“I’m not angry.” He gave me a look, direct and intense. “And of course I came.”
I took another sip of my tea, buying a moment or two until I could breathe evenly again. “What did I say?”
“You told me where you were and asked if I would come get you.” He studied me for a moment longer, his eyes unblinking, and I set the cup down with a rattle. I’d forgotten how forceful his gaze could be, how that singular focus could unnerve me as no other. “You’re not going to tell me it wasn’t you on the phone,” he said.
“The phone was in my hand. I just don’t remember making the call.”
“Did you have too much to drink tonight?”
“Did I seem drunk to you?”
“Since I’ve never seen you inebriated, I can’t speak to that with any authority,” he said. “But no, you didn’t seem drunk. If anything, I’d say you were drugged.”
“That’s what I think, too. I just don’t know when it could have happened. I met Temple and Ethan for dinner, and as I walked back to my car from the restaurant, I saw two men on the sidewalk. I’m pretty sure one of them had followed me before. He came to the cemetery this morning pretending to be a reporter. I think the other man was Darius Goodwine.”
Everything seemed to go deathly still inside my office. Devlin’s expression, bemused a second ago, was now stone cold. “How do you know Darius Goodwine?”
“I don’t. But I’ve heard his name. Dr. Shaw must have mentioned it.”
Devlin sat there scowling while I talked. He didn’t move or interrupt, but I could tell that he was listening intently. He leaned forward, almost crouching, like a panther ready to spring. I’d thought of him that way before, but tonight his power and grace caught me newly by surprise. I felt an uptick in my pulse and took a deep breath to steady myself.
“He blew something into the air,” I said. “Some sort of powder, I think. Maybe I absorbed it through my skin and it knocked me out. The next thing I remember is waking up in a strange room. I’d never been there before, but I knew that I was in a house on America Street. An old blue Victorian. There were a lot of people inside, including Dr. Shaw’s assistant, Layla, and Tom Gerrity.”
Devlin’s gaze had moved to the back window, but now his head whipped around. “Gerrity? What was he doing there?”
“I don’t know, but I followed him to that same house yesterday after I left the Institute.”
“Why on earth would you follow Tom Gerrity?”
The explanation was a little tricky, considering my arrangement with Robert Fremont’s ghost. “It’s a long story and it has to do with Dr. Shaw. Gerrity and I happened to be leaving the Institute at the same time and I found myself behind him. So I followed him. It was an impulse.”
Devlin stared at me as if I’d sprouted a second head. Clearly, he couldn’t fathom such an action from me. “Do you have these impulses often?”
“I seem to lately. Anyway, Gerrity parked and went inside the house. While I waited for him to come out, I saw a man on the third-story balcony staring down at me. He was very tall, very thin. I’d never seen him before, but I somehow knew he was Darius Goodwine. I never got a good look at him until I found myself in that house tonight. He was the only one who talked to me. The others didn’t even seem to notice me.”
Devlin’s voice held a peculiar edge that I couldn’t interpret. “What did he say to you?”
“He asked what I knew about gray dust.”
“What do you know about gray dust?”
Was that suspicion I heard now?
“Only what Dr. Shaw told me.”
Another flicker of doubt. “Go on.”
“Darius and I talked for a few minutes and then the next thing I remember is being back on the street, looking up into the trees. And then you were there.”
“You must have been dreaming or hallucinating,” Devlin said. “You couldn’t have been in a house on America Street.”
“Why not, if they drugged me? They could have taken me there and brought me back.”
“That’s impossible. There wasn’t enough time. It took me less than five minutes to get to you after you called.”
He must have driven like the wind, I thought, and the notion of his urgency was exhilarating. “But if it was just a dream or a hallucination, how could I remember details like the bare lightbulb swaying overhead or the purple caftan Layla wore or the smell of camphor and eucalyptus and all those candles? How would I know that Darius Goodwine has a scar on his throat and another on the back of his hand? He wears an amulet around his neck and his eyes are the color of topaz.”
Devlin got up abruptly and paced to the window, head bowed in thought. “You said you saw him the day you followed Tom Gerrity.”
“From a distance. I never spoke to him. Not until tonight.”
“He was there on the street with you. He made you think you were somewhere else, but it was all just an illusion. I’ve seen him do it before.”
“Are you talking about hypnosis?”
“Drugs, hypnosis. I don’t know how he does it. But I once saw him convince a woman she had snakes crawling inside her body. I thought she would claw her skin off before we could subdue her. Darius just laughed and called it a parlor trick.”
“Why would he do such a thing?”
“He enjoys having power over people.”
“And gray dust gives him power?”
“So he would have you think.” Devlin turned to face me. “What else did he say to you?”
“That he would come to me in my dreams and no amulet or spell or mojo bag could stop him. Nor could you.”
“We’ll see about that,” Devlin said with clenched fists.
I got up and went over to him. “What are you going to do?”
“Something that should have been done years ago.” I could sense that restless tension in him again, and it scared me.
“What does that mean?” When he didn’t answer, I placed a hand on his sleeve. “Why do you have so much animosity for Darius Goodwine? It isn’t just about the gray dust, is it? Your quarrel with him is personal. Does it have something to do with Mariama?”
He turned and caught my arms, his dark eyes glittering coldly. “I don’t give a damn about Mariama.”
Chapter Twenty-Seven
I actually gasped, my gaze going at once to the back garden where I was sure Mariama must lurk. The way he said her name so coldly, so contemptuously, seemed almost like blasphemy. She had once broken a window in my office out of anger. She’d shoved me down in Clementine’s garden and knocked her own portrait off the wall in Devlin’s house. What manner of vengeance she would seek for this desecration of her memory, I could only wonder and dread.
Devlin was still holding my arms. His face was a dark, impassive mask except for those glittering eyes. Slowly, he brought me to him, one hand sliding up into my hair as he lowered his mouth to mine.
“You’re the one I care about,” he murmured against my lips.
For one insecure moment, I thought he might be trying to convince himself as much as me. Then I wasn’t sure I even cared. Not while he stood so close. Not with that dark promise shimmering in his eyes.
His lips moved to my ear and nipped at the lobe. “You’re the one I want,” he drawled, and I was lost. Utterly and completely and perhaps stupidly lost.
It was then that I realized Devlin had magic of his own because somehow I found myself backed up against the wall, and I had no memory of how I’d gotten there. He stood in front of me, blocking me from the garden as if
