The Sense of Reckoning (14 page)

“Yes.”

“And the last name?”

“N-e-a-r.”

“And your fiancé’s name?”

“Scott Pate.”

“P-a-t-e?”

“Yes.”

“And your phone number?”

Damn. Ann gave Ellen her cellphone number.

Ellen tore the paper off the pad and thumbtacked it to a bulletin board behind the desk that contained a jumble of other slips and scraps of paper. “I should know pretty soon what our plans are for July and I can give you a call then. Big reception?”

“Oh no, probably quite small.”

“Oh,” said Ellen, sounding disappointed, then perked up. “You could have the guests stay at the hotel. If you book early enough, of course. I could show you some of the places where we could host a reception. Or even the ceremony.”

“Oh no, I don’t want to put you out. Plus I’d like for Scott to be here to see it.”

“Are you local?”

“No, but we get up here pretty frequently.”

“How long have you been coming to MDI?”

“Oh, for years.” Ann was busily trying to keep all the details of her story straight.

Ellen looked like she was going to pursue it further, but then evidently decided to give up trying to pry details out of her reticent visitor. She rejoined Ann in the lobby. “Well, I need to run some errands and I’ll have to lock up the hotel, but feel free to look around the grounds if you’d like. It looks much nicer in season, of course.”

“Thank you, I will look around a little bit.”

Ann followed Ellen out onto the veranda. Ellen pulled a large wallet out of her purse and extracted a somewhat frayed business card. “Just give me a call if you have any questions.” Ann took the card. They shook hands and Ellen disappeared around the corner of the hotel and in a minute an old Jeep trundled by, Ellen giving a wave as she passed. Ann heard the Jeep grumble down the road, with pauses as Ellen removed the chain, drove through, and replaced it. Then the engine noise receded into silence.
 

Ann glanced at her watch. She still had some time before she had to meet Scott at the main road. She hoped he hadn’t gotten back early, otherwise Ellen’s suspicions might be aroused by the sight of a man sitting patiently in a car on an otherwise-deserted road.
 

Garrick had said the spirit might come into the hotel from the lobby entrance; no harm in spending a few minutes seeing what there was to be seen—or sensed.

Ann sat down on the top step and leaned back on her elbows. The day was chilly, and the warmth generated by her walk was wearing off. The entrance of the hotel faced south, away from the Narrows, and the veranda caught the watery October sun. She had a brief hope of catching some warmth from it, but it was low in the sky and weak. She sat forward and tucked her hands into the opposite sleeves of her parka. Then turned to look at the door.

Had Ellen actually locked it?

*****

From across the hotel lawn, the spirit watched the two women on the veranda. One of them, Ellen, he had known in life, but the other was new to him. Those still alive were usually faint, flitting forms, but this one was clear. It seemed obvious that this woman was not a spirit herself, but rather a living person with an unusual connection to the spirit world. Not as strong a connection as the man in black, but still strong. And she was pretty—slender, with reddish-blonde hair and delicate features.

Ellen left, but the other woman stayed. The woman watched Ellen’s Willys disappear down the road, then moved to the edge of the veranda.

Behind where she had stood was a man—tall, dark-haired, pale-skinned.

The spirit pushed himself away from the tree, a buzz of concern starting in the back of his neck. There hadn’t been anyone on the veranda a moment ago, he was sure of it.

The woman sat down on the top step and leaned back on her elbows, gazing around the hotel grounds. The man stepped up behind her. She seemed unaware of his presence. Then the man squatted down behind her in a catcher’s stance. From where the spirit watched, he almost expected the man to put his hands over the woman’s eyes and say, “Guess who!”

But the man made no attempt to alert the woman to his presence, and the way he watched her—like a snake in the grass watching a mouse unconcernedly nibbling a seed—escalated the buzz to a burr of worry.
 

The woman’s hands dangled over the edge of the veranda, near her hips, and the man began reaching his hand toward hers. But before he reached his target, the woman sat forward and tucked her hands into the opposite sleeves of her parka. The man leaned back, annoyed. He was beginning to move toward her again when she turned and looked behind her. The man slid slightly to one side, out of her line of sight, but it appeared in any case that she was looking not at him but at the door. After a moment, she stood and crossed the veranda. The man moved to stay behind her, following her.

She reached for the doorknob and the man’s arm shot out. He clamped his hand over hers.

She let out a cry and snatched her hand back. She turned away, cradling her hand, and stumbled away from the door.

The man smirked with satisfaction and took a step toward her.

“Hey—
hey
! Leave her alone!”
 

The man’s head jerked toward the spirit’s voice. The spirit broke into a run as the man’s face hardened into anger while at the same time his body began to take on a wavering translucence. The spirit reached the veranda and stepped between the man and the woman.

“What are you doing? Get away from her!”

“Who are you—the hotel handyman?” the man asked impatiently. “Get away from here, this doesn’t concern you.”

He stepped forward. “It certainly does concern me—this is my hotel, and I won’t have a thug like you bothering this lady. I want you out of here!”

The dark-haired man raised an eyebrow, although the eyebrow, and in fact his entire form, was becoming increasingly amorphous. “I’m guessing it’s not really
your
hotel anymore,” he sneered, but his voice, along with his form, was beginning to fade.

“It was mine—it’s my family’s—and you’re not welcome here.”

He took another step forward. but the last remnants of the man’s form were gone and all that was left was a yellowish light which then swirled off into nothingness on a puff of wind coming off the water.

*****

The pain shot from Ann’s hand up her arm and curled her fingers into claws. As she pulled back with a cry, she thought she caught a glimpse of a tendril of yellow light retreating from her stricken hand, accompanied by an acrid tang like the smell of an electrical short circuit. She stumbled away from the door, swearing under her breath, tears of pain and fear springing to her eyes.

