Authors: Heather Graham
She felt a breeze lift her hair and she looked up.
And there was the ghost.
Fiona MacFarlane Flynn, running across the upper-level wraparound balcony, her mouth open in a silent scream.
She was dressed all in white, her gown floating behind her as she ran in terror. Because she was being chased.
Kendall strained to see her face and then started and tried to escape the dream.
Because she knew that face. It was the face of the girl Aidan was searching for.
Jenny Trent.
Then the face morphed and was no longer Jenny’s. It was the face of Death as she knew it all too well from her tarot deck. And it was no longer screaming.
It was laughing, mouth open and eyes maniacal.
The storm swept around Kendall. She was shouting to the sky that the card didn’t mean death but change, trying to be firm and unafraid. She was fighting the wind, because it was threatening to sweep her to the ground, and she was afraid that if she went down, she was never going to get up again.
It started to rain, and she lifted her hand to see that the drops were blood.
And then, she saw what was coming behind the ghost with the laughing face of Death.
Bones.
A tidal wave of bones.
And it was washing down over her, threatening to engulf her.
She woke up screaming and felt something sitting on her chest and staring at her with eyes that glowed in the night.
“What ghosts?” Aidan asked.
Jimmy’s eyes widened in fear. “I hear them sometimes. From the old graveyard.”
“Hear them doing what?”
“They laugh,” Jimmy said. “And they whisper.”
“What do they say?”
“Do you think I’m crazy? I don’t go out and ask them what they’re talking about. I close myself in here and I pray.”
“Do they whisper after a few beers?” Aidan asked him.
Despite his situation, Jimmy drew himself up straight. “I get off work. I buy two cans of beer and something to eat. I walk here, close the door, eat my dinner and read my paper. I keep the door closed. I keep it closed when it rains, when it’s windy and when the ghosts are out. I don’t get drunk, I just ease down a bit. Then I sleep good. I think the ghosts know I’m here, but if I just stay in here and don’t bother them, they won’t bother me. They’re not always out—not that I hear. Just sometimes.”
Just sometimes when Jimmy had more than two beers?
“You were here last night, right?”
“Yes.”
“Did you hear the ghosts?”
“No,” Jimmy said. “Maybe they were out when I was sleeping, but I didn’t hear them.” He brightened, as if he was eager to please Aidan. “I did hear a car. Heard the engine, heard a door open and close.”
Too bad Jimmy was too scared to look out his door, Aidan thought, or he might have gotten a good lead on who’d delivered those voodoo dolls.
“Stay here. Just stay here,” he told Jimmy.
His eyes had adjusted to the dark, and he made his way easily to his car. He pulled his keys from his jeans pocket, and went into his trunk and found the sleeping bag he always kept there, just in case. He took it and a couple of bottles of water, then headed back to Jimmy with them. “Here, so you don’t have to sleep on the ground,” he told the man.
Jimmy stared at him with amazement. “You’re going to let me stay here?” he asked warily.
“For now. I’m Aidan Flynn, and my brothers and I own this place now. We’ll talk more come morning. I don’t know what we’ll do then, but we’ll figure something out. For now, just go to sleep.”
Jimmy was staring at Aidan as if he were going to cry.
Aidan left Jimmy and went back to the house. He’d left the door open when he’d run out to catch the trespasser, so he locked it once he was inside, then started going through the house room by room.
It took a lot more time than going through Kendall’s apartment. The house was huge, but at least there were wardrobes rather than closets, each one containing clothes that represented decades worth of history—and reeked of mothballs. The attic took him the longest. While he was up there, he found a rocking chair by a trunk and realized that not all that long ago, someone had come here, set a glass—which was still there—on the trunk and enjoyed some quiet moments, looking out the dormer window at the river.
Kendall?
He could almost breathe in her scent…
Maybe he was losing his mind. Maybe he should have stayed in town—with her. She had been so doubtful when he had left that morning, as if she was afraid he would hold her responsible for the voodoo dolls.
Should he? Admittedly, she couldn’t have done it herself, but what about one of her friends?
No. He just couldn’t imagine her doing anything like that.
And he couldn’t forget her expression when she had seen the picture of Jenny Trent and learned that she was missing, or how frantic she had been to find Ann. No one who worried that much about people she hardly knew would ever pull a stunt like the one someone had pulled with the voodoo dolls.
