Forever and Always

by Jude Deveraux

  “Can you see him?” I whispered to Linc.

  “No, no, and no,” he said, looking around the big brick-walled room at anything but the man sitting at the table.

  Of course Linc was lying. He could see the man very well. I knew the man before us was a spirit, but did the man know? I’d met a couple of ghosts who refused to believe they were dead.

  I stepped forward, Linc close behind me, and stopped in front of the man. “Are you real?

  “Of course I’m real,” the man said. He had a Scottish accent, like Sean Connery’s, and he had the black brows and gray hair of Sean Connery, too. “If you don’t believe I’m real, go ahead and touch me. Feel for yourself that I’m flesh and blood.”

  I knew the man was challenging me, daring me, so I reached out to touch him. As I knew it would, my hand went through his arm.

  “I’m outta here,” Linc said and headed back down the hallway. But, immediately, an iron gate appeared across the hallway.

  I kept my eyes on the man at the table because he was transforming himself into something else. His face grew leaner, his hair lengthened and darkened, and his clothing changed to that of a buccaneer.

  Wow! I thought, and not only wondered who he was but what he was. I blurted out the question that was foremost in my mind,“How do I find my husband?”

  The man propped a jackbooted foot on a wooden carton where the table had been and began to peel an apple. “Through him.”

  Turning, I looked at Linc. He was examining the iron gate to see if there was a way to open it.

  “Me?” Linc asked in wonder, looking back at us. “I came here because I thought my son might be here. I didn’t—”

  He broke off as he looked at the spirit-man, as though fearing he might change himself into some monster next. I wasn’t going to tell him that I knew the spirit had changed himself into a dragon earlier.

  “What does Linc have to do with finding my husband?” I asked. “And the child? Where is the boy? And where do they keep him if they do have him? And why do they keep him?”

  “So many questions,” he said, smiling and standing up.

  “To find your husband you must find the child and to do that you must have a Touch of God. Ask the slaves. They know things, but they won’t tell you until you give them what they want.”

  He moved his eyes off me and onto Linc. “As for you, you must remember.”

  With that, he was gone. There one second, gone the next. I knew there were no other spirits or humans on this floor. There wasn’t even electricity near us. All was silent. Dead.

  Linc turned on the flashlight and shone it where the iron gate had been. The hallway was unblocked now.

  I had agreed to help Linc because my mother had asked me to, but now it seemed that someone—or something—had put all this into play, not for Linc, but for me. I was sure that if I found out what I was supposed to, it would help me find my husband. If this was about me, then Linc didn’t need to be here exposed to danger. I hadn’t been able to protect my husband and sister-in-law so I didn’t trust my ability to protect Linc.

  “Linc,” I said slowly, “I think you should leave this house. You should go back to Hollywood and stay there.”

  “And what do you plan to do?”

  “Go home, too, of course. The truth is, all this is pretty much over my head. I’m not used to meeting ghosts that change shape and make up riddles. It’s over my little hillbilly brain, so I think I’ll go home and see my daughter and niece. I really do miss them.”

  After that speech, I started down the hallway toward the door. We could leave by the door, and I could get my clothes back on. I was beginning to feel like a stripper standing there in my hose and a teddy.

  I took only half a dozen steps before I realized Linc wasn’t following me. He’d turned the flashlight so it lit a path in front of me, but he was still in the big room where we’d seen the shape-changing spirit-man, Devlin.

  Turning, I looked at Linc in alarm. “What’s wrong?”

  “I was thinking,” he said. “I was trying to remember what that guy said and it seems like the first thing to do is give the slaves what they want. Is that the way you heard it?”

  “Yes, but—”

  He turned away, shining the flashlight on the wall where the spirit-man had been chained. “Aha!” he said. The wall was still brick but now it contained an old wooden door once painted green, with a big iron lock on it.

  Standing, I watched him search for something among the piles of junk. He picked up an old shovel, put it through the lock and pulled.

