“And I offered my friendship. Is that so difficult to understand, when once we cared for each other?”
“I don’t …” But she didn’t finish the sentence, or raise a barricade of denials against his quiet siege.
“You did say I’d be useful if I could haunt someone upon your command,” he said. “Have I not done so?”
A smile brushed the corner of her mouth. “The look on Gary’s face—” She sobered again almost instantly. “No. You can’t help me with this.”
“Because I’m not a real man?” He leaned closer to her. “I can be real enough. Haven’t I proven that to you, Jesse?”
The kiss they’d shared in Al’s study came to life again, a breath of passion to warm the cool evening air. Jesse averted her face, but her lips parted on a soft gasp and her lashes hooded the acknowledgment in her eyes.
He badly wanted to turn her face to his, take her lips, hold her supple woman’s body and feel the pulse of her desire. She would respond, in spite of her resistance. She couldn’t help herself.
He could. He must control every moment of their time together, the relationship being woven between them like a fragile spider’s web.
An apt comparison. But he was not the spider out to make Jesse his prey. Avery was the true villain. Wasn’t his very presence here proof of that? Hadn’t Avery’s greed and jealousy led him to commit the evil that had somehow crossed into yet another lifetime?
That evil must be stopped, or all David’s plans and hopes were at an end.
He looked into Jesse’s eyes. “Confide in me, Jesse,” he murmured. “Trust me.”
Her head bowed low over the water, more strands of hair coming loose to veil her face from him. “I … told you I’d lost part of my memory,” she said slowly. “Those memories involve Gary. Gary Emerson. I knew him when I was a child. He was my mother’s—” She seemed to choke and covered her mouth with her hands. “My mother’s lover. And I believe he had something to do with her death.”
A bitter chill gripped David’s throat like a strangler’s garrote. “How?”
“Until very recently I barely remembered anything about him. But then he came back to Manzanita, and I—” She gathered her legs under her and rose. She went to the nearest tree and embraced the rough trunk—turned for solace to an inanimate object rather than the man at her side.
David wrapped his arms around his ribs. “Then this is what has troubled you. When did he arrive?”
“Two days ago. At a funeral for a … local boy.”
Two days. And two days ago Jesse had called David’s name as she slept. Called him and let him return to seek redemption.
“How long had it been since you last knew him, Jesse?” he asked.
“Seventeen years.” She pressed her cheek to the wood. “I was only eleven when my mother died. She fell in the river. Gary wasn’t anywhere near her at the time. He had the perfect alibi. But I know. I know that somehow he was responsible, even though I—” Again she broke off, swallowed, closed her eyes. “At my mother’s funeral, I had a kind of breakdown. I attacked Gary. They had to sedate me, and I was in a hospital for months. That was when the memories got confused, until finally they weren’t real anymore.”
“But you remember now.”
“I can feel it in here”—she drew back from the tree and thumped her fist over her heart—“that he did something terrible. But I have no way of proving it. I thought if I could make the memories come clear, I could find the proof. But no matter how hard I try, I can’t find it. I can’t find it.”
“He did something terrible.” Had her memories of her past life intermingled with her troubles in this? David moved up behind her carefully, hands at his sides. “I understand your pain, Jesse. More than you can imagine.”
“Not my pain. My mother’s.” Her fingers hooked into the ragged bark, tore off a loose chip, crushed it in a white-knuckled grip. “My mother drank,” she said. “After my father left us, she drank. Often. She didn’t have a good reputation in town. The resort wasn’t doing very well when Gary came. He needed a place to stay. He said he’d help her fix up the resort.” Her words became a disjointed recitation, flat and icy. “Everyone in town liked him. He always knew how to make people like him. They thought he was too good for my mother.”
“But you didn’t.”
“No.” She let the crumbling bark fall from her hand. “He treated her badly. The way he talked to her, his contempt—I hated him for that.”
“And he mistreated you as well?”
