by Julie Kenner
“Hold on, sis.”
Eve took a deep breath, centering her aura. She closed her eyes, watching as a square formed in her mind. The shape altered, became three-dimensional. Then it multiplied. And as the mental tiles grew in number, they started the ritual wall-building. She could block out the voices this way, a method she’d devised as a child while watching her father restore an old wall in their house. She continued to breathe purposefully, stacking the tiles in her mind and after a moment, her heart calmed to a steady beat.
“No, Lacey, you don’t need to come. I’m fine.” In her newfound serenity, Eve remembered why she’d called her little sister a few days ago. “I just wanted to let you know that I’m not going to meet you and Seth out at Virginia Beach next month. You’ll have to make it a romantic weekend for two.”
Lacey chuckled. “As if it wasn’t going to be one with you there anyway. Seth has his ways, you know. He had it all planned. Fun for you, romance for me.”
“Lucky us,” Eve said, pushing back those third-wheel feelings again.
“No arguments here. But I thought you were looking forward to some relaxation. This is your first summer off in years. I wanted us to hang out. I want you to get to know Seth.”
“I know.” Confident she had the spirits at bay, Eve untied the tight knot of her robe and discarded the damp material on the floor. As pink sunlight teased the floor through the slats in her blinds, she hooked the phone between her shoulder and ear and pulled the sheets from her bed. Today just became laundry day. “I’ve got a special project going. Something fascinating. I can’t relax until it’s done.”
Lacey should buy that. Eve was notorious for filling her time off with researching or writing the scholarly works that had established her as an expert in Romani culture. Her sister would never suspect that her new “project” was something much more personal.
“Bring the project with you,” Lacey suggested.
Eve folded her lips inward. If last night was any indication, the bottle had indeed enhanced her ability to communicate with the dead. She needed to stay here, find out as much as she could from Jeta, Nicholai and Alexis about the elusive gypsy king, if they knew him at all. She had to put this obsession to rest or he’d invade her dreams forever.
Viktor.
A memory flashed in her mind. His name, spilling from her lips. Desperate. Wanting. Orgasmic. She sucked in a breath. Her gaze darted to her vanity table.
The perfume bottle had toppled over, the top lying beside it. She’d tried a hundred times over the past two days to open the bottle, but if she’d tugged any harder, she’d felt sure she would have broken the glass. The phone still clutched to her ear, she crossed the room and lifted the decorative stopper.
The edges were smooth, uncracked.
Now the bottle was open? On its own? How?
“What the—?”
“Eve?”
Her mind clicked back to her sister. “Sorry, Lacey, I’m distracted this morning. Look, I just can’t go, okay? I need to stay here and work from home. My research is here.” She forced a smile into her voice, which proved more effective when she swung around, turning her back on the perfume bottle that, until last night, had represented nothing more than a wild attempt to gain insight into a man who no longer existed.
Or did he?
“You and Seth don’t need me hanging around, do you?” Eve asked. “We’ll schedule another vacation, maybe when I have someone interesting to bring along.”
“I thought you swore off men. A year’s celibacy to clear your heart, figure out what you really wanted.”
Eve snorted. “Yeah, well, my deadline is fast approaching and I’m no closer to the answer to that question than I am to finishing my project.”
Without her sister’s doubtful tone, Eve had already started to distrust the wisdom of her decision. She was over thirty and had experienced her fair share of lovers and relationships, not one of them seriously near engagement or marriage. Not that she needed the piece of paper or the ring—she just craved the soul mate. Someone who understood her gift, even embraced it. Someone whose presence alone could calm nerves rattled by work, or who would need her to ground his place in the world. Someone who would always surprise her with his intellect, his insights.
Someone who apparently didn’t exist.
With all the dating she’d done and the friends she’d amassed, she figured she would have found someone by now. But she hadn’t come close, making her suspect that she was, as the song said, looking for love in all the wrong places. She’d decided to take a year to figure out a new plan, clear her head and give her libido a much-needed rest.
