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The Visitor

Amanda Stevens

www.mirabooks.co.uk

Contents

Cover

Back Cover Text

Praise for THE GRAVEYARD QUEEN SERIES by Amanda Stevens

Title Page

One

Two

Three

Four

Five

Six

Seven

Eight

Nine

Ten

Eleven

Twelve

Thirteen

Fourteen

Fifteen

Sixteen

Seventeen

Eighteen

Nineteen

Twenty

Twenty-One

Twenty-Two

Twenty-Three

Twenty-Four

Twenty-Five

Twenty-Six

Twenty-Seven

Twenty-Eight

Twenty-Nine

Thirty

Thirty-One

Thirty-Two

Thirty-Three

Thirty-Four

Thirty-Five

Thirty-Six

Thirty-Seven

Thirty-Eight

Thirty-Nine

Forty

Forty-One

Forty-Two

Forty-Three

Forty-Four

Forty-Five

Forty-Six

Forty-Seven

Forty-Eight

Forty-Nine

Fifty

Fifty-One

Copyright

One

The blind ghost returned in the spring, and with her more nightmares. The days warmed, the magnolias opened and foreboding settled in like an unwelcome caller.

Night after night I lay in a dreamlike state, worn out from the physical labor of my cemetery restorations, but too frightened to succumb to a deeper sleep because she would appear to me then. The look-alike specter that had followed me back from the other side. I wanted to believe she was merely my namesake, the ghost of some long-dead ancestor, but I very much feared she was a vision of my future self. A manifestation of the tortured woman I would one day become.

Discomforted by my thoughts, I glanced over at John Devlin, the Charleston police detective who lay sleeping beside me. His ghosts were gone now. His daughter’s spirit had finally been able to move on, thus breaking the tie that had kept her mother—Devlin’s dead wife—bound to him. In the ensuing months since Mariama’s departure, I’d allowed myself a glimmer of hope that Devlin and I might finally be together. We’d forged a strong bond since that fateful day. An unbreakable connection that neither ghost nor human could sever. Or so I wanted to believe.

But as the temperature climbed and the days lengthened, my blood only ran colder. A shift in the wind brought a whiff of something unnatural. Distorted shadows crept across my bedroom ceiling. As the pull from the other side grew stronger, I couldn’t help but obsess over my visitor’s ominous prophecy. What you are, I once was. What I am, you will someday become.

She’d only ever come to me in my dreams, but I was awake now and I could feel her presence stronger than ever. Careful not to rouse Devlin, I rose and tiptoed from the room, slipping down the hallway, through the kitchen and out to my office, which was located at the very back of the house. The long windows afforded a view of the garden where moonlight dappled the freesia. I stood there probing the shadows, the flutter of every leaf, the quiver of every limb spiking my pulse.

A draft seeped in through the windows, bringing the smell of dust and dried lavender. Hair on end, I peered through the layers of moonlight and darkness until I found her. I didn’t outwardly react to her diaphanous form, but everything inside me stilled as a terrible acceptance stole over me. She was here. Not just in my imagination, not just in my dreams, but here. And now I could no longer deny that I was being haunted.

She was dressed in a white lace frock suitable for a wedding or burial. Moonlight shone upon and through her so that I had no trouble distinguishing her all-too-familiar features—the straight nose, the high cheekbones and the slightly parted lips. The same understated features that stared back at me from the mirror except for one notable exception. Her eyes were missing.

Levitating outside my window, she pressed a hand against the glass and a wintry chill shot through me, a bone cold that came only from the other side. The windows rimed, a film of ice forming in the corners of the panes. Minuscule fissions fanned out from her splayed fingers as the glass crackled beneath the pressure of her brittle cold.

Why are you here? I wanted to cry out. What do you want from me?

But I already knew the answer. She wanted my essence, my life force, my humanness. She wanted what every ghost craved—to be alive. That was what made them so dangerous. That was what made them so voracious.

