Like her mother, Emma was a highly gifted medium, one with the ability to hear the spirits, as well as sometimes see and smell demons or specters from the spiritual realm.
“I sense her, too,” Cecilia agreed, her voice trilling with enthusiasm.
Ari glanced up and found both women staring at him, but he hadn’t expected the slightly wide-eyed expression on Emma’s face. She appeared panicked, threatened. He’d seen a similar look in her eyes during their recent show-down with Ares by the River Styx.
River picked up on her reaction, turning toward her in concern. “What is it, Em?” He slid an arm about her shoulders, drawing her against his side. “Are you all right?”
Emma swallowed visibly, nodding. “Juliana says . . . she’s glad that Ari has us as his friends.” She glanced up at River. “That you, especially, are a true, kind friend, and he deserves that . . . needs that.” Emma’s voice had a distant, slow quality to it, as if she were on the telephone, repeating what the person on the other end of the receiver was saying. In a sense, that was exactly what she was doing, only in this case she was listening in on a party line from the other side.
Ari tensed against the sofa, torn between wanting to bolt and needing to move closer to Emma as she spoke.
Emma locked gazes with him, her pale eyes blazing with otherworldly energy. “Juliana says that she waited for you. That you never came back to her.” She tilted her head, eyebrows lowering as if she was straining to hear the words. “Juliana says she kept waiting here, but you were gone.” Emma’s gaze focused on him, eyes brimming brightly.
Panicked at the sudden change in inflection and tone that Emma had assumed, Ari stood. “What’s going on, Em?”
She pressed both hands against her temples as if in pain. “I believed you loved me, Aristos. That you understood how deeply I loved you. Surely you knew my heart; I was very clear about my feelings. Why did you wait such a very long time to return to me?”
Oh, shit. Juliana realized she was dead, didn’t she?
He began to tremble like crazy, feeling that fiery energy blaze all over his body. His face flushed, his arousal magnifying sharply, and he started pacing in short strides in an effort to walk it off.
One more time she repeated the plaintive question. “Why did you not return to me, Aristos?”
He rounded on Emma, staring at the regal countenance of Juliana herself. Not literally, but the words and timbre of voice coming from Emma were no longer her own. And years of pent-up grief, and heartbreak, and longing, welled up inside of him; he couldn’t hold back the torrent of feeling.
“Why didn’t I come back for you?” he cried out, not trying to censor his reaction. “Because you were long gone! Damn, I was hardly gonna hang around after that.”
Emma jerked back on the sofa as if he’d slapped her, blinking in stinging reaction. “This manner in which you speak is unfamiliar to me. I don’t understand these coarse words. When is this time?”
Oh, double, triple shit. What am I supposed to say to that one?
“Uh, Emma?” Ari tried, never taking his gaze off of her. “You in there still? Emma, I think I need . . . a little help.”
Cecilia moved to his side very quickly. “Aristos, listen very carefully to me,” she said, leaning up to whisper in his ear. “You don’t have to tell her how long she’s been gone, or how she died. She does not seem to understand her fate.”
“She knows who you and Emma are, and that I’m here. . . . Why doesn’t she realize when she . . . you know?” he hissed.
“Juliana’s perceptions are not grounded in time and space. Some facts are clear, others very murky,” Cecilia explained in a low voice. “Be cautious with her.”
When Ari gave her a desperate glance, Cecilia added, “If she’s confused about her past, actual details might upset her.”
He nodded and was about to attempt a bland, openended answer to Juliana’s queries, when Emma cried out. She doubled over, pressing both hands against her temples with a moan. River knelt down in front of her immediately, murmuring words that Ari couldn’t make out. The buzzing energy in his own brain had become much louder, deafening, until it blocked out all other sounds.
Emma looked in his direction, her dazed eyes filled with anxiety. “Juliana’s pushing at my mind. She wants to enter me, speak through me . . . touch through me. Before, I was only repeating her words, but now she’s trying to force her way into my mind and body.”
“Just tell me what she says. I can’t deal with anything more, Emma.”