Ha!
Luckily for Eve, Lacey knew when to argue with her older sister and when to let topics drop. After vowing to call Lacey back at a more decent hour, Eve hung up. She crossed the room and gently replaced the phone in the cradle.
The minute the device left her hand, a charged crackle surged through the air. For an instant, she enjoyed the play of the current, the sparks dancing over her skin as if a shower of static electricity rained all around her.
Then she realized she wasn’t wearing any clothes.
She tensed, grabbed the discarded sheet from the floor, twirled it around her, then turned, only half-prepared for what she might see.
“Such a shame to cover such exquisite beauty.”
Eve swallowed a gulp of air. Viktor Savitch stood before her. Despite that she could see partly through his thigh-high boots, long, lean legs, tapered waist, sculpted chest and defiant smile, there was no mistaking the image he projected.
I am the king.
Still, she had to be sure.
“Who are you?”
He arched a dark brow and even though his face was half-transparent, his intense blue eyes twinkled.
“You know who I am, Evonne Baptiste.”
“How do you know me?”
He leaned back on her vanity and crossed his feet at the ankles. The delicate furniture remained steady under his non-existent weight. “I know you intimately, my sweet.”
“That’s not what I meant,” she snapped. Ghost or not, she wasn’t about to let him make her blush, despite the heat flushing her chest.
She drew the sheet tighter.
“There are things I know,” he whispered, his voice rich with the brogue of a hundred different cultures. “The minute I came into your home, I learned all I could. What you eat. What you drink. What you dream. It’s a habit I’ve formed.”
“When did you come into my home? I didn’t invite you.”
“I’m not a vampire,” he said with a chuckle, crossing his diaphanous arms. “I need no invitation. But, alas, you extended one when you brought my prison into your bedroom.”
With concentrated effort, he reached down and flicked his foggy finger on the perfume bottle, knocking it a few inches aside. She gasped at his ability to move a solid object.
“Don’t break it!” she commanded.
He eyed her though slits. “I will not return to this prison.”
She swallowed, her heart slamming against her chest, not so much with fear for herself, but for him. As she suspected when she’d made the purchase, the glass bottle and Viktor Savitch were inextricably linked, though she’d never imagined how intimately! Had his ghost truly been trapped inside? If he destroyed the bottle, could he possibly inadvertently destroy the part of him that still wandered this Earth?
“You may have no choice,” she said coolly. “If you destroy that bottle before we understand your connection to it, you could disappear forever. Is that what you want?”
He paused, clearly considering her warning. She’d always heard he was a clever man, raised in childhood by a legendary gypsy shaman—his grandfather—then later studying with a respected scholar and nineteenth-century chronicler of the Romani ways. She’d been driven to learn about this elusive man by forces she’d never truly understood. But never in her wildest dreams, not even after she purchased the perfume bottle,
did she imagine she’d actually meet him—or at least, his essence.
She blinked a few times, then glanced at the window. Daylight was indeed dawning outside. Beneath the sheet, she pinched her arm. It hurt.
This was real. All of it. All of him.
In her entire life, she’d never seen a ghost. Heard them, yes. Thousands of them. But never, except in her dreams, had she ever made visual contact. She’d also never carried on a complete conversation. Snippets, only. Words. Phrases sprinkled between planes to exchange messages with the dead who had not yet left this Earth.
“You are amazing,” she said, loosening her grip on the sheet as she walked forward, her arm outstretched. She stopped when her hand was mere centimeters from connecting with his filmy flesh. “Are you real? Are you really Viktor Savitch?”
He lifted his arm, palm up, his ghostly hand hovering just beneath hers. Warmth radiated from him as if he were solid, but an additional, metaphysical vibration sent a streaming reaction along her skin.
“You know I am.”
She sucked in a breath. “Why are you here?”
He quirked his head, and a lock of long, dark, sinfully shiny hair dropped half over one of his sapphire eyes. “You beckoned me, Evonne Baptiste.”
She shook her head. “How?”
