Ghost Walk (6 page)

Betrayal
roared through her as she watched Robert happily cavorting with the pizza
girl.  She’d been bored out of her mind for sixth months, because this son of a
bitch was supposed to be
normal
.  The fact that he’d deceived her about
his staid monotony bothered her a lot more than his cheating.

Which
really did sort of “say much about her relationship,” didn’t it?

Crap. 
This was just what she didn’t need today.  Her head hurt, she was seeing ghosts,
and now she was never going to be able to order pizza again without thinking of
this awkward scene.  She seriously needed to go home and get drunk.

The
woman on the floor finally noticed Grace was there.  She gave a panicked yelp,
beating on Robert’s back and shoving him away.  “Your fucking girlfriend’s
here!”  She squealed, trying to cover herself.  “I thought you said she wasn’t
coming over tonight!”

Robert
jolted up, looking around with bulging eyes.  His dark hair was mussed, his
doughy face shiny and red.  “Grace!”  He groped for his pants.  “Jesus!  What
are you doing here?!”

“It’s
Friday.”  She said in a remarkably even voice, all things considered.  “We
always meet on Friday.”

“It’s
Thursday!
”  Robert sounded like
he
was somehow the injured party.

“Oh.” 
Grace looked over at Jamie, her mind buzzing.  “I thought it was Friday.”

“Does
it bloody matter what day of the week it is?”  He shot back.  “The man is
bedding another wench and that’s all you’ve to say?”

“Yeah. 
Good point.  I should… go.”  At a loss for what else to do, she turned back
towards the door.  “I’m going to go now.”

“Grace!” 
Robert shouted, struggling into his Dockers.  “Wait!”

“You’re
just
leaving? 
Without even raising your voice?”  Jamie frowned like he
couldn’t understand that decision.  “Sweet Jesus, how did a timid little thing
like you even get mixed up with such a man?  If you can’t take care of
yourself, someone should be watching out for your interests.  Perhaps that’s
why you’ve been given to me.”

Timid?
 
Grace shot him a glare.  “I’m not timid and I wasn’t
given
to you.”

“Oh,
it’s bloody clear you’re mine now.”  He argued as if she was being totally
unreasonable.  “Why else could you see me?  How else could you even begin to
explain it?  You belong to me as surely as I’m standing here.”

“Except
you’re
not
standing there.”  Grace retorted, ignoring his territorial
words.  “…And I’m taking care of myself just fine.”  She tacked on a little
belatedly.

“Well,
prove it, then.  Go over there and punch the son of a bitch.”

“What
good would that do?”

“T’would
make him bleed!  Which the wanker fucking
deserves
.”

He
probably did, but Grace never wanted to see blood again.  Shaking her head, she
headed outside with Jamie hot on her tail.  “I just want to
go
.”  She
insisted quietly.

Jamie
made a frustrated sound.  “Lass, confrontation is good for the soul.  It’s
unhealthy to repress your feelings.  Just beat him about the head and you’ll be
shocked at how much better you feel.”

“Grace!” 
Robert fastened his belt, dashing across the lawn after her.  “Darling, this
was
nothing
.  I swear.  The woman means
nothing
to me.  A passing
diversion.”  He made a frustrated sound when she kept walking and reached out
to seize her arm.  “Listen to me, damn it!”  He gave her an impatient shake.

Jamie’s
expression grew even darker.  “That wanker is putting his hands on you!”

Grace
tried to pry herself free, but Robert wasn’t letting go.

“I
wouldn’t have even looked twice at her, if you weren’t semi-frigid.”  Robert
continued, his fingers digging into her flesh.  “I have needs, you know.  Sometimes
I have to fulfil them with a cheap slut, but that pizza-tramp has nothing to do
with us.”

There
was evidently no in-between for Robert: Women were either semi-frigid or
pizza-tramps.  And in that sexist dichotomy, it seemed like Grace was cast as
the boring, icy, un-fun one.

He
really was a wanker.

“Son
of a
bitch
.”  Jamie was still seething about Robert manhandling her.  If
he could’ve touched anything, there would’ve been a whole lot of bloodshed on
the professionally lawn-serviced lawn.  “Grace, leave him
now
.”

