chapter Five
I hate it when I’m wrong about things,” Noelle told Teresa a short eight hours later, as the two women sat watching while Miles walked back and forth in front of them, ranting about how he was simply trying to save them all, the TV show, and the house.
“No one will listen to me, that’s the problem with all of you,” he snapped as he paced past them.
“What’s wrong now?” Teresa asked in a low tone, dutifully nodding when Miles demanded to know if she was paying attention.
Noelle waited until he strode past, continuing his rant, before answering in a whisper, “Well, for one, Gray disappeared this morning. One minute he was there, doing the most incredible things to me, and the next he was gone, his side of the bed still warm.”
“His side of the—Noelle!” Teresa gasped in an undertone, shooting her friend an astonished look. “You didn’t sleep with him? You did! You slept with him, and you just met him! That is so not like you!”
“I told you that we have a bit of an odd relationship,” Noelle answered, unable to keep her cheeks from pinkening a little. “We have, for lack of a better word, a connection, and last night, Gray finally admitted it. Well, I thought he did, but maybe the fact that he disappeared this morning means he’s still in denial. Although we did complete all the steps, so that must mean he can’t go far.”
“What steps?” Teresa asked, watching with a falsely rapt expression as Miles continued to expound about some theory of his regarding the danger they were all in from some facts he’d uncovered.
Noelle hesitated. She desperately needed someone to talk to, and since Grayson was hiding from her, Teresa was the only choice. “Gray’s… er… people have a long tradition regarding courtship. There are seven steps that have to be completed before we’re considered Joined.”
“Joined?”
“It’s another term for a couple.”
“Huh. Odd family. Must be old Czech traditions or something. What are these steps?”
Noelle ran her mind over them, everything from the protecting her against the threat posed by the demon lord who had vitiated him, to the body fluid exchanges, right on down to the exchange of blood. “Most of them are just minor things, like… erm… kissing and other courtship rituals, but that’s really neither here nor there. According to the rules that govern his people, we’re now officially a couple, and men who are part of such a relationship shouldn’t just go haring off on their own.”
Teresa giggled, then immediately donned a somber face when Miles, in full rant, shot her a suspicious look. “You really haven’t dated much, have you? That’s how men are, Noelle.”
Not Dark Ones bound to a Beloved, Noelle thought, but she kept that to herself. Later, when Miles had stormed off in a hissy fit because Teresa insisted they stay for the remainder of their time on the lease despite his nebulous claims that the ghosts of the house posed some horrible, unnamed threat to them all, she spent a few hours ridding the house of the imp packs that had taken up residence. That she was also not-so-covertly searching for signs of the missing Gray was something she shrugged away. They were bound together now, whether he liked it or not.
She was in the garden when Nosty found her.
“There you are, my sweet one,” he said as he sashayed up to her, making her a bow that was courtly despite his being clad in the worn gray habit. “Were you by chance waiting here for me?”
“No, I’m hunting for Gray. You haven’t seen him today, have you?” She cast a glance upward at the cloudless sky. “Not that I’d expect to see him out in the sun, but I can’t find him in the house and thought perhaps he’d come out into the garden for some peace and quiet.”
“Eh,” Nosty said, immediately looking bored. “He’s probably gone to see Lady Joan.”
“The ghost you visit?” Noelle frowned. “Why would he want to see her?”
Nosty’s expression changed to one of impish amusement. He winked and moved off toward the house. “You’ll have to ask the Dark One that.”
“Really,” she said slowly, sensing a mystery. She loved mysteries—loved unraveling them, that is. “Oh, Nosty, I meant to ask you, how many other spirits are there in the house? I have no way of sensing their presence, and Miles is making a nuisance of himself with Teresa, saying we’re all in dire danger of who-knows-what if we don’t leave the house to the ghosts.”
“Other spirits?” Nostredame shook his head. “There are no other spirits but me in the Abbey. Lady Joan’s domain is in her cottage, and the house dada has moved to another estate entirely because all of the decay here made him emo.”
Noelle ignored the idea of a moody domestic spirit, asking only, “Are you sure? Miles seems very insistent.”
“Do you think I would not know if there were others in my haunt?”
“Sorry, didn’t mean to impugn your ghostly abilities,” she apologized, which he accepted with haughty grandeur before moving off toward the house.
“Another mystery,” Noelle said with satisfaction, shaking herself as she drew her mind back to the one that was most important: Gray. Perhaps he, too, was visiting the ghost Nosty had mentioned. If nothing else, she might have some idea of where Gray had gone.
Nosty had said that Lady Joan’s spirit was confined to her cottage on the north side of the estate, but given how big the grounds were, it wasn’t until the afternoon shadows had stretched long, inky fingers across the overgrown lawn and minute cottage garden that she found the place.
