Книга - The Prophet

The Prophet
Amanda Stevens


My name is Amelia Gray. I am The Graveyard Queen, a cemetery restorer who sees ghosts.My father passed down four rules to keep me safe and I’ve broken every last one.A door has opened and evil wants me back. In order to protect myself, I’ve vowed to return to those rules.But the ghost of a murdered cop needs my help to find his killer.The clues lead me to the dark side of Charleston—where witchcraft, root doctors and black magic still flourish—and back to John Devlin, a haunted police detective I should only love from afar. Now I’m faced with a terrible choice:follow the rules or follow my heart.







My name is Amelia Gray.

I am the Graveyard Queen, a cemetery restorer who sees ghosts. My father passed down four rules to keep me safe and I’ve broken every last one. A door has opened and evil wants me back.

In order to protect myself, I’ve vowed to return to those rules. But the ghost of a murdered cop needs my help to find his killer. The clues lead me to the dark side of Charleston—where witchcraft, root doctors and black magic still flourish—and back to John Devlin, a haunted police detective I should only love from afar.

Now I’m faced with a terrible choice: follow the rules or follow my heart.


Praise for THE GRAVEYARD QUEEN SERIES by Amanda Stevens

“The beginning of Stevens’ Graveyard Queen Series left this reviewer breathless. The author smoothly establishes characters and forms the foundation of future storylines with an edgy and beautiful writing style. Her story is full of twists and turns, with delicious and surprising conclusions. Readers will want to force themselves to slow down and enjoy the book instead of speeding through to the end, and they’ll anxiously await the next installment of this deceptively gritty series.”

—RT Book Reviews, 4 ½ stars

“The Restorer is by turns creepy and disturbing, mixed with mystery and a bit of romance. Amelia is a strong character who has led a hard and—of necessity—secret life. She is not close to many people, and her feelings for Devlin disturb her greatly. Although at times unnerving, The Restorer is well written and intriguing, and an excellent beginning to a new series.”

—Misti Pyles, Fort Worth Examiner

“I could rhapsodize for hours about how much I enjoyed The Restorer. Amanda Stevens has woven a web of intricate plot lines that elicit many emotions from her readers. This is a scary, provocative, chilling and totally mesmerizing book. I never wanted it to end and I’m going to be on pins and needles until the next book in The Graveyard Queen Series comes out.”

—Fresh Fiction


The Prophet

Amanda Stevens












www.mirabooks.co.uk (http://www.mirabooks.co.uk)


Contents

Chapter One (#u7f05a142-700b-5ef4-932a-dcc3cb728d39)

Chapter Two (#ub1a9e13c-9b7d-5a96-b7c5-59b5b04df9a9)

Chapter Three (#uf6d29e9c-7f9f-5097-afa4-a8326b8230d9)

Chapter Four (#uac2b43c3-d30d-5252-b72c-984da0d7b4bf)

Chapter Five (#ue5b79cd8-a362-59b8-9b0d-d879e806ef2b)

Chapter Six (#ubad215b8-7449-53e8-965f-eef1335200ab)

Chapter Seven (#ufd0d5431-422a-5d81-adf2-477a9c1f032b)

Chapter Eight (#u4255fbe5-93ba-562f-b1dd-22df907fc881)

Chapter Nine (#u2e921ff9-d2a4-5b49-ab6d-1e87a2eb9618)

Chapter Ten (#u901ba5d9-31b8-58ca-8222-55ce519009df)

Chapter Eleven (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Twelve (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Thirteen (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Fourteen (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Fifteen (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Sixteen (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Seventeen (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Eighteen (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Nineteen (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Twenty (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Twenty-One (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Twenty-Two (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Twenty-Three (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Twenty-Four (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Twenty-Five (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Twenty-Six (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Twenty-Seven (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Twenty-Eight (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Twenty-Nine (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Thirty (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Thirty-One (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Thirty-Two (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Thirty-Three (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Thirty-Four (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Thirty-Five (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Thirty-Six (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Thirty-Seven (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Thirty-Eight (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Thirty-Nine (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Forty (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Forty-One (#litres_trial_promo)

Epilogue (#litres_trial_promo)


Chapter One

Something had been following me for days. Whether it was human, ghost or an in-between—like me—I had no idea. I’d never caught more than a glimpse out of the corner of my eye. No more than a flicker of light or a fleeting shadow. But it was there even now, in my periphery. A darkness that kept pace. Turning when I turned. Slowing when I slowed.

I steadied my gait even as my heart raced, and I berated myself for having strayed too far from hallowed ground. I’d lingered too long at my favorite market, and now it was nearing on twilight, that dangerous time when the veil thinned, allowing those greedy, grasping entities to drift through into our world, seeking what they could never have again.

From the time I was nine, my father had taught me how to protect myself from the parasitic nature of ghosts, but I’d broken his every rule. I’d fallen in love with a haunted man, and now a door had been opened, allowing the Others to come through. Allowing evil to find me.

A car thundered down the street, and I tensed even as I welcomed such a normal sound. But the roar of the engine faded too quickly, and the ensuing quiet seemed ominous. The rush hour traffic had already waned, and the street was unusually devoid of pedestrians and runners. I had the sidewalk all to myself. It was as if everything had faded into the background, and the scope of my world narrowed to the thud of my footsteps and heartbeats.

I shifted the shopping bag to my other hand, allowing for a quick sweep to my left where the sun had set over the Ashley River. The mottled sky flamed like embers from a dying fire, the light casting a golden radiance over the spires and steeples that dotted the low skyline of the City of Churches.

It was good to be back in my beloved Charleston, but I’d been on edge ever since my return, the raw nerves a symptom of the emotional and physical trauma I’d suffered during a cemetery restoration in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains. But there was another reason I couldn’t eat or sleep, a deeper unease that made me pace restlessly until all hours.

I drew a quivering breath.

Devlin.

The haunted police detective I couldn’t get out of my mind or my heart. The mere thought of him was like a dark caress, a forbidden kiss. Every time I closed my eyes, I could hear the whisper of his aristocratic drawl, that slow, seductive cadence. With very little effort, I could conjure the scorching demand of his perfect mouth on mine…the honeyed trail of his tongue…those graceful, questing hands… .

Returning my focus to the street, I glanced over my shoulder. Whatever stalked me had fallen back or disappeared, and my fear eased as it always did when I neared hallowed ground.

Then, a bird called from somewhere in the high branches, the sound so startling I stopped in my tracks to listen. I’d heard that trill once before in the evening shadows of a courtyard in Paris. The serenade was like no other. Gentle and dreamy. Like floating in a warm, candlelit bath. I would have thought it a nightingale, but they were indigenous to Europe and by now would have made the three-thousand mile trek to Africa for the winter.

In the wake of the songbird, a fragrance floated down to me, something lush and exotic. Neither sound nor scent belonged to this city—perhaps even to this world—and a warning prickled my scalp.

I heard a whisper and turned, almost expecting to see Devlin emerge from the shadows the way he’d appeared to me from the mist on the night we met. I could still see him as he was then—an enigmatic stranger, one so darkly handsome and brooding he might have stepped straight from my adolescent fantasies.

But Devlin wasn’t behind me. At this hour, he was probably still at police headquarters. I’d heard nothing more than the rustle of leaves, I told myself. The phantom whisper of my own longing.

And then, distantly, a child’s laughter drifted over me, followed by a soft chant. Somehow I recognized the voice even though I had never heard it before, and an image of Devlin’s dead daughter formed in my mind as clearly as if she stood before me.

Papa would have warned me to remember the rules. I recited them to myself as I turned slowly to scour the gathering twilight: Never acknowledge the dead, never stray far from hallowed ground, never associate with the haunted and never, ever tempt fate.

The ghost child’s voice came to me again. Come find me, Amelia!

Why I didn’t ignore her and continue on my way, I had no idea. I must have been enchanted. That was the only possible explanation.

The nightingale crooned to me as I left the sidewalk and followed a narrow alley to where an ornate gate opened into the walled garden of a private home. By entering, I ran the risk of being shot on sight for trespassing. Charlestonians loved their guns. But the danger didn’t stop me, nor did Papa’s rules because I’d fallen under that strange hypnotic spell.

Months ago, when I’d first seen Shani’s ghost hovering at Devlin’s side, she’d tried to make contact. That was why she’d followed me home that first night and left a tiny garnet ring in my garden. That ring had been a message just as surely as the heart she’d traced on my window. She wanted to tell me something… .

This way. Hurry! Before she comes… .

An icy foreboding clutched my spine. Danger was all around me. I could feel it closing in, but still I kept going, following the nightingale and that tantalizing scent through a maze of boxwood hedges and palmettos, through trails of evening primrose and midnight candy. The trickle of a fountain mingled with Shani’s ethereal laughter and then the hair on my nape lifted as she started to chant:



“Little Dicky Dilver

Had a wife of silver.

He took a stick and broke her back,

And sold her to a miller.

The Miller wouldn’t have her,

So he threw her in the river.”



It was a ghastly rhyme, one that I hadn’t heard in years, and the lines were made even more grotesque by the innocence of Shani’s singsong.

Fighting that sinister lethargy, I turned to retrace my steps to the gate, but she’d materialized on the walkway behind me, a mere shimmer of light at first, and then slowly the outline of a child began to take shape as the garden grew colder. I was scared—terrified, actually—and I knew that I was treading on dangerous territory. I was not only acknowledging the dead, but also tempting fate.

None of that seemed to matter at the moment. I couldn’t turn away. I couldn’t tear my gaze from that delicate specter that now barred my exit.

She wore a blue dress with a matching ribbon in her hair and a sprig of jasmine tucked into the lace trim at her waist. A mane of wiry curls framed her tiny face, giving her a winsome loveliness that stole my breath. She was lit by the softest of auras, silvery and diaphanous, but her features were clear to me. The high cheekbones, the dark eyes, the café-au-lait complexion spoke to her Creole heritage, and I fancied I could see a bit of her mother in that gossamer visage. But not Devlin. The Goodwine influence was far too dominant.

Very deliberately, the ghost child plucked the stem of jasmine from the lace and held it out to me.

I knew better than to take it. The only way to deal with ghosts was to ignore them, pretend not to see them.

But it was too late for that. Almost of its own volition, my hand lifted and I reached for the flowers.

The ghost floated closer—too close—until I could feel the death chill emanating from her tiny form. My fingers brushed the creamy blossoms she held out. The petals felt real to me, as warm and supple as my own skin. How that could be so, I had no idea. She had brought them with her from the other side. The blooms should have been withering.

For you.

She didn’t speak but I heard her just the same. Her voice in my head was sweet and lyrical, like the faint tinkle of a crystal bell. I lifted the jasmine to my nose and let the heady perfume fill my senses.

Will you help me?

“Help you…how?” I heard myself ask her. My own voice sounded distant and hollow, like an echo.

She lifted a tiny finger to her lips.

“What’s wrong?”

She seemed to fade as the air in the garden trembled and shifted. My heart was still racing, and I could see the rime of my breath mingling with a milky vapor that curled up out of the shadows. There was an odd copper taste in my mouth as if I had bitten my tongue. I felt no pain. I felt nothing at all except an icy fear that metastasized from my chest down into my limbs, paralyzing me.

The jasmine slipped through my numb fingers as the hair at my nape bristled. The night went deadly silent. Everything in the garden stilled except for that coil of mist. I watched, mesmerized, as it slithered toward me, twisting and writhing like a charmed cobra. The tension humming along my nerve endings was unbearable, as if the lightest touch could shatter me.

But when the contact came, it wasn’t light at all. The blow was quick and brutal, propelling me backward with such force, I lost my balance. Tripping over a small garden statue, I went sprawling. The ceramic cherub shattered on the stone pavers, and a moment later, the sound of voices inside the house dimly registered. A part of me knew the residents must have heard the racket, but my attention was still riveted on the walkway. Another entity had formed in the garden, and she hovered over me, dead eyes blazing in the deepening twilight.

Mariama. The ghost child’s mother. Devlin’s deceased wife.

