Julianna Emmanuel sat head bowed, hands clasped and weeping in a pew at the front of the church.
Enzo sat next to the young nun, licking her hand.
Clare took a hasty step forward, then paused, not knowing what reception the Sister of Mercy would give her. So she whispered, instead, “Julianna Emmanuel?”
The girl’s shoulders rounded a bit, Clare thought she heard a hiss of Enzo telepathically talking to the apparition.
Zach dropped Clare’s hand and closed the door. The room dimmed further.
Clare walked slowly down the center aisle toward the nun, and ghosts withdrew from her path. As usual, the others didn’t want to attract her attention. When she hesitated a pace away from the Sister of Mercy, Julianna Emmanuel glanced back at her. I am sorry for what I said last night. That I accused you of being judgmental when I, in turn, judged you!
Since no other living person was around, Clare answered aloud, “I didn’t kill him, Jonathan O’Neill. I just, ah, sent him on. That’s what the knife does, moves spirits on—”
BAD spirits, Enzo put in.
“—bad spirits on, more quickly than is my customary process.” Clare cleared her throat. “I also defended myself.”
The phantom nun nodded. I understand. I had visions last night, and much was revealed to me.
All Clare could respond to that was, “Oh. Good.”
Julianna Emmanuel stopped fingering her rosary, glanced at the altar, upward, then back to Clare. Though tears streaked her face, she looked . . . exalted. She made a brief, dismissive gesture. Last night is past and came about as it should have.
Now Clare swallowed and repeated herself. The spirituality of the woman, and feeling the smack of fate, made her itch under her skin. “Oh. Good.”
You have helped me reach this place! Thank you so much!
“You’re welcome.”
Zach tucked her fingers into the crook of his good arm as if to see the ghost better. “We thank you, too.”
The sister backed into the pew, but didn’t retreat as much from Zach as she had when they’d all met.
She looks very defined to me, Zach sent to Clare, and she got the impression that he hadn’t liked not being able to see Julianna Emmanuel and get all her statistics in a glance, like he could with the living and other specters.
Replying to Zach mentally, Clare said, She becomes clearer each time I see her.
To the nun, Clare emphasized, “You helped us. Most of all, you gave the lost children peace as they left their bodies and crossed over to whatever comes next.”
Heaven, the nun replied firmly. They went to heaven. I showed them the way.
“And now it is your time to transcend,” Clare said.
Enzo barked.
Two more tears welled from the ghost’s cloudy eyes and trickled down her cheeks, only a gray shade darker than her wimple. I believe that. I believe that I am worthy to be accepted into heaven.
“You have always been worthy of heaven,” Clare said. “You only had to cast doubts away and believe it.”
Thank you, Clare!
I helped, too. Enzo barked again.
The Sister of Mercy giggled. Thank you, too, Enzo.
She even glanced up at Zach, then away. And my thanks to you, Jackson Zachary Slade, too. You have been a most chivalrous knight.
“I try,” Zach said, though Clare felt his amusement. “Clare will help you transcend to heaven. Will you heal her wound?”
Julianna Emmanuel gasped and surged toward them. I had forgotten! How could I have forgotten such a thing?
“You had other concerns on your mind,” Clare said, but the closer the nun came, the more heat she brought, and a fragrance like grass in the sun.
And aiding the trapped and dying ones drained my energy, Julianna Emmanuel murmured.
“You don’t need to defend yourself,” Zach said gruffly. “The boys needed you more than we did at the time.” He paused. “We had the hope that you would help Clare, and so you will.”
I will, indeed. This very moment!
Clare braced, and to her astonishment, Zach let her go and stepped behind her. Then a warm swirl of wind touched her, and though she wanted to keep her eyes open, they closed naturally, and fragmented colored light sparkles flickered against the inside of her eyelids. Summer. A gentle, fabulous summer that she hadn’t experienced at all in the last year. All the scents of it that Julianna Emmanuel had known, flowers and hot metal from the sculptures in Manitou Springs, the unique odors of the mineral springs . . . and the taste of iron on her tongue, natural bubbling water.