He bolted as far away from Emma as he could without leaving the room, backing toward the fireplace. The posture was his military default—the need to secure his rear, positioning himself where he could see and thwart any impending attack. Current events definitely felt like one hell of an assault.
Emma wrapped both arms about herself as if hoping to bar the ghostly spirit from invading her body. “She’s too strong, Ari. She’s insisting, and . . . she needs to see you. To touch you. I can’t keep her out.”
A cold chill chased down his spine as if he’d just been blasted by an arctic wind. His whole body trembled; he shivered like Emma herself was doing. He backed up another step, the fireplace mantel jabbing into his back.
Emma’s head lifted once again, her pale blue eyes—ones that were identical to those Juliana had possessed—locking on him with a vibrant, magnetic gaze. Emma’s not the one looking at me anymore, he realized.
Only one woman had ever studied him with that kind of fire blazing in her rare gaze. Juliana Tiades. “I think I’m losing it,” he muttered, rubbing his sweating forehead, but nobody seemed to hear.
With a regal sweep of her right hand, Juliana rose to her feet, standing tall and confidently proud. The refined posture was hauntingly familiar, just as Emma was hauntingly gone from her own body. Ari jerked backward, the mantel pushing hard against his spine. Nowhere to run, nowhere to hide, and Juliana continued walking toward him, that graceful glide the same as it had been more than one hundred years ago.
Their gazes locked across the small space that separated them, and it was as if words passed between them. Volumes of unspoken syllables that he’d never had the chance to murmur in Juliana’s ear; hundreds of excuses that she hoped to offer him as to why she’d taken her own life the day after seeing what he truly was. The harsh truth of his immortal nature, black wings and all.
“Stay back.” He pointed an accusatory finger. “I don’t have anything to say to you. The only reason I’m here is so you’ll leave me alone.”
Juliana seemed unaware of his anger, his bitterness. She practically sailed toward him, a lovely smile filling her face, one that hinted at intelligence and amusement . . . and absolute joy at seeing him again after so many decades. That expression was one he’d seen many times before, one that couldn’t have been imitated by an imposter. The reality of it broke down every argument he’d been trying to wield against her.
Juliana was smiling at him; Juliana was moving closer; Juliana had found him through an intricate maze of death and time.
“What are you doing here, Jules?” he whispered, throat so tight he could barely speak.
She seemed briefly taken aback, standing slightly taller. “This is my home. Need I explain my presence in it, Aristos?”
Ari’s patience boiled over. “Woman, this isn’t your home. It hasn’t been for a long damned time.” Then he remembered Cecilia’s explanation that Juliana didn’t fully understand her current predicament—that she knew some facts but was oblivious to others. “I mean, you don’t belong here now,” he added a tad more gently.
She frowned back at him, eyebrows drawing into a tight line. “Well, sir, one fact has not changed since I last spent time in your presence,” she announced indignantly, a hand fluttering against her breastbone. “You remain sinfully handsome, dangerously so, and you still lack the fine manners of my own age.” She glanced about her in sudden surprise. “What year is it, incidentally?”
Chapter 4
Ari kept wide eyes on Juliana, torn between wanting to get as far away from her as possible—and rushing to hold her again. Whether it made him the worst kind of lovesick fool or not, the latter reaction was winning like a backroom card sharp.
She smiled up at him, a faint blush coloring her cheeks, a reaction he’d observed numerous times during their courtship. Juliana had been unexpectedly shy with him on occasion, despite her conversational charm and poise. She’d often flushed at what he considered to be innocent compliments, or the briefest touch of his fingertips against her hand. She might have maintained an elevated position in Savannah society, but that formality had dissolved in his arms. The first time he’d kissed her? Oh, she’d blazed like an inferno, her face turning as red as the hair atop her head. That uncensored reaction, so naive, had charmed him completely.
It might have even caused him to fall in love.
