Emily's Ghost

by Stockenberg, Antoinette

  "Gee, you didn't have to do that," she said without looking at him, hurriedly unsorting her sorted piles. "Your silver would've been safe from me."

  "Yeah, but would it have been safe from Fergus?" he asked, casually plucking out a photo, then tossing it back on the pile.

  Her head came up; a dangerous flush tramped across her cheeks. "We've been around this block before, Lee." She threw an armful of mementos into the trunk and gathered up another. "So leave Fergus out of it."

  Lee grabbed both her wrists, flattening her hands over the pile of papers that fell from her arms. "Emily, please. Stop. Wait. Listen."

  "You sound like a crossing guard," she said, feeling the anger rise in her gorge. "Let go of me."

  His blue eyes were inches from her face; his forehead was damp with sweat. The veins in his temple were working overtime; she'd seen the look before. "I asked you nice," he said. "Now I'll try another way. Shut up for a minute. I have something to say."

  She made a sudden hostile motion, trying to whip her hands free, but he held them fast. It was bizarre -- the two of them, kneeling on a pile of old photos and mail, locked in physical combat.

  "What? What can you possibly have to say to me that you haven't said before? That after the elections we can try again? That you didn't realize until now that I really, really wasn't fooling about Fergus? That you've thought it over and you'll give me thirty days to solve the murder and get him out of here? That -—"

  Lee brought his hand up and clamped it over her mouth. "I can't shut you up," he said, almost in wonder. "There's no way to shut you up. How can I get a word in edgewise? How can --"

  He took her face in both his hands and kissed her, a hard, uncompromising kiss, hot and deep, in every way a match for the kiss she'd given him before she marched out of his office and out of his life. Emily had thrown down the gauntlet that day in his office; now he was picking it up. She didn't expect this, couldn't imagine that he'd throw off his instinctive caution and claim her this way.

  "I ... I don't ... understand," she said, reeling under his assault. She staggered to her feet.

  But he was right there, quick and relentless. "Does this explain it?" He kissed her again, harder, hotter, then broke it off suddenly. "I love you, Sherlock," he said, taking her by her shoulders, giving her an almost symbolic shake. "Don't you get it? You get everything else -- can't you get this one simple thing?"

  She stared at him, still in shock, her body trembling in the aftermath of their encounter. She'd spent weeks backing away from him emotionally, telling herself that her interest in him was academic, even accepting Hildie's invitation just to prove the fact. And now Lee Alden had come flying back into her life on the wings of some twin-engine plane, kissing her until she begged for mercy, insisting that he loved her. It took her breath away.

  "What about Fergus?" she whispered, because she knew that when everything was said and done, it all came down to Fergus.

  She expected Lee to recoil under the blow, but if anything, he became more animated. "Fergus. Okay; Fergus. I've been thinking about that, pretty much night and day."

  He began to pace, then looked down and realized that the floor was carpeted with papers; he stopped abruptly and dropped into the wicker chair near the door. "He's a project you're working on," he said, his agitation barely under control. "I accept that. You see him; I don't. You hear him; I can't. So what?"

  He leaped up from the chair, as if a shot had been fired in the darkness somewhere. "Some of the profoundest thinkers in history have heard and seen things the rest of us haven't -- from Dionysius to Nostradamus. Should we have locked them up, shunned them, because we were too caught up in the noise and clatter of everyday life to hear what they heard? I don't think so. I don't think so."

  He began to pace again, remembered the papers again, stopped again. He was next to her, and almost as an afterthought, he kissed her -- gently this time, as if her lips were flower petals. "You've found something that I've been searching for for years," he said in a voice blended of envy and awe. "What right do I have to insist you're wrong?"

  She was reeling again, this time from the strength of his conversion. "When ... when did you decide this?"

  He laughed softly. "The day you first told me about Fergus, I suppose. I fought it, of course. It was too wildly illogical. How could a woman as rational as you have the ability to see into another dimension? Let's face it, Em," he said, caressing her cheek with his hand, "you don't fit the profile of a mystic."

