Magic (2 page)

Anastasia, California
,
the present

“Great big head. Eyes of red. Don’t know how long he’s been dead. Has anybody seen my ghoul?” Bryan sang softly in his pleasant tenor voice as he worked. He paused as he adjusted the angle of the still camera and smiled broadly into the wide-angle lens, as if posing for a self-portrait. Then he pushed his old-fashioned gold-rimmed spectacles up on his nose, moved on to the next piece of equipment, and continued on with his song.

Ghosts. His life was filled with them. He searched for them and lived with them. Sometimes he wished he were one, he thought darkly, his enforced good mood slipping. The whole point of going back to work was to get away from depression. He was finding that returning to his former upbeat, optimistic self was as tough a job as any manual labor he’d ever done. Squaring his shoulders with determination, he double-checked his photographic equipment, the video camera on its mount above the carved oak door, the light stands set in their strategic positions around the wide foyer. He checked the still camera last.

Finally satisfied that everything was in place and in working order, he flipped off the hall light, turned, and trudged up the first short flight of stairs, his usually lithe step somewhat weary. He had been raised an athlete in a family of athletes. His brother J.J. was a former professional quarterback, his sister Marie was a world-class figure skater. Bryan himself was no slouch on a tennis court, but these days he felt every day of his thirty-six years, and then some.

With his back pressed to the mildewing wallpaper he slid down to sit on the dusty hardwood floor of the landing. He settled back into the shadows, not caring that the floor was cold or that a draft wafted down the stairwell. Those kinds of discomforts were not unusual in his line of work. He’d crouched in the damp, cramped holds of ships, waiting. He’d spent night after night in castles built long before the invention of central heat, waiting. A run-down Victorian mansion like this one was actually fairly cozy by comparison. Besides, it had been a long time since he’d paid any attention to physical discomfort. It was probably a victory of sorts that he had even noticed the draft. The girls would be proud of him.

It was funny how they had ended up there after all. The Fearsome Foursome had disbanded to chase four different rainbows, and still they had ended up in Anastasia, the place they had dreamed of and fantasized about years ago. Faith had her inn and her family. Jayne had her farm and a husband who may not have understood her precisely, but who accepted her nevertheless. And Alaina had finally found a place where she belonged, a family to love and who loved her in return.

Bryan had come to Anastasia to seek solace and sympathy, and his old friends had given it to him in ample measure … for a while. They had consoled him and given him a place to heal his broken heart. Then each had begun to hint in her own way that the time had come for him to start living again.

Faith had been gentle about it. That was her way, gentle, diplomatic, sympathetic, skills that had been polished to perfection by six years of motherhood. Alaina had been blunt. Jayne had been empathetic and philosophical.

It had been the girls’ collective idea that he investigate Addie Lindquist’s house for paranormal activity. Bryan had to smile. He had always been the one to look out for and look after them, but here they were, banding together to see to his emotional well-being. You couldn’t custom-order better friends.

He knew they were right. A man couldn’t go on mourning forever. Yet, there was a small measure of resentment inside him. There was a certain perverse comfort in grief. In clinging to his grief he was clinging to Serena. If he let the grief go, if he involved himself in work again and made new friends and stopped devoting all his time and energy to missing her, he would be letting her go. Her memory and the memory of the pain of losing her would dim, and a part of him didn’t want that. He had loved her so deeply, even holding on to painful memories was better than nothing at all.

So, he had reached a compromise with himself. He would go back to work, ease back into the routine, but deeper involvement with people would have to wait. For the time being he just didn’t have anything left to give.

Settling back more firmly into the corner, Bryan heaved a sigh. Soft gray moonlight spilled into the foyer from the narrow windows that flanked the door. All was still in the hall below. All was still inside him. He didn’t sense anything in the air around him except mold. So far, Drake House wasn’t exactly proving to be a hotbed of psychical activity. Of course, as out of touch as he’d been with his own gift, there might have been spiritualistic manifestations all around him, and he wouldn’t have noticed.

Addie Lindquist claimed there was a ghost in this house. Addie claimed she spoke with this ghost on a regular basis. Perhaps
claimed
wasn’t quite the right word.
Declared
was more like it. Addie was sixty-six, opinionated, and imperious. Of course she spoke with Wimsey, she had announced to Bryan, her blue eyes flashing with impatience. She couldn’t understand why other people thought it unusual that she spoke with Wimsey. She didn’t understand that she was the only one who had ever actually seen Wimsey.

