Ghost Walk (19 page)

“A
bit?”  She repeated skeptically.  “Is that your way of
not
telling me
about your sleazy assignations in the garden?”

“Everything
that happened before I met you becomes a bit of a blur.”  He explained piously.

Grace’s
mouth twitched.  “That’s a good line.”  She stepped over the chain barricade
and moved down the maze’s left corridor.  “Let’s try this direction.  Keep your
eyes open.”

“For
what?”

“Something
that was around when Anabel was here.  Something that wouldn’t have changed.”  For
a woman who’d nearly hyperventilated at the Wentworth’s house, she seemed fine
with entering the garden without permission to find a blood-soaked crime scene.
 Probably because she’d forgotten she was trying to fit in with “normal”
society.

Grace
was kidding herself if she thought she could be anything but brilliant and brave
and bursting with enchantment.  Her insistence on being “normal” was like a
butterfly wanting to cut off its wings and turn back into a caterpillar.  You
couldn’t suppress magic like Grace possessed.  The fearless spirit and the love
of adventure.  Underneath that uptight exterior, the woman had the soul of a
pirate.  No doubt, her living, breathing, husband-materially Partner was aching
to show her how much fun that could be.

Just
the idea of it made Jamie crazy.

What
the fuck was he going to do?

Grace’s
camera was looped around her neck.  She adjusted the setting to something
called “IR” and snapped a picture of a cupid statue.  The image that popped up
on screen looked… strange.  The colors were all wrong.  The plants showed up as
white and the sky glowed orangey-pink.

“Your
camera will show us something?”  He asked.  Focusing on the past seemed far
easier than thinking about the future.

She
nodded and kept walking.  “Infrared lens can detect blood that’s been painted
over.”

“Like
magic.”

She
shot him a quick look.  “It’s
not
magic, Jamie.  It’s science.”

“Not
much of a difference, if you ask me.  They both make impossible things into
reality.”  No wonder she missed her forensic job.  Grace’s blood cried out for
enchantment and investigating crime gave it to her.  “Speaking of which, I
never did get a chance to ask you… What’s the
other
spell you can cast?”

“What?”

“Yesterday,
when Robert attacked you, you said you only knew two spells.  One was for
mensural cramps.  What’s the second?”

Grace
hesitated.  “The Rivera Doomsday Spell.”  She finally muttered.

“Doomsday
Spell?  Well, that sounds quite promising.  What does it do?”

Grace
gave a superior sniff.  “I don’t ever plan to use it, so it doesn’t matter.” 
She took another picture, this time of an arrangement of decorative rocks. 
“Darn it.”  She looked back at the map and picked another path, clearly not
willing to discuss magic.  “Okay, so let’s pretend you’re Anabel Maxwell.  You’re
at a party, at night, playing in the hedge maze with someone.  Is there
anything particular you might have done in here?”

He
arched a brow at her.

“…
Besides
the obvious.”

Jamie
chuckled at her prim tone.  The woman never failed to delight him.  “It doesn’t
much seem like Anabel to be in the hedge maze, a’tall.”  He told her.  “She
wasn’t a fun-loving lass, like Lucinda.  A man would have to do some fast talking
to have her risking her reputation for some frolic in the gardens.  She must
have known him quite well.”

Grace
mulled that over.  “Was she dating anyone?  Or
courting
or whatever you
called it in 1789?”

“I
have no idea.  I barely knew the girl.  The whole family were bloody idiots, so
I had no desire to socialize with them.  Her blockheaded brother nearly lost us
the Battle of Yorktown.”  Two centuries had passed and it still annoyed him.

“Gregory
Maxwell was the
Hero
of Yorktown
.  Everyone knows that.”

“Bullshit.”

“You’re
just mad he wrote
Horror in Harrisonburg
, detailing all the reasons you
were the killer.”

