Grave Refrain: A Love/Ghost Story (30 page)

Her words crashed off the walls of crypts. Exhausted and vulnerable and exposed, she was the most moving thing he had ever seen.

“You love me?” he repeated the words in disbelief.

“Yes.” She wiped her running nose with the back of her wrist. “I do.”

Too shocked to do anything more, he stood directly in front of her and tried to make her understand. “Emily, there is no woman out there. Only here. Only you. Only ever you. You are my muse. I searched my whole life for you, traveled across half the world to find you. You! Your eyes, your lips, your face. I love you. I’ve always loved you, only you, and that is the only truth. I love you. I was afraid you wouldn’t understand, that you’d think I was mad.” He reached out and took her hand again, squeezing it, willing the words into her flesh. “I love you, Emily. Only you.”

Her hands rose to his chest, to edge him away or toward her, he could not tell.

“You’re shaking,” he said.

Tentatively, he took her face in his hands. Moonlight bathed the bare skin of her pale neck, making her look opalescent. He wanted to feel her, he wanted to taste her, he wanted her, all at once. Yet he didn’t move. “Do you understand?” he demanded, desperate to know that she did, that she didn’t fear him, or think him mad. That she wasn’t going to run away.

“Do you?” His fingers sought her shoulders and shook her, so that her back was now pressed against the vaults.

“I love you,” she told him, not taking her eyes from his.

“Do you understand?”

“I love you,” she repeated adamantly.

“Emily, answer me.”

Her cold fingers rose to cover his hands, and she tilted her head until the moonlight swept over her face, illuminating the answer there. She kissed him, still shaking, her breathing amplified in the silence.

“No,” he cursed himself, he needed her to understand. He needed to know she would not leave. “Emily.”

But she remained silent. She lowered her hand between their bodies again, her fingernails gouging his chest. His back arched in fierce arousal from the twin sensations of cold and desire.

“Wait.” His voice was hoarse with want. “I need you too, but I don’t want you to regret—”

His words didn’t matter. Was she in shock? Perhaps. But whatever it was, Emily was as he had never seen her before. She struggled to free herself from her jacket, twisting her shoulders until it fell discarded on the floor, the buttons tinning against the tiles.

Somewhere he knew someone was waiting for them, that they were standing amidst tombs of ghosts, that this woman had almost been attacked, but none of it mattered. He kissed her for what felt like a lifetime and yet only a breath. His lips trembled on hers as his hands slowly swept away her blouse, the straps of her bra, and he heard her groan as he brushed his hands across her breasts, and that sound, that lone sound, ignited something long dormant inside him.

Both of them driven by madness, their hands were frantic to reach his shirt. She tore the fabric downward, buttons cascading on the tiles like rain. Soon flesh met flesh, and memories scored his mind. Her breath hot against his ear, she whispered words that he knew, words she had screamed, whispered, teased him with for ages. Were they from his memory when he longed for her, or from the edges of somewhere, the cusp of a dream? He scoured his mind as his hands explored her body, her breasts, her thighs, the thin bones of her hips. The presence of something out of reach taunted him, angered him, thrilled him and drew him closer. He wanted to scream her name, but he could not find the words.

His tongue tasted the wine on her lips, and he heard her say, “I love you,” like a confession. “I love you, I love you, Andrew, I love—”

Suddenly her body tensed as though someone were standing directly behind them. He lifted his head from the heat of their entangled bodies to gaze at her face. Her eyes were wide, her mouth agape. He turned, still clutching her to him. Her breath buffeted against his bare chest.

There, on the opposite wall, rays of moonlight illuminated a solitary niche. A red tag hung by the glass window.

A name was engraved on a brass plate centered below the ornate frame. He frowned, unable to understand. He could hear Emily inhale. His hands tightened around her.

April 18, 1906 – July 1, 1935

Miss Noreen Thomas

Beloved of Nicholas Chamberlain

14

A
NDREW’S
A
RMS
H
ELD
H
ER
, and the warmth of his breath encircled her neck, but even with those tethers Emily had departed her body; she had floated to the apex of the basilica and was staring down at the vault.

Noreen
Thomas
. No. No, it couldn’t be.
Noreen Thomas.
Every nerve in her was riveted on the brass plate. There had to be some mistake. Nick and Nora were married, were transformed and idealized by Dashiell Hammett into the dashing, debonair couple that swilled martinis and bantered and were dragged across town by their dog, Asta. It should say Noreen Chamberlain. Not Noreen Thomas. Nora Chamberlain.

Miss Noreen Thomas

Beloved of Nicholas Chamberlain

Yet as she gazed at the lettering, she felt the chill as if viewing her own gravestone. Numbly, she stepped from their embrace. “Her name. She has my name.”

“Thomas is a fairly common name, Emily.”

“No.” The pull of the niche and what lay inside was becoming stronger by the second, and nothing that Andrew could say would change that. “What if I’m related to her? And that’s the reason why she haunts me, why she’s only spoken to me?”

“You’re forgetting something. It says
Miss Noreen Thomas
. They might never have married—they might never have had children.”

“Of course they were married, everyone knows they were married. They were in love.”

“Noreen Thomas,” Andrew said, reading the words engraved there.

“Yes, don’t you see?” She looked at him imploringly as his eyes narrowed on the niche. “There is a reason why she sought me out. I’m her family, the only one who can help her. That has to be the explanation to all this.”

He didn’t respond to her, and she thought it was because of his fascination with the niche, the way his gaze didn’t break from studying it, but then she realized where they were standing and what had just occurred between them. The full weight of the last several minutes crashed into her. His stiff posture, his indifference—he was regretting what he had done, and he couldn’t bring himself to look at her. She suddenly felt even more naked than ever, and she turned her face away, beset with the burden of how to act, how to react.

