Then one image pushed to the forefront of his mind, seemingly stronger than the others. Somehow, he knew it had been from one of the last days they had made love. He also knew, instinctively, that he had succeeded in his quest. That day, Rose had become pregnant. He was as certain of it as he was certain that the sun would set that night and rise the next morning.
Chapter Seven
Justin felt the knowledge of Rose’s long ago pregnancy down to the depths of his soul.
The knowledge hit him like a lightning bolt and once more, the world around him seemed to shift and tilt, and he was suddenly back to being Justin. He had slipped out of whatever trance had caused him to see the world through James’ eyes. Time was still frozen and suddenly, it seemed imperative that he repeat what James had done that day.
With a growl, Justin launched himself at Rose, pinning her hands above her head. He held her body down with his, his suddenly painful erection poised at her slick entrance.
“Do you want me, Rose?” he asked, though he knew she couldn’t tell the difference in what he was asking. He really wanted to know if she wanted him, not James, but decided against pushing her that way. He was afraid he wouldn’t like the answer. “Do you want me inside you, the way I used to be?”
“Yes,” she breathed. “I have waited for this day for a very long time. To feel you again is beyond my deepest desires.”
Without warning, he pushed into her and Rose cried out in pleasure. The now familiar hot and cold sensation seemed to radiate from every cell of Justin’s body, but he didn’t fight it. Instead, he reveled in it, never feeling more alive than he did at this moment.
“We made a baby that day, Rose,” Justin whispered in her ear as he began to stroke in and out of her, still pretending that he was James and hating himself a little for it. “Do you know that?”
At first he thought she wasn’t going to answer him, but then Rose turned those sparkling silver eyes to his and he could see that indeed, she had known.
“I knew,” she ground out as Justin shifted so that her hips were now resting on a pillow, allowing him deeper penetration. “I knew that day, but my suspicions were confirmed a few days later. However, I was unaware that you knew as well.”
Justin continued his assault on Rose’s body, alternately kissing her lips and her throat as he took her roughly, something that was unusual for him. Normally, he was a gentle, careful lover. Something about this woman, however, brought out the animal in him. Perhaps he wasn’t so different from James after all.
As Justin ground into her hard, he managed to hiss out his own confession. “I didn’t know until just now. When I saw you lying there, somehow, I knew. Why didn’t you tell me back then?”
“I tried,” Rose cried between moans as her pleasure grew. “I was going to tell you that night, but things went so wrong.” She paused as if trying to gather a coherent thought and suddenly Justin couldn’t remember what they had been talking about mere moments before. “Oh, Justin, don’t stop. You feel so good.”
It wasn’t lost on him that she had called him by his real name and not that of her dead husband. Swelling with desire, Justin released her hands and roughly pulled her into a sitting position so that she straddled his lap. He thrust up into her and Rose cried out. “I’m coming.”
Pulling her tighter against him, Justin continued to thrust upwards, penetrating her as deeply as he could. Finally when he was unable to reign in his own out-of-control desire, he threw his head back and came, spilling himself inside Rose’s welcoming body. She followed moments later, her vaginal muscles clamping tightly around him and milking every drop from his engorged penis.
Collapsing back on the rug, Justin pulled Rose on top of him. As they lay there, his body still joined to hers, he felt time begin shift and move again. It hadn’t exactly resumed yet, but it would soon. The tingling on the back of his neck was a warning, he now realized. Their interlude was almost over and while Justin had been certain that time had stopped while they were together, he was just as certain that it would soon resume.
He was also going to have to leave Rose and their love nest, if for no other reason than at any moment, Reed and Callie would be roaming the house looking for him. The last thing he wanted was to be found in a compromising position with a ghost. Still, he was loath to leave her, just as he always had been.
Justin also noted that some of his anger from earlier had drained away and he knew that was Rose’s doing. Somehow, she had always been able to fix what was wrong inside of him – the arrogance and anger, the fear that often masqueraded as ego. Looking down at her still lying in his arms, he felt a sudden, overwhelming need to tell her. Only he wasn’t quite sure how.
