“Devlin?”
I’m not even sure what I meant to say to him, but the words fled as I glanced over his shoulder where a luminous shimmer had appeared.
A moment later, his ghosts floated through the veil into the falling twilight.
Devlin found nothing in the woods. I wasn’t surprised. The thing I’d glimpsed at the tree line didn’t have enough substance to leave even a footprint, but somehow it had force. I’d never felt anything like it.
But at the moment, I had something else to worry about. We were standing by my car and Devlin’s ghosts were with him. The chill of their presence consumed me. It was all I could do not to shiver and give myself away.
The child remained at his side, cheek resting against his leg, but the woman had glided forward this time. Her boldness alarmed me. The icy fire of her eyes frightened me. I didn’t look at her full on, of course, but I could still see her. She had been a beautiful woman. Exotic and sultry. Even in death, her essence was powerful. Palpable.
Devlin peered down at me. “Are you sure you’re all right?” He touched my arm and a bolt of lightning shot through me. The air all around us became electric and my every nerve ending tingled from the charge.
Drawn by the surge of energy, the woman drifted to my side. She placed her hand on my arm, mimicking Devlin. The heat of the day still lingered on my skin, and she slid her fingers up my arm, savoring the warmth, as she floated around me. I could feel her hands in my hair, her breath in my ear. Her lips against my neck. Her touch was like the coldest of whispers, and it came to me that she wasn’t just drawn to my warmth. She was taunting me.
She stood behind me, Devlin in front of me. A more chilling ménage à trois I couldn’t imagine. It took every ounce of my strength to ignore those ghostly caresses. Devlin had said something to me, but I didn’t hear a word of it.
I stared at him now, making him the focus of my concentration. His expression never changed. He was completely unaware of the dynamics that played out all around us.
“I almost forgot to tell you,” I said, my voice only slightly breathless. “I saw someone earlier. A private detective named Tom Gerrity.”
Everything shifted. The ghost’s hands stilled in my hair as Devlin’s expression grew rigid. She drifted back to his side, and then she and the child melted into the background, as if his sudden tension had repelled them.
“What did he want?” His words came out cold and clipped. I had to suppress another shudder.
“He asked me to give you a message.”
“What message?”
Quickly, I told him everything I could recall of my conversation with the P.I. Devlin said nothing, but I could tell the very mention of Gerrity’s name had upset him.
“He said he needed a go-between because he’s persona non grata with the police department,” I said. “What did he do?”
A muscle worked in Devlin’s jaw. “He used to be a cop. A case went bad and another cop died because of him.”
I had a feeling there was a lot more to the story, but I wouldn’t hear it from Devlin. Which was just as well. It was time the night ended for us. I needed to get away from him and his ghosts. Away from Oak Grove and that thing that had come out of the woods. A lot had happened and I wanted to be home, safe and sound, in my own little sanctuary to try and make sense of it.
But as I drove away, I found myself missing Devlin’s touch. Cold and bereft, I summoned Papa’s rules and chanted them to myself.
Twelve
Temple and I had agreed to meet at Rapture that night, a fusion cuisine restaurant housed in a beautiful old building on Meeting Street that had once been a rectory. Whether the building or the ground beneath was hallowed, I had no idea, but it was one of the few places in Charleston—despite its many churches—where I felt safe and at peace. And I needed that tonight more than ever.
After leaving the cemetery, I’d gone home to shower and change, and had tried not to think about that thing that had come out of the woods. Or of Devlin and his ghosts. I wanted to believe my imagination had played some role in the events of the day, but hours later, I was still shaken.
Even as a child, I’d never experienced the kind of terror I’d felt on the path. My father had instilled in me a fear of ghosts, but he had also given me a way to protect myself from them. Now I wasn’t so sure those rules would be enough. Whatever had surfaced from the woods was like nothing I had seen before.
Papa’s warning made me shudder with dread and I wondered how it all tied together—Devlin’s ghosts, the reappearance of the old man’s entity and now that shadow creature. And at the center of it all, my burgeoning attraction for a haunted man. It should have been a simple matter to keep my distance from Devlin, but even when we were apart, I felt his pull.
Finding a parking place a few blocks from the restaurant, I hurried along the still-bustling streets, keeping watch over my shoulder. It wasn’t just otherworldly dangers I had to worry about tonight. As long as a killer was on the loose, I wasn’t about to let down my guard.
The breeze died away and my hair bristled a warning as the barometric pressure dropped, trapping the city in a heavy, waiting stillness. That eerie calm before the storm.
Temple was waiting in the bar area when I arrived and I was nonplussed to discover she’d invited Ethan Shaw to join us. Not that I minded his company. He’d inherited enough of his father’s charm and charisma to be an interesting dinner companion. But where Rupert had the fading looks of an aging film star, Ethan was more the boy-next-door type.
Once we were seated, I quickly discovered that he and Temple knew one another from their undergraduate studies at Emerson. I was dying to find out more about Afton Delacourt’s murder and the rumors that involved the Order of the Coffin and the Claw, but since Rupert had apparently been implicated in the slaying, I thought it best to wait until Temple and I were alone. After debriefing them on the Oak Grove discovery, I quietly sipped my Cabernet Sauvignon and let the two of them catch up.
My chair was situated so that I had a view of the garden through the arched window by our table. Just beyond the fountain, a ghost hovered in deep shadow.
From what I could see, he’d been a young man when he died—high school age, I assumed, because he wore a maroon letterman’s jacket with a gold W on the breast and sleeve. He had a beefy build with a thick neck and broad, bullish features.
He stood with feet apart, arms in an aggressive, simian position away from his body. Ghosts of the young, particularly those of children, always touched me, but this one was different. There was something about him— apart from being dead—that I found extremely unpleasant. Frightful even. No matter what they’d done in life, the aura that surrounded most ghosts was misty and ethereal, but I saw no grace or beauty in this manifestation. He was surrounded by darkness, contorted by hostility and wrath, and I didn’t like looking at him.
Casually, I picked up my wineglass and turned away from the window, wondering if he had a host somewhere inside the restaurant.
Temple had deftly maneuvered the conversation around to her favorite subject—her work. She looked lovely tonight in a white cotton tunic and jeans. The beaded neckline gave the simple shirt a bohemian flair that suited her.
“Two years and I still haven’t found a suitable replacement for Amelia,” she lamented to Ethan. “She was my detail person. A real pain-in-the-ass stickler. We moved a cemetery once and everything had to be replicated right down to the placement of each seashell. Drove me crazy back then, but now I only wish I had two of her.”
“Flatterer,” I accused.
“No, it’s true. You just don’t find that kind of work ethic these days.”
