Body and Soul Read online

  At the moment Marie was loading it on with Eric, but Jesse was very much aware of the way the woman’s gaze flicked toward her again and again. She was the kind who relished gossip, and Jesse knew people were talking about Gary’s return and his past with Jesse. Maybe Kim, without understanding the significance of the incident, had told Marie how Jesse had reacted when she’d seen Gary at Bobby Moran’s funeral.

  Kim wouldn’t spread that around, but Marie would. She finally released Eric from her clutches and turned to Jesse with a tight little smile.

  “How are you, Jesse? Long time no see. I’ve heard so much about you lately.”

  Out of the corner of her eye Jesse saw Kim and Eric swept away on a new tide of well-wishers. She and Marie were alone, and Marie’s expression held more than a hint of sly calculation.

  “I’ve seen your new restaurant,” Jesse said, refusing to rise to Marie’s unsubtle bait. “I haven’t been able to drop in yet. Is it going well?”

  “Beautifully. I do hope you’ll come and try our cuisine. It’s quite a change for this town. I’m sure you didn’t get much in the way of decent food in—what was it? Africa? South America?”

  “In some of those places, any food is good food.”

  Marie made a delicate face. “Oh, have I offended you? I am sorry. We each have our sensitive areas, don’t we?”

  All it would take to burst Marie’s bubble was an ambiguously less-than-worshipful comment about her appearance, but Jesse wasn’t about to sink that low. And witty comebacks were not in her repertoire.

  “Kim told me you’re still feeling badly over that boy’s death last week,” Marie said. Her scarlet mouth drooped in spurious sympathy. “You really shouldn’t take things so seriously. It’s best to know when to let things go, or … sooner or later you pay the consequences.”

  There was an uncomfortably personal note in Marie’s tone, and Jesse’d had enough. “It’s been nice talking to you, Marie, but I see a friend over there I haven’t had a chance to visit with yet, and—”

  “Speaking of friends,” Marie said, taking her arm, “I have one I’d really like you to meet.”

  “Maybe some other time.”

  “But I insist— Oh, here he is.”

  The shiver at the back of her neck told Jesse who had arrived even before she turned to follow Marie’s eager gaze.

  Gary. He glided to Marie’s side with the smooth ease of a venomous snake and looked directly into Jesse’s eyes.

  “Jesse,” he said softly. “I’d been hoping to find you. To see how you were … after all these years.”

  Sickness blossomed in Jesse’s stomach, and the once solid deck bucked under her feet. She’d been anticipating this, knew it had to come sooner or later. She’d thought she was strong enough.

  Don’t lose it, she begged herself. Not now.

  But though she kept her feet and met Gary’s stare, she couldn’t bring herself to speak. Her throat had closed up, choked with memories just beginning to resurface.

  And hatred. The burning, virulent hatred was still within her, like some noxious black smoke, just as it’d been at Bobby’s funeral.

  “I know this is rather unexpected,” Gary went on. “I saw you at the funeral the other day, but it didn’t seem the right time …” He trailed off, assuming a mask of hopeful concern. “Jesse, I’ve never forgotten you. Or your mother.”

  Oh, God. Jesse felt dizzy and realized her lungs were void of air. She had to say something, find some response—

  “I heard about your mother,” Marie said. “What a sad way to lose someone. It must have been difficult for you to come back to town—after everything that happened.”

  Jesse swung on Marie. “Don’t you talk about her,” she snapped. “You don’t know a damned thing.”

  Marie flinched and hung on Gary’s arm. He detached himself with a sigh. “She’s right, Marie. You don’t know. I was there when they pulled poor Joan out of the river.” He held Jesse’s gaze. “Why don’t you get yourself a drink, Marie. Jesse and I have some catching up to do.”

  Marie didn’t want to go, that was clear. But she made a beeline for the bar, resentment in her stiff, high-heeled stride.

