Her Last Whisper (19 page)

Tam walked out of the bathroom. Actually, stumbled was a better word. She moved past Charlie as if her legs had been turned to jelly. Her always pale face was shiny with sweat. Her hair looked like it had been caught in a whirlwind: it was tangled in a bright nimbus around her head.

Charlie’s breathing suspended as her eyes riveted on Tam. She was so painfully afraid of what the answer was going to be that she couldn’t put into words the question that was tearing at her heart.

Michael?

“I did what I could,” Tam said in response to the look on Charlie’s face, then moved on across the room to sink down heavily on the couch. Bending at the waist, she rested her head on her knees and wrapped her arms around her legs. The moonlight streaming through the window glinted on the silver of Michael’s watch; it dangled from Tam’s fingers.

Charlie froze. Her stomach turned inside out and her blood congealed in her veins and her ears started to ring. For a moment she thought her knees would give out. Then the bathroom door pushed open more and Michael walked out.

Michael, with his tawny blond hair and too-handsome-for-his-own-good
face and drool-worthy body. Michael, with all six-foot-three muscular golden inches dressed in jeans and tee and boots, looking like himself again.

“Hey,” he said. His voice was husky but
his
, the same honeyed drawl that had been doing its best to seduce her from the first time she’d ever heard it. He smiled at her, a crooked twist of his lips that stole the breath from her body.

Relief made Charlie dizzy.

Even as the dark room revolved around her, even as the floor tilted and the stars and moon and city lights outside the window spun into a single sparkling pinwheel, Charlie did what every instinct she possessed urged her to do. She walked straight into his arms, grabbed two desperate fistfuls of his shirt, rested her forehead against his chest, and closed her eyes.

And breathed.

His arms came around her, hugged her close.

The faint scent of lilacs clung to him. It was as real, as tangible, as he was.

So overwhelmed was she that it took her a second to realize that he
was
tangible: she was actually
in
his arms. She could feel him. He was as firm and substantial against her as any living, breathing man. Her breasts were nestled against a sturdy wall of muscle. The arms holding her were hard and strong. Her hands were twined in cool, smooth cotton.

He was
there
. Physically.

Her lips parted with astonishment. Looking up to make sure, she met a blaze of sky blue eyes.

“Michael.” His name came out on a shaken breath.

“Charlie.” His hold on her tightened until she could feel every rock-solid inch of him.

“Oh, my God.” She threw her arms around his neck even as he bent his head to kiss her.

His lips were warm and dry and unmistakably male and just as unmistakably
there
. They slanted over hers, brushing against the soft curves of her mouth before hardening with a carnality that sent heat shooting through her. She closed her eyes. Her lips parted for him. He licked into her mouth, and she instantly went all soft and
shivery inside. Then they were kissing, really kissing, deep and hot and hungry for each other. He kissed her like he was starving for the taste of her, like he could never get enough of her, and she kissed him back the same way. Her heart pounded. Her pulse raced. His hands splayed over her back. She could feel the size and shape and
warmth
of them through her thin blouse. She could feel all of him, the powerful length of his legs, his narrow, muscled hips, his broad shoulders beneath her arms. Greedily she touched the warm smooth skin of his nape, threaded her fingers through his hair. Her breasts tightened and tingled with pleasure as they pressed against the unyielding wall of his chest, and she made a little wordless sound of wanting into his mouth. She could feel his response in the rigidity of his arms around her, in the super-heated insistence of his kiss, in the hard, urgent mound beneath his jeans as he rocked into her a little.

If they had been alone, she would have started ripping off his clothes—and hers. She ached for him. She burned for him.

Then all of a sudden he wasn’t there.

Her eyes flew open. He
was
there, still tight up against her, lifting his head from their kiss with the same glazed and hungry and yet slightly bewildered look in his eyes that she knew must be present in hers, staring down at her with the same dawning realization that she was experiencing as it burst on her that his physicality had been a temporary state, that they were once again on different sides of the barrier, that he was spirit and she was human flesh and never the twain shall meet.

