The Last Time I Saw Her

by Karen Robards

  “I hate thinking about that guy who got wrongly convicted as the Southern Slasher,” Buzz said, grimacing. “Somebody dropped the ball on that one, and now there’s no putting it right: the guy’s dead.”

  Lena shrugged. “Nothing we can do about that.”

  Buzz frowned at her. “You know what, you’ve got more of a heart than you let on.”

  “Let’s go, people.” With a quelling look at the two of them, Tony opened the door. Cold air swirled in. Outside, the world was the washed-out gray of a new dawn. To Charlie, Tony added, “I’ll call you later,” and walked out the door. Lena and Buzz followed. As they headed across the porch Charlie heard Buzz say to Lena, quietly so that Tony wouldn’t overhear, “That heart you try so hard to hide is one of the things I love about you, you know.”

  Lena shot him a look that should have fried his eyeballs. “Stop it,” she hissed. “I told you: We are not going there.”

  Buzz grinned at her, but Charlie missed the rest of the exchange as they went down the steps.

  Charlie was still smiling at the idea that maybe Buzz was making headway after all when Tam called to her from the kitchen, where she and Michael were waiting.

  “Cherie, come here.” There was a sharpness to Tam’s tone that made Charlie hurry back to them.

  The first thing she saw as she stepped inside the room was that Michael was holding on to the back of one of the kitchen stools. He seemed unsteady on his feet. His face was absolutely white.

  “What’s wrong?” she gasped, rushing to his side, sliding a supporting arm around his back. Tam was beside him, too, looking at him with fear in her face.

  It was Tam’s expression that sent the first quiver of terror through Charlie’s system.

  “It’s time.” Michael sounded as if he was having trouble getting the words out. He was breathing hard, leaning on the kitchen stool like he needed its support to stay upright.

  “Time for what?” Charlie asked as cold tendrils of foreboding started to wrap themselves around her heart.

  The look Michael shot her was his answer. Then he said, “You know I’d give you forever, but I don’t have it to give.”

  He’s losing Hughes’s body, Charlie thought, trying to get a handle on her rising panic. That’s all this is.

  “We’ll figure something out,” Charlie told him, doing her best to sound reassuring even though her heart was suddenly pounding. “Until we do, you’ll hang out with me as a spirit just like you did before.”

  Charlie wasn’t looking at Tam, but she heard Tam suck in a breath. She knew Tam: that indrawn breath couldn’t mean anything good.

  Michael gave a slight shake of his head. “I’m talking Spookville. I can feel myself getting pulled back in. You know I might not be able to get out. I may never be able to get out.” He let go of the kitchen stool with one hand and hooked an arm around her, pulling her into an embrace.

  “You can. You will. Oh, God, try to fight it.” Charlie wrapped her arms around him, looking up into his hard, handsome face with alarm. The black seemed to be fading from his eyes. He was shaking, and he felt cold.

  The slightest of smiles just touched his mouth. “Babe, here’s a dirty little secret: Sometimes you fight and lose.”

  “Michael.” Fear tightened Charlie’s throat. She cast a desperate look at her friend. “Tam, isn’t there something you can do?”

  Tam made an inarticulate sound of distress.

  “I love you,” Michael said, and brushed her lips with his.

  Then he collapsed.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  “Michael!” Charlie cried.

  “Cherie, we have to lay him down.”

  Tam was right, Charlie knew. He was too big, too heavy. Between them, they were barely able to prevent him from crashing like a felled tree to the floor. They managed to lower him fairly gently, but that was all they could do. Pale and limp, he lay sprawled on his back, his eyes closed, his face slack. Still breathing, but clearly unconscious.

  They knelt on either side of him.

  Pain twisting through her, Charlie looked at Tam. “There’s no way to stop this, is there?”

  Tam shook her head. “No.”

  Before Charlie could do more than press an unsteady hand to his cold cheek, mist started to rise up out of Hughes’s body. She watched it gather like a cloud of vapor inches above the supine form, hover for a moment, then whoosh up and to the side, where it took on form and substance.

