The Prophet

by Amanda Stevens

  Icy terror raced through my veins as my heart hammered against my chest. I wanted to back away, but I couldn’t move, couldn’t tear my gaze from the perverted beauty of her manifestation. I had no idea what she might be capable of, how much power she wielded from the other side. I thought of Devlin trapped in this house with her ghost, his energy waning, his youth stolen by a woman who had once claimed to love him.

  Still loved him, it would seem.

  She put out her arms to Shani, and my first instinct was to step between them. Despite my fear, I might have done exactly that, but when I looked down, the glimmer of Shani’s aura blurred and then vanished, as if something had pulled her back into the ether.

  Not so Mariama. With Shani’s fading, she seemed to grow stronger, colder, hungrier. And I was already getting weaker. The place in my chest where I imagined my life force to be felt hollow.

  Mustering the last of my strength, I backed away from the stairs, then turned to flee. Devlin had come in silently through the front door, and I ran straight into him. He caught my arms to steady me.

  “Are you okay?”

  “Yes…I thought I heard something,” I said on a gasp.

  “Inside?”

  “I’m sure it was my imagination.”

  His gaze searched the stairs and the hallway behind me. “I left a window open upstairs. The wind may have knocked something over.”

  “That was probably it,” I said shakily. “Did you find anything outside?”

  “Not a trace. Whoever you saw is long gone.”

  “I heard a car start up and drive away. It might have been him.”

  “Can you describe him?”

  “I only saw him briefly when the moon came out. He was black. Very tall and thin, although—”

  Devlin’s hands tightened on my arms. Something burned in his eyes. “How tall?”

  “It was hard to tell. The shadows distorted him…” I trailed off, alarmed. “Why? Do you know who he was?”

  “No.”

  He was lying, I thought. I wanted to ask him about Darius Goodwine, but I couldn’t without giving my eavesdropping away.

  “I heard the nightingale again,” I told him. “It wasn’t a mockingbird. I’m sure of it.”

  “There are no nightingales in Charleston,” he insisted.

  “Then why do I keep hearing one? Who was that man, John? Why won’t you tell me?”

  “I didn’t see him. How would I know?”

  “He blew something toward the house. It was like a shimmering blue powder. Don’t you find that odd?”

  He said nothing to that, but his hands fell away. He was still standing very close to me, gazing into my eyes. I had the strongest urge to lift my hand to his face, trace that scar with my thumb, assure myself that he was indeed real and this night was really happening. It wasn’t another dream. We were here together. But Mariama was there at his side, stroking his arm, smiling at me over his shoulder. Taunting me because she possessed what I never could.

  I glanced away.

  “Why did you come here tonight?” Devlin asked. “Don’t tell me you were just driving by.”

  “I came to see you.”

  He turned to glance out the door. “How did you get here? I didn’t see your car outside.”

  “I parked down the street.”

  “Because you saw someone watching the house?”

  “Because I didn’t want you to see me,” I blurted. “I wasn’t sure I’d have the nerve to knock on your door.”

  “It takes nerve to knock on my door?”

  I sighed. “Yes, and you know why.”

  It was all I could do to keep from reaching out to him, so magnetic was his presence. I let my gaze drift over him again. He’d buttoned his shirt while he was outside. The cut, as always, was perfection. He had an eye for clothes and the money to indulge his refined tastes. But there was an edge to the way he dressed, a hint of the rebellious nature that had driven him away from his elite upbringing and into the arms of Mariama Goodwine.

  “So, why did you want to see me?” he asked carefully.

  He was still staring out through the leaded glass panel in the front door. I focused my gaze on his profile and shivered. “I got your messages. I didn’t have a chance to ask you about them last evening.”

  Slowly, he turned back to me. “What messages?”

  “The ones you sent while I was away. The text came on my way back from Asher Falls.”

  “Asher Falls?”

  “It’s a small town in the Blue Ridge foothills near Woodberry. I had a restoration there, but then I had to leave suddenly, and I was on the ferry when I received your text.”

