Killer Charms

by Marianne Stillings

  Lifting the wineglass to her lips, she took a long swallow, then set the glass down on the table. “This is all very creepy, Logan, and a little unsettling. You seem so normal, but this…”

  “Believe what you will, Miss Devon. You saw a ghaist in that house, and it’s no use denying it. You saw her, but can’t hear her. I can hear her, but I can’t see her. I wonder why that is?”

  “There’s no ghost! That’s ridiculous.” In one long gulp, Andie downed the remainder of her wine. “You can claim to see or hear anything you want, but I don’t have to buy it. That was a nice story you just told me, about you and Allister, but there’s more to it, isn’t there? Some…angle you’ve got going. C’mon, out with it, Logan. I’m not buying your BS, so you may as well tell me.”

  Across the table, he grinned at her. Softly, he said, “And what if there was more to it, and what if I was to share that with you? What would you do with that information, Miss Devon? You haven’t exactly been on the up-and-up with me now, have you?”

  Warning bells. Time to shift the conversation. “What’s it mean to cowp yer hurlie?”

  “What?”

  “You said it to me, just before you fainted.”

  “I repeat—blacked out. It means to spoil somebody’s good time.”

  “Yeah, well, I don’t want to cowp yer hurlie, either, pal, but if you’re not going to level with me, I’m calling it a night. Thanks for the drink—”

  As she began to rise from the table, Logan said, “Her name is Emma.”

  Andie froze in place, her purse strap halfway up her arm. “Whose name is Emma?”

  “The woman trying to contact you. Emma Harte.”

  “I’ve…I’ve never heard of such a person. My ancestors were all named…uh, I mean, there are no Hartes in my background.”

  “All the same. Her name was Emma Harte, and she died on April 18, 1906.”

  Andie slid back down into her chair. “That’s the date of the earthquake and fire,” she whispered. “Are you saying…just what in the hell are you saying?”

  Logan raised his tumbler to finish off the whisky. Over the rim of the glass, he eyed her. Then, “I don’t know exactly. Only that she died, but her spirit lives on in that house and she has something to tell you. You specifically. Something very important. Something she’s been waiting a hundred years to tell. Question is, are you brave enough to listen?”

  Chapter 9

  Each has his own tree of ancestors.

  Robert Louis Stevenson

  Andie doubled her fists and punched her pillow, trying to knock Logan’s words out of her head.

  Smack!

  He lied. He had to have lied. He made it all up, suckered her in, the smug son of a bitch. The con man. The carpetbagger. Criminal. Felon. Wicked-sexy malefactor…

  Smack!

  She let out an angry grunt, then pinched her eyes tightly shut.

  Go away, her mind commanded. Get out of my head. Don’t make me doubt everything I’ve ever believed. Don’t make me challenge what I know and pit it against what I feel, don’t want to feel, what you’re making me feel. Don’t force me to examine my carefully ordered world. I might have to change it, and that I will not do.

  Slam…punch…smack!

  On her stomach, she rested her weight on her elbows, bowing her weary head, letting Logan’s words play through her brain once more.

  …Emma Harte…spirit lives on in that house, and she has something to tell…you specifically…very important…waiting a hundred years to tell…brave enough to listen…

  …listen……listen…

  No damn way. Oh, he was good, all right. He “blacks out,” then awakens with some cock-and-bull story about a hundred-year-old ghost that she could only “see” and he could only “hear.” Uh-huh. Right.

  He’d “go under” again and give her the full story on Emma Harte—for a price. True, he hadn’t hit her up for sex or money yet, but it was only a matter of time. She knew he wanted the first and suspected his real goal was the second, but if he could take her for both, why the hell not?

  Rolling onto her back, she let her head sink deeply into the pillow. Maybe Bostwick had been right; maybe if she couldn’t get the goods on this seductive con man, she should manufacture them. After all, he was conning her, wasn’t he?

  On her way home, she’d contacted Jericho; he’d gotten the whole episode on tape. Problem was, Sinclair hadn’t asked for anything, hadn’t done anything illegal.

  Well, he would. It was just a matter of time.

