Ghost Walk

by Cassandra Gannon

  “Oh, it’s bloody clear you’re mine now.” He argued as if she was being totally unreasonable. “Why else could you see me? How else could you even begin to explain it? You belong to me as surely as I’m standing here.”

  “Except you’re not standing there.” Grace retorted, ignoring his territorial words. “…And I’m taking care of myself just fine.” She tacked on a little belatedly.

  “Well, prove it, then. Go over there and punch the son of a bitch.”

  “What good would that do?”

  “T’would make him bleed! Which the wanker fucking deserves.”

  He probably did, but Grace never wanted to see blood again. Shaking her head, she headed outside with Jamie hot on her tail. “I just want to go.” She insisted quietly.

  Jamie made a frustrated sound. “Lass, confrontation is good for the soul. It’s unhealthy to repress your feelings. Just beat him about the head and you’ll be shocked at how much better you feel.”

  “Grace!” Robert fastened his belt, dashing across the lawn after her. “Darling, this was nothing. I swear. The woman means nothing to me. A passing diversion.” He made a frustrated sound when she kept walking and reached out to seize her arm. “Listen to me, damn it!” He gave her an impatient shake.

  Jamie’s expression grew even darker. “That wanker is putting his hands on you!”

  Grace tried to pry herself free, but Robert wasn’t letting go.

  “I wouldn’t have even looked twice at her, if you weren’t semi-frigid.” Robert continued, his fingers digging into her flesh. “I have needs, you know. Sometimes I have to fulfil them with a cheap slut, but that pizza-tramp has nothing to do with us.”

  There was evidently no in-between for Robert: Women were either semi-frigid or pizza-tramps. And in that sexist dichotomy, it seemed like Grace was cast as the boring, icy, un-fun one.

  He really was a wanker.

  “Son of a bitch.” Jamie was still seething about Robert manhandling her. If he could’ve touched anything, there would’ve been a whole lot of bloodshed on the professionally lawn-serviced lawn. “Grace, leave him now.”

  Like she wasn’t trying. Grace finally jerked herself free of Robert’s painful grip and kept heading for her car.

  “But, my heart belongs to you.” Robert went passionately, still not taking the hint. He made another grab for her and Jamie all but snarled at him. Grace evaded his grasp, walking faster. “You know that. We’re alike, you and I. Made for each other. All my friends say so. Don’t spoil everything with some juvenile fit of jealousy.”

  “Donea listen to a word he says.” Jamie warned, slanting Robert a deadly look. “If you even think of forgiving such a man, I will bloody well lose my mind.”

  Grace tuned them both out and dug her keys from her purse. Until that moment she didn’t realize how little Robert mattered to her. Her family had tried to warn her that he wasn’t her true Partner, but she hadn’t listened.

  Except, on some level, she had.

  She’d never given Robert everything inside of her, because she’d never felt safe with him. Grace had never felt safe with anyone. Some part of her always held back.

  Now she was angry and hurt, but her heart wasn’t breaking. She wouldn’t forgive him, so she didn’t see the need to yell or cry. There was simply no reason to. He cheated on her and now it was over. Like flipping a light switch, her tepid feelings for him snapped off forever. Part of his appeal had always been how little he affected her. Grace could see that now.

  She had known that he wasn’t a gentleman.

  Jamie’s disapproval was making her feel inadequate, though. He clearly wanted her to have a huge, dramatic scene. Given the fact that he had no problem saying every thought in his invisible head, it was no wonder he couldn’t understand her reticence. But, the last time she’d shared all her thoughts, she’d been locked in a padded cell for a week. Grace never, ever wanted to go back into that hospital. Losing control, again… No. Just the idea panicked her.

  Peaceful green cornfields.

  Peaceful green cornfields.

  Peaceful green cornfields.

  Robert smoothed down his dark hair, casting a furtive look around. It looked like the pizza girl had used clumps of it as handles, so it stuck out in wild spikes. God only knew what the neighbors would think. “And really this wouldn’t have even happened if you hadn’t mixed up the dates, Grace. Honestly, how could you not know it was Thursday?”

