Always

  “Let him suffer,” Jack said, hurrying toward Lavender.

  When Darci got there both Lavender and Jack were on the driver’s seat, with her holding the reins.

  As Darci climbed into the back, Lavender said, “Jack is going to allow me to drive. Isn’t he the most generous, kind man alive?”

  “Oh yeah,” Darci said, “the best.”

  Jack winked at her and the next minute they started off. Lavender sat straight and rigid on the seat and handled the reins competently. Jack—the overactor!—often gave her little admonishments and pointed out potholes to miss, and three times he cautioned her about going too fast. You would have thought he knew all about buggies and horses.

  All through their long, slow trek through town, Darci sat in the back and watched the two of them together. They nodded to passersby, calling to them by name, and everyone who saw them smiled back. Everyone in town seemed to find pleasure in the sight of the beautiful young couple.

  Darci thought back to Greg Ryerson at the FBI and how she’d felt the deep bond between him and Jack. A deep, die-for-each-other bond. Greg wouldn’t recognize Jack now because Jack is no longer an angry young man, she thought.

  But Darci knew that something wasn’t right. If she had her power, she’d know in an instant what it was, but it was hard to figure out things on a human level. If she had her power, she could just look at people’s auras and know what was going on.

  She tried to put her mind on Lavender and Jack but she couldn’t. Their giggly happiness made her think of her own husband, of Adam. So far, nothing she’d done seemed to have taken her closer to finding her husband. She’d helped the actor Lincoln Aimes find his son; she’d found Henry, a man with power that she was only gradually finding out about. But still, she hadn’t come any closer to finding Adam.

  For a moment, she closed her eyes and remembered a happy time when she’d been with her family. Adam had been playing ball with the girls in the back garden. He was laughing and saying it wasn’t fair for the girls to throw the ball by using their minds. He’d pretended to read a rule book that clearly stated that “no hands” was illegal. The three of them had ended by tumbling down and rolling on the grass.

  But even in her happy memory she saw the shadows that always haunted Adam’s eyes. No matter how happy he was, there was always in his aura and in his eyes what had been done to him as a child.

  And then there was Boadicea, his sister. She would never be so-called normal. She’d been raised by a truly evil woman, and as a result, she’d never fit into society. Darci’s heart would ache when Bo went with them to a mall or to a movie. Bo only felt at home when there were people around her who she knew and loved and trusted.

  As they left the town behind them, Darci’s thoughts grew more melancholy. Jack had found love, so he wanted to stay with that love. It was easy for Darci to tell him he had to leave, but she wondered what she’d do if the tables were turned. What would she want to do if she found Adam here in this time?

  “I’d—” she said aloud, then said no more, because Lavender raised the horse whip, yelled “hee-yah!” and the animals took off. Darci was thrown back against the seat and Jack would have fallen onto the road if he hadn’t managed to grab the side of the seat.

  “Lavender!” Jack shouted but was answered by her laugh.

  Darci, trying to stay upright as she bounced along, watched as Jack struggled with himself. The nineteenth-century John Marshall inside of him seemed to want to stop Lavender’s wild driving, but the twenty-first-century Jack was loving it.

  Jack won. He gave a yell, threw his hat to the ground, pulled off his tight jacket, tossed it back to Darci, then unbuttoned his shirt halfway down his chest.

  As Darci banged from one side of the carriage to the other, she knew she’d never seen a more beautiful couple in her life. And she also knew that if she was going to get Jack to leave, she was going to have to use some very powerful magic.

  Chapter Eleven

  “YES, I AGREED,” LAVENDER SAID SLOWLY AND firmly, “but that was before I knew that you wanted me to go to a haunted house.” She was on the driver’s seat of the buggy and they were on the outskirts of Drayton Falls, but she was refusing to go any farther.

  “You don’t have to go in,” Darci said patiently. “I will go in. You can stay here in the buggy and kiss Jack for an hour or so.”

  Lavender looked at Darci with narrowed eyes. “You’ve changed, you know that?”

