They fell asleep in each other’s arms, and this time it was Aidan’s turn to dream, but his was oddly comforting.
He’d seen the woman in the white gown again. It was as if he’d simply opened his eyes to find her there. She’d touched his cheek, and though she was beautiful and young, there had been nothing sexual in her touch, only tenderness. And then she’d whispered, You have to help. It’s happening again. He’s like the one who came before.
Who is he?
A killer. A man of pure evil. You have to stop him.
I’m trying. But how? And what does he have to do with the plantation?
History repeats itself. Amelia saw the lights.
Then he had roused, the dream still clear in his mind. It was just his subconscious trying to help him sort out what was bothering him, he told himself.
Amelia saw the lights.
Was his subconscious trying to tell him that Amelia’s lights had been more than just Jimmy’s flashlight?
He followed her into town. He even parked and walked her into the shop, then stayed to have coffee with Mason and Vinnie, who had opened for her.
“Anything on Sheila?” Mason asked him anxiously.
Aidan hesitated before answering. “Nothing. I’m sorry.”
When Aidan left, he gave Kendall a kiss on the cheek and assured her that he would see her later. As he walked to his car, he was surprised to hear someone call his name.
It was Rebecca. She was wearing a scarf over her head, a trench coat and sunglasses, and she was carrying a large shopping bag.
“Rebecca, hello,” he said, arching a brow. “Are you incognito?”
“I don’t want anyone to see me giving you these. Just take the bag,” she told him.
“What?”
“Take the bag.”
“What is it?”
“Your bones,” she told him.
Kendall skipped lunch and ran down to the florist’s shop. She selected a number of arrangements and had the delivery boy take them to her car. On the street, she paused, feeling the air, looking around.
She didn’t feel it. The sensation of being watched. Was she safe by day? she wondered.
She decided not to do any readings that afternoon. When she got back to the shop, she put her tarot deck in a desk drawer and closed it firmly.
Mason seemed to do too much thinking when he wasn’t busy, so she did her best to keep him occupied. At one point, she asked him to go to her apartment and retrieve Jezebel, who was going to come and live in the shop for a while, because Kendall had decided that she wasn’t leaving the Flynn plantation for home again until she had figured out what was going on. Despite her earlier good intentions, she was afraid to let the dream go any further, so maybe she had to start exploring while she was awake.
Later in the afternoon, when the store was quiet, she turned to Mason. “Can you watch the place alone for a while?”
“Alone? What am I?” Vinnie asked. “Chopped liver?”
“Actually, you’re coming with me,” she told him.
“Oh?”
“You’re going to help me bring flowers out to the graveyard.”
As they walked out to her car, she looked up at the sky, wondering what was going on with the weather. It was October, but the sky looked like winter. There were dark clouds forming overhead, and it seemed much too chilly for autumn in New Orleans. Something hinted at a thick gray fog, and dampness hung ripe and heavy in the air.
As they drove, Vinnie said, “I don’t believe it. We’ve got a ground fog rising.”
He was right, she realized. Mist hung low to the ground, swirling ominously.
A mist very like what she kept seeing in her dreams.
Aidan couldn’t quite figure out how it had happened, but somehow Rebecca ended up in his car after she’d delivered the bones, so he took her with him to the FBI to send them off to Robert Birch, and then on to the historical society.
Sheila’s boss was a decent guy. He told Aidan that the police had been in to look through Sheila’s desk, and had taken her calendar and most of her files, but he was welcome to search for himself, in case he could come up with anything.
It was Rebecca who noticed the Post-it stuck in the closure of a drawer.
“‘Before plane, meet Papa,’” Aidan read. “Papa. Her father?”
Rebecca shook her head. “Her mama and daddy were never married. I don’t think she ever knew her father.”
“Papa. Someone older, maybe?” Aidan mused. He rose swiftly. “Come on, let’s go.”
“Where are we going now?”
“Police station.”
“Honey, you’re on your own,” Rebecca said, looking at her watch. “I got to pick my mama up from the doctor’s now.”
“I’ll drop you at your car.”
She studied him just before she got out of his car to get into hers. “You really do care for our girl, don’t you? Mama approves of you, you know.”
“I’m glad. Thank you, Rebecca.”
Aidan headed to the police station. Hal was in his office, a stack of papers in front of him.