But the sound never left her lips, because a familiar voice interrupted her thoughts.
“Who are you, and what the hell are you doing?”
The voice, deep and very low, and all the more menacing for the quiet within it, cut into her mind like a knife.
And still, fear eased instantly.
She was silent and dead still for a minute, ruefully realizing her position.
Then she spoke.
“I’m your unwanted guest, and I was merely on my way out to the balcony when a breeze blew, and suddenly I found myself rather rudely accosted.”
She felt the vise ease from around her. For a split second, there was the simple warmth of Matt’s hold, taut muscles slackening, and a pleasant sense of just being held, of life and vibrance, masculine aftershave, and an essence of sexuality that took her completely off guard. She swayed.
His arms were releasing her.
She quickly gathered her wits about her, and found steadiness on her feet while he worked to untangle her from the draperies.
She emerged facing him, flushed, hair tousled.
“Why are you sneaking around the balcony?” she demanded.
Matt crossed his arms over his chest. “A, it’s my balcony. B, I wasn’t sneaking around. Your turn. What the hell were you doing, sneaking around on the balcony.”
“I heard something.”
“Apparently, you heard me.”
“So—why were you out here?”
“I heard something—apparently you.”
She shook her head. “I believe that I heard you first.”
“I beg to differ.”
“Oh, this is getting ridiculous.”
He arched a brow to her, implying that the entire situation of her being in his house was purely ridiculous.
She exhaled on a long sigh. “Look, your night has been disturbed enough. I really wasn’t making any noise.”
He grunted.
“Since there’s no one on the balcony except for you and me, I believe it would be safe for both of us to go back to sleep.”
“The balcony doors do lock,” he told her.
“Do you keep yours locked?” she asked him.
He shook his head.
“Why not?”
“Because I listen.”
“In your sleep?”
“It’s a talent,” he said dryly. “But you should keep yours locked.”
She stared at him for a long while.
“Why should I?”
“Because someone is playing tricks with this room.”
“So you believe the danger is coming from the outside?”
“Where else?”
“Why can’t you believe that there’s anything in the world that isn’t black or white, visible to the naked eye?” she asked softly.
“I believe in a great big real world of gray,” he said.
“If there is any danger in the house,” she insisted quietly, “I believe it comes from the inside.”
“But you want to stay in the Lee Room anyway?”
She lowered her head, praying for patience. “If you’re such a serious skeptic, why did you agree to let the company in?”
“Because I know Adam. And I know that he can find any kind of sleight of hand out there.”
“Adam also believes deeply in the occult. And in me,” she added.
He shrugged, then brushed past her, entering the Lee Room again. For a moment, he stood with his back to her.
“I can’t tell you how many nights I spent in this room as a kid. And…even in the last few years,” he murmured. There was something behind his words; she didn’t know what. But then he swung around, staring at her again. “Lots and lots of nights. And nothing ever materialized before me. Nothing whispered in the dark. Nothing floated by.”
She twisted her jaw slightly. “I didn’t tell you that anything materialized or floated by me. I merely said that I had a nightmare.”
“Right. And the great ghost buster ran out screaming.”
“It was a very bad nightmare.”
He walked over to her and she was startled when he set his hands on her shoulders, and his eyes, very dark in the shadows of night, were hard focused on her own. She was again aware of something evocative in the mere nearness of the man. He carried a richly masculine and seductive scent, and the simple touch of his fingers seemed like a caress. She told herself that it had been a long time since she had been this close to a man so vital and arresting, and so, it was natural that her senses should be jumping. It was a hard argument. They didn’t jump that easily.
“Darcy, I do believe that something is going on. But something real. And I don’t want you hurt.”
His words were honestly, sincerely spoken. The edge of hostility was gone between them, fallen off like a cloak.
She needed it back. She was standing in a bedroom in a flimsy nightgown, body brushing that of a striking male in his prime, clad in no more than boxers and a robe. If she moved just a little bit closer…half an inch, she’d know firsthand if she had an equal effect upon him.
“I’m…I’m not going to get hurt,” she assured him. Her voice was thick.
It seemed as if eons passed in which he didn’t reply. In which they just stood there. Her mind raced in a fury of thoughts. He wasn’t going to let her go. He was going to take that step closer. She should, of course, step away, but she wouldn’t. She’d feel the force of his arms enwrapping her again, but carefully this time, pressing her against his length. The palms of his hand would come to her face, fingers would caress her chin. Then they’d be fused together, tangled in a web of touch and taste and sensation, and—
He stepped back.
“I’m right next door. You didn’t disturb my sleep. Feel free to scream at any time.” He offered her a wry grimace, then took another step back. She wasn’t sure his stride was as confident as usual.
Or maybe she just wanted him to be a bit shaky, too.
“Seriously, at the least disturbance, please, scream your heart out. I’ll be right here.” He smiled. Then his knuckles lightly brushed her cheek; for a moment, time passed again, with endless electricity and thought.
Then he was gone.
Admittedly, Matt was tired.
Still didn’t help the way that the morning completely sucked.
