Forever and Always Read online

  “I hear nothing from the spirits tonight,” Delphia finally said in desperation, seeming ready to dismiss the group.

  Darci held on to my hand tightly. “Perhaps Narcissa could try,” she said.

  “Me?” Narcissa said, and I could swear she was suppressing laughter. She had to know about the projectors and the wires and know that they were failing Delphia. “I know nothing about the spirit world.”

  “But sometimes weak spirits…I mean, I’ve read that sometimes weak spirits just need a body to use. Sometimes spirits don’t have the strength on their own to manifest themselves. Maybe if there were some spirits in this room they could use your body and talk through it.”

  Everyone at the table was looking at Darci as though she’d lost her mind. Glassy-eyed, drugged-up, happy, the six women stared at Darci, not understanding her. Delphia was frowning in disapproval—but then she seemed to disapprove of everything. Plump little Narcissa looked like she wanted to run away at the very idea of spirits using her body.

  “They could try,” Darci said loudly, her eyes on the empty space just over Narcissa’s left shoulder. Nobody had to tell me that Darci was talking to four pretty slave girls.

  The next second, Narcissa changed. Years seemed to fall away from her as she leaned toward me and leered.

  I couldn’t help my involuntary reaction of repulsion. Darci tightened her grip on my hand and sent me a mental message to behave myself.

  “I want him,” Narcissa said in a sultry, sexy voice. “I been waitin’ a long time.”

  If the room were dark and I couldn’t see Narcissa, I would have been interested in a woman with a voice like that.

  “What do you want?” Darci asked.

  “Him.” This was another voice, a little higher but just as sexy. “He’s fine. I want him.” I leaned a little bit toward Narcissa.

  “No!” Darci said sharply. “Not you, but them. What do the people by the graveyard want?”

  “They want to find their kin. That’s been sold.” I swear it was a third voice so I knew that all four beautiful slave women were inside Narcissa’s old body. I couldn’t help it but I looked at Miss Burns. She was the youngest of the six guests, about twenty-six. She was skinny, flat-chested, flat-assed, had stringy blonde hair and lips the width of a piece of string. I’d dismissed her when I’d first seen her but, maybe, if the four girls could be put into her body instead of Narcissa’s…

  Miss Burns saw me looking at her and gave a shy smirk. She had rich people teeth: perfect, white but not so white that they were vulgar. I smiled back, picked up my full glass of liqueur, and saluted her with it.

  Thank heaven Darci jerked on my arm before I drank any of it.

  “How do I do that?” Darci asked Narcissa. “Where do I find their relatives?”

  “Are they like him now?” Narcissa purred, looking at me with hot eyes.

  “No,” Darci said. “They aren’t all like him. When do I find—?”

  I don’t know what happened next. Narcissa was leering at me, Miss Burns was doing her best to flirt with her skinny eyes, Delphia looked like she wanted to take an ax to the lot of us, and the other women were watching it all with eyes that were so glazed I knew they were feeling no pain. Darci was quizzing the four slave women she’d invited to inhabit Narcissa’s body. The next thing I knew Darci was standing up and staring into the darkness on the far side of the room. Her face drained of what little color she had. She whispered “Adam,” then she fainted.

  I caught her before she hit the floor, picked her up, and carried her out of the room. Once we were in the hall, I thought, Now what the hell do I do? If I’d had access to a car, I would have put her in it and driven away, but I had no car and I didn’t think Delphia would lend me one.

  When I heard voices from the library behind me, I turned and headed toward the door outside. I knew that if I took Darci to her room, soon all of them would be banging on the door. But where could I take her so that she and I could be alone?

  “If there really are any ghosts floating around me, I need help,” I said aloud. “Show me where to take her where we’ll be safe from them.”

  I didn’t want to believe in any of them but it was like about a hundred soft hands started pulling me. Part of me wanted to drop Darci’s limp body and run, but a part of me liked it. It felt so safe, like being in my mother’s arms—not that I knew what that felt like.

  I was so busy enjoying the sensation, and looking at Darci to see any signs of life, and hiding from people’s voices as they searched for us, that I didn’t realize where I was being led until I was inside. There was a closed door, I pushed it open, then I was inside. There was just enough moonlight for me to make out a rusty flashlight. Still holding Darci, I picked up the flashlight and saw a big white table and a bunch of candles and a box of matches. I put her down on the table, lit half a dozen candles, then looked around.

  I was in a crypt. I’d seen it earlier but had had no desire to explore it. It was not too far from the slave cemetery and I’d assumed some of the Barrister sisters’ ancestors were buried in it. Inside, there were four marble sarcophagi with the lids pushed aside, one lid broken. It looked as though someone had been looting graves, been interrupted, and the flashlight, candles and matches had been left behind.

  A groan from Darci made me turn to her. She was a tiny thing and she looked even smaller lying on that hard, cold marble lid. I put my hand on her forehead and smoothed back her hair, then I removed my dinner jacket and put it over her. “How do you feel?”

  “Awful,” she said, looking up at me. When she started looking at the empty space around my head I said, “How many of them are in here?”

  “All of them. Fifty or so, and they’re almost all women. Interesting.”

  “I see,” I said and swallowed. I wasn’t going to let her see that I wanted to run away and hide. “Any of them tell you what they want?” I noted that, in death, there seemed to be equality as the slave-ghosts could enter their masters’ mausoleum.

  With her hand to her head, Darci started to sit up. I helped her turn around so her legs were hanging down the front of the sarcophagus. There was a name and a date carved in the marble and I could have read it, but I didn’t. Also, the lid was askew so I could have peeked inside, but I didn’t.

  Darci looked up at me. “They want me to be a travel director.”

  “Yeah?” I said as I took a seat beside her. Obviously, she wasn’t yet ready to tell me what had upset her so much that she’d fainted. “What does that mean?”

  “They’re letting me know that there are records in the basement of the house that tell about their loved ones. They want me to get the papers and tell them where to go to find them.”

  “We’re talking about slavery, right? One hundred fifty to two hundred years ago? Do they think their friends and relatives will be waiting there for them?”

  “I think so. Maybe their graves will be there and the spirits will be attached to the graves.”

  I thought about all this for a moment. “I have two questions. One is, Why don’t they all go to the Good Place and meet up with their loved ones there like they’re supposed to?” I said this last loudly to make sure they heard me. “Second, if they want papers that are in the basement why don’t they just—you know.” I made a sliding gesture with my hands, palms slipping past each other. “Why don’t they go through the walls and get the papers themselves?”

  “They’re afraid,” Darci said quietly.

  That sobered me. “What could ghosts be afraid of? That someone’s going to kill them? Tear their arms off? No, wait a minute,” I said, snapping my fingers. “They don’t have arms and they’re already dead.”

  “They’re afraid of Devlin,” Darci said as she jumped down from the sarcophagus.

  “And who is he?”

  When Darci put her hands over her face and burst into tears, it was natural for me to pull her into my arms. When we heard voices outside, I pulled her tighter and looked at the li