  “You’re lucky I’m a ghost, ya wanker. She might not want to punch you, but I sure as hell would.” Jamie glowered down at her. “Are you really going to let him get away with this?”

  Grace refused to care about his obvious disappointment in her. Absolutely refused. “I don’t like confrontations.” She muttered.

  “You donea like confrontations?” He echoed incredulously. “How can you not like confrontations?”

  “I just don’t, okay?”

  No, it clearly wasn’t okay with him. “Where’s your spirit, lass?” He asked in a confused and troubled voice. Someone so extroverted would never know how scary it was for her to feel the chaos of heightened emotions. To fear that saying too much would unravel everything in her life again.

  Grace unlocked the driver’s side door. “I lost my spirit last year, along with everything else.” She muttered. “I burned out.”

  “You burned out? What does that…?” Jamie stopped short. “Wait.” His patriot blue eyes flashed over to hers, suddenly realizing she was acknowledging his existence. “You’re speaking to me!” His handsome face lit with hope. “You’re believing I’m a real then?”

  “No. But, I know I’m not crazy and that’s enough for the moment. If I was crazy, this would all make more sense.”

  “What?” Robert frowned, thinking she was talking to him. “Are you feeling alright, Grace?” He didn’t bother to wait for a response, because he didn’t care. “Look, I’ll need to get dressed, if we’re going somewhere. Since you’re determined to be so childish about this, I’m willing to spend all evening making amends, but I can’t be seen in public without a shirt and tie.”

  “Relax, Robert. You’re staying here with Miss Peperoni. I’m the one leaving and I’m not coming back.”

  “Thank bleeding Christ.” Jamie crossed himself in relief. “Finally she sees reason. Maybe there’s some hope for the woman, yet.”

  Robert wasn’t nearly so thrilled by the news of their break up. “But, darling…”

  Grace cut him off. “I don’t think we’re made for each other, Robert. In fact, I think I’ve been kidding myself for the past year. You see, I’ve just realized something very important.” She climbed into the car and started the ignition, leaning forward to glower at him out the passenger’s window. “I suck at being normal.”

  Chapter Three

  June 21, 1789- JMR is quite the handsomest man in town. He’s also charming, energetic in his love-making, and willing to spend his gold on pretty things. Such a shame he isn’t in some respectable trade or I’d convince him to marry me, regardless of what Mother and Father had to say.

  But no respectable girl can have her good name linked to a pirate!

  From the Journal of Miss Lucinda Wentworth

  For the first time since he died, things were looking up.

  Jamie smiled at Grace, hoping he appeared as nonthreatening as a specter could possibly appear. The girl was a jumpy little thing. He didn’t want to scare her into ignoring him again. “Feeling better?”

  “Well, I’m still seeing ghosts, so I’m certainly not doing great.” Grace sat across from him in an overstuffed floral arm chair, drinking wine straight from the bottle, and eating ice cream for dinner. (Low fat vanilla, of course. The girl truly needed to expand her horizons.) A patchwork mountain of pillows was piled around her. They matched the rest of her mix-matched furnishings. “God, this is just the worst night of my life.” She muttered and drank some more wine. “Which is really frigging saying something.”

  “You�
��re well rid of such a man, lass.” Jamie detested her ex-boyfriend with a passion he’d once reserved for Red Coats. The bastard had tried to steal what was rightfully Jamie’s and had not even treated her well. He wouldn’t soon forget the sight of the man shaking Grace, his hand leaving angry red marks on her arm. Back in his day, Jamie would have run the wanker through with a sword. “That Robert is a waste…”

  “Oh who cares about him?” She interrupted. “Jesus, Robert’s the least of my problems. I watched Grey’s Anatomy. Seeing ghosts? It usually means a brain tumor.” Grace’s dark curls were drawn up in a messy topknot and a few more tendrils fell around her shoulders as she shook her head. “I can’t deal with a brain tumor. I don’t even have health insurance anymore.” She reached up to rub her forehead. “Darn it, I cried through that whole season.”

  “You donea have a brain tumor.”

  “That’s probably just what a brain tumor would say.” Grace flashed him an impatient glare. “Look, I need some time to think, alright? Why don’t you go warn someone the British are coming or something? Either that or just shut up for once.”