In one petrified moment, I took in the filmy swirl of her dress, the bare feet, the hedonistic spill of curls down her back. And that mocking smile. Terrifyingly seductive. Even in death, Mariama’s mystique was pervasive, palpable. And so was her cunning.

Something Devlin had once told me about her flitted through my mind. According to her beliefs, a person’s power wasn’t diminished by death. A bad or sudden passing could result in an angry spirit wielding enough force to come back and interfere with the lives of the living, even enslave them in some cases. I had always wondered if that was her intent. To keep Devlin shackled to her with his grief and guilt. She sustained her existence on this side of the veil by devouring his warmth and energy, but the moment he let her go, the moment he started to forget, would she simply fade away?

I huddled there shivering, scolding myself for having followed Shani’s voice and that strange songbird. I shouldn’t have allowed myself to be lured into that garden. This was Mariama’s doing. I understood that now. She was interfering in my life, warning me to stay away from Devlin.

I felt a sting and looked down to find my hand covered in ants. I shook them off as I scrambled to my feet. In that brief moment when my eyes left the ghosts, they’d vanished, leaving nothing but a lingering frost in their wake.

The back door opened, and a woman stepped out on the porch. “Who’s there?” she demanded. She didn’t sound frightened at all, merely annoyed.

I didn’t know how to explain my presence in her garden so I grabbed my shopping bag and ducked behind a stand of azaleas even though I felt like a coward for doing so. I saw her shiver as she pulled a sweater around her body and gazed out into the shadows.

If I hadn’t still been so shaken by the ghostly encounter, I might have made my presence known instead of skulking in the bushes like a thief. I could have made up some story, told the woman that I’d chased my cat through her gate, then offered to pay for the broken statue. I was on the verge of doing exactly that when I spotted the silhouette of a man behind her in the doorway.

“I thought I heard something,” she said over her shoulder, and then he came out on the porch to join her.

My heart contracted as though from another powerful blow. I recognized the man, her companion. It was Devlin. My Devlin.

Now I knew why I had been enticed into this garden. I had been meant to see this.

Mariama appeared at Devlin’s side, and I could feel her glacial eyes on me, taunting and mesmeric. Her hair tangled in the breeze, and the gauzy hem of her sundress wrapped snakelike around her legs. I could see right through her, and yet, she seemed at that moment as vital as any living thing.

Her hand lifted to Devlin’s face, and she stroked his cheek, slowly, possessively, her gaze focused on mine. I didn’t hear her in my head the way I’d heard Shani, but her message was clear just the same. She would never let him go.

My chest contracted painfully, as though an invisible hand had reached inside my chest and gripped my heart. I sucked in air, willing my heartbeats to slow even as my legs trembled and weakened. Something horrifying was happening to me in that garden. I was being drained, my warmth and energy usurped by an entity that had made me her enemy.

Papa had cautioned me so many times:



What the dead want more than anything is to be a part of our world again. They’re like parasites drawn to our energy, feeding off our warmth. If they know you can see them, they’ll cling to you like blight. You’ll never be rid of them. And your life will never again be your own.





The ghost laughed at me now as though she’d heard Papa’s warning, too.

Shani materialized on the other side of her father and tapped his leg, willing his attention. He never looked down, never so much as flinched. He couldn’t feel her. He hadn’t a clue she was there. His focus was entirely on the brunette. He came up behind her and slipped his arms around her narrow waist. Her head dropped back to his shoulder, and the intimate murmur of their voices drifted across the garden to where I crouched in my hiding place.

He didn’t kiss or caress her the way a lover might. Instead, he just stood there holding her as his ghosts floated around them.

I couldn’t move or breathe. I couldn’t look away even though it was quite possibly the worst moment of my life.

* * *

After a few moments, Devlin went back inside and his ghosts vanished. But the woman lingered, her gaze scanning the twilight as though she could sense my presence. I didn’t dare move for fear of drawing her attention, but I was dying to get a better look at her. I could see little more than a shapely silhouette with a spill of dark, glossy hair over her shoulders. I knew she was attractive, though. She had an air about her, a certain vibe common to beautiful women.

She remained on the porch for several long minutes before following Devlin inside. I waited breathlessly to make sure neither of them came back out, then bolted from the garden and fled down the alley with barely a thought to my previous stalker.

I was so distraught by the sight of Devlin with another woman that I let down my guard and that wasn’t at all like me. Living with ghosts necessitated vigilance, but as I hurried toward the street, my mind remained in that strange garden and the lapse cost me. The looming shadow appeared out of nowhere and the next thing I knew, I was grabbed roughly and shoved up against the stone wall, a forearm jammed to my throat.

The pressure on my windpipe precluded a gasp, much less a scream, but the attack was over in the space of a heartbeat. Even as I flailed for the mace I carried in my pocket, the assailant was already backing away. The arm dropped from my throat and I heard a sharp intake of breath. Then incredulously, “Amelia?”

Devlin.

I was so gobsmacked by his nearness, I couldn’t utter a word. It had been months since I’d last seen him, but he’d visited my sleep nearly every night of our estrangement. Those dark, lush dreams allowed me to play out my every fantasy about him, but now I realized what a pale substitute the visions had been. Even with him standing there looking down at me so warily, I could think of little more than how much I still craved his touch. How much I’d missed his kisses.

“Are you all right?” he asked quickly.

Oh, that voice! That low, silky, old-world drawl that would always be my undoing.

I swallowed with some difficulty. “Yes, I think so.”

“What on earth are you doing out here? And why didn’t you say something? I might have hurt you.” He sounded a bit rattled himself.

“You didn’t give me a chance,” I said defensively. “Do you always grab people without reason?”

“I had a reason. I was visiting a friend and we thought we heard someone in the garden.”

“You mean a prowler?” How completely innocent I sounded.

There was a curious hesitation, then, “Yes, a prowler. I circled around to head him off.” He glanced past me up the alley. “You didn’t see anyone come out of here, did you?”

I shook my head as my heart continued to hammer.

“What about on the street? Did you notice anyone lurking about?”

“I didn’t see anything.”

His gaze was still on me, dark and probing. “Your turn, then. What are you doing here?”

“I…was just on my way home from the market.” Lamely, I held up my shopping bag.

“You’re a little off course, aren’t you?”

“You mean the alley?” I moistened dry lips. “I heard something, too, so I decided to investigate.”

His head came up and I sensed a sudden tension. “What did you hear?”

“It sounds crazy now,” I said reluctantly.

He took my arm and a chill went through me, half alarm, half desire. “Tell me.”

“I heard a songbird.”

“A songbird?” Under other circumstances, his utter bewilderment might have been amusing.

“It sounded like a nightingale.”

His grasp tightened almost imperceptibly and I could have sworn I saw a shadow sweep across his handsome features. Impossible, of course. Dusk was upon us and I could make out little more than the gleam of his eyes, but I had the distinct impression that my words had touched a nerve.

“There are no nightingales in this part of the world,” he said. “You must have heard a mockingbird.”

“I thought of that. But when I was in Paris, nightingales sang almost every evening in the courtyard of my hotel. Their trill is very distinct.”

His tone sharpened. “I know what they sound like. I heard the damn things often enough in Africa.”

Yet another detail I hadn’t known about him. “When were you in Africa?”

“A lifetime ago,” he muttered as he tilted his head to stare up into the trees.

Now I was the one utterly mystified. “Why does it matter what kind of bird it was?”

“Because if you heard a nightingale in Charleston—” He broke off, his head snapping around at the soft snick of a gate. Then he drew me to him quickly, dancing us both back into the shadows along the fence. I was too startled too protest. Not that I had any desire to. The adrenaline pulsing through my bloodstream was intoxicating, and my hand crept to the lapel of his jacket, clinging for a moment until a woman’s voice invaded our paradise.

“John? Are you out here?”

When he didn’t immediately answer, I slanted my head to stare up at him. Our faces were very close. So close I had only to tiptoe to touch my lips to his—

“I’m here,” he called.

“Is everything okay?” she asked anxiously.

“Yes, fine. I’ll be there in a minute.”

“Hurry in.” I heard the gate close behind her and a second later, the back door of the house slammed. But Devlin and I were far from alone. A breeze stirred, whispering through the leaves, and I felt the unnatural cold of his ghosts. I couldn’t see them, but they were there somewhere, floating in the shadows, driving a wedge between us just as surely as the unknown woman’s husky voice.

Devlin still held me, but now there was a distance between us. An uncomfortable chasm that made me retreat into myself. “I should be going.”

“Let me drive you home,” he said. “It’s almost dark out.”

“No, but thank you. It’s only a few blocks and this is a safe neighborhood.”

“Safe is a relative term.”

How well I knew.

“I’ll be fine.” I was already walking away when he said my name, so softly I was tempted to ignore the entreaty for fear I’d only imagined it. I turned and said on a breath, “Yes?”

His dark eyes shimmered in the fading light. “It was a mockingbird you heard. It couldn’t have been a nightingale.”

My heart fell and I nodded. “If you say so.”


Chapter Two

Devlin didn’t call out to me again and I never glanced back. But the warmth of his touch lingered as did the frost of his ghosts. I’d spent many a sleepless night trying to convince myself that as long as I kept my distance, his ghosts wouldn’t be a threat to me. After tonight I could no longer delude myself. I had done nothing to lure them back into my life. They had come despite my best efforts, and I hadn’t a clue how to rid myself of them.

Shani had implored me to help her, and even now the memory of her voice in my head tore at my resolve. But I had to maintain a distance, my perspective. Whatever she needed, I couldn’t give her. Whatever she wanted, I couldn’t help her. I wasn’t a medium. I didn’t communicate with the dead—at least not intentionally—nor did I guide souls into the afterlife. Ghosts were dangerous to me. They were ravenous parasites. Hadn’t Mariama just proven that?

If I were smart, I would ignore Devlin’s ghosts just as I had ignored the hundreds of other manifestations I’d seen throughout the years. I would cling to the remnants of Papa’s rules for dear life because, without them, I had little protection from any of the netherworld beings that crept through the veil at dusk.

Best just to put the whole disquieting episode out of my mind.

But…even if I somehow managed to disregard the ghosts, I knew the image of Devlin and that strange woman would torment me. I had no right to feel betrayed. I was the one who had broken things off with Devlin, and I’d done so without even a proper explanation. But how could I tell him that our passion had opened a passageway into a terrifying realm of specters that were colder and hungrier than any I’d ever encountered?

Drawing a shaky breath, I tried to soothe myself. I should be grateful that he’d found someone else. The sooner he moved on, the safer he would be. The safer we would both be. Hadn’t I tried to do the same with Thane Asher?

But no amount of rationalization could ease the pain in my chest, nor did the sight of my home offer solace, though it was more than just a residence. It was a hallowed sanctuary, the one place in all of Charleston where I could sequester myself from the ghosts and hide from the rest of the world.

Rising from the remains of an orphanage chapel, the narrow house was built deep into the lot with upper and lower balconies and front and rear gardens in the Charleston tradition. I had the ground level to myself and that included access to the backyard and the original basement. A medical student named Macon Dawes rented the second floor. He was away at the moment, which gave Angus, the abused stray I’d brought home with me from the mountains, a chance to acclimate to his new surroundings before having to deal with a stranger.

Angus must have sensed my return because I heard him bark from the rear garden to welcome me home. I called out to him as the gate swung shut and I stood for a moment letting the scent of the tea olives settle over me. Later, we would sit out back together watching my white garden come to life as the moon rose over the treetops. It had become a nightly ritual, the only time that I actually welcomed the darkness. I had always admired the walled gardens of Charleston, but I enjoyed mine especially by moonlight when the moths stirred and the bats took flight. Sometimes I felt as if I could sit out there forever, dreaming my life away.

The old southern graveyards I restored held much the same fascination with their dripping moss, creeping ivy and, in the spring, the lavender gloom of their lilacs. Summer brought sweet roses; winter, luscious daphne. A perfume of death for every season. Each unique, each invoking a different emotion or a special memory but always reminding one of the past, of the fleeting nature of life.

I don’t know how long I stood there with eyes closed, drowning in melancholia as I drank in the evening scents. Misery still held a firm grip, so perhaps that was why I didn’t see him straightaway. Or even sense him.

