Haunted

  Neither the dying Amy nor the determined Ophelia noticed her in the least. Time had come, and time had gone, and all that vision could give was an echo of the past.

  As Darcy burst upon the sisters, the images faded. Shaking, Darcy fell upon her knees in the water. Yet, as she knelt there, shaking, horrified at Ophelia’s vicious cruelty to her own sister, she saw the ghost.

  Amy, headless, thrashing through the brush by an old oak, not twenty feet away.

  Slowly, Darcy rose.

  When Matt reached the house, he saw that Clint and Carter were out by the stables, arguing over Riley, a big buckskin quarter horse. He strode over to the two of them.

  “We have more horses,” he reminded his cousin and their friend.

  “Ah, but only one glorious redheaded guest,” Clint said. He carried his usual joking tone, but there was a slight edge of steel to it.

  “She’s out riding again?” Matt asked.

  “And I say I should be the one riding out just to make sure she’s doing all right,” Carter said. He rubbed his beard and grinned. “You know, give her a real feel for the charm of the Old South.”

  “Hell—a beard gives you Southern charm?” Clint scoffed.

  “Hey, I’m a land baron, and you’re…a relation,” Carter reminded him.

  “Right. I belong at Melody House. You’ve got your own property. You just like to hang out here,” Clint returned.

  Matt ignored the two of them and took Riley’s reins, then quickly swung into the saddle. He looked down at the two of them. “I’ll go.”

  They frowned at each other. “That’s just not fair,” Carter said.

  “And why not?”

  “You’re rude to her,” Clint answered.

  “And she doesn’t really look a damned thing like Lavinia,” Carter said.

  “Yeah, Lavinia is beautiful, but she’s also got that pinched terrier look, you know? Like a woman who always wants more,” Clint agreed.

  “While this one just seems to rise above it all,” Carter said.

  “Look damned good in a nightgown,” Clint said.

  “Too bad she doesn’t sleep in the buff,” Carter said, shaking his head.

  “Hey, the woman is working for me,” Matt said irritably. “Lay off—she’s not a one-night conquest here for anyone’s amusement.”

  “Who said anything about one night?” Clint demanded.

  “Working for you?” Carter said, one eye half closed as he squinted up at Matt in the dying summer sun. “Bull. You don’t believe in anything she’s doing.”

  “Neither do you.”

  “No, but I sure am attracted to our guest. And I’m fascinated by her work, not at all ready to mock her—the way that you are,” Carter said.

  “See you at dinner,” Matt said, starting to turn Sam around.

  “Hey!” Clint called to him.

  He looked back at his cousin. For a minute, Clint looked as he sometimes had when they were kids. Stubborn, and somewhat sullen.

  Matt reined in, staring at him.

  “She’s no one-night stand for you either, Matt.”

  “She’s working for me,” he repeated.

  “Yeah. Like the air doesn’t crackle when the two of you get close.”

  True enough. But he’d be damned if he’d have these two knowing anything and taunting him about his attraction to the ghost buster he didn’t believe in.

  “She’s only here until she finds something…or until Adam arrives,” he said curtly. Then he nudged Riley with his thighs and headed out for the forest. He hadn’t asked any questions about which way she’d ridden, nor did he look for any signs.

  He was certain that he’d find her right where she’d been before, near the water, probably seated right on the same log.

  “Communing” with the forest.

  A surge of irritation filled him, and yet he was anxious to reach her, and suddenly, deeply glad as well that he’d reached the house when he had. There wasn’t a damned thing wrong with Clint—except that he was a spendthrift and a womanizer. He did have a way with the opposite sex, though. He was all smiles and courtesy, and made many an easy conquest. Carter, too, seemed to manage his share of affairs. And he hadn’t seen either of them so determined in a long time. Hell, never determined enough to argue over one woman.

  So?

  If she was interested in one of them…?

  She was working for him. Or rather, come to think of it, Harrison Investigations had paid for their exploration and examination of Melody House. It was his damned house. That gave him the right to have a proprietary feeling.

  Maybe it didn’t.

  Hell, he had one anyway.

  He reached the copse, the brook, and the place where the fallen log lay in the forest. Nellie, wide-eyed, stood in the brook. The horse wasn’t drinking, just standing. She seemed to be in a strange trance, swaying oddly in the water.

  Matt looked hurriedly to the log. Darcy was not there.

  Then he heard a sound. A grunting. His eyes were diverted close to one of the old oaks. He stared incredulously, dismounting from his horse by rote, staring at Darcy.

  She was on her hands and knees, digging furiously. Covered in mud. His austere, regal-looking guest was smudged with raw earth from head to toe, and she was totally oblivious to the fact that he was there.

  She’d dug a really big hole with only the help of a club-shaped log and a sharp stone.

  “Darcy?”

  As he said her name softly, she gave out a cry of triumph.

  And in the eerie light of the dying day, she raised a human skull high into the air.

  6

  She had found it!

  Elation roared through Darcy.

  “Darcy!”

  Her name was called out so roughly that she nearly dropped the skull. She looked to see that Matt had come upon her in the woods.

  “Matt! I’ve found it!”