He combed his hair aside with his other hand and glanced to the bed. “You called my name—don’t you remember?”
With a start, she snatched her hand back, fisting her fingers against her chest. “No! I mean,” she scrambled, remembering quite clearly now that she’d cried out his name with her orgasm, “yes, I called you, but that doesn’t explain how you came here.”
He dropped his hand. “Fate, perhaps. Luck, definitely.”
She bit her lip, nodding, certain this could all make sense if she simply put the facts she knew into a logical progression. For years, she’d known the legendary bottle was tied to Viktor’s past. She’d also known that the delicate knickknack had purported magical powers, having been crafted by a family of gypsy artisans skilled in the black arts. However, she’d had no clue, no indication whatsoever, that the soul that was once Viktor Savitch had been trapped inside the glass.
He reached out to her again, breaking her thoughts. Before she could stop herself, she extended her hand as well. The contact was brief, but charged. White heat shot through her body. Her knees quivered so badly, they buckled.
And when she looked up, he was gone.
CHAPTER FOUR
“DR. BONNIE ANDERS, PLEASE.”
Breathless, Eve had had just enough time to throw on a T-shirt, panties and shorts before she’d dug out the phone number of the bottle’s previous owner and dialed the number. She couldn’t wait. Not for coffee. Not even for a decent hour. It was just after six-thirty in the morning, Eastern Standard Time. For what she’d paid Anders for the bottle, the woman would just have to live with an early morning call.
The man on the other end of the line grumbled sleepily and sexily, something along the lines of, “Just a minute.”
Eve swallowed and tried to steady her breathing. This was all too weird. She didn’t exactly know what she would gain by this phone call, but before she decided what to do with her newly acquired ghost, she wanted a few facts.
“Hello?”
“Dr. Anders? This is Evonne Baptiste. I’m sorry for calling so early, but I must talk to you about the perfume bottle I purchased.”
She heard an annoyed sigh on the other end of the line. “It didn’t arrive damaged, did it? You need to contact the shipper. I had it insured, as you requested.”
“No, no,” Eve insisted. God, her brain was so scrambled, she was going about this all wrong. “I’m so sorry, Dr. Anders. Especially for disturbing you so early. The bottle arrived intact. But when we spoke prior to my wiring you the cash, you told me that you believed the bottle enhanced your own paranormal talent, as the legend said.”
“Yes,” she confirmed, her voice slightly breathy. In the background, she heard a sexy male mumble and if she wasn’t mistaken, kissing noises.
Aw, geez. Had she interrupted the doctor during good-morning sex?
“Should I call back? This has to be a bad time.”
Bonnie chuckled throatily. “No, please. The bottle spooked you, or you wouldn’t have called so early. That’s why I tried to explain beforehand, so you wouldn’t be caught off guard the way I was.”
Too late. “The bottle is exactly what you described. But what I need to know is, when you had the bottle, did you see him?”
A pause echoed over the line. “See whom?”
Eve shook her head. This wasn’t right either. She tried a different tactic. She wasn’t yet ready to admit to anyone, even someone who accepted the existence of paranormal powers, that she’d seen a ghost. A nearly solid, incredibly sensual ghost.
“Did you open the bottle? Dislodge the stopper?”
“No.”
“And you never experienced an apparition of any kind while the bottle was with you?”
Eve heard a rustle of sheets, as if what she’d said had made Dr. Bonnie Anders sit up in bed. “No. Have you?”
“Yes.”
She didn’t hesitate with the truth, and maybe she should have. Eve knew Dr. Bonnie Anders was a psychiatrist. And right now, she was fairly certain the woman was assessing Eve’s mental health. But then again, Dr. Anders also accepted the existence of paranormal activity, and Eve had read her articles on the rare existence of kinesthetic sensory perception. Even so, ghosts could be outside her expertise.
“Was the experience frightening?” Bonnie asked.
“No, just disconcerting,” Eve answered, though the sweat beading at her temple and the rapid rate of her pulse would seem to make a liar out of her. “But I needed to know if my experience is unique.”
