Her hands rose to his chest, to edge him away or toward her, he could not tell.
“You’re shaking,” he said.
Tentatively, he took her face in his hands. Moonlight bathed the bare skin of her pale neck, making her look opalescent. He wanted to feel her, he wanted to taste her, he wanted her, all at once. Yet he didn’t move. “Do you understand?” he demanded, desperate to know that she did, that she didn’t fear him, or think him mad. That she wasn’t going to run away.
“Do you?” His fingers sought her shoulders and shook her, so that her back was now pressed against the vaults.
“I love you,” she told him, not taking her eyes from his.
“Do you understand?”
“I love you,” she repeated adamantly.
“Emily, answer me.”
Her cold fingers rose to cover his hands, and she tilted her head until the moonlight swept over her face, illuminating the answer there. She kissed him, still shaking, her breathing amplified in the silence.
“No,” he cursed himself, he needed her to understand. He needed to know she would not leave. “Emily.”
But she remained silent. She lowered her hand between their bodies again, her fingernails gouging his chest. His back arched in fierce arousal from the twin sensations of cold and desire.
“Wait.” His voice was hoarse with want. “I need you too, but I don’t want you to regret—”
His words didn’t matter. Was she in shock? Perhaps. But whatever it was, Emily was as he had never seen her before. She struggled to free herself from her jacket, twisting her shoulders until it fell discarded on the floor, the buttons tinning against the tiles.
Somewhere he knew someone was waiting for them, that they were standing amidst tombs of ghosts, that this woman had almost been attacked, but none of it mattered. He kissed her for what felt like a lifetime and yet only a breath. His lips trembled on hers as his hands slowly swept away her blouse, the straps of her bra, and he heard her groan as he brushed his hands across her breasts, and that sound, that lone sound, ignited something long dormant inside him.
Both of them driven by madness, their hands were frantic to reach his shirt. She tore the fabric downward, buttons cascading on the tiles like rain. Soon flesh met flesh, and memories scored his mind. Her breath hot against his ear, she whispered words that he knew, words she had screamed, whispered, teased him with for ages. Were they from his memory when he longed for her, or from the edges of somewhere, the cusp of a dream? He scoured his mind as his hands explored her body, her breasts, her thighs, the thin bones of her hips. The presence of something out of reach taunted him, angered him, thrilled him and drew him closer. He wanted to scream her name, but he could not find the words.
His tongue tasted the wine on her lips, and he heard her say, “I love you,” like a confession. “I love you, I love you, Andrew, I love—”
Suddenly her body tensed as though someone were standing directly behind them. He lifted his head from the heat of their entangled bodies to gaze at her face. Her eyes were wide, her mouth agape. He turned, still clutching her to him. Her breath buffeted against his bare chest.
There, on the opposite wall, rays of moonlight illuminated a solitary niche. A red tag hung by the glass window.
A name was engraved on a brass plate centered below the ornate frame. He frowned, unable to understand. He could hear Emily inhale. His hands tightened around her.
April 18, 1906 – July 1, 1935
Miss Noreen Thomas
Beloved of Nicholas Chamberlain
14
* * *
ANDREW’S ARMS HELD HER, and the warmth of his breath encircled her neck, but even with those tethers Emily had departed her body; she had floated to the apex of the basilica and was staring down at the vault.
Noreen Thomas. No. No, it couldn’t be. Noreen Thomas. Every nerve in her was riveted on the brass plate. There had to be some mistake. Nick and Nora were married, were transformed and idealized by Dashiell Hammett into the dashing, debonair couple that swilled martinis and bantered and were dragged across town by their dog, Asta. It should say Noreen Chamberlain. Not Noreen Thomas. Nora Chamberlain.
Miss Noreen Thomas
Beloved of Nicholas Chamberlain
Yet as she gazed at the lettering, she felt the chill as if viewing her own gravestone. Numbly, she stepped from their embrace. “Her name. She has my name.”
“Thomas is a fairly common name, Emily.”
