The Prophet

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.

Wasn’t it?

Had Fremont somehow sent those messages from beyond in order to lure me back to Charleston?

We have to act quickly, he’d said. Do you understand? It has to be now.

Devlin was watching me closely. “You’re trembling. Are you sure you’re okay?”

“Yes. I’m still a little shaken and it’s cold in this house. Haven’t you noticed?”

He shrugged. “It’s always been drafty.”

Always? Or just since the ghosts came?

“What did the messages say?” he asked.

I was reluctant to reveal my intimate interpretation of the missives, particularly now that I knew they hadn’t been sent by him. “In the email, you asked where I was.”

“Did you answer?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t really know,” I said truthfully. “I was out of town, so I didn’t think there was anything to be gained by telling you my whereabouts.”

“What about the text?”

“It said ‘I need you.’” My face warmed as he stared down at me.

Then he leaned in, his gaze dark and fathomless. “I need you,” he drawled.

“Y-yes. That’s what it said.”

“Nothing more?”

I shook my head.

He looked pensive and slightly ominous. “When did you say you received the text?”

“A few weeks ago.”

“And yet, you’re just now coming to see me about it.”

Yes, there was that. I couldn’t explain my hesitance without giving away more of my feelings than I cared to reveal. “I couldn’t come at once. I needed some time to recuperate when I got back. I wasn’t well.”

“Not well?” He placed his hands on my shoulders and turned me to the light. “You’ve been through something. I can see it on your face, in your eyes.” His voice dropped. “What happened to you, Amelia?”

Don’t, I thought miserably. Don’t say my name. Don’t look at me that way. I’m only human. How can I not melt when you look at me like that?

“I’m better now,” I said.

He took my chin and gently tilted it. “What are those marks on your face? Who did that to you?” I heard something in his voice, a dark and dangerous undercurrent that made me shiver.

“Not who, what,” I tried to say lightly. “I tangled with a briar patch. Occupational hazard. It was nothing.”

“I don’t agree.”

I had backed away inadvertently, until I felt the wall behind me. Devlin moved with me, and now I started to feel panicky because he had that look again. He wouldn’t try to kiss me, surely. Not after the way I’d run out on him.

But he was slowly leaning toward me, dark eyes glinting with something I didn’t want to put a name to.

He said Amelia on a whisper, and my resistance weakened. I might have reached for him, despite my best intentions, but Mariama was there, as always. Floating between us. Touching Devlin. Touching me.

I drew a tremulous breath and turned my head away. “I should go. If you didn’t send those messages, I suppose there’s nothing more to talk about.”

“Actually, there’s a lot that needs to be said.”

“It’s getting late and I have to be up early—”

He lifted a hand to my hair and let the strands sift through his fingers. “Don’t go.”

I closed my eyes and sighed. “I have to.”

He placed a hand on the wall above me, trapping me. He didn’t touch me again, but I could feel the heat of his skin mingling with the cold of Mariama’s presence. She’d drifted away, but not too far. She was somewhere in the shadows, watching us.

“Are you ever going to tell me what happened that night?” He glanced toward the stairs, and I shuddered as memories assailed me. His lips pressed to my pulse, his fingers skimming my thigh…

“Please let me go,” I whispered.

“I’m not holding you. I just want to know what happened that night. The way you looked when you ran out of the bedroom…it’s haunted me. I’ve been over it a million times in my head. What did I do to frighten you? Did I hurt you somehow?”

“No. No! It wasn’t anything you did. Please believe me. The timing was all wrong. And you said yourself, you weren’t ready to let go of the past. You didn’t want to let them go… .” My babbling trailed off. “I’m sorry I couldn’t explain it better at the time. I don’t think I really understood it myself until later. Until I had time to think—”

I never had a chance to finish that lame excuse. A loud crash from the parlor startled us both, and Devlin’s hand flew to his back where he’d slid the gun into his waistband. He drew it now and motioned for silence as he eased across the foyer, me at his heels. Taking a quick sweep of the parlor, he dropped his arm and turned on the light.

Mariama’s painting lay facedown on the floor.

“What happened?”

“Damned if I know. The wind couldn’t have knocked it off. That thing weighs a ton.”

“Then what caused it to fall?” Dumb question. I already knew the answer.

“The fasteners must have loosened.”

“The glass is broken,” I said inanely because I didn’t know what else to say at that moment. Mariama’s message was perfectly clear.

“It can be repaired,” he said. “I’ve been meaning to take it down, anyway. I just never got around to it. I rarely come in this room. It’s always so cold in here, even in the summer. I’ve never been able to figure out where the draft comes from.” He looked up as the chandelier stirred. “See what I mean?”

I was standing in the archway and could feel that same current sweeping down the stairs. I looked up, expecting to see Mariama once again, but instead, the darkness on the galley pulsed and throbbed with shimmers, like tiny strobes, where the Others were trying to come through.

I stared wide-eyed and terrified as the flickers intensified. I had to get out of that house, away from Devlin, away from the emotions that drew those ravenous entities like moths to flame.

“I have to go.”

“Amelia, wait.”

I was out the front door and all the way down the veranda steps before he caught up with me. Once again he took my arms and turned me, searching my face in the darkness. “What’s wrong? Why did you run out like that?”

“Just let me go. Please.”

I tried to wrench away, but his grasp only tightened. “What is it about this house that frightens you? What is it about me?”

My gazed went past him to the house. I could see Shani in the window and Mariama hovering in the doorway. Maybe it was my imagination, but I thought I saw the glimmer of faces in every other window. “You know why,” I said breathlessly.

“What are you talking about?”

“You know, John. You just refuse to admit it.”

He dropped his hands and took a step back from me. Even in the dark, I could see the look of horror that flashed across his face.