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  Darci narrowed her eyes at him. “We can do without Jack the Smart Alec, that jerk I met in Greg’s office.”

  “He’s still in here, along with John Marshall. It’s getting a little crowded, though. There’s the haunted Jack who hates his father, the Jack who’s in love with Lavender, and John who’s dull and boring but who is also desperately in love with Lavender.” He looked at Darci. “You know, it’s odd about Lavender calling Marshall dull. He’s inside me and he doesn’t feel dull at all. In fact, he’s done some pretty rowdy things.”

  “Maybe he’s afraid to let her see that side of him. Maybe he thinks Lavender’s a woman of such virtue that all she wants to do is have tea parties. I doubt if he’d believe that she wanted to dance half naked in front of a bunch of miners.”

  Jack gave a one-sided grin. “You should have seen her. She was magnificent. If I didn’t know better I would have thought she was Arabic. I tell you that I got so jealous of those men looking at her that I…I…” He rubbed his palms on his trouser’s legs.

  “You are John and John is you,” Darci said. “You’re separated by a few hundred years but you’re the same.”

  “Maybe not. Maybe I’m just occupying his body. And keeping it. I’m not leaving Lavender.”

  Darci put her fingertips to her temples. “This thinking is hard work,” she said. “It’s much easier to go into a trance and come out with the answer.” When she looked at Jack, he was shaking his head in disbelief, but she ignored him. “What if the spirit lied to us and she wasn’t Lavender Shay? Maybe she wanted to be Lavey so much she thought she was her. What if she thought you were going to marry her? Maybe she thought that if she pushed Lavey off a building you’d marry her instead.”

  “Maybe John did kill Lavey,” Jack said quietly.

  “Remember that the paper said he married someone else after Lavey’s death.”

  “Or maybe he didn’t know that Lavender had been murdered. Do you think he married the murderer? Okay, what we need to know first is who John Marshall had been to bed with.”

  At that, Jack became conspicuously silent.

  “What is it that you don’t want to tell me?”

  Jack ran his hand along the mantel. “I told you that neither John nor I were saints or angels. Only I had a reason for what I did, while he—”

  “Yeah, I know,” Darci said impatiently. “You were the poor little rich boy who didn’t get enough love. You got enough food and you had a best friend and, oh yeah, you had his parents who loved you madly, but your daddy didn’t praise you enough, so you turned to drugs and bad ways.”

  “How has anyone let you live this long?” Jack said with clenched teeth. He stared at Darci and she stared back.

  “Okay,” Jack said at last. “What’s different in John’s case is that it was ‘like father, like son.’ His father likes floozies and his son did, too.”

  “Like you,” Darci said.

  “No, there you’re wrong. I like my women smart and beautiful and talented. I like a woman who gives me a run for my money.” At that, he looked Darci up and down in the manner of the old Jack, but she ignored him.

  “No, I mean, ‘like father, like son.’ You’re just like your father.”

  “I’m what?!” Jack half yelled, then lowered his voice.

  “I’m not at all like my father.”

  “Right,” Darci said, sarcastic. “Let’s see. Your father is cold; you’ve always been cold to people. Your father is obsessed with money; you get upset at the mention of money. Your father has been doing something undercover, evidenced by the items in his secret room, and you do nothing but undercover work. The world thinks your father is a good, kind man but he’s not, and you aren’t what you appear to be, either. So what’s different between you two?”

  Jack’s face was white, and he looked as though he’d been hit with something. His mouth was open, as though trying to get his breath. “You know, I think I liked it better when that angry spirit was hanging around me. Then I was so angry that nothing anyone said got to me.”

  “Who is that angry spirit?” Darci asked. “Who thinks you’re going to marry her? Whose birthday is today and who has a sick father? What woman have you bedded and made her think that there was going to be more?”

  “Not me. John Marshall, remember? I’m the one who had it all and wanted more.”

  “Who have you angered enough that she followed you into the next life—or probably next lives, since it’s been so long. Who has worked to make your life miserable?”

  “Just one woman?”

  At that Darci stood up. “I’m going upstairs to get a couple hours of sleep. You should stay here and think about this.”

  “Okay,” Jack said calmly. “The truth is that I don’t know. I told you that this Marshall character is fading inside me. Or maybe it’s that I’m fading inside myself. Whatever is happening, with every hour I seem to feel him less. Maybe having spent a lifetime surrounded by an angry spirit has made me stronger, or made me more greedy so that I’m taking more than my share. I don’t know. I know that when I woke up in his body, I could feel him and remember what he did, but gradually that’s changed. Now it’s ninety percent me in here and only ten percent him.” He grinned at Darci. “Maybe I should be hypnotized to bring him out.”

  Jack had been making a joke, but as he looked at Darci, his eyes widened. “Can you ride a horse?”

  “Not at all. I fall off the side the minute the creature takes a step. Why do you want me to ride a horse?”

  “This woman you went to, this Simone, the one you’ve tried to keep secret from me. Do you think that she might be able to find out who this person is?”

  “I don’t know. I think she has more power than she thinks she does, but I don’t think she has much.” Darci’s head came up. “Do you think that she might be able to tell us what did happen?”

  “Did, as in hasn’t happened, yet what could happen this afternoon?”

  “Exactly,” Darci said. “You know what I’m wondering? That paper said that Jack married after Lavender died, and he died when his house burned down. Wonder if it was an accident?”

  For a moment, Jack and Darci looked at each other in silence.

  “I’m going to pack my Victorian clothes,” she said.

  “I don’t want to shock anyone in my plus fours. While I’m packing, I want you to go to Adam and get the key and the crucifix, and ask him if we can borrow a horse. Can you ride a fast horse?”

  “I can ride a bucking bronco if I have to. What crucifix?”

  “I’ll tell you on the way to Simone’s house—if I can find it in the dark. How long before it’s daylight?”

  “No more than three hours, I’d think.”

  “What do we do about Lavender?” Darci asked.

  “How about if we leave her here under Drayton’s care? Think he can guard her for us?”

  “I think he can do anything,” Darci said, then saw Jack’s look of speculation. “Don’t start making up things.”

  “I want you to tell me everything that happened tonight.” He gave a little grin. “Maybe you’ll want to stay here, too. Maybe there’ll be a double wedding this afternoon.”

  “No,” Darci said softly. “If at all possible, I’m going home to my family.”

  “You’ll probably get there in another hundred and some years.” Jack was grinning, laughing, but she wasn’t. She wasn’t going to tell him what Simone had said about Darci having only one life and needing to return to the twenty-first century. Nor was she going to tell him that Simone had told her that if a spirit had power, it always had power. When she’d been with Adam under that man’s bed, she’d felt the vibrations between the two objects. Maybe some of her power was coming back to her. Or being released, she thought with a grimace. Maybe whoever had hidden her power was beginning to release it.

  She did, however, tell him in detail about the hiding place where Tom was going to put the magic objects. Jack listened and nodded, liking her plan. “