Haunt My Heart

by Medley, Lisa

  “No.” Sarah stood and pressed her forehead against the window pane.

  “Yes! And I’m on a plane to New York to meet with the web developer franchise office. They want me to temporarily fill her spot. Me. I think your luck is rubbing off.”

  “I don’t know what to say. I mean, I knew Candace was bitchy, but this? I’m shocked. Shocked. Congratulations. How long are you going to be gone?”

  “Until next week for sure. That’s also what I called to tell you. The office is closed for the rest of the week, pending an investigation and the collection of more evidence. You’ll need to drop by your laptop too. Sorry. It’s evidence now as well. Don’t delete anything. Just shut it down and bring it by tomorrow. There are scads of FBI guys all over the building.”

  Sarah ran a hand through her hair. “I can’t get over it. How long do you think the office will be closed? Will we get paid? I can’t afford to go without a paycheck.”

  “That’s one of the reasons I’m headed to New York. To sort all of that out. They did say everyone, who’s not implicated of course, will be compensated as usual. You just got a week, maybe two, of paid vacation, baby. You can thank Candace for that.”

  “Seems like everyone I know is going to jail. You be careful in New York. I can’t afford bail money for you. I’ll miss you.”

  “Don’t worry about me. I’m sorry I won’t be there tonight. Speaking of jailbirds, no word from Jason, I hope.”

  “No, but I filed for the restraining order, and I know he’s out on bail.”

  “So much for the thirty days. I’m calling Adam next. I’m sure he’ll be willing to help you if that asshole decides to visit again. Promise me you won’t let him in.”

  Sarah was silent a beat too long.

  “I mean it, Sarah.”

  “Oh don’t worry. I won’t. Nothing could make me open the door to him again. But that’s what I was going to talk to you about. I did have a visitor the other night.”

  “Who? What happened?”

  Sarah hesitated, already regretting telling her over the phone, but closed her eyes and forged ahead. “Tanner.”

  “Your secret admirer? Seriously? What does he look like? Tell me everything.”

  Sarah walked to the couch and sat, pulling the ring from beneath her sweater. The words she wanted to say seemed ridiculous. Were ridiculous. But she felt safe with Ellie, and if anyone was open-minded enough to hear her story, it was her.

  “I think…he…”

  “What? Did he hurt you?”

  The ring began to heat in her palm, and she peered down at it. A faint glow emanated from it and it grew warm, but not to an uncomfortable level.

  “No. But he did frighten me. He appeared very late and he was…”

  “What?”

  “I’m sorry. I don’t know. It was a strange meeting is all. It’s probably nothing.”

  “Sarah Elizabeth Knight, if you have a not-right feeling about this guy…at all, you do not see him again. You lock yourself in that apartment and stay there until I get back. I mean it.”

  “I can’t do that. I don’t think he’s dangerous. If he were, he could have had his way after I passed out.”

  “Passed out? Jesus, I’m coming home. You can’t be alone.”

  “No! I shouldn’t have even told you. I’m fine. It’s fine. I probably won’t even see him again after last night. I’m pretty sure he’s gone.”

  Silence stretched across the connection, and she could feel the weight of Ellie’s worry, and now guilt.

  “A few days ago you didn’t think Jason was dangerous. How do you feel about him now?”

  Sarah went cold. It was true that her perception of men was perhaps flawed. She’d always been too trusting. There was no way she could tell Ellie the rest of what was going on over the phone.

  “Don’t worry. Go. Save the company. Save my job. Be awesome. I’ll see you when you get back.”

  Ellie sighed. “I’m assigning Adam as your bodyguard while I’m gone. If anything happened to you…”

  “Nothing is going to happen.”

  “Shit.”

  “Quit worrying. And I don’t need a bodyguard. A helpful neighbor is plenty. Thank you. I’ll try not to break him while you’re gone.”

  “I’ll call you every day.”

  “Perfect.”