  The metal lock didn’t break but the shovel handle did and the rotten old door did. Linc put his hand on the hole in the door, opened it and peered inside, shining his light all around. “Nothing but old wooden cabinets in here,” he said. “I think maybe they’re filing cabinets, though. Probably full of old papers.” He turned back to me and gave me that much-practiced Paul Travis smile, the one that melted hearts. “You go on, go back to your kids. I think I’ll stay here for a while.”

  I knew what he was doing; I just couldn’t figure out why he was doing it. He was goading me into staying at the house. But then I was sure he very well knew that I had no intention of leaving. So why did he want to stay? For a child he’d never met? And what was Linc supposed to remember? That he loved the child?

  Slowly, I walked toward him. “I wasn’t really going to leave, you know,” I said.

  “Yeah, I know.” Inside the room, he went to a cabinet and pulled open a drawer. It contained file folders and old papers. Linc pulled out a folder. “Bingo,” he said, holding up a paper for me to see. It was a bill of sale for a slave child, aged ten, son of Dinnah. The space for the father’s name was a blank.

  “If these papers are so easy to find, why haven’t those spirits out there found them before now? They’ve had a few years,” Linc said.

  I was looking in a file cabinet and I paused to look at Linc. “If everyone who stayed in this house was as plagued as you are by the spirits of the slaves, no one would stay. This whole house would be nothing but ruins.”

  Linc didn’t understand what I meant. I was asking why the ghosts had attached themselves to him. “If Delphia thought there was a buck to be made in it, I’m sure she’d put the ghosts back into chains.”

  “True,” I said. It was difficult to see in the dark room, but as far as I could tell there were about a hundred years’ of slave records in the drawers. “Is this normal?” I asked.

  “None of my ancestors were rich enough to own slaves but…” I couldn’t help it but I looked at Linc. A couple hundred years ago it would have been possible to buy a man like Linc. A beautiful, gorgeous, delicious man like Linc.

  He didn’t even look up. “Honey, what you’re thinkin’ is makin’ my ears burn.”

  I laughed. He was certainly perceptive!

  “There are too many of these to go through, even if we knew what we were looking for,” he said, shutting a drawer and opening another. “As far as I can tell, Narcissa and Delphia’s ancestors only bought women. They sold all the male children and most of the females, keeping only—”

  What Linc was saying hit me at the same time it did him. Narcissa and Delphia’s ancestors had made their fortunes by breeding slaves. They bought women, bred them, then sold the children.

  When I thought of my own daughter and my niece and how much I loved them, I was sickened. How could I have survived watching them sold?

  “You okay?” Linc asked.

  “Yeah. But this makes me sick. No wonder the spirits out there are still here, still wanting to find their loved ones. But, Linc, why can you feel them? I haven’t felt any psychic power in you.”

  “None,” he said, squatting down to look at a bottom drawer. “On the other hand, maybe I’m related to some or all of them.”

  I smiled at that. “You don’t exactly look like you just stepped off the boat. Your skin’s the same color as my husband’s when he has a tan. You must have had a wh
ite grandmother.”

  “Or white grandfather,” he said, standing up and handing me an old photo. I had to shine the flashlight on it. In the background was the brick house where we were now. In front was a tall, older, gray-haired man flanked by four very black women. Scattered around them were about a dozen children, all of them with light-colored skin.

  “I guess Delphia’s like her ancestor,” I said. “He didn’t want to waste money on a…” I looked at Linc.

  “A stud?”

  “I guess that’s what he’d be called.”

  “So he did the job himself,” Linc said.

  I glanced back at the file cabinets. “Do you think some of your relatives are in here? That would explain why the spirits of the slaves were flocking to you.”

  “I know nothing about my ancestry,” Linc said. “The only people who ever visited my parents’ apartment were colleagues of theirs. My mother once said she had a sister but I never met her. I never heard my father mention anyone he was related to.”

