Ghost Walk

by Cassandra Gannon

  Drat.

  Grace moved. Without making the conscious decision to take even a single step, she was suddenly halfway across the room. She made it to the doorway and tied to remember how to breathe. So far so good. Now how was she going to do the rest of this? “Go check if anyone is coming down the hall.” She got out frantically. “I don’t want to get caught.”

  Jamie rolled his eyes like she was being silly. “I used to make my living sneaking about the seven seas, you know. And a ship is a great deal harder to hide than a wee girl. I think I know how to…”

  “Just go do it!”

  Jamie held up his hands in surrender. (God, he had beautiful hands.) “Fine.” He strolled his invisible self into the hallway and made a production of looking around. “You see? No constables are coming to arrest you. I told you, I will let nothing happen to you.”

  Peaceful green cornfields.

  Peaceful green cornfields.

  Peaceful green cornfields.

  Grace took a deep breath and skirted into the hall. She ducked under the velvet ropes cordoning off the steps and hurried up the steps two at a time. It only took five seconds, but by the time she reached the upper landing, she was pretty sure she was having a heart attack from panic. No one had seen her. Or at least no alarms and sirens were blaring. That was good news. Right?

  God, she was losing her mind.

  How in the world had he convinced her to do that? Why had she felt safe enough to try? Grace never felt safe with anyone, but now she was willing to trust an adrenaline junkie ghost? Maybe she was sick. She paused in the shadows to take her pulse, already expecting the worse. See? Her heart was going too fast. First she’d keel over of a coronary and then she’d get tossed in a prison cell, all because of Jamie.

  The oblivious moron wore an encouraging grin. “You’ve done it! And faster than I ever expected, given your natural pessimism. I knew you had it in ya! It can be quite fun to break the rules, when you give it a go.”

  Satisfied she wasn’t having a heart attack (yet), Grace focused on the idiot ruining her life. “This is not fun, Jamie.” She hissed. “I just want to get it over with as quickly as possible, so I can go home and take a Valium.”

  He made a tsk sound. “You’ve got to overcome your weak spirit, lass. It’s stifling all your potential. There’s nothing wrong with being a bit of an odd-duck. Live your truth.”

  Grace rolled her eyes. He did love his pop-psych crap. She seriously needed to call her cousin Blessing for an anti-ghost spell.

  …Or maybe not. The last spell Blessing cast gave Grace green hair for three weeks. Spells always went wrong. They were the worst kind of magic, in her opinion. Totally unpredictable. She’d probably just end up with two Jamies bitching at her.

  “I’m not weak spirited or an odd-duck.” Grace scowled at him. “I just like to follow the speed limit, pay my taxes on time, and obey the law. That’s being a responsible adult.”

  “It’s being a smashingly dull adult.”

  “At least no one’s lynched me, yet.” Grace headed down the upstairs corridor. “Is her room this way?”

  “Aye, last one on the left.” Jamie followed along behind her, looking irritated. “I wasn’t lynched for anything I did, ya know. My having a bit of fun with Lucinda and dancing at a ball didn’t kill those girls. Hardly fair to blame me for the town being so bloody stupid.”

  “You were a convenient scapegoat, given your reputation.” She glanced up at him. “I don’t suppose you have an alibi for any of the disappearances?”

  “I was getting drunk at The Raven when Lucinda disappeared. I was there late into the night and then I was passed out in my cabin on the Sea Serpent.”

  “None of your men could verify that.”

  “Because they were drunk, too! They were bloody sailors!”

  Grace rolled her eyes again. “What about when the other girls went missing?”

  “How the hell should I know where I was back then? It’s damnably hard to recall all the details, when I’m not even sure exactly when they vanished.”

  “Well, the ‘details’ mean the difference between solving this case or not, so I suggest you try to regain your memory.” She arched a brow, just to needle him. “Unless you have a reason for your amnesia. The murders stopped after you died, after all. Gregory Maxwell’s book tells us that no other girl’s disappeared after you were gone. The Hero of Yorktown found that very coincidental.”

