Emma finally broke eye contact, a flush now on her cheeks. If he didn’t know better, he’d think that she’d read his mind and seen everything he wanted to do to her. Many of the things were already detailed in that sexy novel he’d read.
He’d be very happy to bring every last one of her fantasies to life if she gave him half a chance.
“Harold Duchamp,” Emma said, after pushing away from him. She stared around at the lobby filled with shaking furniture and flickering lights. Her voice didn’t tremble, it sounded out strong and commanding. He was impressed and he watched her full lips form the words. Everything she did, every move she made, now seemed painfully erotic to him. They’d been too close for too long and the potion’s effects were impossible to ignore. “I am not afraid of you,” she continued. “I demand that you show yourself immediately—to both of us.”
The shaking and tremors increased and the noise was so loud that Ryan had the urge to cover his ears with his hands but he didn’t budge. The only sign that Emma was anything but totally calm was the fact that she was now squeezing his hand very tightly. He admired her hidden strength and tried to refrain from flinching in pain.
Finally the form of a man slowly began to solidify in front of them. He looked to be in his thirties, with brown hair trimmed short, a handsome face, a well-groomed beard and moustache, and a suit that also appeared—much like Lorraine’s dress and appearance—to be something from the 1940s.
Harold glared at them. “I warned you.”
Even though he’d seen Lorraine, Ryan was surprised he was able to see this ghost as well. When he and Emma had been partners, he hadn’t once seen a ghost. Emma had taken care of things all by herself, while Ryan typically assured the scared homeowners that everything would be okay, doing his best to sense their emotions. Fear was one of the easiest emotions to sense empathically, even if the person was trying to hide it.
Like now. He could tell that Emma was afraid. He felt it coming off her in waves. It helped to give him additional courage. He’d protect her, no matter what.
“You told us to leave,” Emma said evenly to Harold. “But then you locked the front door, trapping us in here with you.”
“Perhaps I wanted to teach you a lesson.”
“By killing us?”
His gaze narrowed and he drew closer, eyeing them both with distaste as if they were maggots he’d found on the underside of a loaf of bread. “Why have you disturbed me tonight? What right do you have to be here?”
Emma drew in a shaky breath. “Happy anniversary.”
Harold grew transparent for a moment before his form became opaque again. Ryan guessed it was his way of showing intense surprise.
“Excuse me?” he snapped.
“I know it’s your anniversary tonight.”
Harold looked ill. “And how would you know something like that?”
“Because I spoke with your wife, Lorraine.”
The ghost’s mouth fell open and pain flashed in his gaze. “It’s not possible. She’s gone.”
“No, she’s not. She’s close. Actually, she’s just a few hundred yards away from this building. Her spirit is trapped in a restaurant that used to be an old house.”
Harold glanced in the direction Emma pointed, toward the locked door. There were windows on either side, but they were covered with thick curtains. “Our house. But no…it’s not possible.”
“Why?”
“I would have known. I would have sensed her—seen her. All of these years, there’s no way she could have been that close and I wouldn’t have known it.”
“She’s close. Trust us.”
“Why should I trust you? I don’t know you.” His eyes narrowed.
Emma’s grip hadn’t loosened a bit from Ryan’s hand. “She wanted me to tell you something…”
“What?” Harold searched her face.
“That she forgives you.”
His eyes narrowed and a hateful look filled his expression. “You’re a liar.”
He moved toward Emma quickly and Ryan yanked her back, placing himself directly in front of her. He hadn’t consciously thought about it first, it had been an automatic reflex.
“Don’t even think about it,” Ryan growled.
Harold stopped in his tracks, glaring at Ryan for a moment before a cold smile crossed his face. “You think you can stop me if I mean to do anything? This is my territory and no one is welcome here.”
“Can I stop a ghost who’s being a complete and utter asshole?” Ryan’s jaw tightened. “I’ll sure as hell try. If you so much as make a move toward Emma I will make your afterlife even more hellish than it already is.”