As hard as it was to believe, as much as he had never thought he would be able to feel something for a woman again after Serena’s death, she was slipping under his skin. He couldn’t get her out of his mind, couldn’t forget the feel of her skin, the look of her eyes, the tone of her voice. For so long he’d held back, feeling the guilt of living when Serena was dead. It wasn’t fair that he was even alive, so how could he be allowed to find happiness again?
And, to be honest, he hadn’t wanted to find it before he met Kendall.
He was still standing in the attic, he realized. Looking at a rocking chair, imagining her sitting in it, wondering what she had been thinking about as she stared out at the world.
Kendall had definitely taken root in his mind.
He wished that she were here with him.
But she wasn’t. He had chosen to come out here—alone. Good thing, really. He’d found Jimmy and solved at least one mystery.
He forced himself to finish checking out the attic. He even looked in some of the trunks, where he was amazed to find Civil War weapons, old letters, clothing, boots, buckles…some things that probably even predated the Civil War. A trove of riches.
So why the hell hadn’t Amelia left this place or at least some of these rarities to the young woman who had become like a daughter to her?
Maybe she hadn’t known what she had.
He went back to bed at last, where he lay awake, pondering just what was making him feel so uneasy about this house. He should have been pleased at solving the riddle of Amelia’s eerie lights, which had only been Jimmy, living there in the old slave quarters. But something was still bugging him.
Impatient with himself, he got desperate enough to try counting sheep, which failed when his sheep kept turning into voodoo dolls. He gave up and counted those instead, and at last, when the light was just starting to brush the horizon, he fell asleep.
He woke when he heard the first workman coming up the drive.
Kendall gasped, then realized she was staring straight into Jezebel’s eyes.
She didn’t know whether to scream or laugh. Then Jezebel meowed pathetically, and she managed to laugh.
Light was also peeking around her drapes, and she realized it was morning.
She cradled Jezebel to her. “What is it, cat? Am I scaring you? That’s okay, I’m scaring myself. But things are going to get back to normal, I promise. Come on. I’m betting you want some breakfast.”
She rose, fed the cat, put on the coffee and went to take a shower. The water was bracing, and she studiously concentrated on washing her hair, shaving her legs and scrubbing her face. A few minutes later, wrapped in a bathrobe, she went out to pour her coffee. Last night’s dream seemed ridiculous in the light of morning.
Freud had said most dreams had sexual undertones. She thought about her nightmare, which had seemed so real—and yet on some level she had known all along that it was only a dream. Try as she might, she couldn’t find anything sexual about it. It had been frightening, plain and simple, and she wasn’t going to think about it anymore.
She decided to think about Aidan Flynn instead. She was torn. She wanted to dislike him, but she couldn’t help it: for some reason, she respected him. It was like a love-hate thing. There had been times—admittedly mostly early on—when she had come pretty close to hating him. She hadn’t known him long enough to love him, though. Had she? She did love sleeping with him, and a part of her admitted that she was terrified of getting too close to him, because he just might be the man she could fall in love with, and she probably
wasn’t
a woman he could ever want to be with forever.
She poured herself another cup of coffee, then walked to the back of the apartment and pulled the drapes back from the French doors. It looked like a beautiful day—no threat of storms, much less a rain of blood—and she unlocked the door and stepped out into the courtyard.
Even though she had just showered, she found herself looking at her hand.
No blood.
Out in the courtyard, she sipped her coffee. None of her neighbors were in evidence, so she stood there in solitude and enjoyed the soft breeze. October was a beautiful month, she thought.
The courtyard still looked much as it had for almost two centuries; her house was one of the few that had survived the fire of 1788, which had destroyed most of the city. This neighborhood might be called the French Quarter, but most of the architecture for which the city was so famous, including the “cities of the dead,” dated from the period when the area was under Spanish rule. Once, the narrow alley that ran behind the courtyard had been the main entrance. There was still a huge old gate there, which was used early every morning by the lawn maintenance company that kept up the courtyard.
Wicker tables and chairs were surrounded by flower beds and beautifully potted plants. The old carriage house stood to one side, and a high brick wall protected the tenants’ privacy.
She wandered toward a chair and sat, taking a moment just to enjoy the beauty of a morning that reminded her why she loved this city that had always been her home and would never want to leave.