“No. Not like Mom. He pretended to ignore me, most of the time. But I always knew he despised me, whatever he told other people.”
So she had seen through him—as Sophie had seen through Avery. But David hadn’t listened then. Hadn’t believed.
“There was nothing I could do to make my mother see what he was,” Jesse said. “She thought she loved him. She wouldn’t listen. And then it was too late.”
David threw caution to the winds and touched her rigid back, laid his palm against her warmth and felt her breath shudder out in a long rush.
She could have evaded him with a sideways step. Instead her weight settled on his hand. Accepting. Needing his comfort.
“If you were a child,” he said, “you couldn’t be responsible for your mother’s choices. You can’t blame yourself.”
She shook her head, and in that emphatic gesture David recognized his mistake. His argument wouldn’t wash with Jesse Copeland. He’d known her only two days, and yet he had touched her soul.
If Jesse believed in anything, it was responsibility. She would assume it even when it wasn’t her burden to bear.
So unlike David Ventris, who’d accepted no limits to his will, his pleasure, his freedom.
Perhaps Jesse could feel what he was through his very touch, as he felt her. But though his most powerful instincts demanded that he remove his hand, put distance between them again, he defied those instincts. For her sake.
He cleared his throat harshly. “What if you do learn he had a role in your mother’s death?”
Her fist came down on the tree trunk. “All I know is that he has to be stopped before he hurts someone else.”
What was it she’d said on the hillside last night? “I believe that people pay for what they do. If there’s any justice, evil is punished.”
If Avery had suffered punishment for his crimes, David had never learned. But Avery hadn’t been condemned to limbo after death. He’d been reborn, granted a second chance that he’d squandered.
“He was warning you at the party,” David said. “Threatening you in some way.”
“Because he is guilty. He knows I can see it, even if no one else can. It was as if he were testing me.”
David slid his hand to her shoulder. “But if you have no proof—”
“He’s running for state assembly. Even a hint of scandal or wrongdoing could hurt his prospects.”
State assembly. Some high political office, no doubt. This was America, where there were no kings or peerage. In such a world Avery would have sought power where he could find it. Sought and protected it by any means necessary.
“So he must stop you from making any accusations,” David said.
She laughed. “Everyone knew I wasn’t rational about Gary Emerson. I was even crazy once. Why should he think I could touch him now?”
Her despair was a terrible thing to witness. She feared a return to her childhood madness as much as she feared Gary Emerson.
But Sophie hadn’t been mad when she’d written David about Avery’s malicious behavior toward her. David had simply chosen to ignore her ramblings as more of his wife’s irrational neediness and obsessive suspicion.
He could not ignore Jesse.
He curled his fingers around her shoulder, felt the tight-wound tension of muscle over delicate bone. He began to rub through the thin fabric of her blouse, working at the knots under her skin. Little by little her head lowered, came to rest against the tree trunk.
/>
“I’m such a coward,” she said. “I’m so weak—”
“You’re no coward.” He paused in his ministrations and gazed into the shadowed woods. “Believe that, if nothing else.” I know what cowardice truly is.
She gave him no answer. The woods grew hushed with the transient serenity of dusk. Darkness closed in around them, creating an intimate space where scent and touch and subtle sounds defined the tiny world they inhabited.
It seemed only natural to move his hands yet again, slide them to her arms, press the length of his body to her back, rest his chin in the hollow of her shoulder. His touch became an enfolding, a sharing of warmth that needed no words.
“I’d haunt him for you, Jesse,” he said, savoring the fragrance of her skin, the silken tendrils of hair at her nape, the curves that fit him like a finely tailored glove. “I’d pursue him to the ends of the earth if you but give the command.”
Even as he spoke he knew the rash statement was more than an empty promise designed to win her gratitude. Wasn’t this the answer? Wasn’t it the way to earn his peace—rid Jesse of Avery’s incarnation in this life? He could break the pattern that had destroyed Sophie and drawn him to the woman who stood so quietly in his embrace.