“You are my salvation, Rose. You always have been.” In the back of his mind, Justin knew he was speaking as James again.
Reaching up, she stroked his face and he was aware that, while his skin still felt the clash of fire and ice, hers was cooling back down to her usual spectral state. The flesh and blood warmth he’d just experienced was fading.
“James, I am yours. I always have been and always will be. I never cared where you came from or how you came to be. I have always been simply grateful that you chose me over all of the others.”
Justin knew he should correct her, but he couldn’t. She’d called him “Justin” earlier, so clearly she knew the difference between them. At this moment in time, however, he was James Morgan and Rose was his wife.
“We made a baby that day.” Justin’s voice was hollow, as if he were speaking across a long distance and he absently wondered if maybe he was. Perhaps he was speaking James’ words, channeling James’ memories that were still trapped in this house. “He, or she, would have been beautiful.”
Tears glistened in Rose’s silvery eyes, a deep and raw emotion shimmering just below the surface. “Our child would have been amazing, but he, and I know now that it was a boy, died with me. He doesn’t get the chance to be reborn, my love, at least not yet. Maybe never.”
Justin sniffed and once again knew the words he was about to speak weren’t really his. “He will be reborn again. I am certain. Just not today.”
“No, not today,” Rose agreed, her eyes sad beyond words. “One day, perhaps.”
Justin was quiet for a minute and then reached out to push aside a tendril of hair that had fallen over Rose’s face. “What happens now?”
She shrugged, her ennui regarding her situation returning as quickly as it had left moments before. “I don’t know. We move on, I suppose, though do not ask me how. There is still much I do not understand.”
“Nor do I understand.” The words and phrases were foreign to Justin, but he knew they came from the part of him that had once lived and breathed a life he no longer remembered. “But I will. This time, in this life, it ends. We will find a way to be free.”
“I believe you,” Rose sniffled, on the verge of tears once more. “You have never failed me, not even that night, though I know you think you did.”
Justin slowly felt the last remnants of time click into place and below them, he could hear shuffling sounds mingled with voices – Reed and Callie. Instantly, he was simply Justin again, no remnants of James Morgan left inside him, as if some invisible switch had been flipped. The idea that he could slip between one persona and another unnerved him, but he would deal with that later. Now, there was work to do. Quickly, he kissed Rose on the forehead and as he moved to get up from the rug, he felt the last vestiges of James slip away and recede into a deeper part of his psyche.
What had just happened had convinced Justin that the unique personality that had been James was still inside him and that, when he was in this house at least, it was more prone to manifest, pushing his current life as Justin Grant into the background. He just hoped that he could learn to control it long enough to finish the case.
He quickly dressed and then helped Rose back into her own clothes. She could have done it herself, he knew, with ghostly magic, but he liked the idea of
helping her. He wasn’t sure why; he just did.
As he stole a quick glance at himself in the dressing table mirror, he felt Rose come up beside him.
“Your friends have arrived,” she told him unnecessarily. “They are looking for you.”
Justin nodded. He wasn’t quite ready to face them, but he didn’t really have a choice. “I know.” He bit his lip, unsure how to ask what he knew he needed to. “They need to meet you if they’re going to help. They won’t hurt you.”
Rose inclined her head towards the doorway in silent agreement. “I trust you,” was all she said.
Reaching out, Justin took her hand and together they left the attic. As they reached the second floor, he could hear Reed calling for him.
“Just a minute,” he replied to Reed’s yell of Justin’s name. “We’re on our way down.”
He placed a quick kiss on Rose’s lips and she smiled at him, that same trusting smile she’d given him every day.
As they walked hand in hand down the sweeping dual spiral staircase to the first floor, Justin began to get dizzy again, the way he had the night before when he’d first entered the house. The walls around him appeared to melt and the floor began to sway like a fun house.
