Magick Rising (16 page)

saw some heads briefly surface, but the power of the current proved too

much.”

I moved my hand to his, squeezing it.

“Then, I had no choice,” he admitted, more to the sky than to me. “For

survival, or for honor—even I cannot tell you.

“I had to get to Manon.”

HE’D FOUGHT WARRING currents, hip deep, waist deep, some waves

swamping him entirely, for what must have been blocks. Each time he went

under, he thought himself dead until he surfaced to missile-like rain pelting

into his gasping mouth.

Sometimes he would spot another person struggling through the

saltwater. They would catch each other’s gaze for a dazed moment of

remembered humanity before returning to the instinct of surviving another

minute, then another, then another. Any hope of living longer than minutes

faded.

Survival depended on nothing more than chance now—or, again, so he

had thought. Not on wealth, nor power, nor even competence. Debris

turned deadly. Flying glass and roof tiles hit and often killed struggling

evacuees with the force of artillery. The heavy wooden beams which had

recently paved the street now floated above it, just under the surface, like

massive alligators. The tides bashed them into buildings and rolled them

over struggling pedestrians. Anybody dragged under by those, drowned.

Most drowned anyway.

Bobbing, wave-borne corpses became their own deadly debris.

He’d struggled through the tide of wreckage, some of it wooden, some

of it once flesh, all of it trying to stop him. But he could not stop. With every

floundering step, he became more certain that he had no other choice. So he

struggled for every inch of progress, through wind that literally tore his

clothing, through battering brine.

Somehow, he found the iron bars of a high fence that now enclosed no

more than choppy surf, no house. That gave him the ability to drag himself

through the tempest, like climbing a horizontal ladder. Black waves

swamped him. Often he fumbled his handhold on the wet metal and went

under the churning, deadly water. Each time, he struggled back to the

surface. But why?

Perhaps, he’d foolishly thought, he did this less for Manon Boulanger

and more for himself. He could not pretend he had not known her. He

could not pretend he had not kissed her. He could not, he told himself, to

explain the need to keep going, leave her to die, alone.

Finally, he found Sorrow’s End. It stood yet, despite gusting surf

drowning its entire first floor. Richard half swam, half waded his way to it.

He dragged himself onto the half-gone roof of the collapsing verandah. He

cut himself on glass as he pushed through the gaping eye-socket of a missing

bedroom window, staggered into the dark, groaning interior of the house,

and collapsed.

Vaguely conscious of the rain that flew in the windows, he gulped his

first lungs-full of waterless air since . . . since . . . ?

Manon,
something inside him insisted.
You must find Manon!

“Mademoiselle Boulanger!” he’d eventually called with the remains of

his salt-stripped voice. “Anyone?”

But nobody answered him.

WHEN RICHARD stopped talking, I just held his hand, our forearms

nestled together, and I leaned against his bewildering strength while we

watched the now soft waves in the twilight.

To have gone through all that? No wonder he was a ghost!

We stood in the shadow of the very seawall that had been built as a

result of that nameless hurricane, the worst—most deadly—natural disaster

the United States has ever known. I knew my history. Between 8,000 and

12,000 lives were lost. About 4,000 buildings were destroyed. Richard’s

Galveston had never regained status as the largest, most prosperous city in

Texas. It had died that day as surely as all those innocent people.

I’d often seen the storm’s memorial statue of a man sheltering a woman

and child while reaching upward in unheard desperation. I’d dealt with other

hurricane hauntings. In most of those, the spirits had been disoriented by

the confusion of wind and water, grateful for the direction and peace I

offered. But I’d never really
felt
the story.

I turned to Richard. “I don’t know another man who would have tried,

not for someone they don’t even love. You are amazing.”

His eyebrows arched. “You hear my story, and this is how you interpret

it?”

“Yeah. This is how I interpret it,” I agreed. “While thousands died, you

got to Sorrow’s End. You didn’t give up. You were willing to give your life

because you wouldn’t leave a mentally unbalanced woman alone to die.”

“I was fortunate, perhaps even . . .” But he shook his head. “Far

stronger swimmers, far braver souls were cut down.”

“You were fortunate,
and
you were amazing. You’ve got to stop

blaming yourself for all this, Richard. You
have
to . . .”

As I had earlier, I laid a hand against his chest. I felt the grit of sand

under my fingertips, like off a picnic blanket after a day at the beach. But I

also felt
him
. Miraculously solid. Real. I thought I could even feel the spring

of chest hair, under his shirt . . .

But no heartbeat,
I reminded myself.
He’s not really alive. You can’t forget that.

Richard stared down at me, both wary of and desperate for my

absolution. My eyes stung with my need to give it to him—and with an

increasing dread of doing just that.

Because once I put his soul to rest, he would move on.

He
should
move on.

That’s why it hurt to speak the words. “You’ve done your job, here.

You’ve protected Manon for as long as you possibly can. You can let go,

now.”

We held each other’s desperate gazes. I drew a shaky breath, drew my

hands down his strong arms, readied to let him go.

But Richard said, “I think not.”

My frustration mixed with almost giddy relief. “Why not?”

“My job has never been to protect Manon Boulanger. Not, until now,

have I been able to protect anyone
from
her. You are my first real chance.

After a century of failure, with you, I have hope. There is no way I will let

you face her without my protection. You know nothing.”

Excuse me? “
Nothing
?!”

“Nothing regarding this.”

“So tell me, Mr. Firsthand Account. You looked for Manon, and what

did you find? Did she drown? Hang herself in despair?”

