His eyes were very dark, very cold, very unforgiving. “The next time you have a question about my private life, I suggest you ask me directly instead of going behind my back.”
TWENTY-TWO
Devlin’s anger hit me hard. I’d never handled disapproval well nor had I learned to let criticism roll off my back. Sometimes I wondered if being adopted had something to do with my almost obsessive need to please. Or maybe I over-compensated because of my father’s rules and my mother’s melancholy.
Whatever the reason, I knew that if I went home, I’d spend the whole day in a mood, so late that afternoon I called Temple and asked her to meet me for drinks.
We chose a place with a waterfront view, and by the time I arrived, she was already seated on the patio watching the sailboats put in.
“There you are,” she said as I sat down across from her.
“Am I late?”
“No, I’m early.” She picked up her drink, some potent-looking concoction in a tall, frosted glass, and sipped. “After ten days of babysitting undergrads, I needed this more than you. Although…” She cocked her head. “You do look a little flushed.”
“It’s summertime in the Deep South. What do you expect?”
“Hmm, yes, except you’re not exactly sweating.”
“We glow down here, remember?”
She didn’t take her eyes off me as she motioned for the waiter.
“What?” I asked.
She shrugged. “Something’s different about you. I can’t quite put my finger on it.” She waited until I’d given the waiter my order, then leaned in. “Are you sleeping with Devlin?”
“I hardly know him! And after today,” I said a bit glumly, “the possibility of that is even more remote than the last time we talked.”
“What happened?”
“Something stupid.” I rubbed a hand across my forehead. “I’m almost too embarrassed to tell you.”
She propped an elbow on the table, drink in hand, and waited.
“I drove down to Beaufort County yesterday to visit his wife and daughter’s graves.” I glanced up to view her reaction.
She arched a brow. “And why did you do that?”
“I don’t know. Curiosity, I guess. While I was there, I met Mariama’s grandmother—who is a root doctor, by the way—and a young girl named Rhapsody, Mariama’s second cousin. Anyway, one of them must have told Devlin I’d been there, and now he’s angry that I pried into his personal life and I’m completely mortified.”
“If that’s the worst thing you’ve ever done to a man, then you obviously have never been in love,” Temple said with a shrug. “But I still don’t understand why you went to visit those graves. What did you hope to accomplish?”
“Nothing. I just wanted to see where they were buried.”
“And so now Devlin’s upset with you.” She contemplated the matter for a moment. “What are you going to do about it?”
“Wait for it to blow over, I guess.”
“The fatalistic approach. I’m not a fan.”
I sighed. “What would you do then?”
“Try my damnedest to make him forget about Mariama—at least for a night. But that’s me. And for you, I’m afraid that might be a tall order.”
Her gentle ribbing went right over my head. “I don’t want him to forget Mariama. Why would I want that?” I thought of my encounter with Mariama’s ghost and shuddered.
Temple gave me a look over the rim of her glass. “I said for a night.”
The waiter brought over my drink and I used the opportunity to change the subject. “How did you get here so fast, anyway? You must have already been in town.”
“I was. We wrapped up early and now I don’t have a thing to do for the next couple of days but hang out by the pool and soak up some sun. Well, except for a report to file and a mountain of papers to grade.” She did look relaxed and quite exotic in a mustard-colored peasant blouse with embroidered flowers. In comparison, my skinny jeans and tank seemed a little too coed. A little too vanilla.
“When are you going back to Columbia?”
“Not until I take a look at your skeleton. And speaking of Devlin, he called. He’s rescheduled the exhumation for tomorrow.”
“Yes, I know. Ethan Shaw left a message on my voicemail earlier.”
“You’re planning on being there then?”
Was that a note of disapproval I heard in her tone? Or was I being a little too sensitive after Devlin’s censure? “I don’t see why not. I’ve been involved from the very beginning. Which is another reason I wanted to see you today. I’ve been trying to research Afton Delacourt’s murder, but I can’t find anything about it online or in the newspaper archives.”
Her relaxed mood faded as she sat back in her chair and gazed out over the water. A breeze tickled the dark curls at her nape and the palmetto fronds that hung over the railing. “Why are you so obsessed with that murder?”
“I wouldn’t call it obsessed,” I said a bit defensively. “But I am interested. Two, possibly three murder victims have been found in the cemetery where I spend a lot of time alone. I think my concern is understandable.”
“Maybe. But we both know what’s really going on here, don’t we? You’re overcompensating. Something exciting has come into your careful little world and you’ve latched on with both hands.”
“That’s not it!” But I wondered if my vehemence was due in part to her hitting a little too close to home. “And, anyway, I thought you said I needed some excitement.”
“I hardly meant involving yourself in a murder investigation.”
I stared at her across the table. “Why does it bother you so much to talk about Afton Delacourt?”
“I’m not bothered. It happened a long time ago and I don’t see the point of dredging up ancient history.”
“What kind of archaeologist are you?”