  A faintly derisive smile lifted the corner of Gary’s mouth. “Marie isn’t as subtle as she likes to think she is, but she does have her assets.” He looked Jesse over with a connoisseur’s appraisal. “You’ve grown up to be quite lovely, Jesse. Very much like your mother.”

  His very mildness was filled with menace and contempt. In Gary’s eyes was all the proof she sought, evidence of crimes buried like so many ancient bones. The metaphor was strikingly apt. Only one person in the world could dig up those bones. And, by God, she was going to do it.

  “You never loved her,” Jesse said hoarsely.

  He gave a good approximation of wounded startlement. “What makes you believe that? You were too young to … completely understand what goes on between a man and a woman.”

  Innuendo shaded his words. A game, that was what it was to him. Scenes like the one in her recent dream flashed in Jesse’s mind: episodes of nasty verbal sparring with her mother. And with her. Now it had a new overtone that made the gorge rise in her throat.

  “You know,” Gary said, “I often thought of returning to Manzanita … once you’d grown up and enough time had passed. I know about the hospital. It did my heart good to hear you’d come through just fine.”

  His heart. He spoke as if he actually had one. “You didn’t care what happened to me.”

  “You’re wrong. I cared very much. I made sure to keep track of everything that happened … after you left us.”

  She heard the threat in his voice. It wasn’t her imagination. There was something he wanted from her; he had engineered this meeting for his own purposes. Why? Had he come to Manzanita for more than his political campaign?

  Where was the clue she was missing?

  She felt as if she walked in a dream far less real than her visions of happiness with David Ventris in some other country, some other age.

  David. She tried to picture him with her now, watching over her like the guardian angel he definitely wasn’t.

  He’d offered once to haunt her enemies. He’d agreed to come when she called. But she was not a coward. Not a child. She didn’t need David Ventris.

  “You never knew me,” she said. “Not then, and not now.”

  “And you underestimate me. I can see you’re not so different from Joan. She was very … sensitive.” Gary shook his head. “She had a serious problem, Jesse. You suffered from it as much as she did.”

  How easily he turned things around. Her knuckles felt close to cracking with the strain of holding back. If only she could strike out and wipe that smug confidence from his handsome face …

  “She never did have much time for you, did she?” he asked. “Poor, neglected child.”

  Now he was mocking Jesse outright. He’d taken all Joan’s time once he’d come into her life. Demanded it. Controlled her as if she were a puppet.

  “You ruined her life,” Jesse said. “You tormented her, made her worse than she’d ever been.”

  He sighed. “Children do misinterpret what they don’t understand.”

  “I understood enough. I heard you fighting—”

  His mock-indolent demeanor vanished in a heartbeat. “What did you hear, Jesse?”

  “Enough to know what you are.” Recklessness took her, erasing the fear. She replayed the dream, piecing together the fragments of conversation. “She stood up to you, and you threatened her. She was afraid what you would do if—”

  “If what?” Suddenly he was only inches away, his hands on her arms, his face too close. “What did she say about me? What dirty little lies did she tell you?”

  His grip was like the bite of a rattlesnake, pumping poison into her blood. He had the grotesque stare of a madman whose mask of sanity had shattered.

  “What did she say?” he snarled, teeth bared. He shook her, hard. “Answer m
e!”

  He was afraid. Gary Emerson was afraid … of her, of something she’d said or implied. So afraid that he’d forgotten who and where he was.

  Her instincts had been right. But his touch paralyzed her, and the accusations she wanted to shout were trapped in the unreasoning terror that reduced her to that eleven-year-old child, incapable of fighting back.

  Only hatred made the fear go away. She gathered up the splinters of it and made it whole again. She imagined it as a hammer, breaking his hold, smashing his bones.

  “Let go of me,” she said.

  An unnatural stillness surrounded them like an airless bubble. Curious faces were turned in their direction. Gary jerked and released her, as if her imaginary hammer had struck.