The cottage itself was mostly overrun with trumpet vines, wisteria, and honeysuckle, the thatched roof long since sunken into the center of the stone walls. One wall was entirely gone, the other three still standing but stained green and black with age. Noelle approached the tangled remains slowly, having to beat a path to the gaping blackness that was once a doorway. As she neared it, a profound sense of sadness seemed to leach up from the ground, choking her with its hopelessness. She stopped, goose bumps on her arms. Even the most unknowing of mundane mortals would know this was a haunted place.
“Hello? Lady Joan? My name is Noelle, and I’m a Guardian. I was told by Nostredame that you like to talk to people now and again.”
Silence hung thick and heavy in the air, and it struck Noelle then that despite the cottage being nestled in a stand of willows, there was no birdsong, no distant drone of either cars or airplanes. Bees flitted around the honeysuckle and trumpet vine, but their hum, if any, was too muted to be heard. Quiet wrapped around the cottage as thick as cotton wool, merging with sadness and despair to make the hairs on the back of her neck stand on end.
Noelle shook her head against the fanciful thoughts. She was a Guardian, a keeper of a portal to hell itself. She had seen and bested beings much more frightening than one simple forlorn ghost. “Lady Joan?”
Tiny little motes of dust seemed to gather in on themselves, swirling around in the air and thickening until the figure of a spirit slowly resolved itself into that of a woman clad in a long, flowing gown, topped with a simple surcoat. “A… Guardian?” the ghost said after a moment of considering Noelle. Her voice was so soft that for a moment, Noelle thought she’d only imagined she heard the sound. It floated high, more like a gentle caress of the wind than an actual sound. “No, more than a Guardian. A Beloved.”
“That’s right. My name is Noelle, Lady Joan. I’ve come to talk to you about Gray Soucek.”
“Grayson? You wish to talk about Grayson?” The ghost sucked in her breath, her form wavering for a moment before it solidified. “You are his Beloved?”
Noelle couldn’t tell by her expression if the woman was happy or angry about that. “Yes, I am. You do know Gray, don’t you?”
Lady Joan gave a silent laugh that filled Noelle with more sadness than she thought possible. “He is my son, Beloved. He is my son, my only child, one whom I loved more than even the man I adored until the day I ceased to draw breath.”
“You’re his mother? Oh, then that explains how you knew I was a Beloved. You must be one… er… no, wait, that isn’t right, is it?” Noelle frowned at her obvious faux pas. “I’m so sorry. I really put my foot in my mouth that time, didn’t I? Gray is an unredeemed Dark One, which means you weren’t his father’s Beloved. How tragic for you.”
The ghostly Lady Joan acknowledged this by closing her eyes for a moment, pain etched in her face. “I am bound to tragedy, Beloved, but you, at least, have brought me the joy of knowing my Grayson has a future where his father did not.”
Noelle shivered despite the heat of the day, the shadows now consuming the cottage as the sun began to drop into the horizon. “I hope he does. I mean, he does, but right now he’s being… well… I don’t quite know what he’s being. We’ve done the seven steps of Joining, so all that remains before he gets his soul back is for me to make some sort of a sacrifice for him, but I don’t know what I’m supposed to do in order to achieve that. And Gray is being really tight-lipped because he didn’t want to have a Beloved due to him being vitiated, which is understandable, although not at all necessary. Since I’m a Guardian, that is. Do you happen to know where he is?”
Lady Joan looked somewhat dazed by the wall of conversation that just hit her, but after a moment of sorting through it, she shook her head. “I have not seen Grayson since the day… since the day he left. He was so angry, so unyielding…” The ghost actually wrung her hands as she spoke, an act that made Noelle feel quite unnerved.
“What day was that, if you don’t mind me asking? Or, rather, what happened that day? You don’t have to tell me if it’s too personal, although I have to admit now to being really curious about why you would be here in spirit form but your son wouldn’t want to see you. It doesn’t seem like Gray at all, because underneath all that denial, he’s really a very nice person, but I’m sure you know that. Did you two have a falling out? Was there some sort of an argument? Was it about a demon lord, by any chance? Did—”
Before she could continue firing questions at the morose spirit, the sounds of a large body moving through the undergrowth disturbed the silence that hung so heavily over the cottage. Noelle stepped backward a few feet to eye the shadow that emerged from the trees, prepared for the worst—a demon—but filled with joy when she recognized the bulky shape as it stepped out from the darkest shadows.
“Speak of the devil. Well, not literally,” Noelle told Lady Joan, not wanting the woman to get the idea that she was bad-mouthing Gray. “Because obviously, Gray isn’t the head of Abaddon, although I have to say that I’ve heard rumors that things are not going well for the demon lord who was in charge there.”
The ghost blinked at her.
