“Perhaps now you’re fearful for your sanity,” David said. “How does it feel?” He grabbed the lapel of Gary’s coat in his fist. Still Gary didn’t see, though he plainly felt the touch. His face went white.
“Condemning you to a madhouse would be a fit repayment for what you did,” David said. “But that would take too long.”
He dropped his hold on Gary and drew his saber. “Can ghosts kill, I wonder? More directly than by fear or madness?” Yellow light raced up and down the bared blade. “Will a haunted sword do as much damage as a real one? I should like to find out.”
With exquisite care he positioned the tip of the blade against Gary’s flat belly, just above his smooth leather belt. The fabric of his shirt dimpled. Gary made a low sound, like a moan, and slapped his hand down.
At the same instant David withdrew the sword, and Gary’s hand hit his own belly. Slick beads of sweat had gathered on his forehead; he blinked rapidly to clear his eyes. All at once he spun around and strode for the nearest door. His hand slipped on the doorknob before he got it open.
David followed, stunned by the significance of what he’d done. The sword had been physical, because he’d willed it so. The blade had begun to make an impression. If Gary had touched it, would he have bled?
Could he be killed?
Could David kill him?
The dark and stuffy room provided Gary no deliverance, though he slammed and locked the door behind him. He sat down heavily on the wide bed. David stood over him, the saber in his hand.
Hatred. He still felt it in full measure, and now, for the first time in two centuries, he had Avery at his mercy. He could even the score and protect Jesse at the same time. One quick thrust and it would be over. Surely they wouldn’t have given him this power, this chance, if he weren’t meant to take it.
He stepped closer to the bed and raised the sword. Now it was his hands that shook, and he couldn’t seem to get a proper grip.…
“Lancelot,” Gary said in a low, hoarse voice.
David lost his hold on the sword. It fell, vanishing into midair.
“Avery?” he whispered.
Gary’s stare had gone blank and strange, as if he looked on more than darkness. David plunged headfirst into memory.
Lancelot. When they were boys, before they’d grown so far apart, they’d played at games of King Arthur’s court. Avery had claimed Arthur from the first, younger though he was. And David had been pleased to take Lancelot, who was the warrior and hero and had all the grand adventures.
Children. They’d both been children once. Gary had invoked that childhood nickname as surely as if he knew what it meant. He raised his hand to his mouth and gnawed the tip of one finger. It was the habit Avery had when he was young, the one Mother had constantly scolded him for. He’d always done it when he was afraid. Or when David went off alone, leaving his most annoyingly tedious younger brother behind.…
David brushed at his hip for the wooden sword that swung from the simple rope belt he’d made. His fingers closed on metal. The saber was back in its sheath as if he’d never drawn it.
Now he knew he couldn’t. Oh, the hatred wasn’t gone. But when he looked at Gary it wasn’t Avery the murderer he saw, but Avery the child. Avery the younger brother, who hadn’t always been evil. Who’d wanted, once upon a time, to be like his elder brother.
David had made life-and-death decisions every day during the war, yet now he could only stand and tremble, unmanned by utterly useless memories.
Avery would laugh. But he didn’t yet have the victory.
With a low curse David unbuckled his sword belt and flung it across the room. It vanished before it hit the wall.
“Listen to me, Avery,” he said. “I’ll spare your life, but I won’t be a fool. Leave this place. Tonight.”
Gary raised his hand from his mouth and raked it through his hair, gaze unfocused. “I … don’t—”
“Get out of town,” David said. “Forget about Jesse Copeland. You can’t touch her. You’ll be destroyed if you don’t put her out of your thoughts forever. Do you understand?”
He stared into Gary’s eyes, stared until comprehension returned and Gary was shivering and sweating.
“If I see you here tomorrow,” David said, “I’ll haunt you. I’ll haunt you to your death.” He raised his fist. “Don’t mistake me. I will do as I promise. I have a purpose now.”
