My name is Amelia Gray. I’m the Graveyard Queen.

Restoring lost and abandoned cemeteries is my profession, but I’m starting to believe that my true calling is deciphering the riddles of the dead. Legend has it that Kroll Cemetery is a puzzle no one has ever been able to solve. For over half a century, the answer has remained hidden within the strange headstone inscriptions and intricate engravings. Because uncovering the mystery of that tiny, remote graveyard may come at a terrible price.

Years after their mass death, Ezra Kroll’s disciples lie unquiet, their tormented souls trapped within the walls of Kroll Cemetery, waiting to be released by someone strong and clever enough to solve the puzzle. For whatever reason, I’m being summoned to that graveyard by both the living and the dead. Every lead I follow, every clue I unravel brings me closer to an unlikely killer and to a destiny that will threaten my sanity and a future with my love, John Devlin.

Praise for THE GRAVEYARD QUEEN SERIES by Amanda Stevens

“The beginning of Stevens’s GRAVEYARD QUEEN SERIES left this reviewer breathless. The author smoothly establishes characters and forms the foundation of future storylines with an edgy and beautiful writing style. Her story is full of twists and turns, with delicious and surprising conclusions. Readers will want to force themselves to slow down and enjoy the book instead of speeding through to the end, and they’ll anxiously await the next installment of this deceptively gritty series.”

—RT Book Reviews, 4½ stars

“The Restorer is by turns creepy and disturbing, mixed with mystery and a bit of romance. Amelia is a strong character who has led a hard and—of necessity—secret life. She is not close to many people, and her feelings for Devlin disturb her greatly. Although at times unnerving, The Restorer is well written and intriguing, and an excellent beginning to a new series.”

—Misti Pyles, Fort Worth Examiner

“I could rhapsodize for hours about how much I enjoyed The Restorer. Amanda Stevens has woven a web of intricate plot lines that elicit many emotions from her readers. This is a scary, provocative, chilling and totally mesmerizing book. I never wanted it to end and I’m going to be on pins and needles until the next book in THE GRAVEYARD QUEEN SERIES comes out.”

—Fresh Fiction

The Visitor

Amanda Stevens

www.mirabooks.co.uk

Contents

Cover

Back Cover Text

Praise for THE GRAVEYARD QUEEN SERIES by Amanda Stevens

Title Page

One

Two

Three

Four

Five

Six

Seven

Eight

Nine

Ten

Eleven

Twelve

Thirteen

Fourteen

Fifteen

Sixteen

Seventeen

Eighteen

Nineteen

Twenty

Twenty-One

Twenty-Two

Twenty-Three

Twenty-Four

Twenty-Five

Twenty-Six

Twenty-Seven

Twenty-Eight

Twenty-Nine

Thirty

Thirty-One

Thirty-Two

Thirty-Three

Thirty-Four

Thirty-Five

Thirty-Six

Thirty-Seven

Thirty-Eight

Thirty-Nine

Forty

Forty-One

Forty-Two

Forty-Three

Forty-Four

Forty-Five

Forty-Six

Forty-Seven

Forty-Eight

Forty-Nine

Fifty

Fifty-One

Copyright

One

The blind ghost returned in the spring, and with her more nightmares. The days warmed, the magnolias opened and foreboding settled in like an unwelcome caller.

Night after night I lay in a dreamlike state, worn out from the physical labor of my cemetery restorations, but too frightened to succumb to a deeper sleep because she would appear to me then. The look-alike specter that had followed me back from the other side. I wanted to believe she was merely my namesake, the ghost of some long-dead ancestor, but I very much feared she was a vision of my future self. A manifestation of the tortured woman I would one day become.

Discomforted by my thoughts, I glanced over at John Devlin, the Charleston police detective who lay sleeping beside me. His ghosts were gone now. His daughter’s spirit had finally been able to move on, thus breaking the tie that had kept her mother—Devlin’s dead wife—bound to him. In the ensuing months since Mariama’s departure, I’d allowed myself a glimmer of hope that Devlin and I might finally be together. We’d forged a strong bond since that fateful day. An unbreakable connection that neither ghost nor human could sever. Or so I wanted to believe.

But as the temperature climbed and the days lengthened, my blood only ran colder. A shift in the wind brought a whiff of something unnatural. Distorted shadows crept across my bedroom ceiling. As the pull from the other side grew stronger, I couldn’t help but obsess over my visitor’s ominous prophecy. What you are, I once was. What I am, you will someday become.

She’d only ever come to me in my dreams, but I was awake now and I could feel her presence stronger than ever. Careful not to rouse Devlin, I rose and tiptoed from the room, slipping down the hallway, through the kitchen and out to my office, which was located at the very back of the house. The long windows afforded a view of the garden where moonlight dappled the freesia. I stood there probing the shadows, the flutter of every leaf, the quiver of every limb spiking my pulse.

A draft seeped in through the windows, bringing the smell of dust and dried lavender. Hair on end, I peered through the layers of moonlight and darkness until I found her. I didn’t outwardly react to her diaphanous form, but everything inside me stilled as a terrible acceptance stole over me. She was here. Not just in my imagination, not just in my dreams, but here. And now I could no longer deny that I was being haunted.

She was dressed in a white lace frock suitable for a wedding or burial. Moonlight shone upon and through her so that I had no trouble distinguishing her all-too-familiar features—the straight nose, the high cheekbones and the slightly parted lips. The same understated features that stared back at me from the mirror except for one notable exception. Her eyes were missing.

Levitating outside my window, she pressed a hand against the glass and a wintry chill shot through me, a bone cold that came only from the other side. The windows rimed, a film of ice forming in the corners of the panes. Minuscule fissions fanned out from her splayed fingers as the glass crackled beneath the pressure of her brittle cold.

Why are you here? I wanted to cry out. What do you want from me?

But I already knew the answer. She wanted my essence, my life force, my humanness. She wanted what every ghost craved—to be alive. That was what made them so dangerous. That was what made them so voracious.

No sound came from her moving lips, but I could hear her message clearly in my head: The key. It’s your only salvation. Find it!

Then she dissolved into the shadows as the frost on the windows vanished.

“Amelia?”

I might have jumped at the sound of my name, but after years of living with ghosts, I’d learned to quell my reflexes. Devlin moved up behind me. The power of his presence never failed to thrill me, but I could take no pleasure in his nearness at that moment.

“What are you doing?” he asked.

“I couldn’t sleep.”

“What’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” I lied.

He placed his hands on my shoulders. “My God, your skin is like ice.”

“It’s cool in here.”

“Come back to bed.” His fingers trailed down my arm. “I’ll keep you warm, Amelia.”

The way he drawled my name, even more than the lingering chill, drew a shiver. “In a minute.”

He rested his chin on my head with a sigh. “Something’s bothering you. What is it? Another nightmare?”

I hesitated, my gaze scanning the darkness. I wanted so much to confide in Devlin, lay all my cards on the table, but that would mean telling him about the ghosts. If he remembered anything of his near-death experience, perhaps he would have been more receptive to my gift. But he’d awakened from his coma without any memory of those moments before and after the shooting. As his wounds healed, his disdain for the supernatural returned stronger than ever, leaving me to brood about how he would react to such a confession.

After everything he’d been through with the malicious and now dead Mariama, an attachment to an unstable woman was the last thing he’d want. So I’d taken the cowardly way out and said nothing.

For most of my life, I’d been sequestered behind cemetery walls, protected from ghosts but isolated from human companionship by Papa’s rules. The loneliness of my adolescence and young adulthood justified my silence now. Or so I told myself. I had a right to happiness, no matter how fleeting, and so I clung to my secrets as tenaciously as the ivy roots that I tugged from my forgotten graveyards.

“Tell me,” Devlin insisted.

“I thought I saw something in the garden.”

He was instantly alert. “Just now?”

“A few minutes ago.”

He turned me to face him. “Why didn’t you wake me?”

“Because it was probably nothing more than a shadow.” Why had I even mentioned it? Was I testing him? Prodding him to admit that he, too, could sense an otherworldly presence?

“I’ll take a look around,” he said.

“You’re wasting your time. You won’t find anything.”

His expression remained stoic, but I felt the same mixture of exhilaration and trepidation that I’d experienced upon our first meeting. I wondered if I would always be a little unsettled in his company. His charisma could be overwhelming at times, and yet his manner remained formal and reserved. He was a beguiling puzzle, John Devlin. An enigma to his very core.

“It’s not a waste if it puts your mind at ease,” he said, pressing his lips to my forehead. He disappeared into the kitchen and I heard the back door close behind him. A moment later, he was in the garden, the beam of his flashlight outing tree trunks and exposing dark corners.

Moonlight glinted in the new silver at his temples, a souvenir from his journey to the other side. My breath quickened as I watched him. Without ghosts feeding on his energy, he’d lost that gaunt, desolate look. His eyes were no longer sunken, his cheeks no longer hollow, but regardless of his physical well-being, he would always be tormented by memories. There would always be an empty space inside his heart that I could never fill.

He stood in my white garden, shoulders rigid as he lifted his face to the moon before turning—with a shudder, I could have sworn—back to the house.

“All clear,” he said as he came into my office. “Nothing to worry about.”

He moved back to the windows and we stood gazing out into the moonlit garden, where the early yarrow gleamed like silver. Garlands of wild roses cascaded down from the tree branches, adding a touch of romance to the night as nothing else ever could.

Devlin wrapped his arms around my waist, pulling me against him once more. Safe within the sanctuary of his embrace, I tried not to think about the past or the future. The only certainty we could ever have was in the moment. I’d learned that lesson the hard way.

But even when he kissed me, I couldn’t shake the feeling of doom that had been building for weeks. Something was coming. The blind ghost’s visit was just the beginning.

Two

I was up and dressed the next morning and on my first cup of tea when the sun crept over the horizon. Leaning a shoulder against the bedroom door, I sipped the tea in the hazy air and watched Devlin button his shirt.

He didn’t always stay over. His job made him restless and he would often get up in the middle of the night to go over the files of a troubling case. Work occupied much of my time, too. I’d been freer over the cold winter months and Devlin and I had grown close during his recuperation. But lately I’d sensed a distance.

It was easy to blame the return of the ghosts and the secrets that I kept from him, but Devlin had become increasingly pensive and withdrawn in his own right. Sometimes when he had no idea I was around, he’d stare out the window with the strangest look on his face or glance over his shoulder as if he could sense a presence that even I couldn’t see. After the trauma of the shooting, his behavior wasn’t unusual, I told myself. But I couldn’t help worrying that something else bothered him. Something he didn’t want me to know about.

I caught his gaze in the mirror and smiled. “Tea?”

“No, thanks. I barely have enough time to stop by the house and change before the first briefing. After that, I’ll be off-line for the rest of the day. I’m not sure when I’ll be back.”

I nodded. “I understand. I have a full day myself.”

“New restoration?”

“If I win the bid.”

“Good luck.” He draped his jacket and tie over his arm as he strode across the room to the doorway. The sun peeking through the lace curtains gave him an otherworldly glow, and for a moment, I was reminded of the shimmer of a manifestation. But John Devlin was no ghost. He was warm, human and very much alive.

Pausing at the door, he slipped his free hand through my hair, tilting my face as he leaned down to brush his lips against mine. My heart instantly quickened. It was all I could do to keep the cup and saucer balanced as I responded with a parting of my lips, a quick dart of my tongue.

He drew back, eyes gleaming. Then he threw his jacket and tie on the bed, removed the china from my fingers and, threading both hands through my hair, kissed me again. The pressure of his mouth and the heat of his body reminded me all too vividly of what had transpired between us an hour ago. The intimate whispers, the soft moans, his hand sweeping slowly up my thigh.

That was all it took. One kiss, a memory and I was lost to him all over again. In all my twenty-eight years, I’d never known anyone like Devlin. He was everything I’d ever dreamed of in a man and not at all what I could have imagined.

“I really do have to go,” he said.