Like
she wasn’t trying.  Grace finally jerked herself free of Robert’s painful grip and
kept heading for her car.

“But,
my heart belongs to
you
.”  Robert went passionately, still not taking
the hint.  He made another grab for her and Jamie all but snarled at him. 
Grace evaded his grasp, walking faster.  “You know that.  We’re alike, you and
I.  Made for each other.  All my friends say so.  Don’t spoil everything with
some juvenile fit of jealousy.”

“Donea
listen to a
word
he says.”  Jamie warned, slanting Robert a deadly look. 
“If you even
think
of forgiving such a man, I will bloody well lose my
mind.”

Grace
tuned them both out and dug her keys from her purse.  Until that moment she
didn’t realize how little Robert mattered to her.  Her family had tried to warn
her that he wasn’t her true Partner, but she hadn’t listened.

Except,
on some level, she
had
.

She’d
never given Robert everything inside of her, because she’d never felt safe with
him.  Grace had never felt safe with
anyone
.  Some part of her always
held back.

Now
she was angry and hurt, but her heart wasn’t breaking.  She wouldn’t forgive
him, so she didn’t see the need to yell or cry.  There was simply no reason
to.  He cheated on her and now it was over.  Like flipping a light switch, her
tepid feelings for him snapped off forever.  Part of his appeal had always been
how little he affected her.  Grace could see that now.

She
had
known that he wasn’t a gentleman.

Jamie’s
disapproval was making her feel inadequate, though.  He clearly wanted her to
have a huge, dramatic scene.  Given the fact that he had no problem saying
every thought in his invisible head, it was no wonder he couldn’t understand
her reticence.  But, the last time she’d shared all her thoughts, she’d been
locked in a padded cell for a week.  Grace never,
ever
wanted to go back
into that hospital.  Losing control, again…  
No
.  Just the idea panicked
her.

Peaceful
green cornfields.

Peaceful
green cornfields.

Peaceful
green cornfields.

Robert
smoothed down his dark hair, casting a furtive look around.  It looked like the
pizza girl had used clumps of it as handles, so it stuck out in wild spikes.  God
only knew what the neighbors would think.  “And really this wouldn’t have even
happened if you hadn’t mixed up the dates, Grace.  Honestly, how could you not
know it was Thursday?”

“You’re
lucky I’m a ghost, ya wanker. 
She
might not want to punch you, but I
sure as hell would.”  Jamie glowered down at her.  “Are you
really
going
to let him get away with this?”

Grace
refused
to care about his obvious disappointment in her.  Absolutely
refused.  “I don’t like confrontations.”  She muttered.

“You
donea like confrontations?”  He echoed incredulously.  “How can you not like
confrontations?”

“I
just
don’t
, okay?”

No,
it clearly wasn’t okay with him.  “Where’s your spirit, lass?”  He asked in a
confused and troubled voice.  Someone so extroverted would never know how scary
it was for her to feel the chaos of heightened emotions.  To fear that saying
too much would unravel everything in her life again.

Grace
unlocked the driver’s side door.  “I lost my spirit last year, along with
everything else.”  She muttered.  “I burned out.”

“You
burned out?  What does that…?”  Jamie stopped short.  “Wait.”  His patriot blue
eyes flashed over to hers, suddenly realizing she was acknowledging his
existence.  “You’re speaking to me!”  His handsome face lit with hope.  “You’re
believing I’m a real then?”

“No. 
But, I know I’m not crazy and that’s enough for the moment.  If I was crazy,
this would all make more sense.”

“What?” 
Robert frowned, thinking she was talking to him.  “Are you feeling alright, Grace?” 
He didn’t bother to wait for a response, because he didn’t care.  “Look, I’ll
need to get dressed, if we’re going somewhere.  Since you’re determined to be
so childish about this, I’m willing to spend all evening making amends, but I
can’t be seen in public without a shirt and tie.”

“Relax,
Robert. 
You’re
staying here with Miss Peperoni. 
I’m
the one
leaving and I’m not coming back.”