Jamie
ignored that, because it was patently impossible that that numb-skull wrote any
book beyond a “How To” guide on general stupidity.  “I was
at
Yorktown,
so I vividly recall that jackass nearly…”

“Shh!” 
Grace suddenly put her finger against her lips to hush him, even though she was
the only one who could hear him anyway.  “I think someone’s coming.”

Jamie
listened for a moment and --sure enough-- he could hear movement in the
hedgerows.  “Stay here.”  He walked through the walls of the maze, scanning up
and down the long, green aisles.  Near the entrance, he spotted two
Harrisonburg employees looking around.

Shit.

“Everything
seems okay to me, Morris.”  One of the guys said.  He was college-aged, with a
bad goatee and a name badge that read “Emmett.”

“I’m
telling you, I saw somebody come in here.”  The boy named Morris was about the
same age, with equally atrocious facial hair.  His wide hazel eyes were darting
around.  “It was a pretty woman in an old-fashion dress, just wallllking into
the maaaaze.”  His voice lilted across the words, stretching out the syllables
so they had the spooky cadence of a narrator from an old B movie.  “She was
talking to someone who wasn’t there.  Like maybe she didn’t know she was dead
or something.”

Jamie
squinted at him.  “What the bloody hell…?”

“You
spend too much time reading at those dumb paranormal sites.”  Emmett opinioned,
trying to sound braver than he looked.  “We need to check out the pathways and
make sure it wasn’t some vandal or a lost kid or something.”  …But he didn’t
venture any deeper into the labyrinth.

Neither
did Morris, who was equal parts excited and scared.  “It wasn’t a frigging kid,
Emmett!”  He whispered fiercely.  “I think it was really
her
.  Anabel Maxwell
has come to haunt the spot where she died.  Shit like this happens all the time! 
I
told
you she was real!”

Jamie
smiled in delight and ducked back through the hedgerows, returning to the spot
where he’d left Grace.  Phasing through solid matter was one of the small perks
of being incorporeal.  It only took him a moment to cheat his way through
several hundred feet of maze.  “Well, good news and bad news.”  He told her,
calmly.  “Bad news:  Two of your fellow tour guides are poking about in here.”

She
paled.  “Oh no!  How am I supposed to find any blood evidence if I’m locked in
a jail cell for trespassing?”

“Which
brings us to the good news… They think you’re a ghost.”

Grace
blinked.  “Come again?”

“They
think you’re Anabel, haunting the scene of the crime.”

“You’ve
got to be kidding me.”  She rolled her eyes like the very idea was ludicrous. 
“Because of the stupid dress?  Half the people in Harrisonburg wear costumes!  I
swear, it’s like this town goes out of its way to hire idiots.”

Jamie
arched a brow at her derision.  “Ghosts are such a farfetched notion, then?”

“Oh
shut up.”

He
chuckled.  The whole situation had perked him up immensely.  “I wouldn’t worry
much about the boys.  They seem a bit terrified of you, lass.”

“Wonderful. 
If they get too close, I’ll just yell ‘boo!’”  She hissed.  “For real, what are
we going to do?”

“I
find that belittling someone’s tour-guiding techniques is the best way for a
ghost to be noticed.”

Grace
made a face.  “I’m glad you’re finding this so funny.”

“Aye,
I really am.”

She
deliberately turned on her heel and headed away from him, down another twisty
row of vegetation.  “Just keep an eye on them and make sure they don’t find
me.  I’m going this way.”  She consulted the map again.  “At least, I
think
I am.”

“Following
that blasted thing, the only place you’re going is ‘round and ‘round and ‘round
in circles.”

“We’re
not
going ‘round and ‘round and ‘round in circles.  It just
seems
that way, because everything is all green and leafy.”

“And
because we’ve made a loop.”  He said dryly.  “We’re standing in the same spot
we were ten minutes ago.”

She
looked around with a perplexed frown.  “Are you sure?”

“Very.”

Grace
kept walking, just to spite him.  “Well, the map says that we need to take this
path, so I’m…”  She broke off mid-word, realizing that Ned’s useless
instructions had led them right into a dead end.