When she had put some distance between herself and the door, she turned to face her tormentor, but there was nothing discernible there except an area of grayish haze in the middle of the veranda, rimmed by a flicker of yellow. The haze disappeared as she blinked the tears out of her eyes, then reappeared briefly in a weak ray of sunlight breaking through the clouds. The yellow and gray vied with each other for a moment, and then the yellow was gone and she could see for just a moment the gray, solidified into a human form.

It was a man of some indeterminate middle age, with a lean, muscular build. He had tousled brown hair and thin lips touched with the hint of a smile, but most striking were his gray eyes lined with crow’s feet—light eyes that were more striking in the dark tan of his sun- and wind-weathered face. He was saying something, but the words faded away as she lost sight of his form, although she sensed that he was still there.

Was this the manifestation of the light she had seen near her hand when the pain struck? She thought not—this spirit, emerging out of the gray light, seemed unthreatening, even concerned. Maybe there had only ever been this one spirit, and the yellowish light she thought she had seen was just a trick of the sun. Maybe this was the man Garrick had hoped she would find.

“Loring?”

She caught a brief glimpse of him again, his smile widening, but then it was gone.

“Loring? Are you there?”

Now she had lost all sense of a presence. She was torn between two impulses. On one hand, she wanted to get away from the hotel—the general sense of creepiness that resulted from being alone in a usually public place was heightened by the shock of the pain in her hand. On the other hand, she wanted to continue trying to engage the spirit she had seen, especially if it meant she might be able to save herself a return trip to the hotel that night. For a little while, the second impulse won out.
 

She crossed the veranda to the door of the hotel and, with some foreboding and with frequent glances behind her, tried the knob. It turned, and she opened the door and stepped inside. The room—in fact, the whole building—felt empty of any presence, living or dead. Garrick had mentioned that the spirit appeared in the lounge. Was this the lounge? There certainly wasn’t a spirit here. She crossed the room to a doorway leading to another room, which looked and felt even more empty than the first. Still nothing.

She didn’t fancy searching the hotel any further—the idea of Ellen returning from her errand early kept nagging at her nerves. She hurried back to the front door and felt a little sigh of relief as she closed it behind her.

She spent some time, first on the veranda and then on the drive and lawn, walking back and forth like a retriever searching for a ball in tall grass, hoping for an angle or perspective that would reveal the man she had glimpsed. But the lights—both yellow and gray—were gone, although when she walked through the space in which the man had stood, she could pick up a faint scent of sun-warmed skin and fresh sweat.

Chapter 18

Eventually, a glance at her watch told Ann that she had used up the time she had allotted to her reconnaissance run—she had to hurry if she wasn’t going to keep Scott waiting at their meeting place. She again considered taking the route along the inlet, but clouds were building and she had no wish to get caught on slippery rocks in the rain. She headed back through the pine woods to the shore road.

Entering the dimness of the woods was oddly comforting because she thought she’d be better able to see the yellow light if it was in fact a spirit pursuing her. She glanced behind her periodically, looking for any sign of the light that had preceded the pain in her hand. Was it Biden Firth? She hadn’t seen anything remotely identifiable, but the noxious presence she had sensed certainly matched up with her brief but tragic acquaintance with Firth. But the more she thought about it, the more likely it seemed that the explanation for the pain was the sensing experience itself. Even if the man who she had eventually glimpsed hadn’t intentionally caused the pain, perhaps his very presence had been enough. And it obviously wasn’t some malignant intent of the spirit that was causing the reaction—she had experienced it after seeing Scooter, for heaven’s sake. And after seeing Beau and the old woman, both of whom she knew from experience were intent on protecting her.

At the small family cemetery, her now-attentive senses picked up two faint lights hovering over two small headstones behind the chain-link fence, accompanied by a barely perceptible and tuneless humming. Probably young children and definitely not the spirit she had encountered at the hotel. She tucked her hands deeper into her pockets, ready for the pain to strike, but she passed the cemetery unaffected. Perhaps it was only when she was caught unawares that the sensing had this effect.

By the time the road left the pine woods and began its run along the shore, the waves on the Narrows had become choppier, small whitecaps forming at their tips. A few minutes later, the clouds closed across the sky like curtains across a stage and she felt the first drops of cold rain on her face. She pulled her cap more firmly down on her head, zipped up her parka, and made fast time back to Indian Point Road.

When she reached the main road, she was chilled to the bone and was happy to see the Audi parked on the shoulder, Scott in the driver’s seat with a map spread open across the steering wheel. He saw her coming and leaned across the seat to open the passenger door for her. She fell into the seat, throwing her soggy hat into the back.

“So how did the secret mission go?” Scott asked.

“Okay.” She considered how much she could tell him and decided that it wouldn’t be violating the oath of secrecy to let him know it involved a sensing; what other reason would Garrick have to send her off on an assignment? “I saw a spirit. And I got that pain in my hand again.”

“Really? Are you okay?”

“Yeah, I’m fine.” She turned to look out the foggy window at the dreary scene outside. “It certainly is tedious, though.”

“Was it Biden? Did he follow you?” Scott glanced around the car.

Ann also glanced around the car, then pulled her sunglasses down to the end of her nose so she could look over them and scanned the car again. “I don’t think so.” She flopped back in her seat. “I’m starting to think I don’t need Garrick, I need a shrink.”

“Don’t be silly,” said Scott. “Whatever it is, it’s a real thing, not something you’re making up.”

“How can you know that?”

He patted her knee. “Because I know you. Why are you wearing sunglasses?”