Break the pattern, and with it his own eternal chains.
But it was Jesse who broke away, slid out of his arms and faced him with lifted chin and steady gaze. Some ambient light from the terrace, or the afterglow of dusk, reflected in her eyes.
“I appreciate the offer,” she said. “But it’s my problem. I’m not running from it. I’m not asking anyone else to solve it for me. I’m going to find the proof I need and expose Gary for what he is, no matter how long it takes or what I have to do.”
The resolve in her voice didn’t mask what David heard beneath: hatred. Hatred powerful enough to span two lifetimes, though Jesse didn’t realize it. Hatred that would spur her to rash and reckless acts against a man who had once destroyed her.
David felt a violent desire to draw his saber and slash at the inoffensive undergrowth, thrust and hack until his arm was too weary to move. By God, Jesse Copeland was stubborn. He’d been able to manipulate Sophie, bend her to his will—but Jesse would resist more obstinately the harder he pushed. He had no power over her. None.
Reason, then. Calm reason.
“You’d do well to take a soldier’s advice and proceed with caution,” he said. “A frontal attack will fail, Jesse.”
Her gaze was bleak. “Don’t you think I know that? Gary holds all the cards.”
“And if Emerson’s threats become more direct?”
“What can he really do to me?” she said. But under the bravado was that thread of fear. David had no doubt that there were things Gary could do to her. A murderer could always kill again.…
Unless that murderer’s own fears were great enough to stop him.
Yes. Resolution crystallized in David’s mind. He’d been able to frighten Gary away from the party. Could he do more than that? Not pistols at dawn, however tempting the prospect might be—but there were other unique methods of confrontation a ghost might undertake. Especially with the man who’d been his own brother.
Stopping Gary was surely the key. If he learned the source of Avery’s guilt in this life, so much the better. But that was a minor concern compared to keeping him from Jesse.
And keeping Jesse away from him.
He drew Jesse’s attention back from her own dark thoughts. “There’s nothing more you can accomplish tonight,” he said. “You should go home and rest.”
“I couldn’t sleep.” She hugged herself and looked in the direction of the party. “I left too early. I’ll go back and help Kim celebrate.”
Of course she would refuse to let fear dictate her actions. But she ought to be safe enough; Gary would very shortly be otherwise engaged.
He smiled with little humor. “It’s an odd thing, but I don’t remember that you were so blasted difficult to convince in our previous life together.”
He’d had no intention of making more than a casual comment, but Jesse started and her gaze dropped to his mouth. Her voice took on a husky sensuality. “I thought we’d established that I’m not that woman.”
Desire dealt David an unexpected punch well below the belt. He went to her and trapped her face between his hands.
“No,” he said softly. “You’re a woman of great courage. What need of armies with you in the vanguard? I suspect that you could have defeated Boney single-handed.”
He bent his face to hers, drew out the moment just before their lips touched. Jesse closed her eyes. In spite of her fiery words, she wasn’t fighting him now. She wanted him—
And he wanted her too much. He dropped a light kiss on her forehead, a chaste salute that did nothing to assuage his internal fire, and released her.
“I’ve outstayed my time here,” he said. “As you once so aptly put it, I must ‘recharge my batteries.’ ”
She would not look at him. “You have a pretty good handle on the modern world for a man who’s been dead almost two hundred years.”
“Yet all such knowledge is useless to me. Without life.”
“I promised to help you.”
“Then you must take care of yourself. Good night, Jesse.”
She stared at him until he faded and she could see him no longer. He followed, invisible, while she made her way back to her party, and waited to see her securely ensconced among her friends.
Only then did he turn to his hunting. He drew on senses within himself he’d barely used, concentrating on the soul-spark he had once known as Avery.
