Forever and Always Read online

  “Can you see him?” I whispered to Linc.

  “No, no, and no,” he said, looking around the big brick-walled room at anything but the man sitting at the table.

  Of course Linc was lying. He could see the man very well. I knew the man before us was a spirit, but did the man know? I’d met a couple of ghosts who refused to believe they were dead.

  I stepped forward, Linc close behind me, and stopped in front of the man. “Are you real?

  “Of course I’m real,” the man said. He had a Scottish accent, like Sean Connery’s, and he had the black brows and gray hair of Sean Connery, too. “If you don’t believe I’m real, go ahead and touch me. Feel for yourself that I’m flesh and blood.”

  I knew the man was challenging me, daring me, so I reached out to touch him. As I knew it would, my hand went through his arm.

  “I’m outta here,” Linc said and headed back down the hallway. But, immediately, an iron gate appeared across the hallway.

  I kept my eyes on the man at the table because he was transforming himself into something else. His face grew leaner, his hair lengthened and darkened, and his clothing changed to that of a buccaneer.

  Wow! I thought, and not only wondered who he was but what he was. I blurted out the question that was foremost in my mind,“How do I find my husband?”

  The man propped a jackbooted foot on a wooden carton where the table had been and began to peel an apple. “Through him.”

  Turning, I looked at Linc. He was examining the iron gate to see if there was a way to open it.

  “Me?” Linc asked in wonder, looking back at us. “I came here because I thought my son might be here. I didn’t—”

  He broke off as he looked at the spirit-man, as though fearing he might change himself into some monster next. I wasn’t going to tell him that I knew the spirit had changed himself into a dragon earlier.

  “What does Linc have to do with finding my husband?” I asked. “And the child? Where is the boy? And where do they keep him if they do have him? And why do they keep him?”

  “So many questions,” he said, smiling and standing up.

  “To find your husband you must find the child and to do that you must have a Touch of God. Ask the slaves. They know things, but they won’t tell you until you give them what they want.”

  He moved his eyes off me and onto Linc. “As for you, you must remember.”

  With that, he was gone. There one second, gone the next. I knew there were no other spirits or humans on this floor. There wasn’t even electricity near us. All was silent. Dead.

  Linc turned on the flashlight and shone it where the iron gate had been. The hallway was unblocked now.

  I had agreed to help Linc because my mother had asked me to, but now it seemed that someone—or something—had put all this into play, not for Linc, but for me. I was sure that if I found out what I was supposed to, it would help me find my husband. If this was about me, then Linc didn’t need to be here exposed to danger. I hadn’t been able to protect my husband and sister-in-law so I didn’t trust my ability to protect Linc.

  “Linc,” I said slowly, “I think you should leave this house. You should go back to Hollywood and stay there.”

  “And what do you plan to do?”

  “Go home, too, of course. The truth is, all this is pretty much over my head. I’m not used to meeting ghosts that change shape and make up riddles. It’s over my little hillbilly brain, so I think I’ll go home and see my daughter and niece. I really do miss them.”

  After that speech, I started down the hallway toward the door. We could leave by the door, and I could get my clothes back on. I was beginning to feel like a stripper standing there in my hose and a teddy.

  I took only half a dozen steps before I realized Linc wasn’t following me. He’d turned the flashlight so it lit a path in front of me, but he was still in the big room where we’d seen the shape-changing spirit-man, Devlin.

  Turning, I looked at Linc in alarm. “What’s wrong?”

  “I was thinking,” he said. “I was trying to remember what that guy said and it seems like the first thing to do is give the slaves what they want. Is that the way you heard it?”

  “Yes, but—”

  He turned away, shining the flashlight on the wall where the spirit-man had been chained. “Aha!” he said. The wall was still brick but now it contained an old wooden door once painted green, with a big iron lock on it.

  Standing, I watched him search for something among the piles of junk. He picked up an old shovel, put it through the lock and pulled.

  The metal lock didn’t break but the shovel handle did and the rotten old door did. Linc put his hand on the hole in the door, opened it and peered inside, shining his light all around. “Nothing but old wooden cabinets in here,” he said. “I think maybe they’re filing cabinets, though. Probably full of old papers.” He turned back to me and gave me that much-practiced Paul Travis smile, the one that melted hearts. “You go on, go back to your kids. I think I’ll stay here for a while.”

  I knew what he was doing; I just couldn’t figure out why he was doing it. He was goading me into staying at the house. But then I was sure he very well knew that I had no intention of leaving. So why did he want to stay? For a child he’d never met? And what was Linc supposed to remember? That he loved the child?

  Slowly, I walked toward him. “I wasn’t really going to leave, you know,” I said.

  “Yeah, I know.” Inside the room, he went to a cabinet and pulled open a drawer. It contained file folders and old papers. Linc pulled out a folder. “Bingo,” he said, holding up a paper for me to see. It was a bill of sale for a slave child, aged ten, son of Dinnah. The space for the father’s name was a blank.

  “If these papers are so easy to find, why haven’t those spirits out there found them before now? They’ve had a few years,” Linc said.

  I was looking in a file cabinet and I paused to look at Linc. “If everyone who stayed in this house was as plagued as you are by the spirits of the slaves, no one would stay. This whole house would be nothing but ruins.”

  Linc didn’t understand what I meant. I was asking why the ghosts had attached themselves to him. “If Delphia thought there was a buck to be made in it, I’m sure she’d put the ghosts back into chains.”

  “True,” I said. It was difficult to see in the dark room, but as far as I could tell there were about a hundred years’ of slave records in the drawers. “Is this normal?” I asked.

  “None of my ancestors were rich enough to own slaves but…” I couldn’t help it but I looked at Linc. A couple hundred years ago it would have been possible to buy a man like Linc. A beautiful, gorgeous, delicious man like Linc.

  He didn’t even look up. “Honey, what you’re thinkin’ is makin’ my ears burn.”

  I laughed. He was certainly perceptive!

  “There are too many of these to go through, even if we knew what we were looking for,” he said, shutting a drawer and opening another. “As far as I can tell, Narcissa and Delphia’s ancestors only bought women. They sold all the male children and most of the females, keeping only—”

  What Linc was saying hit me at the same time it did him. Narcissa and Delphia’s ancestors had made their fortunes by breeding slaves. They bought women, bred them, then sold the children.

  When I thought of my own daughter and my niece and how much I loved them, I was sickened. How could I have survived watching them sold?

  “You okay?” Linc asked.

  “Yeah. But this makes me sick. No wonder the spirits out there are still here, still wanting to find their loved ones. But, Linc, why can you feel them? I haven’t felt any psychic power in you.”

  “None,” he said, squatting down to look at a bottom drawer. “On the other hand, maybe I’m related to some or all of them.”

  I smiled at that. “You don’t exactly look like you just stepped off the boat. Your skin’s the same color as my husband’s when he has a tan. You must have had a wh