She didn’t need to step back from his arms. She could no longer feel them around her. Her hands fell down through his body, just fell of their own weight without the wide shelf of his shoulders to support them. The electric tingle that was all she felt now when touching him was suddenly as horrifying as anything she had ever experienced.

Because it meant that they were once again impossible. Two different kinds of creatures, with no future that they could share.

“What the
hell
?” His voice was a growl as he took a step back from her. The note of frustrated anger in it echoed her own sudden devastation.

“Oh, my God, for a few minutes there I thought you were alive,”
she told him. Her gaze swung to Tam, who was still bent almost double on the couch, although Tam’s head was up now as she watched them with a troubled expression that was just discernible in the starlight. “I thought you’d somehow managed to bring him back to
life
.”

Her tone was a mixture of anguish and pleading.

Tam shook her head. “That can’t be done. The dead cannot be brought back to life. Don’t hope for it, cherie, because it can never happen.”

Charlie knew that,
knew
that, had known it all along and had never before even questioned it, but still that moment of wild hope and joy when he had emerged from Tam’s spell feeling as warm and solid as any living, breathing man refused to release its grip on her, and Tam’s words felt like a knife twisting in her heart.

Looking at Michael, Tam said, “You understand, spirit. You cannot be made alive again under any circumstances. The spell doesn’t exist that can do that.”

“I never thought it did.” Michael’s voice was wry. “Miracles are kind of thin on the ground where I come from.”

Charlie must have made a wordless sound of distress, because he looked down at her with a gathering frown.

“Babe—” he said, reaching for her. Like her, he was obviously having trouble remembering that he was once again in a noncorporeal state.

Even as his hands brushed her arms, even as the too-familiar electric tingle made her heart ache, Charlie shook her head at him. She wasn’t done with Tam.

“Then what
was
that?” she demanded. Pain still shivered in her voice. “The only times I’ve managed to break through to his side of the barrier I’ve had to fall asleep first. And he—he gets thrown into Spookville—the Dark Place—whenever he manifests, but here he still is. So what just happened?”

“You must understand, it’s all about vibration,” Tam said. “These planes—the plane of the living, the plane of the dead—operate on different frequencies, like radio channels. The spirit said you drowned, that the white light came for you. If that’s true, then your frequency must have been altered by the experience: you’re
closer to the Afterlife now, and you’re vibrating at a higher frequency because of it. Intense emotion like what I just saw from you would send your vibrations higher still. The spirit’s vibration was probably temporarily lowered by the spell I cast. You were briefly able to meet at the same level. But it was only temporary. He had to return to his plane, to go back to vibrating at a higher frequency, and your extreme emotion leveled out, and so you’re once again on different frequencies.”

“In other words,” Michael said drily, “we’re just two metaphysical ships who happened to pass in the night.”

“That’s right.” Tam sounded pleased that he understood.

Welcome back to cold, hard reality
. The words popped into Charlie’s head like a slap in the face.

“You okay?” Michael asked her. His eyes—thank God they were back to their normal sky blue!—searched hers. Suddenly the memory of the things they had said—
if he gets destroyed it will break my heart; I didn’t want to leave you
—hung in the air between them. She could see that he was remembering them, too, in the deepening intensity of his gaze, the tightening of his lips. The air between them surged with—something. Whatever it was, the depth of emotion she was experiencing scared her.
You can’t love him
, she told herself fiercely, and broke eye contact, looking away. A second later, he was speaking to Tam.

“So what you’re saying is that she’s permanently stuck on a higher vibration than she was before, because she nearly died,” Michael said. Internally, Charlie was still a quivering mess. That he was able to pick that one detail out of everything Tam had said, to hone in on that, when she was still raw and bleeding inside, surprised her. He sounded, and looked, so calm and together that she didn’t know whether to be impressed or affronted. But wishing things were different or railing against the cruelties of the universe was useless, as she had learned long since, so she pulled herself together instead and locked her emotions down and looked at Tam, who was shaking her head.