  Something flitted across his face. “I never texted you.”

  “But…the message came from your phone. I’m certain of it.”

  “I didn’t send it,” he insisted.

  “Then who did?”

  “I have no idea. Did you save it?”

  “I had to replace my phone recently, and I lost everything. But it was sent from your number. I’m sure of it. And before that, I received an email from you. I suppose you didn’t send that, either?”

  “No.”

  “Well this is very strange.” And more than a little unsettling. “I don’t know what to say. I’m not making this up.”

  He smiled thinly. “I never thought you were.”

  I felt like bursting into tears. I’d been so certain the messages had come from him. And now to find out that he hadn’t tried to contact me… .

  It was foolish to feel so devastated, I told myself. And yet I did.

  “Who could have sent them?”

  “I don’t know,” Devlin said. “But I intend to find out.”

  As I watched him, heart in my throat—and in my eyes—Mariama floated between us. I tried not to track her with my gaze.

  How could he not feel the cold? How could he not flinch from her touch?

  Go away, I thought.

  I could hear her taunting laughter in my head. You go away.

  Was I mad? I wondered. Had my years of living with ghosts finally driven me over the edge? Ever since Asher Falls, not only could I see specters, but I could hear them.

  “What’s wrong?” Devlin asked.

  “I was just wondering why someone would go to the trouble of making me think the messages were from you. They must have somehow gained access to your phone, your email…” I trailed off as Fremont’s cryptic words came back to me yet again.

  “That’s not likely,” Devlin said.

  Wasn’t it?

  Had Fremont somehow sent those messages from beyond in order to lure me back to Charleston?

  We have to act quickly, he’d said. Do you understand? It has to be now.

  Devlin was watching me closely. “You’re trembling. Are you sure you’re okay?”

  “Yes. I’m still a little shaken and it’s cold in this house. Haven’t you noticed?”

  He shrugged. “It’s always been drafty.”

  Always? Or just since the ghosts came?

  “What did the messages say?” he asked.

  I was reluctant to reveal my intimate interpretation of the missives, particularly now that I knew they hadn’t been sent by him. “In the email, you asked where I was.”

  “Did you answer?”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “I don’t really know,” I said truthfully. “I was out of town, so I didn’t think there was anything to be gained by telling you my whereabouts.”

  “What about the text?”

  “It said ‘I need you.’” My face warmed as he stared down at me.

  Then he leaned in, his gaze dark and fathomless. “I need you,” he drawled.

  “Y-yes. That’s what it said.”

  “Nothing more?”

  I shook my head.

  He looked pensive and slightly ominous. “When did you say you received the text?”

  “A few weeks ago.”

  “And yet, y
ou’re just now coming to see me about it.”

  Yes, there was that. I couldn’t explain my hesitance without giving away more of my feelings than I cared to reveal. “I couldn’t come at once. I needed some time to recuperate when I got back. I wasn’t well.”

  “Not well?” He placed his hands on my shoulders and turned me to the light. “You’ve been through something. I can see it on your face, in your eyes.” His voice dropped. “What happened to you, Amelia?”

  Don’t, I thought miserably. Don’t say my name. Don’t look at me that way. I’m only human. How can I not melt when you look at me like that?

  “I’m better now,” I said.

  He took my chin and gently tilted it. “What are those marks on your face? Who did that to you?” I heard something in his voice, a dark and dangerous undercurrent that made me shiver.

  “Not who, what,” I tried to say lightly. “I tangled with a briar patch. Occupational hazard. It was nothing.”

  “I don’t agree.”

  I had backed away inadvertently, until I felt the wall behind me. Devlin moved with me, and now I started to feel panicky because he had that look again. He wouldn’t try to kiss me, surely. Not after the way I’d run out on him.

  But he was slowly leaning toward me, dark eyes glinting with something I didn’t want to put a name to.

  He said Amelia on a whisper, and my resistance weakened. I might have reached for him, despite my best intentions, but Mariama was there, as always. Floating between us. Touching Devlin. Touching me.