  Jamie’s expression darkened. “Gregory Maxwell was not the sodding Hero of Yorktown and I did not kill anyone, Grace.”

  “The first serial killings in America all happen within a week of each other.” She pointed out, warming to her topic. “That’s the behavior of a perpetrator who’s gotten a taste for it. Someone who’s going to keeping going and escalating, until he’s caught.” She paused. “Then you’re hanged and there were no more killings.”

  “Except I. Didn’t. Bloody. Do it.” Each word was bit off like bullet. “What can I say to make you believe that?”

  “I do believe it.” Really, she did. She’d met killers and this man wasn’t one of them. “It’s just hard to separate these crimes from seeing…” Grace trailed off and shook her head. “Never mind. Forget it.”

  Jamie didn’t look ready to forget it. “Separate them from seeing what?”

  “Bad things.” Anyone with half a brain would’ve heard the finality of those words.

  Jamie frowned, not pleased with her refusal to confide in him. Centuries of isolation had obviously left him desperate for some kind of human connection and she was his only option. The man wanted to know everything about her. If he was corporeal, he’d no doubt be reading her diary and searching through her underwear drawer. “You know, there’s no harm in telling me your secrets. I’m the very best friend you have.”

  “You’ve got to be kidding me.”

  “It’s true! You are more important to me than anyone else, alive or dead. It would be safe to need me back, just a bit. I wouldn’t mind, a’tall.” He paused and tacked on with a suspicious amount of innocence: “I truly could be a grand partner.”

  “You’re not my Partner, Jamie.” He couldn’t be. “You don’t even understand what it really means.” The Riveras were the ones who gave the word all its capitalized subtext. It was their family shorthand for the best kind of magic. Even Grace respected Partners and she worked hard to distance herself from the supernatural.

  “Well, explain it then! What’s the point of keeping things from me? It’s not as if I can share your confidences with anybody else, is it?”

  “Not everyone likes to blurt out every thought in their head.”

  “Usually, that’s only because they’re hiding something.”

  Grace pointedly ignored that, because there was nothing to say. She reached Lucinda’s door and pushed it open with a bit more force than necessary.

  The bedroom was being used as storage, with piles of cardboard boxes and random furniture. Grace hoped they weren’t planning to throw out any of the old knickknacks that were haphazardly arranged on every surface. A little glue and paint and most of them could be saved. She hated to see old things just tossed away, like they’d never meant anything to anyone. Like they had no purpose, just because they’d gotten a few dings.

  Everything deserved a second chance at life.

  Jamie looked around, an amazed expression on his face. “It looks so different.” He whispered.

  Grace cleared her throat. “So this is the last place Lucinda Ann Wentworth was seen. Sunday, June 28th, 1789.” She began, like it was any other crime scene. “Did you meet with her at all that day?”

  “Aye. I saw her in the morning, while the rest of the household was at church. She pleaded a headache and begged off. I stopped by to pay my respects and inquire after her well-being.”

  Grace sifted through that garbage. “She played sick, so you could sneak in and have sex?”

  He shot her a sideways look, amused by her bluntness. “Aye.”
>
  “What time did you leave?”

  “Just before ten. It was the last I ever saw her.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “I was nearly caught pant-less by her sister Eugenia, so I recall it well. The pinched-lipped little thing came back early and I had to hide in the kitchen, with only a flour sack to cover me.” He made a face. “Believe me, that part sticks in my mind.”

  Despite herself, Grace’s mouth twitched upward. “You’re completely blowing my image of staid and respectable Olde Harrisonburg, I hope you know that.”

  Jamie shrugged unrepentant. “Lucinda had a laugh over my predicament, too. She finally tossed me my clothes out the window and I saw her wave goodbye. The next day, I heard she’d disappeared in the night.”

  “Were you worried?”

  “Yes and no. At first, I wondered if she’d left with some man. We all did. Eugenia heard her sneaking out, sometime after midnight. There’d been whispers of Lucinda seeing someone far more important than me.”

  “Do you have any idea who?”