Like a guttering candle, Gary’s essence was a dim illumination that drew David to a long, two-story building at the edge of town. A lighted sign proclaimed the place an inn. David had no need to search further.
Gary stood outside one of the doors on the lower floor, bathed in the harsh glow of an overhead lamp. He drew on a cigarette as he paced a short distance away from the door and back again. His agitation was manifest in his movements, but David felt it on a much more profound level.
Gary was afraid. Jesse had said he had no real cause to fear her, but she hadn’t reckoned on the terrible bonds of a cursed brotherhood.
Or on the powers of a ghost who had reason to hate.
David drew that hatred into himself as a drowning man would suck in air, let it fill him completely. He’d gone countless years without the stimulus of basic human emotion. No passion could long survive the prison to which he’d been condemned. Even guilt had abandoned him in limbo, leaving him with an emptiness designed by expert torturers to punish for eternity.
Jesse had changed all that. She’d given him a taste of life, reawakened lust, anger, frustration, jealousy, joy—and other feelings he dared not examine too closely. Complicated feelings he no longer had the skill to control and employ to his advantage as he’d done in his former life.
This was different. This was clear and simple. Liberating. Right.
Avery had never been punished. David had come here for Jesse’s sake: this man was her enemy. Gary had the power to hurt her. He had to be stopped. He deserved to pay for his crimes.
Pay in full.
David moved closer to Gary, close enough to touch. Gary hadn’t seen him at the party, but David wasn’t ready to risk appearing in solid form. He would take his time making himself known to his former brother, step by gradual step. And then he would test his power to act.…
“We meet again, Gary,” he said. “Or should I call you Avery?”
Gary dropped the cigarette with a filthy curse, shaking his fingers. His head snapped toward David.
“You know I’m here, don’t you?” David asked. He gave his body dim shape and leaned against the flimsy railing that ran the length of the inn. “How much are you aware of, brother? Is it your guilt that hones your senses?”
Gary cocked his head, staring intently just to the right of David’s shoulder. He reached under his coat and drew out anoth
er cigarette. He lit it with a small metal device that produced a spurt of flame.
“Your hands are trembling, dear brother,” David said. “Do you wonder what’s happening to you?”
“Jesus,” Gary whispered.
“Coming from you, that’s no invocation. You made your pact with the devil long ago. Is that how you’ve escaped punishment?” He watched the fall of ash from Gary’s cigarette and casually smeared the fine powder into the ground with his boot. “It’s a bloody miracle that’s brought us together. We never did get an opportunity to bid our farewells.”
Gary closed his eyes and pinched the skin between his brows.
“I’m quite certain you can’t understand everything I say,” David said. “But the gist of it will surely make an impression. Tell me—” He pushed away from the railing and stood next to Gary, companionably close. “What did you do to Jesse’s mother?”
Gary took a long drag on his cigarette. The outgoing smoke hissed through his teeth. “Joan,” he muttered.
“Was that her name? Jesse seems quite convinced that you committed some evil, brother. That would scarcely be out of character for you, would it? But of course you weren’t cursed to remember. Only to play it out all over again.” He gripped the hilt of his saber. “The one thing that’s different is that this time I’m here to stop you.”
The overhead lamp flickered, and Gary looked up. The yellowish glow made his skin sallow, deepened the hollows under his cheekbones, and accented the lines of dissipation around his eyes. His throat worked above the collar of his shirt.
“And I will stop you,” David said, “I shall make sure that you never get the chance to hurt Jesse again.”
Gary’s laugh was hoarse and incredulous. “Damn you,” he swore.
“Do you address me, brother?” David made himself more substantial and plucked the dangling cigarette from Gary’s mouth. His grip was as lifelike as Gary’s own; he did have the power to affect Gary, just as he could Jesse.
He had the power.
He dropped the cigarette and ground it under his boot as he’d done the ashes. Gary’s mouth hung open as he stared at the pavement.
Body and Soul Page 13