“I know.” Rising on tiptoes, I kissed him again, lightly now, because it was time for both of us to start our day. “Will I see you later?”

A slight hesitation, so infinitesimal as to be my imagination. “I’ll have to let you know. I’m not sure when I’ll be back.”

“You’re going out of town?”

A longer hesitation and a shadowy flicker in those dark, dark eyes. “I’m having dinner with my grandfather at his house in Myrtle Beach.”

I lifted a brow but said nothing because I was completely taken aback by the revelation. Devlin and his grandfather had been estranged for years, ever since Devlin had decided to become a police officer rather than joining the family law firm. I suspected the hostility between the two stubborn men ran a lot deeper than Devlin’s career choice, but he had never really opened up to me about his family.

Turning away, he picked up his coat and tie. “His assistant seemed to think it a matter of some urgency, so I don’t know how long I’ll be there. If dinner runs late I may stay over and drive back in the morning.”

“I understand. I hope he’s not... I hope everything is okay.”

“I’m sure he’s fine,” Devlin said, but the shadows in his eyes belied his casual assurance.

I made no further inquiries even though I’d always been curious about Jonathan Devlin, an illustrious attorney and philanthropist who could trace his roots all the way back to the founding of Charleston. I’d walked past his mansion south of Broad Street any number of times, but I’d never met Devlin’s only living relative. I didn’t like to press him about his people because my own family had more than their fair share of secrets.

Determined to put those lingering doubts behind me, I set out on my morning walk as soon as Devlin drove away. I always enjoyed a brisk stroll through downtown where the magnolias were already in bloom and the city’s past lurked on every cobbled street corner. On those days when I arrived before dawn, I loved to pause on the Battery to watch the sun come up over the harbor. In that quiet time as the ghosts floated back through the veil and the tourists slept soundly in their beds, I had the city to myself. No secrets to worry about, no prickles at my nape to warn me of an uncanny presence. Just the dance of sunlight on water and the silhouette of Fort Sumter shimmering on the horizon. Right before the dew burned off, the trees would sparkle with diamonds, a fairyland of prisms so bright and beautiful I could scarcely catch my breath at the wonder of this city.

I was a relative newcomer to Charleston, having been born and raised in the small town of Trinity, but my mother was a native Charlestonian. She and my aunt had grown up in a small house deep in the historic district, in the shadow of all the grand mansions. Theirs had been a childhood steeped in genteel tradition and seasoned by middle-class reality.

As a child, I’d been captivated by the grace of their bearing and the charm of their Lowcountry accents. They were exotic creatures that bathed in rose water and dressed in crisp cotton. It was only when I grew older that I came to realize the effort that went into such elegant presentations. Like so many Southern women of a certain age, my mother and aunt’s upbringing had become their vocation.

I was not my mother’s daughter by nature or nurture. On most days, I dressed in jeans and sneakers and rarely bothered with makeup. My face was tanned and freckled from working in the sun, my palms callused from the hard labor of a cemetery restorer. I possessed none of my mother’s or aunt’s polish, and sometimes when I looked at myself in the mirror, I wondered how someone like me had caught the eye of a man like Devlin.

This was not a question born of self-deprecation or false modesty. I could acknowledge my attributes. I was well educated, well traveled and my profession kept me physically fit. I liked to think that my eyes were a standout, changing from blue to gray and sometimes green depending on my attire and surroundings. At the bottom of my irises were tiny elongated motes. When I was little, I’d discovered that if I squinted just so and used a bit of imagination as I peered into the mirror, those odd colorations gave my pupils the look of keyholes.

But no matter the color of my eyes, no matter my education, profession or intellect, I would never be one of those golden women who glided so effortlessly through life. For me there would never be yacht club luncheons or white-gloved garden parties or harmless flirtations over frosty mint juleps. That was Devlin’s old world, and because of who I was and where I came from, I would never be welcome there. For all its charm and allure, Charleston remained an insular place, one of bloodlines and traditions, a city perpetually turned inward by its rivers and harbor. I was an Asher by birth, a legacy imbued with great wealth and corruption, but I was also a Gray. My papa’s people were simple mountainfolk, and it was from that branch of the family that I had inherited my dark gift. Caulbearers, we were sometimes called. Those of us born with a veil. It happened every generation or so.

But as more of Papa’s secrets came to light, I was starting to suspect that my legacy ran far deeper than the ability to see spirits. I had been born dead to a dead mother. My grandmother Tilly had pulled me back from the other side by cutting away the veil of membrane covering my face and forcing air into my premature lungs, and now I sometimes felt that I belonged to neither world. I was a living ghost, a wanderer who had not yet found my purpose or place. But every new discovery, every broken rule brought me closer to my calling.

If only I could peer through the keyholes of my eyes and know the future, perhaps I could somehow change my destiny. But how did one fight preordination? How did one combat fate?

It was a question I pondered often in the dead of night as ghosts drifted past my window.

* * *

Back home and freshly showered, I carried my second cup of tea out to the garden, where I could watch the butterflies flit among the sweetspire. Somewhere down the street, a horn blared and I could hear the muffled roar of traffic on Rutledge as commuters headed to and from the Crosstown. But all was calm and quiet here in my little oasis. Or so I thought.

I must have still been on edge from that ghostly visitation because the moment I spotted the open cellar door, my heart gave a painful jerk.

Tamping down a premature panic, I crossed the yard to the steps, but before I could call down, an odor wafted up to me—the smell of musk, earth and more faintly, decay. Not the stench of active rot, but the fusty perfume of old death.

Phantom fragrances were often attached to ghosts. Devlin’s dead daughter had smelled of jasmine, and the sightless apparition of dust and dried lavender.

But this was not the scent of a ghost.

A cloud passed over the sun and I shivered. When the sun came back out, a shadowy face stared up at me from the gloom of the cellar.

Three

“Amelia?”

My heart stuttered for a fraction of a second as I tried to catch my breath. The shock of hearing my name on some odious creature’s lips stunned me. Then reason intervened and I realized the voice was a familiar one. A safe one.

“Hey, I didn’t scare you, did I?” Macon Dawes called up.

I could just make out his features in the dusky light. Tousled hair, tired eyes, slightly pointed chin. Not a demon, not some loathsome half being from an in-between world, but the pleasantly human visage of my upstairs neighbor.

But that smell...

I clutched the stair rail as I struggled to quiet my pounding heart. “I was a bit startled. I wasn’t expecting to find anyone in the cellar at this hour.”

“Did the hammering wake you up?” He placed a foot on the bottom step as he continued to stare up at me. He wore black Chucks nearly identical to the ones I had on, torn jeans and an old plaid shirt thrown over a threadbare T-shirt. The ordinariness of his rumpled appearance comforted me. “Sorry about that. I should have realized all that banging would go straight up the walls to your place.”

“I didn’t hear a thing,” I assured him. “I was just having some tea in the garden when I noticed the open door.”

“Still, it wouldn’t kill me to mind my manners. I’m so used to my crazy schedule at the hospital I forget there are folks like you keeping normal hours out there in the real world.”

“No harm done.” I went down a step or two. Now that my pulse had settled, I was genuinely curious. Macon was a student at the nearby Medical University of South Carolina, so I’d grown used to his coming and going at all hours. But so much early-morning activity was unusual even for him. “What are you building down there?”

“Building? Nothing. Just reinforcing some of the shelving so we can have a little more storage space.” He motioned toward the depths of the cellar. “Have you been down here lately? This place is a firetrap. You wouldn’t believe all the useless crap I’ve come across. Cartons of old textbooks and magazines, trunks of moth-eaten clothing and something that looks suspiciously like a mummified bat.”

I descended another step. “What’s that smell?”

He wrinkled his nose. “You should have gotten a whiff earlier before I aired out the place. I think something’s nesting down here.”

“Nesting?” I asked in alarm. “Like what?”

“Rats, maybe. Or possums. And did I mention the spiders?” He ran fingers through his hair with an exaggerated shudder.

“Do you need a hand?” I asked with little enthusiasm because the mention of spiders gave me pause. I’d had a mild case of arachnophobia since childhood and despite my years of prowling through web-shrouded tombs and infested mausoleums, I’d never quite managed to conquer my aversion.

“Thanks, but if you’ll make sure all your belongings are marked, I’ll take care of the rest.”

“I don’t have much. Just a few boxes that were left behind when I moved in. I’ll come down and take a look, though.”

I started down the steps, reluctant to leave the sunlight in the garden for the dimness of the basement. The house had been built on the site of the chapel of an orphanage that had burned to the ground at the turn of the last century. The cellar was the only thing that remained of the original structure, and sometimes when I went down there, I had an uncomfortable feeling that something lay hidden and waiting behind those brick walls. Something other than spiders and rodents.

The house had always provided a shield from the ghosts—a safe haven—but sometimes I wondered if the cellar might be a back door through the protective firewall of hallowed ground. The only spirit to ever breach my inner sanctum had been the ghost of Devlin’s daughter. Somehow she’d found a way inside my house, and if she could do it, how long before I experienced another intrusion?

I continued downward, my footsteps echoing eerily in the dank stillness. A second stairway at the back of the cellar led to the kitchen, but the door had been boarded up during one of the renovations. Once upon a time, that fortified passage had made me feel safer inside the house, but now I wondered if my peace of mind had ever been anything more than an illusion.

Funny how the same sealed door could make one feel secure on one side and trapped on the other. As I reached the bottom of the steps, I became overly aware of that single exit. Claustrophobia pressed in on me. For an archaeologist turned cemetery restorer, I tended to have a lot of inconvenient hang-ups.

“What’s that noise?” I cocked my head with a frown.

Macon paused. “I don’t hear anything.”

“Listen. It’s an odd drone. Sort of like an electrical hum.”

He lifted his gaze to the bare lightbulb. “Faulty wiring would be my guess. I doubt this place has had a proper inspection in years. Like I said, a regular firetrap.”

Rubbing my arms, I glanced around warily. Macon was right. Something had been crawling around the cellar, shredding old books and forgotten clothing while leaving behind the faint but animalistic odor of musk and decay. “I’ve never liked coming down here,” I said. “This place gives me the creeps.”

“Says the woman who restores old graveyards for a living.” Macon blew dust from a box, then lifted the lid to peer inside. “Junk, junk and more junk.” As he swung the carton off the shelf, something dislodged and tumbled to the floor—a card with two nearly identical photographs mounted side by side.

As I bent to pick up the curiosity, I felt a tug of recognition even though I’d never seen the man that gazed up at me from the dual images, let alone the two diminutive girls that stood in front of him. They were older than their size would suggest, in their midteens perhaps.

Judging by the odd attire, the photos had been taken long before I was born. The man was shirtless beneath old-fashioned bib overalls while the girls were draped in dark cloaks that covered their frail bodies from neck to ankle.

Something about the incongruity of those heavy cloaks, about the way they stood back-to-back with their faces turned toward the camera gave me an inexplicable chill.

I handed the card to Macon. “Look at this.”

He moved over to the natural light in the doorway for a closer examination. “It’s a stereogram,” he said after a moment. “If you look at it through a viewer, the photographs merge into one 3-D image.”

“I’ve played around with photography. Double exposure and things like that, but I don’t know much about stereoscopy. The card seems quite old.”

“I’m sure it is. These things were popular as far back as the nineteenth century. I had an uncle who collected them. I wonder if there’s a stereoscope around here somewhere. Where did you find it?”

“On the floor. I think it must have been wedged between the shelves. You probably nudged it loose when you moved the box.”

I waited patiently while he rummaged through the dusty items, a man on a mission. A few minutes later, he gave a triumphant “aha” and held up an interesting-looking apparatus mounted on a wooden handle. Taking the device back over to the stairs, he placed the card in the holder and raised the viewer to the light. “Wow, this is cool. The image is so clear it’s as if they’re standing right here in front of me.”