Her smile was ironic and she seemed to unwind a little. “Good point. I know this sounds odd, but it feels…intrusive somehow. Like maybe we should leave that poor girl alone.”
“It’s strange that you should say that. Daniel Meakin made almost exactly the same comment the other day.”
“Meakin?” She couldn’t have been more dismissive. “Where did you see him?”
“In the archives room at the university.”
“Figures. I suspect he spends most of his time down there. He’s like a mole.”
“I saw Camille down there, too, that day. I think she was spying on us.”
“That sounds like Camille. She’s always had a tendency to stick her nose in where it doesn’t belong. I used to hate the way she’d go through my things when I wasn’t around.”
“Did you really have a fling with her or were you just teasing Ethan the other night?”
“Camille and I definitely had our moments. But there’s darkness in that woman. It drives her to do impulsive, hurtful things. Just like the darkness in Meakin drove him to attempt suicide.”
“You really think he tried to kill himself?”
She flicked at an invisible speck from her blouse. “Let me put it this way. The scar I saw on his wrist wasn’t exactly a scratch. It was thick, raised, raw and ugly. The kind you get from a deep gash. I don’t blame him for trying to keep that thing covered.”
“Did you know him very well when you were at Emerson?”
“Not really. We had a few classes together, but we didn’t socialize.” She was growing impatient again. “Why all the questions about Daniel Meakin? I thought you wanted to talk about Afton.”
“I do. Whatever you can tell me.”
She shrugged. “I guess the thing that stands out most in my memory about that time is how scared we all were when the body was discovered.”
“We?”
“My little group of friends. Everyone I knew had partied in that cemetery at one time or another. It was a rite of passage at Emerson. To hear that a girl had been killed there was very upsetting.”
“Did you kno
w Afton?”
“Only by reputation. She was a rich, spoiled party girl who, until she was murdered, led a fairly charmed life.”
I wasn’t altogether certain the irony was intentional. It was hard to tell with Temple. “Where did you meet her? She wasn’t a student at Emerson, was she?”
“Every hotshot on campus dated her. Or so they claimed.”
“Was there much talk after the murder about her involvement with a member of the Order of the Coffin and the Claw?”
“Some.”
“Did you know any of the Claws?”
“I may have, but I wouldn’t have known it.”
“No one ever let anything slip?”
“About the Claws? Never.”
“But Emerson is such a small campus. You must have had your suspicions.”
“There was always speculation. Among the girls I knew, it would have been considered quite a coup to sleep with a Claw and then out him. Or her.”
“Did you ever hear any rumors about occult activity?”
“Nobody paid any attention to that stuff.”
I perked up. “So there was talk.”
“All those secret initiations, midnight orgies, Dionysian rituals—nothing more than a bunch of frat boys’ wet dreams.”
“You never went to any of them?”
She frowned. “Why do I get the feeling you’re leading up to something?”
I hesitated as the waiter brought her a fresh drink. “It did occur to me that you might have some inside knowledge about the Claws.”
“I already told you I didn’t.”
“I know, but the other night at dinner, you mentioned that you and Camille were roommates for a time when you were juniors. You said you were thrown together by circumstances. And I read recently that the Order’s bylaws were changed to include women. Two from every junior class. So I just thought—”
“That I’m a Claw?” She gave a low chuckle. “Now that would be an unexpected twist, wouldn’t it? Especially if I’d dated Afton.”
That stopped me cold. An involvement with Afton Delacourt had never even occurred to me.
“Before you ask, no,” she said flatly.
“I wasn’t going to ask. And I don’t think your being a Claw is so far-fetched. I imagine you were just what they looked for in a recruit—smart, ambitious, attractive.”
“And poor. I was at Emerson on a full scholarship. Big black mark against me.” She stirred her drink. “Not that it mattered. I was never much of a joiner or a follower and I detest ceremony and ritual. Probably why I’m a lapsed Catholic.”
Not exactly an outright denial, I noted.
“Speaking of ceremony and ritual, have you ever heard of something called an egregore?”
“An egre-who?”
“An egregore. A thoughtform. A physical manifestation of collective thought. Some secret societies create them through ceremony and ritual.”
She narrowed her eyes. “Where are you getting all this stuff?”
“I saw Rupert Shaw today.”
“Aha! Now it’s all starting to make sense.”
“What is?”
“You. These questions.”
I shrugged.
“Look, I’ve known Rupert for years. He was a favorite professor of mine at Emerson and I consider him one of the last true Southern gentlemen. But let’s face it. His knapsack’s been short a few biscuits for years.”
“He seems perfectly fine to me.”
She smiled. “That’s one of his talents. He’s so sweet and down-to-earth and reasonable that you don’t realize you’re buying into his crap until you find yourself glancing over your shoulder for the bogeyman.”
I didn’t need Rupert Shaw to make me watch out for bogeymen.
“He’s been unstable for a long time,” she said. “I’m sure that’s why he was asked to leave Emerson.”
“I thought you said he was fired because of unfounded rumors.”