As she sat there, she noticed something lying near the French doors of her apartment, something she had missed when she first stepped outside.
Something…
She felt her fingers tense around her coffee mug.
She set it down and rose, walked back to her doors and bent down to see exactly what had caught her eye.
It was a doll.
A voodoo doll.
Not like the beautifully crafted ones she sold, but the kind for sale at any souvenir store, but with the addition of long hair made out of auburn yarn, and big green buttons for eyes.
When she instinctively went to pick it up, it fell apart, and she saw the deep slashes at the juncture of head and neck, the arms, legs and torso, where the pieces had been held together by mere threads.
The doll had been made to look like her. And it had been dismembered.
S
aws were whining, and hammers were slamming.
One cup of coffee gave Aidan enough energy to get into the shower and out of the house. On the lawn, the contractor was meeting with the electricians, and he turned, pleased to see Aidan.
“Your brother wants the place by Halloween,” the contractor told him cheerfully.
“And you can make that date and still do everything all right?” Aidan asked.
“I’ll show you the plans.”
He spent an hour going over blueprints and schedules, and had to admit that his brothers had managed to bring on an efficient captain who knew what he was doing.
The house should have been his biggest headache, Aidan thought. Instead, it was proving to be nothing at all.
Except for that feeling he couldn’t shake…
There were ghosts in the cemetery, Jimmy had said. Aidan found himself walking in that direction again, almost as if drawn. It was just a graveyard, he told himself. He was probably only spooked because he had found dried blood on one of the tombstones. Even so, he promised himself to look around more thoroughly later in the day.
But first, he had things to do in the city. He got into his car and reached the end of the driveway just in time to see Zach coming toward him on the river road. He beeped and waved to tell his brother to pull over, then filled him in on the squatter who had been living in the old slave quarters.
“Did you throw him out or call the police?” Zach asked.
“Neither. I gave him my sleeping bag.”
Zach grinned, called him a soft touch, then asked, “You’re sure he’s harmless?”
“Pretty sure. He works nights up at the gas station. I’m going to check into his story. If he was lying, I’ll give him the boot, but if he was telling me the truth, I want him around a while longer.”
“Really?” Zach asked, surprised. “You don’t think he was fooling around with voodoo dolls to drive us off the place, huh?”
“That guy couldn’t buy a two-dollar voodoo doll, much less a collectible,” Aidan assured him. “I’ll check him out, don’t worry.”
“But why do you want him around? Or is it just that you feel sorry for the guy?”
“I kinda do. If he’s telling the truth, maybe we can find a few things for him to do around the place, even fix him up a bit. Mainly, he’s been around. He was Amelia’s ‘ghostly presence.’ On the other hand,
he
thinks there are ghosts in our graveyard, too. Who knows, maybe he does know something, even if he doesn’t know he knows. Know what I mean?”
Zach nodded. “All right. Check him out. I’ll keep Jeremy in the loop.”
They said goodbye, and Aidan drove on.
His first stop was the gas station. He spoke to the manager and found out that there was indeed a Jimmy Wilson who worked there nights. The manager looked at Aidan as if he wanted to say more, so Aidan waited.
“I guess I should tell you he’s an ex-con, but I checked his record. He wasn’t even arrested for breaking and entering, just petty theft. He was found with a woman’s handbag in an alley up in Shreveport. He gave the bag right back. He was on drugs, but his stint in the slammer cleaned him up. Hey, someone has to give those guys a chance, and Jimmy was honest with me from the get-go, so I took him on. You didn’t have any trouble with him or anything, did you?” he asked.
“No, no trouble,” Aidan said, and thanked the man. “I was just making sure he really works here.”
“He does. My hire, my mistake if anything goes wrong.” The man looked at him worriedly.
“Everything’s fine,” Aidan reassured him. “I was thinking of giving him some odd jobs around the place, that’s all.”
“You’re one of the Flynns, right?”
“Yes.”
“I hear you plan on keeping the house, opening her up for special events, school groups, stuff like that.”
“We’re hoping to.”
“That’s great. Well, I hope it works out for you.”
Aidan left, fairly certain from his conversation that at least some people didn’t harbor any ill will toward them.
From the gas station, he intended to head in to see Lily Fleur. If he couldn’t get her to give him the names and contact information for the other guests who had been there the same night as Jenny Trent, he would have to head over to see Hal Vincent and somehow cajole the policeman into helping him.