It started out with a desperate call from one of the area’s three middle schools. The sheriff’s department rushed in, prepared to deal with a possibly deadly, serious situation. It turned out that Brad Middleton, tall, lanky, fighting a case of acne, but usually a decent kid, had come in to class saying that he had a gun. Not a soul in the world was going to have a sense of humor about such a situation these days, which Brad couldn’t understand, since he had come in packing a water pistol. After a discussion with the psychiatric counselor, the police counselor, the principal, and then his parents, he was shaking like a leaf by the time he reached Matt, and Matt wasn’t feeling much better about the situation himself. The kid was going to have to go to court, and Matt didn’t lie about the fact that he was facing consequences. Since Brad seemed truly repentant, he was certain that the boy would receive leniency, and he could make him feel somewhat better. But in the middle of his conversation with Brad, there was a holdup at one of the gas stations on the highway, and when they chased down the perp, he wasn’t packing a water pistol. Still, surrounded by law enforcement vehicles, the man turned himself in. Thankfully, no one, including the perp, was shot.
That was all before noon in a town where days could go by, totally uneventful.
He wondered why he had ever wanted to be elected sheriff in the first place. But he knew why. He was like one of the ancient oaks that filled the forested area, born and bred to Stoneyville. He felt the responsibility of his family’s claim to the place, almost as if he was rooted there as well.
And still, though he was worn and weary, he knew how to be sheriff. He knew how to handle juveniles, gun-wielding thieves, and even the older populace who c
omplained that their neighbors were playing rock music or rap too loud.
What he didn’t know how to handle was what he couldn’t see, touch, hear, or stand up against, face-to-face. The other night had disturbed him deeply.
Just as Darcy Tremayne disturbed him.
She could appear as unruffled as the most dignified queen, and yet last night, when he had first seen her after she’d fled the Lee Room, she had been terrified. She had conquered her bout of fear quickly, and with a steely resolve that truly brooked no argument. Last night he had known that he wanted her out, far away where no harm could come to her. And yet he had respected something about her determination as well; hell, he was afraid every time he faced a lethal weapon—he’d seen what they could do. Didn’t alter the fact that he meant to be just what he was, and be first in line to face any situation that arose.
He didn’t believe in ghosts. Didn’t matter. Something had scared her badly.
He’d be damned if he could figure out just what was going on, or who was causing it. The seance could be chalked up to childish antics. As to the rest…
Pranks as well. Had to be. Or the imaginations of those who just wanted ghosts to exist so badly that they could create them. That worked with Penny and their streaking bride. But Clara? She was as down to earth as could be.
Why worry about it so much? He taunted himself. Half of humanity wanted to believe in ghosts, in anything that gave credence to a life after death. Let Melody House be haunted.
Ah, but there was the rub. Clara had either slammed herself into a door, or been hurt somehow. But he still had to question how the hell someone was playing games in the house. He’d gone through the Lee Room endlessly, and had found nothing. No wires, no taps, nothing.
He’d spent plenty of time in the Lee Room himself. Once, when Lavinia had been in love with the place. She considered the room exciting, for reasons he’d never really fathomed. Clint, he knew, had taken a number of women to the house. Carter, too. Maybe for the thrill of being intimate with a woman when there was an element of fear. The point was, not one of them had ever been bothered by anything in the least amiss.
He realized he’d been sitting at his desk at the station, staring down at a form, pen in hand. He gave himself a mental shake and concentrated. The true reason police forces lost so many good cops. Paperwork.
He forced himself to finish up, then called out to his secretary that he was calling it quits. It was well after six and he’d been in for almost twelve hours.
He felt a sudden uneasiness.
It was too long to have been gone from Melody House.
Stoneyville might be a small town, but it had one of the most impressive and charming public libraries Darcy had ever seen.
Mrs. O’Hara, tiny as a wren, but sprightly and quick with beautiful dark brown eyes peeping out from behind her bifocals, evidently loved books, and apparently felt a need to create comfortable and aesthetic surroundings in which they might be enjoyed. Beautiful plants and flowers adorned the numerous tables, and she proudly told Darcy that she’d found the inviting, overstuffed chairs set about the library at various yard sales throughout the county. The library was entirely user-friendly, with signs to direct youngsters to their section, and adults to where they wanted to go as well. “A library should be educational, of course,” she told Darcy cheerfully. “But the point is that reading should always be a pleasure, and when one learns to read and love it, all kinds of knowledge just becomes available so easily. I do go on, but then, I do love books!” She wasn’t obtrusive, however, and quickly brought Darcy to the section on local history.
Luckily, many local writers had been intrigued with chronicling events around them. In the 1870s, a woman named Murial Moore had written about the sisters Darcy and Matt had discussed on her first day at Melody House. The family had been the Claytons, and their home had been located just outside of town. A Barry Brewster had been engaged first to marry Ophelia, the oldest of the brood, but had fallen in love with young Amy, the baby of the family. Amy had last been seen with her sister Ophelia as they walked through the east forest, ostensibly to visit neighbors on the far side. Amy had not been seen again alive. Barry had returned, and on the day that the majority of Amy’s bones were discovered by a farmer walking through the woods with his dog, Barry had hanged himself from a tree near the brook. Ophelia had later gone insane, but lived out her life to the ripe old age of eighty-eight, prisoner of her family, kept in the barn. The barn, and family property, had burned to the ground.