  *

  Tanner’s relief was great when Sarah’s conversation finally drew to an end. Ellie was clearly delayed for a few days, Sarah was without employment and now, hopefully, he would have another chance to reach out to her. She reached for her phone again and called for the delivery of something called pizza.

  Drawn back to her computer, she sat and continued to study the images on the display. He’d read what she’d transposed into the notebook over her shoulder as she wrote, and again as she’d entered her conclusions into the computer. Her notes appeared in a neat font disappearing down the screen into oblivion. Miraculously, she had in fact broken the code, but the resulting message was also coded as a fail-secure. There was no way she’d break the second code. That key resided within him alone.

  As the evening passed, Sarah devoted herself to her task, filling the notebook and screen with more and more still-unbreakable pages of the Brothers of Peril grimoire. It would take weeks to transpose the entire book, but she had the first chapter nearly completed. The sustenance she’d called pizza, which had been delivered hours earlier, had smelled so wonderful he was amazed she hadn’t heard the growling of his reawakened stomach. Food had suddenly and unexpectedly begun to seem like a good idea again. Hours later, half of the meal sat untouched and cold on her desk.

  At last, she rubbed at her eyes and stretched, her spine crackling with the realignment after spending the bulk of the day hunched over her work. Bitly had long ago abandoned his efforts at gaining her attention or affection and lay curled in the chair by the window. She crossed and stared down into the street.

  “Where are you, Tanner?” she asked the night.

  Tanner had already accosted one of her friends in his efforts to achieve corporeality. And as his own energy faded, he was sure he’d need to do it many times over this night for his next attempt with Sarah. Time was running out.

  While Sarah performed her nightly rituals in the bathroom and prepared for bed, Tanner once again slipped out and into the hallway. His lack of energy feeding had left him weaker than he liked, and he easily passed through the first two apartment doors along her hallway to feed like some sort of parasitic incubus from her neighbors’ energy while they slept.

  This was what Sylvia had reduced him to. Small consolation that, so far, none of his victims had been seriously damaged…or killed. Yet.

  When he’d achieved a full and corporeal form once again, he reveled in the miracle for only a few seconds before slipping down to the coffee shop. He’d worried about his clothing, but it seemed the shop’s many patrons found his appearance mildly amusing and nothing more. Fredericksburg was clearly a historically-minded city, and he assumed they took him for a ‘volunteer’ from Chatham Manor or the like, if they questioned his attire at all. No one asked and he didn’t offer any explanation. In fact, he made it a point to be standoffish, lost in the perusal of the vast volumes the shop boasted in the hopes of avoiding conversation all together.

  His mere proximity to the remaining patrons would hopefully be enough to sustain his form for his next encounter with Sarah. It had to work. Now, if only his powers of persuasion were half as effective. He browsed the shop for more than an hour before he noticed the staff winding down for closing. Soaking in the warm flow of energy from each person he came near, he let their auras feed him, making him feel stronger than he had since that fateful day at Chatham, before he’d lost his life.

  Filled to overflowing, he marveled at his reflection in the bookstore window. For the first time since he’d been reawakened, he realized he manufactured an aura of his own.

  A few minutes before the coffee shop closed, Tanner climbed the
staircase to Sarah’s apartment once more and stood outside her door. What if she didn’t open for him this time?

  What if she did?

  He couldn’t shake the certainty that the moments that were about to follow would determine his fate once and for all. Once again, he was at the mercy of a woman.

  This time, however, it was a woman he was certain he could love.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Sarah groaned. Again with the knocking? What was this? Grand Central Station? One night of peace was all she asked. One. Night.

  A quick glance at her phone revealed the time as 12:02 a.m.

  She flipped back the covers and padded to the door, pressing her ear to it for any clue as to the identity of her visitor. Drawing in a deep breath, she resigned herself to whatever lay ahead.

  “Who is it?” she asked.

  “It’s Tanner, Sarah. May I come in?”

  Indecision beat at her as her heart rate kicked up. She considered calling Adam. “I don’t know, Tanner. I don’t think this is going to work out between us.”

