by Eileen Wilks
“Oh.” They’d reached the tubs of drinks. Lily pulled out a Diet Coke and popped it open. “You’re not a medium, so it must have been one of those intimate connection deals. I’m told that happens sometimes.”
“She wasn’t dead.”
The can halted halfway to Lily’s lips. Belatedly she took a sip. “Then would it be . . . I don’t know. Astral travel, maybe? Was she Gifted?”
“No. I saw her ghost at five minutes after midnight—terribly appropriate time, isn’t it?—and she died at 12:49 A.M.”
That was a new twist.
“Of some interest,” he went on, “is that she was in the last stages of Alzheimer’s. She’d been at a nursing home in Cambridge for ten years, and hadn’t spoken at all for the last year. That night I was here in Washington to speak with, um, a member of that administration, and I was sound asleep in my hotel room. I woke suddenly with the sense that someone was bending over me . . . and she was. She was wearing a pale blue nightgown and robe I remember from when I was small, and she smelled of White Shoulders. My father gave her White Shoulders every year at Christmas, and she wore the scent every day until he died. Never again after that. Her hair was brown and curly. She’d worn glasses for the last forty years of her life. They were gone. So were all the other accoutrements of aging . . . she tucked me in,” he finished simply. “Gave me a kiss and smiled, then she was gone. I looked around and saw the clock. It changed to 12:06 at that moment.”
“Wow.”
“The scent of White Shoulders lingered for several minutes.”
“That’s incredible. It must have been . . .” Lily shook her head, unable to say what the experience had been like, other than powerful. “Did she physically tuck you in? Actually move the covers, I mean. Did you feel the kiss?”
“No and no. Her actions did not affect the physical world.”
“But you smelled her favorite scent.” Scent was physical, but scent memories could be triggered in the brain, so that didn’t prove that she’d been physically present. “You mentioned the color of her hair and her nightgown. Did she look solid?”
“Almost.” His voice turned dreamy. “She was unusually vivid, but not quite solid, no. I knew she was a ghost right away.”
“And you’re certain about the times.”
“As I said, I saw the clock click over. As soon as she vanished, I called the nursing home and insisted that they check on her. They discovered her in respiratory distress, but still alive by all the measures we use to determine life. Medical personnel were in attendance from that point on. At 12:49, heartbeat and respiration ceased.”
“A ghost that appears before death. I’ve never heard of that.” She considered it. “Is such a visitor really a ghost? A woman I know—a highly Gifted medium—would probably say it depends on how we define ghost.”
“Exactly.” He broke into a smile like the merry gamin he must have been back when a woman in a pale blue nightgown and robe tucked him in routinely. “It started me on my little hobby of collecting ghost stories. At first I looked for those like mine—and I found a few—but I grew interested in the question of how and why some people without a mediumistic Gift see ghosts. You’re wearing agate.”
She blinked. “I am?”
“Your necklace. The white stones are agates. Were you wearing it when you saw your ghost?”
“It’s not my ghost.” Lily was already sick of that phrase. “And no, I wasn’t.”
“You donned it to protect you from the ghost?”
“I donned it because Rule gave it to me. This evening. Just before we came here.”
He chuckled. “Perhaps I’m confusing causality with coincidence. White agate is said to enhance dreams and concentration. Because of its connection to the crown chakra, some consider it a way of enhancing spiritual communication, while others wear it for protection from malign or confused spiritual influences. Ghosts, in other words.”
“Oh. Well, unless Rule has suddenly developed a precog Gift to rival Ruben’s, me wearing agate tonight was a coincidence. You mentioned a theory.”
“Also intrusive personal questions. This one, however, is not too intrusive. Tell me about the ghost you saw.”
Lily described it briefly. “. . . so this wasn’t like your experience. Misty form, no color, just a shape, and as far as I know, I’ve got no personal connection to the deceased.”
“Hmm. Have you ever died?”
“I . . .” For several heartbeats Lily didn’t know what to say. The story behind “yes” was both complicated and not for public consumption, since it involved the opening of a hellgate. “That’s not a question I get asked every day. I’m going to say yes, but I can’t give any details.”
