The Edge of Recall (25 page)

Lingering worked for her. She had loved him already, loved him for a long time, or it would not have hurt to lose him. She had told herself back then that they were only friends, but something had fed the smoldering betrayal like wood chips, and that something licked up now and threatened to burn when his mouth returned to hers.

Love hurt, the song said, but it wasn’t love that wounded, it was loss. Loss could engulf and consume her, reduce her to ashes, and yet she drew his kiss inside her like red-hot coals.

He drew back and smiled. “Tell me to go.”

Don’t go,
the something inside her whispered, but it must not have made it to her face, because he kissed her forehead and backed off the porch, step by step. He stopped when he reached the ground. “If I don’t show you my back at this point, I’ll run into the car.”

Her eyes widened; her smile spread. He’d heard and understood. Had six years, or his own rejection, or the faith he credited changed him so much? “Good night, Smith.” She reached for the door and went in, less concerned about the night to come—but only until she started to climb the stairs. She changed course for the end of the foyer, where the innkeeper busied herself behind the tall podium desk.

Nan Duncat smelled of lilac and furniture wax and tried to look as though she hadn’t watched through the glass door panels. “Oh, hello.”

“Nan.” Tessa stepped up to the desk. “Could someone have gotten into my room last night while I was sleeping?”

Nan looked surprised but didn’t issue an instant denial. “Why do you ask?”

“I thought I saw someone. Or some … thing. It looked thin and pale, but I only saw it for a moment and then it was gone.” She sounded stupid, and Nan would surely laugh.

Only she didn’t. “You’ve seen our ghost? In your room?”

Tessa searched her face. Surely she hadn’t said ghost.

“Oh good.” Nan clasped her hands. “Now that he’s found us, I can put the inn on the haunted register.”

“What are you talking about?”

Nan leaned forward. “The lost soul who walks this county, unable to find his way to the other side.”

Tessa stared at her. “People have seen this … ghost?”

Nan nodded. “Honey, this county has loads of ghosts. They’ve got Moll Dyer and her praying stone up in Leonardtown”—she said it like Lennittown—“and all those confederate prisoners at Point Lookout. I’m just tickled this one’s found the inn.”

“It’s not very comfortable to wake up to.”

“Oh, he’s harmless. In all these years he hasn’t so much as said boo.” She raised a finger. “He’s a clever one, though. He can move things.”

Her heart thumped. Things like gates and tools?

“He borrows them. Some people think he got cheated in life, and he’s trying to find justice. Others say he was a thief that keeps trying to get caught, so he can pay his due.”

Should she tell Smith it was a ghost who had messed with them? Was that what she’d glimpsed that day when she’d been driving out? “I may have seen him before. Out where we’re working.”

“Oh my.” Nan touched her cheeks. “Maybe that’s why he’s found the inn. Maybe he followed you here.”

“That’s not …” A shiver found her spine. “A great thought. Besides, I’m not even from here. Why would he follow me?”

“Well, I’ve done some reading on ghosts. And it seems they attach to sensitive people who might help them find their way.”

No. That couldn’t be right.

Nan rested her hands on the desk. “I know the Good Book tells us not to conjure them up, but I can’t see any reason, if he’s already here, not to make him comfortable.”

Tessa stood dumbfounded. She had no intention of comforting ghosts. She had enough trouble with monsters. She looked up the stairs. “So no one else could have gotten in?”

“Did you lock your door?”

“And the window.” She hadn’t unlocked it since making sure it had been secured.

Nan shrugged. “There’s no other way in. I think it’s safe to say you’ve seen the ghost.” Though she might not be the best judge of any alternative explanation.

“Well.” Tessa released her breath. “Better than a monster, I guess.”

“Oh, honey. Don’t bring them here.”

Not
monsters don’t exist,
just
don’t bring them here
. “I won’t.” Not intentionally.

She went upstairs and looked out the window. A few random swaths of lightning still brightened the sky, but the rain had stopped while she’d been gone with Smith. Now that night had fallen, she could hardly believe she had waited out the storm in the woods. What if it hadn’t stopped? What if she was out there still?

She wished she hadn’t given up her dad’s sweatshirt. She’d have slipped it over her now. But it warmed her in a different way to think of Smith in it. Why had she revealed that strange quirk of carrying her lost father’s and dead mother’s things around? She jolted. Was that why a ghost had found her?

That was crazy. Ghosts were not real. And monsters were? In her nightmares he was, and just yesterday she had believed the line between dreams and reality had blurred, that the monster had escaped.

She gripped her head. She needed the peace inside that only paring herself down and standing before God could bring. If it were not dark, she’d walk the labyrinth right now. She collapsed onto the bed.

Why couldn’t Nan have said, “Of course no one was in your room.” Wasn’t that an innkeeper’s responsibility? Maybe Nan thought people who saw ghosts wanted to see ghosts.

Tessa closed her eyes. She’d be happy to see nothing otherworldly ever again. How was she going to sleep? She’d be all holloweyed and ragged when Smith came for her tomorrow. She hadn’t worried how she looked before. Now she thought about it all the time. She reached back and freed the hair that had a deleterious effect on his self-control. The thought made her smile, but then her stomach clenched in fear. Why was she risking the hurt? Again.

He should not see her. Would not. She was not like him. She had made him hope, with her beautiful drawings, with the way she moved through the field, through the trees, with her face to the sky sniffing the scents, sensing the air.