  “Changed from what?” Darci asked, her voice rising. “What was I before today?”

  Jack put his hand on Lavender’s shoulder and turned her around. “Sweetheart,” he said soothingly, “Darci needs to…” He gave Darci a look that said he needed help in coming up with a reason why she had to go into a haunted house.

  “Tell me about the house,” Darci said, trying to get control of her emotions. She needed Lavender so she couldn’t afford to anger her. Lavender knew where the house was and could save them a lot of time by just taking them there. Ever since her first encounter with Connecticut, Darci didn’t trust the place, so she didn’t want to have to go knocking on doors and asking directions. “I want to know what happened to make the house haunted.”

  Lavender seemed to relax as Jack held her hand and caressed it. “A man and his wife and their two young children lived there. It’s an old, old house, one of the first to be built in the state. I think it had something to do with the Revolutionary War, but I’m not sure what. It’s been in the Drayton family for a long time. They came from England and somehow kept the land no matter what happened.”

  She glanced at Jack. “All right, I’m hurrying. Old Mr. Drayton died when I was a girl and that left young Mr. Drayton as the heir to it all. When he didn’t get married right away, my mother used to say she hoped he’d wait for me. But he didn’t.”

  When Lavender looked at Jack, he lifted her hand, kissed it, and she said, “I’m glad he didn’t wait.”

  “But he did marry?” Darci asked.

  “Yes. He went away for a few years and returned with a wife from somewhere else. They moved into the old house and right away had two children. I didn’t know them as they’re quite rich. Not our set.”

  “What happened to her?” Darci asked.

  “It was all anyone could talk about for months. It seems that she just dropped dead one day. I heard that she was in her garden and just fell down. She was dead instantly. Her husband shut himself in his room for weeks and left the care of his children to the nanny. When he finally left his room, he moved to the other side of the town and locked his old house up.”

  “So he didn’t move because of a ghost?” Darci asked.

  “Oh no. In fact, my mother told me that Mr. Drayton refused to believe that there was a ghost. I heard that he yells at anyone who says there is a ghost. But everyone within a hundred miles has heard the stories of the poor woman. She’s been seen in windows and in the garden and walking in front of the house. It isn’t just one person who’s seen her but dozens. I heard a story that a bunch of boys tried to break into the house one night and they ran out so terrified that one of them never recovered his mind.”

  “Lavender, please take me to this house,” Darci said softly, her voice pleading. “If you don’t I’ll go into the nearest liquor establishment and ask the men in there.”

  “You wouldn’t,” Lavender said, aghast.

  “She would,” Jack said, “so I really think you should take us there. We’ll leave Darci there, then you and I will—”

  “You would leave your own sister in a haunted house?” Lavender sounded outraged. “You’d leave her to the mercy of the spirits? What kind of man are you?”

  “I wouldn’t marry a coward like him,” Darci said.

  “I’d call the wedding off right now.”

  Jack gave Darci a look to tell her that he was going to happily wring her neck the moment they were alone. “All right, I’m outnumbered,” Jack said. “Take us to the house and I’ll…guard the entr
ance, I guess.” He shot a lascivious look at Lavender. “If I get scared, will you hold my hand?”

  “You are incorrigible,” Lavender said, but she was smiling as she picked up the reins. “What I want to know is why Darci wants to go to a haunted house.”

  Darci decided to take a chance. “Because Simone said I had to.”

  Lavender hesitated a moment, then flicked the reins of the horses. “You should have told me that earlier.”

  “Did I miss something?” Jack asked. “Who’s Simone?”

  “She’s not for any man to know about,” Lavender said tightly, then glanced back at Darci. “Be careful what you say around Tom. He snoops and he tells.”

  “I’ve already learned that,” Darci answered.

  Minutes later, Lavender turned the horses down a narrow dirt road. Weeds ran down the middle of the road and trees hung over them; Jack was constantly brushing branches away so they wouldn’t hit him or Lavender. As they neared the house the atmosphere seemed to grow darker and quieter. From behind, Darci could see Lavender and Jack begin to stiffen their backs, and Lavender slackened the reins so the horses were walking slowly.

