Tami Hoag - Magic

He stared down at her in the gloom of the poorly lit room. All around them stood dark, dusty, neglected furniture. The striped paper on the walls was stained and buckling, the draperies, heavy with mildew and age, drooped from their hooks. It was a grim setting, and yet Rachel shone like a gem, so bright, so pretty, her amethyst eyes smiling up at him, echoing the glow of the old brooch he had given her.

“I love you,” he murmured, leaning down to kiss her.

She melted against him, all warmth and willingness. She slid back into his arms, fitting there as if she were a part of him. Rachel gave herself over to the kiss, trying to communicate the words that were locked in her heart. She couldn’t bring herself to say them. Somehow she thought that if she said them aloud, it would only hurt worse when the parting came.

“I want you,” Bryan whispered, trailing his lips down the ivory column of her throat as he bent her back over his arm.

“Oh, Bryan,” she said, all the longing she felt dragging the words out on a moan of need.

His hand slid up between their bodies to cup her breast, his gentle fingers kneading her swelling flesh, his thumb brushing across her nipple, teasing it to hardness. Desire surged through her like an electric current, converging in the most feminine parts of her body and intensifying there into pools of heat. She didn’t try to stop the sensations from overwhelming her. There were too many things in her life now that needed rigid control and discipline and self-sacrifice. In these few stolen moments with Bryan she was going to be selfish. She was going to take his passion, as much as he wanted to give her. She was going to revel in the strength of this desire. It was so unlike anything she had ever known, and she knew nothing would ever compare to it.

They sank down onto an old fainting couch, coughing at the cloud of dust that enveloped them but not letting it interfere in the proceedings. Rachel purred her contentment as Bryan settled himself on top of her, his manhood prodding at her from behind the snug barrier of his jeans. She loved the weight of his trim, hard body bearing down on her, loved the masculine sounds of frustration that rumbled in his throat as he tried to get closer to her. Wantonly, she arched up against him, her legs parting so he could press against her more intimately.

“Oh, Rachel.” Bryan groaned. “Oh, Rachel.”

A scream rattled the chandeliers above them.

“Oh, hell.” He uttered the words through gritted teeth, feeling as if he might start sobbing at the agony of thwarted passion. “Oh, hell.”

He levered himself up off Rachel and staggered to his feet, gritting his teeth at the throbbing in his groin. “If there isn’t a ghost upstairs, there will be when I’m finished.”

“If you get violent, can I help?” Rachel asked dryly as she forced herself off the couch.

“Absolutely.”

The second scream kicked them into action. They ran down the hall and bolted up the grand staircase, turning in at Addie’s room only to find it empty. They found Addie at the back of the house, standing in the hall in her nightgown, her face as white as paste.

“Mother, what happened?” Rachel asked, going to her mother’s side but hesitating to put an arm around her.

“It was that terrible ghoul again!” Addie said, panting. Her hair was in a wild tangle around her head. She looked as if she had stuck her finger in a light socket “It was standing down there at the end of the hall with this weird white mist all around.”

All three peered down the corridor, but nothing was there.

“What happened to it?” Bryan asked.

“Poof!” Addie said, flapping her arms at her sides. “He just disappeared.”

Rachel ground her teeth as she followed Bryan to the end of the dark hall. “People don’t just disappear.”

“Ghosts do.”

“There’re no such things as ghosts.”

“ ‘Asserting a statement an infinity of times does not in itself make it true,’ ” Bryan quoted. “Abel J. Jones.”

Rachel scowled at him. “ ‘No matter how thin you slice it, it’s still baloney.’ Alfred Smith.”

Bryan met her look with a determined one of his own. “ ‘There is nothing so powerful as the truth- and often nothing so strange.’ Daniel Webster.”

He stopped at the spot Addie had pointed to, letting his gaze roam over the area, letting his sixth sense listen for any kind of sign. It was one of his ordinary senses, however, that picked up a clue. He held himself very still and sniffed the air like a bird dog.

“Ammonia,” he mumbled, his eyes taking on a faraway look.

“Ammonia?” Rachel questioned, making a face as the scent burned her nostrils. “What does ammonia have to do with anything?”

“Magic,” Bryan said flatly, almost angrily.

“A ghost that does housecleaning,” Rachel mused, leaning back against the paneled wall and crossing her arms over her chest. “I love it. Do you think we could get him to do windows? There are about ninety of them in this dump that all need a good scrubbing!”

She squealed the last of the word as the wall shifted behind her. Startled, she bounded into the middle of the hall, and then did her best to not look embarrassed, straightening her lavender blouse and smoothing her hands over her skirt as if yelping and leaping were not the least bit out of the ordinary.

Bryan was too absorbed in his inspection to notice the instinctive flame of fear that had burst to life in Rachel’s eyes. Following his nose, he moved toward the wall, where he stopped and stood staring down at a smudge of dirt on the wooden floor. His heart sank a little, but he stemmed the rush of disappointment. Ghost or no ghost, there was a mystery to be solved, and solving mysteries was his forte.

With a look of grim determination on his face, he opened the door in the wall, flipped on the light, and followed the scent of ammonia down the dusty servants’ stairs. The step with dry rot was cracked through, and he skipped it altogether, frowning harder. He slipped out of the cabinet in the pantry, careful not to make a sound.

The kitchen was dark, illuminated only by the reflection of moonlight on the fog that hung outside the windows, but his eyes adjusted quickly. He eased along the wall, keeping to the deepest shadows, his gaze taking inventory of every object as he moved toward the back door. Nothing moved. The only sound was the wind outside and the metallic screech and clang of the vent for the stovepipe of the old appliance Addie had set ablaze earlier in the day.

He let himself out the back door and stood on the porch with his hands on his hips. He looked out across the grounds of Drake House, solemn and silent. There was nothing to see but overgrown bushes shrouded in fog. There was nothing to hear except the roar of the wind and the sea But there was something out there. He could feel it. He could sense it-a menace, a threat. There was something out there, and he was determined to find out who or what it was.

After locking up and thoroughly checking the downstairs for any sign of an intruder, Bryan climbed back up the servant’s staircase, going slowly in hopes of picking up some sense of who their uninvited guest had been. Rachel met him at the door in the second-floor hall.

“I got Mother to go back to bed,” she said quietly, wrapping a sweater around her shoulders. “Did you find anything?”

Bryan shook his head. “No, but I have an idea or two.”

“Casper the Cleanly Ghost?” she suggested with an irrepressible smile.

“Very funny,” he drawled, sliding an arm around her and steering her down the hall toward her bedroom.

“Ammonia and hydrochloric acid. It’s an old magic trick,” he explained. “You soak a wad of cotton in ammonia and one in hydrochloric acid. Forcing air through the cotton produces volumes of white smoke. Very eerie-looking stuff. My dad taught me how to do it when I was ten. You can’t imagine the trouble I got into in Sister Agnes’s religion class when Mark Tucker and I engineered a surprise reenactment of the Ascension, using that trick.”