“The rumors may have been unfounded and I do believe somebody deliberately set out to ruin his reputation, but none of that stuff would have had legs if not for his previous behavior.”
“By previous behavior, you mean the séances he conducted with some of his students?”
“It wasn’t just the séances.” She glanced away, her expression troubled. “He had an obsessive interest in death. I always wondered if it had something to do with his wife passing. She was sick for a long time. Years, I think. Maybe the agony of watching her suffer and the guilt of waiting for her to die unhinged him somehow. I don’t know. As I said, he was one of my favorite professors, but I’m not surprised he’s taken up permanent residence in Crazy Town. Aka, his ridiculous institute.”
“I’ve spent a lot of time with Dr. Shaw and except for an occasional memory lapse he seems perfectly lucid and very in the moment,” I said. “Unhinged I don’t get from him at all.”
“That’s just it. Even someone truly sick can hold it together for a while.” Her smile turned hard. “Then one night you wake up and find them coming at you with a pair of scissors.”
That night I tucked Essie’s amulet underneath my pillow again. I had no idea if the pouch contained anything more than dirt and cinnamon—a root doctor’s placebo—but I felt better having it nearby.
Propping myself against the headboard, I opened my laptop and started a search. As I skimmed through article after article on shadow beings and egregores, I realized that something Temple said earlier had been bothering me all night. That seemed typical of our conversations. The impact sometimes didn’t hit me until much later.
“She was sick for a long time. Years, I think. Maybe the agony of watching her suffer and the guilt of waiting for her to die unhinged him somehow.”
I hadn’t made the connection before, but now I realized why I felt so uneasy about Temple’s speculation. It went back to Dr. Shaw’s theory about death—and back to my father’s warning about the Others. When someone died, a door opened that would allow an observer a glimpse into the other side. The slower the death, the longer the door would stay open, so that one might even be able to pass through and come back out.
Was it possible Dr. Shaw had tried to open a door to the other side by murdering Afton Delacourt? Had he been that desperate to make contact with his dead wife?
I tried to shove such a nasty, baseless thought from my mind, but already an insidious seed had been sown and I felt the chill of something dark creeping over me.
Listen to me, Amelia. There are entities you’ve never seen before. Forces I dare not even speak of. They are colder, stronger, hungrier than any presence you can imagine.
Sitting up, I scoured every nook and cranny of my bedroom. I was alone, of course, with nothing but the nighttime sounds of my apartment to keep me company. Settling floorboards. A noisy air vent. My neighbor walking around upstairs.
My gaze lifted to the ceiling.
Macon Dawes was hardly ever home, so it surprised me to hear him up there now. In a way, I felt better knowing another warm body was so nearby.
Slipping out of bed, I padded over to the window to glance out. The garden wall blocked my view of the driveway, but it also gave me privacy from the street and from my next-door neighbor’s windows. I didn’t always bother with the blinds. Now I pulled them tightly closed before I got back into bed.
As I settled under the covers, my thoughts returned to Dr. Shaw.
I remembered how his voice had sharpened when he asked if I’d had a near-death experience. I could see in my mind the way his eyes had gleamed with…curiosity? Obsession?
The very thing that Temple had accused me of.
See how easy it is to distort someone’s intentions?
I was getting myself all worked up over nothing more than hearsay. Dr. Shaw was a harmless introvert with an interesting profession. The same could be said about me.
Time to move on.
I needed to cleanse my brain with more agreeable thoughts before trying to fall asleep. And for onc
e, I would not dwell on Devlin.
Digging Graves was always a pleasant diversion, although now my blog had also become a lucrative business endeavor. Writing steady and interesting content was both challenging and time-consuming, but on most evenings, I had nothing better to do, anyway.
I’d yet to moderate the comments from my latest entry— “Poisoned by His Wife and Dr. Cream: Unusual Epitaphs”—and now as I sifted through the responses, I began to relax. I was in my element here, sharing my passion and my experiences with taphophiles and online acquaintances from all over the world. In cyberspace, I didn’t have to look over my shoulder for ghosts.
Halfway down the page, an anonymous post caught my eye—not because the poster hadn’t used a screen name. That was common enough. But because I recognized the epitaph:
The midnight stars weep upon her silent grave,
Dead but dreaming, this child we could not save.
It was the headstone inscription on the grave where Hannah Fischer’s body had been buried.
How odd. And more than a little disturbing.
I glanced up from the screen to search my room once again. Still alone. But now the house was completely quiet. The air wasn’t running at the moment and the footsteps above were silent. Macon Dawes had finally settled in for the night.
I went back to the epitaph.
The comment had been published several hours earlier, well after the last time I’d logged on. I wanted to believe it was just some random posting, one of those bizarre coincidences, but that was asking too much.
Who else would know about that epitaph?
Devlin, of course.
And the killer…
Grabbing the phone from the nightstand, I scrolled to Devlin’s number in the directory, then hit Send before I could change my mind. The call went straight to voicemail and I left a quick message.
The moment I hung up, I regretted the impulse. What if the post was just a strange coincidence?
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