“Sorry, no ghosts in my bottle. Apparently, it affects everyone differently. Since you told me you have the ability to speak with the dead, with the bottle in your possession, it’s not unreasonable to assume you will see them as well. If this disturbs you, I’ll take the bottle back. I had another potential buyer, one that wasn’t too happy that I agreed to sell it to you before I gave him another chance to counteroffer.”
Eve chuckled, not so certain she felt lucky. “Why’d you pick me?”
The rustle of sheets echoed over the phone line again. “I wanted to pass the object along to another woman, especially since you knew so much about its history. You’d appreciate it, and you were offering quite a bit of money, all of which went to a very good cause.”
Eve nodded, remembering that Dr. Anders had sold the bottle to raise funds for a veteran’s group. “Again, I’m sorry I woke you. But I think I’ll hang on to it. I’ll work this out.”
“I’m sure you will. Good luck.”
With the call disconnected, Eve marched over to the vanity table. The sun now streamed into her bedroom. The minute Viktor had vanished, she’d yanked open the blinds and turned on every light in the room, as well as the floods in the hallway for good measure. Not that sunlight would have any real effect on a ghost. Like Viktor had so charmingly pointed out, he wasn’t a vampire. But she couldn’t ignore the comfort of bright light, especially now, with the sunbeams glittering off the faceted surface of the bottle.
Though he’d said he wouldn’t go back in his prison, she wondered if he’d had any choice. She picked up the base in one hand, the stopper in the other. After a deep breath, she replaced the top. She counted to ten, then removed the stopper. Her eyes darting around the room, she waited for him to materialize.
Nothing.
She couldn’t deny that she wanted to see him again. She’d been enthralled with him and his legend for years. His sexual prowess had been legendary and totally counter to what she’d learned from her research on the Romani culture. Unlike modern hippies and bohemians who adopted some gypsy traditions, the Romani did not play fast and free with their sexuality.
But last night! Well, she couldn’t deny the
power of the experience. Her body still thrummed with the memories. At the first flash of sensual recollection, her nipples hardened, prickling through her shirt. She gave her thighs a little squeeze to squelch the intimate throbbing of her pulse. Her dream had likely been a point-to-point mirror of reality, yet while sleeping, she hadn’t visualized Viktor physically present with her.
His voice, not his body, had seduced her. The water and the wind had whipped her into a frenzied storm, aided in the end by her own hands—at his bold suggestions.
And the experience had surpassed deliciousness—and despite her year of celibacy, Eve appreciated the power of sexual intimacy. Great sex had kept her in doomed relationships longer than anything else. She could only imagine how much more enthralling making love to Viktor could be, now that he had near-corporeal form.
She giggled uncharacteristically at the thought, but enjoyed the private joke all the same. Before heading back to the kitchen to brew her coffee, Eve put the bottle on her vanity, but left the top off. If Viktor wanted out again—if he indeed was back inside—she wouldn’t deny him. For personal or professional reasons, this could all work out to her advantage.
The minute a past owner of the bottle, a New Orleans policewoman named Caitlyn Raine had contacted her, Eve’s interest in possessing the magical heirloom had swelled. Rumors had persisted for years in the European Romani world that the bottle, created by the Romani family that had cursed Viktor Savitch and perhaps even murdered him, still existed. Before that, the last she’d heard about the bottle was that it had been sold or traded in Glasgow. For years, she’d tried to track down information about the phial and its reputed magical powers, but she’d come up empty until the phone call from Caitlyn, who’d soon after sent the bottle to Dr. Bonnie Anders.
When Bonnie decided to sell the bottle to raise money for the psychiatric care of former soldiers, Eve had seized the opportunity, hoping to enhance her powers, hoping she’d have a clearer flow of communication with the gypsies whose spirits haunted her backyard. From what she could gather from neighborhood histories and the faded headstones, they’d lived in the same time as the gypsy king. She’d hoped that they’d known him. Or known of him.