The familiar russet heat infused her face now; for a moment, the physical limitations of eternity and death melted away. Emma was no longer their bridge, and Juliana was truly alive again, near enough that he could hold her, stroke her hair, murmur in her ear, because she was real, vital. She stood in front of him, obviously expecting him to say something , when he could only gape like the ill- mannered idiot he’d always been in her presence.
Except she wasn’t real; she wasn’t even physical, he reminded himself. The only reason she was here like this was because she’d overrun Emma’s resistance.
“Juliana,” he ventured carefully. “You’ve taken over my friend’s body. You can’t do that. Not without asking permission.” Was that even how a channeling relationship worked? Was it like borrowing someone’s car or shoes—like when he pinched Nikos’s Harley without quite getting the okay?
She peered up into his face. “But I want to be here, with you, Aristos.”
His eyes watered suddenly, forcing him to look away. “You’ve got to leave.”
I need you to leave here because I can’t deal with these feelings again. He was just too frightened of the swirling emotions roaring through him. “You can’t possess Emma’s body. She’s my friend. You can’t use her, no matter what you want.”
Cecilia barricaded that emotional escape route by piping in. “Juliana could never have gained control or access, not if Emma weren’t willing.”
Blasted mediums, he thought. Blasted friends who forced you to face things you’d just as soon keep running from.
Juliana moved much closer in that elegant way of hers. The familiarity chilled him, angered him—and made him hope. That was the most maddening reaction of them all.
“Aristos?” she said. “I asked you what year it is.”
He cut an inquiring look toward Cecilia, panicked. If he wasn’t supposed to answer these questions because they might upset Juliana, then what was he supposed to do instead? Lie? Tell her it was still 1893?
“Go on.” Cecilia nodded encouragingly, leaning forward from where she sat on the sofa. Beside her River watched, and his calm reaction lit a fuse inside Ari. How could the guy look so placid when his wife was sharing skin space with their very own version of Linda Blair? “Talk to her, Aristos,” Cecilia pressed.
“About what?” he roared in frustration, tossing his hands into the air.
“What do you wish you’d said? If she’d stayed with you? Whatever’s been in your heart and mind, this may be your only opportunity.”
He’d never gotten to tell Juliana good-bye. Or how much he loved her. A love that came from this strange, mystic place in the core of his being, one that he’d never known existed before he met her. He’d never had the chance to acknowledge that feeling, the full scope of how it had consumed him from almost his first sighting of her.
In the end, he’d not gotten to say perhaps the most important words of all—that he was sorry for being a creature so dark, so disturbing, that it had driven her to take her own life rather than face what he was. But those confessions were smothered in layers upon layers of anger over one true fact: She’d given up on them, never let him explain what she’d seen so long ago.
He began hyperventilating slightly as Juliana moved right up into his space. She had him cornered against the fireplace. Her eyes shone brightly, filled with the same vivacious energy she’d always possessed.
She lifted a porcelain-delicate hand toward his face. “Aristos?” She sounded uncertain, vulnerable. Almost sad. “I was so certain you would want me, or at the very least show some joy at my return. Are you not happy to be here in my home?”
His skin prickled with electric tension. “It’s not your home anymore, woman.”
Those intense blue eyes grew sharp, almost irritated. “My father built it for me. You know that.”
“A long time ago. Long, long time ago,” he added, hoping she’d catch the hint.
Her eyebrows knit together in apparent confusion, and he swore that they changed color, becoming auburn briefly. He blinked, sure it was the spell of the moment, the spooky unnaturalness of it. He searched Emma’s face, ignoring the fact that she’d temporarily vanished from her own body, seeking some physical sign of Juliana. It was like that moment when a lit candle suddenly catches a gust of wind. The flame gutters. Light . . . dark. Dark . . . light.
They shared the same blue eyes, color of the Aegean, with the same long, thick lashes.
But then Emma’s dark brown hair seemed to flicker, too, morphing into auburn. Emma still stood before him physically, but in the spiritual realm, he could see the blurring of their identities.
“She’s . . .” Consuming Emma, he almost warned River and Cecilia, but he doubted that was true.
