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instinctively knew, would be initiated by Helena Devereaux.
    The silence seemed to drag into eternity.
    “So you are the woman my son married,” Helena rasped at last, her eyes narrowing to appraising slits as her nostrils flared slightly. “Well, I suppose there’s nothing to be done about that, is there?” Then her eyes flicked away from Anne, taking in each of the children in turn. Her head bobbed in a barely perceptible nod. “The girl is a Devereaux,” she pronounced. “As for the boy, I don’t—”
    “His name is Jeff,” Anne said, her voice emerging from her throat in a strangled squeak, forced out only to prevent her son from hearing whatever his grandmother had been about to say. “And he’s every bit as much a Devereaux as Julie.”
    Helena’s eyes—cold as a snake’s now—fixed on Anne again, and once more Anne felt the strange power of the old woman. No wonder Kevin has nightmares about her, she thought. And no wonder he never wanted to come back.
    And then, once again, another unbidden thought formed in her mind.
    She doesn’t intend for us to leave. Not ever
.
    Helena’s eyes abruptly released Anne and moved to her son. “Kevin,” she said, her tongue caressing his name. And then, though his mother said nothing else, Kevin stepped forward and offered the old woman his arm. Taking it, Helena struggled to her feet and started across the entry halltoward the open doors to the living room, her son on one side of her, her daughter on the other.
    It’s not just the island she owns, Anne reflected as she reluctantly followed the three Devereauxes into the gloomy depths of the parlor beyond the double doors. She owns Marguerite, and now she owns Kevin again too. And she wants to own my children.
    As Anne settled herself on the sofa a moment later, her children flanking her and sitting unnaturally close as they warily watched their grandmother, Anne wondered if there was anything she—or anyone else—could do to thwart Helena Devereaux’s wishes.
    An hour later, when Helena finally returned to her room, Anne felt exhausted, as if from the old woman’s very presence—her piercing eyes smoldering with the power of an indomitable spirit, belying the obvious weaknesses of her body. It wasn’t until then that Anne realized the meaning of the makeup Helena had used to cover the ravages of age.
    It was theatrical makeup, intended to cover up the person behind it, exposing only a carefully constructed façade to the world. Though the façade Helena Devereaux had created was truly frightening, Anne had the certain feeling that the terrifying mask, and the woman behind it, were one and the same.

CHAPTER 3

    It was nearly two o’clock when Jeff and Julie finally escaped the cavernous gloom of their grandmother’s house, emerging out into the brightness of the summer afternoon only to have the oppressively tropical heat close around them like shrouds of wet sheets. They stayed in the protective shade of the oaks for a while, gazing out at the shimmering air that lay over the island.
    “It’s weird, isn’t it?” Jeff finally ventured. “Aunt Marguerite hardly said a word, and Grandmother looks like she already died.”
    Almost against her will, Julie snickered at the remembered image of the strangely painted old lady who had sat perched on a wing chair by the fireplace, ignoring the peeling wallpaper and mildewed plaster of the ceiling while she rambled on about how privileged the children should feel to be there. “It’s like she doesn’t even know the place is falling down around her,” she said finally. “And she hardly even spoke to Mom.”
    Jeff rolled his eyes scornfully in a vain attempt to rid himself of the strange fear he had felt in the presence of his grandmother. “And did you hear her talking about how I look exactly like Mom? Everybody knows I look just like Dad.”
    Julie giggled. “I bet she tells Aunt Marguerite that Mom’s just a carpetbagger and they should just pretend