  A heartbeat later Michael stood beside the body of the unconscious Hughes. Still on her knees, Charlie looked up at him. He looked as solid and real in spirit form as Hughes did in life. His tawny hair was too long again, and shaggy. His perfectly sculpted face with its chiseled features had a healthy tan. His eyes—he was looking down at her—were once again their usual heart-stopping sky blue. He was wearing scuffed cowboy boots and faded jeans and a white tee that hugged more solid muscle than Hughes sported. He was her own outrageously handsome Michael, and Charlie’s heart throbbed with love for him and pleasure at seeing him looking so completely himself again. That knee-jerk reaction was immediately supplanted by a spurt of fear: the prospect of him being once again swept off to Spookville made her stomach twist into knots.

  He’d said that this time he might not be able to get out—

  “Are you all right?” She sprang to her feet. She would have thrown herself into his arms, but the whole ectoplasm thing prevented that.

  “Yeah.” He smiled at her, a wry twist of his lips. Something about it scared her all the way down to her toes. “No more serial killers, Doc. Promise me.”

  Charlie took a deep breath. The way he was looking at her was like he was saying good-bye. Her heart started to slam against her breastbone. “I promise,” she said.

  “Write that book. Be happy. Don’t worry about me. I’ve got Spookville down.”

  “Michael.” Her mouth was dry. “Please try. I want you to stay.”

  He glanced over his shoulder, out through the window at the shadowy backyard. To her nervous eyes as she followed his gaze, that familiar space suddenly looked almost sinister. She could feel the rising tension in him, the heightening emotion. The stress. The sense of dread. Like he was waiting for the other shoe to drop. Like he was waiting for something terrible to happen.

  He looked around, met her eyes. His were a blazing blue. “Believe me, I want to stay. More than I’ve ever wanted anything. But Spookville is getting ready to take me no matter what I do, and I don’t think I’m going to be coming back. You need to face up to that. You and me, we’ve had something great here, but we’ve both known from the beginning it couldn’t last. Now you’ve got to go on with living, and I—I have to go on to what’s next.”

  “There has to be something—” Charlie began desperately.

  “There’s not.” He sounded, and looked, grim. “There’s no help for it, babe. There’s a path we’ve both got to take, and they don’t go the same way. I want you to live your life, and have the best time, and marry and have kids, the whole nine yards. Then by and by, when you’re like a hundred and twelve and you cross over, maybe we’ll hook up.” He looked over his shoulder again. His face tightened. “I got to go.”

  Terror stabbed her. “What? No. Not yet.”

  He looked past her at Tam. A silent message seemed to pass between them. Michael said, “You’ll stay with her?”

  Charlie felt rather than saw Tam’s nod as Tam curled a hand around her elbow. As if to prevent her from—

  “I love you,” Michael said. His eyes burned into hers. His voice was low now, and husky. “You remember that.” He turned and started walking away.

  “Michael—” Her voice was sharp with panic. Tam’s hand tightened on her arm as if to prevent her from following him. Charlie pulled away, running after him as he passed right through the kitchen door without opening it, gaining speed as he went. His gait was unnatural—it was as if he was being drawn by an invisible force. She saw that his booted feet weren’t even t
ouching the ground now. Reaching the door, she flung it open, burst out into the backyard. It was cold, barely light, smelling of earth, of damp. Dawn was just beginning to break. Shadows lay everywhere. Michael was already near the sunflowers. He was a couple of feet off the ground now, and getting higher. Darting after him, she cried, “I love you, too. Please don’t—”

  Go, she was going to say, but she stopped abruptly as he seemed to be jerked skyward. His back arched, he grimaced—she knew that look, he was in terrible pain, but he wasn’t screaming for her sake—and then he was gone.

  Vanished into thin air.

  Charlie felt a scream crowding her lips, but she forced it back. There was no help to be had; screaming would do no good. She stared into the purpling sky where Michael had disappeared. He was gone. There was not so much as a ripple in the air.

