Tears burned behind Maddy’s eyes as she imagined Gracie’s final moments, but she didn’t allow them to fall.
The air grew heavier and damp. The shadows darkened. The forest thickened around them and the mist from the falls rose up in fine droplets that coated their hair and skin.
“Evelyn died a long time ago, Tom,” Maddy began.
“Shut up! You think I don’t know that? I’ve read her diary again and again. I’ve sat here by the falls where she died, broken and bleeding and alone. My wife is gone. We can never be together again. But Evelyn is here and the sheriff is supposed to love her. Not your stepsister with her camera and her tag-a-long ways. Around every corner. Noticing everything until a man can’t take a step without her knowing all his secrets. The sheriff was starting to notice her…and then you. With your gardens and your energy. Evelyn can’t reach him with you in the way. You push her out. You bring him back from his grief and he’s not open to her anymore. Now you have to die, too,” Tom said.
He was panting with the exertion of speaking through tears that flowed unchecked down his hollow cheeks.
Maddy had stopped several feet from the edge of the slippery rock where she’d almost fallen before. She’d told Amelia where they were. And Constantine had been with Amelia. Somehow she had to avoid the edge and a bullet until help arrived.
“Your wife loved gardens, too,” she said.
Tom stopped. His eyes widened. Maddy thought they even brightened. For a second she thought she saw flecks of gold his wife might have seen in better times.
“Her name was Julia. She grew chrysanthemums. Prize-winning mums. I still have all her ribbons,” Tom said. He wasn’t a killer. Not really. Whatever was left of Evelyn Chadwick Wildes—her pain, rage and loneliness—had found a host in him.
Maddy took a step forward from the ledge where the coolness of an open space behind her had slid fingers of gravity down her spine. Her movement was a mistake. Tom lifted his gun and gripped it with white knuckles. She couldn’t tell if he strained against the lift or if he was ferocious in holding the revolver in place. His back straightened and his chin came up.
“It’s all over now. Julia is gone. Evelyn is here. The sheriff is finally here. They belong together,” Tom said. His eyes had gone even darker than before. The white of his knuckles faded. Any resistance to the influence of the jealous ghost was gone.
Alwaysssss
Scarlet Falls whispered below her feet. Tom walked toward her, gesturing with the gun and her feet slid back, closer and closer to the edge. Slick moss moved beneath her boots and tiny pebbles gave way to fall and be eaten by metallic-scented mist.
When Constantine came off the path at a run with his gun drawn and Mark Smith by his side, Maddy saw Tom tense to pull the trigger, but she also saw the diving black shape of a living missile plunge from the sky. She heard the beat of wings and the screech of a caw and suddenly sharp talons were tangled in her hair. Her scalp was on fire as the talons scratched and sank into her skin. A sudden hot trickle of blood rolled down into her eye.
She tried not to stumble and failed. She tried to push the crow off of her head. Its sharp beak pecked and pinched and tore at her fingers.
But then a yellow blur erupted with a yowl from the trees to land in the middle of Tom McCall’s chest.
His gun arm lifted. The shot fired into the air. Maddy dropped to the ground and the bird left her with a shriek that sounded almost human, scared by the stray cat that propelled the lost deputy over her and off the mossy rocks. He didn’t scream. He only fell. Another soul to join Evelyn’s restless one on the rocks below.
But not just her soul.
Amelia came forward from behind the sheriff and Mark. Had she called him Marcus on the phone? In her arms, she cradled the chest full of bone fragments and dust. No one stopped her when she solemnly walked to Maddy’s side. When she kneeled, Maddy rose up beside her and helped. They both lifted the lid. They both spilled the contents of the chest over the ledge. The mist claimed the falling remains. It seemed to swirl and eddy, pulling the fragments down into the pools of water at the base of the falls. What fell on the sharp rocks was soon washed into the water by splashes and sprays.
Maddy tried not to look at Tom’s body. But his hand had splayed out beside him when he fell and it dipped into the deepest pool of water as if he was pointing, showing the remains of Evelyn where they needed to go.