“No.” The pull of the niche and what lay inside was becoming stronger by the second, and nothing that Andrew could say would change that. “What if I’m related to her? And that’s the reason why she haunts me, why she’s only spoken to me?”
“You’re forgetting something. It says Miss Noreen Thomas. They might never have married—they might never have had children.”
“Of course they were married, everyone knows they were married. They were in love.”
“Noreen Thomas,” Andrew said, reading the words engraved there.
“Yes, don’t you see?” She looked at him imploringly as his eyes narrowed on the niche. “There is a reason why she sought me out. I’m her family, the only one who can help her. That has to be the explanation to all this.”
He didn’t respond to her, and she thought it was because of his fascination with the niche, the way his gaze didn’t break from studying it, but then she realized where they were standing and what had just occurred between them. The full weight of the last several minutes crashed into her. His stiff posture, his indifference—he was regretting what he had done, and he couldn’t bring himself to look at her. She suddenly felt even more naked than ever, and she turned her face away, beset with the burden of how to act, how to react.
“Look at me.”
Andrew brushed the damp hair from her face, but she wouldn’t face him.
“First thing…I love you.”
He brushed away another lock and frowned at her, unsatisfied.
“Second thing. I love you.”
He kissed her, gently this time, and when he gradually drew away, his lips still touched hers. “Third thing. I love you. You need to know that. Emily, look at me,” he said in exasperation and raised her chin with his finger. “This is not where I envisioned us being together. Not where I wanted to tell you that I love you…I had dreams, fantasies…truly…of somewhere romantic and…preferably with fewer dead people.”
She tried not to smile.
“Emily, all that I said, all that I told you, everything is true. And it will still be true when the sun comes up in a few hours, and when the sun goes down tonight. Always. Nod your head if you understand.”
She nodded her head.
“Now, nod your head if you have any idea how much I love you.”
She nodded again.
“Good. Now nod your head if you have any clue where my bloody shirt is.”
She laughed in earnest now, and he chuckled himself. There was still so much to say, but now was not the time. Yet as Andrew, all shirtless and tousled, found her jacket and bra and handed them to her, the sound of Simon’s footsteps came clipping up the stairs. Before either of them could react, he whipped around the corner. At the sight of Emily clutching her crumpled jacket to her chest and Andrew sweeping his fallen shirt from the floor, he let loose with a string of Gaelic curses so loud he nearly shocked them out of their wits. With an immediate turn of his heel, he spun around and placed his hands to his hips before he addressed the top of the basilica.
“I never pegged you two for ‘doing the deed with the dead.’” He wickedly enunciated each D, clearly relishing the fact that he had caught them red-handed.
“Simon,” Andrew warned. He started to button his shirt only to realize there were no buttons.
Simon then turned to Emily, a self-satisfied smirk tilting his long, skinny face. He peered at her over the edge of the opaque circles of his glasses. “I believe it’s safe to say that everyone in here believes in the second comin’ now
.”
“Simon.”
“I bet you sat in the truck and worked out each one of those, didn’t you,” Emily announced primly, finishing dressing. “It doesn’t matter. I found it.”
“Did you now? I’d thought you’d lost it.”
Andrew lunged, and she grabbed a hold of his shoulders seconds before Simon stepped out of reach and snickered devilishly.
“No, Nora’s vault.” She cleared her throat, gradually letting go of a disgruntled Andrew as she motioned with her head to the small vault across from them. “Only she’s…”
Simon squinted into the dark. She watched the reaction on his face pass from incomprehension, to bewilderment, to flat out astonishment. “Well, look at that. Is she like your granny or something?”
“Not my grandmother—her name was Loraine—and I know she was a Mrs. Thomas.”
Simon stared down the stairs into the silent darkness, not paying her much heed. “I’m thrilled you found the old lady and all, but would you mind if we bolt soon? This place is giving me the willies, and that’s just from smoking in the car park. Also, I hate to be the bearer of bad tidings, but one of San Francisco’s finest cruisers keeps circling the block. I reckon they suspect someone’s casing the joint, and I have no desire to become acquainted with law enforcement again if I can possibly avoid it.”
