Destiny found herself riding the epicenter of an earthquake, a bucking bronco of rare man laughter, an eruption so violent, she got thrown and landed on the bed, so Morgan could sit up and catch his breath.
Morgan Jarvis, carefree. Happy. Loud. Raucous.
The man who’d growled through the first four months of their acquaintance. The man who talked her ear off while necking on the night of Harmony’s wedding, who’d grumbled as he walked down the aisle at Storm and Aiden’s wedding.
Something in Morgan Jarvis had snapped.
More than his dick but less than his sanity.
Chapter Thirty-five
SUDDENLY the laughter stopped, and something momentous and emotional took its place. Destiny didn’t dare try to name it; she knew only that it existed.
As one, they swooped, and fell on the lingerie-strewn bed together, both aggressive and starving, giving and taking, coming and coming, slick with sweat, sticky with sex, each shouting or screaming, satisfaction guaranteed, sometimes together, sometimes in turn.
After the first formidable flash of lust, Morgan found Bunny à la Mode, turned it on, examined it, placed his thumb at the tip of its jackhammer ears, and grinned. “Hunh, hunh, hunh,” he said, imitating a Frenchman by twisting his nonexistent handlebar mustache, “Thee bunny ears, they are deelicious for thee happee clit?”
Destiny rolled into him to hide her face, while he lowered her scarlet panties and rubbed his five o’clock shadow against her butt cheek, tickling her and staking his claim. Then he put the bunny where it belonged and played her like a French horn.
At one point, she was certain she’d passed out.
The following morning, Destiny woke to Morgan tickling her nose with a feather from her sex toy bag. She wiggled her nose, scratched it, and tried to go back to sleep.
“What have you done to me?” Morgan whispered rather earnestly.
“Witchcraft, that crazy witchcraft,” she sang, keeping her eyes closed so she wouldn’t wake up entirely.
He chuckled. “I don’t think so.”
“I planned to use that feather on your most prized possession,” she said, rolling over and trying to go back to sleep.
“Please do.” He feathered her ear.
“Mmm,” she sighed.
“Come on, Kismet, get up. I feel like a new man today. Let’s play. Tell me what you want to do, and we’ll do it.”
She rose up and leaned on an elbow. “I wanna play with your debunking equipment.”
“No, that’s crazy. We can’t; I mean we don’t need—”
“Yes, we do. A belly laugh and a good pluck do not a free man make. You
need
to talk to your sister.”
“That again.”
“You let me protect her, though you don’t believe she’s here?”
“I let you protect her, in case I’m wrong to disbelieve, because I
was
wrong once.”
Destiny swatted him and got up, hoping to gain his cooperation by manipulating him with her nakedness. “Get your debunking equipment and
prove
me wrong, or yon rising sex slayer will rust from disuse.”
“Now don’t go off half-timbered,” he said following her to the shower. “Letting the big guy rust sure trumps a headache.”
After separate showers and breakfast, Morgan reluctantly set up his debunking equipment.
Deep inside, Destiny was doing a happy dance. She planned to
make
him see his sister, come hail or high priestess, which called for a couple of silent spells, the first to wake Meggie, the next to wake Morgan.
Angel wings unfold
Allow Meggie sight.
Meggie, my sweet,
Come into the light.
Horace, Meggie, and her angel appeared in the center of the rug, almost like the first time she’d seen them, except that this morning, they were watching Morgan set up his equipment.
Memories unfold
Give Morgan sight
Morgan, my dear,
Come into the light.
His debunking equipment with all those wires and dials and recording devices looked complicated. He brought the recording stuff into the kitchen, where Meggie had had her tantrum, and it took him a while to set it up.
“It’s plugged in and running,” he said returning to the parlor.
Meggie shrugged. “I could have a tantrum in here, too.”
“What?” Morgan asked.
“You’re sister’s being flip.”
“Quiet, brat.”
“She’s sticking her tongue out at you.”
“Guess I don’t need to replace the batteries in this electric and magnetic field meter, because I’m already getting an off-the-charts reading, and we’re nowhere near a power plant.”
Destiny combed Morgan’s burnished hair back from his brow. “Gee, what a surprise.”
