Of Midnight Born

by Lisa Cach

  No, that couldn’t be right. Manipulative and sly fit her vision of him much better than did generous and kind. He might use the carrot instead of the stick, but he still managed to get his own way. Her brothers would have underestimated him, thinking him weak and laughing at his methods. But who would have laughed last? Woding probably had much in common with Hugh le Gayne, and there was no question of who had won that battle of wits, Hugh or she and Thomas.

  Alex woke feeling more tired than when he had laid down, restless images from his dreams flitting into his disjointed memory. She was the cause of his poor sleep; he was certain of it. Daytime be damned, it was Serena who had him thrashing and sweating when he sought calm slumber. He turned his head, catching the pale shape in the corner of his eye.

  He needn’t have checked. She had been staying so close to his side these past days, it felt as if she were attached to him—and always would be. He wondered which of them had the greater stamina to endure such closeness. He feared anyone who had hung around a pile of ruined rock for half a millennium might have already proved her staying power.

  The thought made him groan, and he quickly masked it with a stretch, easing his stiff muscles. If he knew what she wanted, he would give it to her, if only she would go away. Of course, that was probably just what she herself wanted from him: his departure. And that was the one thing he would not give. He could not imagine explaining to his fellow amateur astronomers that he had left his perfect tower because a female ghost insisted on sleeping beside him at night and watching him at his bath.

  His bath. What was he going to do about that? It had been bad enough when he only felt her presence in his room, but could still force himself to dismiss it as his imagination. To actually catch glimpses of a watching woman while he bathed…that would be a different experience.

  Perhaps going mad was the best solution. He would simply never again change his clothes or wash his body.

  He checked the clock and saw that it was time for dinner under the watchful eyes of the Canadian caribou. The presence tagged along, and as he sat down at the head of the empty table he gave a moment’s thought to what Serena might think of this new version of her castle. Did she like the caribou? The castle must not look much as she remembered. Briggs had not cared much for historical accuracy, and even the flight of stone stairs that Serena had supposedly fallen down was nowhere to be seen. For all he knew they’d been pulled up and the stones used in the walls.

  The table was already set, and a ring of the bell brought Marcy and Dickie, carrying the dishes that held his dinner, lamb stew, a pudding, and an overabundance of boiled peas. Daisy Hutchins was not an imaginative cook, but he would not be left starving. And, truth be told, he rather preferred plain fare to some of the elaborate, sauce-drenched dishes that Leboff had forced on him. He would miss the ice cream, though.

  Marcy and Dickie left him alone to fill his plate and eat, and he soon found his mind wandering off into the starry skies, far beyond the realms of stews and puddings. He ate by rote, fork and knife working together without his interference.

  Then he noticed the peas. Two of them, sitting on the tablecloth.

  Had he done that? He didn’t think he’d been so careless. His sisters had ensured that his table manners were impeccable, even when he was not paying attention.

  A third pea hopped off his plate, making a little splat of gravy as it landed on the linen. He stared at the offending legume for a long moment, then from the corner of his eye caught the white movement of a presence.

  Serena.

  A pea suddenly shot off the table, much as if someone had flicked it with a finger. With his knife and fork, he carefully picked up the two remaining peas, depositing them back on his plate.

  Yet another pea inched up the edge of the plate and dropped over the edge. It slowly rolled toward Serena, then took off across the dining room, hitting one of the leadedglass windowpanes with a soft pat and dropping to the floor, leaving a smudge of gravy on the glass.

  Alex took a deep breath, watching as a fifth pea made its escape from his plate. He didn’t know if this came under proper ghostly behavior, playing with someone’s food. It seemed more like something a bored child would do. It certainly was not frightening, although he would admit it was plenty annoying.

  The pea took flight, landing in the flower arrangement at the center of the table. Another dropped off his plate.