“Excellent.” He beamed. “The stories of ghost sightings by non-mediums that I’ve collected fall into three categories. In one, there’s an intimate connection between the corporeal person and the ghost. In the second, the ghost itself appears to be responsible, having acquired the ability to manifest itself visually. For whatever reason,” he added, “English haunts seem to be especially adept at such manifestations. The third category, however, is composed of people who have had what is popularly called a near-death experience.”
Lily took another swig of Diet Coke. She was uncomfortable, yet fascinated. “I have reason to believe that my, ah, my near-death experience . . .” She shook her head. Near was the wrong word. Part of her absolutely had died, but that part had been embodied separately from the rest of her at the time. “My own experience leaves me sort of open to spiritual stuff that—”
“Fagin, you’re monopolizing . . . oh, dear.” Deborah Brooks grimaced prettily. “I’ve interrupted.”
“A beautiful woman is never an interruption.”
Deborah was that. Her beauty was the classic English sort, with skin like milk and soft brown hair bobbed just above her shoulders. Her eyes were large and heavily lashed; her features were perfectly symmetrical in a heart-shaped face. Men wouldn’t stop and stare when they saw her on the street. They’d hunt frantically for a puddle they could throw their cloaks over. Though given the scarcity of cloaks these days, they might have to settle for casting a T-shirt in the mud.
That perfectly symmetrical face produced a stiff little smile. “Thank you.”
“Deborah!” Fagin swooped down upon her like a genial bear, seizing her shoulders and giving her a loud, smacking kiss on the lips. “Don’t do that!”
A laugh startled itself out of Deborah. “You’re impossible!”
“Merely highly unlikely. Your mother isn’t here tonight. You can accept the compliment, punch me—not in the face, please—say, ‘yes, I know,’ tell me to stuff it, ask me to jet away to the Caribbean with you for days of sun-drenched pleasure and nights of madness—”
Deborah was laughing. “Oh, stop it. I’m too busy for the last, too inhibited to tell anyone to stuff it, and I couldn’t possibly just agree with you!”
“I observe that you’ve kept open the option of punching me.” He patted her arm. “Good girl. Lily, I cede you to our hostess for now, while reserving the right to pester you again later.”
“So noted.”
Fagin ambled off. Deborah’s smile lingered as she turned to Lily. “I was sent to fetch you, actually. There’s someone Rule would like you to meet.”
Automatically Lily glanced over at the swimming pool fifty feet away. That was a tell, though Deborah wouldn’t recognize it. Lily always knew where Rule was. That was one of the handiest things about the mate bond. At the moment, he was talking with two men—one tall and dark-skinned, wearing khakis and a yellow polo shirt; the other short, slim, and dark-haired with a trim little mustache. He wore jeans with a white shirt and a sports jacket. Lily was pretty sure he hadn’t joined in the softball game.
It was odd for Rule to have her “fetched.” Was there a status thing going on? “I already know Croft, so it must be the guy in the sports jacket.”
“Dennis Parrott. He’s Senator Bixton’s ch
ief of staff.”
Lily grimaced.
“I know,” Deborah said sympathetically, “but it can be useful to get to know your enemies socially.”
Lily glanced at her, surprised. “You see Dennis Parrott as an enemy?”
Rosy color washed over that soft, pale skin. “I shouldn’t have said that.”
“Why not?”
Deborah pursed her lips. “I don’t know, but I shouldn’t. Fagin has an absolute genius for getting me to let my guard down, but once I do, there’s no telling what might come out of my mouth. Never mind. It’s true that Rule would like you to meet Mr. Parrott, but I had another reason for seeking you out.” She took a breath like she was about to jump from the high dive. “I wanted to apologize.”
“Apology accepted, but what are you apologizing for?”
“For the way I acted when we met. I . . .” That soft color rose in her cheeks again. “I wouldn’t shake your hand. I wouldn’t talk. I just nodded and hurried away. You must have thought I was snubbing you.”
That’s pretty much what she’d thought, all right.
