The Messenger: A Novel (16 page)

He died two days later, a day after a visit from his solicitor, and not long after a visit from the local vicar, who appeared quite shaken when he left. With Wentworth, I was at Lord Varre’s bedside when he died, and we received the last of his confidences. I will not betray his trust. I will only add this note to this part of my narrative—I do not believe for a moment that he was damned.

Of Lord Varre’s wealth, the largest part went to his servants and to aid the poor of his parish, most especially to those returning soldiers who had served in the recent wars. I was surprised to learn that I was a beneficiary of his will, but this made it easier for me to take away those objects that he had entrusted to me, most of them possessions of Adrian deVille. Added to these were family papers, his own collection of books, and a small collection of miniatures of his family members.

This last bequest, the solicitor said, reading from the will, “is given to you to remind you of the importance of having accepted a gift.” The solicitor seemed hopeful that I would interpret this for him, but I am afraid I disappointed him.

A
manda finished the last of the parchment pages and set them carefully on the desk. All her first thoughts were of Tyler, and what he had been through. She thought of him spending so many years keeping secrets, going to one deathbed after another.

A little earlier, she had heard him return, heard him speaking softly to Shade as he walked down the hallway past her room. She thought of going to him, to talk to him about the pages he had left for her.

She hesitated.

She asked herself if she believed what she had just read.

Yes
, she thought,
I do
.

And yet, none of this fit into her experience. She told herself sternly to consider the possibility that he was crazy, convinced of his delusions, but right out of his head—or that this was a hoax. She knew she had to be on guard against con men—that had been drilled into her own head from childhood on.

Okay, if this was a hoax, the pages she had just read could have been written yesterday, faked to look aged. But that phrase, “written yesterday,” took her thoughts to the previous day.

No, they couldn’t have been written yesterday. Not while he was lying on a dirt road in the desert, dying. Not with all that had occurred yesterday and today.

She took a deep breath and let it out slowly.

She had seen him revive after the accident. She had seen him heal—twice, now—from serious wounds. She had watched him use his gift with the dying.

He wasn’t crazy. It wasn’t a hoax. Strange, but not a hoax.

She admitted to herself that given the degree of attraction she felt to him, she might not be able to think about him objectively.

She got up again and put on a light robe. She would check on Brad, she decided.

She was crossing the room, headed toward the door to the hallway, when the ghosts appeared. She drew in a sharp breath and put a hand to her throat, but managed not to yelp.

Tyler’s story made her think of them a little differently now, she realized. He didn’t see ghosts, so why did she? She studied each of their faces, trying to read their expressions.

Not disapproving this time, she noticed. Her aunt and uncle looked worried, her parents—serene.

She could not recall a time, during the years her mother lived, when she had ever seen her look like this. Even the childhood photos she had seen of her mother, years before marriage, had not captured this quality. “You’re beautiful, Mom,” Amanda said.

Nothing in her mother’s expression changed—or did it? Something in her eyes. Didn’t they lighten just a little?

Then it occurred to her that they were standing between her and the door.

“Is this a message of some sort?” she asked.

They said nothing. Made no gesture.

She waited.

They drifted toward her.

They had been near her many times over the years, but she had never seen them close distance in this way. She felt frightened, and realized that although they often startled her, they had never before scared her.

“Why are you doing this?” she asked, hearing the tremor in her voice. “I’m just going to see Brad!”

Her mother seemed to shake her head, just slightly. They came closer still, and she began to feel cold.

Closer yet, and now the air was icy. She shivered. “Don’t!” she whispered.

She turned in blind panic, knocking over a vase that crashed to the floor behind her. She ran to the French doors leading to the deck and wrenched them open. Crossing the deck in quick strides, she gripped the railing and took great gulps of air. The night was cooler now, but still warmer than she had felt in her room.

“Amanda?”

She turned to see Tyler, who must have been standing there all along. Shade was next to him, looking at her with his head cocked to one side.

“Are you all right?” Tyler asked, moving toward her. “I heard something crash—are you all right?” Somewhere inside the house, an intercom tone rang. He ignored it.

“I broke something,” she said, trembling. “A big vase.”

“It doesn’t matter,” he said, coming closer still, almost touching her now.

His cell phone rang.

“Answer it,” she said, thinking that if someone was dying, she was not going to be the one who kept that person from speaking his last thoughts.