“Not permanently. I’m almost certain that any alteration would be temporary.”

“Would it be the kind of thing that would let her hear voices
that nobody else—me included, and keeping in mind that I’m on the other side of the line—can hear?” Michael asked. Charlie looked at him with dawning respect: affronted now definitely took a backseat to impressed. She would not have thought of that. At least not right now, as shaken and off-kilter as she was.

“Is that what she’s doing?” Tam sounded interested. She was still leaning forward, but her forearms were resting on her thighs now and she looked altogether more alert.

Michael nodded. “Since she woke up in the hospital after she almost died.”

“And that would be how long ago?”

“About three weeks.”

Charlie frowned: the experience of having herself discussed as if she weren’t even present by two people (if Michael even qualified as a person) who meant about as much to her as anybody in the world was new. She wasn’t sure she liked it.

“I’ve been experiencing clairaudience,” she told Tam, claiming ownership of her own symptoms with a withering glance at Michael. “I hear voices inside my head now. I’m almost positive that they’re real voices and not hallucinations. From the dead, I think. Michael can’t hear them, or see whoever’s talking, so the voices don’t belong to spirits who are around me that I just can’t see. I have no idea who’s speaking or where the voices are coming from. It’s only intermittent, and it seems to happen pretty much at random.”

“And at damned inconvenient times,” Michael added, and Charlie was reminded of her bandaged hand.

Tam’s expression as she looked at Charlie was one of almost clinical appraisal. “If that’s only been happening since your near death experience, then I’d say it’s probably because you’re vibrating at a higher frequency now. It will go away in time. I am almost—”

She was interrupted by the ringing of Charlie’s cell phone. The sound was so unexpected, so cheery and normal in that heavy atmosphere, Charlie jumped a little with surprise. She knew immediately what it was, of course, and glanced toward her purse, which was on the coffee table where she had left it.

“—sure,” Tam concluded, and looked at the purse, which was right in front of her. “It’s important, cherie.”

Charlie didn’t even question how Tam could know that the incoming call was important: over the years, she had learned that the psychic part of Tam just did. Given the time on the East Coast, the caller almost had to be Tony, or possibly Buzz or Lena, wondering where she was. Charlie had no idea how long she’d been gone, but the bottom line was, too long. Now that Michael was restored to himself again and that particular crisis was past, she needed to concentrate on the job she had come to Las Vegas to do: helping to find Lena’s sister.

“Excuse me,” she murmured, and dug her phone out of her purse. A glance at the caller ID told her that it was indeed Tony. “I need to take this.”

“Where are you?” Tony asked without preamble when she answered. His voice sounded blessedly normal, an antidote to all the craziness she’d been experiencing. Michael’s sardonic expression told her that he recognized the caller’s voice as soon as she did. He could hear both sides of the conversation, she knew. She narrowed her eyes at him. He kept on listening unashamedly.

“I ran into a friend,” Charlie replied, which was perfectly true. “I’m still here, in the hotel.”

“We finally tracked Kaminsky down. She’s at the morgue, says she thinks she has a lead. Crane and I are heading there now. Are you coming?”

The instinctive shiver that ran down her spine was, she hoped, visible to no one else. She hated morgues. They were worse even than hospitals for someone with her particular sensitivities.

“Yes,” she said. The thing about it was, though, that if there was something in the morgue that might help Lena’s sister, Charlie was the best person to pick up on it: morgues tended to be full of the recently, violently dead. The good news about morgues was, there weren’t likely to be any serial killers in them. At least, not live ones.

“Meet us in the lobby in front of the reception desk in ten minutes,” Tony said, and when Charlie agreed he disconnected.

“You sure you’re up to this?” Michael asked quietly as Charlie picked up her purse and tucked the phone back into it. “It’s been a long day.”

“I should be asking you that. You’re the one who nearly got obliterated.”

“If I say I’m not up to it, will you forget about heading out to a damned morgue tonight?”