“I’m sorry.” Deborah held her hand out.
Lily shook it, smiling at what she learned from that touch. Also from relief. She hadn’t wanted Ruben to be married to a stuck-up bitch. “You weren’t snubbing me. You’re shy.” Not just wary or self-protective, which was learned behavior. Shyness seemed to be more innate.
“The experts are calling it social anxiety disorder these days, but I like the old word better. Yes, I’m shy.”
“That must be difficult for a teacher.”
A sudden smile lit her face. “Teaching is different. It’s helped me get over myself to some extent. These days I bumble along fairly well most of the time, but now and then I just seize up, like I did with you. Then I torture myself about how stupid or cold or awful I must have seemed. Shyness is really very selfish, very inward.”
“So’s grief, but we don’t blame people for feeling it.”
Deborah blinked. “I like you,” she said, as if startled by the notion. She tipped her head. “When we shook hands I expected you to say something about my, well . . . my little Gift.”
“I don’t speak of what I learn from touch unless there’s a compelling reason, not unless I know it’s okay. Some people dislike having others know.” Earth magic always felt warm to Lily, warm and sandy and slow. A major Earth Gift felt weighty as well, as if the bones and boulders of the earth were pressing up from the sandy surface. Deborah’s Gift wasn’t major, but it was clear and vivid, the sign of someone who used a Gift regularly.
“I am a little uncomfortable discussing it,” Deborah admitted as they started for the pool area. “It’s not as if my parents were Orthodox. They aren’t very religious at all, but I think they see magic as cheating. Certainly they consider it distasteful, not something one should speak of in public. I was raised to keep my ability secret.”
“So was I.” Lily had known Ruben was Jewish, but had the fuzzy notion he was a Jew by heritage more than belief—maybe because the subject of religion had never come up. She hadn’t known that Deborah was Jewish in any sense. She looked so very English. “Back when I was with homicide, I never told anyone I was a sensitive. That was partly because I’d been raised not to speak of it, but also I worried about being used to out someone, you know?”
Deborah nodded. “Torquemada.”
“Among others, yeah.” Sensitives had been used before, during, and after the Purge to find those of the Blood as well as those “tainted” by magic, but Spain’s Grand Inquisitor was the sensitive everyone had heard about. As mass murderers go, he was outranked by Hitler, Lenin, and Pol Pot, but he’d tortured way more than the nine or ten thousand he’d had burned at the stake. “It took a while to get used to being out, but I like it better this way. Lots better.”
“I don’t exactly keep my Gift secret. I just don’t mention it.”
Lily gave her a wry look.
Deborah grimaced. “I guess that amounts to the same thing. Does magic run in your family?”
“On my father’s side, yes, though he isn’t Gifted himself. Why?”
“Oh, I’ve gotten interested in the genetics of it. Particularly after we found out how Ruben’s trace of sidhe blood affects him—first with that allergy problem, then by saving his life. Do you know Arjenie Fox?”
“Sure.” Arjenie was newly mate-bonded to Rule’s brother, Benedict—the only other Chosen in North America. That was a deep, dark secret, of course, but Lily had already known the woman. Arjenie was an FBI researcher.
“I was so surprised when she moved to California. But love does have its way with us, doesn’t it? She’s been helping me. Just as a favor, in her spare time,” Deborah added hastily. “She isn’t using government time or facilities.”
Lily smothered a smile. She suspected Arjenie would use any facilities she wanted. She was highly ethical, but her ethics didn’t run along the same lines as the bureaucracy’s. “Now that I know about your Gift, I’m wondering how much of this”—Lily gestured at the grounds—“you did yourself. It’s gorgeous. In my experience, most Earth-Gifted don’t like to have other people mess in their dirt.”
“I planted and tend every filthy inch,” Deborah said with the particular smugness of a gardener.
So complimenting Deborah on her looks was out. That made her freeze. But compliment her on her gardens and she lit up. “I love this one,” Lily said as they reached a round, tiered bed. “It looks like a wedding cake or a fountain of plants instead of water.” She stopped, tilting her head. Most of the plants weren’t blooming this late in the year, but . . . “Is it a white garden?”