“Now
you’re
being flip. Are you sure you’re not manifesting your sarcasm on Meggie?”
“Are you sure you’re not locking that meter on high?”
“Touché.” He took a block of batteries from a leather camera bag and ejected the old ones from a small piece of equipment. “This is a kind of camera that senses heat or energy and projects it onto the screen in different colors. Different energy levels equal different colors. A spirit would register energy,
if
spirits existed. You should know that it’s never measured anything but living energy.”
“I’m sure it’s hasn’t. I’m also sure it’s about to be tested. What
is
living energy?”
“An actual person. Body heat left on a chair or bed after somebody gets up, that kind of thing.”
“I understand.” She watched him turn the camera on and dial it to daytime, indoors settings.
At Meggie’s urging, Horace and Buffy moved away from her, as if the little imp understood that Morgan needed to discern them each as separate entities, her especially.
“Your sister’s a smart girl.”
He sighed. “Like I never heard that before.”
“Your grades weren’t as good?”
“My grades sucked. Meggie was a straight A student. Our teachers were always telling me to be more like her. Camera’s ready,” he said, changing the subject.
Said camera looked something like a cell phone with a screen. Destiny stood beside him and let him aim on his own. She didn’t want to guide him at all. Her heart quickened as he got closer and closer to any one of the trilogy of spirits in the middle of the parlor.
“Whoa,” he said. “What is that?”
Destiny checked the aim against the subject. “That’s Horace the lighthouse keeper. Wave at Morgan, Horace.”
The colorful shadow of an arm came up in a naval salute.
Morgan looked at her and back at the shadow. “Meggie? Where’s Meggie, Des?”
“You’ll have to find her yourself, or you’ll never believe me.”
He caught a huge white shadow, so blinding that Destiny looked away. “That’s your guardian angel, in case you haven’t guessed.”
“Holy sh—Buffy? That’s Buffy? She’s bigger than I expected.”
“Buffy?” Destiny asked. “Care to wave a wing? She doesn’t say much, but I believe she’s abstaining.”
Meggie took to running around the room, giggling, dodging the camera, and frustrating Destiny. “Meggie, will you cut that out!”
“Morgan
likes
to play tag,” she said.
Destiny shook her head at Morgan. “If you want to see her, you’ll have to chase her.”
“Cut it out, Megs,” Morgan said. “This is no time for tag.”
Destiny saw something amazing, and a bolt of wild elation shot through her.
She held her hand to her fast-beating heart while Morgan followed his sister around with the camera, as if he
could
see her, but he hadn’t caught up with her yet.
Hot damn. Could it be that Meggie wasn’t the only psychic twin? That could be the key to what Morgan was blocking. True, he was letting down his guard in a big way, but Destiny wasn’t about to tell him so. “You’re getting warmer,” she said, getting as close to an acknowledgment of his possible gift as she dared.
At that moment, he caught Meggie in his sights.
She and Meggie knew it. Did he?
He shook his head, as if in denial, but gasped when his sister held up her stuffed dog and waved its furry arm at him. He fumbled the camera, nearly dropped it, but his need to see his sister overrode all else, and he caught and refocused it immediately. “What the pluck?”
Meggie giggled, but Destiny remained silent, because she didn’t want to break Morgan’s focus.
“This isn’t possible.” He looked around the room. “It’s the windows, the sun and its shadows. Shut the curtains.”
“That’s what you think, big brother,” Meggie said while Destiny did as she was told. “Tell me the light can do this,” Meggie added, challenging the brother who couldn’t hear her, as she separated her ring finger from her middle finger in the “Live long and prosper” salute made famous by Spock on
Star Trek
. “Morgan will know
this
is me,” Meggie said raising her saluting hand away from her body.
“Jesus!” Morgan whispered, beads of perspiration forming on his brow, as if he might pass out.
He shook his head. Stepped back, then closer, and closer. “Meggie?”
Chapter Thirty-six
MORGAN’S heart beat out of his chest. Lights flickered in his vision. A straight chair hit him in the back of his legs, and he sat. “Thanks, Des.
