He rested his chin on my head with a sigh. “Something’s bothering you. What is it? Another nightmare?”
I hesitated, my gaze scanning the darkness. I wanted so much to confide in Devlin, lay all my cards on the table, but that would mean telling him about the ghosts. If he remembered anything of his near-death experience, perhaps he would have been more receptive to my gift. But he’d awakened from his coma without any memory of those moments before and after the shooting. As his wounds healed, his disdain for the supernatural returned stronger than ever, leaving me to brood about how he would react to such a confession.
After everything he’d been through with the malicious and now dead Mariama, an attachment to an unstable woman was the last thing he’d want. So I’d taken the cowardly way out and said nothing.
For most of my life, I’d been sequestered behind cemetery walls, protected from ghosts but isolated from human companionship by Papa’s rules. The loneliness of my adolescence and young adulthood justified my silence now. Or so I told myself. I had a right to happiness, no matter how fleeting, and so I clung to my secrets as tenaciously as the ivy roots that I tugged from my forgotten graveyards.
“Tell me,” Devlin insisted.
“I thought I saw something in the garden.”
He was instantly alert. “Just now?”
“A few minutes ago.”
He turned me to face him. “Why didn’t you wake me?”
“Because it was probably nothing more than a shadow.” Why had I even mentioned it? Was I testing him? Prodding him to admit that he, too, could sense an otherworldly presence?
“I’ll take a look around,” he said.
“You’re wasting your time. You won’t find anything.”
His expression remained stoic, but I felt the same mixture of exhilaration and trepidation that I’d experienced upon our first meeting. I wondered if I would always be a little unsettled in his company. His charisma could be overwhelming at times, and yet his manner remained formal and reserved. He was a beguiling puzzle, John Devlin. An enigma to his very core.
“It’s not a waste if it puts your mind at ease,” he said, pressing his lips to my forehead. He disappeared into the kitchen and I heard the back door close behind him. A moment later, he was in the garden, the beam of his flashlight outing tree trunks and exposing dark corners.
Moonlight glinted in the new silver at his temples, a souvenir from his journey to the other side. My breath quickened as I watched him. Without ghosts feeding on his energy, he’d lost that gaunt, desolate look. His eyes were no longer sunken, his cheeks no longer hollow, but regardless of his physical well-being, he would always be tormented by memories. There would always be an empty space inside his heart that I could never fill.
He stood in my white garden, shoulders rigid as he lifted his face to the moon before turning—with a shudder, I could have sworn—back to the house.
“All clear,” he said as he came into my office. “Nothing to worry about.”
He moved back to the windows and we stood gazing out into the moonlit garden, where the early yarrow gleamed like silver. Garlands of wild roses cascaded down from the tree branches, adding a touch of romance to the night as nothing else ever could.
Devlin wrapped his arms around my waist, pulling me against him once more. Safe within the sanctuary of his embrace, I tried not to think about the past or the future. The only certainty we could ever have was in the moment. I’d learned that lesson the hard way.
But even when he kissed me, I couldn’t shake the feeling of doom that had been building for weeks. Something was coming. The blind ghost’s visit was just the beginning.
Two
I was up and dressed the next morning and on my first cup of tea when the sun crept over the horizon. Leaning a shoulder against the bedroom door, I sipped the tea in the hazy air and watched Devlin button his shirt.
He didn’t always stay over. His job made him restless and he would often get up in the middle of the night to go over the files of a troubling case. Work occupied much of my time, too. I’d been freer over the cold winter months and Devlin and I had grown close during his recuperation. But lately I’d sensed a distance.
It was easy to blame the return of the ghosts and the secrets that I kept from him, but Devlin had become increasingly pensive and withdrawn in his own right. Sometimes when he had no idea I was around, he’d stare out the window with the strangest look on his face or glance over his shoulder as if he could sense a presence that even I couldn’t see. After the trauma of the shooting, his behavior wasn’t unusual, I told myself. But I couldn’t help worrying that something else bothered him. Something he didn’t want me to know about.
I caught his gaze in the mirror and smiled. “Tea?”
“No, thanks. I barely have enough time to stop by the house and change before the first briefing. After that, I’ll be off-line for the rest of the day. I’m not sure when I’ll be back.”