But now he knew. She had dug up the ground, would keep digging it. She was where she did not belong, and he would stop her. She had to be stopped, and she would be, but he wanted to see her now. When she was gone he’d never see her again, and this was the time, this was the chance, and he wanted it. He’d worked himself into a run, panting with his tongue out.

No moon shone through the purpled sky. No stars reflecting from the pools splashing under his feet. He wanted food and so he went. In season, he ate from the planted fields, corn and soybeans and vegetable gardens. Sometimes he caught fish, but mostly it took too long. On bad nights he ate the pet food from bowls on porches and lawns. Only if no pantry could be pilfered.

He could not take from the same ones often enough to be noticed, so he always looked for new ways in. Now he had found entrance to the inn. A new pantry. That was why he wanted in there. For the new pantry. He would not go up to her, would not creep in beneath her bed, not hear her breathe or look at her face. She had betrayed him.

Because she didn’t know! If she knew, she wouldn’t take it away. She would leave him alone and make them go. Make them go away. If he could only tell her, only show her.

But she would scream. She had almost screamed the night before. Almost screamed when she saw him. What would it sound like, her scream?

He reached the inn, creeping softly through the wet, dark night. It hurt to squeeze through the coal chute. But it would be worth it. His stomach growled. A mouse scuttled. He let it go. A new pantry full of food, and she slept upstairs. He could just … look.

CHAPTER

23

“Bair.” Smith whispered across the darkness.

“Mmm.”

“I want to apologize.”

Bair rolled with a slow groan. “Now?”

“You were justified in your concern.”

“About what?”

“Tessa.” He turned. “The truth is, I fell for her pretty hard in college, though I’m not sure I admitted it to myself. I didn’t want to be strapped with someone so needy.”

Bair grunted.

“It’s still a challenge, but there it is. I can’t help but love her.”

Bair lurched onto one elbow. “You’re in love?”

Smith startled. He hadn’t expected an explosion. “I think it’s possible.”

“You spent the night with her and insisted it wasn’t a big deal.”

“What?”

“In Gaston’s casino.”

“I didn’t spend the night with her. We had separate rooms and kept it that way. I told you—”

“What you say isn’t always what you mean.” Bair’s eyes glinted in the moonlight through the window.

“That’s absolutely not true.”

“You told me at the start to have a go if I liked.”

“With Tess?”

“You said don’t let it interfere with the project.”

“That was …”

Bair rolled up to sit. “I’ve done nothing more with Katy because it’s been so easy being with Tessa, no trouble at all talking to her. She listens and knows what I mean, and opens up, and—you’ve set me up.”

Smith sat up, flabbergasted. “I never meant to.”

“You lied from the beginning.”

“I didn’t think I was. I’d been so wretched over Danae, and the last thing I intended—”

“Don’t even start with Danae. I heard the way you talked to her, so conciliating, so understanding. Do you think you can keep them both dangling?”

“Of course not. Bair, I had no idea you’d developed feelings for Tessa.” He truly hadn’t realized. Was that arrogance, selfabsorption?

“If a mate clears the road, he ought to stay off it.”

“You’re right. I changed horses in midstream.”

Bair rubbed his face. “You haven’t told me how she feels.”

His pause conveyed enough.

“Right, then.” Bair flopped back down. “I’ll head back to the office tomorrow. You have things well in hand here.”

Smith almost said there was no need for that, but in Bair’s mind there might be. “Is that what you want?”

“I won’t witness another Anna.”

Smith frowned. “You’re half responsible for Anna.”

“Because I didn’t listen to what you said?”

“Exactly.”

“Well, this time I did.”

Smith expelled a slow, pained breath. “You’re right. I see that.”

Bair clenched his hands in the shadows. “You ran Tessa off into the woods.”

“I don’t deny I’m lousy. I have no idea why she’s held on, but she has. I’m sorry.”

“Will you stop that? I could see how it was from the start, from her side at least. She didn’t hide it.”

And he’d taken the chance anyway. Smith refrained from apologizing again. Bair lay down and rolled to his other side. There wasn’t anything more to say.

Surprisingly rested, Tessa sat up in the fluffy bed. No nightmares had wrenched her from sleep. She’d seen nothing in the dark. But now she whiffed the same strange scent she’d noticed the night before. Had someone been in her room? She crept from the bed and checked the door. Even the deadbolt was engaged.

She washed and dressed with the thought that Smith was coming for her, but the exhilaration of that didn’t overcome the sense that she hadn’t been alone last night. She flung open the window to drive the last vestige of the odor away, then locked it again before going downstairs.

At the desk, she asked Nan, “Could there be a leak or something that might have caused an odor in my room?”

Nan looked up. “You smelled something strange?”

“The same thing I smelled the night before. Could it be a gas leak or—”

“It’s the ghost. Other people have mentioned a damp, rotten scent. One person called it the smell of the grave.”

Tessa shuddered.

“They have some booklets about him at the library, people who’ve seen our ghost and written about it.”

“So this isn’t new?”

“There’s been talk for … ten years, maybe.”

Then it couldn’t be the monster from her dreams. But it could be whatever was hassling Smith and Bair.

“I’m heading to the mini-mart if you’d like a lift. It’s just a short walk from there to the library.”

“Which library do you mean?” She didn’t recall one in that vicinity.