It was still early to go see the older woman, though, and somehow he found himself driving down Decatur to make the loop back onto Royal Street. When he did, his heart lodged in his throat.
There were two police cars drawn up in front of Kendall’s building.
Aidan barged in. And “barged” was definitely the right word. The officer standing at the door never stood a chance of stopping him.
Kendall handed steaming mugs of coffee to Sam Stuart and Tim Yates, a couple of local cops she’d known forever. They had been just up the street when they’d gotten the call. She’d barely had time to get dressed before they arrived.
Another couple of officers had arrived in their wake, one stationing himself at the front door and the other going to look around the courtyard. Suddenly the one by the door was shouting, and she looked up to see Aidan racing toward her, the cop flying after him. The other three jumped forward to help their buddy.
She rushed forward, yelling, “It’s all right! He’s a friend!”
“What the hell happened?” Aidan demanded. “Are you all right?” He glared at all four cops, who stepped back warily.
“You sure he’s all right?” the cop who’d run in from the courtyard asked.
“He’s a friend, honestly,” she said.
“And a P.I.,” Aidan added.
The cops all returned to their original positions, and Sam and Tim, though they still looked stunned by Aidan’s dramatic entrance, went back to drinking their coffee.
Kendall herself felt blindsided by Aidan’s sudden appearance, yet inwardly warmed. Surely this meant that he actually cared, at least a little.
“Sam, Tim, this is Aidan Flynn. You know his brother Jeremy.”
“Nice to meet you—I think,” Tim said, reaching out a hand.
Aidan took it, still staring at Kendall. “Well? What the hell happened here?”
“Nothing, really,” she said quickly.
“A prank. Has to be,” Sam told him reassuringly.
“There was a voodoo doll at my back door,” Kendall explained. “I just thought I should call someone.”
“Was it like the ones at the house?”
“Someone left a voodoo doll out at the plantation?” Tim asked.
“
Three
of them,” Kendall said. “Handmade ones. I rated the cheap kind,” she told Aidan lightly.
“Where is it?” Aidan asked.
“We’ve bagged it, and we’re taking it in,” Sam explained. “I didn’t hear anything about voodoo dolls out at the plantation.”
“That’s because I didn’t call the police,” Aidan said.
“Well, yeah, you should have,” Sam said. “That’s malicious mischief.”
“And almost nothing can be done about it, right?” Aidan said.
“Well, once we find out who did it, you can get a restraining order against them,” Tim said.
Was that a shade of self-importance in his voice? she wondered. She knew Tim liked to think of himself as a hero, but right now Aidan seemed to tower over him in every way. Tim was puffing up a bit, emphasizing the fact that he was a police officer, while Aidan just seemed to emit power without even trying.
Careful, she warned herself. She had to stop thinking of him as…so damned perfect.
“I’d like to see the doll,” Aidan said.
“Sure,” Sam said affably.
It was in an evidence bag, lying on the table. Aidan opened the bag and slid the doll onto the table without touching it, moving the pieces around with a pen so he could look at them more closely.
“Creepy, but probably nothing to worry about,” Sam said. “It’s coming around to Halloween. All of the crazies are out.”
Aidan looked across the room at Kendall. “Isn’t that gate locked at night?” he asked, indicating the courtyard with an inclination of his head.
She nodded.
“Officer Pratt is outside looking around now,” Tim assured him.
Aidan didn’t reply, just headed out the door himself.
“How well do you know that guy, Kendall?” Sam asked, sounding slightly worried.
She hadn’t even known him a week, she realized, but somehow…
“I’ve gotten to know him pretty well because of the plantation and Amelia,” she said simply. “If you’ll excuse me…?” She smiled to take any sting out of the dismissal, then hurried out to the courtyard, where Aidan was talking to Officer Pratt.
“I don’t know how the guy got in here, Kendall,” Pratt said, seeing her. “Hey, you don’t have any weirdos for neighbors, do you?”
Kendall laughed. “The Foys, on the other half of the ground floor, are raising two little kids and own a café up on Conti. Mrs. Larsen, above me, is seventy-seven. And the owners keep the fourth apartment for themselves for whenever they’re down here from New York, which they’re not at the moment.”