Juliana anticipated his concern. “Emma is safe,” she whispered reassuringly, reaching for his hand. “She’s allowing us this moment.” Juliana released a slow breath, shutting her eyes, and he was looking at Emma again. This was still her body, after all, and with her eyes closed, Juliana’s powerful, insistent spirit seemed to vanish.
It hit him then that the reason he’d become certain he was truly interacting with Juliana was because of their eerily similar eyes.
Yes, she carried herself elegantly, more fluidly than Emma did, with her modern, athletic grace. Still, without Juliana staring out at him, he could almost imagine that he’d dreamed the whole thing up. Until the thick lashes fluttered open and that coy half smile he’d fallen in love with formed on her lips once again.
And damn the stubborn woman, she slid a warm palm against his chest, resting it over his heart. The warmth of that contact, the soft flesh pressing against his own skin, searing him through the thin cotton of his T-shirt, swamped him totally. Desire, yearning, need—it all washed over him like high tide.
“Don’t.” He covered her hand, honestly intending to move it. Only he didn’t; he cradled it even closer.
“I was going to tell you what Emma just whispered to me.”
“Whispered how?” He shoved her palm away from his chest. “So you’re in total control of Emma’s body now? She can’t speak for herself?”
“Ari, we are as one right now, Emma and I. You already know that.” She searched his face for permission to continue, and when he didn’t interrupt, she went on. “She says, and I quote, ‘I saw how you reacted to the photograph, what it meant to you.’ ” Juliana peered up at him, obviously expecting him to explain about the photo. He gave a nasty glare in return, forcing her to look away as she continued sharing Emma’s message. “Emma says . . . ‘Let me give this to you, Ari. You’ve given so much to River and to me. Now it’s my turn.’ ”
The reality of the moment slapped him hard, ripping the pin off yet another emotional grenade. This was Juliana; he was being given some perverse second chance with her, if only for this moment. But did he want one? Could he trust her or the opportunity or even his own desires?
Panicked, he threw a glance at the parlor door. He could still get away, beat a fast, strategic retreat. But he was blocked by Juliana, who stood so close that he caught the scent of jasmi
ne off her skin. Em never smelled like jasmine; she smelled like lemons and fresh air.
He began hyperventilating in earnest, rubbing an open palm over his heart. It seemed the little fucker might detonate at any moment. “Shit, I’ve got to get outta here,” he blurted, feeling cornered, unable to breathe. He moved around her, toward the far side of the room, hating the caged feeling that came over him. “I really need to go,” he repeated, plunging his fingers through his hair. He would’ve sworn the floor beneath him shifted. It had to be his new power; the energy must be reacting to the high emotion of the moment, gyrating inside of him.
Juliana was right behind him, her hand instantly placed against his lower back, reassuring and kind. “You are so frightened,” she whispered, planting her other palm against his belly. Heat shot straight to his groin, a rolling wave of sensual reaction at being touched so low on his body. It had always been that way, damn the woman. She so much as blinked, and his cock went to full mast.
He wrenched out of her hold, backing toward the parlor door. “This whole setup is just a little too much.”
She studied him in concern. “I don’t recall you ever being afraid, and especially not of me. Is that why you never returned?”
He rounded on her. “You really want to know why I never came back, Jules? You so sure about that? Because some things,” he said, looming over her, “are better left dead and buried. Know what I mean?”
Her expression grew pained, her eyes shining brightly. “I’ve waited, for such a very long time, but you never came. I need to know why.”
“Because I wasn’t the one who left!” He threw his hands into the air. “You did.”
Juliana poked a long, delicate finger at the center of his chest. “Explain yourself, sir. With all that we once shared, why would you toy with me now?”
It took a serious pair of balls for the woman to get indignant with him, and it set off another physical chain reaction inside his body. That familiar shaking took hold, his hands trembling at his sides; a roaring noise reached a crescendo inside his brain. Vaguely, he was aware that several lights in the room snuffed out with a crackling staccato of electricity. His power was starting to ramp up way too fast, was overloading, but he could hardly harness it now.
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