Harold glowered at him. “I don’t fear you.”
Ryan returned the sour look with one of his own. “What’s your problem, anyway? You have a woman who has been pining away for your sorry ass for the last seventy years, yet you stay here, flickering lights all by yourself, because you want to suffer?”
“What damned business is it of yours what I choose to do?”
“Isolating yourself is not something anyone would choose. Trust me on that.” It hit a bit close to home, actually.
“You’re trying to tell me that you know how I feel?” Harold’s words dripped sarcasm. “That is highly unlikely.”
“Yeah, all alone. All by your sorry self. Not much fun, is it?” Ryan’s words twisted with the irony he felt. He’d been alone for far too long, but it wasn’t entirely by choice. He thought it through, his brow furrowing. “Wait a minute, I think I’m getting it.”
“I doubt that.”
Ryan’s gaze flicked to the ghost. “You’re here, all by yourself. In this hotel.” He looked around the lobby with the high ceiling, up to the floors with open banisters on the landings looking down to this area. The furniture had stopped shaking but the lights still flickered ominously. “Your wife still loves you. Her soul is tied to yours. That doesn’t happen very often. If you weren’t that important to her, she would have been able to move on without you. You did something you feel guilty for—so guilty that you can’t get over it.”
Emma looked at him, her eyes wide. “You’re right.”
“Of course I am.” He gave her a grin before forcing himself to look at the angry ghost again.
Harold just glared at him, then he turned his back and walked away, not climbing the stairs as much as floating up them.
“Where do you think you’re going?” Ryan let go of Emma’s hand and chased after the ghost. Emma was right behind him.
“To my room, where I belong,” Harold said without turning around.
They followed him up the stairs again to the fourth floor, watching as Harold disappeared through a wall into a room with a closed door. To their right was the wooden banister that looked down to the lobby. Higher up, the large chandelier flickered ominously from where it hung from the very center of the ceiling. Ryan tried the handle of the door and wasn’t surprised to find it locked. He looked over his shoulder at Emma.
“So now what?” he asked.
“I honestly don’t know. I’m open to suggestion. Exorcism? Maybe come back a little later?”
“No.” Ryan pressed his hand against the closed door. “This guy isn’t bad to the bone. He’s just misunderstood, even by himself.”
“Which means what?”
“He’s still in love with his wife. That’s why their anniversary is such a big deal. But something’s keeping them apart. Something he feels he did wrong. He’s punishing himself for it.”
Emma looked at him quizzically. “How do you know he’s still in love with her? I didn’t think you could sense any emotion from spirits.”
“I can’t. But I saw it in his eyes when you mentioned her name. He looked like it was tearing him up inside. And there’s only one thing that can do something like that.”
“And that’s guilt?”
“Yes.”
Emma leaned against the railing across from him and glanced down to the lobby before returni
ng her attention to Ryan, her face bathed in shadows. “What’s he guilty of?”
Ryan wracked his mind. “I don’t know. But something has been eating away at him for all of these years and keeping him from the woman he loves.”
“Wait a sec.” Emma frowned.
“What is it?”
She glanced around the hallway, the long mirror along the wall, the peeling wallpaper, the red carpet, the banister she held on to. Her gaze finally fell on the door of Harold’s room.
“Something’s happening. I can feel the energy growing in there. His anger is manifesting…”
Ryan frowned. “Manifesting into what?”
Her face was pale. “Something bad.”
Suddenly the door Ryan stood in front of burst open and what felt like a blast of energy exited like a metaphysical punch.
The railing Emma leaned against splintered and fell away like it hadn’t been more solid than cardboard. It was the only thing between the fourth-floor landing and the drop to the open lobby far below.
Emma shrieked as she lost her footing and began to fall.
Ryan didn’t think, he simply reacted, closing the distance between them in a split second. He grabbed for Emma’s hand just as part of the broken wooden banister crashed to the ground floor.
