Cole and I took turns napping, attending GhostCon events with Albert and Jack like we really gave a crap about the feng shui of a haunted foyer, and watching Floraidh. Since our ward spent most of the day in her room concocting weird Scidair spells while Dormal looked after the B and B, we’d had to improvise our stalker spot, turning the walk-in linen closet beside Dormal’s room into a Scidair-hide. I came up with the name. It helped alleviate my minor claustrophobia to imagine I was a
We furnished the Scidair-hide with a laptop and folding chair, from which we eyeballed the empty hallway like we thought the walls were about to sprout ninjas. Sure, it would’ve been a lot more comfortable, not to mention safer, to guard her from one of our rooms. But if Bea tried something during the day, seconds would count. And though I could move a lot faster than I used to, I still wasn’t superhuman enough to race up two flights of stairs in time to save her from an assassin standing right at her door.
The first time Cole relieved me he came with good news. “Rhona’s driving your dad nuts. She keeps knocking on our door, asking him if he’d like to accompany her to her GAPT seminar tomorrow. I think that blow to her head has lodged an obsession for him deep in her cortex.”
“Cool!”
“Plus, while I was fending her off for him—”
“What!”
“He gave me twenty bucks and promised to fart under the covers for the rest of the day.” I shrugged. How could you argue with that? “Anyway, it gave me the chance to talk to her about Iona. She came with great references. Which I plugged into the database along with one of the shots our cameras picked up. She’s clean. Squeakily so.”
Bummer. I spent my break trying to solve the mystery of Bea’s true identity while some GhostCon idiot droned on and on about why people who die violently have such a hard time resting in the ever-after. I wanted to jump out of my chair and yell, “Well, I’d be pissed too!” I settled for relieving Cole early. Since I couldn’t shuffle my chips for the noise they’d make, I practiced walking one across the tops of my fingers. Amazing how much you can improve at something when that’s the only thing you do for two hours straight. Oh yeah, there was that ten minutes when I figured out Dormal’s secret.
Before my first nap I’d sent the pictures of her room to Tolly along with a request to let me know what she could make of them.ad m%' She’d gotten back to me with the results right around the middle of my last watch. The symbols on Dormal’s and Floraidh’s doorways were charms of protection, ones meant to keep ghostly and magical attacks neutralized. The squigglies on her wall? A massive curse aimed at one Edward Samos. The kind, Tolly said, that a scorned lover chooses, because wound around the curse is the demand for the stolen love to return.
“Meaning what, exactly?” I’d asked Tolly.
“If I had to guess, I’d say Samos broke up her happy home,” Tolly replied. “Do you know of anyone she’s holding out hopes of reuniting with?”
“Actually, yeah, I do.”
Around four Cole came to relieve me. “Anything new?” he asked as I handed him the laptop.
“Not much,” I replied. “Oh. Except I found out that Dormal’s in love with Floraidh, who’s in love with Samos.”
“Well, that could be significant.”
“I don’t know. Samos is dead. Why would Dormal want to kill Floraidh now?”
“Love is, like, the least logical emotion on earth,” he said, avoiding my eyes. “Look at us. On paper we’re perfect for each other, but in real life . . .” He shrugged.
I crouched down in front of him so I could get a better look at his expression. Hurt. Despite all my efforts, and although he’d pretended otherwise, I’d made his heart bleed. What to say now? Where were the words that would heal him without leaving ice between us?
“What are you looking for, Cole?”
“You!”
I shook my head. “Come on. You knew I wanted Vayl almost from the second we met. And you still came after me. What is it that you think I can give you?”
He closed the laptop lid, spread his fingers out across it and studied them, turned his hands over and watched his palms for a while. If he could’ve seen his future there, would he have felt any relief? “I want what my parents have. Real love. A whole lifetime of it. I’ve been looking, God, since I was probably fifteen. Every time I meet a woman I think,
I knew, if I had made a single different decision in my life, he might’ve been right. No Matt. No dead Helsingers. No life as an assassin and no Vayl might have all added up to a Jasmine Bemont with lots of Cole Jrs running around her suburban split-level. Because I did love him. And part of me wanted to be that woman for him.
I said, “You know I can’t do that to you. As much as I might want to, I can’t give you that life. You only think I’m the one because you don’t really know me. You’ve never seen the horror I’m capable of.”
“Jaz—”
“If only you’d consider somebody better. Like Viv.”
“She’s a great girl. We may go on a few dates. We may sadatometay together for a month or two. Someday we’ll probably be good friends. But I can already tell she’s not the one.”
I’d put my hands on his knees to make my point. Now I dropped them. “I’m sorry.”
When Cole’s answer turned out to be a shrug, I shuffled off to his room to try for a last power nap before Vayl rose. I’d been worried about sleeping after my confrontation with Brude, but Raoul and Colonel John had assured