  He shook his head. “No, but she was conscious enough of her place in society that she wouldn’t have settled for anything less than marriage. Even eloping would have been out of character for Lucinda. She would have insisted on a large wedding, to show off a bit. When I considered that, I knew she hadn’t run away.” He paused. “Besides, she never would’ve left all her frocks and jewelry behind.”

  “Did she have any enemies?”

  “Lucinda had dreams to marry a rich man and move to the biggest house his money could buy. Have fancy balls and exclude half the town.” He shrugged. “Maybe she’d pissed off a few other lasses with her flirting ways, but no one would want her dead for it.”

  “Seems like someone did.”

  Jamie’s jaw ticked. “I’ve always supposed it was some bastard she’d turned down. Figured he’d just take what she wouldn’t give.” He looked around as if he was still remembering the cluttered bedroom as it had once been. “She deserved more than being dragged away in the night.”

  “Lucinda probably never left this room alive.”

  He frowned as if that idea hadn’t occurred to him. “What?”

  “According to Eugenia, Lucinda went to bed around nine.” Grace set down her oversized bag and took out her makeshift forensic kit. She’d never thought she’d be using any of it again, but she’d kept a lot of her tools. “Her parents were already asleep down the hall. Around midnight she heard a noise that she thought was her sister sneaking out. In reality, it was probably someone sneaking in. The next morning Lucinda was gone and so were the bed linens, but nothing else. Add it altogether and it sounds like murder, not kidnapping.”

  Jamie’s head tilted. “What makes ya think so? We all believed someone had taken the girls to defile them.”

  “Then he wouldn’t need the bed linens.” Grace pointed out. “No, the linens tell me that there was a clean-up in here.” She looked out the small window. “This room is on the second floor.”

  “Aye.”

  “And no one heard the front door open. That leaves this window as our probable point of entry.” She craned her neck down. “It’s a straight drop into the garden. Was it like that back then, too?”

  He shrugged. “I suppose. I never climbed through her window, but I donea recall a porch below.”

  “Was Lucinda sleeping with anyone but you? This mystery man you were talking about maybe?”

  “Probably.” Jamie said easily. He clearly didn’t buy into the “semi-frigid or pizza-tramp” double standard. “She liked to pass a good time.”

  “Would she sneak out her window to see him?”

  “Scale down the side of the house, you mean?” He actually laughed at that idea. “Lord have mercy, no. Lucinda wasn’t quite so agile.”

  “So that means someone came in here.” Grace looked around. “And it means they left the same way. They must have taken her body with them.”

  But why?

  “Lucinda might not have been dead.” Jamie insisted. “He could’ve just knocked her out and made off with her. Taken her someplace, while she was unconscious.”

  “Carrying a live girl out a window is a lot more difficult than pushing a dead one out the window. It would be easier to rape her here, if that was his plan.”

  Jamie winced a bit at that image.

  Grace barely noticed. Her mind was back in the familiar rhythms of collecting evidence. She looped her camera around her neck, documenting everything she saw. As hopeless as this assignment seemed, she wanted to do everything she possibly could to solve Lucinda’s murder. Grace was good at her job. (Her ex-job.) Maybe there was some scrap of evidence left that she could find.

  Only what kind of evidence lasted two centuries?

  “DNA and fingerprints won’t help us at a scene this old.” She mused out loud. “Who could we compare it to? Fibers are going to be useless, for the same reason. That’s assuming anything even survived twenty-three decades of cleanings and furniture changes. Window’s new, so we can’t check the lock.” She looked down and blinked. “Hang on.” Grace crouched to examine the floorboards. Some of the planks had been replaced, but, like downstairs, most were original. Her brain went “cha-ching!” “Jamie, was there a rug in here?”

  “Why are the living in this town so fixated on floor cloths?”

  “Just answer the question.”

  He sighed like a martyr. “I donea know if Lucinda had a bloody rug.”

  “How can you not know?”

  “It was two hundred and thirty years ago!”

  Grace made an aggravated sound and moved towards the alcove by the window. It was the natural place to fit a mattress. “Is this about where the bed was?”