  At least she was looking at him now. Jamie counted that as progress. “Of course.” He agreed. He would have agreed to whatever she asked, at this point. Getting the woman to like him was of paramount importance.

  “Good. Because, if you’re not a brain tumor, then you’re real. I think that might even be worse.”

  “There was a time in my life when I’d take a pretty girl home and she like everything I had to say.” He told her in his most charming tone.

  Grace didn’t look charmed. “She must’ve been even drunker than I am to fall for your crap.” She muttered and ate a spoonful or her ordinary-flavored ice cream. “And you’re still talking to me. I told you, it freaks me out when you talk to me. At least wait until I finish the whole bottle.”

  “I apologize. I’ll wait for you to become inebriated.”

  “Good.” Grace nodded firmly and washed down her ice cream with some more wine. Then she hesitated. “I don’t normally approve of excessive drinking, you know.” She tacked on in a prissy tone. “Don’t think I do this kind of thing all the time. I’m a very moral person.”

  Jamie nearly grinned. “Oh, I donea doubt that.”

  “Uptight” was the modern word for her condition, if he wasn’t mistaken. He’d yet to hear her mummer so much as a mild oath and she drank wine with her pinkie extended. The woman might as well wear a sign declaring herself a Sunday school teacher. She’d also changed into the most unappealing, matronly bathrobe ever sewn, so it was a real mystery to him how she managed to be so alluring.

  Perhaps, it was the magic in her blood.

  Even before he became a ghost, Jamie had always believed in the supernatural. He’d experienced it himself, growing up in Scotland. Fairies and spirits flited through the green hills of his homeland. They would glow in the dark night, enchanting him. As a boy, he used to point them out to his parents.

  …Until he’d realized that not everyone had a kinship with the unseen world

  He learned quickly that it was better to hide his gifts. To lie about what he saw. He even tried to block it out entirely, but it was impossible. He’d always felt the magic around him. Always known things that others didn’t. His mother said he was kissed by the fay. His father said he was cursed by demons. Whatever you wanted to call it, Jamie had a twinkle of knowing about him.

  And so did Grace.

  There was a smidgen of the otherworldly about her. Something that hinted of feminine mysteries and untapped enchantments. Something that drew his eye and held it like no one else ever had.

  She was the woman he’d waited several lifetimes for. The deepest part of him recognized her. Grace was the one. He knew it with a deep and unshakable belief that was growing stronger all the time. If she had been born in his time, he would have been certain she was his bride.

  She belonged to Jamie.

  The girl wasn’t beautiful in the glittery, bawdy way that he’d been attracted to in life. She was far too thin, and scrubbed free of makeup, and her nails had been chewed to the quick. With her upturned nose and petite frame, she looked a bit like a fay herself. A repressed, timid little fay. The woman would probably faint if a man tried to kiss her. And she clearly didn’t have much of a backbone, if her dealings with her harridan boss and dickhead boyfriend were any indication. Jamie had always liked strong, flashy women, who knew exactly what they wanted.

  But, he’d been captivated by Grace from the first moment he’d laid eyes on her.

  Almost like he recognized her.

  It was why he’d switched tour guides and joined Grace’s Ghost Walk instead of following Nadine like he usually did. Time stretched on and on and on when you had an eternity to fill. Jamie spent every night wandering around Harrisonburg, listening to costumed idiots get history all wrong. Nadine did better than most. She was an elderly lady, who knew how to spin a yarn. For nine years, he’d been taking her tours. It gave him something to do. When Jamie saw Grace, though, his standard evening plans with Nadine had been abruptly cancelled.

  That twinkle of knowing had told him to follow Grace.

  That she was special.

  She was also a bloody horrible tour guide. Grace missed the romance of the ghost stories, delivering the information like she was lecturing to bored twelfth graders. She was uncomfortable under all the attention, uncomfortable with the Colonial dress, uncomfortable in her own skin. Jamie had been offering her advice, because talking to himself was the only way to break the unrelenting solitude. He had absolutely no idea that she’d even know he was there.