  Oh, God, who knew that you could actually feel your heart breaking? It was a burning, agonizing pain in the center of her chest.

  “Charlie.” Tam reached her, put a hand on her back. Charlie sucked in a great, shuddering gulp of air and turned on her.

  “You know something,” Charlie said fiercely. “I saw him look at you. There’s more going on here than just Spookville, isn’t there? Tell me.”

  Tam caught Charlie’s hands, held them tightly. Her face was a study in distress. “I’ve wanted to tell you. He made me promise—”

  “Tam.”

  Tam’s shoulders sagged as she gave in. “Yesterday—I touched his arm. I read him. I didn’t mean to: It was an accident. But when I did, I saw him in the lieu de la mort—the place of death. He was being tortured, horribly tortured. They—the executeurs—were waiting to destroy him, as they destroy all who go there. But he was holding them off, how I couldn’t see. Then you were kidnapped, and he was allowed by them to see that you were in grave danger, and he made a bargain—if they would let him go to you, if they would let him save you, he would stop resisting. When they came for him again, once you were safe, he would allow himself to be destroyed. They did something to him to make sure that it would happen, that there would be no escape, and they let him return to you.”

  “Oh, no,” Charlie whispered. She felt as if her knees would buckle. That explained so much—that explained everything. This whole time, he’d been trying to get her ready for life without him.

  Tam said, “He wanted you to think that he was back in Spookville. He didn’t want you to know that he’d been destroyed. He said you’d grieve.”

  “Grieve.” The word didn’t do how she felt justice. Great dark waves of desolation washed over her at the mere thought of Michael being destroyed. She had to force them back. She had to think. “That’s what happened, isn’t it? Just now. They’ve taken him away to be destroyed.”

  Tam looked at her like she would give anything not to have to answer.

  “Yes,” Tam agreed.

  “No,” Charlie said desperately. “No, no, no. He doesn’t deserve it. He’s not a killer. Anything he did, he had to do. Tam, please, there has to be a way to save him.”

  “There is something,” Tam said, and Charlie grabbed on to her composure with both hands even as she felt it starting to come apart at the seams. “That’s why I read the other man—Detective Foster. I could not lift a hand if your Michael was guilty of those heinous crimes, but since he’s not, there’s one chance, one thing we can try. My mother told me of it, told me the spell. But we must hurry. There’s not much time before he is destroyed, and once that happens there is no undoing it. He’ll be lost forever.”

  “What is it?” Charlie’s hands tightened on Tam’s so forcefully that the other woman winced and freed herself.

  “Come with me to my car while I explain. Everything I need is in there, and like I said, we don’t have much time.” As she spoke, Tam broke away and ran toward her rented Kia, which was parked in front of Charlie’s garage. Charlie ran beside her. Tam continued, “That’s where I went this morning: to get the last component of the spell, just in case. I needed the blood of a chicken slaughtered just as the first hint of dawn appeared on the horizon. I went to a sevite—a spirit practitioner—that my mother knows near here to get it. It has to be used in the day it’s received. I thought to go back every morning until—he was taken. I didn’t know it would be so soon.”

  They had reached Tam’s car by this time, and Tam popped the trunk. From it Tam took a Walmart bag and a Tupperware container of what could only be the chicken blood. Charlie was too agitated even to shudder at the sight of it.

  “What are we doing?” Charlie asked as Tam closed the trunk.

  “I’m going to send you back in time,” Tam said, striding toward the garage. It was a single-car garage, not much more than a shed, actually. It was detached from the house, painted gray, with a solid white overhead door that was presently closed. “To the night that your Michael met that woman he was arrested for killing. I’m going to send you to him, and it’s going to be up to you to stop what will happen. If he doesn’t get arrested for killing that woman, then he will not go to prison, he will not be killed, and he will not wind up being snatched away by executeurs to be destroyed.”

  “You’re going to send me back in time?” Charlie couldn’t help it: her voice squeaked. She’d seen Tam do some amazing things, but she’d never imagined anything like this was even possible.