No sound came from her moving lips, but I could hear her message clearly in my head: The key. It’s your only salvation. Find it!

Then she dissolved into the shadows as the frost on the windows vanished.

“Amelia?”

I might have jumped at the sound of my name, but after years of living with ghosts, I’d learned to quell my reflexes. Devlin moved up behind me. The power of his presence never failed to thrill me, but I could take no pleasure in his nearness at that moment.

“What are you doing?” he asked.

“I couldn’t sleep.”

“What’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” I lied.

He placed his hands on my shoulders. “My God, your skin is like ice.”

“It’s cool in here.”

“Come back to bed.” His fingers trailed down my arm. “I’ll keep you warm, Amelia.”

The way he drawled my name, even more than the lingering chill, drew a shiver. “In a minute.”

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.”

I nodded. “I understand. I have a full day myself.”

“New restoration?”

“If I win the bid.”

“Good luck.” He draped his jacket and tie over his arm as he strode across the room to the doorway. The sun peeking through the lace curtains gave him an otherworldly glow, and for a moment, I was reminded of the shimmer of a manifestation. But John Devlin was no ghost. He was warm, human and very much alive.

Pausing at the door, he slipped his free hand through my hair, tilting my face as he leaned down to brush his lips against mine. My heart instantly quickened. It was all I could do to keep the cup and saucer balanced as I responded with a parting of my lips, a quick dart of my tongue.

He drew back, eyes gleaming. Then he threw his jacket and tie on the bed, removed the china from my fingers and, threading both hands through my hair, kissed me again. The pressure of his mouth and the heat of his body reminded me all too vividly of what had transpired between us an hour ago. The intimate whispers, the soft moans, his hand sweeping slowly up my thigh.

That was all it took. One kiss, a memory and I was lost to him all over again. In all my twenty-eight years, I’d never known anyone like Devlin. He was everything I’d ever dreamed of in a man and not at all what I could have imagined.

“I really do have to go,” he said.

“I know.” Rising on tiptoes, I kissed him again, lightly now, because it was time for both of us to start our day. “Will I see you later?”

A slight hesitation, so infinitesimal as to be my imagination. “I’ll have to let you know. I’m not sure when I’ll be back.”

“You’re going out of town?”

A longer hesitation and a shadowy flicker in those dark, dark eyes. “I’m having dinner with my grandfather at his house in Myrtle Beach.”

I lifted a brow but said nothing because I was completely taken aback by the revelation. Devlin and his grandfather had been estranged for years, ever since Devlin had decided to become a police officer rather than joining the family law firm. I suspected the hostility between the two stubborn men ran a lot deeper than Devlin’s career choice, but he had never really opened up to me about his family.

Turning away, he picked up his coat and tie. “His assistant seemed to think it a matter of some urgency, so I don’t know how long I’ll be there. If dinner runs late I may stay over and drive back in the morning.”

“I understand. I hope he’s not... I hope everything is okay.”

“I’m sure he’s fine,” Devlin said, but the shadows in his eyes belied his casual assurance.

I made no further inquiries even though I’d always been curious about Jonathan Devlin, an illustrious attorney and philanthropist who could trace his roots all the way back to the founding of Charleston. I’d walked past his mansion south of Broad Street any number of times, but I’d never met Devlin’s only living relative. I didn’t like to press him about his people because my own family had more than their fair share of secrets.

Determined to put those lingering doubts behind me, I set out on my morning walk as soon as Devlin drove away. I always enjoyed a brisk stroll through downtown where the magnolias were already in bloom and the city’s past lurked on every cobbled street corner. On those days when I arrived before dawn, I loved to pause on the Battery to watch the sun come up over the harbor. In that quiet time as the ghosts floated back through the veil and the tourists slept soundly in their beds, I had the city to myself. No secrets to worry about, no prickles at my nape to warn me of an uncanny presence. Just the dance of sunlight on water and the silhouette of Fort Sumter shimmering on the horizon. Right before the dew burned off, the trees would sparkle with diamonds, a fairyland of prisms so bright and beautiful I could scarcely catch my breath at the wonder of this city.