When I finally spotted his silhouette, he was little more than a deeper shadow on the veranda, but somehow I knew who he was. What he was. I had the strangest urge to turn and dash back through the gate, but my muscles wouldn’t obey and so I stood there suspended in fear.

In all my years of seeing ghosts, I’d never encountered one quite like Robert Fremont. He could emerge from the veil before dusk and after sunrise, and he could converse with me. Or at least…he communicated in a way that made me think he was speaking. He wasn’t just in my head the way Shani had been. I could hear his voice. I could see his lips move. How he managed any of that, I had no idea. Nor did I understand how he could sit there so calmly on the steps of my sanctuary, a place no other ghost had ever penetrated.

That was the most frightening aspect of his manifestation. None of the rules seemed to apply to him, and so I was completely at his mercy with no way to protect myself from him.

The timing of his appearance couldn’t be a coincidence. Nothing about this evening was happenstance. Not the nightingale, not my run-in with Devlin, not even Shani’s disturbing nursery rhyme. Taken alone, each might seem incidental, but together they meant something specific. There was a word for such a string of events. Synchronicity.

And as I stood there staring through the deepening twilight at the murdered cop, I could feel myself being drawn into something dark and mystical. A supernatural puzzle for which there might be no earthly resolution.

Slowly, I walked through the garden, the crepuscular scent of the angel trumpets perfuming the air with an under note of dread. I came to a stop at the bottom of the steps to gaze up at him.

He looked much as he had the first time I’d seen him, his nondescript attire that of an undercover cop who needed to blend seamlessly into the criminal underbelly of Charleston. As always, his eyes were hidden by dark glasses, but I could feel the power of his dead gaze through those lenses. The sensation was chilling.

“Amelia Gray.” The way he spoke my name was like the prick of an icy needle down my spine.

“Why are you here?” I asked.

“You know why. It’s time.”

The hair at the back of my neck lifted. “Time for what?”

“To make things right.” His voice was deep and hollow like a well, and I shivered again as he watched me from behind those tinted lenses. I tried to avert my eyes, but he held me enthralled.

I’d forgotten how handsome he was, how perversely charismatic even as a ghost. Despite his dark skin—and the fact that he was dead—he’d always reminded me of Devlin. Both possessed that same smoldering charm, that same dangerous allure. They’d once been friends, and I had a feeling it was my association with Devlin that had allowed Robert Fremont into my world.

“We have a lot to talk about,” he said.

“We do?”

“Yes. Maybe you should sit. You look a little unsteady on your feet.”

Was it any wonder?

But I didn’t want to sit. I wanted him gone, banished back to the realm of the dead, along with Shani and Mariama. I considered bolting past him into my house, into my sanctuary, but I wasn’t altogether certain it would protect me from the likes of this ghost. For all I knew, he could follow me inside, and I didn’t want to lose the peace of mind of a hallowed place, illusionary though it might now be.

My legs felt leaden as I climbed the steps, the burden of his unspoken demands already a heavy weight. He didn’t rise, but then I could hardly expect him to. Why should a ghost be bound by earthly ceremony? Especially the spirit of a man whose life had ended in murder.

I sat down on the veranda, placing distance and the shopping bag between us. I felt nothing more than a faint chill emanating from his presence, and even that might have been my imagination.

“I told you once that I needed you as a conduit into the police department,” he said.

“I remember.”

“I need more than that now, I’m afraid.”

I was afraid, too. Deathly so.

“I need you to be my eyes and ears in this world. The living world.”

“Why?”

“Because you can go places I can’t enter. Talk to the people who won’t see me.”

“No, I mean…to what end?”

“As cliché as it sounds, I need you to help find my killer.”

I stared at his manifestation in silence. “How is it you can do all these things—converse with me, invade my sanctuary, appear to me as though you’re still alive—and yet, you don’t know who murdered you? Shouldn’t you know? You told me once you had a gift. You said that’s why you were called the Prophet.”

“I never claimed to be omniscient,” he said, and I thought he sounded annoyed, whether at my questioning of his ability or his current limitations, I had no idea. “I could never control the visions.”

I could relate. I had no control over my gift, either.

“Haven’t you read anything about my death?” he asked.

“Not much.”

“That’s disappointing. I would have thought after our last meeting you’d want to know more about me. You struck me as the curious sort. Or was I wrong about you?”

That aroused a spark. “I’ve been a little preoccupied since that night. I was almost murdered myself, remember? And I have a living to make, a business to run. But…” I paused to draw another breath. “I did look you up once. There wasn’t much on the internet about you and I don’t talk to Devlin. How else was I supposed to learn about you?”

He sighed. “I was hoping you’d be a little more resourceful.”

I wasn’t exactly thrilled with him, either. I really wanted him to just…vanish. “In that case, maybe you should look to someone else for help.”

“There is no one else. I searched a long time to find you.”

That gave me pause. “How did you find me?”

“That’s not your concern.”

“Not my concern!” My voice hardened. “Did it ever occur to you that I didn’t look you up because I wanted nothing more to do with you?”

Careful, a little voice warned. I’d already been the recipient of one ghost’s ire that night. It wasn’t wise to provoke another.

He took a moment to answer. “You have a backbone, at least. That’ll come in handy.”

“Thanks. I guess.”

“Maybe I was a little too quick to judge you. You have to know that I have a lot riding on this relationship.”

We had a relationship? The notion of that made me shiver.

A neighbor walked by on the street. She gazed up at the house, then hurried on past. I saw her glance over her shoulder once. She must have thought me crazy, sitting out there in the dusk arguing with myself. I could hardly blame her. If not for Papa’s ability to see ghosts, I might have wondered about my sanity a long time ago.

“What happened to you?” I asked with grudging curiosity. “I know you were killed in the line of duty—” I broke off. “Is it okay that I speak so bluntly about…?”

“I wouldn’t have it any other way.”

Good. I didn’t want to have to walk on eggshells around him.

That drew me up short again. Even my internal dialogue was starting to freak me out. How had Robert Fremont managed to slip into my life so effortlessly? How had I allowed myself to accept him so readily?

He’s a ghost. He’s a ghost. He’s a ghost.

I chanted the mantra to myself even as he continued to converse with me.

“I was shot in the back,” he said. “I never saw my killer. My body was found the next day in Chedathy Cemetery. That’s in Beaufort County.”

My gaze had still been fixed on the street, but now I jerked around in shock. Mariama and Shani were buried in Chedathy Cemetery.

“You were a Charleston cop,” I said. “What were you doing all the way down in Beaufort County?”

“I’m…not sure.”

“What do you mean you’re not sure?”

He said nothing.

I did not like the feeling of foreboding that knotted my stomach. “I’m still not exactly clear on what it is you expect me to do.”

“I already told you what I need.”

“I know, but—”

“Just listen to me. We have to act quickly. Do you understand? It has to be now.”

His urgency took me aback. “Why now? It’s been over two years since you were shot.”

He glanced up at the sky. “The stars have finally aligned. The players have all taken their places.”

Could he have sounded any more cryptic?

“Does that include me?”

“Yes.”

I turned back to the garden, searching the shadows. “And if I refuse to be a part of this?” Whatever this was.

“Have you looked at yourself in the mirror lately?” he asked.

Now it was I who fell silent.

“Have you not noticed the dark circles under your eyes? The sunken cheeks? The weight loss? You’re not eating or sleeping. Your energy is waning even as we speak.”

I stared at him in horror. “You’re haunting me?”


Chapter Three

My heart tripped at the implication of his words. I thought of my stalker, the elusive watcher who had been dogging me for days. Now I understood my lethargy and my insomnia. Fremont’s very presence was draining me of my life force just as Mariama had siphoned my energy earlier. Or had that been Fremont even then?

“You have to help me,” he said.

I gazed down at my trembling hands. “I’m beginning to realize that.”

“As soon as we find him, as soon as justice is served, I’ll leave you in peace.”

“I have your word?” The word of a ghost. That was a new one.

“What reason would I have for lingering?” he asked.

I shuddered to think.

“You said find him. If you were shot in the back, how can you be so sure the killer was a man?”

“I’m not sure of anything,” he admitted, and for the first time, I sensed some doubt. Maybe even a hint of fear. “I don’t even know why I was in the cemetery that night.”

“You have amnesia?” A surreal question if ever there was one.

“About the events surrounding that night? It would seem so.”

He gazed out at the street as I searched his profile. The detail I could see in the twilight was amazing. The strong line of his jaw and chin, the sharp shelf of his cheekbone, the outline of his lips. Even knowing what I knew, I still found it difficult to accept that he was dead.

“I suppose that makes sense,” I said, tearing my gaze away. “I’ve read that accident victims often can’t recall details leading up to the crash. This is similar. You suffered a severe trauma.”

“Yes, the trauma was severe,” he murmured.

“What’s the last thing you do remember? Before you died, I mean.”

He fell silent, and now I sensed some turmoil, some inner conflict. “I remember meeting someone.”

“At the cemetery?”

“I don’t know. All I remember is the scent of her perfume. The smell was still on my clothes when I died.”

“So the killer could have been a woman.”

“It’s possible. I have a vague recollection of an argument.”

“Do you know who she was?”

Another hesitation. “Her name eludes me.”

“What did she look like?”

In the split second before he answered, I could have sworn I saw a shudder go through him, but it seemed unlikely a ghost would be affected in so earthly a manner. Surely I was ascribing my own human emotions to him.

“I don’t know. But her perfume…”

“Go on.”

“The scent is still on my clothes,” he said, almost in defeat. “I can smell it even now.”

I thought of the exotic fragrance that had drifted to me earlier, riding the same ghostly breeze as the nightingale’s song. If Fremont had been following me then, the scent might have come from him.

And then something else occurred to me. Had he seen Mariama and Shani’s ghosts? Was that why he’d disappeared?

Could ghosts even see one another? Interact with one another?

Years and years of questions bubbled up inside me, but it was so strange to be able to ask them of a ghost. Stranger still that my fear had dissipated. Was I still under a spell?

Once again I found myself heading into dangerous territory, spurning Papa’s warning and flirting with disaster. One door had already been breached because of my wanton disregard of the rules. Would my connection with a ghost open yet another?

“What’s it like?” I heard myself ask him. “Behind the veil, I mean.”

“It’s called the Gray. The place in between the Dark and the Light.”

The place, he’d said. Not the time. The distinction seemed significant.

“Does it still hurt? From where you were shot?”

“There’s no pain,” he said. “There’s nothing really.”

“But you feel something. You must. You’re here because you want vengeance. That means you’re still capable of human emotion.”

“I’m here because I can’t…” His ghostly voice trailed off.

“You can’t what?”

“Rest,” he said wearily. “Something is keeping me here.”

“And you think if we expose your killer, you’ll be released?”

“Yes.”

I thought about that for a moment. His urgent need to find the killer corroborated what I’d always suspected. Not all ghosts were drawn through the veil by their rapacious hunger for human warmth or their insatiable desire to rejoin the living. Some were earthbound for reasons beyond their control. Apparently, Robert Fremont was one of them. I wondered if Shani was another. If Mariama’s ghost kept Devlin chained to her by his guilt and grief, did those same emotions keep Shani bound to him?

“Can you see them?” I asked.

“Who?”

“The other ghosts. They’re all around us. Surely you’ve noticed them.”

“I keep my distance.”

“Why?”

“They’re insidious,” he said with contempt. “Leeches preying on the living because they refuse to accept death. I’m not like that.”

“But isn’t that what you’re doing to me?”

“Only for as long as I need your help. I have to sustain myself until I can find a way to move on,” he said. “I don’t want to be here any more than you want me here.”

“So, what do we do first?”

He moved, stirring the air, and I felt a faint chill creep up my spine. I had to remind myself yet again that, despite our strange arrangement, he was still a ghost and, therefore, dangerous to me.

“We follow the clues,” he said. “No matter where they lead us. Understood?”

“I…”

“Understood?”

I almost jumped. “Yes. Understood.”