Most of all, the near-searing heat against her skin, sinking into her muscles, coating her bone marrow. She felt the press of fingers on her rib cage, burning like being in the hot sun along the rip in her etheric body. She drew in a long, slow breath and the taste of the chapel air came to her . . . incense. Which reminded her of her great-aunt Sandra. Clare could release some of her guilt at not spending more time with the woman she’d loved.
Then the warmth withdrew.
Julianna Emmanuel does good work, Enzo said admiringly, more minor spirit than phantom dog.
“Yeah, looks all healed. In fact, I can’t see any hint of a scar,” Zach added.
Clare sighed and opened her eyes. “I think she healed all my hurts, not only the spectral one. I feel great!” She couldn’t keep from grinning.
“Good. That’s good.” Zach huffed a breath.
Looking around, she found a smiling Julianna stood near the altar. “Thank you.”
The wound concerned you grievously. Julianna appeared puzzled. It was simple to heal.
“Maybe for you,” Zach said, “but others had problems.”
Enzo danced up to the nun. I could not heal it. He licked her hand and she rubbed his head.
“And my body didn’t heal it either, or my energy, or whatever.” Clare waved a hand. And now that all her anxiety had drained away, it dawned on her that they were, once again, trespassing. A standard misdemeanor in her career. She shifted her feet, glanced at the door, which had once again opened wide.
All right, the ghosts or whoever didn’t mind that she and Zach and Enzo were here, perhaps even welcomed them—directly contrasting with the cave of last night.
Clare focused on Julianna Emmanuel, smiled, and said softly, “That you mended my injury so easily with your healing hands shows why the Powers That Be are impressed with you.”
Zach snorted. “Have plans for her.”
Julianna Emmanuel seemed taken aback. Surely not? she said.
“I think so,” Clare stated.
Me, too, Enzo said.
The apparition blinked long lashes over fog gray eyes. I am not sure of these Powers That Be of which you speak.
Angels, Enzo said in a voice that zipped a shiver up Clare’s spine. No, she didn’t want to think of angels. Minor spirit guides, ghosts good and evil, amorphous Powers That Be, were all well and good, but . . . angels as a concept seemed all too real and powerful to her. Something unknown, unknowable, and with whom she didn’t want to interact.
“In any event,” she said, “it’s time you move on, Julianna Emmanuel.”
With a last slow look around the church, the nun nodded, then drifted toward Clare, holding out her hands.
Clare took her warm fingers, and realized the young woman was significantly smaller than she. She hadn’t noticed before because the Sister of Mercy’s spirit filled any space she inhabited. Stepping into the smiling apparition, Clare blinked and turned with the spirit in the direction of the altar.
Chapter 34
The wide-open fancy golden gates of heaven shone from the bright, heavy light pouring past them, their whorls and loops gleaming. The gates themselves seemed two stories high to Clare, dwarfing any human figure. Narrowing her eyes, she understood that the phantom
couple she’d helped before, the Emersons, had held much the same vision of heaven. Because they’d gravitated toward Julianna Emmanuel and spent time with her? Perhaps. One strong personality could influence others, and Clare had never met a phantom with more intensity.
Which explained the more than usual ghosts haunting Manitou Springs. Specters wishing to bask in the lovely spiritual glow of the nun.
Clare drew in a long breath, felt Julianna Emmanuel’s heated hands squeeze hers, and heard the young woman’s breath catch as she stared at the gates and the light.
Oh! Oh, oh, oh! Just as I had imagined.
Clare thought that was the point.
BEE-YU-TEE-FUL! Enzo panted.
Rainbow-colored memories flashed through Clare from Julianna, a childhood in France, the time in Ireland, the trip to the United States and all the way to Manitou Springs, the huge burst of bright epiphany about her healing gift, meeting the Native American shaman who trained her. Then her emotions more than memories—her joy and fascination with her talent. Her great need to help and the pleasure it gave her.