Emma dangled off the landing, staring up at him with fear. Harold’s anger had hit them like a wave of powerful negative energy. He’d been trying to kill Emma.
“Don’t let go of me!” she cried.
“I won’t.”
“You shouldn’t have come here,” Harold was suddenly beside Ryan, looking down at Emma as she scrambled to keep a hold on Ryan’s hand. There was a mix of guilt and fury on the ghost’s face. “I should be alone, always alone. I don’t need the reminder of what I’ve destroyed with my mistakes.”
“Shut the hell up,” Ryan snarled. He needed to focus all his concentration or Emma was going to slip through his grasp and fall sixty feet to the lobby floor. “Give me your other hand. Now, Emma. Do it!”
Their gazes locked and there was a sheen of perspiration on her forehead. One of her high-heeled shoes fell off her right foot and fell to the ground. She reached up with her other hand and he grasped it tightly.
He forgot about absolutely everything else—his troubles with PARA, his weak psychic ability, his search for the truth, the lust potion that made everything that much more difficult and tempting being around Emma. None of that mattered. If he let Emma fall, he may as well join Harold here and become a selfish, self-hating ghost who craved solitude.
He wouldn’t let her slip. He held on so tightly to her, he was sure he was bruising her wrists, but it was a small price to pay. Inch by inch he pulled her back up to the landing. He crushed her against his chest in a tight embrace.
“That was too close,” he whispered into her hair, which he brushed back from her face so he could look into her green eyes. She was hugging him back just as fiercely. “Are you okay?”
She just nodded. “That was close.”
“Too damn close.”
He pulled her to him and kissed her, hot and deep and open-mouthed. She gasped against his lips before kissing him back. There was no way she wouldn’t be able to feel his erection pressing into her, telling her clearly just how damn much he wanted her. His tongue slid against hers and he heard someone groan deep in their throat. He thought it was probably him.
After a moment, he released her, though she kept hold of his arm. Harold waited close by, his face twisted with grief and misery.
“When I get angry, bad things happen,” he said bleakly. “I can’t control it. I’m so sorry.”
Ryan’s hands curled into fists. “What did you do, Harold?”
“Excuse me?”
“Seventy years ago, or however long ago you died. What did you do that Lorraine would have to forgive you for? What is it that you still hate yourself for doing that keeps you stuck here all alone, all these years later, unable to find the peace you need to move on?”
Harold was silent for a long moment, his face etched in pain and regret and guilt. “I lost so much money gambling—Lorraine begged me to stop, but I couldn’t. I knew if I hit it, we’d be on easy street for the rest of our lives.”
Emma and Ryan exchanged a glance.
“But you didn’t,” Ryan said.
His expression shadowed. “No. The bills were mounting up higher and higher every day. It was too much for me—for her. She lost our baby because of the stress.” His expression twisted with pain.
“I’m sorry,” Emma said, and there was a catch of emotion in her voice. Ryan fisted his hands at his sides to keep from drawing her close to him again.
Harold nodded, pain etched into his face. “So I did what any man who’d been driven half mad by the thought that I couldn’t support my family would do.”
“You killed yourself,” Ryan guessed.
That earned him a sharp glare. “No. I wanted to give my wife everything she deserved, everything I could never afford for her. So…I stupidly decided to rob a bank right here in Mystic Ridge. I went in with a gun—no bullets. I never wanted to hurt anyone, I just needed cash.”
Emma stayed silent and let Harold tell his story, staying clear of the broken banister. Ryan leaned against the wall next to the mirror behind him. He couldn’t get an empathic read on a dead person, but by the look on Harold’s face, he was telling the truth as he remembered it.
“Then what happened?” Ryan prompted when Harold went silent.
“Got tens of thousands stuffed in a bag and I headed home to take Lorraine on a long vacation.” The small grin that played at his mouth at the pleasant part of his memory vanished completely. “Lorraine asked me where I got the money and I lied to her. I told her I’d inherited it and it had just been wired to me. And…she believed me.”