  But with every step closer to the house, Darci began to smile more broadly. Yes, she thought, this was the place. She couldn’t feel it as she did when she had power, but merely as a sensitive human she could still tell that the very air was different. The horses began to twitch their ears and snort. When the horses stopped, Lavender flicked the whip above their heads, but they refused to move.

  “I think this is as close as they’ll go,” Lavender said, trying to be brave. “We’ll have to walk the rest of the way.”

  Jack got off the seat, then helped Lavender down, but neither of them moved toward the house that Darci was sure was just out of sight behind the trees. When she was on the ground, she turned to them. Both their faces were white, their eyes wide.

  “Please let me go alone,” she said. She could see that both of them wanted to protest, but at the same time they were dying to get away from what they feared.

  “Food!” Darci said. “We’re going to miss dinner and I’m starving. I don’t want to faint again, so maybe you two could go get us some food. Is there a McDonald’s around here?”

  “Do you mean the MacTavish Tavern?” Lavender asked, puzzled.

  Jack took Lavender’s elbow firmly in his hand. “She’ll be all right,” he said. “Trust me on this, but she’s had experience and she knows what she’s doing. Let’s go get something to eat and bring it back here in, say, about an hour?” He looked at Darci in question.

  “Make it an hour and a half,” she said, glad to get rid of them.

  Within seconds, Lavender and Jack were in the buggy and were maneuvering it back out of the narrow lane. When they were gone and Darci was alone, she breathed a sigh of relief.

  She didn’t know for sure, but she doubted if the spirit occupying the house was dangerous. To Darci, the woman sounded as though she was very lonely and missed her family very much. Like me, Darci whispered into the still evening. The late afternoon was waning, but it was summer so it would be hours before it was completely dark.

  She walked down the road and soon came to a turn. When she pushed aside some overhanging willow branches, she saw the house and instantly knew that Lavender had been right: the house was very old. The upper story was wider than the lower, a holdover from medieval times when the houses were built over narrow streets. They couldn’t widen the ground floor so they widened the upper floors to make as much room as possible. What had once been a necessity had become a design concept. This house, with its dark wood and small windows, was obviously from the earliest period of building in the United States, and done by people who were used to seeing medieval buildings in Europe.

  Weeds had grown around the place and it had that forlorn air that was so common to abandoned houses. She saw that some of the roof shingles were loose and if they weren’t replaced soon water would get into the house. Once water entered, a house didn’t have long to live.

  She stared at the house until her eyes hurt, hoping to see the movement that the locals claimed to see, but there was nothing. The wind was soft and sweet on her face, and in the distance the birds sang. It was a nice place for a house and she could see why the original builders had chosen the site.

  As quietly as she could, she went up the overgrown drive to the house, her heart pounding loudly. Perhaps inside this house was the answer to going back home. Perhaps she could meet the spirit of this woman who’d loved her husband and children so much that she couldn’t leave them, and maybe Darci could appeal to her. If the woman hadn’t been a ghost for so long that she’d become hardened with anger and frustration, maybe Darci could get her to empathize with her plight. Maybe the woman would go to Devlin or Henry, or maybe…

  Darci didn’t want to think too much, to get her hopes up too much so that they’d be shattered. But she couldn’t stop thinking. Maybe she’d been sent back in time to find that iron egg that Simone had given her. If that was true, then she could now return to her own time. Maybe the ghost would know about the box that had caused them to go back in time in the first place. Darci patted the box in her pocket and vowed to ask the spirit where the key was.

  By the time Darci got to the door, her heart was racing, and when she put her hand on the knob, she was shaking. Maybe what was inside this house would lead her home.

  The door was locked. And so were all the windows she could reach. At the back of the house she sat down on the broken bricks of what had been an old well casing. “Is anyone home?” she called out. Lavender had said the ghost had been seen in the garden so maybe she’d come outside to meet Darci.