Then bliss.
Absolute bliss.
All sense of Julianna Emmanuel as a human being, her human form, vanished from Clare as the spirit streamed toward the light, blending in with the white light, gone and unable to be separated from that ray.
Then someone ice cold stepped into Clare and she gasped, caught a flicker of memories as a salesman guy hawked bottled spring water at a storefront. She shivered, but before she could begin to connect with him, he flowed through her and away, streaking to the darker yellow orange hue of heaven’s light.
And so it went. The phantoms seemed to need to move through Clare, but she didn’t have to initiate contact and step into them. Not this time, and not with those who’d gathered around Sister Julianna Emmanuel. The chill of their beings remained the same as if they’d touched her, but not as bad as when she touched them, and she shuddered with the continuing cold, the shock of each as it used her as a conduit to their next destination. If Julianna Emmanuel had promised heaven to these ghosts, and they’d believed, no wonder they’d remained. The sister’s goodness had helped prepare them for their own transitions, replaced fear of the next life with hope, kept them sane in the dreary, emotionless gray dimension.
Yes, Julianna Emmanuel had been—continued to be—a powerful spirit.
Each specter flowed to a hue of the great shaft of light, this one a pale yellow nearly white, the next a golden yellow. Clare lost track of the number shivering through her, and didn’t bother to grab and understand any memories. The aspect of the church around her turned to browns and blacks and sepia. Finally, the last flicker of gray zoomed into yellow, shading into orange with a slight edge of brown, got absorbed by that. Then the light faded and the golden gates slammed shut with the ringing of a thousand bells, high to low.
Zach’s strong, solid, and warm arm steadied Clare, and she realized she rocked in the wind of the ghosts’ passing. The heat of Sister Julianna Emmanuel had transmuted to the standard cold of all the rest of the spirits who crossed into the huge, bright light between the curlicue gates that the nun had seen—the light of her heaven.
Clare’s dazzled eyes couldn’t discern the room. “They’re gone.”
Zach took her arm, and she felt as if she solidified on the plane she and other humans considered reality—and Zach’s touch was real enough for her!—and away from the spectral plane of trapped ghosts she thought of as the gray dimension.
Zach grunted. “The whole lot of them?”
All of them. Enzo sounded dazed as if such a mass departure had affected him, too. Perhaps he’d seen or sensed more about the ghosts than Clare had. Well, he was a spirit, and she remained gratefully human.
She answered, “Yes, everyone who stayed in Julianna Emmanuel’s circle of influence left, too.”
“Always thought there were more ghosts around than there should be. I’d figure most people would just poof from here to there when they died,” Zach said.
A chuckle tore from Clare. She blinked several times and leaned against Zach. No, she wasn’t dependent on him. He helped her when she needed help; she helped him when he needed it. The best of all partnerships, friends and lovers.
“You ready to go?” he asked, his tone rough with emotion. She knew he didn’t like seeing her so vulnerable.
“Yes.” The small church came into focus again and she straightened away from Zach and turned toward the sun’s light coming through the wide-open door, so much less . . . intense . . . than the rich pale yellow through deepest gold to dark orange that had shone through the gates of heaven. Julianna Emmanuel’s heaven, what she believed in and what she’d projected to those around her who’d kept her company. Hopefully what she’d projected to those spirits of lost youngsters when she freed them from their pain and helped them move on.
Clare deeply hoped the children had found the peace and joy and the bliss that Julianna Emmanuel had. The nun would have tried her hardest to calm the tormented spirits and send them on to a beautiful, kind, and loving place.
Sighing, Clare let out the cool air the tagalong ghosts had left in her lungs, then drew in the sun-warmed air of the real world.
“Your wound’s still good despite the other ghosts?” Zach asked.