“Oh, you must be a gardener! Yes, I love the way masses of white flowers seem to glow in the dusk. I wish you could have seen it a month ago. Even the summersweet is past its peak now, I’m afraid.”
“Summersweet?” Lily asked. “I don’t know much about your plants here, but I had the idea it was a summer bloomer. There’s that “summer” in the name.”
A dimple winked slyly in Deborah’s left cheek. “I may have persuaded it to keep blooming longer than usual.”
“Now that’s a useful trick. Not one most Earth-Gifted can do, either.”
“An elemental showed me how once.”
Lily’s eyebrows shot up. “An elemental?”
“They show up here from time to time. They’re curious about me, I think.”
“Ah.” She didn’t have to let herself be fetched, Lily decided, and she’d rather talk to Deborah than make up to Bixton’s chief of staff. “I don’t have my own garden, but my grandmother lets me muck around in her dirt. There’s nothing like destroying a few square yards of weeds to set the mind at rest.”
“Exactly. Though Bermuda grass—!” Deborah rolled her eyes. “The people who owned the place before us had planted it. After twenty years, I still find clumps I have to dig out.”
“Nasty stuff. Roots that want to contribute to Chinese agriculture. Why anyone ever thought Bermuda grass was a good idea—”
“They’d never planted a garden, that’s for sure. Talk about invasive. You have it out in California, then?”
“Oh, it’s everywhere. I’ve heard,” Lily said darkly, “it’s been found at the bottom of the Grand Canyon. What kind of grass do you have? It’s a turf grass, I can see that much, but it isn’t like any we use out in California.”
“Kentucky bluegrass. You have to mow it high, but if you do that, an established bluegrass lawn is almost weed-free.”
Twenty minutes later, Lily and Deborah were studying a sad-looking rhododendron on the eastern edge of the lawn near the woods, talking about mulch and compost and black root rot.
“. . . not much of a problem in my part of the country,” Lily was saying, “but I know good drainage is key. But if you’ve already amended the soil and given it your own special boost, then switching to a different mulch—”
A clear tenor voice broke in wryly. “I should have known
.”
Deborah looked over her shoulder at her husband, that single dimple winking again. “Lily likes to garden.”
Ruben Brooks didn’t look like a man who’d recently had a heart attack . . . one that had nearly killed him and still had him on indefinite medical leave. A heart attack caused by a potion that, for reasons of timing and proximity, restricted suspects to those at FBI Headquarters. A potion administered by a traitor.
Tonight, though, Ruben looked healthy. Still on the skinny end of lean, he had a beak of a nose, messy hair, and glasses that said “geek” more than “power broker.” But he wasn’t wasted anymore. He wasn’t in a wheelchair, either. When Lily first met him last November, he’d suffered from a mysterious condition that caused progressive weakness. The condition hadn’t gone away. It was genetic and would be with him for life, but now he knew what triggered it and could avoid his triggers . . . mostly. You couldn’t avoid iron and steel altogether.
He gave her a quizzical smile. “I didn’t realize you were a gardener. You don’t have one yourself.”
“No, but like I told Deborah, I get to play in Grandmother’s dirt.” When she had time. When she was in San Diego instead of Washington.
“I’m glad you get a chance to get grubby. Lily, please try not to react visibly to what I tell you now. I’d like to have a word with you and Rule after the other guests leave. If you could linger without it being noticed . . . perhaps Deborah can show you the ficus that’s trying to take over the sunroom. You can remain inside as the others depart.”
Deborah sighed faintly. “Time, is it?”
“I’m afraid so.”
Lily smiled and nodded as if Ruben had commented on the weather, but now that he’d brought it up, she noticed that the guests had thinned out while she was talking to Deborah. Half a dozen questions jostled in her mind. She suppressed them. If Ruben felt free to tell her what was up, he would have done so. “Okay.”
He couldn’t have read her mind and she didn’t think her face gave her away, but he answered one of the questions anyway. “It’s about the war.”