With profound relief, she saw Gibbons II climb from the water and collapse. Still alive after his fall.
Chapter Twelve
The vanity found a new home at Hillhaven house. The Chadwick’s had settled in a retirement village on the outskirts of Boston. No one was surprised by their decision not to return to Scarlet Falls, least of all their daughter, Trinity Chadwick Creed. They had found the atmosphere elsewhere much lighter and to their liking although if any grandchildren came along in the future it might change their minds.
Hillhaven was empty save for Samuel Creed’s office and his collection of strange and unusual things steeped in mystery that belied their seemingly ordinary appearance—a rusty red wagon, a single tiny Mary Jane shoe, photographs, musty letters and now a chestnut dressing table with an empty frame where its mirror had been.
To this day, Maddy shivered when she thought of anyone ever opening its drawer.
Marcus Wildes was an FBI agent sent undercover to investigate Gracie’s death. The night she’d run into him after her near encounter with Evelyn’s wrath in the spooky old Victorian with its drop cloth forest, he’d been conducting surveillance. They’d found DNA under Gracie’s fingernails. They’d also found forget-me-nots in her shallow grave. The second meant nothing to Wildes. The first led him to Tom McCall after having tested Sheriff Constantine with negative results.
Maddy had blown the element of surprise. Tom must have seen them talking and had run off wary of Marcus Wildes’ suspicions. That and her intimacy with Constantine had put her in extreme danger.
Amelia was the one who figured out what to do. Her efforts to bring the chest to the falls and dump the remains seemed to quiet Evelyn’s restless spirit for good. Perhaps her body and soul had been reunited in an afterlife Maddy had never imagined could exist.
Gracie’s old friend and fellow paranormal investigator was also the one who discovered the resemblance between William Constantine and Avery Wildes. Later, she’d shown the daguerreotype to Maddy. The same light eyes. The same thick hair. The same slight smile on a lean, handsome face. It had been eerie to see her lover’s face staring back at her from 1866 wearing union blue.
They’d done an ancestry search online to find out more about Constantine’s family. The relationship between the Constantines and the Wildes was distant, but the resemblance had resurfaced after multiple generations. He had thought the job of sheriff had brought him to town, but now it seemed there might have been darker pulls at play.
Marcus Wildes had been taciturn about his own connections to the Wildes family, but something told Maddy that Amelia wouldn’t merely accept the agent’s silence. Apparently, the two very different kinds of investigators had known each other long before Amelia had even heard of Scarlet Falls.
∗ ∗ ∗
A rich and fragrant aroma woke Maddy from an untroubled sleep. She stretched and inhaled.
Espresso.
Constantine had brought his machine and she’d made a place for it on her kitchen counter. She’d found other places for all of his things. Her craftsman wasn’t temporary anymore.
Gibbons II touched his cold nose to hers and Maddy opened one eye. The yellow tabby had recuperated from his plummet to near death. He blinked at her then turned to jump to the floor. He padded out of the room with only a slight limp to indicate he was any less than he used to be.
His possible progenitor still slept for eternity on an embroidered pillow across town.
The cat who had helped to save her life yowled for pate in the kitchen.
Maddy smiled when she heard Constantine
whir the can opener.
She rose and shrugged into a uniform shirt left hanging over the bedpost from the night before. She didn’t bother to do up the buttons or brush her hair. She didn’t put on anything else. She walked into the kitchen with sleep-mussed tangles, not looking for coffee or pate.
Constantine stood in sunrise glow with his steaming mug in his hand. His chest was bare. His cotton sleep pants sat low on his lean hips. He had begun to gain a little of the weight he’d lost in the battle to maintain autonomy from Evelyn’s spirit.
Maddy walked up and wrapped her arms around him from behind. His warm back heated her chilled breasts.
“I don’t think your uniform is quite regulation, Ms. Clark,” Constantine growled.