“Well, we’ll bring the doll in, and we’ll send a car by a few times a night for the next few days. And we’ll let you know if we find out anything about the doll.”
The officers all left a few minutes later, Tim looking back at her as if he would have liked to hang around longer and offer a heroic shoulder.
He would forget her the minute a blonde walked by, Kendall knew.
When she closed the door behind them, she was surprised by Aidan’s sudden fierce demand. “Why didn’t you call
me?
”
“I—I didn’t know if I should bother you about something so silly.”
“Now the cops have the doll.”
“And they’ll use it to investigate.”
“Kendall, to the cops this is a prank, but…Dolls at the plantation, a doll here. It means something.”
She picked up her coffee cup, willing her hands not to tremble. On its own, the doll would have upset her, but it wouldn’t actually have scared her. But combined with the dream she’d had…
“I’m sure it
does
mean something,” she said. “Someone out there is upset with me because of my association with the Flynn plantation and mad that you
own
it, so they’re taking advantage of this being New Orleans and trying to freak us out.”
His expression was disbelieving as he stared at her, hands on his hips, his eyes like ice again.
“Aidan, please,” she said weakly. “Let’s not overreact.”
“Overreact?” He stared at her grimly. “I’ve found bones—human bones, at least one of which may belong to a young woman who came here, then disappeared. And she’s not the only one. My brother found records indicating that nine other young women have disappeared from New Orleans in similar circumstances. So forgive me if I
overreact
to what looks to me a hell of a lot like a subtle threat to back off—or else.”
He turned away from her, paced, paused, then took a deep breath. “Kendall, I’ve studied serial killers. At any given moment, there are hundreds at large in the United States. Some killers want their victims found, but some don’t. Think about it. How do you make sure you never get caught? Make sure the bodies you leave behind are never discovered. So those bones I found could be all that’s left to find of those missing women.”
“Aidan…” She lifted her hands in frustration. He had no proof of anything, including that something bad had happened to those women. He had to know himself that he was grasping at straws.
But was he? She had seen a skeleton on a piece of paper laugh at her.
And she had been afraid. So who was drawing unfounded conclusions now, huh?
“Want to stay out at the house with me?” he asked.
“What?”
He hesitated before repeating the question. Had he surprised himself by asking? she wondered.
“I’ve decided to stay out at the house from now on. Keep an eye out for whoever’s causing trouble. Actually, I did make an interesting discovery last night.”
“What?” she asked carefully.
“I met a man named Jimmy. A guy who’s been staying in the old slave quarters.”
“Someone’s been living on the property?” she asked.
“For six months.”
“Oh, God!” she exclaimed. She and Amelia
had
been in danger.
“He wouldn’t have hurt you. He’s just a down-and-out guy looking for a way to get back on his feet, so I told him he could stay. He’s got himself a job at the gas station out there, and he’s saving up for a car and a place to live.”
“And you believe that?” she asked.
“I do.”
She smiled.
“What?” he asked her.
She laughed. “I don’t know. I guess I didn’t expect you to be that trusting.” She avoided adding, or generous to a stranger.
He looked back at her for a long moment, and shrugged. “Well, I did go by and check with his boss this morning. Jimmy thinks there are ghosts in the graveyard. He comes ‘home,’ closes the door and stays inside all night, hiding from them.”
“A cemetery is a good place for ghosts to be,” she said dryly.
“You haven’t answered me,” he said.
“I’m sorry?”
“About coming out to the house with me. There’s no hurry or anything. I can meet you after work, bring you back here to pack some clothes.”
It was rushing things. She shouldn’t go.
She sure as hell didn’t want to stay here another night, though. Not when someone who didn’t belong there was playing around in her courtyard.
Lurking at her very door.
And leaving a sliced-to-pieces voodoo doll that resembled her.
The cops would be watching the house. But how well?
None of that mattered. She shouldn’t go with him because she was afraid. She should go with him because she wanted to, because she wanted to be with him. Because she cared about him.
And she did.
“Yes, I’d like to go stay at the house with you,” she told him.
He nodded. “Thanks,” he said huskily. “I’m glad.”
“We close up between five and six.”
“Okay. Don’t leave. I’ll come meet you there.”
“All right.”
He was still standing there, staring at her.
“You ready to go to work?” he asked her.
She frowned and glanced at her watch. Amazingly, it was just after ten.