  A long silence followed, and she thought perhaps he’d slipped away, when a thin book slid beneath her door. She bent to retrieve it.

  The Supernatural Civil War: Ghosts, Legends and More

  “Have you read this one?” he asked.

  “No.”

  “Turn to page 167, if you would, please.”

  She did and slumped against the doorway, its support the only thing stopping her from sliding to the floor. The title of the chapter beginning on page 167 was “The Brothers of Peril.” Her mind raced. Everything and nothing made sense at the same time. She had all of the pieces but still couldn’t see the big picture. Answers skirted the edges of her consciousness, like a name or a word you can’t quite retrieve but know you know.

  “What does this mean, Tanner?” she asked through the door, wanting and not wanting to hear his answer.

  “I am the key to your book, Sarah. Let me in, and I’ll tell you everything.”

  After several long moments, Sarah opened the door. She’d backed as far away from Tanner as she could in the small apartment, clutching her scissors in her hand once again as he sat soldier straight on her small couch. The air around him radiated like a heat mirage, making him seem otherworldly. Only Bitly’s open acceptance of him as he rubbed his large feline head against Tanner’s hand relieved her anxiety, turning it down from an eleven to a ten.

  She studied him as he sat, clearly gathering his thoughts and stroking Bitly’s back and ears. The silence finally overcame her, and she broke it.

  “Are you an angel?” she asked, her heart skipping ahead several beats.

  “Hardly.” He laughed and the tension cracked a bit. The sound of his laughter warmed her in places it shouldn’t have, catching her off guard. His dark black hair shone in the firelight, curling at the overlong ends along his uniform collar.

  “Then who? What?”

  “As I told you earlier, at this moment, I’m a ghost, although a bit more corporeal than I was when we last met.” He smiled. “The book you are trying to translate is a grimoire, which belonged to the Brothers of Peril. I was a member of the Brothers of Peril. Not a practitioner of magic, but a liaison. My name is James ‘Tanner’ Dawson. I was a journalist before I joined the war. My family had money and connections. That wasn’t why I was quickly promoted to Lieutenant, however. I had…some skills. I encoded the pages you are trying to interpret. While you’ve done well so far, the key lies in me alone, and I can’t allow the book or its translation to fall into the wrong hands. The book is dangerous.”

  “So that’s why you’re here? To retrieve the book? And whose hands exactly would it be you are trying to keep it out of? Our government? Because I don’t have the actual book. It’s across the river at Chatham. A national park, by the way, and on display for anyone to see, which is pretty surprising if it’s that dangerous.”

  Tanner bowed his head in acquiescence. “I don’t even know anymore which side to entrust it to…if any. I’ve been hexed to Purgatory for more than a hundred and fifty years. When you found the ring…somehow, your energy awakened me.” Tanner twisted his hands together in his lap and rocked forward, eager to continue. “Sarah, I don’t understand the sorcery behind what has happened to me, and now to you as well. What I do understand is that I have grown to care for you in the short time I’ve known you…gotten to know you. I don’t want anything to happen to you. But I need your help.”

  “You saved me from Jason?”

  “Yes. I wish I could have done more. I wanted to.”

  “You did enough. You stopped him before he could…”

  Tanner rose and turned to her. Tall and striking in his uniform, rumpled though it was, he appeared a handsome man. Very handsome, if she wanted to admit it. Certainly he wasn’t the troll she’d feared him to be. But a ghost? He seemed real enough standing before her now. But she couldn’t shake the tremors of uncertainty running through her, leaving her skittish and on edge. Everything about Tanner, from his letters to his actions earlier with Jason to his demeanor now, told her she had nothing to fear from him. Supernatural entity or not, he was here to help, not harm her. The sincerity in his eyes—his bright blue eyes—weakened her resolve and tears began to stream down her face before she could hide them.

  He’d been kinder to her in the two weeks she’d corresponded with him than Jason had in five years. Tanner was the sort of man she wanted to love. If he were a man at all.

