She heard a baby crying, and the mist darkened and swirled, then lightened as the scene changed again to reveal Henry, holding the baby. He was looking at Kendall as if he knew that she could see him.
She called out softly to him, Help me.
Strangely, she could have sworn that she heard Amelia answer. They’re trying to, dear. Listen. You must listen.
Then the fog darkened again, and this time she was running through it, no longer only Kendall but also Sheila, and she realized the ghosts were trying to show her what had happened to Sheila.
There were graves all around her. She tried to wend her way between them, one step ahead of the evil darkness coming up behind her. And then she left the graves behind and reached the water, but it was clogged with bones and limbs and skulls staring at her from their sightless, empty eye pits, and somehow she knew that one of them was the woman she had met in her shop. Jenny Trent.
Too much. It was too much.
Henry was ahead of her, telling her to keep running. He was reaching out for her. She touched his fingers…
And woke with a start.
Aidan was at her side, holding her hand.
“Another nightmare?” he asked, frowning. “I can’t keep bringing you out here. It’s making everything worse for you.”
She stared back at him and shook her head, realizing suddenly that she was drenched with sweat. “I’m not leaving.”
“I can throw you out, you know.”
“But you won’t. Because I’ll just come back.”
He pulled her close to him and kissed the top of her head. “We’ll talk about it in the morning.”
“Aidan,” she said, “there’s something in the cemetery. I…know it. The…the ghosts are telling me so.”
She was certain he was going to mock her, but he didn’t. Instead, he pulled her to him and said, “We’ll figure it out, and we’ll make it stop. I promise.”
They fell asleep in each other’s arms, and this time it was Aidan’s turn to dream, but his was oddly comforting.
He’d seen the woman in the white gown again. It was as if he’d simply opened his eyes to find her there. She’d touched his cheek, and though she was beautiful and young, there had been nothing sexual in her touch, only tenderness. And then she’d whispered, You have to help. It’s happening again. He’s like the one who came before.
Who is he?
A killer. A man of pure evil. You have to stop him.
I’m trying. But how? And what does he have to do with the plantation?
History repeats itself. Amelia saw the lights.
Then he had roused, the dream still clear in his mind. It was just his subconscious trying to help him sort out what was bothering him, he told himself.
Amelia saw the lights.
Was his subconscious trying to tell him that Amelia’s lights had been more than just Jimmy’s flashlight?
He followed her into town. He even parked and walked her into the shop, then stayed to have coffee with Mason and Vinnie, who had opened for her.
“Anything on Sheila?” Mason asked him anxiously.
Aidan hesitated before answering. “Nothing. I’m sorry.”
When Aidan left, he gave Kendall a kiss on the cheek and assured her that he would see her later. As he walked to his car, he was surprised to hear someone call his name.
It was Rebecca. She was wearing a scarf over her head, a trench coat and sunglasses, and she was carrying a large shopping bag.
“Rebecca, hello,” he said, arching a brow. “Are you incognito?”
“I don’t want anyone to see me giving you these. Just take the bag,” she told him.
“What?”
“Take the bag.”
“What is it?”
“Your bones,” she told him.
Kendall skipped lunch and ran down to the florist’s shop. She selected a number of arrangements and had the delivery boy take them to her car. On the street, she paused, feeling the air, looking around.
She didn’t feel it. The sensation of being watched. Was she safe by day? she wondered.
She decided not to do any readings that afternoon. When she got back to the shop, she put her tarot deck in a desk drawer and closed it firmly.
Mason seemed to do too much thinking when he wasn’t busy, so she did her best to keep him occupied. At one point, she asked him to go to her apartment and retrieve Jezebel, who was going to come and live in the shop for a while, because Kendall had decided that she wasn’t leaving the Flynn plantation for home again until she had figured out what was going on. Despite her earlier good intentions, she was afraid to let the dream go any further, so maybe she had to start exploring while she was awake.
Later in the afternoon, when the store was quiet, she turned to Mason. “Can you watch the place alone for a while?”
“Alone? What am I?” Vinnie asked. “Chopped liver?”
“Actually, you’re coming with me,” she told him.
“Oh?”
“You’re going to help me bring flowers out to the graveyard.”
As they walked out to her car, she looked up at the sky, wondering what was going on with the weather. It was October, but the sky looked like winter. There were dark clouds forming overhead, and it seemed much too chilly for autumn in New Orleans. Something hinted at a thick gray fog, and dampness hung ripe and heavy in the air.
As they drove, Vinnie said, “I don’t believe it. We’ve got a ground fog rising.”
He was right, she realized. Mist hung low to the ground, swirling ominously.
A mist very like what she kept seeing in her dreams.
Aidan couldn’t quite figure out how it had happened, but somehow Rebecca ended up in his car after she’d delivered the bones, so he took her with him to the FBI to send them off to Robert Birch, and then on to the historical society.
Sheila’s boss was a decent guy. He told Aidan that the police had been in to look through Sheila’s desk, and had taken her calendar and most of her files, but he was welcome to search for himself, in case he could come up with anything.