“Impossible,” he said, but he couldn’t take his gaze from the camera’s viewer. “So much energy after seventeen years?” he whispered. “It can’t be.”
Destiny touched his arm. “It can be. It is. Do you want a glass of water?”
“No. I want to watch the sweet clown dance,” he said, speaking over the emotion rising in his throat but trying not to let it show. Dancing is exactly what Meggie, or whatever,
whoever
he’d caught in his sight, seemed to be doing.
Morgan covered Destiny’s hand on his arm; he needed her strength.
“Your sister is clowning it up for you. You
do
believe she’s here?”
How could he not? “What kind of shadow makes that precise a salute?” he asked. “We used the salute when our mother was being her strict, controlling, complaining self. Momzilla is what Meggie called her, by the way, not to her face, of course. To us, back then, the sign meant, ‘I feel for you.’ It ticked my mother off, because
she
didn’t know what we were saying to each other.”
“I’ll bet it did.”
“What kills me, here—pardon the pun, Meggie—is the real meaning. My dead sister just told me to live long and prosper.”
“Yes!” Destiny said. “That’s exactly what Meggie wants for you. That’s why you need to remember. What are you blocking?”
“How should I know? I’m blocking it.”
“Meggie says to tell you that you’re blocking something important.”
A sick feeling rose up in him, telling him that he
didn’t
want to know what. “Well, it can’t be very important,” he said.
Destiny chuckled. “Your sister just called you ‘Meatball. ’ She dares you to remember.”
Another reminder of their childhood. He took a deep breath and glanced up at Destiny. “Look at me. I don’t have the legs to stand, and I can’t hold the camera steady anymore. How the Hades am I supposed to remember what I’ve been blocking for nearly twenty years?”
Destiny leaned into him, slid an arm around his neck. He drew strength from her.
“Tell me about Meggie and your childhood together,” she said. “You might hit on something.”
Morgan shook his head against a return of the sick miasma that was coming with every request for him to remember. “Ask
her
what I’m supposed to remember.”
“She says you have to remember it yourself. Talk to me.”
“I don’t want to talk. My head aches.” His insides trembled, too, but he didn’t want Destiny to know that.
He unobtrusively rubbed his palm on his jeans, switched the camera to his dry hand, and repeated the action. He didn’t want to
think
, either. He wanted to
see
his sister without an infrared camera—a real problem, since he was probably losing his mind. A thirty-year-old with a twin, aged twelve. Right. Here, but not. Yet the pull was killing him. “I saw Mother the other day, Meggie. She hasn’t changed at all.”
Destiny cleared her throat. “Meggie says she never will.”
“There go my hopes for family peace.”
“How did Meggie die?” Destiny asked.
“Stick a knife in my heart, why don’t you?” That damned sob he’d been holding back escaped without his permission. “Sorry.” He cleared his throat. “My mother thought Meggie’s predictions were a form of mental illness, or that Meggie might be possessed—sorry Megs—by the devil, so my parents put her in a convent boarding school where the nuns could look after her.”
Morgan hated the way the speck in his eye clouded his view through the lens. Slam. He noticed that his sister had stopped dancing. “Meggie, I won’t tell her what happened, if it hurts you.”
Destiny knelt in front of him and laid her head on his lap. God, he needed her in his life.
“Meggie’s glad you’re remembering,” Destiny said. “She’s only sad because you’re sad.”
Morgan touched Destiny’s hair, wove his fingers through it, and absorbed her comforting and reassuring presence. “Okay. Meggie, I won’t be sad anymore. I’ll just say it like it was. The nuns put Meggie in a tower bedroom, away from the other kids, to keep them safe from the lunatic—again, sorry Megs. The tower got hit by lightning and caught fire. Meggie couldn’t get out.”
“Whoa. Your mother’s scarier than I thought.” Destiny raised her head as if listening to something important. “You’re a better girl than I am,” Des said. “Morgan, Meggie says that she forgave your mother a long time ago.”
“I thought I did, too, until now. The thing is, after Meggie passed, my mother didn’t want me talking about her, my own sister, but I couldn’t help myself, so that’s when they sent me to the seminary to shut
me
up. They thought the priests could straighten me out.”