Magick Rising (12 page)

fierce disapproval, but he framed my head with gentle, big hands.
Guilt.

Concern.
“Are you hurt? Miss Hamilton—are you injured?”

With his finger brushing my ear, I vaguely realized that I’d lost my

Bluetooth earpiece in the attic.

I was not going back for it.

“I’m . . . no. Not hurt. S’okay.” I tried to sound confident, but my voice

wavered as I remembered what coiled behind the attic door. “So maybe I

was a wee bit mistaken about Sorrow’s End being haunted.”

He scowled at me.

The landing around us began to shudder.

The porthole window cracked into a sudden spider web of glass.

Outside it, supernatural darkness pressed away the morning sunlight.

My stomach clenched in a really bad way. Oh, God . . .

It wasn’t over.

“Come on,” Pemberley ordered over the rising rumble all around us.

He caught an arm around my shoulders and ducked his head over me. Like a

couple trying to escape a sudden shower or birdseed after a wedding, we

rushed down the carpeted stairs. One landing closer to safety. Another.

Pictures began to drop from the walls, shattering on impact. Stairs

slanted upward, tripping us. I caught my toe and flew forward, toward the

ground floor far below. Pemberley’s hard hands caught my waist.

He steered me the rest of the way out, his tall body between me and the

worst punishment, his almost painful grip keeping me from falling again.

As soon as we reached the seemingly normal porch, I locked the door,

hopefully locked in the horror. But we kept going, not trusting the flimsy

lock, clearing the yard as well. As we reached the end of the walk, I could

breathe the beachy scent of normalcy.

I turned deliberately into Pemberley’s vested chest, clung to a reality

that proved I was alive, to the strength that had seen to it.

I caught handfuls of shirt over his hard, real back. I breathed in his

saltwater scent. Never had I experienced anything as malevolent as this—or

anyone so brave in the face of ghosts.

“Are you,” he began to ask again—

I rose onto my toes and kissed him quiet before he could finish the

question. If I was thinking anything, it was
please, please, thank you, oh my God,

please . . .

But I was beyond words. I just needed a few minutes being alive.

Luckily, Richard Pemberley was beyond words, too. His hands, hard on

my shoulders, slid down to my shoulder blades and then my spine, holding

me tight against him as he met my kiss and raised me another one. He tasted

of strength, security, solemnity,
pain . . .
pain?

Maybe that was the smell of our shared blood.

But when I ran a hand over his high cheek, I didn’t feel the heat or

slickness of blood. I felt only unshaven jaw, moving with the intensity of his

amazing kiss . . .

We’d survived. That had been death, and this was life, and we’d

survived.

Then he went and pulled away, stepping significantly back from me.

I stared at him, barely catching my balance, and had to face the reality of

what just happened. I still panted a little, though I couldn’t say for sure

whether that was from fear or passion.

Probably both. They’d mixed themselves together pretty tightly.

As he watched me from under heavy lidded eyes, Richard panted as

well. His cuts had stopped bleeding. That must have been part of the

house’s enchantment. A quick glance toward it showed no shattered

windows either, no visible damage.

I preferred to look at Richard Pemberley.

Between his old-fashioned outfit and his strangely proper posture, I

half expected him to apologize for kissing me—kissing me back,

anyway—and copping a bit of a feel as he had. I half dreaded it, as well.

He searched my face and then said, “You
fool
!”

No apology . . . which was strangely refreshing.

“You could have died!” he continued. “I
warned
you that the house was

haunted. I
warned
you that the ghosts here were dangerous!”

I pointed accusingly toward Sorrow’s End. “That was no normal

ghost!”

His eyebrows shot up. “Are
any
ghosts normal ghosts?!”

“
Yes
!” The kind of spirits I usually dealt with fell into a standard pattern,

and sending them on had become one of my unspoken job descriptions. I

was hired to stage old houses with “reputations” partly because I was good

at it but partly because when I finished, prospective buyers weren’t put off

by weird footsteps from nowhere or hazy figures staring out of mirrors.

Ghosts didn’t hurt people or throw pictures or scream so loud my ears still

rang, as if I’d just left a death-metal concert.

I generally worked to get the spirits to see and hear me, though I could

never see or hear them. Instead, I sensed the moment when they recognized

our connection. Then I explained that they were long dead and “listened” to

what they had to say. Usually, all they seemed to want was some company.

They wanted someone to “hear” their stories, if not in words, not unlike any

old person would before calling it an evening. My spiritual job usually

resembled visiting a retirement home while wearing a blindfold more than it

did ghost-busting.

“Then you,” Pemberley repeated, jaw clenched at my yes, “are an

ignorant
fool.”

“So educate me. Who the hell is in there? What do they want? And
how

can we get rid of them
?!”

Pemberley stared at me for a long time, pain sharpening the annoyance

on his face.

“You cannot,” he said at last, his words tight.

Then he turned and walked away.

“What the hell?!” I yelled after him. But he didn’t turn back to me, and

I didn’t have it in me to chase him.

My legs began to feel so weak that I slumped back against the side of

my car and folded my arms.

Only then did I notice that, unlike Pemberley’s, my cuts were still

bleeding.

Galveston, Texas

Thursday, September 6, 1900

THE CHOICE WAS clear. He must rid himself of her.

When Richard Pemberley paid an afternoon call on the fine, Italianate

home of wealthy merchant Georges Boulanger, the man’s flirtatious

daughter confirmed his decision by answering the door herself.

What well-bred young lady did such a thing?

