Magick Rising (14 page)

“Have you gone to counseling?” I asked him. Again.

Like a door slamming shut, the desperate need in his eyes vanished

behind his confident, good-natured facade. “C’mon, I don’t need—”

“AA?” I asked.

“I barely drink—”

“Narcotics Anonymous?”

“I’ve barely touched the stuff since you left. I don’t need it, Penny. All I

need is you.”

I took a bracing breath. I’d tried to say this gently more times than I

could count. I’d pleaded through tears. I’d shouted it in anger. He kept

rejecting the truth. Now, I was just tired.

“But I can’t, won’t be with you, Lance. In fact, I need to
not
be with you.

You’ll just have to get over me.” I started to circle around him. Then I made

one last effort at helping, so gentle it surprised even me. “You really should

try counseling.”

“I’m not crazy!” he insisted, suddenly and truthfully angry. And loud.

Pretty much everyone in The Bibbidi looked up at that. Even the

blender stopped.

“Well you’re unhappy. And it’s not my responsibility to change that,

so—do something.” And I walked back to my two real friends, but I didn’t

sit down. Too many other things
were
my responsibility, including my

responsibility to cross over into the great beyond someone I’d been making

out with this morning.

“I’m going to research the house,” I told them. “And the fate of one

Richard Pemberley. Whatever you learn about the magic used in there, I’d

appreciate it.”

“Pen,” said Teddy, gruff and downcast. “I’m sorry. I didn’t get why

Dawn told me not to—but now I do.” He meant about inviting Lance.

“Don’t sweat it.” I couldn’t blame him. Huge though he is, Teddy’s the

last person who would hurt anybody on purpose. At least, anybody who

didn’t have it coming. And Dawn was right; I had downplayed my break-up

too much for Teddy to understand. “Y’all want to meet me back at the

Sorrow’s End later?”

“I’ll need time to put together some strong, protective amulets,” said

Dawn. “Are we aiming for the witching hour?”

That was our usual method of operations, midnight-to-three being the

most powerful time for spirit work. And I had a key. But I suspected our

problem would not be drawing the evil into existence so much as surviving

it, so we went with daylight hours.

Protective amulets? Very good idea.

After agreeing to meet the next morning, I headed for my car.

But I didn’t drive straight home.

RICHARD SOMEHOW knew Miss Hamilton would immediately return to

Sorrow’s End. He felt something like a masher, lurking around a pretty

blonde lady all day. But what were his choices?

He had little else to do with his eternal “rest.” Certainly not rest itself.

He did not deserve rest and so would never have it. And far too many other

innocents, his victims, haunted this city for him not to fight Miss Hamilton

becoming another.

Still, the arrival of her horseless carriage felt like a reprieve. Focusing on

her brought a brief cessation of the noise, the pain, the shame, as surely as

her kiss had.

The first kiss, the first touch, he’d had in over a century.

He swallowed, hard. He ought not think about that kiss. It would have

meant nothing to her. The realization of survival, after so horrific an

experience, made people do uncharacteristic things. It brought people

together and lowered all barriers of social decorum. He, of all people, knew

that. He’d seen it. The day after the storm . . .

But Richard refused to think about the storm. He’d been refusing to do

so for a century—and likely would continue until the end of the world. The

memories exhausted him, haunted him. He could admit a great deal about

himself, but his role in an apocalypse? Not while staying sane.

Better to focus on Miss Hamilton, stalking up the front walk—less

lengthy a stone pathway than it once had been since the streets got widened

some decades past. She glared at him from those forthright, green-gold eyes.

She really was adorable when she glared, unlike some women he’d

known who only dared showed displeasure after they’d already snapped. In

fact, the honesty of Miss Hamilton’s expressive face eased a wariness in him,

even as she fisted her hands on her hips.

“You’re a ghost!”

“Did I claim otherwise?” he demanded.

“So how is it that you . . . you . . . ?” To illustrate, she poked him. Hard.

In the shoulder.

At least, she seemed to think it was hard. Richard momentarily closed

his eyes to savor the real, human connection.

When he opened his eyes, Miss Hamilton’s anger had faded into an

uncertain inspection, her own eyes narrowed in thought and her full lips

pursed to the side. She still wore those blue dungarees, which molded to her

hips and thighs and . . . other areas . . . far too intimately. She had changed

to a longer sleeved shirt, but the fabric of it proved equally form-fitting.

His sudden need to kiss her again struck Richard so solidly that he took

a quick step back from her, just in case. “I understand no more than you.

Manon—the true curse of this house—is the one who can slam doors, break

windows, push people down the steps. Not I. Not even when I try.”

And he had tried. He’d tried to catch the first victim, an aging

housekeeper with an armful of sheets, but the woman had toppled right

through him and tumbled the rest of the way to the landing, dead from a

broken neck.

She became one more ghost, but not the kind he could see or speak to.

Just more lingering sadness, more proof of his isolation and helplessness.

He’d sensed glee from Manon at that—but he could neither see nor

hear it. He’d not seen her in a century, either, thank God. But he’d known

her presence by her trickery and anger against others.

“I can make myself seen, heard,” he continued. “After working at it for

decades. But could never touch the living. Not before . . . you. Miss

Hamilton—”

“Cut the old-fashioned stuff.” She rolled her eyes at the aptness of her

observation. “Call me Penny.”

He felt tempted, so tempted to be on a first-name basis with a woman

again. But the last time he’d rushed into overfamiliarity with a young lady

had ended in ruin and damnation. Once drowned, twice shy. “May I call you

Penelope?”

“Knock yourself out.”

“Penelope . . .” He liked the taste of her name in his mouth. “Perhaps

our awareness of one another hinges on your skills as an occultist?”