It was Rebecca who noticed the Post-it stuck in the closure of a drawer.
“‘Before plane, meet Papa,’” Aidan read. “Papa. Her father?”
Rebecca shook her head. “Her mama and daddy were never married. I don’t think she ever knew her father.”
“Papa. Someone older, maybe?” Aidan mused. He rose swiftly. “Come on, let’s go.”
“Where are we going now?”
“Police station.”
“Honey, you’re on your own,” Rebecca said, looking at her watch. “I got to pick my mama up from the doctor’s now.”
“I’ll drop you at your car.”
She studied him just before she got out of his car to get into hers. “You really do care for our girl, don’t you? Mama approves of you, you know.”
“I’m glad. Thank you, Rebecca.”
Aidan headed to the police station. Hal was in his office, a stack of papers in front of him.
“Sit down, join me. I’m going through Sheila’s files.”
There was a box of disposable gloves on Hal’s desk, the kind cops had to wear when handling evidence, but they made Aidan remember that whoever had bought the voodoo dolls had been wearing black latex gloves.
He drew up a chair next to Hal’s, they both put on gloves, and together they started going through Sheila’s files in search of something—anything—that might give them a clue as to who had killed her. After a while, Hal excused himself to go get coffee.
He’d been gone a few minutes when Aidan got the creeping feeling at the back of his neck that he was being watched.
He looked up to see…
The woman in white.
Her face was tense with anxiety, and she was beckoning to him.
He stood up, not daring to blink, and started toward the door—and she faded into nothing just as Hal walked back into the office.
“What’s the matter with you, Flynn
? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
“I have to go,” Aidan said.
“What?”
“I’ve got to get out to the house.”
Without another word, he hurried out to his car.
When Kendall and Vinnie arrived at the house, she thought it had never looked more beautiful than it did now, rising mysteriously from the mist. The last coat of paint was complete, and the columns were strong and white and tall.
“Isn’t Aidan meeting us here?” Vinnie asked, sounding nervous.
“No.”
“Maybe you should call him.”
She hesitated. Aidan was going to be angry. She hadn’t meant to come out here in the dark without him, but it had still been daylight when she had hatched her plan. Even now, it was only the fog that was making it so dark, wasn’t it? Then she looked at the clock and realized it was after five. He would be getting to the store soon, and he wasn’t going to be happy when he didn’t find here there. “You call him, Vinnie. Tell him to come straight out here when he’s done with whatever he’s doing. I’m sorry. I’m going to make you really late for work, but you can take my car.”
“It’s okay. The world won’t end.”
She got out of the car and took the first wreath, the one she had gotten for Henry.
“Give Aidan a call, then grab those flowers over there. They’re for Amelia.”
Kendall started walking toward the cemetery. She looked up and saw that the clouds were darkening and massing overhead. She almost turned back. But it wasn’t the ghosts she was afraid of.
The cemetery had never appeared more ethereal. The fog curled around weeping cherubs and praying angels. It cast pale gray shadows upon ancient stone monuments, and snaked through the pathways between the sarcophagi. Now and then it seemed to be gently hiding a broken stone, as if shielding the dead from the intrusion of the living.
She quickened her pace, watching as the gray mist parted for her footsteps, and headed for Henry’s grave, where she tenderly placed the flowers. “You were a good man, Henry. Thank you. If it weren’t for you, I wouldn’t have Aidan. And I’m listening to you. I know you’re watching for the killer, that you’re trying to warn people at the bar.”
She touched the stone, said a little prayer and looked up.
Henry was there.
He was tall, his features bearing the hallmark of both sorrow and strength. His eyes were dark and knowing, caring. Suddenly he started gesturing wildly.
She frowned. “They’re flowers, Henry. A thank-you,” she said.
He was trying to shout, but his voice was just a whisper that mixed with the gray swirl of the fog.
Get out. Hurry.
She turned around, the hair rising at her nape. Someone was there. It was Vinnie, she decided, Vinnie being a jerk. He was wearing his stage costume, the hood of his cape pulled up to hide his face, and he was carrying a plastic Halloween knife that must have fallen out of one of the boxes she’d brought out last night. He wasn’t slashing it up and down, though, like a maddened movie monster. He was carrying it low and stalking her.
He moved slowly through the fog, as if this were a dream. He was being a showman, as always. But the dark and the mist were far too real, and she felt anger and fear mingling inside her.
“Vinnie, quit it!” she yelled, furious.
He was still coming for her, slowly, and she took a step backward and tripped over something, almost falling.
She looked down, trying to see what she had stumbled over, but the mist was heavy now, dark gray, making it hard to see. Whatever it was, it had been softer than a headstone or a tree root.
She peered through the mist, and there, beneath a weeping cherub and an angel with its face turned desperately up to the dark heavens, lay Vinnie, draped over a broken tombstone, like a piece of funerary statuary.
Like the weeping cherub.
And the praying angel.
Blood was trickling down his forehead.
She looked back at the figure coming for her, more quickly now. Weaving between the tombs. Past the statues of saints and angels and cherubs.
She started to run, but he was almost on her as she ran, blinded by the mist and the deepening darkness.