He nodded and turned away. “Someone was in the cemetery after I was shot that night, someone besides the killer. We have to find that person or persons and get them to talk.”

I gave him a skeptical look. “Did you see someone?”

“No,” he said. “But I sensed a presence.”

A presence. “If you were that close to death, how can you be so sure you weren’t dreaming or hallucinating?”

“I felt someone going through my pockets. It was real, but if you don’t believe me, read the police report. My cell phone was missing when my body was recovered.”

“How am I supposed to get my hands on the police report?”

“You said you could be resourceful when the need arises. Find a way.”

I was starting to get frightened again. This was absolutely the strangest night of my life, and that was saying something for me.

Was I really being blackmailed by a ghost? Did he truly expect me to conduct a murder investigation all on my own? If I failed, if I couldn’t uncover his killer, would he haunt me for the rest of my life? Would he continue to devour my warmth and energy until I remained nothing more than a shell?

I tried to remain calm. “Assuming we somehow manage to find this…whoever it was, how do you propose we make them talk? I’m not a cop. I know nothing about interrogations. And frankly, what you’re proposing sounds incredibly risky. Not that you have to worry about it.”

“I’m not out to get you killed,” he said.

“That’s reassuring.”

“So long as you do as I say, you’ll be fine.”

And I was supposed to believe him?

Yet, even as I quivered in fear, an unexpected excitement coursed through me. All my life, I’d been sheltered and protected, not just from the ghosts, but from the world outside my cemetery gates. There was a time when I would have clung to that seclusion, to that safety, even to my loneliness, but the secrets I’d uncovered about myself in Asher Falls had made me reevaluate my ability and my very existence. I wanted to believe there was a purpose to my life, a reason why I saw ghosts. It wasn’t just a dangerous legacy. I had been given a gift.

And now here was a ghost who offered me a way to attain a higher purpose. A reason to embrace that dark gift rather than hide from it on hallowed ground.

If I could help the Prophet move on, perhaps I could do the same for Shani and Mariama. And then Devlin would be mine—

I was a little shocked by the direction of my thoughts, and I told myself I wouldn’t go there. It was too dangerous. Too foolish to even contemplate a time when Devlin and I might possibly be together. Besides, for all I knew he’d already moved on with the brunette. He might already have put our past behind him.

Then why had he sent a message on the day I’d left Asher Falls?

Why had his ghosts lured me into that woman’s garden tonight? Why did Mariama feel so threatened by me?

It wasn’t over with Devlin. A part of me knew that, no matter what happened, no matter the passage of time or the miles between us, it would never truly be over. Devlin was my destiny. The one man I wanted above all others was the one man I could never have.

Unless I could somehow find a way to close that door.

I tried to tamp down that sinister glimmer of hope as I glanced at the ghost. “If I help you, we’ll be even, right? My debt to you will be paid in full.”

Robert Fremont smiled. “Never bargain with the dead. We have nothing to lose.”


Chapter Four

Long after Fremont vanished, I sat there shivering in the falling twilight even though the evening was still quite warm. At some point, it occurred to me that Angus was barking in the backyard. Strangely, he’d been silent during the visitation, but now something had excited him. I called out, but my voice didn’t quiet him.

I grabbed my shopping bag and hurried through the side yard to the back gate, contemplating the impact of my meeting with Fremont. In the space of a few short minutes, my whole life had changed. I’d knowingly entered into a relationship with a ghost. Talk about acknowledging the dead. Talk about tempting fate. I could only imagine what Papa would say about such an association.

Which made me wonder…had he ever encountered an entity like Robert Fremont?

I thought about the ghost of the old white-haired man I’d seen in Rosehill Cemetery, the hallowed place of my childhood. He had been my first manifestation and I’d only glimpsed him one other time since that long-ago day. My father had told me that ever since the initial sighting, he’d been afraid the old man’s ghost had been sent to watch over me by something evil on the other side of the veil. But I had to wonder if Papa was still holding out on me. Despite everything he’d revealed about my birth and my heritage, I couldn’t shake the notion that he kept things from me still. That he had secrets I’d yet to uncover.

Opening the back gate, I slipped inside. There was still light in the garden though the moon hadn’t yet risen. Angus stood in the center of the yard, his gaze transfixed on the swing. It moved slowly back and forth.

Shani?

I didn’t say her name aloud. I didn’t think I needed to.

She didn’t answer. I heard no sound at all except for the faint tinkle of the wind chimes and the pounding of my heart in my ears.

But the swing continued to move in the breeze.

Something was there. I could feel a chill in the air, and as I stood riveted, a scent drifted to me. Not the exotic fragrance from earlier, but the familiar scent of jasmine that harkened Shani’s presence. Once again she had followed me home, but for some reason, she wouldn’t or couldn’t appear. Was she afraid of Mariama?

I didn’t want to contemplate what that might mean. A child—even a ghost child—frightened of her own mother.

I was certainly afraid of Mariama.

“Shani?” Her name slipped out on a whisper.

Silence.

I watched the swing move back and forth, imagining the sway of the little girl’s hair, the billow of her blue dress. The innocent peal of her sweet laughter.

How many times had Devlin remembered her that way? How many times had he roused from a dream, aching to hold his child in his arms only to recall his painful reality? He must have relived her death over and over in the two years since she’d been gone. A fresh despair every time he awakened.

My heart turned over. “I know you’re there,” I called softly.

I was playing with fire, and I could almost hear my father’s condemnation. What are you doing, child? Why are you flaunting the rules? Haven’t you learned your lesson by now? The Others are still out there. Evil is still out there. By acknowledging the dead, you’re inviting forces of which you know nothing into your world. Once inside, they’ll have you at their mercy. Your life will never again be your own…

Angus stood frozen just as I was, his gaze focused on the swing. He didn’t growl as one would expect in the presence of a ghost. He seemed almost…enchanted. Mesmerized.

What’s his name?

I heard the question as surely as if she’d spoken it aloud, but the only sounds in the garden were the gentle music of the wind chimes and the rustle of leaves in the live oaks.

“Angus.”

My voice seemed to release him from his spell, and he came to my side, whining piteously as he nuzzled my hand with his cold nose. Even in the dim light of the garden, I could see the horrible scarring on his snout and the nubs where his ears had been cut off. I ran my hand along his back where the tan fur still bristled.

Did the bad man hurt him?

Was that a note of fear I detected? Or was I merely projecting my own terror onto Shani? Onto a ghost. “The bad man?”

The trees seemed to shudder, and I heard a whimper. I continued to smooth Angus’s fur with a trembling hand, but I didn’t think the sound had come from him.

“Who is the bad man?” I asked carefully.

Another whimper.

“It’s okay,” I crooned, as much to reassure myself as to soothe Angus and Shani. “Everything will be fine.”

But would it?

A line had been crossed tonight, and if Papa was right, I could never go back. For all my lofty ruminations of a higher purpose, I had no idea what I was getting into. What I was inviting into my life. Was I ready to accept the consequences of such a dangerous transformation?

Will you help me?

The question seemed to echo all my worries and self-doubt. All my midnight terrors. “What do you want me to do?”

The swing stopped, and I had a sense that Shani’s spirit was already starting to fade back into the netherworld.

Come find me.


Chapter Five

The next day, I took Angus for a walk in the same neighborhood where I’d seen Devlin and the woman. And I even managed to convince myself that I had a legitimate motive for doing so.

I’d broken a statue in the garden and had then fled the scene without a word. The least I could do was extend an apology and an offer of compensation, even if the accompanying explanation would require a lie. A white lie, but an untruth nonetheless. After all, I could hardly confess that I’d been lured into her garden by a ghost and had then been accosted by another. And not just any ghosts, but the spirits of Devlin’s dead wife and daughter. I could only imagine how that would go over with his…whatever the woman was to him.

Of course, the bigger lie was the one I told myself. My return trip to that neighborhood had very little to do with a guilty conscience. I wanted to find that woman’s house and see her in daylight to assuage my curiosity.

I fully appreciated that my judgment in the matter wasn’t what it should be. I blamed it on exhaustion. All those otherworldly visitations had wreaked havoc on my nerves, and I hadn’t slept a wink. In the course of one evening, I’d been drawn into two disturbing mysteries—Robert Fremont’s murder and Shani’s need for me to find her. I had no idea what either search would entail and already I felt emotionally and physically worn out. But, as Angus and I strolled along the sidewalk, I told myself I wouldn’t dwell on those unsettling contacts today, not even Shani’s disquieting plea. The weather was just too gorgeous, so warm and mellow that the netherworld chill of last evening seemed like a bad dream. I had Angus on a leash, but that was a mere formality. He never strayed far from my side, nor did he rebel against the restraint, so I indulged him as much as I could, letting him take his time with whatever new sight or smell caught his fancy.

I used those frequent interludes to admire the gardens that I glimpsed through wrought-iron fences. The sweet fragrance of autumn clematis wafted from trellises, and now and then, I caught the spicier aroma of the ginger lilies that were just starting to open. I drew in a breath, letting the perfume of a Charleston morning wash over me.

I’d just stopped to admire the electric yellow of a ginkgo tree when the dark-haired woman from last evening suddenly came around the corner of her house. I recognized her immediately, though she looked somewhat different in daylight. A little shorter and curvier than I remembered, but by no means overweight. She had a round, pleasant face and an air of sweet gentility that conjured up images of lacy parasols and English tea roses.

Not at all the impression I’d been left with the night before.

Simultaneously, I noticed the burnish of auburn in her hair and the pink in her cheeks, neither of which I’d been able to detect in the waning light of her garden. She was dressed in faded cords and a droopy cardigan that hung past her generous hips, and judging by the stains on her knees and the large pair of pruning shears in one hand, she’d already been up to some gardening. If not for her ingénue-like countenance, I might have thought the gleam of those large blades a little sinister.

“Hello,” she called, the husky timber of her voice taking me by surprise even though I’d heard her speak last evening. “May I help you?”

I realized that I’d been gawking and, in my embarrassment, blurted the first thing that came to mind. “I was just admiring your garden.”

“Oh, thank you. I’m afraid I can’t take any of the credit, though. I just moved in.”

I noticed the Realtor’s sign in the front yard then and the bright red “sold” sticker that had been slapped across the front. “I didn’t even realize the house was up for sale.” Of course, I wouldn’t, seeing as how I rarely came down this street.

“It was a fast turnaround. Only on the market a few days. Luckily, I happened along at just the right time. The seller needed to move out quickly and so here I am.” She set aside the pruning shears and walked over to the gate. Her hair was pulled back and fastened at the nape, but the breeze caught the loose tendrils at her temples and they floated about her face like sea anemones, giving her a lively animation. “Do you live in the neighborhood?”

I waved vaguely. “A few blocks over on Rutledge.”

She peeled off her gloves and thrust a hand over the fence. “I’m Clementine Perilloux.” She used the more exotic French pronunciation—Clemen-teen.

“Amelia Gray.”

We shook, and then she knelt and put out her hand to my dog. “And who is this?”

“Angus.”

She said his name softly, and he moseyed over to sniff her hand. Apparently impressed by what he smelled, he allowed her to rub his head and scratch behind the ear nubs. I tried not to begrudge his enjoyment.

“What a sweet face. Just look at those eyes.” She glanced up. “May I ask what happened to him?”

“I was told he was used as a bait dog.”

Her good humor vanished. “I assumed as much. I used to volunteer at an animal shelter when I was in college. We would see similar scars and mutilations from time to time. They cut off the ears to avoid unnecessary wounds.”

“So I’ve read.”

“Breaks your heart, doesn’t it? Although Angus seems to be in very good hands these days.” She gave him a few more brisk rubs, then stood. “Where did you find him?”

“Oh, he found me.”

“That’s always the best way.” Her eyes were hazel, I noticed, and as soft and limpid as Angus’s. Given what I’d seen last evening, I had been prepared to dislike her on sight, but I found it impossible to muster up even an ounce of animosity. She was so earnest and charming. So…wholesome. I would never have pegged her as Devlin’s type, but then if Mariama was the yardstick, I wasn’t even on the spectrum.