“Thank
bleeding Christ.”  Jamie crossed himself in relief.  “
Finally
she sees
reason.  Maybe there’s some hope for the woman, yet.”

Robert
wasn’t nearly so thrilled by the news of their break up.  “But, darling…”

Grace
cut him off.  “I don’t think we’re made for each other, Robert.  In fact, I
think I’ve been kidding myself for the past year.  You see, I’ve just realized
something very important.”  She climbed into the car and started the ignition,
leaning forward to glower at him out the passenger’s window.  “I suck at being
normal.”

June 21, 1789-  JMR is quite the handsomest man in
town.  He’s also charming, energetic in his love-making, and willing to spend
his gold on pretty things.  Such a shame he isn’t in some respectable trade or
I’d convince him to marry me, regardless of what Mother and Father had to say.

But
no respectable girl can have her good name linked to a pirate!

From
the Journal of Miss Lucinda Wentworth

For
the first time since he died, things were looking up.

Jamie
smiled at Grace, hoping he appeared as nonthreatening as a specter could
possibly
appear.  The girl was a jumpy little thing.  He didn’t want to scare her
into ignoring him again.  “Feeling better?”

“Well,
I’m still seeing ghosts, so I’m certainly not doing great
.
”  Grace sat
across from him in an overstuffed floral arm chair, drinking wine straight from
the bottle, and eating ice cream for dinner.  (Low fat vanilla, of course.  The
girl truly needed to expand her horizons.)  A patchwork mountain of pillows was
piled around her.  They matched the rest of her mix-matched furnishings.  “God,
this is just the worst night of my life.”  She muttered and drank some more
wine.  “Which is
really
frigging saying something.”

“You’re
well rid of such a man, lass.”  Jamie detested her ex-boyfriend with a passion
he’d once reserved for Red Coats.  The bastard had tried to steal what was
rightfully Jamie’s and had not even treated her well.  He wouldn’t soon forget
the sight of the man shaking Grace, his hand leaving angry red marks on her
arm.  Back in his day, Jamie would have run the wanker through with a sword.  “That
Robert is a waste…”

“Oh
who cares about him?”  She interrupted.  “Jesus, Robert’s the least of my
problems.  I watched
Grey’s Anatomy
.  Seeing ghosts?  It usually means a
brain tumor.”  Grace’s dark curls were drawn up in a messy topknot and a few
more tendrils fell around her shoulders as she shook her head.  “I can’t deal
with a brain tumor.  I don’t even have health insurance anymore.”  She reached
up to rub her forehead.  “Darn it, I cried through that whole season.”

“You
donea have a brain tumor.”

“That’s
probably
just
what a brain tumor would say.”  Grace flashed him an
impatient glare.  “Look, I need some time to think, alright?  Why don’t you go
warn someone the British are coming or something?  Either that or just shut up
for once.”

At
least she was looking at him now.  Jamie counted that as progress.  “Of course.” 
He agreed.  He would have agreed to whatever she asked, at this point.  Getting
the woman to like him was of paramount importance.

“Good. 
Because, if you’re not a brain tumor, then you’re real.  I think that might
even be worse.”

“There
was a time in my life when I’d take a pretty girl home and she like
everything
I had to say.”  He told her in his most charming tone.

Grace
didn’t look charmed.  “She must’ve been even drunker than I am to fall for your
crap.”  She muttered and ate a spoonful or her ordinary-flavored ice cream.  “And
you’re
still
talking to me.  I
told
you, it freaks me out when
you talk to me.  At least wait until I finish the whole bottle.”

“I
apologize.  I’ll wait for you to become inebriated.”

“Good.” 
Grace nodded firmly and washed down her ice cream with some more wine.  Then
she hesitated.  “I don’t normally approve of excessive drinking, you know.”  She
tacked on in a prissy tone.  “Don’t think I do this kind of thing all the time. 
I’m a very moral person.”

Jamie
nearly grinned.  “Oh, I donea doubt that.”

“Uptight”
was the modern word for her condition, if he wasn’t mistaken.  He’d yet to hear
her mummer so much as a mild oath and she drank wine with her pinkie extended. 
The woman might as well wear a sign declaring herself a Sunday school teacher. 
She’d also changed into the most unappealing, matronly bathrobe ever sewn, so
it was a real mystery to him how she managed to be so alluring.