She set her hand over the place of her former injury and probed it from the inside out and the outside in. “Still all healed, nothing there, not even a scar.” Her lips yet curved in the smile that she’d given the young nun when their fingers had met, but her face didn’t feel stiff. Satisfaction, near . . . joy . . . swirled through her. She’d been healed, but more, she’d done a very good job in helping Julianna Emmanuel transcend to heaven . . . and to whatever the Powers That Be offered her in the next phase of her existence.
The serenity of the girl and those others who’d passed through Clare left her with a feeling of fulfillment. Rather like how Julianna had felt after using her healing gift. Could Clare’s gift also be considered healing?
No, foolishness.
But she cherished that gratification at the practice of her gift. Gift, not a curse, not in this moment, though it might feel like a curse again now and then in the future. She’d done well. She had helped people. She’d led Julianna Emmanuel to where she should be.
The Sister of Mercy had given Clare more benefits than healing her etheric wound. The nun had taken pleasure in her gift, let Clare feel that pleasure and see how she, too, could, should do more than accept her psychic power. Consider it more of a blessing. Perhaps, sometimes, take joy in the exercise of it, and definitely accentuate the positives of the Cermak gift rather than dwell on the negatives.
Move away from the negative past, and her poor attitude. Embrace and celebrate her gift. That might be hard to do, but if she could practice a better mind-set minute to minute, then it might turn into a habit.
She could try. So she let out another breath, let out her negativity like her Beginning Yoga instructor stated, and walked down the aisle and outside to the steps. She saw not one human or phantom.
I think I want to stay here for a while, Enzo said, staring at where the gates of heaven had manifested. She didn’t ask him if he meant to remain in the church alone or cruise the town and canyon. She’d finished her case and didn’t need his emotional support now.
Sure, she replied easily, her mind to his.
Sure. Zach’s telepathic comment came.
The ghost Labrador looked up at her. I can be at your side in an instant. You only have to call.
Clare dipped her head. I think we’ve all earned a break.
Enzo stood and moved into her, wiggling his body and chilling her legs. He gave her hand one long swipe of his tongue, then stepped delicately to the front of the church and looked up.
To Zach, Clare appeared a little shaky. Since she and Enzo had said that the ghosts who’d
hung around the little church of Our Lady of Perpetual Help had whooshed into heaven with Sister Julianna Emmanuel, he could leave his lover to recover for a couple of minutes here while he took care of business. He walked Clare down steps to a big, sunny boulder and had her sit. The ripple of the stream came to his ears, so he hoped it damn well anchored her in the physical world of the here and now, and soothed her, too.
Rossi answered in the middle of the first ring. “What can I do, Zach?”
“How are the kids?”
“Tyler is gone from the hospital. Both the attorney and the accountant showed up here. Got the idea the attorney came because of good billable hours.” Rossi snorted, then chuckled. “The accountant swooped down and took Tyler away. I’ve never seen an accountant move that fast.” He paused. “Except Clare, of course.”
“Of course.”
“I got the impression that the accountant won their arguments. He’ll be the one calling the shots now, and that law firm might be out in the cold on this case.”
Zach grunted. “As much as they can be, since I think they are both named executors of the Utzig estate.” He shrugged. “Legal maneuverings. Not our problem—except we’ll keep an eye on the kid.”
“We won’t be the only ones. Social services is involved now. Boutros already has foster parents approved, I think.”
“Good.”
Clearing his throat, Zach said, “Clare has helped the Sister of Mercy transcend.” He had no doubt Rossi as well as Rickman had listened to Zach’s hastily dictated reports automatically uploaded to their secure server.
Rossi made a noise of satisfaction. “That’s great.”
“Yes. I’m taking Clare home. Can you watch someone from the resort pack our stuff, then arrange for our luggage to get to Clare’s house? Check us out of Bubbling Springs?”
“Happens that I’ve made a female friend who works at the resort. She might do this for me,” the bodyguard answered smugly.
“Interested in the sensational case we broke and wants to pump you for details?”
Ghost Maker Page 28