  But one look at his face assured her that he didn’t share her pleasure in the discovery.

  “What the hell are you doing?” he demanded.

  “Matt, it’s her skull—the younger sister’s skull. The story was true. History. We all knew that she had been murdered by her older sister.”

  “Put it down immediately,” he admonished harshly.

  She stared at him, confused, frowning.

  “Down, put it down!”

  Slowly, she did so. “What on earth is the matter with you?” she demanded. “Look, whether you believe in any of this or not, you don’t have to be such a jerk. I’ve found her skull. We can bury it with her body. That would just be human decency.”

  He hunkered down by her, looking at the skull that now lay on the freshly dug earth. He didn’t touch it, but stared at her again. “Keep your hands off it.”

  “But—”

  “You’ve got a human skull there. And I’m the sheriff.”

  She looked at him then in total disbelief. “But…this murder took place well over a hundred years ago! What are you going to try to do—arrest someone?”

  “How do you know that?”

  “What do you mean, how do I know that? We both know the story.”

  He waved a hand in the air, dismissing her outrage. “Are you a bone expert as well, Miss Tremayne?”

  Anger took slow root in her, and, along with it, a sinking feel of desolation. Dammit, he knew it. He knew as well as she did that the skull had been in the earth for eons. And there was something about the way he was hunkered down, near her, yet a million miles away. He wasn’t going to admit that she had found the skull, that she was right, and that she had somehow come upon it through extrasensory perception. At the same time, he knew in his gut that was just what she had done. He drew away. He didn’t believe in her power, but he was still repulsed by it, maybe at some instinctive level of his own.

  “All right. There’s your skull. What are you going to do about it?”

  “I’m going to see that it’s properly handled.”

  “It
belongs to a poor, young, innocent girl who was brutally murdered by someone she loved and trusted. To handle it properly, you merely need to get the records out and see that her head is buried with her body,” Darcy said angrily.

  “You can guarantee me, beyond a doubt, that this is her skull?” he said scornfully.

  “Yes.”

  “Well, that’s not the way the law works.”

  “You’re being ridiculous.”

  “I’m doing my job.”

  Darcy stood up and dusted her hands on the sides of her jeans. “Fine. You do what you have to do,” she said, and started walking away from him.

  She felt his hand fall upon her upper arm. Hard. When he swung her back, there was too much force to his touch. She stared at his hand, stared at his eyes. He released her instantly.

  “Do you go around finding body parts all the time and just burying them because you’re convinced they have to be ancient?”

  “No.”

  “No to which?”

  “We both know whose head this is!”

  “Whether we do or not, human remains have to be handled properly. Legally.”

  Her eyes fell. Maybe he was right on that. And maybe she was just dismayed by the horror she had seen in his eyes when he had watched her with the skull.

  “All right, Sheriff. I bow to your very logical and legal reasoning. If you’ll excuse me, though, I think I’ll head back for a shower.”

  He nodded, those gray eyes still on her. She felt a strange hurt inside, and she was furious with herself. Matt Stone had been a hostile force from the very beginning. She’d been an idiot to let any measure of attraction form between them. And yet…attraction didn’t form. It existed. It existed right then as they stood in the woods, as they stared at one another. Something in the air, alive, electric, static. She’d never felt such an urge to come close to another person, press against him, feel his arms wrap around her. She was certain that the sheer heat dancing in the air emitted from him. And she was equally certain that no matter what his raw desire, the static erupted from his mind, like a wild wind that pushed away, even as it pulled.

  She suddenly wanted to shout that she wasn’t a leper.

  But in his mind, maybe she was.

  She turned and walked away, striding to Nellie without looking back. She mounted, turned the horse toward home, and never turned her head.

  Anger filled her. To anyone else, she might have just proven that she did have certain psychic abilities. Not Matt. He wouldn’t begin to understand her job. That yes, Harrison Investigations could come in and prove if something wasn’t right—if there was indeed a fake, a trickster, creating ghosts or hauntings for their own purposes—be it simple amusement or something illegal. But when phenomena were real, they tried to find out why, what had happened, why ghosts couldn’t move on. And then they tried to help them.

  She’d helped Amy. And the idiot, Matt Stone, should realize that it meant she could discover the truth about his house. And that it should be discovered, because it was something even stranger than she’d ever encountered before.

  Something far more sinister.

  And it didn’t seem that even Josh could help her here, as he so often could.

  When she could solve a mystery and help heal a lost soul, she loved what she did. Which was wonderful, because far too often her work was frightening, and she felt such deep sympathy so many times that it was painful. And yet, a day like today was so incredibly rewarding!

  Except that it had to come with a man like Matt Stone!

  The great unbeliever.

  She knew that he hadn’t moved.

  And he wouldn’t move, not for a while.

  He would watch after her long after Nellie took to the trail.

  It was late, but it didn’t matter. Matt sat at his desk back at the station, doing nothing.

  He’d called out a few of his men, and the skull, and the surrounding dirt, though disturbed, had been properly boxed for forensic study.

  Because he’d known that Darcy was right about the identity of the skull, he’d had it taken straight to friends at the Smithsonian who specialized in the field, and he knew that he’d get a report back in the morning that the skull was well over a hundred years old.