He handed me the stereoscope and I lifted it to the light. My eyes took a moment to adjust and then the subjects leaped out at me, so much so that I was startled by the perception. As Macon said, they could have been standing directly in front of us, so sharp and uncanny the image. My gaze was magnetically drawn to each of those solemn faces dominated by dark, piercing eyes.

Then I began to notice other oddities. A small wagon-like contraption in the background. A fenced enclosure beneath the front porch where a dog might have been penned. I could even see a grainy face in an upstairs window staring down at the trio.

A familiar face.

The image blurred as my fingers tightened around the polished handle. I couldn’t believe my own eyes. It must only be my imagination, some weird optical illusion because there was no reasonable explanation for what I saw. But I was a woman who lived among ghosts. My world didn’t operate on reason and logic.

Taking a moment to steady myself, I brought the image back into focus. The girls disappeared and the man faded away until I saw only that face peering down from the upstairs window.

The eyes, the nose, the mouth—the same understated features that stared back at me from the mirror.

Four

After sipping a cup of chamomile, my nerves began to settle, but I was by no means calm. I tried to convince myself I was overreacting, but what were the chances of that stereogram turning up in the cellar at the same time I was being visited by the sightless apparition?

Macon hadn’t seemed to notice anything unusual in the image or my demeanor. A phone call had pulled him away before he could study the card further, and by the time he returned, he was anxious to get on with his work. I’d escaped upstairs with the viewer and stereogram and had taken both straight to my office, where they now sat on my desk until I could decide what to do with them.

I wasn’t particularly worried about having either in my house. I’d never believed that possessions or even places could be haunted. People were haunted. However, ghosts could sometimes use objects to communicate, and I had to wonder if the stereogram was yet another message from the blind ghost.

It was a big leap, and as I went about my business for the rest of the day, I reminded myself that now was not the time to let my imagination run wild. I had a bid to work up for Seven Gates Cemetery, my blog to update and a speech to write for the Oak Grove dedication ceremony. Until I had time to investigate, I would do well to put that card out of my mind.

But no matter how hard I tried to concentrate, my attention kept straying. The stereogram kept calling. Whether it was a facet of my personality or the nature of my business, I couldn’t rest when a mystery needed solving.

Succumbing to temptation, I inserted the card in the holder and brought it to my eyes, turning my chair to the natural light so that I could scrutinize the three-dimensional image for messages and clues. But the only thing that meant anything to me was the face in the upstairs window.

At least now I could assume that my look-alike had once actually existed. She wasn’t a vision of my future self, but a ghost from the past. That revelation should have eased my mind, but the fact remained, she’d followed me through the veil for a reason. She’d warned me to find a key, but where was I to even look?

Shivering, I set the stereo card aside and examined the viewer, noticing for the first time a small silver plate fastened to the underside. The inscription was so tiny I could just make it out: “To Mott, From Neddy. Together Forever.”

In even smaller print at the very bottom of the metal tag was the name of a shop: Dowling Curiosities, Charleston.

Given the age of the stereoscope and how long it had likely been stored in the basement, I hadn’t much hope that the shop would still be in business. To my surprise, however, a Google search yielded a King Street address. I’d undoubtedly passed it any number of times while strolling through the historic district. I diligently noted the information in my phone so that I could look for the place on my next walk.

For the rest of the afternoon, I remained at my desk, alternately working on bids and studying the stereogram until hunger pains disrupted my concentration. Since Devlin would be spending the evening with his grandfather, I decided to walk down the street to a little place on Rutledge for an early dinner. To my surprise, however, he was sitting on the front porch waiting for me when I arrived home a little while later. As I approached the steps, a light breeze trailed a trace of his cologne, a dark, spicy scent with hints of warm vanilla and a dangerous note of absinthe. Sultry, seductive and a bit decadent for the daylight hours, but that was Devlin.

The late-afternoon sunlight filtering down through the trees blinded me for a moment so that he became nothing more than a dark form imprinted upon my retinas. It almost seemed as if another shape hovered over him, but then I blinked and, like the mysterious stereogram, the two images merged into one.

“I thought you were having dinner with your grandfather tonight,” I said in surprise.

“I am. But I happened to be passing by your house and I had the urge to see you before I head out.” He paused to stare down at me for the longest moment. “Are you all right? You were scowling just now as you came through the garden.”

“Was I? The sun was in my eyes.” I sidestepped out of the glare and as my vision adjusted, I was struck yet again by his devastating good looks. Despite the heat, he appeared as fresh as the proverbial daisy, his cotton shirt crisp, the line of his tailored pants still neatly creased. As I climbed the stairs, it occurred to me that I’d never sufficiently appreciated a well-fitting trouser until I met Devlin.

When I got to the top step, he bent to kiss me. Normally, I would have gone willingly into his arms, drawn by that delectable scent and his innate allure, but I found myself strangely reticent, holding back my desire as I tried to resurrect defenses that had tumbled upon our first meeting.

More and more I was coming to understand Papa’s withdrawal. Retreating behind the wall of his own troubled thoughts had been the only way he knew to protect himself and those around him from the ghosts.

Devlin searched my face. “I don’t think it was the sun. Something’s wrong. I can see it in your eyes.”

“I’m just tired.”

“Because you’re not sleeping.” He trailed his knuckles along my jawline. “I wish Rupert Shaw had never talked you into going back to Oak Grove. You’ve been having nightmares ever since you agreed to finish the restoration.”

“It’s a very dark cemetery,” I said. “A troubled place even before the murders.”

His gaze deepened. “But it is just a place. What happened there was human evil, not supernatural. You do know that, right?”

He wasn’t entirely correct, but I could hardly argue the point. “Not all my feelings about Oak Grove are negative. We met because of that cemetery. I certainly don’t regret that. Although I’d like to think that our paths would have crossed regardless.”

His eyes softened and some of the strain between us melted. “Such a romantic notion from someone usually so serious.”

“The two aren’t mutually exclusive, you know.”

“In you, they’re not. I’ve never known anyone so full of contradictions. You’re a very complicated woman, which is only one of the many reasons I find you so fascinating.”

“You find me fascinating?” I asked without guile.

“Have I not made that clear?” He cupped the back of my neck as he gazed into my eyes. “Endlessly fascinating.”

I felt my knees go weak at the dark glint in his eyes, at the provocative edge in his drawl. Then foolishly I wondered if he’d once thought the same of Mariama, and I glanced away.

He took my chin and brought my face back to his. “Hey. What’s that look?”

“Sometimes I’m still surprised by us,” I admitted. “You and me. That we’re together.”

“Why?”

“We’re so different. We come from different places.”

“Maybe that’s why we work. Our differences keep things interesting,” he said lightly, but his expression sobered. He tucked back a strand of hair that had escaped from my ponytail. “I hate seeing you like this. So exhausted and distracted. Nothing’s going to happen if you fall asleep, you know. I’ll do everything in my power to keep you safe.”

“I know that. Just as I’ll do everything in my power to keep you safe. But some things are beyond our control. Even you have no sway over my nightmares.”

“Maybe you sell me short,” he said and tugged me to him.

This time I didn’t pull away, proving, I supposed, that when it came to Devlin, I didn’t have the courage of my convictions. If the blind ghost lurked in the shadows, I was oblivious to her presence, attuned to nothing more than my own pounding pulse and those seductive eyes peering down at me.

Devlin murmured something to me that later I would never be able to recall except for the silken drawl of my name. His kiss, when it came, was very slow, very deliberate and devastatingly effective. But his hands... Those strong, graceful hands were greedy and grasping...touching here, skimming there...making me tremble with need as I clutched at his shirt.

Somehow I found myself backed up against the porch wall, protected from the street by his body. He lifted my top, pressing his hands to my breasts and deepening the kiss with his tongue. I locked my hands around his neck and threw my head back with abandon as his mouth moved to my throat, then to my ear, then back to my lips. The traffic noises faded and the floorboards evaporated beneath my feet. Only the sound of his voice brought me back to earth.

“Sorry. I got carried away.” He moved back to adjust my shirt. “I know you’re not one for public spectacles.”

“You didn’t hear me complain, did you?” I asked breathlessly. “I wanted you to do that. All of it. When you touch me like that...”

“Like this?” he murmured, his hands sliding back inside my shirt.

Electricity sizzled along my spine. “Yes, exactly like that.”

With the tip of my finger, I traced the outline of the silver medallion he wore tucked in his shirt. I fancied I could feel the coolness of the medal beneath the fabric and the quiver of power and history contained inside that ominous emblem.

“You always know how to get to me, don’t you?” I said. “You know just where to touch me, how to look at me so that I can’t help losing control. Sometimes I wonder how you do it.”

“How I do what?”

“That,” I said with a shudder as he pulled me closer. “Everything you do makes me want you even more. I’ve never felt this way before. That sounds like a very bad cliché, I know, but it’s true. All you have to do is say my name and I melt. It’s as if you’ve cast a spell over me.”

I expected him to kiss me again after that candid and perhaps ill-advised confession and then sweep me inside to the bedroom to prove just how vulnerable to his touch I truly was. Instead, his mood seemed to shift as a disquieting shadow flashed in his eyes, and for some inexplicable reason, I thought again of Mariama, a sultry, hedonistic woman versed in the ways of dark magic. She was gone now, her ties to Devlin thankfully severed, but I wasn’t foolish enough to discount the influence she’d once had over him or the things she had undoubtedly taught him.

Was that why he still wore the medallion? As protection against her treacherous grip?

He claimed he didn’t believe in the power of talismans, and yet I’d never seen him without the silver emblem around his neck, the entwined snake and claw chillingly symbolic of the entanglements and dangerous alliances that came from being a member of the Order. And from being Mariama Goodwine’s husband.

The mood tainted by thoughts of his dead wife, I extricated myself from his embrace. “You’ve a long drive ahead of you and I don’t want to make you late.”

“Yes, it wouldn’t do to keep the old man waiting.” He seemed to immediately regret his harshness. “Sorry. I don’t mean to be short with you. As you may have guessed, I’m not looking forward to the evening.”

I put a hand on his sleeve. “Are you sure there’s nothing else bothering you? Seems to me I’m not the only one who’s been distracted lately.”

Now it was Devlin who detached himself from my touch, gently brushing aside my hand as he moved out of the shade into a patch of waning sunlight. “I’m fine.”

He hovered at the top of the steps gazing out over the garden before he turned to glance back at me. The look on his face made me tremble even though I was hard pressed to put a name to the indefinable darkness I glimpsed in his eyes. Wariness? Resolve?

No, I thought with a jolt. What I saw in Devlin’s eyes was dread.

Five

That night, I turned in early with a new novel, but exhaustion claimed me before I made it through the first chapter. Saving my place with a crystal bookmark my aunt had given to me years ago, I turned off the light and snuggled down in the covers as I tried to clear my mind of secrets, stereograms and the smell of old decay in the cellar.

I must have been dreaming about that smell because the phantom scent roused me from the first deep sleep I’d had in nights. I lay very still with eyes wide-open, trying to orient myself in the darkness. The odor was so fleeting and indistinct it might well have been a remnant of my dream. I wasn’t frightened. Not then. Not until I heard breathing.

The rhythmic sawing was low and croaky. Human but not human.

A thrill of alarm chased across my scalp even as I tried to rationalize the sound. It was just an old-house noise like all the other creaks and groans I heard from time to time. The doors and windows were locked tight. A human intruder couldn’t get in without making sufficient racket to wake me and it was a rare occurrence for a ghost to penetrate hallowed ground. I was safe here in my sanctuary. I desperately needed to believe that.

But as I lay there drenched in moonlight and dread, the sound came again, raspy and furtive. And close. Very close. Right behind the headboard, I was certain.

My own breath quickened as I slowly turned.

Nothing was there. Nothing that I could see. Because the sound came from inside the wall.

I wanted more than anything to leap from bed, put distance between myself and those terrifying rasps, but instead I lay there listening to the darkness as my mind raced back to the conversation with Macon. He’d said earlier that something was nesting in the cellar. An opossum or a rat, perhaps?

