muttered
“It’s not this place. It’s you,” I told him. “You’ve had a long day. We both have. I feel a little drained myself.”
He frowned at that. “How long was I out?”
“A half hour. Forty-five minutes, maybe.” It occurred to me then that he might be wondering why I was sitting beside him. Quickly, I grabbed the afghan from the back of the chaise. “I thought you might be cold.”
As I pulled the cover over him, his hand closed on mine. I knew that I should pull away from him. The ebb and flow of energy between us made me light-headed, but I didn’t move.
“I feel like I’ve been asleep for hours.” His head rested against the back of the chaise, but his eyes were still on me. We spent a few moments of uneasy silence and I did contemplate getting up and returning to my desk. But his hand was still on mine. I couldn’t extract myself without some awkwardness.
“Who are you named after?” he asked unexpectedly.
I looked at him in surprise. “No one that I know of.”
“There’s no story behind your name?”
“Should there be?”
“I thought it might be a family name. It suits you, though. It’s a little old-fashioned.”
I bristled at that. “There’s nothing old-fashioned about the name or me.”
His eyes glinted. “I didn’t mean it as an insult. I’m old-fashioned, too. It’s how we’re brought up down here. Saddled with tradition, yoked with expectations. And all those damn rules.”
“I know about rules,” I said. “You have no idea.”
His hand slid away from my wrist and he entwined his fingers with mine. I couldn’t have been more shocked and I wondered if he could feel the way I trembled.
“I shouldn’t be here,” he said on a sigh. He held up our linked hands and studied them, as if trying to divine some elusive message in the way our fingers were entangled.
“Why not?” I knew why he shouldn’t be here, but I was dying to hear his take. “I’m not so old-fashioned that I can’t be alone with a man in my own home.”
“I don’t mean that. I mean…I shouldn’t be here. With you.” He put a subtle emphasis on the pronoun. “You scare me.”
“I do?”
He grew very still. “Sometimes you make me forget.”
My heart was pounding so hard, I thought it might burst from my chest. “Is that bad?”
“I don’t know. I’ve held on for so long…I’m not sure I’m ready to let go.”
“Then you shouldn’t.”
He said my name then. Just that.
He cupped my face and drew me toward him, staring for the longest time into my eyes. I thought that he meant to kiss me and my eyes closed in anticipation. Instead, he moved his thumb slowly back and forth across my bottom lip, exactly the way I had imagined in the restaurant. It wasn’t a kiss, hardly even a caress, but no one had ever done anything so sensuous to me in my life. It was as if he’d read my mind that night, discerned my innermost thoughts and desires.
He pulled me down against him, wrapped his arms around me and we lay there in silence until he drifted back off. I could feel the steady thud of his heart beneath my hand. It grew stronger as he slept and I grew weaker.
Still, I didn’t move.
I stayed in Devlin’s arms until the scent of jasmine became unbearable in my office.
Then I got up and went over to the window to look for her. Shani was in the swing, moving slowly back and forth, her long hair swaying in the breeze.
She hadn’t come alone this time. Mariama stood at the very edge of the shadows, her taunting gaze not on her daughter, but on me.
I heard Devlin leave just before dawn. I’d gone to bed fully dressed and now I slipped from beneath the covers and hurried to the front window to see him off. As he opened the front gate and stepped onto the sidewalk, Mariama and Shani appeared in the gray light. They floated on either side of him as he crossed the street to his car.
Halfway across, Mariama’s ghost turned to glance over her shoulder. I pulled back from the window, but she knew I was there. And like Shani’s ghost, she wanted me to know she knew.
I didn’t look out the window again, but I knew when Devlin drove away. The more distance he put between us, the stronger I felt, and it seemed clear to me now that this house, this hallowed sanctuary, could protect me from ghosts, but it could not protect me from Devlin.
Thirty
I left the house later that morning freshly showered, dressed and with a renewed sense of purpose. My first stop of the day was the Charleston Institute for Parapsychology Studies, and as I headed around to the side entrance, I wondered if I might be just as well served across the street at Madam Know-It-All’s. My last visit with Dr. Shaw had left me with more questions than answers.
The same blonde with the same silver adornments greeted me at the front door and ushered me down the hall to Dr. Shaw’s office, then discreetly slid the pocket doors closed behind me.
The sunlight pouring in through the garden windows dazzled me so that I had to blink and readjust my focus. Dr. Shaw wasn’t at his desk, but stood at the far end of the room, in deep shadows, paging through a thick, leather-bound tome. No sooner had I noticed him than he carelessly tossed the book aside, plucked another from the shelf and riffled almost frantically through the leaves.
His appearance stunned me. I’d always found a certain absentminded charm in his threadbare attire, but now he looked unkempt, his shirt and trousers so rumpled I thought he must have slept in them. And that gorgeous dome of white hair—the one area of his toilette that seemed to command careful attention—looked dull and lifeless.
I stood quietly for a moment, not certain he even knew I was about. I cleared my throat, shifted my feet, but nothing budged his attention from his task—shuffling through the pages of yet another book. He was obviously looking for something and it was just as obvious that the nugget he sought remained frustratingly elusive.
“You can stop fidgeting,” he said without looking up. “I know you’re there.”
“Have I come at a bad time? I did call first.”
“No, it’s fine. I’m having a rather exasperating morning, I’m afraid.”
“Anything I can do to help? I’m a pretty good researcher.”
He looked up, smiled faintly, then discarded yet another volume. “It would be hard to enlist your help when I don’t even know what it is I’m looking for.”
“I’m familiar with that feeling.”
He walked toward me then and when the light from the window hit him, I realized that my initial impression of him had been superficial. The wrinkled clothing and uncombed hair were the least of it. He didn’t look well. His skin had an unpleasant yellowish tinge, his eyes watery and bloodshot. I wondered if he’d been to sleep at all since the last time I’d seen him.
His usual elegance was absent, too, as he sat down heavily behind his desk. When he waved me to a chair, I saw a slight tremor in his hand that I hadn’t noticed before.
“What brings you by so early? Dare I hope you’ve gotten a better look at your shadow man?” His smile was almost pained, as if he found it a struggle to summon even a hint of his usual geniality.
“No, actually, I’m here for another reason. Another…event.”
The light now fell upon him harshly, revealing skin pulled so tightly over bone that I might have been conversing with a corpse. Then he shifted in his chair and the illusion thankfully vanished.