He could see Reed and Callie waiting at the bottom of the stairs, their faces turned towards him. Justin opened his mouth to speak but no words came out. Instead, he felt as if he were being swallowed by a rushing blackness, as images from what he instantly knew were other past lives cascaded through his mind.
Chapter Eight
Rose knew the instant Justin began to have another spell. Earlier his grip had been strong and sure, but now his hand went limp in hers and his limbs began to shake. She reached out to steady him, but she couldn’t. Their ghostly sex had depleted quite a bit of her energy and she wasn’t recovering as quickly as she normally did. Filing that information away for later, she still did her best to catch Justin before he fell flat on his face. Thankfully, his friends were there to quite literally catch him before he broke his neck falling down the last few stairs into the foyer.
The thin young man Rose assumed was Reed was stronger than he looked. He caught Justin’s weight easily and eased him down on to the floor with the other woman’s help. Rose surmised that was Callie.
Almost as quickly as it had happened, Justin began to wake up. He shook his head and Rose felt herself relax a bit. If something happened to Justin, she wasn’t sure what would become of her. This was the first time James’ reincarnated spirit had found her. If Justin were to die without freeing her, would she be trapped here forever? Suddenly, she didn’t know. This was all new and different. She wondered if her grandfather even knew.
Her thoughts of Ben must have roused the old ghost from wherever he was hiding because suddenly, he was beside her, staring down at Justin as the young man slowly gathered his wits.
“Had a little spell there, did you son?” Ben asked as Justin blinked in confusion.
“Something like that.” Justin’s voice was thick and Rose could see him visibly struggling to make sense of what had just happened. “I just saw my other lives flash before me.”
Still hovering over Justin, Rose saw Reed frown. “Past lives? Before this goes any farther, I think we need to talk. I can’t help if I don’t know what’s going on.” Then the other man glanced up and squinted through his glasses at Rose and Ben. “Ghosts, I presume?”
Rose stuck out her hand, which, much to her surprise, both Reed and Callie quickly shook. In her experience, paranormal investigators and even people who eventually became comfortable around her were rarely so immediately accepting. “I’m Rose Dorsey Morgan. I live here. Or I did once, anyway.”
That elicited a grumble from her grandfather. “You still do, Rosie girl. This is your house.” He then turned his attention to the newcomers. “Benjamin Dorsey, ghost and Intermediary from the spirit world, at your service.” He looked pointedly at Reed and Callie. “And you are?”
The young man stepped forward, as if protecting the woman beside him from her grandfather. “Reed Talbott. I’m an expert in potions, spells and enchanted objects.”
Not to be outdone, Callie elbowed Reed aside, clearly not one to hide behind anyone or even need Reed’s protection for that matter. “And I’m Callisto, with an “o” and not an “a’”, Hughes, but everyone calls me Callie. I’m a Mimic.” She glanced back at Reed with a mischievous smile. “What Reed didn’t tell you is that he’s also a Seer, though he doesn’t quite believe it.”
“Callie,” Reed warned, but there was no heat in his voice, just amusement and a touch of embarrassment.
Watching the two interact, Rose could see that there was far more to the story of the two newcomers than they were letting on. At the moment, however, that wasn’t really her concern.
“You’re here to help that one, down there? The one who used to be my grandson-in-law?” Ben interjected, nodding his chin towards Justin who was still lying prone on the floor, having slipped back into a semi-conscious state once more.
“We are,” Callie confirmed, “but at the moment, I think we need to get some information from Justin first, before his mind stores it away somewhere that I can’t reach.”
Without warning, Callie reached out and touched two of her fingers to Reed’s temple and closed her eyes. Moments later, she shivered and opened them again. What Rose saw astounded her.
Gone were Callie’s striking turquoise eyes that had so amazed Rose moments earlier. Instead, Callie’s eyes were now a swirling mass of dark greens and golds tinged with various shades of purple and blue. They shifted and changed, seemingly of their own volition.