An animal would certainly explain the musky smell, but what of the breathing? The ragged exhalation suggested something larger than a rodent, a sentient prowler that could invade hallowed ground and maneuver its way into my sanctuary.

Slipping a hand from beneath the covers, I reached for the lamp switch. Light flooded the room, chasing shadows from corners and momentarily staunching my terror. Nothing stirred. I saw no evidence of a visitor, animal or otherwise. The rasping had stopped, but I still had a sense that something hunkered inside the wall. I could feel an avid presence behind the plaster.

Climbing out of bed, I plucked one of my slippers from the floor and then, taking a position at the end of the bed, I flung the shoe against the wall above the headboard. I heard a muffled squeal, followed by furious scratching that now came from the hallway.

Gooseflesh popped at the back of my neck. I had no idea what I was dealing with. Human, animal...something from another realm? I couldn’t imagine the space between the walls accommodating anything larger than a raccoon, but if the sound really had come from the hallway outside my bedroom... If something had found a way in through the basement...

Images spiraled through my head as I stood there trembling. The last thing I wanted to do was leave my bedroom to investigate, but what choice did I have? I needed to make sure nothing was loose in my house.

Oh, how I wished for Angus’s company at that moment. Ever since the battered mutt had adopted me during a restoration in the Blue Ridge Mountains, he’d been my constant companion, a guardian against intruders from this world and the next. But he was in the country with my parents because I’d thought, foolishly perhaps, that they needed his protection more than I did.

Grabbing a flashlight from my bedside drawer, I eased through the door and inched my way down the corridor, pausing now and then to track a new sound. Was that the scratch of a claw, the faint click of a door?

By the time I reached the kitchen, I’d almost managed to convince myself that nothing was amiss. I was just about to step into my office when a soft thud brought me around with a jerk.

My gaze went straight to the cellar door and I paused there with hammering heart. Then I tiptoed across the room, and I pressed my ear to the thick wood. All was silent in the cellar, but I could feel cold air seeping through the keyhole. Not for anything would I put my eye to the aperture, but I had to wonder if something was on the other side peering in at me.

I knelt and shone the flashlight beam through the opening. A high-pitched squeal—or was it a whistle?—had me scrambling back to the middle of the kitchen floor. Drawing my knees close to my chest, I sat there quaking, my gaze glued to that keyhole.

I still didn’t see how a flesh-and-bone intruder could have invaded my sanctuary. The only way in from the cellar was through that locked door...unless...

Could there be a hidden crawl space somewhere?

My gaze darted about the kitchen. The notion of a secret passageway was deeply disturbing, but I wasn’t about to go exploring for the entrance. For now, all I could do was seal the keyhole with a piece of duct tape and shove a table up against the door—futile precautions that did little to calm my nerves.

Leaving lights on all over the house, I went back to the bedroom and crawled under the covers, bracing myself for another long, sleepless night. Turning to the nightstand to retrieve my novel, I froze with a gasp.

The translucent husk of a cicada, perfectly preserved and still attached to a twig, lay on top of the book. The silver bookmark with the dangling crystals was gone.

Six

I was very tired the next morning, having dozed only fitfully after I’d gone back to bed. The insect shell left on the nightstand troubled me greatly because it was concrete proof that something had been in my house, even in my bedroom. In hindsight, the actions of my strange visitor seemed almost childlike—pilfering my sparkly bookmark after a macabre game of hide-and-seek. But this revelation made the intrusion no less alarming. Quite the opposite, in fact.

Despite my exhaustion, I managed to rise at a decent hour and was out the door well before nine. I’d scheduled a meeting with a local historical society for late morning, but I still had plenty of time to investigate Dowling Curiosities.

I found a place to park, and as I walked along the shady streets, the sights, sounds and tantalizing smells of a Charleston morning helped soothe my ragged nerves. The tourists were already up and about, although most of the upscale shops along King Street’s antiques district were not yet open.

Passing the address of the shop, I backtracked but saw no sign or shingle. I thought I’d entered the wrong address in my phone until I realized the shop was located at the back of a building. Access was through a wrought iron gate and down a cobblestone alley lined with potted gardenias.

A sign in the window informed me that the shop would open at ten so I headed over to the harbor for a walk along the water. By the time I returned, it was a few minutes after ten and I could see some activity in the shop. A woman was just leaving and we nodded to one another in passing. Bells announced my arrival and her departure as the door swished closed and I stood for a moment gazing around.

Dowling Curiosities was small, cramped and smelled of camphor. The restricted space might ordinarily have repelled me, but the light shining in through the windows was pleasant and the crowded displays had been styled by a clever hand: antique dolls dressed in mourning clothes, carnival sideshow posters in gilded frames, glass cabinets showcasing all manner of curios from ivory-handled dueling pistols to bizarre mechanical toys. And on long shelves above the display cases, dozens of antique cameras and stereoscopes.

As I approached the back counter, a man came through the curtains and stopped dead when he saw me, his hand flying to his heart.

“Oh, my,” he said on a sharp breath. “You gave me a fright. I didn’t know anyone was about. I heard the bells but assumed that was Mrs. Hofstadter leaving.”

“We passed each other in the doorway.”

“Ah, that explains it.”

I looked around doubtfully. “You are open for business, aren’t you?”

“Yes, of course.” He stepped up to the counter with a welcoming smile and I found myself charmed by his whimsical fashion statement—plaid pants and a sweater vest over a lavender shirt with a popped collar. He looked to be in his mid-to late thirties, but the silky sweep of dark blond hair across his brow gave him a boyish look that belied the tiny crinkles around his gray eyes. “How may I help you?”

“I’m hoping to find some information about an antique stereoscope.”

“Well, you’ve certainly come to the right place. Stereoscopy happens to be a passion,” he said. “What kind of stereoscope are you interested in?”

“I’m not here to buy. I found an old viewer in my basement and I’m hoping you can tell me something about it.”

As we spoke, I removed the stereoscope from my bag and placed it on the counter. He picked up the device and lifted it briefly to his eyes even though the cardholder was empty.

“This is a handsome piece. Manufactured by the Keystone View Company here in the States. You can still see their stag elk trademark on the side. See?” He pointed out the emblem. “The unit appears extremely well preserved for having been stored in a damp basement.” He gave me a reproachful glance.

“I had no idea it was even there,” I said defensively.

“What a wonderful find, then. I’d put the age somewhere around 1890 to 1900.”

“That old?”

“Yes, indeed,” he said as he carefully returned the viewer to the counter. When he glanced up, there was a shrewd gleam in his eyes. “If you’re looking to sell, I should warn you that the Monarch—which you have here—was the most common viewer on the market back in those days. Handheld units were mass-produced and relatively inexpensive even in the late nineteenth century. They’re collectible, of course, but not as highly prized as the larger stereoscopes.”

“It’s not mine to sell. As I said, I came across it in my basement and I’m trying to determine the original owner.”

“That’ll be next to impossible, I’m afraid.” He leaned an arm against the counter and I got a whiff of orange blossoms with a dark base note of hawthorn. “A viewer this old has undoubtedly changed hands any number of times. Unless you know how it came to be in your cellar, I don’t know how you’d be able to trace the provenance.”

“That’s why I came here, Mr. Dowling—”

“Owen, please.” He flashed a beguiling grin.

“I think you may be in a unique position to help me...Owen. There’s a small silver tag on the bottom with the name of this shop and an inscription.”

He lifted a curious brow as he turned the viewer over. “So there is. ‘To Mott, From Neddy. Together Forever,’” he read, a frown fleeting across his features as he studied the plate.

“Do you recognize those names?” I asked anxiously.

“What? No,” he said with a distracted air. “I was just trying to remember when we switched from silver plating to brass tags for inscriptions.” He paused, considering. “I don’t recall ever seeing one like this, so I think we can safely assume the viewer was bought and sold before my time.”

“I know it’s a long shot,” I said on a hopeful note. “But I thought you might have a sales receipt or even a record of the engraving.”

“The computerized files won’t go back that far, and even if they did, it would be impossible to locate a receipt without a last name. But if I may make a suggestion?”

“Please.

“If you’d like to leave the viewer, I’ll be only too happy to show it to my great-aunt. She’s owned the shop for nearly forty years and I believe she used to do all the engraving herself. The names in the inscription are rather unusual, so there’s a chance she might remember them.”

“Would it be possible for me to come back later when she’s in?”

Owen Dowling shook his head regretfully. “Her visits are few and far between, I’m afraid. She rarely even comes to Charleston these days.”

“I see.” I pulled a business card from my bag and placed it on the counter between us. “If you or your aunt should think of anything, would you please give me a call?”

He glanced down at the card and another scowl skidded across his forehead, but when he looked up, his expression showed nothing but a mild curiosity. “You’re a cemetery restorer.”

“I am.”

“I don’t think I’ve ever met one before. Sounds like a fascinating profession.”

“It can be. Anyway, thank you for your time.”

“It was my pleasure. I only wish I could have been of more assistance.”

I shrugged in resignation and thanked him again as I returned the stereoscope to my bag.

A phone rang in the back and he pocketed my card with an apologetic smile as he glanced over his shoulder. “Sorry. I’m the only one here so I have to get that. But please...” He waved a hand to encompass the showroom. “Stay and have a look around. Take your time and enjoy our curiosities.”

“I have an appointment, but some other time perhaps.” My voice trailed away as he disappeared through the curtain and I could hear the rumble of his voice as he answered the phone. I would have liked nothing more than to spend the rest of the morning browsing through all the oddities and treasures, but I had to get to my meeting with the Greater Charleston Historical Society.

The pleasing tinkle of the bells followed me out into the sunshine. As I started down the cobblestone alley toward the street, something compelled me to glance over my shoulder.

Owen Dowling stood just beyond the doorway peering after me. He had a phone to his ear, and as our gazes connected, he stepped back into the shadows as if he didn’t wish to be seen.

I experienced the oddest sensation in that moment. Part premonition, part déjà vu. I’d never met the man before, had never been to that shop. Yet I couldn’t shake the notion that I had been guided to Dowling Curiosities for a reason, and that my visit with Owen Dowling had somehow set something dark and dangerous in motion.

Seven

Later that afternoon, I headed out again, this time to see Dr. Rupert Shaw at the Charleston Institute for Parapsychology Studies. As I came around the side of the Institute after parking, I shot a glance across the street at Madam Know-It-All’s, the palmist I’d become acquainted with last fall. I didn’t linger to try to catch a glimpse of her. I was in too much of a hurry to speak with Dr. Shaw.

“He’s expecting you,” the new assistant said with a smile after I introduced myself. “I’ll take you back.”

She escorted me down the hallway and motioned me through a set of thick pocket doors. “Go on in. If either of you need anything, I’ll be at my desk.”

“Thank you.”

As her heels clattered down the hallway, I stepped across the threshold and glanced around the room, relieved to see the same cozy muddle that I remembered so fondly. If anything, the stacks of books on the wooden floor had grown to a new, precarious level and an assortment of files and magazines threatened to swallow Dr. Shaw’s massive desk.

The French doors stood open to the garden and I spotted his lanky silhouette at the edge of the terrace. He stood with one hand propped against a column, his head turned slightly away from me, but I could still see his careworn profile. His profound sadness caught me off guard, and I paused before knocking or calling out his name. A second later, he stepped in from the garden, his eyes lighting when he saw me.

“There you are. Right on time as always. I was just outside getting a little fresh air.” The melancholy I’d glimpsed a moment earlier was now carefully masked, but there was no disguising the ravages of grief. The past few months had not been kind to Dr. Shaw. The sorrow of losing his only son had etched deep furrows in his brow, and his eyes held the shadows of a man haunted by memories and regret—a look I’d seen often in Devlin’s eyes.

Not wishing to be caught staring, I bent to remove the antique stereoscope from my bag and placed it on his desk.

He picked up the device and turned it in his hand. “What an interesting piece.”

“I thought you might find it so. And this is the stereogram.”

