Grave Refrain: A Love/Ghost Story (32 page)

“By the way,” Zoey said, gathering up her tiles for the night, “a detective called while you were asleep. An Anthony Obester. He’s assigned to that girl’s case. He left a number where you should call him tomorrow. Sounded pretty concerned.”

Hell. Emily had almost forgotten. She wasn’t free and clear. It was just the calm before the storm. Dr. Vandin was still out there. Somewhere in London. Free.

“I’m proud of what you did, how you helped that girl,” said Zoey on their way to bed. “Very proud.”

Emily folded up Andrew’s note and placed it in her pajama top pocket, close to her heart, where she needed it most.

The days seemed to drag while the boys were away, but Friday night finally approached. Andrew’s note lay on her nightstand; Emily took it in her hands and gazed at it for the hundredth time.

“I miss you,” she said to the shadows.

She threw off the covers, sweating and restless. The radiator knocked, pumping heat into the room, some passive-aggressive gesture by Sid, no doubt. Over the last few days he had seemed intent on rendering the house inhabitable, thereby either freeing him of the burden of the remodel or forcing the girls into the least amount of clothing possible.

The specter of Vandin should have cast the house in its own icy pall. And images of the Columbarium clawed at the edges of her mind, but the harder she tried, the less she could remember from that night once the lights had gone out. Although her roommates had done their best to keep her busy and draw her into the relief of routine, it didn’t stop her from jumping at the odd sound or catching her breath when a worker turned a corner too quickly. All of this made her miss Andrew even more. He had spoken with her each day to make sure she was all right and kissed her tenderly before he had left. But she missed him the moment the door closed. Everything felt flat and lifeless in his absence.

When not moping about accordingly, she’d spent the time knee deep in research or juggling the demands of her remaining school work. There was little new information she had uncovered about the Chamberlain Detective Agency. It had operated out of the house, but its clientele had been secretive; the majority of the cases it handled were evidently not the stuff that was recorded in newspapers. Noreen Thomas had been listed in a few society affairs, and Nicholas Chamberlain was mentioned sporadically in regard to various crime stories, but she could obtain nothing more about them. Except for the odd circumstance that Noreen Thomas’s obituary was not recorded in any major San Francisco newspaper, or at least not one that Emily could find. Her eyes were sore from the endless rolls of microfiche she had scoured through in the last few days.

Her frustration was fueled by that fact that the box they had recovered from Nora’s vault still remained locked tight. Emily had turned the numbers to correspond with their birthdays as well as the day of their deaths, but nothing worked. She thought of prying it open, but worried she might damage whatever lay inside. What she needed was more information, anything that would cast more light on their mysterious lives. She had reread
The Thin Man
, hoping to glean some secret, but the characters Hammett wrote of were now mere echoes of the ghosts she was learning about. She searched the house again from stem to stern, and had done everything but slash the lining of Nora’s trunk to see if anything was hidden inside.

That thought stuck in her head as she looked to her alarm clock, which read one a.m. Since she couldn’t sleep, she would investigate the trunk again, comb it completely, and then search for anything else hidden in the shadowy passageway.

The chill that normally permeated the roughhewn walls and exposed joists was replaced by Amazonian heat. She cursed Sid yet again and crept along to where she had last left Nora’s trunk, but a rectangular patch of undusted ground was all that remained in the spot. Emily shook her head. No, she distinctly remembered it there. She couldn’t have been mistaken—this is where she had knelt down—those were her footprints. Disturbed, she turned and headed back in the opposite direction in search of it.

The heat was nearly stifling now, and a thin layer of sweat soon covered her, making her nightshirt stick to her body. She stopped herself and leaned against the wall, feeling faint.

A familiar ache held her in place. There at the end of the passageway was the space above Andrew’s room. The image of him lying there in the moonlight flooded her senses. Why couldn’t she think of him and maintain her hold on reality? It was as if a thousand women filled her mind and were calling out to her. She fell back against the beams and gazed down at the lines in her hand. Were they? Were they the lifetimes of concubines and lovers and mistresses? That’s what Dwayne had said. Were they all teeming within her, craving what they couldn’t have? Did their desires intensify with each passing generation, leaving her to shoulder the weight?

Yet there were no wives and mothers in those lines, she could feel that. It was as if all the women that might have shared her past were created for one reason and one reason alone: to tempt, to seduce, to ensnare. But not to stay.

Unable to dwell on it any longer, she managed a little farther in the heat, careful not to make a sound as she approached the faint light that was coming from the slits in the floor. He was home! When had he returned? She took one more step, then another, her body drawn to his. She went to kneel down when she heard a sound behind her. She tensed and spun around, her hair whipping about her shoulders.

“So this is where you are,” Andrew said. He did not greet her, nor ask how she was feeling, not even after days apart. He merely stood stock still a few feet away, a wall sconce shedding light on his body. He wore a pair of pajama bottoms and nothing else. They hung low on the smooth, angled bones of his hips.