Jamie
snorted in amusement.  “At this rate, you
will
wind up a ghost in here. 
The teenage tours guide will find your poor skeleton, miles from the entrance
and still clutching that so-called ‘map’ in your wee bony hand.”

“You
can stop talking now.”  Grace backtracked, a frustrated expression on her
face.  “Go check to see where they are.  I don’t want to be arrested today.”

Jamie
blew her a kiss and headed off to spy on the other guides again.  As funny as
the whole thing was, he was
slightly
concerned about the boys being
alone in the maze with Grace.  They seemed harmless enough, but, after
yesterday, he was anxious about the intentions of other men.  He was useless in
a fight and there were only so many times a menstrual cramp spell would work. 
It would be better for everyone if they just went away.

When
he rejoined the two of them, they were approximately three feet farther down
one of the pathways, still bickering about the best course of action.

“We
should call Anita down here to deal with it.”  Morris was arguing.  “That
fascist bitch is head of the tour guides.  Fuck knows, she tells us enough that
she’s
the boss. 
She
should be the one to deal with emergencies,
right?”

Apparently,
he was no fan of Grace’s employer either.  That raised Jamie’s opinion of the
boy.  He wasn’t forgetting how unkind Anita had been to Grace when she was
wounded.  The girl really did need a new job.  And Anita needed a good
ass-kicking.

“And
let her get all the credit?”  Emmett shot back, fiddling with the camera app on
his phone.  “What if this is a real ghost, huh?  If we could get a picture of
it, do you know how many hits we would get?  We’d be internet
royalty!
 
You just want to hand that kind of fame over to Ms. Beauregard-Smythe?”  He
scoffed at the very idea.  “What the hell would she even
do
with it?  ”

Morris
made a considering face, conceding the point.  “She is --like--
way
old.”

“Old? 
She’s probably still on fucking MySpace!  Screw that ancient hag.”  Emmett held
up his phone.  “If we get a few good shots of something supernatural, we can
spend the rest of the summer at the beach, drinking PBR and talking to hot
chicks.”

Jamie
admired the boys’ goals, but enough was enough.  He didn’t want potentially dangerous
men alone with Grace, he didn’t want her worried about getting caught
trespassing in the maze, and he certainly didn’t that harridan Anita showing up
to harass her.

“Grace,
my love?”  He shouted.  “Remember when you said you could yell “Boo!” and scare
the boys away?  That might not be such a terrible idea.  They want to see a
ghost, so perhaps we should give them one.”

She
understood what he meant without asking for further details.  It was one of the
reasons he loved her.  Leaves began to rustle in an eerie wave and Grace gave a
low moan of ghostly torment that was really quite impressive.  Whether she
liked it or not, spending her childhood in a haunted house had definitely
rubbed off on the girl.  It was quite a creepy little show.

Emmett
and Morris froze.  All thoughts of finding fortune and glory on the internet
faded in the face of a possible
actual
ghost.  In unison, they edged
backwards, towards the exit.

“Did
you hear that?”  Emmett demanded.

Morris
frantically bobbed his head.

“Little
more, lass.”  Jamie called, grinning widely.

She
obliged by screaming the most bloodcurdling scream ever screamed.  It sounded
like she was being attacked by a herd of rapid porcupines… while simultaneously
being burned alive with a million blowtorches… at the dentist…   in hell.  Even
Jamie cringed at the god-awful noise.  It bloody brilliant!

Emmett
and Morris took off running.  They tripped all over each other, dashing out of
the maze, never to return.  Not even the promise of work/study credits was going
to lure them back to their jobs after Grace’s performance.  No real ghost could
have done half as good a job.

Jesus,
Mary, and Joseph, how had he lasted two and a half centuries without this beautiful,
odd-duck of a woman?

“That
did the trick.”  He was still laughing uproariously as he moved back to her
side.  She’d found her way into a new row of the maze, which had to have been
the work of pure luck.  Ned’s map really was leading them in circles.  “Those
lads are quite scarred for life.  You should be proud.”