He took his time scrutinizing the images before slipping the card in the holder as he swung his chair around to capture the light. “The faces are startlingly clear, aren’t they? Almost as if they could speak to us.” His voice held a note of wonder. “Are there others?”

“Other stereograms, you mean? It’s possible. The basement is crammed full of old boxes.”

“Worth a look, I should think.” He lowered the viewer and swiveled back to his desk. “The resemblance is uncanny. I’m referring to the woman in the window, of course. Is she an ancestor?”

“I have no idea.” I released a breath that I hadn’t realized I’d been holding. The fact that he could see her was confirmation that she’d been alive at the time the photograph was taken.

“Surely someone must have mentioned how much you favor a grandmother or great-aunt or distant cousin,” he suggested.

“No, never. Until last fall, I’d been told I was adopted.”

“But you’re not?”

“The circumstances of my birth are unusual, to say the least.”

“I see.” He removed a magnifying glass from his desk and studied the images for another long moment. “Intriguing the way the camera caught her in that window. Almost as if she were a guardian watching over them,” he mused.

“I hadn’t thought of her that way,” I said. “I wish I knew who they all were.”

“You don’t recognize the man?”

I glanced up at the note of excitement in his tone. “No. Should I?”

“You’re much too young, I expect. Ezra Kroll’s legacy is all but forgotten these days, but there was a time when the very whisper of his name could send a chill down one’s spine.”

“Ezra Kroll?” My pulse quickened, though I was certain I’d never heard of the man before. “Who was he?”

“The founder of a rather mysterious commune back in the fifties. He and his followers lived in a self-sustained colony a few miles south of Isola in Aiken County. Some of his relatives still reside in that town.”

Something niggled. Not a memory but a bristling awareness that this tidbit was important. A clue, perhaps?

“What about the children?” I asked. “His daughters, I presume?”

“Kroll had no offspring. But I seem to recall reading something about twin sisters. Conjoined twins,” he added.

“What age were they when they were separated?”

“They were never separated.”

“Never?” All of a sudden, the inscription from the stereogram flashed through my brain: To Mott, From Neddy. Together Forever. “What happened to them?” I asked with a shiver.

“It was very tragic if the stories are to be believed. One of the twins died. The other was so distraught that she tried to hide her sister’s passing by using cloves to cover the smell. It was days before anyone caught on.”

I stared at him in horror. “Is that true?”

“Cloves were used in the Middle Ages to disguise the stench and flavor of rotting meat.”

“No, I mean...is it true that they were still joined even after the sister passed?”

“Who’s to say? Stories become embellished over time.” He dropped his gaze to the stereogram, scrutinizing it for another long moment. “Notice the way they’re standing back-to-back, heads turned to the camera, expressions identical. If I didn’t know better, I’d think it was an optical illusion.”

I put a hand to my nape, where the flesh still tingled. “What else can you tell me about Kroll?”

“He was a distinguished scholar and scientist who seemed to have a brilliant future ahead of him, but he came back from the war a changed man. He gave up his family, career, money—everything—to pursue his vision of utopia. He gathered like-minded people around him, many of them former soldiers desperate for a quiet life. And for a time, Kroll Colony flourished. But every paradise has its serpent. No one knew anything was wrong until the smell drifted into town.”

My fingers tightened around the chair arms. “What happened?”

“Mass suicide. Men, women, children...all gone. Kroll’s body was found sometime later in the woods with a gunshot wound to the head.”

“Self-inflicted?”

“More than likely, although there have been contradicting theories down through the years. The bodies from the Colony were buried far away from the public cemetery and sealed off by a stone fence. The place is isolated and nearly hidden by an overgrown maze that can be quite daunting to navigate, especially when the light starts to fade.”

“I take it you’ve been there.”

“Yes. A few years ago I was contacted by one of his sisters, a woman named Louvenia Durant. She owns a Thoroughbred farm in Aiken County. The cemetery is located on the property she inherited from Kroll’s estate. Over the years, there have been reports of strange lights. She requested that the Institute send someone down to do some readings.”

“What did you find?”

“A few pings on the EMF meter, a bit of static on the recorder, but nothing of consequence. However, the visit was well worth our time. Kroll Cemetery is the most strangely beautiful place I’ve ever investigated. There are thirty-seven graves inside, all of them marked with unusual headstones and tombs.”

“What’s so unusual about them?” I asked.

“For one thing, the symbols are unlike anything I’ve ever seen. Each marker is inscribed with a seemingly random number and a key—”

“A key?”

He gave me a quizzical look as he nodded. “No two are alike. The effect is quite eerie.”

“I can imagine,” I said on a breath. “Normally a key represents knowledge or, if wielded by an angel or saint, the means to enter heaven. Crossed keys symbolize Saint Peter. But the keys you’ve described...” I trailed off, tamping down the advent of something fearful in my stomach. I had a bad feeling that I was being led down a dangerous path with nothing but these esoteric bread crumbs to guide me. “I don’t know what to make of them.”

“Some claim the cemetery is a puzzle or riddle that no one has ever been able to solve. Just think of it.” Dr. Shaw leaned forward, eyes gleaming. “All those clues and symbols hidden behind high walls for decades, waiting for someone clever enough to come along and put all the pieces together. And who better to solve a graveyard mystery than you, my dear?”

Eight

The breeze that blew across the Institute’s parking area was warm and fragrant, but I couldn’t stop trembling as I climbed into my car and started the engine. As anxious as I was to get home to my computer, I sat for several long moments, idly watching crepe myrtle blossoms pepper the hood as I tried to dissect all that I’d learned.

A twin desperate to cling to her dead sister. A commune that had ended in tragedy. A cemetery of keys and suicides. All seemingly linked by a strange stereogram that had turned up in my cellar.

I had no idea how the pieces fit together, but by the time I nosed my car onto the street, I could feel the tightening fetters of an obsession. Who in my position could resist the puzzle of that tiny walled graveyard and the mystery of all those keys? That I might somehow be personally connected to Kroll Cemetery only added to my fixation.

As soon as I got home, I went straight to the office and opened my laptop. An anticipatory thrill quickened my heart as I typed in the name Ezra Kroll and watched the links pop up. Curling a leg underneath me, I relaxed more comfortably into my chair and soon became lost in research.

Nothing I learned about Kroll would suggest the evil charisma of a cult leader or demagogue. To the contrary, he had been a gentle, unassuming scholar who’d eschewed the violent culture that had sent him and so many other young men off to war. He’d chosen, instead, to live simply and in harmony with nature, which made the tragedy at Kroll Colony all the more unfathomable.

Hours passed as I sat spellbound. Twilight came and went. The questions raised by my visit to Dr. Shaw and now by my own research spun on and on until I finally gave up and went to bed.

I’d tossed the cicada husk in the trash that morning, but as I flipped on the light to turn down the bed, I cast a wary glance at the nightstand. Nothing was there. No insect shell or bookmark. I heard nothing in the walls, smelled nothing untoward in the air. All was calm in the house, but it was a very long time before I slept.

* * *

Sometime later I was again awakened by a noise. I lay there straining to hear scratches in the wall or raspy breathing behind my headboard, but the disturbance was different this time. Distant and less distinct. It came to me that I may not have been roused by a sound at all, but by a sixth-sense certainty that I was no longer alone.

I eased open the nightstand drawer and removed a fresh can of pepper spray, which would be of no use against ghosts, but might offer a modicum of protection against the more substantive entities I called in-betweens. If a thing could breathe and scramble through walls, it could also feel pain, I reasoned. It might even be as frightened as I was. A squirt to the eyes might be enough to startle such a creature away.

That my mind would even go to such a place revealed how far I’d come from a time when ghosts had been the only supernatural encounters in my life. Now I lived in a world populated by all manner of shadowy beings.

Clutching the canister, I padded across the room and peered through the door before merging into the thicker gloom of the hallway. As I approached the kitchen, I paused once more to listen. I started to move through the doorway only to stop dead, one foot suspended over the threshold as a breeze stirred my hair. In the same moment, I realized I could hear the faint swish of passing cars out on the street as if a door or window had been left open.

I saw something move in my office then. A flickering shadow. A flash of light. Instinctively, I melted back into the darkness in the hallway and counted to ten before chancing another glance into my office.

A figure stood behind my desk, rifling through the contents of a drawer. The form was dark but well defined against the windows. I couldn’t make out any features, but I took note of what I could see—black clothing, slim build, tallish. And human.

Which would explain why I’d detected no abnormal chill in the air, no death scent in the draft that once again lifted my hair. How the intruder had managed to invade my house so stealthily, I had no idea.

My first impulse was to backtrack down the hallway and get to my phone, but I was afraid that even the slightest movement would draw his attention. I couldn’t know if he was armed, but I had to assume he was dangerous, perhaps even desperate. I wanted to believe all I had to do was stay out of sight and once he discovered that I had nothing of value in my office, he’d leave.

But he didn’t appear easily discouraged. He closed one drawer and opened another, strewing papers all over my desk. I had no idea what he might be after, but if he decided to search the rest of the house, I was a sitting duck. As soon as he crossed through the kitchen into the hallway, he’d spot me cowering in the shadows. I couldn’t remain hidden forever. I had to get to the front door or to my bedroom, where I could lock myself in and call the police.

I moved slightly, testing the floorboards. The creak beneath my feet sounded as loud as a gunshot. Before I had time to blink or even draw a breath, the intruder leaped over the desk—in a single bound I would later swear—and lunged toward me.

Stunned by his agility, I was slow to react. By the time I whirled and dashed down the corridor, he was almost upon me. His footsteps, silent earlier, pounded on the old wooden floorboards, the creaks and moans sending a sharp, cold panic up my spine.

I’d walked that hallway hundreds of times. I knew every nook and cranny by heart and as I raced toward the foyer, I searched my memory for a weapon or the nearest escape route.

He was right behind me, gaining on me with every step. I hit the wall, barely evading his grasping fingers, and sent a small table crashing to the floor. We both tripped and in those precious moments it took to right my balance, I stumbled past my bedroom door.

I’d bought myself some time, but not enough to backtrack to the phone, much less unfasten the dead bolt and chain lock on the front door. Instead, I raced through the parlor archway and flattened myself against the wall, trying to control my breathing as I scanned the room.

The windows were all closed and locked. By the time I could wrench one open, he’d be on me again. The house was a death trap. I couldn’t hope to hide or evade him for long so I had to take a stand.

All this sailed through my mind as I readied my finger on the pepper spray. I knew where he was in the hall even though he was silent. He knew where I was, too. I sensed his intense concentration and the penetration of his stare through the wall.

Reflex, surprise and that puny can of pepper spray were my only defenses. All I could do was let instinct take over. The moment he appeared in the doorway, I leaped out and pointed the nozzle at his face.

The spray hit him in the eyes and he fell back into the foyer. I used that moment of shock to grab a nearby lamp and swing it at his head. The blow brought him to his knees. He collapsed between the front door and me so I sprinted into the hallway.

His hand shot out and gripped my ankle, yanking me off my feet. I hit the floor hard, air gushing from my lungs as the can skittered across the floor away from my grasp. For a moment I could do nothing but flail helplessly. Summoning my strength, I propelled myself forward on hands and knees, but the assailant grabbed me again.

I rolled onto my back and we were suddenly face-to-face. In that terrifying moment, I could have sworn I recognized the gleam of his eyes through the ski mask. Then I lashed out with my legs, pedaling them frantically until, stunned by the blows and the ferocity of my attack, he fell back into a table. In all that time, in all that commotion, he never made a sound. Not even a grunt.

Clamoring up the stairs to the door at the top, I pounded as hard as I could and called out to Macon. The door had been permanently bolted when the house had been converted into two apartments. He wouldn’t be able to let me in, but if he heard my screams, he’d call the police—

Arms snared me from behind, one encircling my waist, the other clamping over my mouth.