He forced himself to step away from Gary, to believe that his brother understood the warning. He didn’t know whether to hope that Gary obeyed him—or drove him to take his revenge.
But when he imagined killing Gary, the image froze in his mind as he’d frozen a few moments ago with the saber in his hand.
Even if Gary left tonight, the pattern was yet to be broken. David lacked the courage to break it.
He left Gary still sitting on the bed, alone and vacant eyed with fear. But a grim foreboding pursued David long after the inn was far behind him.
It wasn’t only the business with Gary that remained incomplete. There was something else that David, for all his otherwordly vision, couldn’t see. Another unknown pitfall awaiting him just around the corner, a hidden trap on the narrow road to liberty.
On impulse he used the last of his nearly depleted energy to return to the party. It was full dark now, and the festive lanterns strung between the trees illuminated a scene of music and laughter.
Jesse was there, laughing with the others, her gestures animated as she talked with her friends. If her happiness was a little forced, her laughter a bit feverish, no one with her would know it. She played her part well.
They all played their parts, dancing to the steps fate laid out for them: Jesse, Gary, David himself.
Even now he watched Jesse and felt his heart clench, his loins tighten. Instinctive reactions he would have acted on in his old life, and inevitably suffered the consequences.
He’d been at the mercy of his gaolers for nigh on two hundred years, and he’d had his fill of it. His dangerous and ambiguous feelings for Jesse could only be deadly liabilities. Today he’d been distracted by protectiveness, desire, admiration; he’d been ready to go after Gary simply to protect Jesse, driven by emotion when cold logic would have served him far better.
As it should have served him when he’d held Gary’s life in his hands. Jesse had made a crack in his heart that let weakness in. A crack he must mend. He would keep from walking right into the ambush.
His war was far from ended, and his greatest enemy was himself.
Gary kicked the sweat-soaked sheets from his legs and sat up in the bed. His heart slammed inside his ribs and his breath came short, as if the dream had been real.
He glanced at the vacant space beside him. He’d had no desire for Marie’s company tonight, not after the bizarre meeting with Jesse; now he was grateful for his impulse.
What would Marie have thought to see him now, shaking and dry mouthed and wondering if he was as crazy as Jesse Copeland?
He swung his legs over the bed and walked unsteadily to the bathroom. The tap water was lukewarm, but he gulped it down and felt for the aspirin he’d left on the sink.
Not that it would do any good. Ever since the party something had been wrong. An illness, he’d thought at first; the shivers and cold sweat, the weakness in his knees and irrational fear. He’d made a fool of himself leaving the party, driven off by some notion that his life was in danger.
His life. Jesus. He couldn’t put the nightmare out of his mind: the tall dark-haired man in some kind of uniform, plunging a curved sword into his chest. Gary staggering under the blow. The shock and terror of knowing he was about to die. Staring down at the gaping hole and wondering why there was so little blood.
And the voice that kept yammering in his ears, never quite audible enough to understand, maddening in its persistence. Mockery. Contempt. Warnings he couldn’t quite hear.
Worst of all, the feeling that he should know the man, the voice—that he had cause to be afraid. An
d with the fear was the envy, the yearning, the hatred.
And guilt. God, the guilt—formless, sourceless, devastating.
It sickened him.
He had to get away from this place—this room, this town, these people. He was certain now that Jesse Copeland had nothing on him. At the party she’d been afraid, just as she’d always been. He’d slipped up when he’d grabbed her, but even if she suspected anything, she didn’t know. He’d swear to that.
Gary stumbled back to the bed, thought better of it and fell into the armchair by the window. Yes. It made perfect sense. Jesse wasn’t a threat. The man he’d hired to search Jesse’s cabin would come back empty-handed, because there was nothing to find.
He had no reason to stay in Manzanita another second.
Gary lurched to his feet and staggered to the chest of drawers against the wall. He yanked open the drawers and removed the neatly folded shirts, tore his suits from the closet. He didn’t bother to do more than throw his things in the expensive leather suitcase and garment bag, heedless of wrinkles and creases in his equally expensive clothing.