“Do you know what I think?” she said crisply as she dusted her hands on her gray pants. “I think you and Angus should come around to the back garden and have some breakfast with me.”

“We couldn’t possibly impose,” I protested.

“It’s not at all an imposition. In fact, you would be doing me a huge favor. I don’t know anyone in the neighborhood yet, and I would love having a friend nearby. My family lives here in the city, but they tend to smother, if you know what I mean.”

I didn’t, actually. My parents had always maintained a distance. Mama, because of the circumstances of my birth; Papa, because of his secrets. We were not a close family, though I had never once doubted their affection for me.

Clementine Perilloux opened the gate with a hopeful smile. “Please,” she coaxed. “I’ve made scones. And there’s a fresh batch of muscadine jelly from my grandmother.”

Her smile was infectious, and I had no ready excuse, so I merely nodded and followed Devlin’s brunette into the backyard with only a passing thought to the broken statue.


Chapter Six

A little while later, I sat on the patio and waited for Clementeen Perilloux to return. She’d come out once to bring freshly squeezed juice and a pot of steaming coffee, and now I could smell something delectable wafting from the kitchen doorway.

“Are you sure I can’t be of some help?” I called yet again.

“Everything’s almost ready. Just relax and enjoy the garden.”

Angus certainly was. He had explored and sniffed and pawed to his heart’s content, and now he’d treed something behind the same azalea bushes that had hidden me the night before.

Like Clementine herself, the garden appeared very different from my first impression. By dusk, it had seemed a place of enchantment—dangerous and ethereal—but now I could see that she had her work cut out for her in restoring forgotten flower beds and taming overgrown bushes. The house was a charming two-story with a peaked roof and dormer windows, but a closer scrutiny revealed peeling paint and missing window screens. The whole place wore an air of gentle neglect.

The shards of the broken cherub still lay strewn across the stone pavers. I wondered if Clementine had even noticed. And I wondered why I hadn’t yet said anything. The delay was just going to make my confession and apology that much more awkward.

Of course, deep down, I knew the real reason for my procrastination, and it wasn’t one of my prouder moments.

She came out of the house just then carrying a basket of fresh scones and a jar of jelly the color of an antique garnet.

“My grandmother makes it every year,” she said as she took a seat across from me. “It’s a family tradition. When I was little, come fall, we would drive out to the country to pick the grapes. That trip with Grandmother was always the highlight of my autumn.”

“You say your family lives in Charleston?” I asked, accepting a scone.

“Yes.” She held up a piece of bacon. “Okay for Angus?”

I nodded.

She called to him and he came at once, gobbling the crispy strip right out of her hand. I might have felt a little betrayed by his gusto, but truth be told, I was quite taken with Clementine myself. I had to wonder, though, if she might not be a little too good to be true. Inviting strangers to breakfast, working in an animal shelter. A part of me wanted to believe that she wasn’t quite as wholesome as she appeared. A part of me still wanted to hate her, but her childlike exuberance had charmed me.

My gaze strayed again to the back porch. Now that I’d met her face-to-face, it was hard for me to imagine her in Devlin’s arms. Hard for me not to imagine it, too.

She offered the last of the bacon to Angus, then straightened. “Where were we?”

“You were telling me about your family.”

“Oh, yes. My grandmother has this wonderful old house on Legare just north of Broad near the Cathedral of St. John the Baptist,” she said. “It’s been in the family for generations. A big, old, rambling place with gorgeous piazzas and gardens. I grew up in that house. My father died when I was ten and pretty much left us destitute. Grandmother, bless her, took us in.”

She offered me the jelly. “Thank you.” I spread some on my scone and took a bite. The quick bread was warm, flaky and delicious. So she could also bake.

“She tried to get me to move back in after…that is, when I decided to settle in Charleston.” A frown played between her brows. “I suppose it would have been the practical thing to do, but I need to prove that I can stand on my own two feet. I had some savings and I’ve always wanted to renovate one of these old places, so…”

“Here you are.”

She drew a breath and released it. “Yes.”

I couldn’t help noticing a slight tremor in her hand as she lifted the cup to her lips and I glimpsed something in her eyes that made me wonder if there was more to the woman than the charming facade she presented to the world. “It’s a lovely house,” I said, feeling a momentary disquiet.

She glanced around proudly. “I can’t wait to get started. My sister has offered to help, but I want to do as much of the work as I can by myself. Not that I’m completely self-sufficient, mind you. I did accept a job from Grandmother.”

“What do you do?” I asked curiously.

“I work in her bookstore and tea shop. It’s a little place on King Street called The Secret Garden. Do you know it?”

“I was in there not too long ago,” I said in surprise. “It’s a beautiful shop. The selection of teas is mind-boggling.”

“I wonder if that’s why you look so familiar to me,” she murmured, her gaze searching my face. “I can’t shake the notion that we’ve met before.”

A sudden breeze gave me a slight chill as I glanced down at my plate. “I don’t think so. Although I suppose it’s possible you saw me in the shop. Or maybe we’ve passed on the street.” Or you spied me hiding in your bushes last evening.

“That’s probably it.”

“How long has your grandmother owned the store?”

“Oh, forever. She came here from Romania as a young woman. Back then, she had a special room in the rear of the shop where she read tea leaves. She also had quite the reputation as a palmist. Some of her clients came from the wealthiest and most powerful families in Charleston. That’s actually how she met my grandfather.”

“She told his fortune?”

Clementine grinned. “To her advantage, no doubt. Grandmother is no one’s fool.”

“Does she still do readings?”

“Occasionally, but never for money these days. She gave it up after she married my grandfather. The practice was deemed unsuitable, borderline satanic in his circle, though many of his friends were her clients. She insisted on keeping her shop, though. She always said it was a foolish woman who relied solely on the discretion and generosity of a man, even one as wealthy and as smitten as my grandfather. She was quite the progressive in her day.”

“She sounds like a very interesting woman.”

“She certainly is. Drop by the shop sometime and I’ll introduce you.” She offered me another scone even though I’d yet to finish the first. “Oh, please eat up,” she encouraged. “The leftovers will go straight to my hips.”

I took another and I placed it on my plate.

“Well, I’ve certainly been the chatterbox, haven’t I?” she said cheerfully. “I don’t know what’s gotten into me.” A pause. “You’re very easy to talk to.”

“I am?” I would never have thought so. I’d spent too much of my life in my own company.

“You have a kind face and a soothing manner.” She held out her hand. It was perfectly steady now. “May I?”

I felt myself immediately withdraw. “Oh, I don’t know. I’m not much for fortunes. I’ve never wanted to see my future.”

“Don’t worry. I know little beyond the basics. Both hands, please. The future is shown in the left, the past in the right.”

I placed my hands palm up on the table. She scrutinized both without touching either. “What do you do for a living, Amelia?”

“I’m a cemetery restorer.”

She glanced up. “Really. How interesting. What does that entail, exactly?” She bent back to my palms.

“In a nutshell, I reclaim old graveyards that have been abandoned or fallen into a state of neglect.”

“You mean like family burial sites?”

“And old public cemeteries, as well. Graves are forgotten and rarely visited after a generation or two. Neglect takes a rapid toll. The ground sinks. Headstones crack. Whole cemeteries get swallowed up by forests… .” I trailed off. “Now I’m talking too much.”

“Not at all. I love old graveyards. I’ve just never given much thought to the care of them. I imagine vandalism is a big problem.”

“Vandalism, acid rain, moss and lichen. The problems vary. Every cemetery is unique. The time and attention required will vary from place to place, stone to stone. My motto is to do no harm.”

“Like the Hippocratic oath,” she said. “I suppose that’s a good life’s motto for any of us.”

“Yes, it is.”

“When I was little, my grandmother and I spent many a Sunday afternoon exploring churchyards all over Charleston. The Unitarian was always my favorite. I loved all the wildflowers and the story about Annabel Lee. She was supposedly the inspiration for Poe’s poem, you know. I would beg my grandmother to tell her story every time we visited, even though I was terrified of running into her ghost. Luckily, I never did.” She gave a little shudder as she fixed her gaze on my palms. “Hmm…that’s interesting.”

“Interesting good or interesting bad?” I asked with more than a shade of trepidation.

“You have water hands,” she said. “I would have guessed earth.”

“Because of my profession?”

“Among other things.”

I curled my fingers and withdrew my hands to my lap. She didn’t object.

“You have some unusual lines,” she mused as she sipped her coffee. “But I don’t know enough to give you a proper interpretation. You should let my grandmother do a reading for you sometime. Or my sister. She’s very talented. Maybe the most gifted of us all.”

“Thank you, but as I said, I’d rather not know what the future holds.”

She leaned in. “I’ll let you in on a secret. Chiromancy has very little to do with psychic ability. It’s both an art and a science. A good palmist is more of a psychologist than a prophet. She bases her predictions on a particular set of factors she gleans from the client and then suggests a likely outcome. But my sister says that no one is interested in the actual methodology. People who visit palmists do so because they’re drawn to the mystique. They want the show, in other words, and Isabel obliges in her own irreverent manner. She calls herself Madam Know-it-all.”

“She’s a professional palmist?” Madam Know-it-all. Why did that name ring a bell?

“She has a place right on the edge of the historic district, near Calhoun.”

Something was starting to niggle. “Is it across the street from the Charleston Institute for Parapsychology Studies, by chance?”

Clementine’s eyes widened. “Don’t tell me you’ve been there. Now that is a coincidence.”

Not coincidence, I thought uneasily. Synchronicity.

“A friend of mine is the director of the Institute,” I said. “I notice your sister’s place every time I visit. There’s a neon hand in the front.”

“Yes, that’s it. But don’t let the name fool you. Isabel takes her work very seriously.”

The last time I’d been to the Institute, I’d spotted Devlin on the front porch with a shapely brunette who I had assumed was the palmist. Now I was sure of it, and I was equally certain that the woman I’d seen him with last evening hadn’t been Clementine Perilloux, after all, but her sister, Isabel.

We both fell silent as we finished our coffee, and, given this new development, I wondered if I should just make a graceful exit and forget about the broken statue. I’d waited too long. Now a confession would be terribly uncomfortable. Still, Clementine had been nothing but gracious, and I felt I owed her the truth and some manner of compensation.

I nodded toward the garden. “I see your statue’s been broken.” She followed my gaze. “Oh! Isabel said she and John heard someone in the garden last evening.”

My heart skipped a beat. “John?”

“He’s a police detective. He and Isabel…”

I leaned in.

“…are very close friends.”

Friends? I was both hoping for and dreading an elaboration, but when none was forthcoming, I let out a breath. “You’re not upset about the statue?”

Her eyes flickered. “There was one very like it in the garden at…where I lived before. I didn’t care for that place so I’m happy to be rid of the reminder.”

I felt a tiny prick of unease, that prescient tingle along my spine and scalp that made me say quickly, “This has been lovely, but Angus and I really should be going.”

“I’ll walk you around,” she said. “Promise you’ll come again. Next time I’ll invite Isabel. I’d love for you to meet her. I know I’m biased, but she’s…well, you’ll just have to see her for yourself. I think the two of you would really hit it off. You have a lot in common.”


Chapter Seven

That night I fixed a light dinner for myself, and after the dishes were washed and put away, I made a cup of tea and settled down to work. My office at the back of the house was a converted sunporch, surrounded on three sides by windows. By day, the sunlight shining in from the garden was warm and relaxing, but by night, the darkened panes spurred the imagination, especially on evenings like this when I sensed the nearby presence of restless spirits.

But I refused to give in to the sensation at my nape. I wouldn’t look around. I wouldn’t scour the garden for the telltale illumination of a manifestation. Instead, I powered up my laptop and opened a new document file.

For weeks, I’d been ignoring my blog, but now that I found myself in between restorations, the ad money generated by Digging Graves was an important source of revenue. I’d already come up with a new topic—“The Crypt Peeper: Communing with the Dead”—a piece about the popularity of graveyards during the Victorian era. Tonight, however, that subject seemed prophetic because I’d spent a little too much time lately conversing with ghosts.