  I drew a tremulous breath and turned my head away. “I should go. If you didn’t send those messages, I suppose there’s nothing more to talk about.”

  “Actually, there’s a lot that needs to be said.”

  “It’s getting late and I have to be up early—”

  He lifted a hand to my hair and let the strands sift through his fingers. “Don’t go.”

  I closed my eyes and sighed. “I have to.”

  He placed a hand on the wall above me, trapping me. He didn’t touch me again, but I could feel the heat of his skin mingling with the cold of Mariama’s presence. She’d drifted away, but not too far. She was somewhere in the shadows, watching us.

  “Are you ever going to tell me what happened that night?” He glanced toward the stairs, and I shuddered as memories assailed me. His lips pressed to my pulse, his fingers skimming my thigh…

  “Please let me go,” I whispered.

  “I’m not holding you. I just want to know what happened that night. The way you looked when you ran out of the bedroom…it’s haunted me. I’ve been over it a million times in my head. What did I do to frighten you? Did I hurt you somehow?”

  “No. No! It wasn’t anything you did. Please believe me. The timing was all wrong. And you said yourself, you weren’t ready to let go of the past. You didn’t want to let them go… .” My babbling trailed off. “I’m sorry I couldn’t explain it better at the time. I don’t think I really understood it myself until later. Until I had time to think—”

  I never had a chance to finish that lame excuse. A loud crash from the parlor startled us both, and Devlin’s hand flew to his back where he’d slid the gun into his waistband. He drew it now and motioned for silence as he eased across the foyer, me at his heels. Taking a quick sweep of the parlor, he dropped his arm and turned on the light.

  Mariama’s painting lay facedown on the floor.

  “What happened?”

  “Damned if I know. The wind couldn’t have knocked it off. That thing weighs a ton.”

  “Then what caused it to fall?” Dumb question. I already knew the answer.

  “The fasteners must have loosened.”

  “The glass is broken,” I said inanely because I didn’t know what else to say at that moment. Mariama’s message was perfectly clear.

  “It can be repaired,” he said. “I’ve been meaning to take it down, anyway. I just never got around to it. I rarely come in this room. It’s always so cold in here, even in the summer. I’ve never been able to figure out where the draft comes from.” He looked up as the chandelier stirred. “See what I mean?”

  I was standing in the archway and could feel that same current sweeping down the stairs. I looked up, expecting to see Mariama once again, but instead, the darkness on the galley pulsed and throbbed with shimmers, like tiny strobes, where the Others were trying to come through.

  I stared wide-eyed and terrified as the flickers intensified. I had to get out of that house, away from Devlin, away from the emotions that drew those ravenous entities like moths to flame.

  “I have to go.”

  “Amelia, wait.”

  I was out the front door and all the way down the veranda steps before he caught up with me. Once again he took my arms and turned me, searching my face in the darkness. “What’s wrong? Why did you run out like that?”

  “Just let me go. Please.”

  I tried to wrench away, but his grasp only tightened. “What is it about this house that frightens you? What is it about me?”

  My gazed went past him to the house. I could see Shani in the window and Mariama hovering in the doorway. Maybe it was my imagination, but I thought I saw the glimmer of faces in every other window. “You know why,” I said breathlessly.

  “What are you talking about?”

  “You know, John. You just refuse to admit it.”

  He dropped his hands and took a step back from me. Even in the dark, I could see the look of horror that flashed across his face.

  Chapter Eleven

  As soon as I got home, I let Angus out into the backyard. Then I poured myself a glass of wine and gulped it. Poured another and gulped it, wishing I had something stronger. The third glass I carried out to the garden and sipped while I waited for Angus to get on with his business. He took his sweet time as he always did, and as impatient as I was to get to my computer, I didn’t have the heart to rush him. He’d spent most of his life cooped up in cages and kennels, suffering horrors that I could barely comprehend. The least I could do was indulge his curiosity.