“It’s Alex,” he said, puzzled. He answered. “Hello, Alex, what is it?”

He looked at Amanda with a slight smile as he said, “Everything’s fine. I’m afraid I knocked over a vase…. Yes, I appreciate your vigilance. Everything all right otherwise?…Good, I’m glad the two of you are watching over Brad…. Yes…. Good night, then.”

He put the phone away.

“Thanks for covering for me,” she said, “but if she’s with Ron, he’ll know who’s breaking things.”

“It’s none of Ron’s business, is it? Besides, I don’t think he’ll tell on you. It doesn’t matter.”

“You keep saying that, but you don’t even know which vase I broke. I think it was an antique.”

“Were you hurt?”

“No.”

“Then everything that was of value to me in that room remains unscathed.”

She smiled.

“What happened?” he said quietly. “What frightened you? Was it what I gave you to read? If so—”

“No, no! I’m glad you gave that to me. Thank you for trusting me.”

“I believe I’m the one who should thank you.”

He was looking down at her, and she could not mistake what she saw in his eyes. She held her breath, certain that in another moment he would touch her, perhaps even kiss her.

He did reach for her, then dropped his hand. She allowed herself to breathe again, and wondered if she should make the first move. She was distracted as Shade came rushing toward them. Amanda froze, but the dog continued past them.

“Becoming more like me after all, are you, Tyler?” a voice said, startling them both.

Tyler turned, keeping her sheltered behind him.

“I believe that’s the worst insult you’ve given me, Colby,” Tyler said.

Colby laughed.

“Colby?” Amanda said, stepping out from behind Tyler. What was he doing here?

“We meet again,” Colby said, eyeing her up and down. “Although if I’d known how delightful you look in a nightgown…”

Tyler took a step forward. “It’s been a long while, Colby, but if you think the outcome might be different this time—”

Colby raised a hand to his jaw in rueful reminiscence, shook his head, and laughed again. “Temper, temper, Captain Hawthorne. Just for that, I don’t think I’ll tell you what I’ve learned.”

“Get out,” Tyler said. “You’re a damned liar, so I don’t care to hear your stories.”

“Damned, certainly,” he agreed. “But aren’t you, as well?”

“Shade,” Tyler said.

“Now, now,” Colby said. “You know Shade will protect you if I truly try to harm you, but he has no interest in me otherwise. Really, Tyler, I hesitate to question your manners, but I do wonder if living in America has been good for you.”

“Get out,” Tyler said. “Must I say it a third time?”

Colby looked at Amanda, then back at Tyler. He smiled. “Miss Clarke doesn’t seem to feel so strongly. In fact, she looks curious about me.”

She was indeed, but she wasn’t going to do anything to help Colby upset Tyler. She stayed quiet.

Colby gave a little bow. “You know, as curious as I am about her in return, I think I will leave—but you might want to keep Miss Clarke with you, Tyler. Otherwise I may come back to renew my acquaintance with her.”

He walked around the corner of the deck.

“Is he gone?” she whispered to Tyler.

“Yes,” he said, still staring after him, as was Shade.

“How did he get in here, past your security?”

“A knack of his,” he said absently. Then in a tight voice, “How did you meet him?”

“At Rebecca’s party.”

“Rebecca’s party?” He frowned. “I didn’t see him there.”

“I think he left before…before we did.”

He turned back to her and seemed to come out of whatever dark thoughts were on his mind. “I apologize for the fright that must have given you. Are you all right?”

“Yes,” she said, but shivered.

He put an arm around her and said, “Let’s go inside.” He started to steer her toward her room, then stopped. “I have a question to ask of you, Amanda, and I hope you know you can answer honestly. I have no doubt that if I take you back to your room tonight, Colby will…will get past my security again, and…visit you.” His face showed a kind of grim determination as he said, “If you would prefer to wait for him…”

“No.”

He visibly relaxed. “Then I have a suggestion to make, and I hope
you will understand that my reason for making it is your protection. You know that I don’t need sleep?”

“Yes—except with the fevers, right?”

“Yes, but this has nothing to do with the fevers. If you would allow it, I would watch over you tonight.”

“Watch over me?”

“What I’m asking is—would you please sleep in my room tonight? I’ll be near you, but I promise I won’t—I won’t impose on you.”