  She took in several deep breaths and blew them out slowly, trying to recover her composure. Sleep. She needed a good night’s sleep so she could attack this whole situation with a clear head tomorrow.

  Sleep. Yeah, that was the ticket…

  Sleep…

  Perchance to dream…

  Andie felt her world melt away. Her muscles relaxed, her lids closed. It was coming on her again, and she let it, opening her mind as she drifted into another time, another place…

  And so I’m Mrs. Jacob Harte now, and damn pleased for it—despite the rude behavior my new husband forced upon me on our wedding night.

  And wouldn’t it have been a kindness afore-hand, had some knowing female shared with me the perils of the marriage bed!

  After the deed was done, and my shame had started to thin as anger took its place, I had my say at last.

  “Well you might have taken a bit more care with me, Jacob!” I cried, shoving his sweaty self off me and gathering the bedclothes up to cover me diddies.

  He looked a bit sheepish but had smooth words at the ready. “I’m sorry,” says he. “I knew it would hurt you, but I thought you understood what was to happen—”

  “And how would I be knowin’ that!” I snapped. “I’ve seen cows and horses in the fields, dogs in the streets, but all seemed willin’ and none in pain, so far as I could tell!”

  I sat up, glaring down at him, his eyes gone all sleepy now after he’d taken his pleasure and left me sore and suffering.

  “Was it all bad?” His beautiful eyes looked worried.

  “Not all. What led up to the thing was very nice indeed,” I admitted. “The touchin’ and kissin’ and that. Why’d you have to spoil it by jammin’ yer pole into me like you was tryin’ to reach tomorrow?”

  He scratched his jaw with his knuckles. “Because that’s how it’s done, Em. Didn’t your mother ever tell you—”

  “Ain’t got no ma, and haven’t had these long years. All the womenfolk in me family are sittin’ back on the Old Sod, and none here to be tellin’ me the ways of men and women.”

  Jacob nodded, then eased himself up next to me and slid his arm around my shoulders, gentle-like and cozy. “I’m sorry, Em. It’ll be better next time—”

  “Ain’t gonna be no next time, and that’s a fact! I don’t care if it is how you get babbies, I ain’t gonna let no man prod and jab at me like a side of prime beef for sale down on Market Street!”

  He scooted closer, nibbling my neck. Them little chills come back, the chills that felt so good when he’d been playing with me before. The little chills that made me think lying with my husband wouldn’t be such a bad thing, like them women I’d heard snickering and gossiping behind the dry goods down at the mercantile.

  He kept on with his kissing and them little chills kept on skittering down my spine, and all the way down, warming me secret place that had so recently been burnt by his own rough thrusting.

  He tugged the bedclothes from my fists, exposing my diddies again. Gently, he cupped one in his large hand.

  “C’mon, Emma,” he coaxed. “I promise it won’t hurt so much after a while.” He kissed all along one shoulder and across to t’other, and my anger and resentment began to work its way from my heart. “C’mon. Here, you lie down, and I’ll take care of everything. I won’t go into you this time, but I’ll make you feel good. Maybe make you change your mind about…things.” His head moved lower, his mouth teasing and biting my tittie
, and I swear, them chills numbed my body, so I did have to lie down and let him have at it.

  He’d promised not to hurt me again, and I knew it was a lie, had to be. Nothing that could feel so awful one time could feel good the next.

  Still, I loved him, wanted to please him, and if lying stock-still and stiff as a sidewalk plank while he did the dirty deed would make him happy, then I’d clench my teeth, curl my fists, and submit.

  “I was too anxious,” Jacob confessed as he cradled himself between my lazy thighs. “Should have taken more time. It was selfish of me. I was eager to have you. I’ll take care and won’t make that mistake again.”

  I close my eyes. “No matter.” I sigh in resignation. “I’m ready. Shove it in and be done with it then.”

  He chuckles, and I remember how much I love the sound of his laughter. “Not this time. Here, do you like this?”

  “Oh!” Well now, that wasn’t half-bad.

  “And this?”

  I suck in a breath and hold it. “I do. Yes. Can you do that bit again, please.”