  So he found himself sitting in his office, doing nothing. His door was closed. At first, he’d pretended to be busy with paperwork. Then, he’d given up all pretense, sat back in his chair, laced his fingers behind his head, and stared into space.

  The image returned to him again and again.

  Darcy, digging.

  Darcy with the skull.

  Her cry of triumph.

  It gave him the creeps.

  But not really, and it should have. She was fucking weird. No. Yes.

  She was, and it didn’t matter. She was still inordinately attractive to him, arresting. More. Seductive. He should want nothing to do with her. He wanted to be closer to her, instead. He wanted to talk to her, know what made her tick, understand her background. He loved the sound of her voice, the inflections in it. He was equally fascinated by every flick of her eyes, her slightest movement. She could have so much energy, move so quickly and fluidly, and then show such cool poise and reserve that she was maddening.

  If he stayed at work, he could keep some distance. He needed distance. If anything was really hauntingly mysterious, it was the allure she seemed to hold for him. So she was good-looking—many women were. All right, so she was sinuous, sensual, and fluid as a cat. Other nearly-perfect people also had such seductive quality.

  Not like this woman.

  Maybe it was the secrets, or the knowledge in her eyes.

  Why the hell couldn’t he be repulsed. Christ, she’d been digging in the dirt like a gopher!

  There was a rap on his door.

  “Yeah?”

  He pulled his feet off his desk top as he called out.

  Deputy Harding, charged with the graveyard shift, opened his door and peeked in. “Everything all right?”

  Alan Harding was young. A good age to keep peace between midnight and eight. Sandy-haired, blue eyed, nearly six-four, and capable of controlling the occasional rowdy drunks who called for law enforcement at that hour.

  “Yeah, everything is fine. Why?”

  “Just…er, checking. You don’t usually sit around in here this late, that’s all.”

  Matt arched a brow. “How late?”

  “It’s nearly two.”

  “A.M.?”

  Harding grinned. “That is my shift.”

  “Yeah, sure.” Matt scratched his cheek. “Yeah, I was just leaving.”

  He rose, taking his hat from the peg on the wall. “Call me if—”

  “If I need you, yessir,” Alan said, a cleft in his chin deepening along with his smile. “Heard you found an old skull out in the woods today.”

  “I didn’t find it.”

  “The psychic found it, huh?”

  He stiffened. Why the hell did he hate it when people referred to Darcy as a psychic? That’s what she claimed to be.

  He didn’t believe in psychics. Refused to believe in psychics.

  “Miss Tremayne, from Harrison Investigations, found the skull, if that’s what you mean.”

  “She must be for real, huh?”

  Matt settled his hat on his head. “She can read, and she apparently likes libraries. That’s why the name of the company has the word investigations in it, Alan.”

  “Sure—sir!” Alan said.

  Matt shook his head and walked out, throwing over his shoulder, “Call me if—”

  “If we need you,” Harding finished for him again.

  Matt muttered beneath his breath. When he exited the station, a low-lying fog sat on the ground. And despite himself, he suddenly felt an intuition of unease. What the hell had he been doing at the station so late?

  Deepest night.

  He should have been at Melody House for hours now.

  His strides were long as he headed for his ca
r. And he was damned glad that he was the sheriff right then because he far exceeded the speed limit as he headed home.

  It should have been an entirely triumphant and peaceful night for Darcy. She knew that she had done well. And usually, to go with some of the torture that her existence afforded her, she was able to feel something like serenity and satisfied pleasure at a job well done.

  But that night…

  Dinner should have been fun. Penny, Clint, and Carter had all been excited about her find. Clint and Carter had vied for her attention, Penny had studied her like a wise old sage who had known her stuff and was proud as a peacock herself for being the one to insist that Harrison Investigations be called into the house. Even old Sam Arden, caretaker, had seemed to eye her with a new respect. It was almost as if she had become the accepted matriarch of a village, having proven her mettle. None of them seemed ill at ease with her, though both Clint and Carter kept asking, in different ways, just how she had managed to do it. She refused to explain exactly how, just saying that she had researched the story at the library, and put two and two together. Clint, however, shook his head.

  “Two and two don’t naturally add up to four in a forest! You’re amazing. Simply amazing. You do have a special and unique gift.”

  “You’ve got to explain how you really found the skull,” Carter told her.

  “Research,” she told him. But she couldn’t help a smile. “That’s what we do—investigate.”

  “That ghost in the Lee Room is going to be sorry!” Penny commented.

  “Maybe you’ve really got to be careful,” Clint said, somewhat worried and subdued then. “I mean, maybe it’s a ghost that doesn’t want to be known, and it will be more violent, because it’s afraid of you.”

  “What do you mean?” Carter had said, frowning.

  “Ghosts only come out because they want to be discovered,” Sam Arden had surprised them all by saying. And when they had stared at him, he had continued with, “Like serial killers. They always taunt the police because somewhere, in their subconscious, they want to be caught.”

  There had been a few minutes of unease, but then Clint had announced that he had some special champagne. Darcy accepted her glass and slipped out to take a walk to the porch. Clint found her there.