I continued to work until I’d eked out a rough draft, and then I saved the file and logged onto the internet to do some research. If I was going to help Robert Fremont find his killer, I would need to study every scrap of information I could lay my hands on. I was still uneasy about my role as detective, but I’d always loved a good mystery and research was the backbone of cemetery restoration. I knew how to dig for the most obscure details, but unfortunately, I found precious little information about the murder. Fremont had worked undercover so I imagined that even after his death, cases and informants needed to be protected. I did run across the occasional mention of him on a site that archived old articles involving the Charleston Police Department and even managed to turn up a brief piece about the shooting and a sparse obituary.

Fremont had been thirty when he died. I’d already known he was close to Devlin’s age because the two had gone through the police academy together. I’d seen a picture of them at graduation, along with a third man named Tom Gerrity, who was now a private detective in Charleston. He and Devlin made no bones about the contempt they held for one another. The bad blood had something to do with Fremont’s death, but I knew none of the details, and the online article mentioned neither of them.

No witnesses to the shooting had ever come forward, and no information regarding motive or suspects had been released to the press. The case had apparently been kept under close wraps by both the Beaufort County Sheriff’s Office and the Charleston Police Department.

Two items from the article and the obituary leaped out at me. One, Fremont had grown up near Hammond, a small town in the coastal plain of South Carolina where Mariama had been raised. And two, the shooting had occurred the day after her accident. Fremont’s time of death had been placed somewhere between two and four in the morning, several hours after Mariama’s car had gone over a guardrail at dusk, trapping her and Shani inside the sinking vehicle.

I’d seen Robert Fremont’s headstone last spring during the restoration of Coffeeville Cemetery, but I hadn’t known who he was at the time so his date of death hadn’t registered. Now, given what I’d learned of his connection to Devlin and possibly to Mariama, the proximity of their deaths intrigued me.

Grabbing a notepad and pen, I made a little diagram of names with arrows:



Devlin > Shani > Mariama > Fremont.



Then I added



Clementine > Isabel > Devlin.



As I stared down at the linked names, I became more and more convinced that nothing about the recent events was coincidental. Not Mariama’s assault, not Shani’s request and certainly not Fremont’s haunting. All three ghosts had come back into my life for a reason, and the timing was important. Everything was connected, and the pieces of the puzzle were already starting to fall into place.

The stars have finally aligned, Fremont had said. The players have all taken their places.

I continued to search until the words on the screen blurred and a sharp pain stabbed between my shoulder blades. I got up and stretched, telling myself I should turn in early and try to get some rest. I was exhausted, drained, and who knew what the days ahead held for me, let alone the nights. I hardly dared contemplate them.

But after everything that had happened, I knew I would never be able to sleep. I was too wired, too certain that something dark was headed my way. And Devlin was somehow involved. I could feel it. That was why he’d been reaching out to me, why even now I could sense his irresistible pull.

The walls of my sanctuary started to close in on me, and not for the first time, I found myself resenting the legacy that kept me pinned to hallowed places. All my life, I’d followed Papa’s rules, kept myself sequestered in loneliness, but now I felt an unaccustomed rebellion welling up inside me. The bloom of an unwise impulse that had very little to do with a noble purpose or a greater calling.

I wanted to see Devlin.

Not from afar as I had last evening and certainly not with another woman. I wanted him here with me, in my haven, where his ghosts couldn’t come to us. I craved his touch, his warmth, the sound of my name on his lips.

Rising abruptly, I walked to the window and pressed my forehead to the cool glass. Why not go to him? I asked myself. Why not throw caution to the wind yet again? The rules had already been broken. The door had been flung wide. I’d seen the worst. What more could possibly happen?

Famous last words.

I glanced down at Angus. He was already in his bed and looked to be fast asleep, which reassured me that, despite my terrifying thoughts, all was well inside and outside the house. His ear nubs twitched, and I wondered if he dreamed about his dark past, about his time spent as a bait dog. I hoped with the passage of enough time, we might both leave our nightmares behind us.

As if sensing my attention, he opened his eyes and gave me a mournful look.

“Sorry,” I murmured. “I don’t like to be stared at, either, when I’m sleeping.”

He settled more comfortably into his bed, snout on paws, and drifted off again. I turned back to the windows, my gaze searching the moonlit garden. The wind had picked up. The Spanish moss hanging from the old live oak billowed like gossamer curtains and the wind chimes jangled discordantly.

A storm brewed where only an hour ago the sky had been clear. For some reason, I thought of Mariama’s wrath. Was this her doing? Just how much power did she wield from the grave?

I put a hand to my chest where I had felt the force of her anger. I’d experienced the touch of a ghost before, but mostly a chill breath down my back or the occasional trail of icy fingers through my hair. With Mariama, I felt physically threatened. She frightened me in a way that went well beyond my ingrained fear of ghosts.

She wanted to keep me away from Devlin. That much was obvious. From everything I’d heard about her, she’d been a volatile woman in life. Passionate and tempestuous. I was very much afraid that death had only intensified her anger.

As I turned away from the window, I caught a glimpse of my reflection in the glass. A pale, gaunt creature with wide eyes and sunken cheeks stared back at me. Hardly a match for Devlin’s memory of the lush and exotic Mariama. Or for the mysterious Isabel Perilloux.

If I peered closely enough at my reflection, I could still see the scars from my time in the mountains, those thin, white lines that crisscrossed my face and arms where dozens of deep scratches had healed. I’d almost died in Asher Falls, but I was back in Charleston now, and like those scratches, the memory of that withering town was already fading.

My time with Thane Asher seemed like nothing more than a long-ago dream, distant and hazy. There were days when I would think of him suddenly and experience a pang of fleeting regret. I missed him, but I didn’t ache for him the way I ached for Devlin. I didn’t yearn for him in the middle of the night, didn’t awaken to his conjured whisper in my ear, the phantom caress of his fingers along my spine. My time with Devlin haunted me as surely as his ghosts haunted him.

Doggedly, I went back to work, but I couldn’t concentrate. My thoughts were too scattered, and the house felt claustrophobic. I told myself it would be foolish to go out after dark when I was already safely sequestered for the night.

But…maybe the fresh air would do me good, I reasoned. A short drive along the Ashley River might help to relax me so that I could finally sleep.

A few minutes later, I was still lying to myself as I turned down Devlin’s street.


Chapter Eight

In all the months we’d been apart, I’d never once driven by Devlin’s house, never once chanced to arrive at a place where I thought he might be or called his phone only to hang up when he answered. At twenty-seven, I was far too old to resort to such adolescent behavior, and truth be told, such tactics were foreign to me.

Growing up, I’d had very few friends, let alone boyfriends. My free time had been spent helping Papa groom graves or sequestering myself in the hallowed section of Rosehill Cemetery, away from the ghosts and alone with my books. Left to my own devices, I’d cut my teeth on the romantic classics: Jane Eyre, Pride and Prejudice, Rebecca.

Little wonder, then, when Devlin had appeared out of the mist that first night, so dark and brooding, so tragically flawed, the pump had been primed, so to speak. I never stood a chance.

But I’d had no experience in dealing with a real-life Byronic hero. My friend Temple had once pointed out that, until Devlin, I’d only ever been attracted to safe men. Scholars and intellectuals. Milquetoasts, she’d called them, and she’d warned me about getting too close too quickly to a man like John Devlin. Mariama, she’d said, would have known how to use her considerable wiles to control him whereas someone like me would only get her heart broken.

She’d been right about that, but it wasn’t Devlin’s fault. He couldn’t help that he was haunted by his dead wife and daughter. He couldn’t help that he wasn’t ready to let them go.

So why had I come? What could I possibly hope to accomplish? Nothing about our situation had changed. Devlin’s ghosts were still with him and Mariama’s warning couldn’t have been clearer. Stay away.

A warning I should have heeded.

But the adrenaline was already rushing as I pulled to the curb and parked down the street from Devlin’s house. The clouds rolling in from the sea intermittently blocked the moon, and the neighborhood lay in deep shadow.

Thankfully, I saw no ghosts as I hurried along the sidewalk. It was just after ten, still early enough for the living. Up ahead, bicycle reflectors flashed around the corner and a young couple out for a pre-bedtime stroll murmured a greeting as we passed. It all seemed so normal.

But nothing about this night was normal. Certainly not my impulsive behavior. I could only imagine what my mother would say if she could see me slipping through the darkness. No woman with a decent upbringing would ever arrive unannounced at a man’s house in the middle of the night. I taught you better than that.

She had. But here I was, anyway.

Of course, my mother had more important things to worry about these days. Her battle with cancer had taken a toll, and, though her doctors had assured us that she’d made it through the worst of the treatment, she still had a long road ahead of her.

On nights like this, when I felt lonely and confused and out of my depth, I wanted more than anything to go to her and rest my cheek on her knee while I poured out my heart to her. I wanted to tell her about Devlin and have her smooth my hair while she murmured reassurances that everything would work out in the end.

Such comfort had been rare enough even before her diagnosis, even when I was a child. I loved my beautiful mother dearly, but she’d always kept me at arm’s length. The circumstances of my adoption had created a chasm, one that she’d been too frightened to breach. And then there were the ghosts. My mother couldn’t see them. That dark gift belonged only to Papa and me. It was our cross to bear, and the burden of our secret had also kept Mama at arm’s length.

But I wouldn’t dwell on my mother tonight when my own plate was already so full. Ghosts had invaded my world, phantom songbirds had serenaded me and the pieces of Robert Fremont’s puzzle still swirled in my head. Where once my world had been narrow and ordered, everything now lay in chaos.

As I hurried along the shadowy street, something very strange happened to me. The night grew darker and colder, but I somehow knew it wasn’t real. None of it was real. Not the nightingale, not the ghosts, not even my ill-advised trip to Devlin’s house. I was home safe and sound in my bed, dreaming. How else to explain the sudden lethargy that gripped me? The shortness of breath and heaviness of limb that afflicted me in nightmares? How else to explain why the street before me now seemed endless, a frigid tunnel that cut through nothing but blackness?

Fear exploded in my chest, and my footsteps slowed, dragged. I could feel eyes all around me, staring and staring as arms reached out to grab me.

The sensation lasted for only a heartbeat. Then the arms morphed back into tree branches and the eyes vanished. I let out a slow breath. What had happened? I wondered. Had I just been warned?

Shivering, I continued down the street. There was a bite in the air that I hadn’t noticed before, but the chill had nothing to do with the temperature. The first two weeks of October had been unseasonably warm, almost balmy in the afternoons, and the nights were mild. The icy draft came from beyond. The spirit world was suddenly very close. As close as I’d ever sensed it.

I cast a wary glance from side to side. I saw nothing in the darkness now, but I knew entities were all around me, floating down the murky walkways and alleys. Hovering within the walled gardens and historic homes. They sensed my energy just as I felt their coldness.

A gust of wind rattled the dry leaves in the gutter, and I could see the distant flicker of lightning over the treetops. Devlin’s house was just ahead, a lovely old Queen Anne that he’d bought for Mariama. My steps faltered, and once again I felt spellbound. It was in that house that I’d finally succumbed to my feelings for Devlin. It was in that house that the door to the Others had been opened.

I told myself to turn back before it was too late, but I couldn’t. Not yet. I was already flashing back to my night with Devlin, to the way he had held me so tightly, kissed me so deeply, and to the way that I’d kissed him. As if I could never get enough of him. I remembered so vividly the primitive rhythm of the African music playing in his bedroom, the heat of his skin as I placed my hand over his heart…sliding my lips downward, downward…and then a glance over my shoulder into a mirror where I’d seen Mariama’s eyes staring back at me.

I forced the disturbing image from my head as I crossed the street. Thunder rumbled out in the harbor, and I could feel moisture in the air, the bristle of static electricity along my scalp. Clearly, a storm was headed this way. The signs couldn’t have been more portentous.

But still I didn’t turn back.

Whether I would have had the nerve to climb the veranda steps and ring the bell, I would never know. As I hovered on the walkway, hair rippling in that eerie draft, the door opened and I heard voices in the foyer.

I reacted purely on instinct, and, for the second time in as many nights, I ducked for cover in the bushes.


