Amanda Stevens - The Visitor

He took my chin and brought my face back to his. “Hey. What’s that look?”

“Sometimes I’m still surprised by us,” I admitted. “You and me. That we’re together.”

“Why?”

“We’re so different. We come from different places.”

“Maybe that’s why we work. Our differences keep things interesting,” he said lightly, but his expression sobered. He tucked back a strand of hair that had escaped from my ponytail. “I hate seeing you like this. So exhausted and distracted. Nothing’s going to happen if you fall asleep, you know. I’ll do everything in my power to keep you safe.”

“I know that. Just as I’ll do everything in my power to keep you safe. But some things are beyond our control. Even you have no sway over my nightmares.”

“Maybe you sell me short,” he said and tugged me to him.

This time I didn’t pull away, proving, I supposed, that when it came to Devlin, I didn’t have the courage of my convictions. If the blind ghost lurked in the shadows, I was oblivious to her presence, attuned to nothing more than my own pounding pulse and those seductive eyes peering down at me.

Devlin murmured something to me that later I would never be able to recall except for the silken drawl of my name. His kiss, when it came, was very slow, very deliberate and devastatingly effective. But his hands... Those strong, graceful hands were greedy and grasping...touching here, skimming there...making me tremble with need as I clutched at his shirt.

Somehow I found myself backed up against the porch wall, protected from the street by his body. He lifted my top, pressing his hands to my breasts and deepening the kiss with his tongue. I locked my hands around his neck and threw my head back with abandon as his mouth moved to my throat, then to my ear, then back to my lips. The traffic noises faded and the floorboards evaporated beneath my feet. Only the sound of his voice brought me back to earth.

“Sorry. I got carried away.” He moved back to adjust my shirt. “I know you’re not one for public spectacles.”

“You didn’t hear me complain, did you?” I asked breathlessly. “I wanted you to do that. All of it. When you touch me like that...”

“Like this?” he murmured, his hands sliding back inside my shirt.

Electricity sizzled along my spine. “Yes, exactly like that.”

With the tip of my finger, I traced the outline of the silver medallion he wore tucked in his shirt. I fancied I could feel the coolness of the medal beneath the fabric and the quiver of power and history contained inside that ominous emblem.

“You always know how to get to me, don’t you?” I said. “You know just where to touch me, how to look at me so that I can’t help losing control. Sometimes I wonder how you do it.”

“How I do what?”

“That,” I said with a shudder as he pulled me closer. “Everything you do makes me want you even more. I’ve never felt this way before. That sounds like a very bad cliché, I know, but it’s true. All you have to do is say my name and I melt. It’s as if you’ve cast a spell over me.”

I expected him to kiss me again after that candid and perhaps ill-advised confession and then sweep me inside to the bedroom to prove just how vulnerable to his touch I truly was. Instead, his mood seemed to shift as a disquieting shadow flashed in his eyes, and for some inexplicable reason, I thought again of Mariama, a sultry, hedonistic woman versed in the ways of dark magic. She was gone now, her ties to Devlin thankfully severed, but I wasn’t foolish enough to discount the influence she’d once had over him or the things she had undoubtedly taught him.

Was that why he still wore the medallion? As protection against her treacherous grip?

He claimed he didn’t believe in the power of talismans, and yet I’d never seen him without the silver emblem around his neck, the entwined snake and claw chillingly symbolic of the entanglements and dangerous alliances that came from being a member of the Order. And from being Mariama Goodwine’s husband.

The mood tainted by thoughts of his dead wife, I extricated myself from his embrace. “You’ve a long drive ahead of you and I don’t want to make you late.”

“Yes, it wouldn’t do to keep the old man waiting.” He seemed to immediately regret his harshness. “Sorry. I don’t mean to be short with you. As you may have guessed, I’m not looking forward to the evening.”

I put a hand on his sleeve. “Are you sure there’s nothing else bothering you? Seems to me I’m not the only one who’s been distracted lately.”

Now it was Devlin who detached himself from my touch, gently brushing aside my hand as he moved out of the shade into a patch of waning sunlight. “I’m fine.”

He hovered at the top of the steps gazing out over the garden before he turned to glance back at me. The look on his face made me tremble even though I was hard pressed to put a name to the indefinable darkness I glimpsed in his eyes. Wariness? Resolve?

No, I thought with a jolt. What I saw in Devlin’s eyes was dread.

Five

That night, I turned in early with a new novel, but exhaustion claimed me before I made it through the first chapter. Saving my place with a crystal bookmark my aunt had given to me years ago, I turned off the light and snuggled down in the covers as I tried to clear my mind of secrets, stereograms and the smell of old decay in the cellar.

I must have been dreaming about that smell because the phantom scent roused me from the first deep sleep I’d had in nights. I lay very still with eyes wide-open, trying to orient myself in the darkness. The odor was so fleeting and indistinct it might well have been a remnant of my dream. I wasn’t frightened. Not then. Not until I heard breathing.

The rhythmic sawing was low and croaky. Human but not human.

A thrill of alarm chased across my scalp even as I tried to rationalize the sound. It was just an old-house noise like all the other creaks and groans I heard from time to time. The doors and windows were locked tight. A human intruder couldn’t get in without making sufficient racket to wake me and it was a rare occurrence for a ghost to penetrate hallowed ground. I was safe here in my sanctuary. I desperately needed to believe that.

But as I lay there drenched in moonlight and dread, the sound came again, raspy and furtive. And close. Very close. Right behind the headboard, I was certain.

My own breath quickened as I slowly turned.

Nothing was there. Nothing that I could see. Because the sound came from inside the wall.

I wanted more than anything to leap from bed, put distance between myself and those terrifying rasps, but instead I lay there listening to the darkness as my mind raced back to the conversation with Macon. He’d said earlier that something was nesting in the cellar. An opossum or a rat, perhaps?

An animal would certainly explain the musky smell, but what of the breathing? The ragged exhalation suggested something larger than a rodent, a sentient prowler that could invade hallowed ground and maneuver its way into my sanctuary.

Slipping a hand from beneath the covers, I reached for the lamp switch. Light flooded the room, chasing shadows from corners and momentarily staunching my terror. Nothing stirred. I saw no evidence of a visitor, animal or otherwise. The rasping had stopped, but I still had a sense that something hunkered inside the wall. I could feel an avid presence behind the plaster.

Climbing out of bed, I plucked one of my slippers from the floor and then, taking a position at the end of the bed, I flung the shoe against the wall above the headboard. I heard a muffled squeal, followed by furious scratching that now came from the hallway.

Gooseflesh popped at the back of my neck. I had no idea what I was dealing with. Human, animal...something from another realm? I couldn’t imagine the space between the walls accommodating anything larger than a raccoon, but if the sound really had come from the hallway outside my bedroom... If something had found a way in through the basement...