Perhaps,
it was the magic in her blood.

Even
before he became a ghost, Jamie had always believed in the supernatural.  He’d
experienced it himself, growing up in Scotland.  Fairies and spirits flited
through the green hills of his homeland.  They would glow in the dark night,
enchanting him.  As a boy, he used to point them out to his parents.

…Until
he’d realized that not everyone had a kinship with the unseen world

He
learned quickly that it was better to hide his gifts.  To lie about what he
saw.  He even tried to block it out entirely, but it was impossible.  He’d
always felt the magic around him.  Always known things that others didn’t.  His
mother said he was kissed by the fay.  His father said he was cursed by demons. 
Whatever you wanted to call it, Jamie had a twinkle of
knowing
about
him.

And
so did Grace.

There
was a smidgen of the otherworldly about her.  Something that hinted of feminine
mysteries and untapped enchantments.  Something that drew his eye and held it
like no one else ever had.

She
was the woman he’d waited several lifetimes for.  The deepest part of him
recognized her.  Grace was the one.  He knew it with a deep and unshakable
belief that was growing stronger all the time.  If she had been born in his
time, he would have been certain she was his bride.

She
belonged
to Jamie.

The
girl wasn’t beautiful in the glittery, bawdy way that he’d been attracted to in
life.  She was far too thin, and scrubbed free of makeup, and her nails had
been chewed to the quick.  With her upturned nose and petite frame, she looked
a bit like a fay herself.  A repressed, timid little fay.  The woman would
probably faint if a man tried to kiss her.  And she clearly didn’t have much of
a backbone, if her dealings with her harridan boss and dickhead boyfriend were
any indication.  Jamie had always liked strong, flashy women, who knew exactly
what they wanted.

But,
he’d been captivated by Grace from the first moment he’d laid eyes on her.

Almost
like he recognized her.

It
was why he’d switched tour guides and joined Grace’s Ghost Walk instead of
following Nadine like he usually did.  Time stretched on and on and
on
when
you had an eternity to fill.  Jamie spent every night wandering around
Harrisonburg, listening to costumed idiots get history all wrong.  Nadine did
better than most.  She was an elderly lady, who knew how to spin a yarn.  For
nine years, he’d been taking her tours.  It gave him something to do.  When
Jamie saw Grace, though, his standard evening plans with Nadine had been abruptly
cancelled.

That
twinkle of knowing had told him to follow Grace.

That
she was special.

She
was also a bloody
horrible
tour guide.  Grace missed the romance of the
ghost stories, delivering the information like she was lecturing to bored
twelfth graders.  She was uncomfortable under all the attention, uncomfortable
with the Colonial dress, uncomfortable in her own skin.  Jamie had been offering
her advice, because talking to himself was the only way to break the
unrelenting solitude.  He had absolutely no idea that she’d even know he was
there.

No
one else ever had.  Not since 1789.

When
Grace lost her temper and snapped at him, it had been the most wonderful moment
of his life.  And death.  She
saw
him.  For the first time in over two
hundred years somebody
saw
him.  If that didn’t prove this neurotic girl
had magic in her blood, he wasn’t sure what did.

“Overall,
I think you’re taking this quite well.”  He assured her.  “Many people would be
having vapors if they saw a specter.”

“Last
time I had ‘vapors,’ they put me in a straightjacket.”  She muttered dourly.

Jamie
had no idea what that meant.  “A what?”

“Never
mind.”  Grace ate another spoonful of ice cream, apparently forgetting that he
wasn’t supposed to talk to her.  “I come from a family that’s used to weirdness. 
My cousin Faith once tattooed her face because a hibiscus told her to.  This is
probably a lot less freaky than it should be.”

“Fortunate
for me.”

She
grunted.  “So, what’s it like being a ghost?  Is it terrible?  I bet it’s
terrible.”

“It’s
terrible.”

Grace
nodded as if she’d expected as much.  “What’s the worst part?  Never being able
to change out of that outfit?”