Whether or not the ghost existed was the matter in question. There were people in Anastasia who vaguely remembered stories of strange goings-on at Drake House told by previous owners, but no one had firsthand experienced. Addie was the only one with that, and Addie’s mind was going round the bend on greased tracks, as Jayne’s husband put it.

In fact, Addie’s doctor had been trying for weeks to contact Rachel Lindquist, Addie’s daughter, to let her know about her mother’s condition. Whether or not the woman would respond was anyone’s guess. No one in Anastasia had even known of her existence.

Bryan hated to think of what would happen to Addie. Not that he was getting involved in her situation, he told himself stoutly. It was just sad, that was all. It didn’t sound as if Rachel Lindquist cared what happened to her mother. Addie would probably be packed off and forgotten, dead in all the ways that mattered most, the shell of her body left to the care of strangers.

“I could win a prize for being morose,” he mumbled, disgusted with himself and his morbid frame of mind.

It wasn’t like him, really. He had always been an optimist, a great believer in magic and rainbows. Besides, he was supposed to be thinking about the case, about the possibility that Addie’s Wimsey was in fact a psychic disturbance of some sort. He knew nothing would happen to Addie as long as he was staying in Drake House, and he had no immediate plans to leave.

Producing a playing card from inside his shirtsleeve, he walked it between the fingers of his left hand with careless dexterity, wondering only vaguely at the sudden strong sense of anticipation that surged through him. It was a pleasant feeling, both soothing and exciting, like a promise of something good. The warmth washed through him, chasing out the chilling ache. Tension seeped from the muscles in his broad shoulders, and his eyes drifted shut as he let himself enjoy the sensation without questioning where it came from or what it meant. His glasses slipped down his nose as his head bobbed forward, and the playing card dropped from his fingers.

The scream could have pierced steel.

Bryan jolted awake, his body exploding out of its cramped position on the landing. His actions were purely instinctive. He had no idea who or what had issued the sound. All that registered was the buzzing of his alarm telling him that sensors indicated a presence in the downstairs hall. He was halfway down the stairs when the flash of his still camera went off, blinding him. Unable to see and unable to stop himself, he stepped out into thin air.

“Aargh!”

His cry of surprise was abruptly cut off with a grunt as he bounced the rest of the way down the steps, rolling like a human tumbleweed. Another otherworldly scream split the air as he hit the marble-tiled floor in a heap and sprawled out, groaning.

The sound had a definite ghostlike quality, he thought excitedly as he struggled to sit up. He was going to have bruises from here to Hyannis, but they would be well worth it if he had captured something on film or tape. He could already see his articles in the scientific journals. Funding for studies and documentaries would come out of the woodwork. Maybe he’d even get invited to the
Tonight Show
. At the very least he’d get a segment on
Unsolved Mysteries
.

Wincing, he hauled himself to his feet and fumbled for the light switch beside the front door. His breath hardened in his throat as the foyer was flooded with amber light from the old chandelier. He’d caught something all right, and she was beautiful.

Bryan straightened his glasses and stared, his heart beating a curious rhythm. The woman before him was quite real, vision though she seemed. The professional in him acknowledged an appropriate amount of disappointment at that, but the basic male in him could find no regret. It would have been physically impossible for a red-blooded man to have been anything but awestruck by the young woman gazing up at him.

She had the face of an angel—gently prominent cheekbones with slight hollows beneath, a chin that looked as if it were made to be cupped by the hand of a handsome lover; a slim, tip-tilted nose; and full pink lips that looked so soft and kissable, they almost made him groan aloud. Her skin was like rose-tinted cream, so tempting, he nearly reached out to touch her cheek. Instead, he pulled his hand back and splayed his fingers across his chest, as if he were having a heart attack.

The overhead light caught in the woman’s halo of pale golden hair, adding to her ethereal quality. She wore it up in a loose chignon, but soft tendrils escaped all around her head, framing her feminine features. She stared at him, her periwinkle blue eyes wide and brimming with terror.

Her obvious fear struck him like a slap in the face. He cleared his throat nervously, peeled his hand off his chest, and offered it to her, attempting a genial smile.

“Bryan Hennessy.”

Rachel flinched at the sound of his voice. The silence had held her spellbound, now she was jolted out of the trance. She stared first at the big hand hovering before her, then her gaze traveled up a considerable distance to take in the rest of the man.