For what seemed an eternity, we struggled at the top of the stairs until my feet flew out from under me and I tumbled backward down the stairs. The intruder fell with me and we sprawled side by side on the foyer floor. I must have blacked out for a moment because I saw faces swimming on the inside of my eyelids. Distorted visages that I didn’t recognize but somehow knew. One of them said, “Where is it? Where is it?”

Where is what? I wanted to ask, but the question flitted away as light began to filter through the swirling darkness and my current predicament came rushing back to me.

I blinked several times, trying to clear my vision as I searched for a weapon—a lamp or vase, anything with which I could defend myself. I grabbed a leg from the splintered table as I crawled into a corner and propped myself up, preparing for another attack.

It was only then that I realized I was alone. Through a haze of panic, I heard footsteps stumbling down the long hallway toward the kitchen and Macon’s voice yelling at me through the front door.

“Amelia! Are you all right? Amelia! Can you hear me? The police are on the way.”

Hitching myself up against the wall, I staggered across the foyer, undid the locks and threw open the front door. The last thing I remembered was Macon’s eyes going wide with shock as I pitched forward.

Nine

For most of my life, ghosts moved silently through my world, leaving nothing behind when they floated back through the veil but a lingering chill and a dread of twilight. However, once that forbidden door had been opened by my association with a haunted man, some of the spirits had started to communicate—a development that came with a terrifying suspicion that my gift was far darker, far more dangerous than Papa had ever let on.

The encounters had been mostly with entities that were somehow connected to me. I told myself those bonds were the reason certain ghosts could penetrate my defenses so easily.

But as I lay alone in a hospital emergency room cubicle, the voices inside my head were unknown to me. I had the horrifying notion that the random babble came from the morgue. Confused whispers from the newly departed mingling with the tormented moans of lost souls. The macabre cacophony rose up through the hospital floors, swelling in my brain until I pressed hands to ears to try to dull the sound.

The young resident who had examined me earlier came through the door and flashed a sympathetic smile as he approached. “It always gets crazy during a full moon.”

I stared at him in astonishment as I dropped my hands to the bed. “You hear them, too?” Then I realized he was referring to the rumble of human misery coming from the other cubicles. That was not the sound in my head, I was certain. “How do you stand it?”

“You get used to it.” He pulled up a rolling stool and sat down at my bedside. “You look as if you could do with a little good news.”

“Yes, please.”

“We’ve got most of your test results back and everything looks normal. No broken bones or signs of internal bleeding and your vitals are all stable. For someone who took a tumble down a flight of stairs, I’d say you’re a very lucky woman.”

“That is good news.”

“You’ll be sore and bruised for a few days and you may experience headaches from that bump on your head. I don’t think there’s any cause for alarm, but even mild concussions are nothing to take lightly. I’d like to keep you overnight so that we can monitor your reflexes.”

The last thing I wanted was a stay in the hospital, but I wasn’t foolish enough to second-guess a doctor. And I wondered if a concussion might be the cause of the weird disturbance in my brain. I’d never heard anything like that noise. Not even close.

“If I do have a concussion, what can I expect in the way of symptoms?”

“Depending on the severity, amnesia, dizziness, nausea, confusion. Maybe some sensitivity to light and sound.”

“Sensitivity to sound?”

“You seemed to be experiencing a bit of that when I came in just now.” He scribbled something in my file as he talked. “That’s another reason I’d like to keep you overnight. As I said, I don’t anticipate any problems, but with head injuries, symptoms don’t always show up right away. It’s best to err on the side of caution.”

“What about noises inside my head?”

He glanced up. “You mean like ear ringing? It’s not uncommon. Are you experiencing that right now?”

“Not exactly.”

“What kind of noise, then?”

I hesitated. “It’s like...babbling.”

“As in people talking?”

“In hushed voices. It’s probably coming from the hallway,” I said. “Maybe I am a little sensitive to sound right now.”

He rose and rechecked my pupils with a light. “Do you have a headache?”

“A slight one.”

“Blurred vision?”

“No.”

He had me follow his finger with my eyes and then made another note or two in the file. “Any dizziness? Nausea?”

“Not really.”

“Can you tell me what day it is?”

I complied. He asked and I answered several more questions until he seemed satisfied.

“Try to relax. Someone will be in shortly to take you upstairs. It’ll be quieter up there. You should be able to rest.”

Macon stopped by a few minutes later, his rumpled attire and days-old beard giving him the appearance of someone who had just wandered in off the street. But despite the late hour and circumstances, he seemed surprisingly chipper, even whistled an inane tune as he removed the chart from the door and skimmed the contents.

“What’s the verdict?” I asked.

“You look like something the cat dragged in,” he said as he returned the file to the holder. “But you’ll live.”

“That’s a relief. What are you still doing here anyway? Don’t you have an early shift?”

“I thought you might need a little moral support and besides, I wanted to get a look at your X-rays before I left. I don’t have to tell you how lucky you are, do I?”

“That seems to be the general consensus,” I said with a nod. “But I’ve been informed that I have to stay the night so that my reflexes can be monitored.”

“Normal procedure,” he assured me. Then he very casually checked the dilation of my pupils just as the doctor before him had. “Headache?”

“A mild one.”

“Any other discomfort?”

“Not really. Nothing I can’t handle.”

“Wait until morning,” he cautioned. “You’ll feel as if you’ve been hit by a freight train.”

“Thanks for the warning. And by the way, may I compliment you on your bedside manner?”

He grinned. “A piece of advice? If you’re offered something for pain, take it. Don’t try to tough it out.”

“I’ll keep that in mind.” I tugged the blanket a little higher because it was chilly inside the cubicle. “Right now I’m still trying to figure out how someone broke into my house without waking me. I’m normally such a light sleeper.”

“One of the cops told me that the back door was jimmied with a special tool. Whoever it was knew what he was doing. You probably wouldn’t have heard him even if you’d been wide-awake in the next room.”

“So he came prepared,” I said with a shiver. “Doesn’t exactly sound like a random break-in, does it?”

Macon shrugged. “I don’t know about that. According to the cop, even petty thieves have sophisticated equipment these days. They just order whatever they need off the internet.”

“What else did the officer say?” I asked anxiously.

“I only spoke with him briefly and he was pretty cagey. As far as I know, they haven’t taken anyone into custody so let’s hope they’re still out canvassing the neighborhood. Don’t worry about your place. I’ll keep an eye on things until you’re released.”

“Thanks, Macon. For everything. I don’t know what would have happened if you hadn’t been home tonight.”

“I’m just glad you were able to wake me. I’ve been told it’s like raising the dead. Anyway, all I did was call 911. You’re the one who fought him off.”

I mustered a smile. “One rises to the occasion. You should go home and get some sleep before your shift. I’ll be fine.”

“I’m headed that way now. Can I get you anything before I go?”

“No, you’ve done more than enough, thank you. And...Macon?”

He glanced back as he started toward the door.

“Be careful, okay? It’s possible someone could still be lurking about.” I was thinking about the cellar and all those dark recesses where someone—something—could hide, even from the police.

“I wouldn’t worry about that. Dude’s long gone by now. You just get some rest.”

After Macon left, I lay alone for the longest time staring up at the ceiling tiles as all those strange sounds droned on in my head. When I was a child, I’d had a recurring dream about being lost in a tunnel. I could see a light at one end, but the other end was pitch-black. I’d start toward the flicker only to be drawn back by something unseen in the dark. The tug-of-war waged on and on while disembodied arms reached through the walls to clutch at me.

I felt that same smothering claustrophobia of my dream. I couldn’t see the arms, but I had a sense that something was reaching out for me, pressing in on me. The sensation was so strong I had to sit up on the gurney to catch my breath.

A panic attack, I told myself. Surely I was allowed a lapse after everything that had happened to me. Still, I didn’t like feeling out of control. I wanted to be home, safe and sound in my own little sanctuary, but even that peace of mind had been taken from me now.

My head began to pound and I felt dizzy, so I lay back down and was just drifting off when I had the eerie sensation of being watched. I opened my eyes and turned my head toward the entrance, expecting to find a nurse or an orderly who would transport me upstairs. The doorway was empty, but I was certain someone had been there a moment ago.

Swinging my legs over the side of the bed, I got up and padded across the room to glance down the hallway. I found nothing unusual in the chaos of the emergency room and was about to chalk the sensation up to paranoia when a man at the end of the corridor caught my eye. He was turning a corner so I only had a glimpse of his profile, but something about his attire and the style of his hair reminded me of Owen Dowling.

It couldn’t be him. The coincidence would be too great. Unless...his presence at the hospital wasn’t a coincidence. Maybe the stereoscope was more valuable than he’d let on.

The business card I’d left only listed my name and phone number, but finding my address wouldn’t have been at all difficult. And there’d been that odd awareness as I stood outside the shop, a niggling premonition that my visit to Dowling Curiosities had triggered something dangerous.

I told myself not to jump to irrational conclusions as I returned to the bed. But I lay with my eyes wide-open until someone came in to take me upstairs. The ghost voices in my head grew even louder as I was wheeled down the hallway, but once inside the elevator, they became muffled. As the car rose to the upper floors, the sound grew dimmer until a measure of calm returned to me. By the time I was rolled into the room, the sounds had vanished altogether, leaving nothing in my head but a dull throb.

A nurse helped me settle in, and then a police detective named Prescott arrived to ask questions. I would have preferred Devlin, of course, but I hadn’t been able to reach him.

This detective looked to be in his mid-to late forties with thinning hair and a condescending attitude that did nothing to put me at ease.

The first thing he did was to jot down my name, address and phone number in a small notebook he pulled from his pocket. Then he took a position at the foot of my bed, where he could peer down at me. Whether he had placed himself there deliberately to intimidate me, I couldn’t say, but his impervious stare unnerved me.

“I know you already gave a statement to the responding officer, but I’m going to need you to take me through it again,” he said.

“Okay.” I was happy that I could think a little more clearly now that the chattering in my head had subsided. “Something roused me from sleep. I don’t know what it was because I don’t remember hearing anything. But I woke up with a feeling that something wasn’t right in the house. So I got up to investigate.”

“You didn’t think about calling 911?”

“No, not then. It’s an old house and there are a lot of night noises.” And at that point I hadn’t thought the intruder human.

The door to my room opened just then and I felt a familiar tingle up my spine, a rush of hot blood through my veins that always signaled Devlin’s arrival.

He strode in—tall, lean, purposeful—and the air seemed to crackle with electricity as he moved toward me.

Ten

Maybe it was my tattered nerves or the position from which I stared up at him, but Devlin looked larger than life and far more formidable than I would have imagined under the circumstances.

In that charged air, a shiver whispered up my backbone. Even the other detective seemed to sense the shift in energy and he scowled warily as Devlin closed the distance between the door and my bed.

He was as impeccably dressed as ever in monochromatic shades of gray and charcoal, colors that brought out the premature strands of silver at his temples. His hair was mussed, as though he’d run impatient fingers through it on the way up to my floor, and his unshaven jaw gave him a rakish air that I did not find at all unattractive.

Because of the ghosts, I learned at an early age how to calm myself in times of great stress, but Devlin’s sudden appearance had a profound effect on me. A knot rose in my throat as our gazes locked, but I tried to shake off my emotional response to him. It was very important that he not think of me as weak or vulnerable, that he never need worry about my mental state as he undoubtedly had with Mariama.

“Hello” was all I said.

“Hello to you, too. Are you okay?”

“Yes, it’s nothing serious. A few bumps and bruises.” I nodded to the man at the end of the bed. “I assume you know Detective Prescott?”

Devlin’s gaze flicked over me and darkened before he turned to Prescott. “A word, Detective?”

The older cop gave him an irritated scowl. “I’m in the middle of an interview.”

“I’ll be brief.”

Prescott nodded curtly and walked to the door. From past observations, I knew that Devlin commanded the respect of his peers, but the privileges and connections that came with his background also bred a certain amount of resentment.

The two men conversed in the hallway for a few moments and then Prescott returned to the foot of my bed while Devlin took up a position at the window.