“You’re dangerous. Evil. I don’t want you in this house, around my Rosie.” Those words, directed at Callie, came from Ben. Rose turned to look at him in astonishment.
“Grandfather!” she scolded. “What is wrong with you?”
However, if Callie took offense, she didn’t show it. “You’re right, in a way,” Callie acknowledged Ben’s words with a nod of her head, her voice having taken on a slightly hollow quality. “I could be dangerous. But I’m not.”
Then she held up her wrist to show off an engraved silver cuff-style bracelet. What looked like Egyptian hieroglyphs circled the entire band, winking in the midday sunlight that filtered through a nearby stained glass window. Subtle colors of rose, pink and lavender shimmered across the bracelet’s smooth surface, as well as Callie’s tanned face and her thick mass of golden blonde hair.
“I’m still learning how to harness my power. To make sure I don’t hurt myself or anyone else, I wear an Imperitas, or control band.” She glanced over her shoulder at Reed. “If something goes wrong, Reed can stop me.”
Offering a small smile, Callie turned away from Reed and looked at Rose and Ben. “I trust him. Justin trusts him. You should as well.”
“You know what an Imperitas can do, right, missy?” Clearly her grandfather knew more about magic and the paranormal than he’d ever told Rose.
For her part, Callie didn’t flinch and Rose wondered just what that beautiful bangle was capable of doing to the woman who wore it. “I know and I trust Reed,” was Callie’s reply.
That didn’t seem to completely assure the old ghost, but he didn’t say anything else. Merely nodded.
With that, Rose watched as Callie knelt on the floor beside Justin and placed her hand on the side of his face. A spark of jealousy flared inside her but Rose tamped it down. Not five minutes ago, she had been wrapped in Justin’s embrace. She had no reason to be jealous. Besides, Callie and Reed clearly had feelings for one another. Now was not the time to become the jealous shrew she knew she could be sometimes.
“Justin,” Callie whispered, her words careful and measured, “I need to know what you saw before you forget it. This could be important.”
Justin tried to push Callie’s hand away, but Rose knelt down as well. “I don’t understand this, my love, but I trust them. It might help me be free.” She prayed that her g
randfather wouldn’t interrupt and allow crucial information to be lost.
Her words seemed to penetrate some part of Justin’s mind and he nodded. Callie looked at Reed and he nodded his confirmation as well. Once more, Callie put her hand on Justin’s face and then the other hand a moment later.
Rose watched as Justin’s limbs grew stiff and his face scrunched up. He didn’t pull away however, or even struggle to be released from the other woman’s touch. When Callie finally released her hold on Justin, he opened his eyes and pushed himself into a sitting position. Callie, in turn, closed her eyes and slumped back into Reed’s arms. For one horrible moment, Rose wondered if Callie had died. The last thing she wanted was to be responsible for yet another death.
Chapter Nine
“I have to get her back to the office,” Reed said as he gathered Callie’s limp form into his arms. “You might remember everything, but if you don’t, she’s the only other one who can tell us what you saw.”
Justin, who was now conscious since his new memories had been transferred into Callie, nodded. “We can look for enchanted objects later, but I don’t think there are any. I think the house is the problem.”
Reed nodded in agreement. “I’ve only been here a short time, but I think you’re right. It feels strange in here.” He looked at Rose and Ben. “We’ll talk when I get back and I will be back. No question. Right now, though, I have to take care of Callie.”
With more ease than Rose had expected, Reed gently picked Callie up and carried her from the house, never once giving any indication that the woman in his arms weighed more than a bit of fluff.
As they heard Reed’s car pull away, Rose turned to look at Justin once more. When she looked at him now, she no longer saw James, but rather Justin and the man he was today. She wondered if that had changed when they’d made love upstairs, if she had somehow finally let go of the spirit of her long-dead husband.
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