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  “Let him suffer,” Jack said, hurrying toward Lavender.

  When Darci got there both Lavender and Jack were on the driver’s seat, with her holding the reins.

  As Darci climbed into the back, Lavender said, “Jack is going to allow me to drive. Isn’t he the most generous, kind man alive?”

  “Oh yeah,” Darci said, “the best.”

  Jack winked at her and the next minute they started off. Lavender sat straight and rigid on the seat and handled the reins competently. Jack—the overactor!—often gave her little admonishments and pointed out potholes to miss, and three times he cautioned her about going too fast. You would have thought he knew all about buggies and horses.

  All through their long, slow trek through town, Darci sat in the back and watched the two of them together. They nodded to passersby, calling to them by name, and everyone who saw them smiled back. Everyone in town seemed to find pleasure in the sight of the beautiful young couple.

  Darci thought back to Greg Ryerson at the FBI and how she’d felt the deep bond between him and Jack. A deep, die-for-each-other bond. Greg wouldn’t recognize Jack now because Jack is no longer an angry young man, she thought.

  But Darci knew that something wasn’t right. If she had her power, she’d know in an instant what it was, but it was hard to figure out things on a human level. If she had her power, she could just look at people’s auras and know what was going on.

  She tried to put her mind on Lavender and Jack but she couldn’t. Their giggly happiness made her think of her own husband, of Adam. So far, nothing she’d done seemed to have taken her closer to finding her husband. She’d helped the actor Lincoln Aimes find his son; she’d found Henry, a man with power that she was only gradually finding out about. But still, she hadn’t come any closer to finding Adam.

  For a moment, she closed her eyes and remembered a happy time when she’d been with her family. Adam had been playing ball with the girls in the back garden. He was laughing and saying it wasn’t fair for the girls to throw the ball by using their minds. He’d pretended to read a rule book that clearly stated that “no hands” was illegal. The three of them had ended by tumbling down and rolling on the grass.

  But even in her happy memory she saw the shadows that always haunted Adam’s eyes. No matter how happy he was, there was always in his aura and in his eyes what had been done to him as a child.

  And then there was Boadicea, his sister. She would never be so-called normal. She’d been raised by a truly evil woman, and as a result, she’d never fit into society. Darci’s heart would ache when Bo went with them to a mall or to a movie. Bo only felt at home when there were people around her who she knew and loved and trusted.

  As they left the town behind them, Darci’s thoughts grew more melancholy. Jack had found love, so he wanted to stay with that love. It was easy for Darci to tell him he had to leave, but she wondered what she’d do if the tables were turned. What would she want to do if she found Adam here in this time?

  “I’d—” she said aloud, then said no more, because Lavender raised the horse whip, yelled “hee-yah!” and the animals took off. Darci was thrown back against the seat and Jack would have fallen onto the road if he hadn’t managed to grab the side of the seat.

  “Lavender!” Jack shouted but was answered by her laugh.

  Darci, trying to stay upright as she bounced along, watched as Jack struggled with himself. The nineteenth-century John Marshall inside of him seemed to want to stop Lavender’s wild driving, but the twenty-first-century Jack was loving it.

  Jack won. He gave a yell, threw his hat to the ground, pulled off his tight jacket, tossed it back to Darci, then unbuttoned his shirt halfway down his chest.

  As Darci banged from one side of the carriage to the other, she knew she’d never seen a more beautiful couple in her life. And she also knew that if she was going to get Jack to leave, she was going to have to use some very powerful magic.

  Chapter Eleven

  “YES, I AGREED,” LAVENDER SAID SLOWLY AND firmly, “but that was before I knew that you wanted me to go to a haunted house.” She was on the driver’s seat of the buggy and they were on the outskirts of Drayton Falls, but she was refusing to go any farther.

  “You don’t have to go in,” Darci said patiently. “I will go in. You can stay here in the buggy and kiss Jack for an hour or so.”

  Lavender looked at Darci with narrowed eyes. “You’ve changed, you know that?”

  “Changed from what?” Darci asked, her voice rising. “What was I before today?”

  Jack put his hand on Lavender’s shoulder and turned her around. “Sweetheart,” he said soothingly, “Darci needs to…” He gave Darci a look that said he needed help in coming up with a reason why she had to go into a haunted house.

  “Tell me about the house,” Darci said, trying to get control of her emotions. She needed Lavender so she couldn’t afford to anger her. Lavender knew where the house was and could save them a lot of time by just taking them there. Ever since her first encounter with Connecticut, Darci didn’t trust the place, so she didn’t want to have to go knocking on doors and asking directions. “I want to know what happened to make the house haunted.”

  Lavender seemed to relax as Jack held her hand and caressed it. “A man and his wife and their two young children lived there. It’s an old, old house, one of the first to be built in the state. I think it had something to do with the Revolutionary War, but I’m not sure what. It’s been in the Drayton family for a long time. They came from England and somehow kept the land no matter what happened.”

  She glanced at Jack. “All right, I’m hurrying. Old Mr. Drayton died when I was a girl and that left young Mr. Drayton as the heir to it all. When he didn’t get married right away, my mother used to say she hoped he’d wait for me. But he didn’t.”

  When Lavender looked at Jack, he lifted her hand, kissed it, and she said, “I’m glad he didn’t wait.”

  “But he did marry?” Darci asked.

  “Yes. He went away for a few years and returned with a wife from somewhere else. They moved into the old house and right away had two children. I didn’t know them as they’re quite rich. Not our set.”

  “What happened to her?” Darci asked.

  “It was all anyone could talk about for months. It seems that she just dropped dead one day. I heard that she was in her garden and just fell down. She was dead instantly. Her husband shut himself in his room for weeks and left the care of his children to the nanny. When he finally left his room, he moved to the other side of the town and locked his old house up.”

  “So he didn’t move because of a ghost?” Darci asked.

  “Oh no. In fact, my mother told me that Mr. Drayton refused to believe that there was a ghost. I heard that he yells at anyone who says there is a ghost. But everyone within a hundred miles has heard the stories of the poor woman. She’s been seen in windows and in the garden and walking in front of the house. It isn’t just one person who’s seen her but dozens. I heard a story that a bunch of boys tried to break into the house one night and they ran out so terrified that one of them never recovered his mind.”

  “Lavender, please take me to this house,” Darci said softly, her voice pleading. “If you don’t I’ll go into the nearest liquor establishment and ask the men in there.”

  “You wouldn’t,” Lavender said, aghast.

  “She would,” Jack said, “so I really think you should take us there. We’ll leave Darci there, then you and I will—”

  “You would leave your own sister in a haunted house?” Lavender sounded outraged. “You’d leave her to the mercy of the spirits? What kind of man are you?”

  “I wouldn’t marry a coward like him,” Darci said.

  “I’d call the wedding off right now.”

  Jack gave Darci a look to tell her that he was going to happily wring her neck the moment they were alone. “All right, I’m outnumbered,” Jack said. “Take us to the house and I’ll…guard the entr