Telling him that it would hardly be an imposition didn’t seem like such a great idea. Obviously, he didn’t exactly have the hots for her, since he was able to suggest that she sleep in his bed—alone. And when she thought about it, why should someone with a couple hundred years of experience want anything to do with her? He probably thought of her as a child. This offer of watching over her was one indication of how likely it was that that was indeed how he viewed her.

Her pride nearly made her refuse the offer. Then she thought of returning to her room, and the ghosts, and Colby’s threat.

She’d be near Tyler. He wouldn’t let her come to harm. And maybe, if they were able to talk a little, she’d understand him better.

“All right,” she said.

“Thank you,” he said, and she could hear his relief.

If there was a little awkwardness in the moments when she got into the bed, that became secondary to a moment of sweet pleasure when he sat next to her and combed his fingers through her hair.

“Good night, Amanda,” he said, and lightly kissed her temple before turning off the bedside lamp.

“Good night, Tyler,” she said as he stood. She inhaled the scent of him from the pillow and smiled ruefully to herself in the darkness.
You are pathetic,
she told herself, but inhaled again.

By the moonlight, she could see him standing near the doors leading to the deck. She could just make out his features.

“How long do you think you will live here?”

“I don’t usually stay anywhere more than half a dozen years. Ten years at most.”

“This is L.A., Tyler. No one ages.”

“I will admit that it is a little easier to have my…differences…go unnoticed in a big city, or any place where people live out their lives without paying much attention to their neighbors, but eventually I’ll have to pull up stakes.”

“People in Southern California move often, too,” she said. “Ron’s grandfather was the only one of our neighbors who lived here for more than five or six years.”

“That may be so, but over time—well, the bureaucracy catches on. I can’t, for example, look as if I’m twenty-four on all my DMV records or passports.”

“Oh. What do you do?”

“Let’s just say I’ve become as good a forger as Adrian ever was, and if you’d like to visit some of the cemeteries where I’m supposedly buried as my own ancestor, it will be quite a tour. I differ from Adrian in that I did not murder anyone to fill a coffin.” He paused. “I will admit that this age of computer records has made it a little more difficult, but I have managed.”

“You do know that Ron’s an excellent hacker, don’t you?”

He smiled. “Yes. We’ve found it an area of mutual interest. And—I am fortunate because some of the people I’ve helped have been willing to help me without asking a lot of questions.”

“Or come to work for you, like Alex and Ben?”

“Although I pay them, I do regard them more as loyal friends than employees.” He paused. “I say that knowing that in another five or ten years, I’ll have to abandon them. Keep this in mind, Amanda—sooner rather than later, I’ll have to pull up roots.”

He couldn’t deliver the message any plainer than that, could he?

She felt a kind of despair, then told herself to grow a spine. He had already told her more about himself than he had told anyone else. If he didn’t care about her, he wouldn’t have brought her into his bed—even if he wasn’t in it with her. Yet.

T
yler asked himself if he had lost his mind.

He wanted nothing more than to crawl in next to her and make love to her all night.

He could think of nothing that would be more disastrous.

He was—to understate the case—an old man. She might see him as young, might even feel as drawn to him as he was to her. But he was constantly aware that his youthfulness was a charade.

And if he ignored that, what could he suppose would happen in the very near future? She would age, and he would not. That might not bother her at first, but eventually it could not help but affect her—and would most likely subject her to ridicule.

She would die, and he would not—thinking of it was nearly unbearable.

Suppose they decided to seize whatever moments they could find? She had lived all her life here. Being with him would require her to live with constant upheaval.

He thought of all of these objections, and more, and still wanted her, was tempted to be with her, consequences be damned.

Suddenly, Shade came racing into the room, and Amanda gave a little scream. Shade halted near the bed and started barking—while staring at the far wall.

“Shade!”

He stopped barking but continued to growl ferociously at the wall.

Tyler turned the light on but couldn’t see what was bothering the dog.

Tyler turned back to Amanda, who had leaped from the bed and was cringing in the far corner of the room, her face paper white.

“It’s not you,” he said quickly, and took her into his arms. He held her and tried again to get Shade’s attention. Had the dog lost his mind?

“Let him growl,” she said, peering over Tyler’s shoulder.

“I know you’re trying to get used to him,” Tyler said, “but really, this is too much to ask—I don’t know what’s gotten into him. He usually only does this in cemeteries, and then only rarely. He growled a couple of times during our walk tonight.”

“Ghosts,” she said.

“Well, I’ve never seen them myself, but that’s my theory, yes.”