The words came out more harsh than I’d meant them.

“I found her alive, Penelope. I found her alive, and—”

At which point he vanished.

He didn’t just go incorporeal, as if some jogger without spirit sight had

glanced our way; he was
gone
. It wasn’t how he’d disappeared back at The

Bibbidi, either. That time, Richard had looked at me—and left. On purpose.

In control.

This time, his eyes widened with surprise, even fear, as he was

somehow submerged into . . . nothingness.

Suddenly, I stood alone in the dark between the concrete stairs and the

graffiti-strewn seawall, almost seventeen feet over me. The gulls had gone to

bed. The waves continued their eternal mantra. But Richard Pemberley was

no more.

For a moment, I thought: Had I done it?
Had he moved on?
But of course

he hadn’t! There’d been no overwhelming sense of peace, which is the most

consistent proof of a spirit going into the light. And his expression . . .

Something—or someone—had
stolen
him!

“Richard?” I called, tentative. Then, not so tentative, “Richard!?”

Nothing.

Whatever had happened, it had to be connected to Sorrow’s End. I ran

the whole way back in the illumination of modern streetlights. Nobody

intercepted me. I’d like to have seen a mugger try.

My car waited for me on the curb.

The house sat, dark and disarmingly innocent against the autumn night.

“Richard!” I called again, gasping for breath. I stalked onto the front

yard and tried a different tack. “Manon Boulanger! I know you’re in there. If

you have Richard Pemberley, you need to let him go!”

No response. Even though ghosts don’t generally hear the living, they

can usually hear me.

“He’s not yours!” I shouted at the heedless dark windows. Blinking, I

felt surprised by the sting in my eyes. Tears. “
Give him back
!”

Silence.

“You’ve had him for over a century! I only just . . . only just found

him . . .”

Which was maybe the stupidest thing of all.

I braced my spread hands on the front of my jeaned legs, bent over, and

began to cry in earnest. It had been a real bitch of a day. And now I had to

decide whether to go in after him? I’d been in that house when Manon was

angry. How much more angry would she be now that I’d told her I was after

her man?

I would love to be the kind of heroine who threw caution to the wind

and charged to the rescue.

Turns out, I was the kind of person who remembered that Richard was

already a ghost. He’d known this woman since the summer of 1900. And

he’d ordered me, more times than I could count, to leave Sorrow’s End

alone.

It was what he’d wanted.

“Bitch,” I whispered at both of us and slouched back toward my car.

I barely managed to dodge the roof shingles that shot downward at me,

one after another . . . like artillery. I dove into my car with them whacking

against the roof. One shattered the passenger side window. Still, I fumbled

my keys into the ignition and took off.

But I felt like a coward. Worse, I felt . . . heartbroken. He was somehow

linked to this psychotic woman, doomed to his loneliness forever. I hadn’t

helped him.

Seeing Richard pulled away from me clarified something I hadn’t

expected.

After one short day, I was falling for him.

A ghost. Someone whom I should be sending
away
from me. I mean,

the best happy ending here would rank little more than having a sexy

imaginary friend, and
this
was where my heart went? In its own way, this was

just as foolish a choice as Lance had been, wasn’t it?

No. It was exponentially more stupid than even that.

I pulled into a parking lot before my tear-blurred vision could make me

dangerous, and I telephoned Dawn.

Saturday, September 8, 1900

“MANON!” A waterlogged Richard tried to push off the wet floor. It took

a while. Cold, shuddering exhaustion unbalanced him. The house shifted

against the storm’s gusts and seemingly eternal, battering waves.

He got no answer except for a strange, uneven thudding noise. That, he

finally recognized as the sound of floating furniture, banging into walls and

the first floor ceiling.

Finally, he managed to regain his feet. He stumbled, bedraggled, onto

the second story landing, to check the bedrooms. Nothing. Nobody. And

yet, despite the confusion of survival, the continued threat that the house

could not stand against the waves forever, an inexplicable need grew in him,

more intense than any emotions he’d ever imagined.

Go to Manon.

Find Manon.

Be with Manon . . .

Dragging himself up the stairway toward the attic was as slow and

difficult as dragging himself through the debris-crowded current . . . except

that it felt right.

The attic was locked.

“Manon!” He knocked several times then just leaned against the door.

Wind screamed through broken windows throughout the residence. The

wreckage of other homes slammed into the brick walls of Sorrow’s End, like

angered gods. She must have left already, he thought, but instead of relief, he

felt confusion. Because he hadn’t been drawn anywhere else. He’d been

drawn here.

Drawn . . . ?

Then he heard, over the chaos, the faintest call of his name. “Richard?”

Reenergized, Richard dug deep and found the strength to throw

himself, again and again, against the attic door, as relentless as the waves that

had already taken down so many buildings. Finally, the door lurched open.

He stumbled inside.

But what he found there . . .

A single oil lamp lit the scene. Manon Boulanger lay on the floor, trying

to push herself into a sitting posture but collapsing with each attempt. Her

feverish eyes brightened at his arrival. Her sunken lips drew away from her

teeth in the macabre effort of a smile. Her once shiny black hair had dulled

to a brittle mimicry of its former curls, seeming to absorb instead of reflect

the lamplight.

Rather than looking like a refugee from the hurricane, Manon looked

like someone who’d starved for months. Yet he’d seen her, only two days

ago!

“You came for me,” she tried to say, a hoarse whisper through cracked

lips. “I called for you, and you came.”

Richard had to look away—and his horror mounted.