Forever and Always

by Jude Deveraux

  “Slave,” I said, still half out of my chair.

  “Slave. Yes, like a slave. Well, it got to me. So what did you and Amelia, uh, talk about?”

  “Was that a crack?”

  “Just a little one. Please, Linc, tell me what was said.”

  I hesitated. “Why did you say I spent the night with a woman who wanted to kill me?”

  “Ingrid was the woman who slipped into your house, opened the safe, and took the documents your agent gave you.”

  I sat back down. “She killed Barney?”

  “Yes.”

  I leaned toward Darci. “I’m going to go work out long and hard, and afterward, you and I are going to have a secrets-sharing session. Got it?”

  “Yeah. What did—?”

  I stood up, looking down at Darci. “Amelia is going to meet me tonight in our usual place. I leave it up to you to find out where that is. I’ll see you at dinner.” I left the room, shutting the door behind me.

  Darci

  Chapter Fifteen

  RESEARCH, I THOUGHT. I’D BEEN SENT OFF TO DO RESEARCH. I’m sure Linc meant I was to go to the library at 13 Elms and search the books there, but I had my own plans, so I needed to keep Linc occupied elsewhere. When I’d been looking for Ingrid and putting my hands on the doors, I’d felt equipment inside one of the rooms. At first I thought it was the room for the cameras and microphones, but I’d already found out that that equipment was in a room just off the kitchen (and for the most part, unmanned), so what was in that room? When I glanced at Linc, I knew. It was workout equipment; all lightweight as befit the Barrister sisters’ idea of ladylike behavior—and as befit the state of the old floors. Heavy weights would have crashed through the floor joists.

  It hadn’t taken much effort to give Linc the idea of encouraging the women to work out, which got Narcissa to unlock the door, which made Linc spend the afternoon in the gym. I knew he wanted to spend more time in bed with Ingrid, but she’d left that morning. Since the ornament I’d put in the bowling ball bag had no power, it was difficult to ascertain if she’d taken the bag with her, but I didn’t think so.

  Maybe I should have made an effort to follow the woman with my mind, but I didn’t feel that she knew anything. Her aura was such a dull shade that I could see no passion in her. I’d seen people like her before. They were damaged. I didn’t want to say soulless, but they were close. They felt nothing, not love or hate, not compassion or remorse. She could easily go to bed with Linc one day and kill him the next.

  While I’d been near her I’d done my best to find out what was in her mind—not that I could read minds—but I saw little. I felt no remorse from her for having killed a man when she set fire to Linc’s agent’s office. Whatever she’d done I knew that in the overall story, she wasn’t important.

  Anyway, I wanted to keep Linc busy for the afternoon so I could do some exploring. We still had the rental car we’d used to go to East Mesopotamia so I planned to use that.

  That morning I’d talked to my daughter and my niece in Colorado. I missed them so very much! Their aunt Susan had found an old dollhouse in the attic, something made for the daughter of the original builder of the house. He’d been extremely wealthy and the dollhouse he’d commissioned in the 1890s had twenty-eight rooms on four floors. There were a dozen dolls with the house, each representing members of Kane Taggert’s family, plus four servants.

  “They have lots of clothes for them and we’re playing with them nicely,” my daughter said—and I knew from her tone that she’d done something she wasn’t supposed to.

  “Let me talk to Aunt Susan.”

  “What have they done?” I asked Susan.

  “They seemed to have given the dolls life. I don’t think it was a real life, with personalities and such, but the dolls were moving around in a rather lifelike way.”

  “Creep you out?”

  “Like you can’t believe,” Susan said from her heart.

  “Mike was here so he got the girls to…to take off their spell. The problem was that they didn’t know any other way to play with the dolls, but we taught them.”

  “Susan…” I began, but couldn’t think of anything to say. I wanted to apologize and thank her at the same time.

  “No problem,” she said, obviously understanding what I wanted to say.

  I did thank her profusely, hung up, then willed my father to call me. He and I had spent so much time together there was a channel between us that was so strong it was as though we had a telecable between us.