“But we can’t leave. They’re taking away Nora’s ashes tomorrow.”
“My regrets,” replied Simon; he glanced back down the stairs, undoubtedly sure the police were going to storm the doors at any second. “But don’t they leave forwarding addresses? You can go visit her there.”
“No! You don’t understand, we can’t leave her here. We have to take her with us.”
Both Andrew and Simon looked at Emily like she was speaking in tongues.
“We, white man?” asked Simon incredulously.
“Emily, luv,” said Andrew more softly, but with the same underlying level of skepticism. “You can’t…I mean what you’re proposing, I believe, is considered theft.”
“How would anyone know?” She threw the question back at both of them. Clearly they didn’t understand the importance of saving these ashes. “We can just replace them with dirt or rocks, no one will know the difference. The lock, though,” she began to murmur to herself. “That’s going to be tricky. I wonder if the keys are in the office?”
“I don’t think the lock’s going be your problem,” said Simon, his voice a little off. “The lock—it’s open.”
All three turned their heads. The lock that had been fastened shut just a moment before now dangled open.
As Emily stepped toward the vault she could feel both Andrew’s and Simon’s hands reach out to restrain her, but it was as if the crypt were calling to her like Pandora’s box.
The lock felt cool in her fingers and slipped off easily. She slowly turned the knob and pulled. The vault sighed, letting loose a long held exhalation; the gust of air was like a thousand whispers, and they blew across her face smelling of smoke, lavender, and death. Gulping down her fear that Nora’s frigid dead hand would latch hold of hers, she reached further inside, and her fingers tightened around something cool and metal. She pulled it to her.
In the moonlight she could make out that the urn was clearly expensive, solid silver by the look and feel of it, and ringed in an elegant design of simple vines.
“It’s beautiful,” she whispered.
“It is.” Andrew took the urn from her hands and holding it up, gazed at the flowing pattern and the gleaming silver.
She had seen this design before, but she couldn’t place it. However, she had no time to ponder it now and reached back inside the vault to feel if anything else was left inside. Her fingers brushed up against the sharp edge of something hard, and as she strained to retrieve it, the thrill of the mystery bubbled up excitedly within her.
It was an old-fashioned keepsake box of a strange construction, also engraved in the same pattern, but with a built-in combination lock several numbers in length. She shook it, and something rattled inside. Andrew’s eyes widened in fascination. “We’re taking this,” she said.
“Ra-ther,” Andrew answered, grinning like a cat.
“Theft? Does anyone recall the word theft? Three to five and out in two for good behavior?” Simon said, trying to get their attention.
“Now all we have to do is get something to transfer her ashes into and something to replace the ashes in her urn,” Emily said, overcome with the spirit of the adventure. “Simon, you run down to the office. There’s got to be a box or container down there. Andrew, I think I saw a potted plant near the piano…can you go grab it?”
Somehow her enthusiasm must have finally rubbed off on the beleaguered drummer, or he had just given up the fight, for he threw up his hands and headed back down the stairs. Andrew gave her a kiss and a roguish smile before taking off after him.
Minutes later he returned. In his hands he held a sad looking potted plant. She glanced down at it with a grin and proceeded to disembowel it, leaving a pot full of dirt and gravel behind.
Simon’s footsteps raced up the stairs and then halted as if he were catching his breath, or biding his time. “How’s this? I found it in a locker in the office,” he announced as he stepped into the moonlight and presented it to Emily with a deadpan expression on his face.
“You have got to be kidding me? No! No, no, no, no!” Dumbfounded, she stared at him and shook her head vehemently, appalled beyond words. “You are not, I repeat not, going to put Nora’s ashes inside—a bong!”
The glass monstrosity gleamed in the moonlight.