By six A.M. he was in the motel office, paying his bill to the sleepy clerk. The man had the brains not to say a word. Gary left him with a generous tip and a facile comment about an early start for home.
There would be questions. He knew and didn’t care. The devil snapped at his heels, and for the first time in his memory he could taste the fear of damnation.
But the devil wouldn’t have him. He’d always stayed one step ahead, and he’d give the bastard the run of his life.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Jesse almost expected to find David waiting for her.
She walked into her cabin, into dimness painted with dawn light that filtered through the blinds. He wasn’t there. In spite of her weariness after an unanticipated long night of talking, laughing, and forgetting, her senses were hyperalert.
And no wonder. She kept reliving the conversation in the woods: pouring out her heart to David, his quiet sympathy, his gallant protectiveness, his touch. Especially his touch. And the tension between them, a second kiss that didn’t quite happen.
It seemed that he should be here, when so much was unfinished. But perhaps she should be glad of the respite. She kept resolving to hold him at a safe distance, and he found the chinks in her armor again and again.
She paused in the darkened entryway, her hand near the light switch. No, David wasn’t here. But it took her a moment to realize that what she felt was something else entirely.
The small hairs prickled along the nape of her neck as she turned on the entryway light. Everything looked as it should. Shadows receded before the kitchen and living room lights, and nothing seemed wrong.
She walked into the bedroom. The bed was neatly made, unslept in. Her clothes still hung undisturbed in her closet. But her chest of drawers—
Her heart skipped a beat as she went to the simple pine chest she’d made eight months ago. The bottom drawer was slightly open. Only an inch—but she knew she hadn’t left it that way.
She pulled the drawer all the way out and stared at the contents. Her travel journal lay where she’d left it, and the various envelopes and papers were tucked away in their color-coded folders. She didn’t have a lot of paperwork, had no need for file cabinets full of records or mementos from the past. Her work with the Peace Corps and her deliberately frugal lifestyle had never allowed her to carry much from place to place.
Still … She set aside the journal and checked each of the folders. By the third one she was certain that the folders had been shifted. A subtle matter of papers out of order, dates rearranged. Most people wouldn’t have noticed.
But Jesse had always been orderly. She liked to know everything was where she could find it at a moment’s notice. Whoever had been in her bedroom hadn’t known that about her, careful as he’d been.
She replaced the folders and sat back on her heels, numbed by a sudden wash of adrenaline that left her muscles shaking.
Someone had been in her cabin. Someone had gone through her things.
Slowly she got up and walked to the window. It hadn’t been locked; that was one thing she wasn’t paranoid about, though crimes were occasionally recorded in Manzanita. Petty thefts, shoplifting, drug possession—a transgression more serious every decade or so. It had never seemed necessary for her to keep her windows barred.
So she’d made it easy for the invader to enter her sanctuary. He hadn’t even had to break the window. One of the slats of her window blind was bent back; that was the only evidence.
Dry mouthed, Jesse made a circuit of the cabin. Aside from her chest of drawers, the few boxes in her closet, and the smaller drawers in her bedside table, nothing else in her bedroom had been visibly handled, and the invader had done little rearranging. In her living room, only the junk drawers built into the bookshelves had been disturbed, though she found a few books slightly out of alignment. Her workshop seemed to have been ignored.
There was very little worth stealing, except for some spare cash she kept hidden in the kitchen. The assorted small bills hadn’t been removed.
But in the kitchen she found the envelopes on top of the refrigerator, the letters from her late father’s lawyer, scattered out of their usual pile. Every one was there, but the invader had obviously looked through them.
Why? Jesse sat down heavily in one of the kitchen chairs and gazed out the window, hardly aware of the cheerful morning sunlight on her face. What had he wanted, the person who’d so easily shattered her privacy? If he were a thief, he wouldn’t have been so careful to leave things nearly as she’d kept them, or spent so much time going through her drawers and paperwork. Any local would know she didn’t own any real valuables and kept her money in the local bank.