  He turned his eyes away, until he could catch in his peripheral vision the cloudy outline of Serena, her arm extended as she made the pea dance a gravy gavotte on the tablecloth. Still looking away, he readied his fork in his hand, and then—whap!—he slapped at where her hand should be with the flat of the utensil.

  The shape leaped backward, but not before the fork bounced off something solid. His lips were curling in boyish victory when his entire plate violently upended, sending stew and peas all over the table. He shoved his chair back, standing just in time to save himself from being dripped on by a rivulet of gravy.

  He stood surveying the mess, aware of the white figure and unwilling to give her any satisfaction for such a childish display. He rang the bell, and in a minute Marcy bobbed in, her hazel eyes going wide at the mess.

  “Please bring a fresh plate,” Alex said.

  “Yes, sir,” Marcy said, having the good sense not to ask the obvious question. “I’ll have Dickie come help me remove the cloth.”

  Alex nodded, and waited while the two young people cleared away the mess, resetting the table with fresh dishes and cutlery. Dickie knocked over the empty wineglasses twice, obviously having suspicions about what had occurred. When they’d finished, Alex sat down again as if nothing had happened, and served himself small portions of each dish. He would not let a petulant ghost deprive him of his pudding and peas.

  He could see the figure move back into place at the seat to his left, and when that vague white shape of a hand moved toward his plate, he lifted his fork in a threatening manner, making it very clear he knew what she was about. The hand stopped.

  He ate the remainder of his meal in peace.

  How had he known what she was about to do? This was no good, Serena fretted, chewing her upper lip, sitting with crossed arms watching Woding eat. Was his sense of her that good, and he had been pretending otherwise all this time?

  Or—horrid thought—what if he could see her, the way Ben Flury could so often see Beezely? Her fingers went to the scar across her face, tracing the path. No, he couldn’t see her. Even the thought of it made her feel sick to her stomach. Almost no one had seen her for centuries, and that was the way she liked it. No one knew what a lumbering giant she was, or that she had an ugly face. It had been one of the few benefits of her undead state.

  Maybe it was something with his astrology that helped him to gauge her so well. She would have to watch him more closely, and pay more attention to what he did. It would help vastly if she could read, but even had she been taught, she doubted she would be able to decipher his scratchings. What flowed from his pen bore little resemblance to the thick script she had seen in her family’s Bible.

  Woding finished his main course, and Marcy and Dickie returned to clear away the dishes and serve his dessert, a bread pudding with custard sauce. She really couldn’t let him win like this, sitting there smugly eating his sweet.

  Dickie was almost to the door with a trayload of dishes. Serena snuck up to him, took two peas from the dish, and popped one into each of his nostrils.

  The resultant crash of dishes snapped Woding’s head around, and had Marcy giving a shriek of surprise.

  “My nose!” Dickie cried, stumbling amid the fallen crockery, treading in stew. “I can’t breathe!”

  Woding rose, but it was Marcy who reached Dickie first, grabbing him by the shoulders. “Let me see!” And then, when she did, she let go of him, stepping back. “Oh, Dickie,” she said. “That’s not funny. You frightened me.”

  Dickie gasped for air through his mouth, his lips hanging wide like th
e mouth of a fish. “I can’t breathe.” His fingertips touched his nose, jerking back at the smooth, firm texture of the peas. “What is it?” he yelped. “What’s in there?”

  Marcy turned away from him, shaking her head in disgust, and began to clear up the mess on the floor. It was Woding who answered him, his face hard. “You have peas in your nose. Go find a mirror and remove them.”

  He then stepped past Dickie, leaving the dining room and his dessert.

  Serena followed, feeling rather pleased with that bit of mischief. She punched imaginary peas into noses all the way up to Woding’s tower room, wondering what would have happened if she’d used his nose instead of Dickie’s.

  He sat down at his desk, placing both hands flat on its surface, staring at the papers scattered there. She could see his chest moving with his breathing under the white folds of his cravat.