  He does, and I let loose with a shaky kind of moan. Then I squirm, unable to stop m’self.

  “And what about this?”

  “Aye,” I breathe, nearly incapable of speaking. “That’s especially nice, Jacob, and…oh! Oh my! Oh dear God…so is that what that little nubbin is for?”

  “It is,” he murmurs. “Want me to stop?”

  “No!” Why, I’d kill him if he did, God’s honest truth! First he tears me up with pain, then he gives me a pleasuring to the point of daftness, and he threatens to stop? I swallow, trying to catch my breath. “I mean, please, carry…oh, my…yes, like that…just like…oh, Jacob! Oh!”

  Spasms of pleasure the likes of which I’ve never known overcome me, and my hips writhe and twist against my husband’s hand. While I’m still panting and sighing, I feel him push a bit inside me, but only a little, not like before to where it hurt. Truth be told, it feels more acceptable than before, maybe even a little exciting, but he holds himself away, making a choking sound as though he’s carrying a load of bricks on his back too heavy for a man to bear.

  When I open my eyes again, Jacob stares down at me, a smug, pleased look about him.

  “Better?” he asks, though I suspect he knows the answer, or he wouldn’t have asked the question.

  I cannot help but smile. “Indeed,” says I. “Is that more the way of it then?”

  “It is,” he says, mimicking my brogue. “I love you, Emma Harte.”

  I throw me arms about him and hug him as tears burn my eyes, and I think my poor heart will break. “And I love you, Jacob. Tell me, promise me, will you, that we can stay this way forever. Promise me we can keep the bad times away, keep the sorrows of the world at an arm’s reach. Tell me we’ll have this, have each other, forever and always.”

  “Forever and always, Emma. I promise.”

  “Forever and always?”

  He smiles into my eyes. “And always…and always…”

  Andie awoke, tears streaming down her face and into her ears. Damn, she hated when that happened.

  Bolting upright, she cursed Logan Sinclair. She shook her head, then grabbed at the nightstand for a handful of tissues, wiped away the tears, and blew her nose.

  As it had with the previous dream, her heart felt as though it would burst from the sorrow of it all, and she let out a long sob. Such desperate loss, so profound…and so personal. Why would she feel the pain so acutely? This bordered on the insane.

  Emma and Jacob Harte. Had they been real people, or had Logan planted those names in her subconscious by his so-called revelation? If they had existed, Logan’s knowledge of them had certainly been gained by detailed research. If this Emma person had died a hundred years ago the night of the earthquake and fire, Andie could verify the fact just as easily as Sinclair.

  But to do it thoroughly, she needed help.

  The world as she knew it was teetering by a lunatic thread, and she wasn’t sure who to trust anymore. Between Bostwick’s blackmail and Logan Sinclair’s lies—not to mention her own subconscious mind betraying her—this whole undercover operation had taken a bizarre twist, making her doubt her fellow officers, as well as her own sanity.

  Though she’d rather take care of all this on her own, she considered herself wise and mature enough to reach out rather than stumble about blindly in the dark.

  Scooping up her cell phone, she blew out a resigned sigh, pressed the autodial, and waited for the call to ring through.

  Two hours later, across the table of the back booth at the Gold Nugget Cafe, green eyes that nearly matched her own narrowed in obvious skepticism.

  “It’s bullshit,” Ethan snorted. “Whether Emma and Jacob Harte existed or not, this Sinclair guy is trying to con you, and you know it. Stick to the facts and do your job, Detective.”

  Always the hard-ass, Andie thought lovingly. Though she adored the eldest of her two brothers, Ethan could be a real snot sometimes.

  Next to Ethan, Nate said dryly, “Stop the presses. I may actually agree with big brother here.” He set his coffee mug on the table. After a moment’s thought, his brown eyes went serious. “If it’ll help, I’ll ask Tabby to meet with you and try and interpret your dreams. Maybe she can find something significant—”

  “Oh, right,” Ethan scoffed. “Ever since you married a—you’ll pardon the expression, psychic dream interpreter—you’ve really let those investigative skills slide, Inspector Darling.”