  He slipped his arms around her waist. "But when Inez mentioned that you were here, that's when it all fell into place for me. You were here. That's all that mattered. There's plenty of space, literally and figuratively, for Fergus. He can have this room," Lee added, bringing his mouth down on Emily's in a kiss of surpassing tenderness, "and we'll take the master."

  Lee was keeping it light, but she could tell from the suppressed excitement in his voice that he was dead serious about Fergus. One way or another, Lee was willing to move over and make room for her convictions. She was intensely moved by his act of faith. And then, of course, there was the fact that she was in his arms, and his warm cheek was pressing hers, and his voice, low and persuasive, was telling her what she'd been waiting a short lifetime to hear.

  She closed her eyes and savored the moment. Lee Alden, the very first man she'd ever loved, was very much here and now, while Fergus was ... somewhere, sometime. Emily took a great swallow of air, then let out a shuddering sigh.

  Lee held her away at arm's length and lowered his head to meet her averted eyes. "Emily? Did I just make a royal ass of myself? Was I so busy with my speech that I didn't understand the sound of your silence?"

  When she said nothing, his breathing became very controlled, very deliberate, as if he were replaying the scene in his mind. "My God," he murmured. "I was wrong. You're not in love --"

  Now it was her turn to clamp her hand over his mouth. "That's not true!" she said passionately. "If you knew how I've been waiting for you ..."

  She released her hand, and then they kissed again, deep, hungry kisses. She had the sense that they'd been in an impenetrable forest, and then they'd become separated, and now they'd found each other again. For the moment it didn't matter that they didn't know how to get out; it mattered only that they were together again.

  "Will you let me make love to you?" he whispered. For her answer Emily reached over to turn off the bright reading light that she'd been using to study. In the golden glimmer of a small Chinese lamp they removed what little they were wearing, and then, wrapped only in the night's sultry heat, they pulled back the bedcovers together. For one wild second Emily wondered whether the television would stay off this time; and then she forgot about the television, and Fergus, and what Lee had called the noise and clatter of everyday life, because she was in his arms again.

  "I fell apart when you walked out on me," he confessed, burying his face in the curve of her throat. "They had to glue me back together. Please, darling, don't ever," he begged between kisses, "do that ... to me ... again."

  "No ... no, how could I?" she murmured. "Everything's different now ... night-and-day different ...."

  "What's different, for pity's sake? Any fool could see he's loved ye all along."

  Of all the voices in the world -- this world or any other --that voice was the one voice Emily was not prepared to hear. She shut her eyes; she became stiff as a barn board.

  Lee pulled away. "Emily? What's wrong?"

  "Tell him, Em," she heard Fergus prod. "Test his faith."

  "Oh, God," Emily whispered, afraid to open her eyes. "Not now. How could you?"

  "Emily, are you serious?" Lee demanded, his voice shaky with frustrated passion.

  "Yes. No -- I don't mean the sex. Is that what you're thinking of?" she asked Lee, bolting upright and looking around the room frantically.

  "At this minute? Yes," Lee confessed in a wondering voice.

  "He's not kidding, ye know." Fergus, standing with h
is arms crossed at the foot of the bed, was perusing Lee with a kind of good-natured leer.

  "Oh! How could you?" Emily wailed to Fergus, pulling a sheet up over her breasts. "We're not even dressed!"

  "But ... that's the general idea," Lee said in hapless confusion.

  Emily, wide-eyed, didn't respond. Lee waved his hand in front of the fixed expression on her face, then said in an instantly more serious tone, "He's here, isn't he?"

  Somehow that got through to her. She gave the faintest of nods and whispered, "This is the most ... the most unacceptable moment of my life." Tears of mortification rolled down her cheeks.

  "Don't cry, dammit to hell," growled Fergus. "It's yer own damn fault. Did ye think I could stand by idly and watch ye give yerself to this -- this hunk? I like him well enough," he added, "but not enough to share ye with 'im."