“Did the suspect speak to you?” Prescott asked. “Did he grunt or groan during the struggle? Did you hear anything that would identify him as male?”

I hesitated. “I don’t think so.”

“You don’t think so?”

“I blacked out for a moment. I thought I heard a voice, but it seemed dreamlike. I’m not even sure it was real.”

“What did this voice say to you?”

I strained to recall. “I don’t remember.”

“Nothing at all?” he pressed.

I shook my head.

Prescott exchanged a look with Devlin. “You described the assailant as being a little under six feet and thin. He wore a mask over his head.”

“Yes, like a ski mask.” I gestured vaguely toward my face. “I couldn’t see anything but his eyes.”

“So you never got a look at him. Under the circumstances, you can’t be one hundred percent certain the suspect was male, can you?”

“No, I suppose not. I just assumed...the way he attacked me—”

“What about smells?” Prescott interjected. “Cologne? Perfume?”

“I didn’t notice any.” Which was odd given my recent sensitivity to scents.

“Rings, watches?”

I shook my head.

“Scars, tattoos?”

“It all happened so fast and it was dark inside the house...” My gaze strayed back to Devlin. He stood with his back to the window, arms folded, head slightly bowed. I felt a quiver go through me at his unwavering concentration. Would I ever get used to the fierceness of that stare?

Prescott said something to me then and I had to wrench my gaze from Devlin’s. “I’m sorry. Could you repeat the question?”

“Have you seen any suspicious cars in the neighborhood? Any strangers lurking about?”

“No, but I live on a busy street. I might not notice anyone new.”

“Do you have any idea what the suspect was after?”

“I don’t keep cash in the house, and the only items of any real value are my laptop and cameras, some equipment I use for work, a pearl necklace. Nothing that could be sold for very much money.”

Prescott shrugged. “He may not have needed a lot. A hundred bucks can keep a meth head buzzed for a couple of days.”

“What makes you think he was looking for drug money?” I asked.

“The way he went after you,” Devlin answered, drawing another frown from Prescott. “It’s not unusual for a meth addict to display extreme aggression, especially if he feels cornered or threatened.”

“Yes, I’ve read that,” I said. “So you think the break-in was random?”

“I didn’t say that.” Devlin’s eyes were so fathomless I hadn’t a clue what he was thinking. “What I am saying is that the suspect’s behavior wasn’t rational. You said he leaped over the desk to get at you and he kept coming even when you fought back. He could have escaped through the same door he entered when he saw you, but instead he pursued you despite the ski mask he wore to hide his features.”

My mind spun back to the attack. The assailant had been relentless, but his behavior hadn’t struck me as frenetic. To the contrary, he’d seemed in control and coldly determined.

I said none of this aloud, however, because I was anxious for Prescott to leave so that I could have a private conversation with Devlin.

To my relief, the detective closed his notebook and returned the pen to his pocket. “You’ll need to come in and sign your statement once you’re released from the hospital. In the meantime, if you remember anything else, give me a call.”

Devlin followed him out of the room and a moment later, I again heard their voices in the hallway.

I was tempted to climb out of bed and eavesdrop at the door, but the effort seemed beyond my strength. Every bone in my body had started to ache. I didn’t dare glance in a mirror. I’d never been a vain person, but I could only imagine what I must look like.

When Devlin returned, I was in the process of pouring myself a cup of water from the insulated pitcher on the nightstand. He came over and finished the task for me, which was probably a good thing since my hands weren’t as steady as they might have been.

He stood staring down at me until I had the strongest urge to reach up and run my fingers through the tousled strands of his hair, to brush my knuckles against the unaccustomed scruff on his lower face. But more than anything, I wanted to pull him to me for a long, comforting kiss.

I did none of those things because in that fragile moment, I was more aware than ever of the distance that had been growing between us.

The silence seemed to stretch forever, but only a few seconds passed as he waited for me to finish the water. Then he took the cup and returned it to the stand.

“How are you feeling?” His scent enveloped me as he perched on the edge of my bed.

I shrugged. “I’m okay. No broken bones or internal injuries. Just some bruising and possibly a mild concussion. I was admitted to the hospital to be on the safe side.”

Devlin leaned in but he made no move to touch me. He didn’t have to. His presence consumed me, in part because of my shattered poise, but mostly because he was Devlin.

His gaze lingered on the tender side of my face. “Is that where he hit you?” His expression never changed, but there was something behind his eyes, a hint of violence that made my heart jolt.

I lifted a hand to my cheek. “It’s from the fall. I don’t think any blows were exchanged except for when I struck him with a lamp.”

“I was told you put up a fight.” A stranger might have mistaken his monotone for indifference, but I recognized the flatness of his delivery for what it was—supreme control.

“I’m strong for my size. I think that took him by surprise.”

“You are strong,” he agreed. “And brave. Frighteningly so, I sometimes think.”

“Brave? Hardly.” I held out my hands so that he could see how badly they still shook.

“Being brave and being fearless are two different things.” He reached over and adjusted the covers around me. The gentleness of the gesture belied the darkness still simmering at the back of his eyes. “Some of the bravest people I’ve met were also smart enough to know when to be afraid.”

“Does that include you?” I asked, our gazes locking.

“I hope so.”

“Somehow I can’t imagine it...you afraid.”

“Why not? I’m human.”

“What frightens you?” I asked.

He didn’t answer, but I saw something flash in his eyes before he turned away.

As I studied his profile, the oddest vision formed in my head. Devlin was still seated on the edge of my bed, but it was as if I could see right through him into the farthest corner of the room—or into his mind—where a tall figure with a bowed head loomed in the shadows.

For a moment, I thought someone must have entered the room without my notice, but then I blinked and the illusion vanished.

“What is it?” Devlin asked, turning back to me. “You look as if you’ve seen a ghost.”

“I’m sorry. My attention drifted for a moment. I think shock may be setting in.”

The intensity of his focus stirred me in a way that only Devlin could. “Would you like for me to leave so that you can rest?”

The sensible thing would be to let him go. I was hardly fit company and I needed time to get my emotions under control. But given the vision, the headache and the voices inside my head, I didn’t think it a good idea to be alone.

“I don’t want you to go.” I reached for his hand and when his fingers curled around mine, the unexpected bite of frost startled me. Devlin was always so warm, so steady—so human. A counterpoint to the ghosts. The coldness of his skin filled me with an unreasonable fear and my first reaction was to release him. Instead, I clung to his hand. “Stay. I need to talk to you about something.”

“What is it?”

I tugged at the covers, still shaken by the chill of his touch. “I know you and Detective Prescott think the intruder was looking for money or something to hock, but I’m not so sure.”

“You think he was searching for something specific?”

“I don’t know. Possibly.”

Devlin frowned. “Tell me.”

“Macon and I found an old stereoscope in the cellar. Do you know what that is?”

“A 3-D viewer.”

“There’s a little metal tag on the bottom engraved with the name of a local shop. I took it in and was told that viewers from that era are collectible but not particularly valuable. If true, I don’t suppose it could be the reason for the break-in.”

Devlin lifted a brow. “If true? Do you have reason to doubt the validity of the assessment?”

“No, not really. But I wasn’t completely honest with Detective Prescott. I do remember what the voice said to me while I was blacked out. He said, ‘Where is it? Where is it?’”

“Why didn’t you say so earlier?”

“Because it didn’t seem real. I honestly believed it was just my imagination. But then earlier before I was brought upstairs, I thought I saw the shopkeeper in the ER. I only caught a glimpse so that may have been my imagination, as well. But it freaked me out a little.”

“What’s the name of the shop?”

“Dowling Curiosities on King Street. The man I spoke with is Owen Dowling.”

Devlin gave a brief nod. “I’ll check him out.”

“We also found a stereogram—the card that fits into the stereoscope. The image was of a man and two girls standing in front of a white two-story house. I took the card and the stereoscope to the Institute so that Dr. Shaw could have a look at them. He identified the man as Ezra Kroll.”

“As in Kroll Colony?”

“You know about that place?” I asked in astonishment. “Why have I never heard of it?

“It’s like your abandoned graveyards,” Devlin said. “Years pass, people forget. And it’s so far off the beaten track the only way to get there is by foot or horseback.”

“Then, how do you know about it?”

“When I was a kid, my grandfather owned a Thoroughbred farm not far from Isola. Some of the old-timers that worked for him would occasionally mention Kroll Colony. They were still superstitious about that place.”

“Have you ever been there?”

“A few times. It was mandatory that I spend a couple of weeks every summer on the farm to build character,” he said with a humorless smile. “The housekeeper had a boy about my age. Nathan Fortner. His grandfather had once been a cop, but after his retirement, he took a job in the stables. He used to tell grisly stories about the Colony, so naturally Nathan and I would ride over to the ruins anytime we could sneak away. We’d sometimes spend the whole afternoon poking through the buildings. Some of the roofs had caved in so the place was dangerous. I’m sure that was a big part of the attraction.”

“Go on.” I leaned forward, captivated by this glimpse into Devlin’s early years. He rarely volunteered information about his childhood.

“All I remember is an old commissary, a couple of dormitories for the single colonists and a few smaller buildings for the families. Some of the houses still had scraps of old clothing and toys strewn about and the commissary even had dishes on the table from the colonists’ last meal.”

“I’m surprised that stuff wasn’t carted off a long time ago as souvenirs. People can be ghoulish about that sort of thing.”

“I’m sure some of it was, but the locals mostly kept their distance. Like I said, it was a spooky place, difficult to get to and not much to see once you got there.”

“Is it still standing?”

“All the buildings burned to the ground a long time ago. There’s nothing left now but the cemetery.”

“Do you know how the colonists died?”

“Cyanide most likely. Back then, you could find it in local feed stores.” A grim note crept into Devlin’s voice. “Death would have been quick but not quick enough.”

I glanced toward the window, trying to distract myself from the gruesome imagery. “Dr. Shaw said Ezra Kroll was shot to death in the woods. Apparently, there’s always been a question of whether or not it was suicide.”

“Nathan’s grandfather was still a cop when it happened. He had a theory that none of the deaths was suicide. He believed it was mass murder perpetrated to cover up a single homicide.”

I stared at Devlin in horror. “What could motivate a person to do such a thing?”

“Same motives I see every day. Jealousy, passion, greed.” Devlin’s expression hardened and I wondered if he was thinking about another crime of passion and greed, one that hit a little too close to home. “Ezra Kroll came back from the war a damaged man. He’d inherited the family fortune, but had no use for earthly possessions beyond what he needed to survive. He started giving all the money away to the needy while his relatives had to stand by helplessly and watch the coffers dwindle.”

“So one of them took matters into their own hands?” I could hardly imagine such a thing. Three dozen innocent people, including children, had lived in Kroll Colony.

“The colonists ate every meal together,” Devlin said. “It was a ritual. But on that day, Kroll missed the communal lunch. The police believed he left to meet someone who lived nearby. A woman.”

My thoughts raced suddenly. If the woman in the stereogram—my look-alike—had been involved with Ezra Kroll, maybe that explained why she’d followed me back from the other side. She couldn’t rest until justice was done. Like Robert Fremont, another ghost from my past, she needed a conduit to tie up her earthly loose ends.

A nurse came in just then to monitor my vitals. She shooed Devlin into the hallway, giving me a minute to reflect upon everything he’d told me as she pumped the blood-pressure cuff.

“Your heart rate is still a little elevated,” she said. “Try to relax. Best thing you can do right now is rest.”

“I’ll try.”

“Are you in pain? I can get you something to take the edge off if you need it.”

“No, I’m fine.”

“Press the call button if you need me,” she said. “I’ll send your friend back in, but remember what I said. Rest.”

“I will. Thanks.”

She exited silently on rubber-soled shoes and Devlin returned a moment later. “I’ve been given my orders,” he said.

“Not to leave, I hope.”