  A mild breeze stirred the wind chimes, but I felt no ghostly presence in the garden. Thankfully, Shani hadn’t followed me home tonight.

  Shivering, I zipped my jacket all the way up to my neck. The night had turned chilly, but at least the storm seemed to have passed us by. Or maybe the clouds had only gathered over Devlin’s house. Here, a few blocks away, the moon was out and the thunder had faded. I even saw a few stars peeking out.

  I wondered if the hazy ring around the moon was an omen. Fishing for the talisman I wore around my neck, I rubbed my thumb across the smooth surface. The polished stone had come from the hallowed hills of Rosehill Cemetery, my childhood playground. How many afternoons had I spent curled up in the shade of an old, drooping live oak or with my back pressed against the warm granite of a weeping angel, devouring the pages of my favorite Gothic novels, fueling an imagination already primed by the ghosts? Back then, I’d dreamed of someone like Devlin. A darkly charismatic man with even darker secrets. As a lonely teenager, nothing had seemed more romantic than doomed love, nothing more beautifully melancholy than unrequited passion.

  How stupidly naive I’d been. There was nothing remotely beautiful or desirable about being denied the love of one’s life, as I had been so cruelly reminded tonight. Even without the threat of the Others, Mariama would always find a way to keep Devlin and me apart.

  The wine was going straight to my head, making me slightly hysterical and borderline maudlin. Hovering just outside the door, I watched Angus amble around the yard as my thoughts raced and images flashed in my brain—the almost kiss…the falling painting…Mariama in all her dead glory.

  Shani clutching my hand.

  In some ways, the ghost child’s attachment to me was the most disturbing development of all. Not because I was actually scared of her—at least, not the way I feared Mariama—but because it seemed a direct manifestation of Papa’s broken rules, a terrifying reminder
that I had inadvertently crossed a threshold from which there would be no return.

  I’d brought all of this on myself, of course. How many times had Papa warned me? By allowing a haunted man into my life, I’d made myself susceptible to his ghosts. And those ghosts had drawn other ghosts. By letting down my defenses, I’d opened myself up to an invasion. Not just from Shani and Mariama and Robert Fremont, but possibly from spirits that had yet to make their way to me.

  It was all well and good to contemplate a higher purpose, but when delusions of grandeur became stark reality, I didn’t know what to do. I had no idea what would be expected of me, what lay in wait for me. I didn’t have an inkling of where all this would lead me, but I thought perhaps it was a very good thing that Clementine Perilloux hadn’t been able to tell my fortune. More than ever, I had no wish to see my future.

  With another fortifying sip of wine, I tried to shepherd my thoughts from ghosts to the overheard conversation between Devlin and Ethan. Robert Fremont’s murder investigation had taken an unexpected turn tonight and Devlin’s involvement was an added complication. Suddenly, something Fremont had said came rushing back to me. We follow the clues no matter where they lead. Understood?

  Even if those clues led to Devlin? Had that been his implication?

  I played that conversation over and over in my head because it was easier to dwell on what I’d learned from my eavesdropping than to delve more deeply into what had happened in Devlin’s house.

  Finally, Angus finished his business, and we went back inside. He prowled through the rooms for a while before settling down in his bed. I took a shower and changed into my pajamas before returning to my desk.

  Wineglass within easy reach, I ignored all those dark windows and opened my laptop. I typed in Darius Goodwine, almost expecting the same sparse results yielded by my previous search. But instead, a dozen or more links popped up. Excited by the prospect of immersing myself in a project, I began to click through the pages.

  Whatever I expected to learn about Darius Goodwine certainly wasn’t what I found. The way the two men had spoken of him earlier had spawned images of a dangerous criminal living on the fringes. But Darius Goodwine had quite the impressive résumé. For starters, he had a doctorate from the University of Miami in molecular biology with an emphasis on ethnobotany. I only had a vague idea of what that entailed so I looked up the Wikipedia definition—the study of how people of a particular culture and region make use of indigenous plants.