Chapter Nine

“Storm’s coming,” I heard Devlin say as I huddled in the bushes like the stalker I’d become.

“Seems fitting,” another man replied. “Bad weather, bad juju.”

“If you believe in that sort of thing.”

“Of course. How could I forget? Nothing exists beyond the five senses, right, John?”

“I’ve learned to trust my instincts. Does that count?”

As always, the sound of Devlin’s voice had a profound effect on me. My response was to shrink even deeper into the shadows beside the porch. But I couldn’t resist peeking through the turning leaves to catch a glimpse of him.

Until last evening, I hadn’t laid eyes on him since our final parting in Chedathy Cemetery months ago. I’d avoided his phone calls and email because I’d known the only way to get over him was to cut him completely from my life. During my short stay in Asher Falls, I’d almost managed to convince myself that I was ready to move on. I’d met a man whom I liked, a man whom I was attracted to, a man whom I might once have been happy with.

Now I knew better. Devlin was the only one for me, but so long as that door remained open, so long as he remained haunted, there was no hope.

So why couldn’t I just accept my fate and let him go? I’d managed to keep my distance for months, so why was it getting harder to stay away?

Because I’d seen him with another woman. Because I was afraid he’d already let me go.

Maybe that was it. Or maybe Mariama had lured me here yet again for her own purposes. It was far easier to blame a ghost than to accept responsibility for my own questionable behavior.

Whatever the reason, I was stuck now until Devlin’s guest left and he went back inside the house. I would be mortified if he caught sight of me cowering in the bushes.

As quietly as I could, I shifted my position so that I could get a better view. He stood on the veranda backlit by the chandelier in the foyer. I couldn’t see his face, but I really didn’t need to. His every feature—those dark eyes, that sensuous mouth—was permanently ingrained in my memory. I could even trace in my mind the line of the indented scar below his lower lip. That one tiny imperfection had always fascinated me.

The second man’s voice sounded familiar, but he stood with his back to me, and I didn’t recognize him until he turned to scour the shadows where I crouched. Light from the foyer fell across his face, and I drew a quick breath.

It was Ethan Shaw, a forensic anthropologist I’d worked with a few months ago. I’d first become acquainted with Ethan through his father, Dr. Rupert Shaw, the director of the Charleston Institute for Parapsychology Studies. Dr. Shaw and I had been friends since I’d first moved to the city. He’d been intrigued by a “ghost” video I’d posted on my blog and had emailed to arrange a meeting. He’d even been instrumental in helping to secure my current residence from a former assistant of his who had moved to Europe suddenly.

I remained frozen as Ethan peered into the darkness. After a moment, he turned back to Devlin. “I thought I heard something.”

“Probably just the wind.”

“Or my imagination.”

“Yes, there is that. Here.” He handed Ethan a beer, and I heard the soft fizz as they each opened their bottles.

Devlin stepped out on the veranda then and stood with shoulders squared, feet slightly apart, as if bracing for something unpleasant. He was a tall man and lean to the point of gauntness from all his years of being haunted. But there was something very powerful about him just the same. Something almost menacing about the way he scowled into the darkness.

“I don’t mind admitting I’m still a little jumpy,” Ethan said with an uneasy laugh. He perched on the railing while Devlin leaned a shoulder against the porch wall. “Never in a million years did I expect to look across the street and find Darius Goodwine staring back at me. I’m telling you, John, it was the eeriest feeling. The weirdest coincidence.”

“You don’t really think it was a coincidence, do you?”

“I don’t see how it could be anything else. I’m never in that neighborhood. I don’t even have occasion to drive through it. Then today I was called out to an old house on Nassau to examine some bones that were unearthed beneath the porch. When I crawled out, there he was. He had on sunglasses and a hat, so I guess I could have been mistaken—”

“You weren’t mistaken,” Devlin said. “It was him.”

“How can you be so sure?”

“Things are happening in this city.”

“What do you mean?”

Devlin paused, his gaze lifting to the trees and for some reason, I thought of the nightingale and his strange insistence that I’d heard a mockingbird. “A woman was found dead on the east side a few nights ago. The toxicology screen turned up some interesting chemicals in her bloodstream. A cornucopia of botanical psychedelics, the coroner said, along with a substance that no one has been able to identify.”

“What’s that got to do with Darius?”

“Everything if that unknown substance turns out to be gray dust.”

“Gray dust? Jesus.” Ethan turned once again to scan the darkness. He looked pale and tense in the light that streamed through the doorway, and I could have sworn I heard a note of fear in his voice. “I thought that stuff disappeared years ago.”

“Apparently, it’s resurfaced just when Darius Goodwine returns from a long African sabbatical,” Devlin said grimly. “There’s only one source for gray dust and only a handful of outsiders that have ever been granted access. He’s one of them.”

“Yes, but he’s not the only one.”

“Come on.” Devlin sounded impatient. “Today was no coincidence. He wanted you to see him just like he made sure those rumors about the gray dust got back to me. Just like he made sure the right chemicals turned up in that woman’s body to create a mask. Every move he makes has a purpose.” Again, Devlin tilted his head, as if trying to detect some distant sound. I glanced up, but the trees remained silent.

“What is it?” Ethan asked anxiously.

“Nothing. I guess I’m hearing things, too.”

“Darius has that effect.” Ethan rubbed the back of his neck. “It’s hard to believe a man in his position would take such a risk. It’s not like he needs the money these days.”

“Money was never his motivation. Gray dust gives him the power to play God.”

“The wielder of life and death,” Ethan murmured. “Isn’t that what he used to say?”

Devlin moved over to the steps and stood gazing out into the yard. If he looked down at just the right angle, he would surely spot me. I wanted to fade more deeply into the shadows of the porch, but I was afraid even a slight sound would draw his attention. Discovery would be the ultimate humiliation, but I was also fascinated by the conversation. Mariama’s maiden name was Goodwine so I suspected she had some connection to Darius. What I didn’t know was why the very utterance of his name seemed to invoke dread. I felt a tremor of something in the air that made my heart beat even faster.

“I used to think gray dust was a myth,” Ethan said. “I always scoffed when Father and Mariama talked about it so reverently. I still say it’s just a very powerful hallucinogen.”

“It’s more than that,” Devlin said. “It stops the heart and people die. And the ones that come back…” As he moved down the steps, he turned his head away, and his voice became muffled. I couldn’t make out the rest of his comment.

“You’ve seen them?” Ethan asked.

Devlin moved back to the steps. “They’re still out there if you know where to look. Take a walk on the east side sometime, down along America Street. You can still spot one now and then among the crackheads and heroin addicts. Eyes frosted like a corpse, shuffling around all slumped over as if they’d dragged something back from hell with them.”

Ethan was silent for a moment. “Father used to call them zombies.”

“They’re not zombies,” Devlin scoffed. “Just fools that trusted Darius Goodwine.”

Ethan rose and moved down the steps. I couldn’t see either of their faces now, but their voices carried clearly to my hiding place.

“What are you going to do?” he asked Devlin.

“He’ll have to be stopped.”

“Not by you, I hope. He’s a powerful man, John. From what I hear, he’s got disciples all over the city. Some in very high places.”

“I’m not afraid of him.”

Something in Devlin’s voice, a hint of excitement, sent a warning thrill up my spine.

“Maybe you should be,” Ethan said.

“And why is that?”

“You know why.”

“No, I don’t. But I have a feeling you’re about to tell me.”

In the tense silence that followed, I was almost afraid the rapid thud of my heart would give me away. I hadn’t a clue what they were talking about. I’d never heard of gray dust, but it made me think of what Fremont had said earlier about the place in between the Light and the Dark: It’s called the Gray.

“I’m talking about the night of the accident…after you found out about Mariama and Shani,” Ethan said. “You went to see Father at the Institute, remember?”

“What of it?” Devlin’s voice sounded terse and wary. Almost suspicious.

“You demanded that he help you contact the other side so that you could see them one last time. So that you could say goodbye. When Father couldn’t help, you grew extremely agitated. Violent, even.”

“I was still in shock,” Devlin said in exasperation. “Out of my mind with grief. That’s the only reason I went there. You know I don’t believe in any of your father’s nonsense.”

“And we both know there was a time when you did. You were once Father’s protégé. I’ve heard him say a million times you were the best investigator he ever had.” Was that a note of jealousy I heard in Ethan’s voice?

“That was a long time ago,” Devlin said. “I was looking for a way to annoy my grandfather and Rupert’s dog and pony show was a novelty to me.”

“It was more than that. Even after you moved on…I don’t think you completely let go. You married Mariama, after all.”

“What are you getting at?” Devlin asked coldly.

“Some remnant of that belief must have remained. Grief and shock alone wouldn’t have driven you to the Institute that night.”

“Think what you want. I have no idea why you’re dredging all this up now.”

“After you stormed out, Father sent me to look for you, but it was as if you’d vanished into thin air. Where did you go that night?”

Devlin said nothing.

“You went to see Darius, didn’t you? You asked him for gray dust.”

Still, Devlin remained silent.

“I waited on this very porch for hours to make sure you were okay. You came home the next day looking like a corpse. Almost as if—”

“I’d just lost my daughter and my wife,” Devlin cut in. “How did you expect me to look?”

“I didn’t expect what I saw. You weren’t just grieving, you were terrified. You couldn’t stop shaking. I’d never seen you like that. That’s why I gave you an alibi when the police came around asking questions about Robert Fremont’s murder.”

“I never asked you to lie for me.”

“I was afraid not to,” Ethan said. “You were barely able to drag yourself through that door, let alone handle a police interrogation.”

“Interrogation? You make it sound like I was a suspect.”

“You may well have been if they’d discovered your whereabouts that night. They already knew you and Robert had had a falling-out. Someone overheard the two of you arguing the day before he was shot.”

Devlin’s voice had gone quiet again. “Careful where you take this, Ethan.”

“I’m only taking it to its logical conclusion. If Robert knew that Darius had supplied you with gray dust, he could have made things very difficult for you in the police department. A cop found using that stuff…” His voice trailed off.

“So you think I killed him.” It was statement, not a question.

“No, of course not. But you do have a motive.”

“And what about you?” Devlin asked, still in that same deadly quiet voice.

“What about me?”

“You told the police you were with me the whole night. You didn’t just give me an alibi. You gave yourself one, too.”

“What?” Ethan sounded taken aback. “Why would I need an alibi?”

“That’s what I’ve always wondered.”

A dog barked from someone’s backyard, and I could hear the muffled roar of traffic over on Beaufain. But here in Devlin’s front yard, everything was silent, the air so thick with tension I could scarcely draw a breath.

“You can’t really think I had anything to do with Robert Fremont’s death.” Ethan sounded more hurt than outraged. “What possible motive would I have had?”

“Just forget it,” Devlin said. “We need to stay focused.”

I heard Ethan expel a breath. “You’re right. We have to stick together. Even after all this time, there could still be questions about that night.”

“I’ll take care of any questions. You just call me if you see Darius again,” Devlin said. “No matter the time.”

Their voices faded as he walked with Ethan to the curb. A moment later, I heard a car door slam and the engine start up. I expected Devlin to go back inside, giving me a chance to slip away undetected, but instead, he sat down on the steps to finish his beer as he gazed out into the darkness.

He sat with shoulders hunched, forearms to knees, as if the weight of the world rested on his back. I wanted to go to him, but how would I explain my sudden appearance? What excuse could I give him for lurking in the bushes and eavesdropping on a private conversation? A very disturbing conversation. I was still reeling from the revelations and innuendoes, all of which seemed to lead back to Robert Fremont. The stars have finally aligned.

I also had a feeling the moment I showed myself, Mariama would materialize.

At the mere thought of her, the air grew colder. I shivered in the chill and braced myself in dread.

I must have made some involuntary movement because Devlin’s head whipped around, and I saw his hand slide inside his jacket where I suspected he still wore his shoulder holster.

A cat darted out of a clump of bushes near the street and sprinted across the lawn to the house next door. Devlin’s hand fell away. Slowly, he rose and scoured the yard before he turned to go inside.