Yet Manon Boulanger flung the portal open, laughing her pleasure at

his arrival. She caught Richard by the hands to draw him into the parlor and

then fell, too willingly, into his arms.

He took a firm step backward and had to hold her at arms’ length to

stop her from quite literally throwing herself at him again. Even then, her

dark, exotic eyes sparkled at him, as if his reticence were a jest.

“Mademoiselle Boulanger,” he attempted, firmly. “This is hardly

proper.”

“Who cares for propriety in love?” Her Gallic shrug bounced her black

curls. Then she lunged for him again.

Love
, she said. As if she were not known to have thrown herself into the

arms of other men, as well. She’d avoided scandals because her father was

wealthy—one of the wealthiest men in one of the wealthiest cities in the

country.

That Richard, of the Austin Pemberleys, had not been drawn to her

wealth had intrigued her. But neither could her wealth hold him.

He sidestepped her, ashamed by the memory of how often he had not.

Last spring, when he arrived for a summer on the beach, she had caught him

at a weak, lonely moment. She had easily wheedled him into keeping

company with her. As promised, she’d proved a fascinating companion for

outings, picnics, oyster roasts, dances. She embraced the latest fad of

spiritualism, hosting séances and hiring mentalists, all quite entertaining. Her

passions changed from temper to elation like the wind. And her kisses . . .

Richard never could have expected so many heartfelt kisses from a

“good girl.” He had enjoyed the change.

But there, as Hamlet would say, lay the rub. Their relationship began

lightly. But as his summer drew to an end, the mademoiselle and her father

now hinted of marriage. And Manon Boulanger was not the kind of girl

respectable men married.

Especially when he had never claimed to love her.

“Please, mademoiselle,” he insisted now. “What I have to say is difficult

enough. You see . . .”

As he explained their misunderstanding, the laughter on her beautiful

face and the spark of her dark eyes banked into something darker.

“You are mistaken,” she told him firmly when he finished.

“No, mademoiselle—”

“Richard. Please!” She pronounced his name
Ree-SHARD
. Then she

bit her full lower lip, ducking her head to look coquettish.

But he could neither love nor marry a coquette.

“I shan’t deny that I care for you,” he admitted. It had been easy to care

when she cuddled into his arms, pressed her lips to his throat, purred into

his ear. He wished now he had been stronger in those moments. He

wondered how many other ears had caught such purring. “But not enough

to merit a proposal. Far better for both of us—”

Manon spat out a word so salty that it shocked him. “
I
know what is

best for me,” she snarled. “And that is
you
.”

As if love could be enforced by willpower.

“My apologies for anything I did to foster your hopes—”

She interrupted him with a scream. An actual, throw-her-head-back,

spread-her-clawed-hands
scream
. It stabbed his ears and shook the crystal

droplets of the chandelier. Exhausting her first breath, Manon gulped air

and howled again.

His perception of her beauty quickly faded.

“Mademoiselle . . .” Richard searched the parlor with its piano,

horsehair settee, paintings, and knickknacks, for assistance. What could he

do? He’d vowed not to touch her again, if possible. He should never have

done so to start, but should that commit them forever?

Luckily, her father scurried from his office. “What is this?” he

demanded. “What has upset
ma petit chou
so?”

Not
who
but
what.
Any other father would have assumed the man alone

in a room with his daughter was deserving of a horsewhipping at the least.

Not Boulanger. Stunned, Richard tried to explain as politely as he could. “I

am releasing your daughter from any obligation she might feel—”

But he had to duck, because she began throwing things. China figurines

flew past his head. Vases splashed flowers and water on their way to smash

against the wall. A silver candlestick crashed through the front window to

bounce onto the verandah outside.

And still she screamed.

Monsieur Boulanger laughed,
amused
by the same behavior that made

Richard recoil. “There there, my dearest. Papa will make everything better.”

Foreboding chilled Richard’s lungs at that seemingly innocent promise.

Surely the man could not make “everything better” against Richard’s will!

But all Monsieur Boulanger did was to wave his young visitor toward the

door.

“She will be fine. You will see. Good day, Mr. Pemberley.”

Before Richard could close the door, Manon rushed up the stairs in a

swirl of silk skirts and tight fury, her feet pounding past one landing then

another, out of sight. In a moment, her father and former beau heard a

distant door slam.

“See?” Georges Boulanger winked over his waxed moustache. “All

better.”

It was a lie, to be sure. But Richard felt too grateful to escape Sorrow’s

End, and these people, to question it.

He hurried out into the late summer sunlight of Galveston in early

September, glad for the unusually brisk breeze.

NO PSYCHIC IS an island.

I met with my ghost-busting team at our favorite café. Once called The

Bibbidi Bobbidi Brew, copyright issues and convenience had long ago

shortened its name to The Bibbidi. Imagine Starbucks having a love child

with someone’s ratty, well-loved library. It had once been a tiny bungalow,

built sometime after the big storm, but was long ago rezoned as a business.

The kitchen became the bar, complete with the usual coffee and tea

paraphernalia and a random rotation of baristas. Someone had long ago

knocked out the wall between the living room and bedroom, filled the

resulting space with chairs and tables from the Salvation Army, and lined

everything with plank bookshelves. Everything from hardcover textbooks

to paperback erotica had been left by customers in an informal book swap.

The Bibbidi’s one bathroom had stayed a bathroom.

Dawn had gotten there early and saved our favorite powwow spot,

which consisted of a curving partial sectional and two mismatched,

high-legged dining chairs around a scarred table with a barrel base.