“She loved you,” Emma said.
This statement only made Harold look more distraught. “The cops came for me when she was packing a couple suitcases for us. Lorraine, she—she tried to protect me, stood in front of me and told the cops what I’d told her. That I couldn’t have robbed a bank, that it was inheritance money. She got in the way when they pulled the trigger, and then—” His voice broke and he drew in a ragged breath. A silvery tear slipped down his cheek.
Emma inhaled shakily. Ryan glanced at her to see that her eyes were glassy. It was painful, but Ryan knew she had to get the ghost to tell his story, to deal with what was keeping him earthbound for so many years. It was the only way, other than exorcism, to deal with a haunting like this.
“It happened on our anniversary,” Harold said. “She died in my arms. I was so furious that I stormed at the cop with my gun held up and he shot me without hesitating. Both of us dead because of my stupid mistake. Now I’m here, in the hotel that I couldn’t keep going—our nest egg. Everything I chose led to pain and death. And every year on our anniversary I feel that pain like it was only yesterday.”
Emma’s face had paled. Ryan moved to put his arm around her. It was worth the risk of contact. He still wasn’t certain that Harold could control himself. Ghosts held a whole lot more power than even they were aware of, especially when they were distraught.
“Harold,” Emma said after a minute of silence passed between them. “Look at me. Please.”
He raised his gaze to hers and there wasn’t anger in his eyes anymore, only sadness.
“Lorraine specifically told me that she forgives you. No matter what happened, she forgives you. And she loves you. She’s waited all this time for you to forgive yourself. For you to return to her. But you’re delaying her peace and happiness—your peace and happiness—because you won’t forgive yourself.”
He frowned deeply. “I don’t understand.”
“You need to forgive yourself for what you did,” Emma said, raw emotion in her voice. “Forgive yourself and go to her. Don’t you see that this day—your anniversary, the day that you died—has power in it? I could feel it the moment I set foo
t in here. She can’t leave where she is because it’s not her decision. It’s yours.”
Harold looked defeated. “I can’t leave this hotel.”
“Have you ever tried?”
His jaw set, he looked down at the floor and shook his head.
“She loves you—that’s not something that should just be ignored! Do you still love her?”
“Of course I do.” His voice broke.
“Then go to her,” Emma said firmly. “And stop wasting more precious time.”
Harold glanced at Ryan who still stood warily watching the ghost, barely believing what he’d seen with his own eyes.
Finally, Harold nodded. “I could see our house from the fourth floor. That’s why I stayed up there. I had no idea she was waiting for me all this time. I couldn’t see her.”
“You didn’t want to see her. You were afraid. But it’s time for you to gather your courage and go to her.”
Ryan nodded. “She’s waiting for you.”
Harold raked a ghostly hand through his hair. “Thank you.”
Then he faded from sight.
Emma let out a shaky sigh and looked at Ryan. She was smiling. “Come on.” She grabbed his hand and pulled him into the room in front of them. They stood by the window and looked across the way toward the restaurant.
“Can you see her?” Emma asked, leaning against Ryan’s side.
He squinted at the distance. Yes, he could. Lorraine stood on the veranda of the restaurant—the veranda of the house she’d shared with Harold. A pale silver glow approached her and it solidified into Harold’s form. He ran up the stairs and embraced his wife.
Then, only a few moments later, they both disappeared in a soft flash of light.
“So what does that mean?” Ryan asked. “They found their peace? They’ve moved on?”
Emma didn’t answer. It was dark in the room, the lights had stopped flickering. She stared at his face.
“What’s wrong?” he asked.
“It makes you think, doesn’t it? About wasting time worrying so damn much about what’s right and what’s wrong? Sometimes we just need a bit of a reminder, don’t we?”
“What do you mean?”
She slid her hands over his shoulders and up into his hair. Thanks to their proximity, the lust potion was working its special kind of magic. He knew that. He didn’t pull away from her.
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