  She felt him close the distance behind her as a war of indecision battled inside her. The practical side of her warned her to be afraid, to run from him, but the other part of her begged her to give him a chance and be open to the possibilities, impossible as they seemed.

  His very real hands closed against her shoulders and a static electricity sparked between them, then spread down her arms and through her chest, erasing her fears and good sense. After her encounter with Jason, enduring a man’s touch was the last thing she could have imagined herself doing. Yet, here she was.

  She turned toward him and searched his eyes, studied his face and wondered at him. “How can this be so? How can you be so? It’s all too much. Were the letters real? Or a ploy to get to the book?”

  “I meant every word of my letters. You are a bright light and have pulled me from a living Hell.”

  “I don’t know what to believe. It’s all so…crazy.”

  “I know. It’s like a dream.” Tanner reached a tentative hand to her face and slid it along her jaw and into her hair. Her eyes closed, and she leaned toward him, drawn to his light and his touch.

  His lips pressed to her forehead and when she pulled away to look up at him, a passion ignited within her she hadn’t known existed. Pulling his head down to meet her, she pressed her lips to his and his arms engulfed her. Lost in his kiss, the room, her troubles, her questions all faded away. She was consumed by the press of his firm body against hers as he gripped her tightly to him, like he was hanging on for dear life.

  Only the need for air brought her back to reality. Embarrassed at her reaction, she pulled away first and backed to the window to distance herself from him.

  “I don’t know why I did that. I don’t even know you,” she offered in defense.

  “I feel like I’ve always known you.”

  The sudden closeness of the room overwhelmed her. “None of this is real. You aren’t real.”

  “That kiss. Your touch. That was real. You make me real again. You can give me back the life I lost.”

  “How?” she whispered.

  “By believing me. You know what I’ve told you is true.”

  “It’s what you haven’t told me that I worry about.”

  His brow crinkled in concern. “It’s too much for one night. I should go.”

  Tanner turned and walked to the door. Bitly leaped from the couch and wound between Tanner’s legs as he made his way across the room, a feline obstacle course slowing his departure.

  “Don�
�t go,” Sarah said, her request surprising her.

  Tanner hesitated, hand on the door knob. “I don’t want to go. But I don’t know how long I can stay. I may fade away again.”

  “Then stay until you do.”

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Tanner’s greatest dream stood behind him and every bit of his essence demanded he seize what was his for the taking. The kiss had catalyzed him in a way no other energy exchange had thus far. His body was alive—truly alive—in every way, and walking away from Sarah was the last thing he wanted. But it was too soon. Too much to ask of her. Too much to expect from her. Too much to wish for…until she said the word.

  Stay.

  His good intentions crumbled and desire quickly filled the space they’d occupied since the moment his lips touched hers. He couldn’t imagine leaving her side again. Ever. As real as he felt now, his essence filling his body as sure as it had before he’d passed, the fear remained. How long would his corporeal state last? What if he faded away before her eyes? After all Sarah had endured thus far, would that be the final thing that pushed her over the edge?

  He wondered if he could survive it himself.

  Tanner wanted his body back. His life back. But in this moment, he wanted Sarah more. He found himself in her arms before he could even think on all of the reasons he shouldn’t. Her eager gaze spurred him onward despite his reservations as his emotions, and then his biology, got the better of him.

  His member hardened like the attentive stance of every good soldier.

  He kissed her hard and with a hunger he wasn’t sure could ever be satiated. Sarah’s hands tangled in his hair, and she radiated with light before him. The taunt muscles of her lean back strained beneath the cotton of her thin shirt as she clutched at him and returned his kiss, demanding more and everything from him. A sweet vanilla scent drifted from her hair, and her hands worked at his Union jacket, struggling to undo the buttons between them. His long neglected heart rent in half when her warm hands slid beneath his own shirt and up his ribs, nearly bringing him to his knees. The contact sparked electric and light energy surged through him.