Jamie
frowned and glanced down at his ensemble.  It had been the height of fashion
when he died.  “What’s wrong with my outfit?”

Chocolate
brown eyes widened.  “Oh…  Nothing.”  Grace said quickly.  “Nothing, at all.  It’s
very…
bold
.  Colorful.”  She took another gulp of wine and licked a drop
from her lower lip.

The
woman had bloody
perfect
lips.  Lush and pink and delicately shaped. 
She clearly had no damn idea what to do with them, given she was forever
chewing on them and twisting them into frowns, but Jamie could think of at
least a dozen places he wanted to feel that soft, unpainted flesh.  Sadly,
there was no way that would ever happen.

Dying
played hell with a man’s sex life.

Not
being able to touch women was so fucking unsatisfying that he’d given up
voyeurism back in the 19
^th
century.  It was too depressing to watch
what he couldn’t have.  Grace Rivera was making him reconsider that stance.

The
pirate in him wanted to seize every piece of her that he could get.  Jamie had
always been a possessive man.  What he’d stolen, he didn’t give back.  Grace
was
his
now.  Every instinct in his ghostly body wanted to claim her
before some other Robert showed up and tried to steal her away.  His eyes
slipped down to the collar of her robe, already picturing what was underneath.

“Right. 
Um.  So,” she cleared her throat, not even noticing that he was mentally
undressing her, “why are you still here?  Like
on Earth,
I mean.  You’re
not --like-- a vengeful spirit or something, right?  Out to destroy the living,
like in
Poltergeist?
”

“Of
course not.  I couldn’t hurt anyone, even if I wanted to.  I’m not corporeal.” 
He waved a hand through the arm of the hideous chair to prove his point.

Grace
appeared relieved.  “Did you not walk into the light or something?  Like in
Ghost?
” 
She paused.  “That’s a movie.  You know that, right?”

“I
know.  I’ve seen it.”  For a man born before electricity was harnessed, Jamie
had a fairly good knowledge of films and television.  Over the years, the
flickering images had kept him sane.  “And I also saw plenty of lights when I
died.  ...But, only because the mob that killed me carried torches.  Otherwise
things stayed dim and quiet that night.”

And
had remained that way ever since.

If
there was a Heaven, Jamie clearly hadn’t been invited to the party.  No angelic
guides setting him on his new path.  No glowing beams drawing him upward. 
Nothing but Jamie, all alone in an endless pit of time.  He’d been a selfish,
irresponsible bastard in life, so, for several decades, he’d been sure that he
was in purgatory.  That this was all a test or a penance.  As the years passed,
he began to see that it was so much more horrible than that, though.  He wasn’t
being punished.

He’d
simply been forgotten.

Jamie
was forsaken in a misty realm between one plane of existence and the next.  No
one could see him or feel him or hear him.  He didn’t exist.

…Except
he
did
.

He
was
there
, goddamn it.  Trapped and invisible, but
there
.  No
matter how loud he yelled or how hard he tried, he couldn’t get anyone to
notice that he still part of this world.  The solitude had been never ending. 
Suffocating.  A thousand times worse than dying.  He’d given up hope of ever
escaping his endless loop of days.

But
now he had Grace.  God had finally remembered Jamie Riordan and sent him someone
who could
listen
.  Sure, she lacked spirit and seemed irrational as
hell, but that was a small matter considering she was also his savior.

Grace’s
dark brows tugged together.  “It must’ve been terrible for you.  Dying, I
mean.”

“Nah,
t’was over in a flash.  One minute, I was hanging by my neck and wishing I
could breathe.  The next, I was standing outside of my own body.  I never felt
a thing.”

That
was a lie.  Ghosts didn’t sleep, but sometimes Jamie still dreamed of murderous
faces and twisting flames.  In life, Jamie drank a bit, and stole a bit, and
tupped more than a few willing women, but he’d never been a
truly
bad
sort.  At least he didn’t think so, no matter what his father had claimed.  Not
even spending his childhood under that asshole’s thumb had prepared him to
witness the mindless savagery of Harrisonburg’s lynch mob, though.  The hatred
and evil and fear.  Even in death, he couldn’t escape the nightmarish memories
of his death.