  Dad called me minutes later. He was still on the trail of Boadicea’s bag that had contained the mirror. So far, he hadn’t found it but I felt that he would. I couldn’t yet tell if he’d ever find the mirror but I hoped he would.

  He asked about me and what I was doing, but I told him nothing. But then, there was nothing to tell. Linc and I had sent some slave ghosts away, and Linc had managed to create a sexual frenzy among all the women, both living and dead, but all in all, we hadn’t made any progress in finding his son.

  However, the reason I’d cleared the afternoon was so I could visit a few places without the distraction of Linc. The beauty of him, the sheer presence of him, distracted people from talking about what I wanted them to talk about, so I told my father I might have some news soon.

  After I hung up, I went outside to the car. I’d been asking the other guests questions and had even pulled a few words out of a maid, so I’d found out where the oldest local church was, and where the woman who was supposed to be Lisa Henderson had crashed.

  The first place I went was the crash site. As I’d known, it was at the bottom of a hill. I didn’t know whether to be proud of myself or annoyed because I felt nothing more than I’d felt when I’d held the newspaper photo. I stepped into the tangle of growth at the base of the tree to see if any car parts, or anything at all, had been left behind. Maybe if I touched something from the wreck I’d feel—

  “Oh!” I said and jumped back. I’d put my hand on the tree to steady myself and had felt a jolt through my arm. The tree was very angry at having been rammed by a speeding car.

  I drew back and looked at the tree. As Linc had said, it took a lot to discombobulate me, but this angry tree was doing it. As I stepped backward, I looked at the tree in alarm, half expecting it to start throwing apples at me—except that it was an oak tree.

  When the tree stayed just a tree, I was relieved. However, I nearly ran back to the car, then took a moment to calm myself. As I turned the car around to get back on the road, I thought, Give me ghosts and dancing dolls, but let the trees be quiet!

  I found the church I was looking for down a graveled lane. It was set in a little clearing, with a cemetery to the right and behind it. As I got out of the car I listened for a moment to the stillness of the place. There were so many spirits hovering that the birds made little noise. Quietly, I closed the door and walked toward the cemetery. What I hoped to find was Martin’s gave, but I somehow doubted that Amelia’s husband would have allowed the man to be buried in consecrated ground. I felt sure that Martin’s grave was on the land surrounding 13 Elms, and unmarked.

  As soon as I stepped inside the little white picket fence surrounding the cemetery, I was so bombarded by spirits that I put my arms over my face. It wasn’t as though they would hurt me or that I feared them. It was just the sheer volume of them. It was as though they’d been marooned there for a hundred or so years and were dying to talk to someone. Since not many humans could hear them, they ran at me, eager for gossip and news.

  “Have you seen my cousin?”

  “I can’t find my gold locket. My sister-in-law stole it. Can you get it back for me?”

  “You have nice hair. Can I touch it?”

  “Do you have children? I used to have children. Twelve of them, but six—”

  “Ssssh,” I said, drawing in my breath, closing my eyes and willing all of them to calm down. When I felt quiet around me, I opened my eyes. These weren’t ghosts like Devlin
and Amelia, but were the plain kind that only people like me can see. They were standing—floating, actually—all around me and looking at me with big eyes full of questions.

  “Could I help you?”

  “Ssssh!” I said sharply. “I told you—”

  “I beg your pardon.”

  Turning, I saw a young man—an alive person—with blue eyes and dark blond hair. He was wearing a blue shirt with the distinctive collar of a minister. I’m sure I turned red down to my horrible black roots. “I’m sorry,” I said, “I thought you were…” What could I say, that I thought he was one of the many ghosts? I gave him a weak smile. “I like old churches…and old cemeteries,” I said. “I’m trying to find out some of the history of this area.” He looked too young to have experienced any of the history himself.

  He stood frowning for a moment, suspicious of my first reaction, but I managed to calm him down. He had an aura of blue with some red and a little bit of white in it. He was a man who liked peace, sometimes liked excitement, and was trying very hard to follow a righteous path. I liked him.