He turned in her arms and leaned to kiss her. They were both still satiated from a long night of loving, but Maddy always enjoyed her first taste of morning coffee on Constantine’s lips.
“A person who plants a garden believes in tomorrow,” Constantine murmured near her ear when they came up for air.
“What?” Maddy asked.
Her brain had gone fuzzy from the kiss and also from his hands. He’d set his mug down on the counter and now both of his hands were cupped on her bare bottom beneath his shirt.
“It’s a quote I saw after you came to town. It stayed with me. I hadn’t believed in anything after my partner’s death. I saw you believing day after day after day. It changed something in me. Your belief in tomorrow. I wasn’t as hollow as I’d been before,” Constantine said.
“That’s why Evelyn wanted me gone,” Maddy said.
“With Gracie, I think Evelyn was afraid of discovery. With you, she was afraid of being completely exorcized,” Constantine agreed.
She’d always wondered about Constantine and Gracie. Now she knew. There hadn’t been any romantic feelings between them. Only Gracie’s search for evidence of Evelyn’s existence and Constantine’s determined fight against the very idea of an entity who might try to penetrate his stoic control of his grief.
“You’re a good sheriff,” Maddy assured the man she held. He buried his face in her neck and pulled her closer.
“I’ll be a better one now that my eyes are opened,” Constantine said. “My instincts told me there was something wrong in Scarlet Falls. I should have listened.”
“Samuel Creed says the town is haunted because of a curse. He says one of the women who was drowned as a witch in 1692 swore vengeance on the Chadwick judge who ordered the dunkings. She was a Wildes, by the way. The woman who cursed the town,” Maddy said.
Her words caused Constantine to straighten and smile.
His smiles came easier to him now, but that didn’t make her any less warm whenever she saw them.
“Not so sure I’m willing to stretch my beliefs that far. Witches and curses and…” Constantine said.
“Hauntings,” Maddy said. “Trinity says the accidents that happen especially at night are malevolent spirit activity.”
They both stood silent after that holding each other close. Outside the town started to wake with the sun. Garage doors opened. Blinds rose. Cars started to move down the street.
They’d had firsthand experience of a malevolent spirit of the worst kind.
“But you want to stay in Scarlet Falls?” Constantine asked into her tousled hair.
Maddy thought of all the work she’d done and all the work she still had to do. Gardens to create and gardens to reclaim. Weeds to cut back and tame. A whole town to save, one flower bulb at a time.
She nodded and looked up into Constantine’s clear blue eyes.
“You were right. I do believe in tomorrow.”
Epilogue
The attic rooms he’d rented in the Stewart’s bed-and-breakfast were roomier than the apartment he would now have to sublet in Georgetown. Marcus Wildes folded the deputy uniform he’d worn for the past year and placed it in a dry cleaning bag for pick up. He’d have it delivered to the sheriff’s office once it had been cleaned.
But he didn’t change into any of the dark suits that waited in the back of the dusty closet under the eaves. Instead, he pushed them farther back and pulled out a leather jacket to shrug over a casual shirt and jeans.
Sabbatical.
He was long overdue for a vacation. Amelia Glass had picked the time and place.
Scarlet Falls.
His instincts had started buzzing before he’d even crossed the county line. He’d fought the hum of warning for almost 365 days. For her. He didn’t know if he could fight it much longer but he had to try.
For as long as he’d known Glass she’d been in danger. Hell, she doggedly hunted danger, drawn to it like a mouse to cheese in a trap. She’d escaped the deadly snap time and again.
But not this time.
The itch under his skin—the same one that had pointed him toward Tom McCall as a prime suspect when others would never have believed it—said that this time Amelia Glass would die. He wasn’t fond of what his heightened instinct said about his unusual ancestry. He’d spent his life with his back strongly turned against the idea of anything remotely associated with the occult. But he didn’t turn his back on the skill itself. His ability to feel the right way to go in an investigation had saved lives and brought killers to justice.