  But it was no longer Gary who held her attention. The moment he let her go she felt the other presence, glimpsed the unmistakable vision of a second man beside her. A man in an antique uniform with a long curved sword in his hand, facing Gary as he would face a deadly enemy.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Ghosts, David thought, ought to be immune to shock. Surely there was no greater blow than death and realizing that one was condemned to perpetual limbo.

  It was now very obvious to him how badly he’d underestimated the obstacles set in his path to salvation. One of those obstacles stood before him: alive with menace and devastatingly familiar to David’s arcane and ghostly perception.

  Avery. His brother. Avery was here, in a body older and taller—a shell that had disguised his true identity until this moment.

  Avery, reborn. His eyes were the same. Eyes that fixed on Jesse in open threat as he released her and clenched his fists at his sides. His handsome face, twisted with violence, underwent a rapid transformation, becoming calm and cold and unmarked by his brief and brutal rage.

  He smoothed his tie and smiled at her. “I see that we have a great deal to discuss,” he said to Jesse, as if they’d been holding an ordinary conversation.

  God. David tightened his grip on his saber before it fell from his hand. Like some grotesque farcical play endlessly repeating itself, they were all here together. Again.

  Avery and not Avery. Sophie and not Sophie. He alone was the same.

  “You may have heard that I’m running for state assembly,” the man called Gary went on, his voice deeper than Avery’s had been. “We’ve both come a long way, haven’t we? It would be most unfortunate if trouble came of any … misunderstandings between us.”

  The threat was still there, indisputable. Jesse held his gaze, outwardly calm, but David felt her hidden turmoil—her rage, her dread—intermingled with his own, inseparable.

  How could it be otherwise? His emotions were as tangled and piercing as a thicket of thorns. He had never found or confronted Avery in the years following Sophie’s death. Sophie’s murder, for that was what it had been. David had no doubts even before his own death at Waterloo. And after, in limbo, he had been as certain of Avery’s crime as he’d been of Sophie’s hatred in the last minutes of her life.

  After Sophie’s death Avery had disappeared. Nothing was resolved. Nothing finished.

  And this was Jesse’s enemy. She knew him as Gary, and she hated him as Gary—hated and feared him for reasons David did not yet recognize.

  But it went so much further than the events of this life, this ugly contention to which David was covert witness. The pattern played out, inevitable as death itself.

  Only this time David was with her, not on some distant battlefield facing the wrong foe.

  The impact of Avery’s presence was too overwhelming to absorb here and now. David was shaken to his jeopardized soul, as immobilized as the woman at his side. And he knew what Avery was capable of. He knew.

  He had to get Jesse away. He hadn’t let her see him, but he sensed that she felt his presence. To distract her with his earthly form would only prolong her agony.

  But if he could reach her another way …

  Jesse. He formed the word in his mind, projected it to hers. Jesse. Listen to me. I’m with you.

  She started, though she kept her gaze on her enemy.

  Don’t be afraid, he said. Go, Jesse. Now.

  He saw the response in her body, an aborted motion trapped between defiance and the desire to obey. Her lips formed the shape of refusal, but she remembered to whom she would speak.

  A ghost that her enemy could not see.

  “Perhaps we should find a more private place to talk, Jesse,” Gary said. “I’ve been by the old resort. A real pity no one ever did anything with it—but it may serve our purpose. I think that you and I need to come to an … understanding.”

  “I’m not going anywhere with you,” Jesse said in a rasp. “Never.”

  “Maybe you’d prefer the river. I hear there’s a nice ledge up where—what was the poor boy’s name?—oh, yes, Bobby. The place where poor Bobby died.”

  A hot, cruel lance of pain arced out from Jesse, catching David like a blow. Without further thought he sheathed his sword and closed the space between himself and the man who’d been his brother.

  He didn’t know if what he planned would work. He hadn’t tried to reach any other mortal on this plane. For all his talk of haunting, his limits remained untested.

  “Do you hear me?” he hissed, his face inches from Gary’s. “Do you feel me here, you blackguard?”

  Jesse made an inarticulate sound. Gary blinked. “What did you say?” he demanded of Jesse.