  “We are going to try to reroute his path.” Tam pulled a tube of colored chalk out of the Walmart bag, extracted a piece, and began drawing a large rectangle on the garage’s smooth metal door. “You will only have a few minutes. You know where to find him on that night?”

  Charlie thought of the bar where Michael had picked up Candace Hartnell. “Yes.”

  “You must picture that in your mind as you travel. Don’t let your thoughts wander. You could wind up somewhere else.”

  “I can do that,” Charlie said.

  “That’s his watch you’re wearing, right?” Tam asked. She’d seen the watch before. She’d actually used it in a spell before.

  Charlie touched the watch, which she’d put on when she’d gotten dressed. “Yes.”

  “That should help take you to him. Keep your hand on it while you go.” Having finished with the rectangle, Tam sprinkled a rectangle of chicken blood on the gravel drive, the ends of which touched the chalk rectangle on the garage door.

  “All right.”

  “There is one thing of which you should be aware—if you are successful, if this works, he might forget all about you. We will have rerouted his path. He won’t wind up in your prison. On this new path of his, you two will never have met.” Tam finished with the blood and set it aside, then pulled four stubby white candles out of the bag.

  At the idea of Michael not remembering her, Charlie felt her stomach twist. But compared to him being destroyed—there was no choice.

  “Tam.” Charlie was still trying to get her mind around what was getting ready to happen. “Are you saying that if this works, Michael won’t have gone to prison and will have spent the last five years simply going about his life?”

  Tam nodded. She was setting the candles on the four points of the rectangle she’d drawn in blood in the gravel. “That’s exactly what I’m saying.”

  “I’d do anything to give him his life back,” Charlie said. Even if she wasn’t in it. Even if he didn’t remember her. More than she’d ever wanted anything else, she wanted him to have his life.

  Tam put the last candle in place and straightened to look at Charlie. “He was willing to give up his soul for you; you’re willing to give up your heart for him. I never thought I would be okay with the two of you, but I think perhaps you were meant to be. Soulmates.”

  Soulmates. She and Michael. There was a time when the thought would have boggled Charlie’s mind. But now—it felt right.

  Charlie felt her heart clutch as another thought hit her. “Will I forget him, too?”

  Tam shook her head. “No. Everything that has happened, has happened. You will remember all of this
, including being sent back in time and what you did to save him. His will be the path that is altered. But all of this has happened to him, too, and can’t be erased. He has already experienced dying and being a spirit and meeting you. It’s there in his soul, embedded forever, along with past lives and the in-between times and everything else that has ever happened to the entity that is now having a human experience as Michael Garland. If you are able to reroute his path, the body will be spared but the soul will not. The soul never loses anything that it has ever experienced. As a result of what we are doing, the soul will simply loop back and merge with the body at the point where the path is altered. The memories of what has happened during those years will still be there. They may be buried, in the same way we can’t access past lives while we’re on the earth plane. Or it’s possible that they won’t be, that he’ll remember. I can’t tell for sure.” Tam pulled a long-handled lighter out of the bag and straightened again to shake her head at Charlie. “Now step inside that rectangle. What I’m going to do is light the candles and cast a spell, which will create a wormhole through time. If I’ve done everything right, the door that I’ve drawn on your garage door should open. Step through it, hold on to your Michael’s watch, picture where you want to end up, and you should be taken there. When the spell wanes, you’ll be bounced right back here. Do you understand?”

  Charlie nodded, and stepped inside the rectangle. Her heart pounded, her stomach knotted, and the fear of what was about to happen coursed through her. But the alternative—to do nothing and let Michael be destroyed without even trying to stop it—was unthinkable.

  “I’m ready,” she said, and took a deep breath as Tam lit the candles. The scent of lavender wafted in the air. The sky was just beginning to lighten up, just beginning to swirl with streamers of orange and pink. Behind her, Tam set something on fire—Charlie didn’t even want to know what—and started to chant.

  “Porta aperio. Tempus vade retro. Ab aeterno transire. Revertere!”