“How are you doing, young lady?”
Darcy started and looked up. Mrs. O’Hara was standing by her side. “I was about to make a cup of tea. Would you like some?”
This was definitely a different kind of library.
Darcy smiled, then glanced at her watch. She hadn’t gotten very deep into the history of the Stone family at all, but she felt as if she was carefully treading water between legends, truth, and experience as it was. And she was anxious to get back to the forest.
“I’ll take a rain check on the tea, Mrs. O’Hara, if I may,” Darcy told her. “I’ll be back tomorrow.”
She handed the book she’d been reading to the librarian. Such an old volume wasn’t allowed out of the library.
Mrs. O’Hara assured her she was quite welcome, and told her that she’d go through some of their old books and see what she could show her that might be important regarding the history of Melody House. “I warn you—any difficulty on research regarding Melody House and the area is not because there hasn’t been a lot written. There are many, many books on the subject.”
“Thanks so much for your help.”
“Absolutely. I’m quite convinced myself that the area is haunted. In fact, I have a friend you might want to talk to. Her name is Marcia Cuomo. She started working at Melody House right after Matt’s grandfather died. And she quit in one day. She was convinced that she was grabbed and rousted about and nearly killed when she was thrown down a stairway.”
“Oh?” Darcy said. She hadn’t heard a word about Marcia Cuomo.
Mrs. O’Hara was smiling wryly. “At the time, I’m afraid, she had a reputation for having a nip or two while working. She didn’t want Matt Stone thinking that she was drinking on the job, so she just told Penny she’d had a fall. Apparently, when she tried to explain to a few people that there was a very physical ghost in the house, they didn’t think her a credible witness in the least.”
“I see. I’d love to talk to her.” At the counter, Darcy wrote down her cell phone number and gave it to Mrs. O’Hara. “Could you ask Marcia to call me at her convenience?”
Darcy left the library and searched for the little Volvo she had borrowed from Penny. Twenty minutes later, she was out at the stables. Sam, the old caretaker, was working there, and she assured him that she could manage saddling and bridling the horse herself.
Daylight still dappled through the trees, but with such a canopy of green, the forest trails and copses were dark and shadowy as early evening came to pass. Darcy rode to the point where she had dismounted on her last ride out, left Nellie having a lazy sip of water at the brook, and returned to her perch upon the log.
She hugged her knees to her chest, always a little afraid. She closed her eyes, concentrating on the sense of the past that had nearly come clear to her before.
First, the cold. It settled over the forest like a blanket. An inward voice, her own, called out in silent fear as the feeling wrapped around her. “Josh!”
“I’m here.”
It was the softest voice, or it was insanity. It was her own mind, working on different circuits, a mechanism to keep her from going mad.
She opened her eyes. The forest had darkened even further. She heard voices. One light, a girl’s voice. She was laughing. Talking about the wedding, then apologizing. “Ophelia, you’ve been so wonderful. He was to have been yours, but then, really, you’d never met, and then we met, and Ophelia, I really do love him so very much! We’ll find the r
ight man for you, I know it. Maybe not in this little town, but you’ll travel with Barry and me, and it will be wonderful.”
She could see the sisters. They had come into view. Two ghost horses had now joined Nellie at the brook. Nellie lifted her head, snorted, shied away uneasily, seemed to get ready to run.
Both girls had a wealth of brown hair, and were clad in simple cotton dresses, petticoats beneath, heavy boots on their feet.
Amy dismounted first.
“It will be wonderful,” Ophelia agreed softly from her saddle. Then she, too, dismounted.
“Why did we stop here?” Amy asked, cupping her hands to create a dipper so that she could draw a cool drink from the brook.
“Oh, I just wanted to show you something. It’s in the water. You’ll have to kneel down.”
“I’ll get soaked.”
“It’s summer, little goose. You’ll dry.”
Amy hesitated.
And watching the past replay itself in her mind’s eyes in the haunted glen, Darcy wanted to cry out, to warn Amy, to help her. And instead, she sat frozen, in something of a trance, seeing the time repeat itself in the images of what had been, aware that she could only see, that there was nothing she could do.
“Something in the water?” Amy repeated.
“Yes, get down, you’ll see!”
It was a classic execution, carried out badly, brutally foiled. Once Amy was down, Ophelia drew the heavy ax from the pouch at the back of her saddle. Her first blow merely dazed Amy, who screamed and fell sideways into the water. Ophelia instantly saw that she had botched a clean kill. She began to work arduously, swinging the hatchet again and again while Amy screamed. The thudding of the blade against flesh, bone, muscle, and sinew seemed as loud in the forest as a drumbeat.
The vision came to life far too vividly. And, watching from the log, Darcy could bear it no longer. She began to scream as well. She forgot herself, running forward to the spot, thinking that something had to stop the terror.