“How many times, Emily?” He glanced to the source of light shining from the floor. He took another step forward, his bare feet silent in his stalking. “Did you like what you saw?” His eyes were violet in the light, volcanic, not a glimpse of their pure blue remaining. He was on the hunt, every muscle of his arms and chest poised to spring. “You watched me, didn’t you?” He smirked but didn’t let her respond.

“Secret passageways always have an entrance and an exit, everyone knows that. Such a fairy tale place, this house. Which fairy tale is left?” He bit his bottom lip as he said this, and a lock of hair tumbled to his forehead. His eyes fell to her body, watching the lines of sweat trickle down her neck.

The sane part of her knew there were questions she needed to ask him, and she could tell from his eyes that he wanted to answer them, that he wanted them to be quiet and close and calm, but somehow the thought of being denied each other demolished everything else.

Ever since that night at the Columbarium, something primitive and raw had passed between them, something long held captive and straining to be let loose. That’s what it felt like. Like she was possessed. Whenever she was in the dark and alone with this man, she ceased to be simply Emily Thomas, and he ceased to be simply Andrew Hayes. What were they then? Her mind burned with memories of lovers she could feel but not see. Was that who they were?

“
La Bella y la Bestia
,” he whispered, the first time she heard him speak Spanish. “That’s the only fairy tale that’s left.” He moved toward her soundlessly. “You know what I always found fascinating about that story?”

She shook her head, her fingers reaching behind her to find the dead end of the wall.

“That last moment, when the beast is transformed. The look in her eyes when she sees the prince. There’s that second of hesitation when she longs for the beast. She wants the animal.”

“I know.”

He was close now. Too close.

“Did you get my invitation?”

“Yes…thank you.”

“Tomorrow I will be the prince, I swear. But tonight, I can’t…please don’t make me. All I need is to taste you. Your mouth, your body…please.” He loomed over her, his face inches from hers. His teeth found her neck; his hands took her body.

“Emily,” he gasped. “Emily, please…”

“No,” she said, and without hesitation or conscious thought she reached out and took hold of his shoulders and pressed his back flat against the wall. The ghosts of all the women within her smiled seductively as she knelt down before him. “It’s my turn.”

They had collapsed into each other’s arms immediately afterward, kissing and groping, sweaty and sliding. What a tangled, sodden mess they were. Delicious and disheveled, he wanted nothing more than to have her, he truly did, with her hair so wild and her face so flush, there on the splintered and dusty floor. But this was Emily; he had to get that fact into his head. This was Emily, but what she had done to him, what her tiny hands and supple mouth had ignited in him made him wonder if what the mad fortuneteller had said was true. And it was beyond glorious. Her mouth on him had fueled all his pent up desire, and with it a fuse was lit. It was an explosion without sound, only force and light. And all at once the dreams he had dreamed before seemed small, and all the wants he had wanted were gone. Yet here in the dark, he wanted nothing but to turn her inside out with lust. He had to chastise himself:
remember, this is Emily, your muse
.
Emily.
But in the darkness, in this beastly heat, she was a secret to him.

Doubting how long he could trust himself, he cradled her in his arms, and in one fluid motion swept her up against him. Her eyes widened as he stood and began to navigate the hallway, heading back to her bed. She made no sound when he stepped through the door to her closet, no sound when he placed her on her bed, but only watched him with those cool gray eyes, daring him to walk away.

He lowered himself down until the lengths of their bodies were one. He propped himself up on his forearms to gaze down on her.

“How did you find me?” Emily asked.

“In the passageway or before?”

She tilted her head, as if not understanding for a moment, and smiled again, brushing the back of her hand against his face. “You’ll need to shave for Friday.”

“You don’t care for it?”

“You look like Simon.”

“If you tell me you harbor a secret love for my drummer, I’ll just kill myself now.”

“I like you smooth.”

“There are places on your body that may object to that.”

He could feel her twist below him, and he groaned softly and began a story. He had to. It was the only thing keeping him from attacking her.

She stilled as he told her how he had seen her in the Skellar. That first night. How everything had changed, or begun, in that one moment.

“As far as finding you, I didn’t have much to go on, just the belief that I would find you some day. Something I’ve always known, though, my entire life.”

She studied him. He was sure she didn’t understand, couldn’t grasp it. He was having a hard time understanding it too. But it didn’t seem to matter.

“Your whole life?”

“The promise of you, yes. I can’t explain it. I’ve felt you, envisioned you in my mind, since I could remember. When I actually saw you that night, well, don’t you recall how I went barmy on the stage? It’s quite disconcerting when fate decides to manifest, well…your fate right in front of you. If only I had seen you sooner, spoken with you—”

“I wouldn’t change anything. No, you are here, now. For as long as you can be. That’s all that matters.”

Her voice was meant to be strong, but there was a cheerlessness to it he didn’t like because he knew it was the truth. They would eventually have to leave this place. To go on. Return to the road. And very soon. But at this moment, in this moonlit room, breathing the same air, he could not think of parting from her.