  “Leave her alone, Av—” David caught himself before he spoke his brother’s name. Gary wouldn’t recognize it, and Jesse would question later. “Bugger off, d’you understand? Leave the lady alone, or I’ll make your life hell.”

  Gary blew out his breath in a startled puff and took a step backward. He waved his hand in front of his eyes. It passed through David with no effect.

  David seized the lapels of Gary’s coat in his fists. Without solidity he couldn’t move Gary, but it wasn’t necessary. He saw the sudden, wild confusion in Gary’s brown eyes.

  “How does it feel to be on the other end, you bastard?” he whispered in Gary’s ear. “I’m here this time. My name is David Ventris, and I know who you are.”

  With an awkward lurch Gary broke free. He glanced around and wiped the back of his hand across his mouth.

  “I’ll … see you later,” he said to Jesse. He turned to retreat, and David let him go. It was Jesse who needed his attention now.

  She stared after Gary far too long. “I wasn’t alone,” she said.

  “No,” David said. “I know he is your enemy, Jesse. We must leave this place.”

  She surveyed the groups of merrymakers ranged about the wooden terrace. “Gary saw you.”

  “Not quite. Nor can anyone else. But we must go.”

  “Just … stay out of sight. Please.” She started across the terrace, her walk a bit unsteady, and spoke with the dark-haired woman who’d come to her cottage the previous night. She made her farewells to a few others, constantly watching for the man who’d fled. David kept pace with her, silent and imperceptible. He knew that Gary had gone.

  But not forever. That was the grand joke of it. There was no doubt in David’s mind that Avery would return.

  And David had to know why.

  Jesse descended broad wooden steps to a cool path that wound its way among the trees and past several small log cottages to a quiet area some distance from the noise of the party.

  “David?”

  “I’m here.” He materialized, holding himself midway between spectral and solid. “Are you well?”

  “Yes.” She blew a loose strand of blond hair from her forehead and closed her eyes. “I didn’t … expect you to come. Thank you.”

  Her gratitude was stiff and grudging, but David felt a fierce pleasure in hearing the words. In knowing he’d been able to help her, when before …

  “Who is he, Jesse?” he asked. “Why do you fear him?”

  What is he to you in this life?

  She looked
away. “We shouldn’t stay here. Someone might hear me talking to thin air and decide I’m crazy again.” With a quick glance right and left, she walked away from the stone-lined path and into the woods beyond the buildings. Here the sun’s waning light barely penetrated, but Jesse was certain of her course.

  As they moved deeper among the pines and undergrowth, David let himself become more substantial. The dusty smell of fallen pine needles and bark and earth filled his nostrils. A bird called sharply overhead.

  Jesse came to a stop beside a stream. The clear water tumbled over rocks and fallen branches, dark green and brown with the reflection of trees above. Only the faintest hint of music reached them, weaving in and out of the stillness.

  With a sigh Jesse sank to a crouch on the bank. She leaned forward to plunge her hands in the current, laving them as if to scrub something unclean from her skin.

  “Are you going to say I called you again without meaning to?” she asked. “Is that why you came to my rescue?”

  Her strained cynicism didn’t deceive him. The confrontation with Avery had left her badly unsettled.

  As it had David.

  “I could hardly ignore a lady in distress,” he said. “But I was with you all along. I confess to being very curious about your party.”

  “Then you didn’t keep your word.” But she spoke with oddly little heat. “What made you decide I needed help?”

  He knelt beside her. “I have eyes … of a sort. He was threatening you, was he not?”

  Her fingers glistened with drops of water as she withdrew them from the stream. “What did you do to scare him off? You said he didn’t see you.”

  “But he felt me. It seems I have some ability to make my presence known even to those who can’t see me. A ghost must be good for something.” He tilted his head to better observe her face. “You didn’t answer my question, Jesse. Who is he to you, and why is he your enemy?”

  “It doesn’t matter. I’m supposed to be helping you, remember?”