He reached for her, and she screamed, feeling the strands of hair ripping from her head as she somehow managed to escape. With no idea where to turn, she raced into the Flynn mausoleum and tried to slam and bolt the heavy iron door. It was almost closed, and she desperately threw her weight against it.
And then she realized she wasn’t alone.
Henry was with her. Henry, futilely attempting to throw his ghostly weight into the fray. She drew strength from him, but a crack remained, and her pursuer shoved a hand through and sprayed something at her. She staggered back and fell, the world spinning, no matter how hard she fought against the sensation.
Without her weight to hold it shut, the door opened, and Kendall backed away in terror, stumbling toward the altar, because there was nowhere else to go. Henry was gesturing frantically for her to keep away from the altar, but she had no choice, so she kept backing away, fighting the darkness that threatened to overwhelm her, as the hooded figure with the knife loomed ever closer.
She circled the marble altar, fighting desperately to stay conscious, to stay on her feet.
Her pursuer reached her, and she knew she was about to be stabbed.
But she wasn’t.
She was pushed.
And then she knew why Henry had tried to warn her away.
The floor behind her gave way with a loud scraping sound, and suddenly she was falling…
Falling, and landing hard in the sodden secret crypt that lay below the mausoleum. There was just enough light filtering down that she could make out the tombs, some single, some stacked, and some deep within the earth, just rotting coffins.
There was water on the floor, inches deep and seeming to flow around her.
Her eyes adjusted until she could see clearly, and a terrified scream escaped her lips as Sheila’s rotting, bloated head bobbed by in front of her.
The killer jumped down beside her then, and the soft laughter she heard was all too real.
As was the figure so very close to her now, wielding its deadly knife.
Aidan tried Kendall’s cell. No answer.
He tried the store, and Mason picked up. “Mason, it’s Aidan. I have to talk to Kendall right away.”
“She’s not here—try her cell.”
“I just did. She didn’t answer.”
“Try Vinnie. He’s with her.”
“With her where?”
“They were taking some stuff out to the plantation.”
“Shit!”
Aidan didn’t say goodbye. He sped past a Mazda on the highway as he dialed Vinnie’s number. No answer.
He hesitated briefly, praying that his instincts were right, and called Hal. Hal couldn’t be out at the plantation, because Aidan had just left him in his office.
It took him long seconds to be put through.
“Flynn, you’re really starting to get on my nerves,” Hal said.
“Hal, get some patrol cars out to my place now. Please.”
“What the hell is going on?”
I don’t know. But something is. A ghost just told me so.
“Just get them out there. There’s an intruder on the grounds, and I can’t find Kendall.”
“All right, all right,” Hal said, and hung up, but Aidan knew the man would do as he said.
He sped down the road to the house and jerked to a stop in the driveway, right behind Kendall’s car. She wasn’t in it, and neither was Vinnie.
He raced into the cemetery, pulling out his laser light. The fog was so thick that he couldn’t even see the low-lying markers.
“Kendall!” he shouted her name, then paused to listen for a response. That was when he heard a groan and, with renewed hope, tracked his light around the cemetery.
A cherub seemed to stare back at hi
m, mournful and weeping. A trick of the light.
An angel looked despairingly toward heaven as Aidan searched desperately through the dense fog. Suddenly he spotted a black mass lying on one of the graves. He squatted down and touched it, and it groaned again.
Vinnie.
“Vinnie, what’s going on?” he demanded frantically. “Where’s Kendall?”
But Vinnie’s eyes didn’t open. There was a huge gash on his head, trickling blood.
Aidan stood, pulling out his phone again. He dialed 911 and asked for an ambulance, trying to maintain enough calm to explain the situation while searching frantically for any sign of Kendall.
The cemetery was empty.
“Mr. Flynn?”
The tentative, terrified voice was real. He trained his light in the direction of the voice and saw Jimmy, shaking like a tree in winter, standing there.
“It’s the ghosts, Mr. Flynn. It’s the bad ghosts!”
“Where are they, Jimmy? Help me. Where are they?”
Jimmy pointed, but it was unnecessary.
Because she was back. The woman in white. And she was standing by the family mausoleum, beckoning to him. But she wasn’t alone. Two men stood with her, one in a uniform of butternut and gray, one in deep blue, and all three of them were urging him to hurry.
He hurried.
Kendall staggered to her feet, facing the monster with the knife. She wasn’t going to die without a fight, but how did you fight a huge knife?
“I have you at last.”
The voice was familiar. Friendly.
“I’ve wanted you for so long.”
“Great,” she said, fighting the tremors in her voice. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I’ve been trying to tell you for some time, but I kept my distance. I thought that you’d be the biggest mistake. You have such passion, but sometimes great passion must be denied. On the other hand, genius must be rewarded.”
“You killed Sheila,” she said.
“Obviously.”
That voice…She knew it.
“You must understand. I’m considered a genius in my field…and my field has helped me so much. I know what they look for, when they find the dead. And I know that if they don’t find the dead, they don’t find what they should be looking for. And where better to keep the dead than where the dead should lie?”