  “Serena,” he said, raising his eyes and looking straight at her.

  She froze, her eyes wide, a fist in mid-pea punch, and just managed to keep herself from answering. She suddenly had the same feeling of dread and fear that had come with being called in front of her father for a misdeed.

  “I have had enough of your childish games.”

  Good. Maybe he would leave.

  “For a while, I admit, I was growing curious about who you were,” he went on. “I have felt you following me, lying beside me in my bed, and watching me bathe.” He leaned back in his chair. “I have even dreamed about you, and what you may look like.” He looked at a spot in the distance, his eyes going vague as he recalled. “It seemed you were a tall woman, with long, pale blond hair flowing down past your hips.”

  Her lips parted, a chill running up her body.

  “I even thought, once or twice, about how fascinating it would be to speak with you, and to hear you talk about your life.”

  What?

  “Now, though, I am not at all certain that I want to know anything about you. I have doubts that you retain any more of your humanity than its worst qualities, paramount among them cruelty and violence. I fear you may be nothing but the echo of a disturbed mind.”

  She was not disturbed! That was unfair. And she was more human than not—why else would she feel this pain when the living were near? He did not understand her, did not understand the purpose of her haunting, did not understand that it was in self-defense. He understood nothing!

  He sighed. “Which are you, Serena? Are you a beautiful woman caught halfway between life and death, or are you nothing but an echo of the ugliest parts of humanity?”

  Silence stretched to the corners of the room, trapping her mute in its bonds. She was neither, but she wished she could be one of those two, wished it as she always had, with all her heart. She wanted to be a beautiful woman about whom men dreamed.

  “If you are indeed a woman, I should like to know you,” Woding said.

  Serena drifted a few inches off the floor and sat in a nonexistent chair, trying to make sense of all this. People had but rarely spoken to her during her years as a ghost, and most often when they did they said things like “Stop it,” or “Don’t hurt me.” No one tried talking to her as if she might have something to say. Except for Thomas, no one in her lifetime had, either.

  Woding had dreamed of her as a beautiful woman.

  Stuffing peas up a boy’s nose suddenly seemed a petty thing to do, much more shameful for her than for poor Dickie, stumbling around with his green-plugged nostrils. For a moment she got a glimpse of how Woding must perceive her—not as a force to be reckoned with, as she had intended, but rather as a spiteful child.

  He had dreamed of her as a beautiful woman. He guessed, or knew, that she was tall, with long, pale hair. He must not have seen her face in his dream.

  She drifted backward, half disappearing into the stonework of the fireplace as she thought on his words, her mind trying to encompass this shift.

  He claimed he wanted to know her.

  Had anyone ever wanted to know her?

  Chapter Twelve

  The night of stargazing was long, but peaceful. Alex could still feel Serena close by, and could still catch glimpses of her from the corner of his eye, but there were no disturbances as there had been at dinner. She did not play with his pen, did not blow on his hair, and did not make thumping noises. She was as well behaved as he could expect. Better, really.

  He hadn’t known if his ploy would work, but apparently it had, at least well enough to keep her quiet for a few hours. Serena had shown him that force or insults from him only led to grand, violent retribution from her. While chewing his lamb stew he had accepted that he was basically powerless when it came to the ghost. She could do whatever she wished, and he had no way to stop her.

  And yet he had not grown up in a house of women without learning a few things. His sisters, even as children, had been able to wrap his father around their dainty little fingers, obtaining whatever they wished with an adoring look, a bit of flattery, and an astonishing aptitude for creating practical reasons where no such reasons actually existed.

  The lessons had served him well. He might not be a fearsome warrior, but warriors did not rule the land. Warriors got their limbs chopped off and died on battlefields. A warrior was but a pawn to those wily enough to rule.