I was a relative newcomer to Charleston, having been born and raised in the small town of Trinity, but my mother was a native Charlestonian. She and my aunt had grown up in a small house deep in the historic district, in the shadow of all the grand mansions. Theirs had been a childhood steeped in genteel tradition and seasoned by middle-class reality.

As a child, I’d been captivated by the grace of their bearing and the charm of their Lowcountry accents. They were exotic creatures that bathed in rose water and dressed in crisp cotton. It was only when I grew older that I came to realize the effort that went into such elegant presentations. Like so many Southern women of a certain age, my mother and aunt’s upbringing had become their vocation.

I was not my mother’s daughter by nature or nurture. On most days, I dressed in jeans and sneakers and rarely bothered with makeup. My face was tanned and freckled from working in the sun, my palms callused from the hard labor of a cemetery restorer. I possessed none of my mother’s or aunt’s polish, and sometimes when I looked at myself in the mirror, I wondered how someone like me had caught the eye of a man like Devlin.

This was not a question born of self-deprecation or false modesty. I could acknowledge my attributes. I was well educated, well traveled and my profession kept me physically fit. I liked to think that my eyes were a standout, changing from blue to gray and sometimes green depending on my attire and surroundings. At the bottom of my irises were tiny elongated motes. When I was little, I’d discovered that if I squinted just so and used a bit of imagination as I peered into the mirror, those odd colorations gave my pupils the look of keyholes.

But no matter the color of my eyes, no matter my education, profession or intellect, I would never be one of those golden women who glided so effortlessly through life. For me there would never be yacht club luncheons or white-gloved garden parties or harmless flirtations over frosty mint juleps. That was Devlin’s old world, and because of who I was and where I came from, I would never be welcome there. For all its charm and allure, Charleston remained an insular place, one of bloodlines and traditions, a city perpetually turned inward by its rivers and harbor. I was an Asher by birth, a legacy imbued with great wealth and corruption, but I was also a Gray. My papa’s people were simple mountainfolk, and it was from that branch of the family that I had inherited my dark gift. Caulbearers, we were sometimes called. Those of us born with a veil. It happened every generation or so.

But as more of Papa’s secrets came to light, I was starting to suspect that my legacy ran far deeper than the ability to see spirits. I had been born dead to a dead mother. My grandmother Tilly had pulled me back from the other side by cutting away the veil of membrane covering my face and forcing air into my premature lungs, and now I sometimes felt that I belonged to neither world. I was a living ghost, a wanderer who had not yet found my purpose or place. But every new discovery, every broken rule brought me closer to my calling.

If only I could peer through the keyholes of my eyes and know the future, perhaps I could somehow change my destiny. But how did one fight preordination? How did one combat fate?

It was a question I pondered often in the dead of night as ghosts drifted past my window.

* * *

Back home and freshly showered, I carried my second cup of tea out to the garden, where I could watch the butterflies flit among the sweetspire. Somewhere down the street, a horn blared and I could hear the muffled roar of traffic on Rutledge as commuters headed to and from the Crosstown. But all was calm and quiet here in my little oasis. Or so I thought.

I must have still been on edge from that ghostly visitation because the moment I spotted the open cellar door, my heart gave a painful jerk.

Tamping down a premature panic, I crossed the yard to the steps, but before I could call down, an odor wafted up to me—the smell of musk, earth and more faintly, decay. Not the stench of active rot, but the fusty perfume of old death.

Phantom fragrances were often attached to ghosts. Devlin’s dead daughter had smelled of jasmine, and the sightless apparition of dust and dried lavender.

But this was not the scent of a ghost.

A cloud passed over the sun and I shivered. When the sun came back out, a shadowy face stared up at me from the gloom of the cellar.