  I could feel the sadness in his words even though he didn’t tell me this with self-pity in his voice. “I’m sorry,” I said as I reached out to put my hand over his heart. I wanted to calm him and try to heal his pain.

  “You know what the best way to make me forget is?”

  Since I was touching him, his thoughts raced straight up my arm. Clearly, I could see the two of us in bed together, me on top, panty hose gone, crotch of my teddy unsnapped.

  I pulled away as though burned. “You have a dirty mind,” I said.

  “Does that mean you lied about being able to read minds?”

  For a moment all I did was blink at him, then I put my hand on his arm. “Think about something else. Not sex. Think about your first-grade classroom.”

  I closed my eyes and could see it. “Rich,” I said. “You’re in a uniform and it’s a private school. You’re a good student. Very smart. And popular. All the children like you.” I moved my hand off his chest, then took his hand. “Think about something else.” I wondered if it was just touching his heart that made me able to read his thoughts.

  “You think I should go home,” I said. “You think I’ll get hurt. You think you ought to call the police and have them search this house for your son.”

  Linc was looking at me without a smile as he held up one finger and I touched just the tip of it. “You’re thinking—” I quit touching him. “I told you: no sex.”

  “Can’t help it,” he said. “Between the ladies around me and you wearing next to nothing…”

  I moved farther away from him. I could read what was in his eyes in a general way, but if I touched him, I could read his thoughts clearly, down to names and colors.

  “I’m getting cold,” I said. “Let’s go upstairs, go to bed, and tomorrow we can—”

  “Come down here tomorrow and find out somebody’s moved every one of these files? No thank you. Darci, baby, you and I are going to move these files out of here tonight.”

  I couldn’t help my groan. It had been a very long day and I wanted to go to bed. I needed some time to think about what I’d learned and what I’d seen, and I needed an hour or so of meditation to check on the whereabouts of my family.

  I didn’t have to touch Linc to know what he was thinking. The spirits out there, the ones floating around the old slave quarters, could be the spirits of Linc’s ancestors. His family.

  And he was right that the files might disappear. Linc had broken the door so anyone who was in the basement would see that the room had been broken into and searched. If there wasn’t a furnace down here there were certainly enough fireplaces upstairs that could be used for burning these old files. If the files were burned, would the slaves’ spirits ever be able to rest?

  “Okay,” I said tiredly,“tell me what to do.”

  “Get your friends to find us a wagon, and can you make sure everyone in this house stays asleep?”

  I assured him I could. Before I came here, I’d believed I could do a lot of things. Between what had happened in Connecticut and all the wonderful things my father told me I could do, I’d begun to believe in myself. True, I couldn’t find my husband and his sister, but, always, I’d felt that it was just a matter of time.

  It was five A.M. before I got into bed. Linc had left the basement to find a cart, but, unfortunately, the door had locked behind him, on the outside. To open it would take too much time. The only way for the files and me to get out was through the broken window. As a result, Linc made me run up and down that dark, dank, smelly old hallway carrying load after load of file folders.

  I must say that he was handy mechanically. He found some rope in one of the storage rooms, and an old metal tray. After some adjusting, he made a sort of winch around the metal frame of the broken basement window. I would run down the hall, scoop up a load of papers, run back down the hall, put them on the tray, then Linc would haul them up to the window. He piled them into a big garden cart he’d found leaning against the house and when it was full he’d take them to the mausoleum.

  By the time we finished, I was exhausted. I shoved four boxes in front of the broken door of the file room, then ran down the hall. I had to run to keep from freezing as the basement seemed to grow colder by the minute. Linc leaned in through the window, I jumped and he caught my hands. To be funny, as he pulled me up, he sent me an image of us together, him pulling my teddy off with his teeth.

  “I’m going to tell my husband on you and he’s gonna beat you up,” I said when I was outside, and he laughed. I grabbed my pink suit, still on the ground beside the window, and put it on.

