeling triumph at her easy victory. She scrambled out of range as the green mist exploded all over the other woman and waited for it to do its work.
Except… Why was it green?