  Emily pulled the sheet up with both hands to her mouth to stifle a scream of frustration. This was it, the point at which she might well tip over into madness. She closed her eyes and bit on the cloth, summoning every fiber of self-control she possessed. When she opened her eyes, Fergus was still there and Lee was standing alongside the bed, hauling his pants up over his nakedness. It all seemed very funny. She let out a high-pitched yelp of sheer nervous energy. The sound of it frightened her; she bit the inside of her lip so hard that she tasted blood.

  Lee came around to her side of the bed and sat there, his thigh touching hers, his hands gripping her shoulders. Emily searched his face for signs of fear and revulsion, but all she found was a kind of overwhelming humanity. "We'll walk through it together, darling; it's all right." He turned around and looked right through Fergus, then turned back to her. "Will he tolerate my being here with you?"

  Her face became ashen. Fergus could destroy Lee in one blinding flash. She'd been so caught up in her own embarrassment that she'd forgotten the ghost's power. She shook her head bleakly, incapable of putting together a coherent explanation of the danger.

  "Ah, hell, let 'im stay," Fergus said with a magnanimous wave of his hand.

  Emily gazed over Lee's shoulder into the green, dancing eyes of the ghost. She saw a cat, ready to pounce. "He says you can stay," she repeated to Lee, feeling foolish and fearful.

  Lee seemed to relax. "Well, that's a start, then. Where exactly is he?"

  "He's standing at the foot of the bed," she answered, gathering courage. "With his arms crossed and a snotty expression on his face," she added angrily.

  Lee said calmly, "I take it he doesn't approve of what we are -- were -- doing?"

  She shook her head and said through clenched teeth, "He doesn't seem to want to share me."

  "Ye don't have to bloody well tell him everything," Fergus interrupted, flushing deeply.

  "You're the one who has the advantage in this little dynamic," she shot back at him. "All the power, all the knowledge!"

  The ghost looked surprised, then looked at Lee's broad, rippling back, and an expression of torment twisted the features of his face. "Ye haven't heard anything I've said if that's what ye believe," he said in a voice cut low by her anger.

  Lee was watching Emily's reactions carefully; he saw the stricken look on her face. When she had no answer for Fergus, he said simply, "He's hurt you."

  But Emily shook her head, deeply distressed. "No, I'm the one who's hurt him." Hildie's little tank top was on the nightstand; Emily picked it up and pulled it over her head, not because she felt particularly modest, but because she didn't want anyone to want her anymore. Maybe that was the definition of modesty; she didn't know.

  "Oh, no, ye don't," Fergus said, in a lightning shift of mood. "Don't ye be layin' any guilt trip on me. I watch Donahue. I watch Oprah. I watch Geraldo, for God's sake. I know everything there is to know about manipulation. Unh-unh. Take that little thing off. Go back to yer business. I'll just wait outside. From what I seen," he added with a sly and jealous glance at the senator, "ye'll only be a minute."

  Lee had been tracing the play of emotions on Emily's face. "Now what?" he asked her.

  Emily turned defiant, folding her arms across her chest. "He wants us to resume," she explained with fine outrage, her foot tapping thin air under the sheet. "He promises not to look."

  Lee burst out in a laugh. "Does he say why he wants us to resume?"

  "He doesn't want to feel guilty."

  "Guilty! What does a ghost know about guilt?"

  "He watches all the talk shows."

  "Ah. Of course. Well. This really is ... unbelievable," Lee said softly, shaking his head.

  "Don't say 'unbelievable,'" Emily moaned. "Or we'll be back where we started."

  "Wrong word," Lee said, kissing the top of her hair. "I meant 'weird.'"

  She was dismayed to see Lee stand up and approach the spot where Fergus was standing. The ghost remained where he was, arms akimbo now, watching Lee with a narrow, calculating expression. Emily was reminded again of a cat. Her heart began to pound as Lee paused, stared, moved to another angle, and repeated the pattern. Fergus said nothing; only his eyes, glittering and attentive, conveyed any sense of danger. Lee brought one arm up and very calmly, very deliberately began to cut a swath through the air.

  Right through Fergus. Emily cried, "Don't!" at the same time that she saw both Fergus's image and Lee's broad, bare arm occupying the same space. The hair on the back of her neck stood up. In one fell swoop Lee had violated a taboo that Emily had been extremely careful to honor. For an instant Fergus looked stunned. Then the light began: blinding, terrifying, and focused completely on Lee.