  No one else ever had. Not since 1789.

  When Grace lost her temper and snapped at him, it had been the most wonderful moment of his life. And death. She saw him. For the first time in over two hundred years somebody saw him. If that didn’t prove this neurotic girl had magic in her blood, he wasn’t sure what did.

  “Overall, I think you’re taking this quite well.” He assured her. “Many people would be having vapors if they saw a specter.”

  “Last time I had ‘vapors,’ they put me in a straightjacket.” She muttered dourly.

  Jamie had no idea what that meant. “A what?”

  “Never mind.” Grace ate another spoonful of ice cream, apparently forgetting that he wasn’t supposed to talk to her. “I come from a family that’s used to weirdness. My cousin Faith once tattooed her face because a hibiscus told her to. This is probably a lot less freaky than it should be.”

  “Fortunate for me.”

  She grunted. “So, what’s it like being a ghost? Is it terrible? I bet it’s terrible.”

  “It’s terrible.”

  Grace nodded as if she’d expected as much. “What’s the worst part? Never being able to change out of that outfit?”

  Jamie frowned and glanced down at his ensemble. It had been the height of fashion when he died. “What’s wrong with my outfit?”

  Chocolate brown eyes widened. “Oh… Nothing.” Grace said quickly. “Nothing, at all. It’s very… bold. Colorful.” She took another gulp of wine and licked a drop from her lower lip.

  The woman had bloody perfect lips. Lush and pink and delicately shaped. She clearly had no damn idea what to do with them, given she was forever chewing on them and twisting them into frowns, but Jamie could think of at least a dozen places he wanted to feel that soft, unpainted flesh. Sadly, there was no way that would ever happen.

  Dying played hell with a man’s sex life.

  Not being able to touch women was so fucking unsatisfying that he’d given up voyeurism back in the 19th century. It was too depressing to watch what he couldn’t have. Grace Rivera was making him reconsider that stance.

  The pirate in him wanted to seize every piece of her that he could get. Jamie had always been a possessive man. What he’d stolen, he didn’t give back. Grace was his now. Every instinct in his ghostly body wanted to claim her before some other Robert showed up and tri
ed to steal her away. His eyes slipped down to the collar of her robe, already picturing what was underneath.

  “Right. Um. So,” she cleared her throat, not even noticing that he was mentally undressing her, “why are you still here? Like on Earth, I mean. You’re not --like-- a vengeful spirit or something, right? Out to destroy the living, like in Poltergeist?”

  “Of course not. I couldn’t hurt anyone, even if I wanted to. I’m not corporeal.” He waved a hand through the arm of the hideous chair to prove his point.

  Grace appeared relieved. “Did you not walk into the light or something? Like in Ghost?” She paused. “That’s a movie. You know that, right?”

  “I know. I’ve seen it.” For a man born before electricity was harnessed, Jamie had a fairly good knowledge of films and television. Over the years, the flickering images had kept him sane. “And I also saw plenty of lights when I died. ...But, only because the mob that killed me carried torches. Otherwise things stayed dim and quiet that night.”

  And had remained that way ever since.

  If there was a Heaven, Jamie clearly hadn’t been invited to the party. No angelic guides setting him on his new path. No glowing beams drawing him upward. Nothing but Jamie, all alone in an endless pit of time. He’d been a selfish, irresponsible bastard in life, so, for several decades, he’d been sure that he was in purgatory. That this was all a test or a penance. As the years passed, he began to see that it was so much more horrible than that, though. He wasn’t being punished.

  He’d simply been forgotten.

  Jamie was forsaken in a misty realm between one plane of existence and the next. No one could see him or feel him or hear him. He didn’t exist.

  …Except he did.

  He was there, goddamn it. Trapped and invisible, but there. No matter how loud he yelled or how hard he tried, he couldn’t get anyone to notice that he still part of this world. The solitude had been never ending. Suffocating. A thousand times worse than dying. He’d given up hope of ever escaping his endless loop of days.

  But now he had Grace. God had finally remembered Jamie Riordan and sent him someone who could listen. Sure, she lacked spirit and seemed irrational as hell, but that was a small matter considering she was also his savior.