The intruder hadn’t been after money or valuables, and he’d been systematic in his search.
For what? Why? And …
Who. Jesse sat up. Who in Manzanita had a grudge against her? Who seemed to want something from her—who’d taunted and mocked her in an effort to extract some unknown information? Who knew she hated him?
Who was her one enemy in the world?
Gary. The evening’s confrontation came back to Jesse with crystal clarity. Toward the end, she’d accused him of bullying her mother, desperate to make him acknowledge the only crime she knew he’d committed. The fight she’d remembered in the dream.
And then he’d threatened her—grabbed her, eyes wild, as if he was almost afraid. “What did she say about me?” he’d said. “What dirty little lies did she tell you?” Even after he’d calmed down again, after David had frightened him off, he’d made it plain that it wasn’t finished between them.
Because Gary had committed some crime, he was afraid it might be discovered … and he believed Jesse could expose him.
Jesse shot up from the table and paced the length of the kitchen, flexing her fists. She hadn’t been wrong to sense his guilt. At the party she’d been too scared to think clearly or analyze the subtle implications of their conversation.
Gary believed she not only knew something that could hurt him, but that she might have tangible evidence. Why else go through her paperwork? Why demand what her mother might have told her?
Through this act of violation Gary had given himself away. Oh, he wouldn’t have done the work himself. It wasn’t his style. But he had influence and money. He could have hired someone to break in and do the looking for him.
Did he think Joan had left her daughter proof of his crime, whatever it might be? Proof that he’d had a part in Joan’s death, regardless of his airtight alibi?
Jesse moved through the cabin like a whirlwind, driven by the turbulence of her thoughts. What could this mysterious evidence be? She had very little of Joan’s, just a few knickknacks sent to her a year after her mother’s death.
Yet if Gary believed she could hurt him, it meant there was a chance. A chance she could find that proof and use it against him. With any luck, the tres
passer hadn’t found whatever he was looking for.
That tide of hope carried her in a vigorous and thorough survey of the cabin, but her investigation turned up nothing. Exhausted, she went into her workshop to take comfort from the reliable solidity of her furniture and the knowledge that here, at least, the invader hadn’t intruded.
She could ask the police to dust for fingerprints, though she doubted that Gary’s flunky would have been that careless. Nevertheless, she’d pursue every avenue. And in the meantime, she’d keep searching her memory—and search as well for the proof she knew must exist. Somewhere.
She sank down on the cool and dusty floor. As her mind calmed, her thoughts took a new direction, as inevitable as the sunrise.
David. She closed her eyes and imagined him, imagined sharing her breakthrough with him. She’d told him about Gary; for the first time she’d been able to talk about her remembered past, and he’d listened with apparent sympathy and concern.
He’d also protected her. He’d gone at Gary with real anger, as if he were shielding something … someone precious to him. As if it had been intensely personal, not a convenient favor he could easily perform.
A strange and wonderful thing, to be protected, defended. Even by a ghost. Jesse smiled and touched her mouth. David had proved his friendship. He’d called her brave. He’d offered to haunt Gary, for her sake. At the time she hadn’t fully appreciated the gesture.
He’d acted like … like a man defending the woman he loved. Like a knight with his shining sword facing down the dragon.
Her smile faded. But of course, she was supposed to be helping him win his salvation. She was of value to him, in theory—though so far she’d done little of any use.
Jesse leaned her head against a low, half-finished cabinet and breathed in the sweet smell of the pine. No reason to blow the episode out of proportion. She had no expectations of David Ventris. She’d made it clear enough that she wasn’t that naive young girl named Sophie anymore, not the woman he’d once loved. Just as he’d made equally clear how badly he wanted freedom from his eternal punishment.
Body and Soul Page 14