“It’s not a theory,” she said, her voice a little stronger. In fact, she seemed to be over her initial shock. “Good dog, Shade! Keep them away!”

Shade gave a quick wag of his tail but kept growling.

“Them?” Tyler asked in dismay.

“My parents and my aunt and uncle,” she said angrily. “Who have no business being here right now!”

One part of his brain recognized that he was experiencing a rare emotion: fear. The rest was employing every ounce of his willpower to keep him standing there.

“Your parents?” he said faintly.

She looked at him. “You will not convince me you are scared of ghosts! You just went walking in a cemetery after midnight!”

“Shade protects me from them on those walks,” he said as Shade’s growl grew louder.
And will protect me now.
The thought calmed him. Shade was with him, no ghost would be able to harm him.

“Protects you? You can’t be killed, right?”

“There are worse things,” he said. “Ghosts present a particular hazard to my kind.”

“What hazard?”

“They see my kind as caught between their world and the world of the living. They would have me live an existence closer to theirs instead of this one.”

Amanda stared toward the wall, then said to those she saw there, “I would never forgive you for that! Never!”

The room grew colder, and he felt her shiver. He held on to Amanda, determined that just as Shade protected him, he would protect her.

Shade stopped growling.

“They’re still here,” Amanda whispered. “But they seem to be staying put.”

Shade settled near the foot of the bed. Amanda had grown pensive, and Tyler watched her face as his heartbeat returned to normal. He should let go now, he told himself. He held on to her as he led her back to the bed, then reluctantly released her. She got back under the covers, scooted to the middle of the mattress, and patted the top of the comforter.

He resisted for half a second before sitting down next to her.

“If a ghost attacked you—you’d become a ghost, too?” she asked. “You would die?”

“Not exactly. As I understand it, ghosts aren’t all alike. If I allow a certain type of ghost to approach me, it can have a kind of persuasive power over me. It would try to change my nature to one closer to its own. And since I can’t die—well, I’d become like Colby.”

“Like Colby?” She swallowed hard. “He’s not human?”

“That’s hard to answer. Colby isn’t a ghost, but he’s also not fully one of my kind either—and he’s certainly not merely human. He has some of the powers of each—he got past my security because he can appear and disappear at will, show up at one place, then another. Yet he doesn’t have the invisibility of a ghost—he can’t hide his presence from the living in that way. Like me, he is in his own body. His skin, were you to touch it, would feel like that of anyone—solid, warm-blooded. He has my powers of agelessness, of recovery, but he can’t hear the thoughts of the dying.”

“So what is he?”

“A creature completely devoted to pleasure and mischief, as nearly as I can tell.” He fell silent, thinking of Colby’s visit. “I really handled things the wrong way tonight. Colby loves to provoke, and I allowed him to provoke me. He’s older than I am, and far more experienced in finding another person’s weaknesses. Lately I’ve worried that he’s in trouble or needs to tell me something, but I haven’t controlled my temper long enough to allow us to reach a point where he could confide in me. I should know by now that in any encounter, first he has to try to push my buttons, just to have his fun. It’s his nature.”

“What makes you think he’s in trouble?”

“The number of times he’s been in contact.” He paused, then said, “Perhaps he’s happy in some way I don’t comprehend. But lately, I think he’s regretted giving up his usefulness. He’s a man without a purpose, in essence. Agelessness is not an existence I could bear without a purpose. And I do not envy ghosts, who may be devoted to some purpose, but are unable to do much about it.”

“I can understand why you wouldn’t want their existence. I have to admit, I haven’t really thought about what it’s like for the four who haunt me. I’ve always been fairly sure they weren’t real.”

“How long have you seen them?”

“When I woke up in the hospital, after the accident, they were in the room. Ron and I have been trying to come up with an explanation for them for years. At first, I thought it was just my head injury, and then I thought it was guilt, you know, especially because they wear evening clothes, dressed like they were on that last night. But they weren’t even buried in those clothes.” She glanced at the dog. “It’s kind of a relief to know Shade sees them. I’ve thought I was crazy.”

“You’ve had to cope with seeing ghosts for eight years?”

“Yes. Only those four ghosts. They don’t harm me. They don’t speak. Just startle me now and then. I’m the only one they bother. For whatever reason.” She frowned. “What is the reason? I mean, why do they hang around me?”

