Always Read online

  “I’m sorry, but I don’t know you,” Jack said formally. “At least I don’t think I do. You see, I have lost my memory.”

  Darci had to keep from laughing with pleasure at Jack’s game. She’d been told that he was excellent as an undercover FBI agent, but she hadn’t guessed how good.

  “My darling,” Chrissy said, stroking Jack’s face. “My own true love. You don’t recognize me?”

  “No, but you’re very beautiful.”

  Chrissy’s face turned pink with pleasure. “I am Lavender Shay, and you asked me to marry you six months ago.”

  “Did you get married?” Darci asked.

  Lavender, in Chrissy’s body, turned eyes full of hatred onto Darci. “Who is this?” she hissed.

  “A relative,” Jack said quickly. “My sister. Don’t you remember her?”

  Lavender stepped back, looked at Darci for a moment, then glanced about the room. “I do not seem to remember any of this. Where are we? Why did you not return to me?”

  “I told you, I lost my memory,” Jack said, reaching out his hands to her. “Tell me where we live and when.”

  “When we live?” There was doubt in her voice. “You said you would love me forever but you didn’t. You don’t even remember me now. You have betrayed me yet again.” She was backing away from him, getting closer to the bookcase where Jack could see the outline of that Devlin. He was a mere blob now, as though he were listening so hard that he couldn’t be bothered to form himself into a shape.

  “I remember my love for you,” Jack said quickly.

  “The wedding,” Darci whispered. “Tell her of the wedding.” She’d tried to talk to Jack with her mind, but hadn’t been able to. With this spirit in a human body, the mind connection was broken.

  “What wedding?” Jack shot back as he said, “Your dress. Lace. I remember a lot of lace.”

  Lavender smiled at him, her eyes softening. “You must have peeked.”

  “It’s just that I know you so well. You were made to wear lace. Did you decide on the cake?”

  “No chocolate, you naughty boy,” Lavender said coquettishly, moving toward him again.

  “And what about our honeymoon?”

  She stopped walking. “You know that will have to wait as Father is so ill.”

  “Where? When?” Darci whispered.

  Lavender turned angry eyes on Darci. “Who are you? Why do you speak?”

  “She’s to be your bridesmaid, remember?” Jack said, his voice soothing. He extended his hands to take hers, but instead she flung her arms around his neck.

  “It’s been so long,” she said, her lips on his neck. “So very, very long. When you left Camwell I thought I would die.”

  “Camwell!” Darci said, in spite of her intention to be silent.

  “Darling,” Jack said, running his hands down the sides of her body, “please set a date for our wedding.”

  “But it is set,” she said suspiciously, pulling back to look at him.

  “I’m a man. How can I remember dates?” he said in such a charming way that she smiled at him.

  “The twelfth of June, of course. My birthday.”

  “And which year? This one or next?”

  “This one. 1843. You are a silly goose.” Pausing, she put her hand to her head. “Something is hurting me. I can’t think clearly. It’s after the twelfth, but we didn’t marry, did we? You weren’t there.”

  She was standing back now, out of reach of Jack. Quickly, she turned to Darci and her face distorted in rage. “You. You stopped him.”

  Only Jack’s quick reflexes kept Chrissy/Lavender from leaping onto Darci. In a replay of that morning, Darci once again had hands around her throat.

  Chapter Six

  “ARE YOU ALL RIGHT?” JACK ASKED.

  Slowly, Darci turned her head. In a reversal of roles, she was now lying on J. Barrett Hallbrooke’s bed and Jack was holding a cold washcloth to her forehead.

  “You and your friends,” Darci said through a bruised throat. “Is she gone?”

  “Yeah. He…it…sent her back. I guess. I pulled Chrissy off of you, and she went limp for a while, but then she picked up her gloves and went back to cleaning. All in all, I think I’d rather get shot at than this.”

  Darci didn’t speak for a moment as she closed her eyes and tried to swallow.

  “I think we should get you to a doctor.”

  “No,” Darci whispered. “Where is she?”

  “He did something with her.” Jack didn’t turn but he nodded toward the bookcase and Devlin, who had shaped himself into a sleeping baby.

  “He’s put her asleep,” Darci said, moving to sit up in bed. “I think we need to try to find out who she is and why you missed the wedding. I hope you were killed and that you didn’t run off with some other woman. Maybe if we show that spirit evidence of your death she’ll forgive you.”

  “Evidence of my death,” Jack said. “We’ll show a ghost that I’m dead? Tell me, Darci Montgomery, do you live like this all the time?” He held the bedroom door open for her.

  “No, only since my husband and sister-in-law disappeared has my life been like this.”

  He wanted to ask her questions but her manner didn’t allow him to. Always, there was a kind of dignity about her that made him keep his distance.

  “That’s it,” Jack said, leaning back in his father’s leather office chair. He and Darci had just spent the last several hours on the Internet and on the telephone. It was after midnight now and they were both exhausted—but they’d found out what they wanted to know.

  “That poor girl,” Darci said, stretched out on the leather couch. On the coffee table were the remnants of the huge meal Jack’s relatives had prepared for them.

  It had taken a lot of digging and Darci had had to hex a couple of people into divulging some unlisted phone numbers, but they’d at last found Miss Lavender Shay.

  She had grown up in Camwell, Connecticut, in the 1840s, the only child of a rich businessman and his wife.

  Lavender had fallen in love with a boy she’d known all her life, a Mr. John Marshall the third, the only child of a rich, widowed landowner. As far as the town was concerned, it was the match of the century, and everyone had been looking forward to the festivities of their wedding.

  But on the day of her wedding, Lavender had put on her wedding dress, climbed the stairs to the roof of her house, and jumped off.

  The day of joy had turned into a day of mourning.

  Darci and Jack had read a single sentence about the suicide in a book about Connecticut ghosts, but could find nothing else anywhere. But after a call to the Camwell library—“You call,” Darci had said. “They’ll remember me”—they’d found out that the house where Lavender had lived and died was still there, as were some of her family’s descendants.

  Darci watched Jack use a seductive voice—while she used what she’d always called her True Persuasion—to get Lavender’s descendants to talk to him. Why? was what they wanted to know. Was Lavender being forced into the marriage? Was the groom a despicable person? Or had he jilted her? Maybe he’d been killed and Lavender couldn’t bear to live without him.

  “How the hell would I know?” a sleepy man said to Jack. “That old ghost story happened over a hundred and fifty years ago.”

  “Is there a town historian? Anyone who would know what happened?” Jack had asked the man, a descendant of Lavender’s family.

  “The only thing this town cares about are witches. Ever since that witch thing a few years back…you hear of that?”

  “Yeah,” Jack said, looking at Darci, who turned away. “I heard about it.”

  “Nobody here’s interested in a girl that threw herself off a roof a hundred years ago. People in this town only care about witches. Tourists come here wanting to see what’s left of the tunnels. And downtown now has three so-called witchcraft stores.”

  Darci was concentrating, trying to send a message to the man to reveal what he knew.