  “Aye. Right there.”

  “Of course you remember that part.” It irrationally annoyed her that he’d had sex with Lucinda in this very room. The floor here looked good, though. It had mostly been protected by various beds, so there had probably never been a rug covering it. “Hand me that screwdriver, will you?”

  Jamie didn’t move.

  It took Grace a second to realize why.

  “Crap. I keep forgetting the whole ‘you can’t touch anything’ thing.” She quickly got it from her kit herself. “Sorry about that.”

  He ran a hand through his hair, looking frustrated. “No, I’m sorry. It’s my failing, not yours. I’m sorry I can’t help you do this. I’m sorry I’m not really here.”

  She blinked at that phrasing. “But, you are helping and you are here. Trust me, I spent all night trying to convince myself otherwise, but there’s no denying that you’re standing right in front of me.”

  “Or I could still be a brain tumor.”

  “You’re way too handsome to be a brain tumor.” She said before she thought better of it. Something about Jamie had her blurting out things she’d normally keep to herself. Like she could just say anything and it would be okay.

  Like he made her feel… safe.

  Jamie slowly smiled at her. “I like it when you call me handsome.”

  Grace self-consciously swept her hair behind her ears. “Well, we both know it’s true.” She muttered, feeling her cheeks heat up under his intense stare.

  For some reason her blushes always seemed to fascinate him. He studied her for a long moment and then shook his head. “Jesus, Mary and Joseph, Robert must be daft to want another woman.”

  Grace appreciated that sentiment, even if outrageous flirting was his default setting. “The compliments are pretty, but not necessary.” She knelt by an original section of floor. “And I’m already doing what you want, so there’s no need to badmouth Robert to win points.”

  “I’ll badmouth the wanker for fun, then.” Jamie decided good-naturedly. “I wish nothing but curses upon his bland and balding head.” He paused. “And you’re surely not doing everything I want, lass. You closed your bedroom door, last night.”

  “Because you would have watched me get undressed.”

/>   He didn’t even bother to deny that. “I think ya even locked it, which is bloody adorable.”

  She made a face, because that had been kind of brainless. “Yeah, I keep forgetting the ‘you can walk right through walls’ thing, too.”

  “I like that you forget.” He crouched down so they were at eyelevel. “I like that you see me as man. I sure as hell see you as a woman.”

  “Probably because I’m the first one you’ve talked to in over two hundred years.”

  “No. That’s not the reason a’tall.”

  Grace cleared her throat and looked away. Since high school she’d been fantasizing about the painting of this pirate and now he was gazing at her like she was the most magical being he’d ever met. It was no wonder she was losing her mind. How was she supposed to think straight when he was so incredibly… Jamie? “Can we just get back to our crime spree, please?”

  Jamie chuckled at the subject change. “You know, I donea think I’ve ever fancied a shy lass before. ‘Tis quite a delightful thing to see you get discomposed.”

  “I don’t even think that’s a word anymore.” Grace pried up the floorboards, refusing to be taken in by his Scottish-accented appeal. He’d no doubt honed it on every girl in Revolution, from Betsy Ross on down. “And I’m not shy. I’m just cautious around womanizing ghosts.”

  “No need be cautious. It’s not as if I can do much more than talk to you.”

  “With you, talking is plenty.”

  “Kind of you to say so.”

  Grace shot him an exasperated look. “Would you be quiet and let me do this?”

  “Alright, alright.” He obediently left her alone, watching her work. “What in Christ’s name are you doing?” He asked after about thirty seconds. That was the longest he’d stayed silent since they’d met, so it must have taken some real effort for him.

  “This is the same floor Lucinda died on. The surface has been cleaned a thousand times since then, but not the sides. Wood is porous.” She finally wrenched a board loose and set it sideways, so she could look at the unfinished edge. “You see?” She pointed at the telltale black stains. “Blood seeps through the cracks and gets absorbed. Two hundred years and it’s there.” She began yanking up more boards, trying to see how big the pool had been.