“I prefer the word psychic. And I’m barely even that. I’m just . . . tuned

differently, my grandfather used to say. Lance is the one that can see and

communicate with ghosts as if they were people. I mean . . . no offense.”

Lance
. Richard had watched, annoyed, as the young man’s gaze held

Penelope like a leash of unwanted affection. The man was in his late

twenties, perhaps Richard’s original age, and neither unhealthy nor

unattractive. But he’d seemed far younger, far less capable. “He is your

beau?”

“Briefly. I ended it, not that he gets that. I don’t want to hurt him, but

he isn’t the person I thought I knew.”

Now Richard barked out a mirthless laugh at the familiarity of her

dilemma. “Then I suspect that
Lance
also might be able to touch me. The

abilities of those with occult gifts clearly enhance mine.”

“So you’re saying—since I don’t need my spirit sight in order to see

you, I get the bonus of touching you instead? Like . . . if I have five dollars

for a coffee, but the barista gives it to me for free, I can now afford a

cupcake?”

He blinked at her, stunned. “Good Lord. Five dollars for a coffee?”

“Calm down, Grampa. The point is . . .” But instead of finishing her

sentence, she demonstrated, laying her palm on his chest. She felt small.

Warm. Real . . .

Against the amazing sensation of her touch, he felt real, too.

Richard shivered, and he still wanted to kiss her. But a crunching

screech against the house’s brick wall revived him in time to swing Penelope

by her waist—away from a window shutter that half fell, half flew onto the

verandah. It gouged a wedge of wood out of the floor, it landed with such

force. Rather than set her down, he carried her down the steps, across the

yard, and safely to her vehicle.

Putting her down proved one of the more difficult things he’d ever had

to do—and Richard had done harder things than most humans need ever

face. He did not have the strength to move his hand from her shoulder,

though, nor from her hip. God help him, the ability to touch someone again

was . . .

But a century dead suggested there was no God, at least, not one who

would help him.

“You truly are a fool, you know.” He tried desperately to scold her but

instead just admired her. Her skin seemed so soft, and her dark-honey hair

shone. In her eyes, he glimpsed hints of deeper emotions than she let show.

But he doubted that, were he to ever see those depths, they would frighten

him. She spoke too forthrightly about her thankfully former beau, about her

occult abilities, to be hiding any true evil. And he should know.

“This house possesses great evil, Miss—Penelope—and you must not

return. Only a thorough fool would ever involve oneself with the spirits of

this place.”

Including him.

“And someone has to stop it.” She hadn’t moved her hands from his

shoulders, where she’d clasped him as he carried her, either. Drunk on the

gift of her touch, he had to concentrate to even hear her.

“That someone need not be you.”

“Has the house, its spirit I mean, ever hurt anyone?”

Manon had not bothered everyone who trespassed into her father’s

house, simply attacking on whim. The tripped housekeeper. A realtor,

crushed under a fallen beam. A workman, his hand amputated by a

windowpane, spurting a trail of blood as he staggered for help . . .

Even as he tried to surface from the thought of those more recent

victims, worse memories smashed Richard’s thoughts deeper, downward

into the swirling, helpless memories. Again he heard the screams from

houses collapsing beneath the relentless brutality of the waves. Again he saw

corpses rolling in with the tide. Again he smelled the stomach churning

stench of untold dead, corpses ballooning in the indifferent sun . . .

“Richard!” Penelope’s voice drew him from his thoughts. She shook

him by the shoulders, and even that, he cherished. “Richard? The spirit
has

hurt people, hasn’t it?”

“Yes,” he answered, quite stiffly, in hopes that his grief-swollen throat

would not color his words. As if it mattered what this girl, generations

younger than he, thought of his manliness. “The spirit of Manon Boulanger

has hurt far more people than you can imagine.”

Because of me.

But that, he could not admit. Especially not to her.

I REALLY HAD BEEN angry when I drove to Sorrow’s End to confront

Richard Did-I-Not-Mention-I-Was-Dead Pemberley.

Then he’d swept me out of the way of that plummeting window

shutter. He’d actually
carried me to safety
. Now he stared at me like a heroic

knight who somehow wanted to cry . . .

So much for staying angry—at him, anyway.

The ghost, on the other hand?

“Who is this Manon Boulanger?” I demanded. “Is that a guy or a girl?

Not that it matters, because no ghost gets to go around hurting people in my

town.”

“She goes nowhere,” pointed out Mr. Literal. “She’s trapped in the—”

A
she
, then! Why did that bug me? I suspected my bias had more to do

with me holding on to Richard again, him still touching me as we talked,

than it did with any sense of sisterhood.

“
She’s hurting people!
” I insisted, in case he’d forgotten that part. “
Someone

has to stop her, and I’m the one the owners hired to get the place ready to

show. I have spirit sight. My friend Dawn has protective abilities. My friend

Teddy’s weirdly immune to the non-physical. Even Lance might be able to

talk sense into—”

“Nobody can talk sense into Manon!” Richard’s tone implied I was

stupid. “You have no idea the depths to which this woman is capable. I did

not see it myself, not in time, but Manon is deadly. You must stay away from

her, Penelope. And if you value your friends’ lives, you will not risk them on

this battlefield.”

I tried cracking a smile. “So you’re saying we just send in Lance?”

His scowl deepened. “Not. Even. Him. She will destroy anyone who

crosses her. Everyone. And should you be so unlucky as to survive—”

Whoa. What?

“—You will never forgive yourself!”

I wasn’t an idiot. I’d dealt with ghosts—if not at this level of

power—enough to know that, except for friendly visits from the spirits of