  I knew that most of the windows and doors of the house were on an alarm system so I thought I’d have to wait until the kitchen help arrived to get back inside—I didn’t have the energy to True Persuade anyone—but a small side door caught my attention. The door was closed but a large panel in the bottom of the door seemed to be askew. When I touched it, it shifted. Easily, Linc removed the panel and I slipped inside the house. It wasn’t difficult to see that someone had fixed the door so people could use it without setting off the alarm. The question was if the door had been fixed for me, or for other people? If it had been fixed for me, had it been done by a human or a spirit?

  Personally, of the two of them, I hoped it was a spirit. Around this house the spirit people were by far the nicer. As weird as the spirit in the basement had been, I’d rather deal with him than with Delphia. The greed I felt surrounding that woman made my skin crawl.

  She was as greedy as…as a man who’d make babies with slave women, then sell his own children.

  Just thinking of that made me shudder. If the man was capable of something like that no wonder so many slave-spirits were still here and were still in misery.

  I reached my room and ran my mind around it to see if the cameras and mikes had been reinstalled. Yes. That meant someone had known I was out of my room. I was too tired to think of a clever explanation for why I’d been up all night. In front of the camera in the wreath I peeled off my pink suit down to my teddy and hose that now had a million runs in them. “That Devlin,” I said. “What a man!”

  With that I gave a yawn and fell onto the bed. I was much too tired to take a shower.

  I hadn’t been asleep but minutes when I began to dream. At least that’s the way it seemed to me. But even as I was half unconscious, I knew it wasn’t an ordinary dream, that it was more.

  I saw Adam, my husband. I tried to run to him but I couldn’t. He was there but he wasn’t. It was as though he was frozen in a great block of ice. Beside him stood Boadicea, also in a block of some icy substance.

  I looked down at my hands and I was carrying a box. It was big and black and bound by brass straps. The box seemed to be humming, vibrating, making a little noise that I could feel more than I could hear. Beside me were three people, two men and a woman, and hovering nearby was a spirit that changed form constantly, from animal to person, then back again.

  I knew that I was dreaming but
I also knew that through some magic I was being shown a future that could possibly be. Someone was showing me what I needed to do to free my husband and his sister.

  I tried to look around me but I was hindered by my body as I saw it walking toward the frozen forms. That body was focused, concentrating, only looking straight ahead to the figures of Adam and Boadicea.

  I couldn’t see inside the box but I knew that inside it were three objects, objects of such great magic that when they were together they hummed. They were like old friends, so glad to see each other that when they were together again they started purring. Did that mean the objects were part of a whole? Should I look for pieces of something? What did the objects look like? What should I try to find? How would I know them if I saw them? Did they have any magic when they were by themselves? If the pieces had no magic how would I know them when I found them?

  As I watched myself get closer to the frozen bodies, I tried to calm down. My instinct told me that when my body reached the frozen forms I would awaken, so I needed to see all I could.

  Who were the people near me? Linc! When I saw him I smiled. Already, I had found part of what I needed to free my husband.

  I looked at the other two people in the dream. One was a man, white, strong-looking, handsome on the outside, but I could feel that he was very angry. I knew I had never seen him before.

  The woman had dark eyes that were as hard as iron. I knew without trying that I could not use my mind on hers. Something or someone had made her shut her mind, close if off so no one could probe into it.

  My body had nearly reached the blocks so I looked at the spirit hovering above. I could feel that he was showing off by changing into shape after shape. Annoyed, I watched him change into my mother, my cousin Virgil, into Putnam…and then into a little boy. He was about seven and he had Linc’s face, lighter colored skin, but it was Lincoln’s face.

  The child looked at me, his eyes wide and pleading. “Help me,” he mouthed. “Help me.” He reached out his hands to me and instantly I felt power. When I’d shaken Narcissa’s hand a tiny current had run up my arm. I’d correctly guessed that I could use her to channel the slave women.