He came back over to the bed. “No, but I think we should table our discussion about Kroll Colony. It’s a gruesome story and you don’t need more nightmares. When you’re released in the morning, you can show me everything you found in the cellar.”

“About that stereogram—”

“In the morning,” he insisted.

“You’re right. It’s better if you see it for yourself.” I took his hand to pull him down beside me on the bed. “But just one last thing. When you go see Owen Dowling, be discreet, okay? He’s probably done nothing wrong and I don’t want to worry or embarrass him because my imagination ran away with me in the emergency room.”

“Aren’t I always discreet?”

An innocent question, but the subtle shift in Devlin’s drawl made my blood surge. “Yes...I suppose you are...”

He leaned in, eyes as dark and sultry as a Charleston midnight. “What if I were to discreetly kiss you right now?”

“If I didn’t know better, I’d think you’re trying to distract me.”

“Is it working?”

I sighed. “You know that it is.”

“Good.” He leaned in, feathering his lips over mine in a fleeting caress that made me tingle. I tunneled my fingers through his thick hair, but when I would have pulled him to me for a deeper kiss, he held back, making me want him even more as he moved his mouth lightly against mine.

Trailing kisses across my cheek, he said in my ear, “When I find the man responsible for that bruise on your face, I’ll make him very, very sorry.”

I drew back in shock. “Don’t say that. I would hate to think of you doing anything rash or foolish on my account.”

“I’ll be neither rash nor foolish,” he promised. “But I will be thorough.”

All I could do was stare up at him. “Sometimes you frighten me.”

“Why?” His hand rested on my leg, and I wondered if he was even aware of what his touch did to me.

“I look into your eyes and I still see a stranger.”

This drew a scowl. “That’s ridiculous. You know me better than anyone ever has.”

“Do I?” Somehow I thought that honor still belonged to his dead wife.

“Yes,” he insisted. “And anyway, we’ve done too much talking for one night. You should try to sleep now.”

I sank back against the pillows and stared up at the ceiling, still troubled by his threat. “It’s too cold in here to sleep.”

He stretched out beside me on the narrow bed, tucking the covers around me as he pulled me against him. “Better?”

“Much.” I cushioned my head on his shoulder as we fell silent. Through the layers of his clothing I could feel the vibration of his heartbeat, strong and steady. His skin was warm now and I pressed closer, basking in the heat from his body.

“The last time we were in this hospital, our roles were reversed,” I said.

“I remember.” He tightened his arms around me. “I was told that you barely left my side the whole time I was unconscious.”

“I was afraid if I let go of your hand, you’d slip away from me. I wouldn’t be able to bring you back even with—” I broke off in midsentence as I realized what I’d been about to say. Even with Darius Goodwine’s magic.

After the shooting, Devlin had shown no sign of awakening from his coma so in desperation I’d reached out to his old nemesis. The powerful tagati had brought Devlin back to me, but not without a price, I feared.

“What were you about to say?” Devlin asked.

“Nothing.”

“You’re trembling,” he said. “Should I get you another blanket?”

“Just hold me tighter.”

He complied, drawing me into his warmth. “Try to put it all out of your mind for now. You’re safe here with me. I won’t let anything happen to you. Close your eyes and go to sleep.”

His voice was so calming, his arms strong and reassuring. I nestled down in the covers and let the rhythm of his heartbeat lull me to sleep.

When I woke up, he was gone.

Eleven

The room was dark, but I could see a silhouette looming in front of the window. I caught my breath before I realized it was Devlin.

He stood very still, his face tilted skyward, moonlight bathing his features. The hush of the hospital heightened my senses. I could hear the murmur of voices in the hallway, even the distant ping of an elevator, but my attention remained riveted on Devlin. His presence filled the room, and I drew a long breath, drinking in that indefinable essence that belonged solely to him.

As I lay there studying his profile, a large form swooped down from the sky, casting a shadow across his face and into my room before vanishing into the night. I might have thought the fleeting image had been caused by the bump on my head except for the way Devlin took a half step back from the window.

“What was that?” I gasped.

He whirled in surprise, those gleaming eyes pinning me in the moonlight. “How long have you been awake?” He sounded taken aback, though whether from my alertness or that plunging shadow, I had no idea.

Ignoring his question, I pushed myself up on my elbows to scan the window behind him. “You must have seen it, too. It was huge.”

“Yes, I saw it,” he said with a shrug, but there was an unexpected roughness in his tone that his aristocratic drawl couldn’t disguise. “I only caught a glimpse out of the corner of my eye, but I’m sure it was an owl. Their wingspan is impressive, especially when you aren’t expecting to see one.”

“An owl? In the middle of the city?”

“It’s not unheard of,” he said. “Barn owls are fairly urbanized. They like to nest in church steeples. And we have plenty of those in Charleston.”

His tone had lightened, but neither his words nor his demeanor soothed me. I found something ominous about the way he’d been staring out into the darkness so intently. “Whatever it was flew right past the window. Close enough to cast a shadow over your face and into the room.”

Devlin said nothing, but instead moved toward the bed with his customary grace, his features an inscrutable mask. He looked perfectly poised, calm and unbent, but the rigid set of his shoulders betrayed a tightly coiled tension. Where moonlight slanted across his face, I could see a hint of trouble brewing in the furrows of his brow. I noticed the phone in his hand then. I hadn’t heard a ring or a vibration, much less a conversation, but something had obviously transpired to disturb him.

My gaze darted to the window, then back to Devlin. “Is everything okay?”

Normally, he was as adept as I at concealing his emotions, but I was picking up a weird vibe from him tonight.

“What is it?” I urged.

Another pause. “I have to go out for a while.”

“Is it a case?”

He hesitated for so long that I thought he didn’t want to answer, but then he said with a hint of dread, “It’s not a case. I’m told my grandfather has taken ill.”

I glanced at him in alarm. “I’m sorry. I hope it’s not serious.”

“He was in perfect health when we had dinner so I’m convinced he’s up to something. I just haven’t yet figured out his angle.”

“Are you so sure he has an angle? What if he really is sick?”

“That slim possibility is the only thing tearing me from this room tonight,” Devlin said. “I’ll be back as soon as I can, but in the meantime I’ll see to it that security keeps a sharp eye out for anything or anyone suspicious.”

“Don’t worry about me. Whoever broke into my house is likely long gone. I’ll be fine.”

“Amelia...”

I waited expectantly. He wanted to tell me something. I could see it in the flare of his eyes.

I put an encouraging hand on his arm. “What is it?”

He leaned over and grazed his lips across my forehead. “I wouldn’t leave you if I wasn’t certain you’d be safe here.”

“I know that.”

“Get some rest. I’ll be back before you know it.”

A moment later, he was gone.

I wanted to call out to him, to tell him to be careful out there in the dark where dangers from this world and the next lay in wait.

Instead, I got up and padded over to the window to search the night sky. I still wasn’t convinced I’d seen an owl earlier. For most people a nocturnal bird would have been a perfectly acceptable explanation for that diving shadow, but I wasn’t most people. I knew things. Saw things. Heard things.

The past twenty-four hours had been full of strange happenings. I felt very off center. It was as if banging my head on the stairs had awakened something inside me, making me more attuned than ever to the unnatural world around me. And yet I suffered no other repercussions from the blow. I didn’t feel dizzy or disoriented. I hadn’t experienced any blurred vision or memory loss and even my headache had faded. I wanted to believe the visions and voices would disappear, too, once I left the hospital.

What was it the resident had told me earlier? It always gets crazy during a full moon. No kidding.

The moon wasn’t just full but ringed. When I was a little girl, before I knew about the ghosts, Papa would tell me stories about swamp witches and boo hags that traveled through the Carolina marshes by moonlight. I later wondered if those eerie tales had been his way of preparing me for what was to come. He used to say that a lunar halo signified a time when spirits were especially restless. A dangerous time when mirrors should be covered and babies hidden so as not to be replaced by changelings.

Maybe there had been something to that warning. If the phases of the moon could affect ocean tides and human behavior, what might they stir in creatures from the other side?

Wresting my gaze from that silvery sphere, I started to turn back to my bed when I happened to glance down at the street. It was misting and the pavement shimmered with an oily patina beneath the streetlamps. My room looked out on a busy thoroughfare, but there was very little traffic at this hour. Which might explain why my attention was drawn to a lone pedestrian across the street.

The person was small, but I didn’t get the sense that I was looking down at a child. Something dark and flowing was draped over the shoulders, making it nearly impossible to distinguish the silhouette among the other shadows. Indeed, for a moment I thought I might have attached human shape to a bush or tree trunk.

I told myself there was nothing at all sinister about someone being out and about at this hour. Perhaps the person was waiting for a bus. But I couldn’t dismiss the feeling that a gaze had been cast upon my room. Upon me.

The sensation was so intense that I took a step back; my heart beat a rapid tattoo. When I dared to glance out again, the figure had disappeared, leaving me to wonder if the shadow had been nothing more than my imagination.

I went back to bed and pulled the covers up to my chin. Sleep came with disturbing visions. I had no idea how long I’d been dreaming when my eyes popped open, senses fully alert. It would be dawn soon, a time I always anticipated, but I could still feel the pull of the dead world.

I saw the ghost then, hovering deep in the shadows. As if sensing my awareness, she drifted out of the gloom with outstretched arms and paused at the end of my bed to turn those dark-stained sockets upon me. It was the eeriest sensation, the way she stared down at me. Could she see me or did she merely sense me? Could she feel my warmth? Had she been drawn there by my energy?

She made no move toward me, to latch on to me, but instead levitated at the end of my bed for the longest moment as if making certain that I was awake. She had manifested in the same white lace dress from her previous visit, but now I saw that she clutched a key in one hand.

Before I had time to process this turn of events, she drifted through the closed door. Her message couldn’t have been plainer. She wanted me to follow.

There had been a time when trailing an entity would have been unthinkable, but the days of ignoring the other world were long behind me. The ghost knew that I could see her. She was already haunting me. Perhaps if I did as she wished, she would go away and leave me alone. Not likely, but it was the only thing I had at the moment to cling to.

Climbing out of bed, I crossed to the door and glanced into the corridor. The overhead lights sputtered from an electrical surge caused—I was certain—by the ghost’s energy. There was an elevator by the nurse’s station and another at the opposite end of the hallway large enough to transport gurneys from floor to floor. That elevator went all the way down to the basement level. I wasn’t sure how I knew this unless I’d subconsciously taken note of the buttons when I’d been brought up to my room.

The tiles were cold beneath my bare feet as I slipped down the hallway in the wake of the ghost. The moment I rounded a corner, out of sight of those behind me, the electrical fluctuations subsided. I entered the elevator, the doors closed and, as the car descended, the hushed voices from the morgue crept back into my head.

When the elevator stopped, I stepped out into a wide hallway with branching corridors on either side. In front of me was a set of double doors with narrow glass panels through which I could see into the receiving area of the morgue. A red sign marked the outside bay where bodies were delivered and picked up, and beyond a long counter were several closed doors, which I assumed were the autopsy rooms and coolers.

The ghost voices faded as an unnatural hush fell over the hallway. Time seemed to stop as I hovered between the dead world and the living world. The floating sensation was not at all unpleasant, but it lasted for only a heartbeat before the babbling in my head started up again, rising to a sharp, painful crescendo. The walls started to spin and I slid down the cool cinderblocks, curling myself in a ball as I clutched my ears.

Even in the grip of that debilitating vertigo, I could feel invisible hands reaching through the walls for me, diaphanous bodies squeezing in on me as I huddled on the floor breathless and trembling.

For a moment, I let myself entertain the possibility that all of this was nothing more than a terrible hallucination. A nightmare from which I would soon awaken.

But I knew better. It was real. It was happening. And in a moment of enlightenment, I realized why the blind entity had led me down to the basement. The voices were stronger in the morgue because the newly departed had somehow opened a door, allowing those trapped souls to reach out to me. Individual spirit communication was one thing, but this mass beseeching was a new development. Another terrifying facet to my dark gift.

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