  Ever affable, Nate grinned. “And ever since you married a TV celebrity, your ego’s more inflated than ever.”

  “Eat me.”

  “Prick.”

  “Dickhead.”

  “I can’t take you boys anywhere!” Andie huffed. Flicking her gaze back and forth between them, she ordered, “Behave for once, will you?” She half expected them to elbow each other and end up in a tussle on the floor under the table.

  The brothers glanced at each other. “She doesn’t get it, does she, bro?” Ethan said with a smile.

  “Nope.” Nate chuckled.

  Ethan faced Andie. “It’s a guy thing.”

  Nate reached across the table and patted her hand. “Relax, baby sister. Keep your weapon holstered. We’ll be good.”

  As her brothers returned their attention to their coffee, Andie quietly assessed them over the rim of her own coffee mug. Big, handsome, smart, and if the longing stares that followed them everywhere were any indication, hunky. Former SFPD detective Ethan and current SFPD detective Nate Darling had been at odds with each other for close to twenty years, ever since their parents had divorced and Nate moved away with their dad to Washington state, leaving teenaged Ethan alone to cater to a silly mother and help raise a very young sister.

  But in the two years since Nate returned to the Bay area, something had changed between the brothers. From what was at first animosity born of misunderstanding, circumstances over the last several months had tempered their feelings, causing the bond they’d shared as boys to re-form and strengthen. Each happily married with babies on the way, they’d become men who now shared more similarities than differences. They’d each found their paths and were happy in their lives, devoted to the women they’d recently married.

  If Andie didn’t love them all so much, she’d probably be a little jealous. Still, they were going to make her an aunt twice over in July, so she really couldn’t complain.

  Okay, Ethan and Nate still chided and teased each other like the lamebrained juveniles they often were, but they seemed to have come to some kind of tacit understanding that when push came to shove, they’d watch each other’s backs—or as it turned out a year ago, nearly die trying.

  Because in the end, it was all about family.

  “We don’t have any ancestors named Harte, do we?”

  The brothers glanced at each other, then at her, and shrugged.

  “I mean, this Emma Harte,” she went on. “She couldn’t be a great-grand-something to us, could
she?”

  Ethan’s dark head tilted in thought. “Dad’s sister, Aunt Shirley I think it was, did a family tree thing a few years back. No Hartes on it as I recall, and she went back all the way to when the Darlings emigrated from Ireland.”

  “Well, I think this Emma person is Irish, but Jacob Harte sounds American.”

  Ethan’s gaze snapped to hers. “What do you mean sounds?”

  Andie blinked. “I—In my dreams. She has an Irish accent, but he doesn’t.”

  Nate straightened. “I still think you should have a session with Tabby—”

  “I’ll think about it,” she lied. Nate might believe his wife was a psychic who could interpret people’s dreams, but as much as Andie liked her new sister-in-law, psychic dream interpretation was total hogwash.

  “Besides,” Ethan said, his sharp green eyes boring into hers, “Sinclair thinks your name is Devon, so he’s barking up the wrong family tree, so to speak.”

  Except for my dreams. I had the first dream before Logan identified the woman by name, so where does that leave me?

  Andie wrapped her palms around her mug and peered into the flat surface of her black coffee. “Okay, that’s Dad’s family. What about Mom’s?”

  Nate’s eyes narrowed as he ran his fingers through his short blond hair. “No Hartes there either. Mom’s ancestors were mostly German who settled in Wisconsin and Michigan. Didn’t move to California until after the First World War.”

  “I can run a background, see if there are any stragglers out there,” offered Ethan. “I don’t see what good it’ll do, though.”

  “Yeah,” Andie said, pursing her lips and nodding. “Yeah, why not? Put all that fancy-schmancy high-tech equipment you’ve got down at Paladin to work on it, would you? At the very least, finding no connection would close that avenue of investigation, and I can stop dwelling on it.” Then she remembered…

  “Oh, and uh, check on the name Emma Conner or Conner’s Dry Goods on Van Ness, would you?”

  “Why?” the brothers asked simultaneously.