  Smiling, he came toward me and offered his hand to shake. “Christopher Frazier,” he said, which startled me.

  “As in Charles Frazier?”

  He smiled, showing perfect teeth—someone had spent a lot of money on those teeth. “Sounds to me as though you already know quite a bit about our local history.”

  I couldn’t help returning his smile. “Just bits. I know some of the slaves from 13 Elms were sold to Charles Frazier and took his name. I met Pappa Al.”

  Reverend Frazier smiled broadly. “Wonderful man is Pappa Al. But fierce. You wouldn’t believe the battles he’s had to win to keep his school open. He’s had trouble making people believe that his ‘Leaders of the World’ as he calls them need help. But you didn’t come here to talk about the school, did you, Miss…?”

  “Mrs. Nicodemus,” I said, hating the name. I loved my husband’s name of Montgomery and wanted to tell everyone that I shared it.

  “What can I help you with?”

  “There was a slave uprising in 1843, at 13 Elms, and a man named Martin was hanged. I want to find his grave and anything about him that I can.”

  “Sorry, but he wasn’t buried here. Until the 1920s, this was an all-white cemetery. Did you check the graves at 13 Elms?”

  “Yes,” I said. While he was talking I looked at the spirit forms floating around behind him. They were shaking their heads no, that they knew no one named Martin.

  Dead end, I thought, but then thought of something he’d said. “You said ‘local’ history. Isn’t East Mesopotamia, Georgia, where Charles Frazier lived a little far away to be ‘local’?”

  “The Barristers and Fraziers married into each other’s families long ago. I believe it was before the Civil War, but I’m not sure when or who married whom. If you’re interested in the family history, you should ask Henry.”

  “Who is he?”

  “He lives just through there. See that little white house?”

  I could see nothing through the trees. As I looked, Reverend Frazier put his hand on my arm and pointed, showing me the corner of a house. Instantly, I felt things about him. He’d done something when he was a child, something he considered very bad. To atone for it, he’d dedicated himself to God.

  “You should forgive yourself,” I said before I thought.

  He looked startled for a moment, then laughed. “You and Henry will get along very well. He worked at 13 Elms for over fifty years, and he loves to talk about all the ghosts and goblins there.”

  “Me, too,” I said, backing toward the house as fast as I could go and not flat-out run. Behind the reverend, I saw the spirits holding out their arms to me, imploring me to come back and socialize with them.

  “What is wrong with this place?” I muttered. “Why are the spirits around here so unsettled? Why don’t they have peace?” As soon as the question came to me, I thought, Devlin! Whoever and whatever that creature was, I was sure he was the cause of the unrest around here. For a second I imagined my father finding Aladdin’s lamp. Somehow, I’d stuff Devlin inside and I’d take him out only when I needed him. But needed him for what? What could he do except make walls telescope in and out?

  Thinking of peace, I knew I’d reached it when I was within twenty feet of the white house. It was tiny, square, with a small porch on the front. The little yard was surrounded by a white picket fence so exactly like the one around the cemetery I knew the same person had built both of them.

  In front of the house was a garden of fragrant flowers: roses, stocks, honeysuckle. All of it was beautifully kept, not a weed in sight.

  Sitting on the porch in a swing painted dark blue was an old, old man, African-American, at least ninety, if not a hundred. He was very thin so that his clean but worn clothes hung on him. His old hands were on an ivory-topped cane and he was looking directly at me. Only he wasn’t seeing me because I knew that the eyes behind his dark glasses were totally blind.

  “You have a presence about you,” he said in a beautiful voice. If you heard it alone, you’d think he was about thirty and full of health, but I knew this man wouldn’t live for more than two years, if that. He was going to be missed by a lot of people.

  His aura was the most beautiful blue I’d ever seen and it stretched out around him for nearly three feet. I’d never seen anything like it. More than anything on earth I wanted to sit down beside him so my own purple-blue aura would mingle with his.

  “What’s your name?” he asked as I walked toward him.

  “Darci Nicodemus,” I said.