What Amelia Glass saw when she looked at him through the lens of the battered old camera she wielded in her work was something he tried not to think about at all.
∗ ∗ ∗
Outside, the old Victorian bed-and-breakfast, a solitary large crow with faded, ruffled wings perched on the ledge of a mullioned attic window. The crow worried and pecked the wavy vintage pane making no other sound but the hollow thump and sliding shriek of its beak against glass.
Again and again, the crow doggedly attacked the glass as if it tried to tear its way into the attic rooms beyond. Each failing impact was too far from the ground to be heard by anyone passing below.
If someone had noticed, if someone had braved an approach to the seemingly mad creature with ladder or open window, they would have seen deep scratches pitted in the pane from the crow’s force and persistence. They would have seen that the window was smeared with the crow’s blood, but that it didn’t seem bothered by the injury it had caused to itself. Its feathers were damp and matted around its beak from its constant, useless effort.
Weeks upon weeks of effort.
∗ ∗ ∗
Marcus left his attic rooms without noticing the bird who seemed determined to join him inside and went in search of the woman he would either damn or save in Scarlet Falls.
About the Author
Barbara Hancock lives in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains, where her daily walk takes her to the edge of the wilderness and back again. When Barbara isn't writing modern Gothic romance that embraces the shadows with a unique blend of heat and heart, she can be found wrangling twin boys and spoiling her pets.
Also by Barbara J. Hancock
Harlequin E Shivers
Darkening Around Me
Silent is the House
The Girl in Blue
Queen of Stone
By Jen Christie
To Jocelyn
“To plant a garden is to believe in tomorrow.” —Audrey Hepburn
Chapter One
Liberal, Kansas
April 1935
The day before I left my home forever, I stood in the doorway, looked to the sky and saw no hint of the danger that awaited me. Not a single cloud marred my view. The sun hung like a yellow pearl against a silken blue sky. That is the dark secret of drought—it comes cloaked in blue skies and sunny days, the fair weather of happy times. But, these were not happy times. I needed only to look down at the earth, at the barren, dusty fields that once held oceans of wheat and I knew exactly why my suitcase stood packed and ready at the door.
My father would be home at four. Until then, I had to finish pulling his uniform from the clothesline and make a simple meal for us. Our last meal together. I ga
thered the last ingredients from our icebox. A few limp carrots, a withered onion, the meat from a chicken slaughtered only last night and government flour for biscuits. Funny, a wheat farmer needing government-rationed flour to cook.
I felt tense and anxious, uneasy about the future. Time and again I stared out the kitchen window, across the fields and toward a future that I couldn’t see. I fiddled nervously with my ring—a worthless piece of jewelry, silver plated and fashioned to resemble a vine. I wore it only because it was my mother’s and all I had left of her. I had grown too thin for it, but couldn’t stand to be apart from it, so I was ever touching it, checking on it.
Sometimes as I played with the ring, my thoughts drifted to my mother. I was surprised that after only a year the images were already slipping from my mind. The clearest and freshest that remained was oddly also the oldest, occurring when I was only three or four years old. We stood on the small patio and I balanced on her feet while she laughed and danced. That was when life was sweet and I had no fears at all.
My father always said that I had my mother’s disposition, since my personality was very different from his. I favored him only with my looks. I was fair-haired and tall like him. My mother was small and birdlike, with warm brown hair and eyes. My features were a mixture of the two. I had a rather blunt nose and a few too many freckles, also like my father. Now, I would sit and have my last meal with him in the house where I grew up.
I set the knife down on the counter and stared mindlessly out the window. I saw our well, with the old windmill on top and the small, barren land just beside the well where I tried my best to grow a garden. I closed my eyes and could still imagine the garden from my youth. Tomato vines that wound their way to the sky. Row upon row of carrots, their green tops bursting from the soil. The gray-green heads of new lettuce as they poked through the dark earth. All gone now. The animals, too. We had sold what stock we could and given away to neighbors what we couldn’t sell.
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