  But no such luck. Darci hesitated only seconds, then picked up a brick, hefted it for a moment, then threw it through a pane of glass. That it was probably seventeenth-century glass and irreplaceable wasn’t lost on her. Minutes later, she’d used the bricks to form a little staircase so she could climb up to the window. Getting through wouldn’t have been a tight squeeze if Darci’d had on a pair of jeans and a T-shirt, but with the heavy skirt and petticoats she was barely going to fit. She thought about removing some of her garments, but with only an hour and a half before Jack and Lavender returned, she didn’t have the time. Besides, if she were caught in her underwear, Lavender would probably be so shamed that she’d have to call off the wedding. “And then everything bad would be my fault,” she whispered.

  When Darci landed on the floor amid the broken glass, she was smiling. It was good to think of something lighthearted in all this.

  “I’m here,” she whispered to the empty house. There was no furniture so even her whisper echoed off the walls. “Please come and talk to me,” she said, a bit louder this time. “I’ve lost my husband, too. Please help me find him.”

  She waited but heard nothing. When she thought she heard something from upstairs, she ran through three rooms before she found the narrow, steep stairs. She ran up them, thinking that she wished she’d asked Lavender what the woman’s name was.

  “Mrs. Drayton,” Darci called. “Please help me. Please help me find my husband.”

  Nothing. No sound.

  Darci wandered through the upstairs rooms. They were made in the old-fashioned way of one room leading into another. No hallways, so people had to walk through other bedrooms to get out.

  “If I had my power,” Darci whispered, “I’d know which room had been hers.” She tried to imagine which room she’d want for the master bedroom if she lived in the house, but she couldn’t seem to make up her mind. This one and this view, she said at last, looking out a front window at the road leading to the house. She could see a church steeple in the distance. Had the Draytons gone to church there?

  “Please help me,” Darci whispered as she leaned her forehead against the cold window glass. “My husband left and I never saw him again. He got on an airplane one day—do you know what an airplane is?—and he never came back. I’ve tried to find him.”
r />   She drew in her breath. “You see, when I was in my own time period, not now, but a long time in the future, I had some abilities.” Turning, she looked at the room. “If I were myself right now you wouldn’t be able to hide from me. If you’re in here I’d know it. But right now I’m just a normal woman, like you were, and like you, I’ve lost my family. Please,” she said, “please help me. I’ve come such a very long way.”

  There were tears rolling down her cheeks, and her throat was clogged with more tears. Putting her hands over her face, she sank down to the floor. “Maybe I’m never going to find him,” she said. “Maybe I wasn’t supposed to go back in time. Maybe it was an accident and now I’m stuck here. Jack doesn’t want to go back, and Simone said that I couldn’t go back without Jack. No, I can’t go back without Jack and Lavender. But they don’t want to go and it doesn’t matter anyway because I don’t know how to get out of here.”

  “You could use the front door,” said a cold voice—a voice she never thought to hear again.

  Darci lifted her face to see a man standing in the doorway. The sun was setting behind him so all she saw was a silhouette—but it was the silhouette of Adam, her husband. It was a body she knew every inch of.

  Weakly, she began to pull herself up by holding onto the windowsill. Slowly, never taking her eyes off the dark shape of the man, she tried to stand. “Adam?” she whispered.

  “Yes, I’m Adam,” he said, his voice still cold.

  It was Adam’s voice, Adam’s body. The tears started rolling down her cheeks again. She was determined to stand so she used both hands on the windowsill. “Adam,” she said, this time a statement, not a question.

  The man stepped forward into the light and she saw his face. Darci looked into the frowning, angry face of her husband, Adam Montgomery, for only a second before everything started going ’round and ’round and she fainted.

  Chapter Twelve

  DARCI SLOWLY OPENED HER EYES, AND FOR A moment she couldn’t focus. She lay still, blinking in the pale light of what looked to be a golden candelabra.