He was fairly tall with shoulders so wide, they seemed to block out the stairwell behind him. His hair was disheveled. The strands falling across his broad forehead were a color somewhere between blond and brown. With panic overruling her other senses, the only thing she noticed about his face was the strong jaw and the five o’clock shadow that darkened it. His clothes—worn jeans with bits of paper sticking out of one front pocket, and a chambray shirt that was tucked in on only one side—were rumpled.

All things considered, she thought, he looked dangerous, maybe even unbalanced. He certainly didn’t look like anyone her mother would invite into her home. The woman she remembered wouldn’t have sat next to this guy on a bus. How, then, had he come to be the one to greet her at the door? The possible answers were not reassuring.

She choked down what fear she could and called on years of vocal training to project a confident tone when she spoke. “What have you done with my mother?”

“I don’t know,” Bryan said, bemused. He was too thrown off by her remarkable beauty and by his reaction to it to think straight. He pulled his hand back and combed his fingers through his hair. “Who is she?”

Rachel swallowed hard. She started to back away from him, wondering what her chances were of making it to her car and from there to the police station. Not good, she figured. He appeared to be in wonderful physical condition. That was probably essential when one was running from the law. As she took a step back, the man took a step forward. She held up a hand to ward him off.

“If you touch me, I’ll scream,” she promised.

“You’ve already done that,” Bryan pointed out ruefully. “Quite well, I might add. My ears are still ringing. Now I know the full meaning of the word
shrill
.”

“I know karate,” Rachel blurted out. She braced her feet, squared her shoulders, and raised her hand as if she were preparing to take on Bruce Lee. It was ludicrous, of course. Bryan Hennessy dwarfed her. He wasn’t the stocky, no-neck, musclebound type, but he was big and athletic-looking; and she was all of five feet seven, a hundred and twenty pounds. She decided she would have to make up the difference with her temper.

Bryan’s brows bobbed up and his face lit with genuine interest. “Karate? Really?”

Now was not the time to be overly honest, Rachel reflected as she frantically cast her gaze about for a handy sharp-edged instrument with which she might defend herself.

She thought of her mother and a terrible pang reverberated through her. All the years they’d wasted! And for what? Now she was finally returning, hoping she and Addie could patch up their relationship. What if she were too late? Dr. Moore had told her it wasn’t safe for Addie to live alone any longer, that her mother’s impairment made her forget things like turning off the stove and who to allow inside her home. Had her mother let this man into the house thinking he was a friend? It was entirely possible.

On the drive to California from Nebraska, Rachel had thought about what time she would have left with her mother—the mother she knew and loved—not some vacuous stranger existing in her mother’s body. And she had vowed to make the most of it. Time for them may have been snatched away. The thought filled her with a sense of almost overwhelming loss.

“Rachel,” he said abruptly.

Her eyes widened at the sound of her name. The stranger’s voice was husky and warm, but the fact that he knew her name sent chills down her back.

Bryan nodded decisively. “You’re Rachel Lindquist. You’re Addie’s daughter. I should have recognized you right off. You look a lot like your mother.”

He stared at her hard, his straight brows drawing down low and tight over his eyes. A slight frown of disapproval turned the corners of his mouth. It wasn’t triggered by Rachel Lindquist’s appearance or her identity, but by his own reaction to both. This was the daughter who had not bothered to visit her mother in five years, the girl Addie herself had labeled ungrateful. This was the young woman who had run off with a folk singer, the young woman he had thought of as selfish and uncaring. And he was damned attracted to her.

It came as a very unpleasant surprise, that warm, curling sensation deep in his gut. It was something he hadn’t felt in a long, long time, but he was too strongly, basically masculine not to recognize it for what it was—desire. The primitive male in him was responding to a pretty female, and he heartily resented it, resented
her
for stirring that dormant need inside him.

“So, you decided to come back after all,” he said coldly, trying to distance himself from her emotionally as well as physically.

Rachel willed herself to stand still while Bryan Hennessy’s gaze bore through her. He moved back and a little to her left, and the light from the old chandelier fell more fully across his face. He looked as if he’d just awakened from a sound sleep. Behind his glasses his eyes were bleary and bloodshot, but there was nothing truly dangerous in their stare. He looked annoyed more than anything. More than anything except male. He looked very male—big and brooding and sexy with his tousled hair and beard-shadowed cheeks.