“Look at me.”

Andrew brushed the damp hair from her face, but she wouldn’t face him.

“First thing…I love you.”

He brushed away another lock and frowned at her, unsatisfied.

“Second thing. I love you.”

He kissed her, gently this time, and when he gradually drew away, his lips still touched hers. “Third thing. I love you. You need to know that. Emily, look at me,” he said in exasperation and raised her chin with his finger. “This is not where I envisioned us being together. Not where I wanted to tell you that I love you…I had dreams, fantasies…truly…of somewhere romantic and…preferably with fewer dead people.”

She tried not to smile.

“Emily, all that I said, all that I told you, everything is true. And it will still be true when the sun comes up in a few hours, and when the sun goes down tonight. Always. Nod your head if you understand.”

She nodded her head.

“Now, nod your head if you have any idea how much I love you.”

She nodded again.

“Good. Now nod your head if you have any clue where my bloody shirt is.”

She laughed in earnest now, and he chuckled himself. There was still so much to say, but now was not the time. Yet as Andrew, all shirtless and tousled, found her jacket and bra and handed them to her, the sound of Simon’s footsteps came clipping up the stairs. Before either of them could react, he whipped around the corner. At the sight of Emily clutching her crumpled jacket to her chest and Andrew sweeping his fallen shirt from the floor, he let loose with a string of Gaelic curses so loud he nearly shocked them out of their wits. With an immediate turn of his heel, he spun around and placed his hands to his hips before he addressed the top of the basilica.

“I never pegged you two for ‘doing the deed with the dead.’” He wickedly enunciated each
D
, clearly relishing the fact that he had caught them red-handed.

“Simon,” Andrew warned. He started to button his shirt only to realize there were no buttons.

Simon then turned to Emily, a self-satisfied smirk tilting his long, skinny face. He peered at her over the edge of the opaque circles of his glasses. “I believe it’s safe to say that everyone in here believes in the second comin’ now.”

“Simon.”

“I bet you sat in the truck and worked out each one of those, didn’t you,” Emily announced primly, finishing dressing. “It doesn’t matter. I found it.”

“Did you now? I’d thought you’d lost it.”

Andrew lunged, and she grabbed a hold of his shoulders seconds before Simon stepped out of reach and snickered devilishly.

“No, Nora’s vault.” She cleared her throat, gradually letting go of a disgruntled Andrew as she motioned with her head to the small vault across from them. “Only she’s…”

Simon squinted into the dark. She watched the reaction on his face pass from incomprehension, to bewilderment, to flat out astonishment. “Well, look at that. Is she like your granny or something?”

“Not my grandmother—her name was Loraine—and I know she was a Mrs. Thomas.”

Simon stared down the stairs into the silent darkness, not paying her much heed. “I’m thrilled you found the old lady and all, but would you mind if we bolt soon? This place is giving me the willies, and that’s just from smoking in the car park. Also, I hate to be the bearer of bad tidings, but one of San Francisco’s finest cruisers keeps circling the block. I reckon they suspect someone’s casing the joint, and I have no desire to become acquainted with law enforcement again if I can possibly avoid it.”

“But we can’t leave. They’re taking away Nora’s ashes tomorrow.”

“My regrets,” replied Simon; he glanced back down the stairs, undoubtedly sure the police were going to storm the doors at any second. “But don’t they leave forwarding addresses? You can go visit her there.”

“No! You don’t understand, we can’t leave her here. We have to take her with us.”

Both Andrew and Simon looked at Emily like she was speaking in tongues.

“We, white man?” asked Simon incredulously.

“Emily, luv,” said Andrew more softly, but with the same underlying level of skepticism. “You can’t…I mean what you’re proposing, I believe, is considered theft.”

“How would anyone know?” She threw the question back at both of them. Clearly they didn’t understand the importance of saving these ashes. “We can just replace them with dirt or rocks, no one will know the difference. The lock, though,” she began to murmur to herself. “That’s going to be tricky. I wonder if the keys are in the office?”

“I don’t think the lock’s going be your problem,” said Simon, his voice a little off. “The lock—it’s open.”

All three turned their heads. The lock that had been fastened shut just a moment before now dangled open.

As Emily stepped toward the vault she could feel both Andrew’s and Simon’s hands reach out to restrain her, but it was as if the crypt were calling to her like Pandora’s box.

The lock felt cool in her fingers and slipped off easily. She slowly turned the knob and pulled. The vault sighed, letting loose a long held exhalation; the gust of air was like a thousand whispers, and they blew across her face smelling of smoke, lavender, and death. Gulping down her fear that Nora’s frigid dead hand would latch hold of hers, she reached further inside, and her fingers tightened around something cool and metal. She pulled it to her.

In the moonlight she could make out that the urn was clearly expensive, solid silver by the look and feel of it, and ringed in an elegant design of simple vines.

“It’s beautiful,” she whispered.

“It is.” Andrew took the urn from her hands and holding it up, gazed at the flowing pattern and the gleaming silver.

She had seen this design before, but she couldn’t place it. However, she had no time to ponder it now and reached back inside the vault to feel if anything else was left inside. Her fingers brushed up against the sharp edge of something hard, and as she strained to retrieve it, the thrill of the mystery bubbled up excitedly within her.

It was an old-fashioned keepsake box of a strange construction, also engraved in the same pattern, but with a built-in combination lock several numbers in length. She shook it, and something rattled inside. Andrew’s eyes widened in fascination. “We’re taking this,” she said.