Amanda Stevens - The Awakening

As we stood there with very little else to say to one another, it occurred to me that perhaps this moment was the essence of Dr. Shaw’s explanation of a death omen. Not a literal passing, but the end of something I’d been hanging on to. I’d been carrying a torch for Devlin for far too long and I waited for that moment of supreme revelation when the weight of unrequited love lifted miraculously from my shoulders, saving me from all those sleepless nights and liberating me for the open road ahead.

Instead, I found myself jostled by someone passing by in the corridor. I was pushed up against Devlin and my heart jolted.

His arm came around me, so fleeting I might have imagined the caress. But for a moment, I felt the pressure of his fingers against the small of my back and I closed my eyes, drawing in that delectable, indefinable essence that was so uniquely John Devlin.

“Sorry,” I mumbled and pushed away.

“You’re here with Temple,” he said.

“And you? You aren’t dining alone tonight, are you?”

The question was a throwback to that first night when he had come to the restaurant alone, but I instantly berated myself. What a stupid thing to ask of an old flame that had recently gotten engaged. I’d momentarily forgotten about his betrothal. Now it all came rushing back to me and as an image of Claire Bellefontaine’s perfect face flashed before my eyes, I did have a revelation.

I thought about the other time Devlin and I had stood here in this alcove and the conversation had turned to Ethan Shaw. Devlin and I had only just met, but I’d had the thrilling notion that he was jealous of my dinner companion. I’d known very little about him then, other than his profession and that two ghosts haunted him. Now I knew quite a lot about his past, about his dead wife and daughter, about his upbringing, his legacy, his affiliation with the Congé. If my hunch was true about his astral travels, I might even know something about him that he wasn’t aware of himself. But for all those discoveries, he was more of a stranger to me at that moment than he’d been upon our first meeting.

He hadn’t answered, I realized, so I gave him a reprieve. “You’re here with—”

“There’s a group of us.”

A meeting of the Congé?

I said very casually, “I heard about your engagement. I should congratulate you.”

Something flickered in his eyes, an emotion I didn’t dare name. “Thank you.” Unlike his eyes, his tone was impassive to the point of dismissive. I tried not to read anything into it.

I started to ask if they’d set a date, make the proper small talk about his upcoming nuptials, but instead I shrugged. “I really should get back.”

“I won’t keep you. But I’m glad I had a chance to say hello.” That beguiling flicker again and a little half smile that made me wonder once more about the unlikely coincidence of our meeting.

Despite his engagement, a part of me wanted him to protest my departure. In the back of my mind floated a vision. His hand sliding up my bare arm as he pulled me farther into the shadowy alcove where he would stare deeply into my eyes for a long, heart-stopping moment before he kissed me.

He was already staring deeply into my eyes, I realized, and his gaze lingered on my lips as if he had read my mind. He straightened languorously, reminding me of all those long, dreamy mornings in bed. I might not know his motives or intentions or even the content of his heart, but I knew his body, all the angles and shadows. The ripple of sinewy muscle.

“I—nice to see you again,” I murmured.

“Good night,” he said, and as I brushed past him, I could have sworn I heard an ominous whisper in my ear. “Watch your back, Amelia.”

* * *

I went back to the table and sipped my cooling tea as I glanced around the dining room. I didn’t see where Devlin had disappeared to or Temple, either, for that matter. Which was just as well as far as I was concerned. The last thing I wanted was to see Devlin with his gorgeous fiancée, and as for my dinner companion, I needed a moment before facing her. Temple’s ability to read me bordered on the uncanny. She would know something was up the minute she sat down across from me and I wasn’t prepared for another grilling about Devlin. My only hope was that she would be sufficiently distracted by her apparent infatuation with Rance Duvall and wouldn’t notice the high color in my cheeks or the slight tremor in my hands.

As I waited for her return, I tried to distract myself by going back over everything that had happened at Woodbine Cemetery. Staring into my cup, I conjured the infant’s face floating on the surface of my tea. The expression captured by the photographer still distressed me. The big eyes, the button nose, the soft cheeks—common attributes of almost any two-year-old. But behind that sweet countenance something dark lurked. Or was that merely my imagination? Was I searching for something in the child’s violet eyes that existed only in my head?

I sank so deeply into contemplation that the music didn’t register at first. The canned melody was soothing background noise, nothing more. Then slowly the haunting strands wove into my consciousness as familiarity teased me. What was that song? I still couldn’t place it. The tune seemed right there at the edge of my memory. Eerily pervasive and yet maddeningly elusive.

The room grew frigid, a dank, seeping bone-frost that often preceded the dead. I rubbed my arms and glanced around yet again. The other diners seemed impervious to the chill, but the cold wasn’t my imagination. The corners of the window had rimed and I could see my breath on the air.

I turned to the garden in fear. Twilight had deepened to nightfall and the candles on the tables sputtered in a draft. My spine crawled as dread mingled with the cold. I told myself to look away. A manifestation in the garden was nothing to me. No ghost could touch me on hallowed ground and the talisman I wore around my neck was added protection. I was safe inside this former rectory. Safe inside my consecrated bubble.

But I couldn’t tear my gaze from the window. Even as I watched the frost spread and crackle across the glass, even as my hand crept to Rose’s key, I could feel an insidious presence tearing at my fingers, stealing my will as my defenses crumpled.

The scent of woodbine oozed in with the cold. The cloying perfume leached through the glass to whorl around my senses like smoke. I sat enthralled—trapped—as my gaze darted about the garden, searching for the ghost child even as I tried to recoil from her icy tentacles.

She was well hidden and nearly transparent. If not for the faint glow of her manifestation, I wouldn’t have noticed her at all. But as soon as I focused on her, she grew more substantial, as if the warmth of my concentration imbued and emboldened her. The last of the shadows melted away and she stood exposed, an ethereal vision bathed in silky moonlight.

She had manifested in the same white dress as before but I could see more detail now. A row of black buttons set against a scalloped seam decorated the bodice, and a plaid ribbon trimmed the drop waist. She wore patent leather shoes with white tights, and another ribbon dangled from her long blond hair. Her attire was obviously from another decade. Late sixties to midseventies, perhaps, though I was no expert on fashion. She looked to be dressed for church, but her young features were twisted in angry defiance—and a touch of fear, I thought—as she stood with her hands behind her back hiding something in the folds of her skirt.

I became so fixated on her shimmering form that I felt myself slip deeper into enthrallment. She had my undivided attention, but she seemed unmindful of me. She didn’t peer at me from the shadows as she’d done in the cemetery. She didn’t taunt me or try to make contact. It was as if I’d somehow entered her memory, a voyeur to something that had happened in the past. The ghost wasn’t aware of me because I didn’t yet exist. I didn’t belong in her world.