The Prophet

“I came to see you.”

He turned to glance out the door. “How did you get here? I didn’t see your car outside.”

“I parked down the street.”

“Because you saw someone watching the house?”

“Because I didn’t want you to see me,” I blurted. “I wasn’t sure I’d have the nerve to knock on your door.”

“It takes nerve to knock on my door?”

I sighed. “Yes, and you know why.”

It was all I could do to keep from reaching out to him, so magnetic was his presence. I let my gaze drift over him again. He’d buttoned his shirt while he was outside. The cut, as always, was perfection. He had an eye for clothes and the money to indulge his refined tastes. But there was an edge to the way he dressed, a hint of the rebellious nature that had driven him away from his elite upbringing and into the arms of Mariama Goodwine.

“So, why did you want to see me?” he asked carefully.

He was still staring out through the leaded glass panel in the front door. I focused my gaze on his profile and shivered. “I got your messages. I didn’t have a chance to ask you about them last evening.”

Slowly, he turned back to me. “What messages?”

“The ones you sent while I was away. The text came on my way back from Asher Falls.”

“Asher Falls?”

“It’s a small town in the Blue Ridge foothills near Woodberry. I had a restoration there, but then I had to leave suddenly, and I was on the ferry when I received your text.”

Something flitted across his face. “I never texted you.”

“But…the message came from your phone. I’m certain of it.”

“I didn’t send it,” he insisted.

“Then who did?”

“I have no idea. Did you save it?”

“I had to replace my phone recently, and I lost everything. But it was sent from your number. I’m sure of it. And before that, I received an email from you. I suppose you didn’t send that, either?”

“No.”

“Well this is very strange.” And more than a little unsettling. “I don’t know what to say. I’m not making this up.”

He smiled thinly. “I never thought you were.”

I felt like bursting into tears. I’d been so certain the messages had come from him. And now to find out that he hadn’t tried to contact me… .

It was foolish to feel so devastated, I told myself. And yet I did.

“Who could have sent them?”

“I don’t know,” Devlin said. “But I intend to find out.”

As I watched him, heart in my throat—and in my eyes—Mariama floated between us. I tried not to track her with my gaze.

How could he not feel the cold? How could he not flinch from her touch?

Go away, I thought.

I could hear her taunting laughter in my head. You go away.

Was I mad? I wondered. Had my years of living with ghosts finally driven me over the edge? Ever since Asher Falls, not only could I see specters, but I could hear them.

“What’s wrong?” Devlin asked.

“I was just wondering why someone would go to the trouble of making me think the messages were from you. They must have somehow gained access to your phone, your email…” I trailed off as Fremont’s cryptic words came back to me yet again.

“That’s not likely,” Devlin said.

Wasn’t it?

Had Fremont somehow sent those messages from beyond in order to lure me back to Charleston?

We have to act quickly, he’d said. Do you understand? It has to be now.

Devlin was watching me closely. “You’re trembling. Are you sure you’re okay?”

“Yes. I’m still a little shaken and it’s cold in this house. Haven’t you noticed?”

He shrugged. “It’s always been drafty.”

Always? Or just since the ghosts came?

“What did the messages say?” he asked.

I was reluctant to reveal my intimate interpretation of the missives, particularly now that I knew they hadn’t been sent by him. “In the email, you asked where I was.”

“Did you answer?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t really know,” I said truthfully. “I was out of town, so I didn’t think there was anything to be gained by telling you my whereabouts.”

“What about the text?”

“It said ‘I need you.’” My face warmed as he stared down at me.

Then he leaned in, his gaze dark and fathomless. “I need you,” he drawled.

“Y-yes. That’s what it said.”

“Nothing more?”

I shook my head.

He looked pensive and slightly ominous. “When did you say you received the text?”

“A few weeks ago.”

“And yet, you’re just now coming to see me about it.”

Yes, there was that. I couldn’t explain my hesitance without giving away more of my feelings than I cared to reveal. “I couldn’t come at once. I needed some time to recuperate when I got back. I wasn’t well.”

“Not well?” He placed his hands on my shoulders and turned me to the light. “You’ve been through something. I can see it on your face, in your eyes.” His voice dropped. “What happened to you, Amelia?”

Don’t, I thought miserably. Don’t say my name. Don’t look at me that way. I’m only human. How can I not melt when you look at me like that?

“I’m better now,” I said.

He took my chin and gently tilted it. “What are those marks on your face? Who did that to you?” I heard something in his voice, a dark and dangerous undercurrent that made me shiver.

“Not who, what,” I tried to say lightly. “I tangled with a briar patch. Occupational hazard. It was nothing.”

“I don’t agree.”

I had backed away inadvertently, until I felt the wall behind me. Devlin moved with me, and now I started to feel panicky because he had that look again. He wouldn’t try to kiss me, surely. Not after the way I’d run out on him.

But he was slowly leaning toward me, dark eyes glinting with something I didn’t want to put a name to.

He said Amelia on a whisper, and my resistance weakened. I might have reached for him, despite my best intentions, but Mariama was there, as always. Floating between us. Touching Devlin. Touching me.

I drew a tremulous breath and turned my head away. “I should go. If you didn’t send those messages, I suppose there’s nothing more to talk about.”

“Actually, there’s a lot that needs to be said.”

“It’s getting late and I have to be up early—”

He lifted a hand to my hair and let the strands sift through his fingers. “Don’t go.”

I closed my eyes and sighed. “I have to.”

He placed a hand on the wall above me, trapping me. He didn’t touch me again, but I could feel the heat of his skin mingling with the cold of Mariama’s presence. She’d drifted away, but not too far. She was somewhere in