  "Fergus, don't!" Emily cried out. "He didn't mean it! Stop it!" she commanded in a shrill voice.

  "Keep him away from me," Fergus growled, and then he disappeared. Instantly the light subsided, although random shafts of brightness continued to play around the room, the way thunder rolls after the initial crack of lightning. Lee, who hadn't been seriously hurt, looked dazed.

  "What was that all about?" he asked in a voice that wasn't quite steady.

  Emily had climbed back out of bed and dressed. "You offended him, Lee," she said, zipping up her shorts. She looked at him across the bed -- unoccupied, yet again -- and said with a sigh, "He wants desperately to be a human being again, and you made it really clear that he's not."

  "For that he was going to annihilate me?"

  "I don't know what he was going to do. He's been very tense lately."

  Lee pulled his dark polo shirt back over his head and said in a voice muffled by fabric, "I can't believe we're having this conversation." When his head popped through, he gave Emily a look that was both ironic and apologetic. "But . . . I do believe everything else." He came over to Emily and locked his arms around the small of her back, holding her close. "I love you, Emily. I love you. But I've got to admit, this guy is formidable competition."

  Emily laid her cheek against his chest and said in a low, confused voice, "He'll probably be glad to hear that."

  They had coffee in the kitchen after that, even though it was late. Lee rummaged around for something sweet and came up with a still-warm carrot cake with cream cheese frosting. They left the kitchen lights low and spoke in undertones about Hessiah Talbot's murder. As it turned out, Lee had read the notebooks she'd left on the desk in her condo that first night; he was more informed than she'd thought.

  "Anyway, now that I've found the photograph and identified the family as the Talbots, I feel a lot more motivated about searching that pile of memorabilia in the bedroom. I think there's a significant connection between the mayor and them," she said. "If I can't find it in that pile, I'm going back to Talbot Manor for those diaries."

  "Not without telling me first," he urged. "Maria Salva sounds more dangerous than Fergus."

  Emily agreed to keep him posted. "This is crazy, Lee," she said, sliding her hand around the back of his neck. "Somehow I thought that if you believed me, everything else would fall into place -- including us, right into each other's arms." She drew his face closer to hers and, move
d by an overwhelming feeling of tenderness toward him, kissed him.

  Lee answered the kiss in kind, holding himself in check. But the kiss turned deeper; a low sound escaped from his throat. "Unless you want to be carried off to bed, this is not a good idea." His smile was taut.

  "No," she said, sighing. "You're right. I want to, but --" She laughed softly and shook her head. "It'd have to be in a lead-lined room. You do understand, don't you?" she asked, tracing her finger over the fullness of his lips. "I don't want to hurt Fergus. I'm not sure I can actually help him, but I can't -- I won't -- hurt him.

  "And besides, you have a primary race to run," she said, changing the subject.

  But Lee didn't want to talk about the primary. "You're pretty serious about this fellow, aren't you? Should I be jealous?"

  "Not in any normal sense of the word," she said, coloring a little.

  "Heck, if he were normal we could duke it out behind the barn, winner take all -- with your permission, of course," he added gallantly.

  "Lee, I'm serious about the primary," she said, switching the subject again. "For all we know there's a reporter from the Washington Post hiding in your front bushes right now. Even putting the subject of Fergus's hostility to you aside, we don't dare be seen together until the primary next month -- until after the election, I mean," she corrected.

  Lee's playful mood evaporated. His brow became furrowed and his blue eyes went gray. "I hate to say this. But I'm in trouble, Emily. I haven't let on to my family yet, but I'm hanging by a thread. The projections don't look good. Strom is picking up speed while I'm dropping back fast."

  "But it's early days yet," she argued. "This is politics. Anything can happen."

  "Yeah. Maybe you can talk Fergus into haunting Strom instead," he quipped. "Come on, I'll see you safely to your bedroom door." He pointed a finger heavenward. "You owe me for this, Fergus."