He thought for a while, then said, “They may be protecting you.”
Something else was troubling him, though. “All these years, Ron is the only other person who has known about them?”

“Yes. I once tried telling Rebecca and Brad about them. Years ago. They really didn’t let up about that for a long time.”

“You told me they blame you for the accident. Do you blame yourself?”

“Most days, no. Some days, I think I should have stood up to them. Rebecca says, ‘You knew they were drunk, why didn’t you insist they call a cab?’ And I don’t really have a good answer for that one.”

Tyler looked toward the wall, at which Shade was still staring. “Have you asked them if they blame you?”

“I don’t think there’s much I haven’t asked them. But they don’t respond.”

“Do you blame her for your deaths?” Tyler asked, hoping he was looking somewhere near them.

Her eyes seemed to follow some movement, and she started crying.

“Amanda—what’s wrong?”

“They shook their heads.”

He took her hand. “I’m sure they never blamed you.”

“They’re agreeing with you.” She wiped her tears away with her free hand, then said, “They’ve never made so much as a gesture in my presence until now. Just stared at me. Ask them why the hell they’re answering you when they’ve never answered me!”

He did so.

“Now they’re shrugging. I guess they don’t know.”

“Is Amanda’s guess right?” Tyler asked, speaking to the ghosts. “You don’t understand?”

“Um, I don’t think they know how to reply. My aunt and my mom are nodding and my dad and my uncle are shaking their heads.”

“Oh, I see,” Tyler said. “Shrug if you don’t understand why it is you can’t speak to her.”

“They’re shrugging.”

“But I’m acting as some sort of bridge between you and Amanda?”

“They’re nodding.”

“Why are you here this evening?” he asked.

“They’re pointing between us,” she said. “Because we’re together?” she asked indignantly.

Tyler repeated the question.

She turned to Tyler. “It’s a little phony of them to act as if they care about me now.”

But they did care about her. Of that, Tyler felt sure. They didn’t blame her for their deaths, so they weren’t haunting her out of vengeance. They lingered to protect her. And here he was, sitting on a bed next to their daughter, and he could not deny that he desired her. No wonder they had chosen this moment to appear.

He looked down into her tear-stained face. “Are you all right?” he asked. “Is there a way to get rid of them?”

“Believe me, if I knew of one, I would have used it a long time ago.”

“I wonder if there is some way I can help you with this.”

She studied his face. He had already become used to this, he realized, this straightforward, unabashed examination of him. Hours ago, he had decided to let her take her time to see whatever she could see in his eyes, the set of his mouth, whatever else it was she chose to stare at, and had not taken offense. Of course, it gave him a chance to study her in return.

“You aren’t making me a project, are you? I mean, I’m not just some poor soul in need of assistance?”

He smiled. “No. Far from it.”

Her attention was diverted. “They’re gone.”

He breathed a sigh of relief.

“Sorry about that.”

“You have nothing to apologize for. Are you going to be okay?”

“Yes, thanks.”

He stood up. He wondered if he was imagining the disappointment he saw on her face. He turned out the light and settled on the floor next to her.

“Maybe I shouldn’t stay in here,” she said. “I’m afraid of what the ghosts might do to you.”

“Shade won’t let them do anything to me. But we need to figure out what they want, I think.”

She brooded in silence over that. After a few minutes, she said, “I feel guilty, taking your bed from you.”

“Don’t. I’m fine. Truly.”

Eventually, she fell asleep.

He listened to the rhythm of her breathing, watched her face in repose.

He did not doubt that something had drawn them together—his ability to free up her communication with her ghosts was just one more sign of that. He was equally sure that despite the strong attraction he felt for her, he had a choice in the matter. He simply had no desire to look elsewhere. Something about Amanda just felt…right.

He thought of her acceptance of him, and felt a kind of contentment unlike any he had ever experienced. Something more than gratitude—although he was indeed grateful.

He desired her, but he wasn’t going to hurt her, or fail to proceed with caution. He would not spend the next two hundred years regretting carelessness with her.

Shade got up and stood next to him long enough to accept a few soft scratches on the ears and chin, then left to stand on the deck again. There, he intently watched something out in the woods. The ghosts must have relocated. Or perhaps Colby was enjoying himself by teasing the dog. If so, he wouldn’t get away with that for long.

It was nearly dawn when Shade came in to settle beside him.

Tyler watched the sky lighten—just before, contrary to all his intentions, he fell asleep.