Kirsty gave her a fierce stare. She decided the lady’s long wet hair was really a bunch of curly black snakes that would bite you if you got too close. Her skin was white. Didn’t ghosts have white skin? They must have white skin because they were really dead and so they had no blood left inside of them.
This woman had snaky hair and dead-ghost skin and... and wicked kelpie eyes that were looking at her right now.
Kirsty tried to look at the woman the same way she looked at her classmates when they made her feel she wasn’t good enough to play with them. She sat a little straighter and said, “I don’t like you.”
“Good. I’m not particularly fond of you either.” She slapped her hair out of her face and it whipped back behind her. Her hair was so long the tips of it brushed the rug.
She ignored Kirsty and looked around the bathing room, frowning. She stared at the tank and tub for a long time, then she looked around some more. After a moment she muttered, “No windows.”
Kirsty watched her cautiously. If she was looking for windows that meant she was going to steal something else or she was going to try to get away. “Father locked the door and now you can’t get out.”
“Thank you for that brilliant piece of knowledge. I doubt I could have figured it out on my own, windows being so hard to distinguish.”
“What’sdistinguish?”
“Something your father isn’t.”
Kirsty didn’t like it when grownups did that, made funny remarks that they knew she didn’t understand. But she wouldn’t let the lady know it. She pulled her blanket tighter around herself and stared at her because she wanted to make her feel uneasy, too.
The woman gave her the same look, and hers worked better because Kirsty felt as if she could see every next thought inside her head. Kirsty tried to think of everything ugly... snakes and spiders and Miss Harrington’s ruler.
But the lady wasn’t paying attention to her anymore. Instead she talked to herself and muttered something about kidnapping.
Kirsty stuck her chin up in the air. “My father would never let you kidnap Graham and me.”
“Kidnap you?” She burst out laughing. “Now that’s rich.”
“My father is the bravest and strongest man in the whole world.”
The woman stopped laughing. She was quiet for a second. She stared at Kirsty as if she wanted to say something very badly. But she didn’t speak, just looked like she was concentrating really hard, the way Kirsty had to do during arithmetic lessons.
The lock clicked suddenly and they both turned toward the door at the same time. Her father filled the doorway like those paintings in Harrington Hall filled their big frames.
“Well, well...” the woman said in a snotty voice. “Look at this. Samson’s here.”
Kirsty looked back at the lady again, wondering if she was making fun of her. But the lady was glaring at her father with one of those prickly looks people got when they wanted to let you know they’d get even. The same nasty look Chester Farriday gave her when he pulled his dumb old head from the mop bucket.
Her father stood there with dry clothes over his arm while he stared at the woman. He didn’t look angry, but she had his full attention, something that Kirsty had to work so hard for.
“She’s a thief,” Kirsty reminded him.
Her father’s gaze flicked to her. “She saved your foolish little life.”
“I can swim.” Shecouldswim.
He looked as if he wanted to argue but said nothing. Instead he tossed her dry nightclothes. She watched him while she quickly changed clothes. He closed the door, walked over, and stood above the snake-haired woman, who had to crane her neck back to look all the way up at her father. He was so very tall.
“I told you to get out of those wet clothes, George.”
The lady pulled the blanket tighter around her and her jaw got really tight. “No.”
They looked at each other for the longest time. Kirsty sat there watching them, looking from one to the other. The air grew really funny, like it did before a lightning storm when it was perfectly quiet and all the birds had suddenly gone away.
She didn’t like the way her father looked at this George woman. She didn’t know why. All she knew was she wanted him to stop because she was getting one of those strong feelings she got inside her sometimes. It was like her heart hurt or some important part of her was growing really small and soon there wouldn’t be anything left. She used to get that feeling just before she began to do something really dumb, like cry.
“So you want to stay in those soaked clothes and freeze to death.” He wore a strange smile, the kind Graham had when he knew a secret and hadn’t told her.
“I’m perfectly fine.”