Noelle patted what would have been the ghost’s hand if she’d been in corporeal form. “Don’t worry, I won’t let the overthrow of the premier demon lord Bael have any impact on Gray. I am quite capable of handling any demons or demon lords who decide to come after him. Not that I think they would, but in case someone does, I’m on it. So to speak. Am I confusing you? I think I am. You have the same expression that I’ve seen when I try to explain how you can destroy a demon’s form but not the demon itself. Oh, hullo, Gray. I was just reassuring your mother that Bael isn’t going to pose a threat to you.”
Noelle couldn’t help but notice the scowl that Gray wore like a badge of righteousness. “What the hell are you doing… did you say you were reassuring my mother?” he demanded to know as he stopped in front of her, careful to stand in the shadow of the house. The sun might be in the process of setting, but he was obviously wary of exposing himself to its still-potent rays.
“Yes. I think I may have babbled at her a bit. It’s something I do when I’m comfortable with people. You probably haven’t noticed that yet, because I’m still in the process of getting comfy with you, but you should be aware that I do that. So you won’t be surprised, I mean. Where’ve you been? You were gone when I woke up. Well, the second time I woke up, since you were most definitely there the first time I woke up. Oh, dear.” She looked from Gray to his mother. They both wore identical expressions of disbelief. “Now I’ve overwhelmed you both, haven’t I?”
“Noelle,” Gray said, taking a deep breath with the distinct air of someone who would be a likely candidate for martyrdom. His brow was still furrowed in a frown. “My mother is dead. She was mortal, and she died several centuries ago.”
“Yes, I know, otherwise she wouldn’t be a ghost.” Noelle sent Lady Joan a reassuring Your son may not be too bright, but he’s sexy as hell smile.
“She’s not a ghost,” he answered, and was clearly about to go into one of his denial lectures, but Noelle decided that this was a time when bud-nipping was most definitely called for.
“Gray, darling, I’m not stupid. Yes, I’m a Guardian, and yes, most of my experience is with demons, but I know a ghost when I see one, and your mother”—she paused to wave a hand at Lady Joan, who was gazing at her son with an expression of yearning that was painful to see—“your mother is most definitely one.”
Gray froze, his eyes narrowed on her. “My mother is… here?”
“Yes.” She looked more closely at him. “You don’t see her, do you?”
He shook his head, pain and guilt gripping him with such strength that Noelle’s knees weakened. She grabbed his arm, gasping for breath. “My God, what is it? Why do you feel that way? Why can’t you see your mother’s spirit?”
An inarticulate sob came from Lady Joan. Noelle, sharing Gray’s pain, turned her head at the sound, the anguish on the woman’s face so horrible to see that she fell to her knees.
Instantly, Gray was there, pulling her into his arms, tamping down the horrible pain inside himself until she could breathe again, the scent and feel of him so warm and alive wrapped around her like a soft blanket.
Are you all right, Beloved? I’m sorry that my emotions got away from me. I should have better shielded them from you.
“No, you shouldn’t have,” Noelle said, pulling herself away from the safe haven of his body in order to search his eyes. “I don’t want to be protected from your emotions, Gray, not even the negative ones. What happened to you?” She took his face in her hands and gently kissed him. “What happened to your mother to leave her so devastated? Why can’t you see her?”
Fresh pain lanced through him at her words, and Noelle swore to herself, damning her verbal clumsiness.
He rose to his feet, pulling her up at the same time, his face shuttered, his emotions locked tightly away from her. “The past is in the past, where it should be. As for my mother…” He looked over her shoulder to the crumbling remains of the cottage. “If you can indeed see her and speak to her, tell her…” His voice cracked. It took him a few seconds to speak again. “Tell her that I am sorry.”
Tears burned in Noelle’s eyes as she glanced behind her to see Lady Joan, now seated on a fallen tree, weeping silently into her hands. Obviously, whatever happened to you and your mother was a profound tragedy. But I don’t get a sense of censure from her, Gray. I don’t think she wants an apology from you.
He stumbled away from her, pushing away her hands when she tried to grab his arm, his mind once again choked with so much guilt it almost strangled her.
Gray?
Leave me. Just… leave me. I bring nothing but sorrow to those close to me. You are better off without me, Noelle.
“Poor, deluded man,” she said softly, watching his shadow flicker for a moment before it disappeared into the gathering darkness. “He honestly thinks that we’d be better off apart.”
“He carries a great burden,” Lady Joan said in her soft, whisper-thin voice. “He seeks to protect you from the darkness within him.”
“But I can relieve him of that darkness, at least some of it. I can give him back his soul. Surely he must want that?” She turned to the ghost, who now bore an expression of hopelessness. “I’m going to be blunt, Lady Joan. Blunt and nosy. What happened between you that Gray feels such guilt?”
The ghost closed her eyes for a few moments. “He believes he is responsible for my death.”
“Goddess! That would certainly account for his emotions. Was he responsible?”
“No, Grayson was not responsible.” Lady Joan stood and brushed off her skirts before drifting toward the cottage, her visibility fading as she disappeared into the spirit realm. “It was his father who killed me.”