  He leaned on the parapet, watching the deep blue sky catch the first hints of sunrise to the east. Demands had not worked with Serena, but it was looking as if flattery might. He caught pale movement from the corner of his eye. She appeared to be pacing back and forth, parapet to parapet, right through the end of his reclining chair.

  It had been somewhat of a lie he had told her. Part of him did not want to know who she was, as her visits to his dreams were unsettling, and she had done nothing to make him think her company would improve upon further acquaintance. She was, quite literally, the stuff of which nightmares were made.

  On the other hand, what man of either science or philosophy would not seize the chance to speak with the dead? There were so many questions she could answer, so many things she could explain, if she chose to communicate. And besides that matter, he actually did feel curiosity about who she was personally, and wanted to know if the eerily erotic woman in the dreams was her.

  The eastern sky was turning a vivid pink as the sun crept toward the horizon. A breeze ruffled his hair.

  If Serena chose to talk, he would learn the answers to questions of life and eternity that man had asked since first he walked the earth.

  He would also have to accept the possibility that he had gone stark, raving mad.

  Serena followed Woding down to his bedroom, still undecided about what she would do. His words had the distinct odor of manipulation, and yet she found herself tempted by them.

  Wily devil.

  What would it hurt, to talk a bit with the man?

  It would hurt the cherry tree, true enough, to use its energy to create a voice he could hear. The expenditure would be less than that of moving objects or making great, thudding noises, though. Maybe if he knew her, he would understand why she needed him to leave.

  She scratched that thought. Whatever Woding’s ways, he was still a man. He would do as he wished, regardless of her desires.

  But to spend even as little as an hour in conversation with another person, as if she, too, were real…The thought made her heart ache with such longing, she doubted she could survive if she rejected it. She doubted she could survive stopping if she acted on it.

  She could instead fade into oblivion, and wait there until Woding had left the castle, as he eventually would. If he didn’t move out, he would at least die of old age. But then the chance would be lost completely, perhaps never to come again, or the cherry would die in the interim, making waiting him out pointless.

  Her fretting distracted her until she saw that he was heading for his bathroom. She made to follow, but then he stopped in the doorway, turning to look over his shoulder toward her.

  “Serena,” Woding said. “Would you do me the great
kindness of waiting here while I bathe?”

  She stood in her tracks, her face flaming, as he shut the door behind him.

  Damn Woding. He had already taken away the pleasure of spying on him in his bath, and she had not even agreed to speak with him yet.

  Serena went to sit on his bed and wait, nervous as a bride. She listened to the running of water, and then the splashes as he bathed. She felt as if some of her power in their encounters was already slipping away.

  He was a wily, sly creature. Even as she felt the first ebb in her determination to be rid of him, felt the faint shift in the tide against her, she was unable to crush the desire to hear him speak to her again.

  He came back in, wrapped in a dressing gown, a nightshirt visible at the neckline. Was she not even to have a glimpse of his bare shoulder while he slept? This was too cruel.

  “Thank you,” he said, looking briefly toward her, then turning away.

  She stood up, her hands clasped tightly before her, watching as he moved about the room. He went to the windows first, pulling shut the curtains against the morning light, sending the room into twilight. The half-dark soothed her somewhat, making her feel less visible to him, although she knew the thought was ridiculous. His seeing of her, however strong it was, likely had nothing to do with light.

  He came back to the center of the room, then stopped. “Do you wish to speak now?” he asked.

  No.

  Yes.

  She did not know. She wanted him to keep talking, and then perhaps later she would have the courage to join in.

  He listened, his head cocked to the side. “I suppose I shall have to take that as a no.” He took off his dressing gown and got into bed, the mattress sighing as his weight pushed out the air amid the feathers. He pulled at his nightshirt as it twisted around him.

  She sat at the corner of the foot of the bed and leaned against the post, trying to calm herself. She would have liked to see him propped up by pillows, comfortable and ready to entertain her, rather than lying on his side, hunched up and stiff, pulling occasionally at his recalcitrant nightshirt.