  “I wasn’t expecting anyone named Nicodemus.”

  I couldn’t help laughing. “Use Darci then. May I sit by you, Mr….?”

  “Just Henry. I won’t take the name of a white master so it’s just Henry.”

  “All right, Just Henry, may I sit by you?”

  He chuckled as I sat down on the swing beside him. I didn’t touch him but I was close enough to that aura of his that I could feel it. I closed my eyes and breathed of it, as though I could suck that delicious blue into my soul.

  “Are you an old woman or just an old soul?”

  “I don’t know much about myself,” I said, but didn’t add that I wasn’t interested. One thing I already knew about this man was that I could tell him anything. I felt that he knew a lot of secrets about a lot of people, and he’d take those secrets to his grave. “I’m trying to find a little boy, but people say he doesn’t exist. He’s the descendant of a slave who was hanged because he fathered a baby on the white mistress of 13 Elms. I feel the child is around here but I can’t find him.”

  “Nothing ever leaves this place,” Henry said. “Give me your hand and sit closer to me.”

  “Gladly,” I said as I scooted across the swing and gave him my left hand.

  “You’re just a little bitty thing, aren’t you?” he said, feeling my hand in his much larger one. I felt that he knew he wouldn’t live much longer and he was almost ready. There was something he still wanted to do on earth but I had no idea what it was. “And you’ve known hunger. Is it hunger for food or hunger for…Is it somebody you hunger for?”

  “My husband is missing. If I solve things here I think it will help me find him. What do you see in my hand? I want to know everything.”

  He rubbed my hand, lacing his old fingers with mine. His hands were worn from years of work and I was fascinated with the two skin colors and how good they looked together. I bet Martin and Amelia had looked like that, I thought, and I bet their son had been as beautiful as Linc.

  I could have sat like that all day. I could feel Henry’s powerful aura blending with mine, calming me. He was doing for me what I did for others.

  “Better?” he said after a while, and I knew what he meant. Was I calmer and not so agitated?

  “Yes, much better,” I said, feeling truly relaxed for the first time since…since my husband had disappeared.

  “Now tell me everything f
rom the beginning,” he said, and I began.

  If anyone had seen us on that old swing, sitting close together, holding hands, they would have thought we were lovers. I wondered if allowing auras to merge and mingle rated as adultery.

  I told Henry a great deal and he figured out more. He was an old-fashioned soothsayer, a person gifted with second sight. He told me he’d been blind for about fifteen years, since he’d retired from 13 Elms.

  I had so much I wanted to ask him that I didn’t know where to begin. He’d known Narcissa and Delphia since they were children. “Not much good in those two,” he said, smiling, “but there’s worse. They like money. I don’t know what they want it for, but they want it.”

  “Can you see Linc’s child? He’s close to here but I don’t know where he is.”

  “Someone doesn’t want him to be found, and you don’t yet have the power to break through the hold.”

  “Yet?!” I leaped on the word. “How do I get more power?”

  Henry chuckled, holding my hand tightly in his. “That’s one of those things that hasn’t been decided yet. There’s a test—”

  “Test,” I muttered. Again some test I’d have to go through.

  I could tell that Henry wasn’t going to say any more so I decided to talk of something else. “What do you know of Amelia and Martin?”

  Henry loosened his grip on my hand. “Are you thirsty? One of the neighbors made me a big pitcher of lemonade. I wonder—”

  I jumped up and practically ran into the house. The faster I got the lemonade, the faster I’d get to hear the story. Once I was inside I slowed down. The house was small, cozy, very clean and perfectly tidy. It had a bedroom and a bath on one side and the other half of the house was a pretty kitchen open to a nice living room. I opened the old refrigerator and took out a pitcher of lemonade, then opened a cabinet and got out two glasses.

  I didn’t need psychic abilities to see Henry’s life. He was loved by people, but apparently he wasn’t fed by them. In the refrigerator was a roast chicken nearly picked clean, three apples, and a nearly empty carton of milk. In a cabinet over the sink was a half-empty box of cereal.