As the door closed behind him, I started to emerge from my hiding place, but that terrible cold gripped me. I stood paralyzed as Shani’s ghost manifested at my side.

Her hand was in mine, the frost of her existence chilling my whole being. She clung to me as she gazed out across the yard.

I was horrified by the contact, and my first instinct was to jerk my hand away. Already I could feel my strength waning. But, ghost or no, she was Devlin’s daughter. I couldn’t turn her away.

Her gaze lifted, and when she saw that she had my attention, she lifted a tiny hand and pointed to the cluster of bushes from which the cat had bolted. I almost expected to find Mariama’s ghost swooping down on me.

Instead, I saw the gleam of human eyes in the darkness.


Chapter Ten

Someone was watching the house. Someone besides me.

My first instinct was to call and warn Devlin, but even the slightest movement or sound would alert the watcher to my presence. I remained motionless, hardly daring to even breathe as I shivered in the chill emanating from Shani’s ghost.

The night was very dark. I could pick out little more than a silhouette until the moon peeked from a cloud, and in the sudden illumination, I got a clear view of him. He was black and uncommonly tall, though the shadows surrounding him may have added to the illusion. His gaze seemed transfixed on Devlin’s house, and as I stood watching him, I heard the nightingale again. The trill was soft and mellow, like a dream. The man tilted his head to the sound, and I could have sworn I saw him smile.

Then he turned back to the house and lifted his hand to his mouth. Uncurling his fingers, he blew something from his palm. The shimmering particles hung suspended for a moment before they fell one by one to the ground and disappeared, leaving nothing but the faint odor of sulfur.

Throwing off the spell cast by those sparks, I cut my eyes back to the bushes. The man was gone. A moment later, I heard the thud of a car door down the street and the gentle hum of an engine. I waited until the vehicle was well away before I stirred. It was only then that I realized Shani had vanished, too.

Crawling from my hiding place, I hovered indecisively. I wanted nothing more than to head straight home to the safety of my sanctuary. Forget about this night, forget about the ghosts, forget about the troublesome connections to Fremont’s murder that my eavesdropping had uncovered.

But I couldn’t leave without warning Devlin, even if it meant giving myself away. For all I knew, he could be in terrible danger. His conversation with Ethan had certainly unsettled me. I didn’t know what to make of any of it, but I knew that as soon as I was alone, I would go back over every word, dissecting nuances and inflections as I tried to figure out where these new details fit into the puzzle.

I hurried up the veranda steps, casting a wary glance over my shoulder. The wind had risen, rustling the palmettos, and already I could feel the aberrant cold seep from Devlin’s house. I didn’t want to go in there. Ghosts resided in that house. Not just Shani and Mariama, but entities from another realm, from beyond the Gray.

Minutes went by before Devlin finally answered. When he drew open the door, my breath escaped in a painful swoosh. He must have already been getting ready for bed because his shirt hung open and his hair was mussed as if he’d been running his fingers through it. Or as if someone had.

It hit me then that he might not be alone. That maybe Ethan and I had both interrupted his evening.

“Amelia?” He rested a hand against the door frame. “What are you doing here?”

“I…had to see you.”

I tried to glimpse past him into the foyer, but I could see nothing beyond the doorway. My gaze flicked back to his and then, despite my best efforts, dropped. Where his shirt parted, I could see a strip of chest and against his pale skin, the gleam of his silver medallion. The talisman of the Order of the Coffin and the Claw, a secret society with a membership chosen from the city’s oldest and most influential families. Devlin had shunned the constrictions of his upbringing, turned his back on his grandfather’s legacy and expectations, yet, he still wore that symbol. He was still tied to his past in more ways than one.

All that strobed through my mind in a flash. In the next instant, I tossed another anxious glance over my shoulder toward the street.

He seemed to pick up on my urgency then, because he said sharply, “What’s wrong?”

“I just saw something…I don’t know what it means, but it frightened me.”

“Come in.” He took a step back so that I could enter.

Memories assaulted me the moment I stepped into the foyer, and my gaze went immediately to the staircase. I saw myself slowly climbing those steps, Mariama brushing by me, frightening me with her coldness, teasing me with a glimpse of her eyes in the mirror. I could almost hear the beat of those drums and the thud of my heart as I walked down the hallway to the bedroom. Her bedroom.

“What is it?” Devlin asked. “Tell me.”

I turned. “Someone was in your yard just now. I saw him watching the house.” I moved back to the door and pointed to the bushes where the man had been hiding. “He was there.”

Devlin’s demeanor instantly altered. “Wait here.” He pulled open the drawer of a console in the foyer and removed a gun. I heard a series of snaps and clicks, and then he took another glance out the front door. But he didn’t exit that way. Instead, he disappeared through the tall archway into the front parlor. I followed him, hovering just outside in the foyer as I watched him slip through the French doors into the side garden.

It was getting noticeably colder in the house. Devlin’s ghosts were near. I could feel them. Fear shot through me.

An errant draft rustled paper on the console behind me, and the light in the foyer flickered, though the storm was still some distance off. I could feel a strange heaviness in the air and a pulse of electricity that tingled my nerve endings. Slowly, my gaze traveled through the parlor, probing dark corners.

I’d glimpsed this room once before when I came to see Devlin. I’d thought then as I did now that the weighty antiques and gilded frames were not at all to his taste. This room was Mariama’s. I was certain of it. The lush decor belied the more common scent of lemon verbena stirred by that draft.

Over the mantel hung a portrait of Mariama dressed in a simple black dress that covered her arms and throat. The plain attire was no accident. Nothing detracted from those almond-shaped eyes, those cheekbones, that bewitching smile.

The only light in the room came from the chandelier in the foyer. It swayed gently, throwing shadows across the walls and over the painting so that Mariama’s face alternated between dark and light. The movement was hypnotic, and it was only with some effort that I resisted the trance.

At one end of the room, a large window faced the street. Shani’s ghost was there, motionless, as she peered out into the night. Watching for Devlin. Waiting for him to come back just as she had on the day of the accident.

Ethan had told me once that Mariama and Devlin had had a terrible row that day. Shani kept tapping on John’s leg to get his attention. I think she was trying to console him, but he was too angry…too caught up in the moment to notice. He stormed out of the house, and when he drove off, Shani was standing at the window waving goodbye. That was the last time he saw her alive.

She was still at the window waiting for him, still trying desperately to get his attention. She must have sensed my presence—or felt my warmth—because she glanced over her shoulder with a finger to her lips.

My breath accelerated as I turned and lifted my gaze to the top of the stairs where Mariama’s ghost hovered, the unnatural current stirring her hair and the hem of her gossamer dress. She was pale and cold, but her eyes were lit with an inner fire as she moved down the stairs, her feet floating inches from the steps. The papers swirled on the console, the light flickered and the air grew so frigid I could see the frost of my rapid breaths.

I looked down to find Shani at my side, nearly transparent save for the faint glimmer of her aura. She clung to my hand and I sensed Mariama’s rage as she drifted ever closer.

Icy terror raced through my veins as my heart hammered against my chest. I wanted to back away, but I couldn’t move, couldn’t tear my gaze from the perverted beauty of her manifestation. I had no idea what she might be capable of, how much power she wielded from the other side. I thought of Devlin trapped in this house with her ghost, his energy waning, his youth stolen by a woman who had once claimed to love him.

Still loved him, it would seem.

She put out her arms to Shani, and my first instinct was to step between them. Despite my fear, I might have done exactly that, but when I looked down, the glimmer of Shani’s aura blurred and then vanished, as if something had pulled her back into the ether.

Not so Mariama. With Shani’s fading, she seemed to grow stronger, colder, hungrier. And I was already getting weaker. The place in my chest where I imagined my life force to be felt hollow.

Mustering the last of my strength, I backed away from the stairs, then turned to flee. Devlin had come in silently through the front door, and I ran straight into him. He caught my arms to steady me.

“Are you okay?”

“Yes…I thought I heard something,” I said on a gasp.

“Inside?”

“I’m sure it was my imagination.”

His gaze searched the stairs and the hallway behind me. “I left a window open upstairs. The wind may have knocked something over.”

“That was probably it,” I said shakily. “Did you find anything outside?”

“Not a trace. Whoever you saw is long gone.”

“I heard a car start up and drive away. It might have been him.”

“Can you describe him?”

“I only saw him briefly when the moon came out. He was black. Very tall and thin, although—”

Devlin’s hands tightened on my arms. Something burned in his eyes. “How tall?”

“It was hard to tell. The shadows distorted him…” I trailed off, alarmed. “Why? Do you know who he was?”

“No.”

He was lying, I thought. I wanted to ask him about Darius Goodwine, but I couldn’t without giving my eavesdropping away.

“I heard the nightingale again,” I told him. “It wasn’t a mockingbird. I’m sure of it.”

“There are no nightingales in Charleston,” he insisted.

“Then why do I keep hearing one? Who was that man, John? Why won’t you tell me?”

“I didn’t see him. How would I know?”

“He blew something toward the house. It was like a shimmering blue powder. Don’t you find that odd?”

He said nothing to that, but his hands fell away. He was still standing very close to me, gazing into my eyes. I had the strongest urge to lift my hand to his face, trace that scar with my thumb, assure myself that he was indeed real and this night was really happening. It wasn’t another dream. We were here together. But Mariama was there at his side, stroking his arm, smiling at me over his shoulder. Taunting me because she possessed what I never could.

I glanced away.

“Why did you come here tonight?” Devlin asked. “Don’t tell me you were just driving by.”

“I came to see you.”

He turned to glance out the door. “How did you get here? I didn’t see your car outside.”

“I parked down the street.”

“Because you saw someone watching the house?”

“Because I didn’t want you to see me,” I blurted. “I wasn’t sure I’d have the nerve to knock on your door.”

“It takes nerve to knock on my door?”

I sighed. “Yes, and you know why.”

It was all I could do to keep from reaching out to him, so magnetic was his presence. I let my gaze drift over him again. He’d buttoned his shirt while he was outside. The cut, as always, was perfection. He had an eye for clothes and the money to indulge his refined tastes. But there was an edge to the way he dressed, a hint of the rebellious nature that had driven him away from his elite upbringing and into the arms of Mariama Goodwine.

“So, why did you want to see me?” he asked carefully.

He was still staring out through the leaded glass panel in the front door. I focused my gaze on his profile and shivered. “I got your messages. I didn’t have a chance to ask you about them last evening.”

Slowly, he turned back to me. “What messages?”

“The ones you sent while I was away. The text came on my way back from Asher Falls.”

“Asher Falls?”

“It’s a small town in the Blue Ridge foothills near Woodberry. I had a restoration there, but then I had to leave suddenly, and I was on the ferry when I received your text.”

Something flitted across his face. “I never texted you.”

“But…the message came from your phone. I’m certain of it.”

“I didn’t send it,” he insisted.

“Then who did?”

“I have no idea. Did you save it?”

“I had to replace my phone recently, and I lost everything. But it was sent from your number. I’m sure of it. And before that, I received an email from you. I suppose you didn’t send that, either?”

“No.”

“Well this is very strange.” And more than a little unsettling. “I don’t know what to say. I’m not making this up.”

He smiled thinly. “I never thought you were.”

I felt like bursting into tears. I’d been so certain the messages had come from him. And now to find out that he hadn’t tried to contact me… .

It was foolish to feel so devastated, I told myself. And yet I did.

“Who could have sent them?”

“I don’t know,” Devlin said. “But I intend to find out.”

As I watched him, heart in my throat—and in my eyes—Mariama floated between us. I tried not to track her with my gaze.

How could he not feel the cold? How could he not flinch from her touch?

Go away, I thought.

I could hear her taunting laughter in my head. You go away.

Was I mad? I wondered. Had my years of living with ghosts finally driven me over the edge? Ever since Asher Falls, not only could I see specters, but I could hear them.

“What’s wrong?” Devlin asked.

“I was just wondering why someone would go to the trouble of making me think the messages were from you. They must have somehow gained access to your phone, your email…” I trailed off as Fremont’s cryptic words came back to me yet again.

“That’s not likely,” Devlin said.





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