The silence between them swelled with unspoken messages, messages Rachel didn’t want to hear or understand. Just the same, she felt a strange fluttering deep inside her, and she pressed a hand to her stomach as if she could push the sensation away. It was probably just hunger. Most of a day had passed since she’d eaten.

Tearing her gaze away from Bryan Hennessy, she gave herself a mental shake. She was experiencing hunger, all right, but it wasn’t the kind that she could appease with a sandwich. If she had learned anything over the course of the past five years, it was to be honest with herself. The kind of hunger coursing through her had little to do with prime rib and everything to do with primal attraction.

The realization shocked her. She had lived to the ripe old age of twenty-five and had never experienced such a strong physical reaction to a man, not even to Terence, whom she had once loved. She hadn’t expected ever to feel it. It simply wasn’t in her nature. She certainly hadn’t expected to feel it for a complete stranger, especially one who was suddenly regarding her with subtle disdain. She didn’t like it, didn’t want it, and she most definitely didn’t need it. The reason she had come to Anastasia loomed over her like a dark cloud. There would be no time in her life now for anything but Addie.

“Where is my mother?” she asked firmly, effectively breaking the strange spell between them.

“Upstairs. Asleep, if she’s lucky,” Bryan said, shouldering his way past her, “though I’d be surprised if there’s a dog in this county you didn’t wake up with that shrieking.”

“Shrieking!” Rachel said indignantly. She pressed her lips into a thin line and planted her hands on her slim hips as she watched him fiddling with the array of equipment clustered in the foyer. Anger surged through her as other feelings subsided. “Of course I was shrieking. I step into my mother’s house and am virtually attacked by mechanical contraptions.

“What is all this junk?” she asked impatiently, gesturing sharply at the stuff. “What’s it doing here? What are you doing here? Who do you think you are anyway?”

“Most of the time I think I’m Bryan Hennessy,” Bryan said dryly. He righted a light meter that had tipped over and tapped it gently with a finger, relieved to see it was still functioning. “I got hit in the head with a shot put once, and for about three hours afterward I thought I was Prince Charles, but that was fifteen years ago. I’ve pretty much gotten over it, except for a strange yen to play polo every now and again. And I was once mistaken for Pat Reilly, the actor.” He shot her a Cheshire-cat smile that made Rachel’s heart flip. “Personally, I don’t think we look all that much alike, but the lady tearing my shirt off didn’t agree.”

Warmth bloomed under the surface of Rachel’s skin as her imagination conjured up an unusually vivid picture of this man with his shirt half off. Her image of his chest was smooth and solid with well-defined muscles, a sprinkling of tawny curls, and a tiny brown mole just above his left nipple. She could almost feel the heat of his skin against her palms, and her nostrils flared as she caught the faintest hint of his male scent. It was an altogether weird experience, one that had her fighting to get a good deep breath into her lungs.

Oblivious to Rachel’s predicament, Bryan had turned back to his machinery. He checked each item thoroughly. At the moment he couldn’t afford to have a piece needing repair. His finances weren’t in the healthiest of states. In fact, he was more or less broke.

“This ‘junk,’ ” he said, “is highly sensitive electronic surveillance equipment essential to my work. I’m a psychic investigator specializing in locating and defining paranormal phenomenon.”

It came as a complete surprise to Rachel that a man who looked as rumpled and ratty as Bryan did was capable of speaking in more than monosyllables. She tucked her chin back and frowned as she tried to translate his explanation into garden-variety English. “Is there a generic term for what you do?”

He flashed her a smile that revealed even white teeth worthy of a toothpaste commercial. This time his eyes twinkled with amusement, the corners crinkling attractively behind his spectacles. “I’m a ghostbuster.”

Rachel blinked at him, certain she had heard him wrong. “You’re a what?”

“You know, a ghostbuster. When people hear things that go bump in the night, I’m the guy they hire to find out what those things are. Is it Aunt Edna coming back to get them for all those jokes they made about her pot roast, or is it just bad plumbing?” His broad shoulders lifted in a shrug. “Is that disgusting ooze in the basement crud from hell, or do they just need a new septic tank?”

“People actually pay you money to do that?” Rachel questioned in disbelief. The idea went completely against her innate sense of practicality. “You actually take money from people to do that?”

“A crime against humanity, isn’t it?” Bryan said sardonically. He was used to dealing with skeptics. When one made his living investigating things a great many people refused to acknowledge, one learned to handle criticism in a hurry. But he made no effort to argue his case to Rachel Lindquist.