Simon scrutinized what had to have been Dwayne’s bong. “Hey, it’s the only thing down there. Listen, those fine officers just got out of their car, so if you want to get arrested for breaking and entering we can stand around here and chat. Otherwise, dish ’em out darlin’. At least the thing is dry.”
Andrew bit his lip to keep himself from laughing, but she could see a small muscle spasm at the corner of his mouth. This had undoubtedly pushed him over the edge. He looked exhausted and weary and gleeful all at once.
“Oh, Nora, I’m so, so sorry. Please forgive me.” Her eyes rose to heaven. Simon guffawed. “Yeah, laugh it up, big guy, you don’t have to live with her. She’s going to be incensed.”
“Better than being incense,” snorted Simon.
“More like she’s going to be plagued with an eternal case of the munchies.” Andrew fell over into a fit. Simon joined in.
“Men…” Emily muttered and opened the urn, praying she didn’t drop a speck.
After she finished transferring Nora to her new, Maui-wowie home, the downstairs door creaked open. The three of them froze, eyes wide like saucers. Simon grabbed the bong and hid it in his jacket, Andrew grabbed Emily’s hand, and they all flattened their backs against the farthest wall.
Agonizing minutes passed while what sounded like two determined police officers prowled around downstairs. Emily stood cramped and frozen between Andrew and Simon, her mouth dry. Suddenly, the rays of a flashlight doused the air around them. They plastered themselves further against the crypts, so hard in fact that the locks stabbed into their backs. Emily’s heart was beating so rapidly she swore her blouse fluttered up and down.
Just then, steps, deliberate and heavy, echoed from the bottom of the staircase. She looked to Andrew in panic. Cool as ice, he merely shook his head and crouched down. His long fingers swept up something from the floor. Like a cat, he crept soundlessly to the edge of the gallery and tossed whatever it was to the floor below.
It rattled along the marble, causing the footsteps to seize and change direction. After several pulse-hammering minutes, two voices muttered in turn, “Fucking rats…Yeah, hate those things.”
Her mouth hung open. “Rats?” she mouthed wordlessly to Andrew.
He nodded. “Near the piano.”
“What?”
He swiftly placed his hand over her mouth.
It seem
ed like an eternity, but eventually the door shut below, the police evidently satisfied no one had broken in. The sound of their squad car disappeared into the night. Without a second to lose, they quickly replaced Nora’s urn and locked the vault before racing down the staircase.
She took a moment to glance back up to the basilica. Andrew’s eyes followed her gaze; his hand covered hers.
“We’ll always have the Columbarium,” he whispered in her ear, leaving a kiss on her temple, and then yanked her swiftly toward the door.
When the next morning came, it was overcast. At least Emily thought it was overcast, but when she dragged herself out of bed and squinted through the curtains, she realized the morning was night. She had slept through an entire day.
She found Zoey in the dining room wearing a macraméd poncho and leggings, samples of tiles and grout boards scattered over a table cobbled together from a sheet of gypsum board and stacks of magazines.
“She’s awake,” she exclaimed and raced over to give her a hug. Not letting go, Zoey walked with her into the kitchen where Margot, still in her slacks and blouse from work, sat in front of her laptop, sipping what looked like scotch.
She made a few more strikes to the keyboard before eyeing Emily flatly. “I’m glad you’re alive, but you have got to be kidding me.” She nodded toward the fireplace where Nora sat on the mantle. Emily grimaced and sat down, but not before Zoey began to dish her out some dinner from pots still warm on the stove.
“Now, just to clarify. Last night you stole the ashes of the ghost who saved you from that disgusting pig of a professor, and now she’s living in a water bong on our dining room mantle.”
“That’s about it.”
Margot tilted back on her chair and leveled Emily with a withering stare.
“Aren’t you leaving out one itsy bitsy detail? I’m assuming due to the fact that you were pawed over, and he didn’t have any buttons left on his shirt that when he carried you half asleep in the door last night—”
Grave Refrain: A Love/Ghost Story Page 21