“John Devlin’s daughter. She seems to have latched onto me.”
“She drowned,” he said.
I whirled in surprise. “Have you seen her?” A woman walking by on the Battery slanted me a curious glance, and I turned back to the harbor, lowering my voice. “You’ve seen Shani Devlin?”
“I told you I keep my distance from the other ghosts.”
“Then how do you know about the drowning?”
“Someone must have told me.”
I was silent for a moment. “You say you have no recollection of the shooting or of the time preceding it. You don’t even know why you were in the cemetery or the identity of the woman you met sometime earlier, the one whose perfume you still wear. Yet you know about a death that occurred just hours before yours. The accident happened at around twilight. The car Shani was riding in went through a guardrail into a river, and she and her mother were trapped inside. You were shot sometime between two and four in the morning. In the hours in between, you somehow learned about Shani’s death. This could be important because it would help establish a timeline. Did someone call to tell you about the accident?”
“I remember nothing,” he said.
“Not true. You remembered she drowned. That must mean something.”
“I was a cop, remember? It wasn’t unusual to hear about accidents, especially one involving another detective’s kid.”
A man sidled up to the railing to admire the bloodred sunrise. “Beautiful, isn’t it?”
“Yes, lovely,” I murmured.
“I’ve watched sunrises all over the world,” he said. “Nothing beats the one over Charleston Harbor.”
I smiled noncommittally as I watched one of the pelicans break formation and dive, emerging from the sea a moment later with a flash of quicksilver in its beak.
“Have a nice day,” the stranger murmured and sauntered away.
I glanced over to make certain Fremont was still beside me. He was.
“Something about that girl’s death,” he muttered.
“What?” I asked anxiously.
“I don’t know. Tell me more about her ghost. You say she’s latched onto you?”
“Like you, she can’t move on. She wants my help, but I’m not sure what it is I’m supposed to do.”
He said, very softly, “You still don’t know who you are, do you? You still don’t understand why we come to you.”
His ghostly voice swept over me. “You come because I can see you.”
He nodded vaguely as he turned back to the harbor. “Why can’t the child move on?”
I took a deep breath, trying to quell a rising foreboding. “I can’t say for sure. She was only four years old when she died. She doesn’t converse with me the way you do, but she can communicate.”
“You mean the heart?”
“And sometimes I hear her in my head. I think she can’t move on because her father won’t let her go.”
“That makes sense. I saw them together a few times. They were very close.”
“Her mother was trapped in the car, too, but I doubt she’s ready to move on. She has John right where she wants him.”
“That sounds like Mariama,” he said, his gaze still on the horizon.
The sound of her name startled me, and I turned to stare at his profile. “You knew her?”
“We grew up together,” he said, in that strangely hollow voice.
“Were you friends?”
“Friends? Hardly… .”
“Lovers?”
“Every man who crossed Mariama’s path loved her.”
“Including you?”
“For a time. Then I moved to Charleston and discovered that the world didn’t revolve around Mariama Goodwine.”
“How did she take that revelation?”
“Not well.”
“Are you the reason she came to Charleston?”
“She came because she saw an opportunity and seized it. A man named Rupert Shaw offered to finance her education.”
“I know Dr. Shaw. He’s a friend of mine.” Fremont paused and I could feel a facture in the air as if something unseen had moved between us. “He used to spend a lot of time in Beaufort County.”
“Doing what?”
“Research,” he said. “He was particularly interested in Essie Goodwine, Mariama’s grandmother. She was the most prominent root doctor in the area. He wanted to learn about medicinal conjure, but knowing Essie, she only taught him a few harmless incantations and spells. She wouldn’t cotton to anyone’s use of the root for evil.”
“Evil? I hardly think that criteria would apply to Dr. Shaw,” I said, remembering my own visit with Essie Goodwine. She’d given me a packet of Life Everlastin’ and an amulet to ward off evil spirits.
She’d also told me there would come a time when I would need to tell Devlin about Shani’s ghost because he would have to choose between the living and the dead. I couldn’t imagine revealing such a thing to him back then, but last night I had come very close.
He probably did know on some level. The draft, the cold spots…the inexplicable sounds in the middle of the night. The spiny hair at his nape, the icy shiver along his spine…
I forced my attention back to the ghost at hand.
Robert Fremont gazed down at me so intently, I wondered for a moment if he could read my thoughts. He had the power to pass himself off as human. What else could he do?
“Do you know anything about rootwork?” he asked.
“I only know what I’ve read here and there. You don’t grow up in South Carolina without some knowledge, no matter how rudimentary. It originated in West Africa, didn’t it?” Which naturally made me think of Darius Goodwine.
“Devotees believe that all things have spiritual essence, a soul even. A knowledgeable root doctor can tap into that universal power through the spirit world and use it for good or ill. Mariama was raised to respect the root. She was meant to follow in Essie’s footsteps. I think that’s why Shaw really brought her to Charleston.”
“So that he could use her to tap into the spirit world? I suppose that makes sense. He’s always had a keen interest in the afterlife, but not for personal gain or power. His wife was ill for a long time before she died. He tried to make contact through séances, but according to Devlin, Mariama wanted no part of it. She was afraid of what Dr. Shaw was trying to do.”
“She had a healthy fear of the dead as anyone with her knowledge would.”
“Because a person’s power isn’t diminished by death?”
“Because she knew you can’t always control what you bring back,” he muttered.
A chill wind feathered up my spine. “Did you see a lot of Mariama after she moved here?”
“Some, but she wasn’t in town long before she met someone new.”
“John?”
“He was taboo and that made him all the more irresistible to her.”
“Why was he taboo?”
“Old resentments run deep in these parts. Distrust of the white man is still alive and well, and a union with John Devlin was considered a betrayal by some. He wasn’t just white, he was rich. Old-money, Charleston rich.”
“So, Mariama’s family didn’t approve of the relationship?”
“It was deeper than disapproval. And much more complicated.”
I was very curious about Devlin and Mariama’s relationship, but reluctantly I moved on to a new subject.
