Unfinished (Historical Fiction) (18 page)

Lilith's screams brought half the household staff running. The sound of shattered glass made them back away as Lilith ran into the formal dining room and systematically found each prized goblet from her father's grandmother's collection and shattered them against the stone mantel, one by one, until the front of her dress and hands were dotted with glass dust.

“Coachman!” she bellowed, running down the hall, glass crunching from her skirts long after she left the room.

“He's not in, Miss. Took your father to a business appointment.”

“Then I shall walk.”

The shabby townhome in Cambridge hadn't changed in the year since she was last here with her mother and the Beacon Hill Biddies. Early morning activity near Harvard meant that progress was slow, but Lilith managed to walk steadily from the underground station. Taking the subway scandalized her mother, but these days nothing bothered Lilith. All was a blur, a mindless, tasteless, bleak, unfocused flurry of nothingness that thrummed a painful phantom pain, like an amputee whose leg still hurt though it had gone missing long ago in a field surgical hospital.

Lilith's phantom limb was buried somewhere in Chile.

Three quick raps on the door and then Lilith settled in for the wait, her face stinging. A shuffling, then the thick, oak door, varnish bubbled and faded from the elements and time, opened an inch.

“You!” The word was a long, drawn out hiss of shock and anger.

“Yes, Miss Wolf. Me. I've come for a séance of one.”

The thick oak door slammed shut, nearly flattening the end of her nose.

Angry, but more shocked by the poor manners, Lilith knocked on the door with great vigor.

No answer.

Exasperated, Lilith exhaled through widened nostrils and said in a loud, firm voice, “Miss Wolf, I know you're in there, and I know you are in need of fees.”

The door opened a crack. “Please leave.”

“Why? Because I believed you to be a fraud?” Lilith's laugh was sharp and mocking.

“No. Because you are a dangerous creature and I've no desire to poke the dark world.”

Slam
.

Dangerous creature? Dark world?

“Miss Wolf, has my father been filling your head with tales about me?” Lilith ignored the neighbors' servants, all poking heads out of windows and opening doors to watch the spectacle Lilith was making.

“I have never met your father. Go away, you restless spirit! I've no unfinished business with you! Leave me be.”

“You said I was a conduit. For a whole soul. Which is an oddity. Are you saying all other souls are broken and unwhole? Shall I tell everyone I know that you think this of people?” Like a barker at a carnival, Lilith projected her voice and added a touch of the grandiose.

Evangeline Wolf opened her front door, dressed only in a threadbare nightgown, hair in a cap, and roughly grabbed Lilith's upper arm, dragging her in. Miss Wolf slammed the door behind her, leaving Lilith breathless.

“How dare you? I'll be bruised by you – ”

“How dare
you
.” The medium spat the words out as if possessed by a spirit, voice rough and pebbly. “Whatever soul does possess you is a Loki, bent on wreaking havoc. Have your say and then leave.”

Outrage and self-righteous anger battled with need and dependence. Miss Wolf was the only person who might help her, damn it. Need overrode pride. “Can you help me to reach someone who is dead.”

Miss Wolf flinched and turned green. “No. Never.”

“Because you are unable?”

“Because I value my life.”

Mad with grief, Lilith grabbed the medium's hands. Ice cold. “Please help me. James died. I need to talk to him one last time. When we saw each other for the last time I didn't know. I didn't know it would – ”

Flinching, the medium wrenched her hands from Lilith's. “This is exactly as I feared. You're doing another soul's work. If I intervene, then I may become its target. You must go.”

Dark sobs filled Lilith's throat and mouth. “How can you be so cold?”

Miss Wolf's eyes softened, the yellowing corneas ringed with pink lower lids that sagged like ungartered stockings pooling at the ankles. “If I seem cold, I apologize. In a few more cycles, though, you will understand. This lifetime is all you think you know. There will be so much more. Think in centuries and not in years.”

“I can't even think in seconds! My heart is broken. Each breath is shattered glass.”

“All the more reason to think in centuries, Miss Stone.” She looked deeply into Lilith's eyes with great kindness tempered by a guardedness, as if Lilith were an injured animal who could do damage if unleashed. Opening the thick door, Miss Wolf guided Lilith to the front step.

A stray kitten appeared from a bush adjacent to the steps and began brushing against Lilith's ankle. A little brown tabby, the kitten was scrawny and underfed, with a brown beard and mustache.

Lilith hated cats.

Against all instinct, though, she picked him up.

“A sign,” Miss Wolf whispered, then shut the door quickly.

Cradling the kitten in her arms, Lilith petted the small creature. Purring, it nestled into her arms. All she could think to do was walk, soon finding herself breathing in concert with the kitten's purr, her legs taking her to the Unitarian church where she and James had shared their first kiss.

She stopped, closed her eyes, and inhaled, the moment frozen by memory and loss.

“Miss Stone?” A warm male voice interrupted her reverie. She opened her eyes.

Dr. Burnham.

“Hello,” she said, hearing death in her voice, yet not caring.

He tipped his hat. “Good day.” Glancing back at a group of men and one woman, with whom he was obviously socializing, he asked, “Would you like to join us?”

“Oh. No. Thank you,” she said thickly, her throat small and laboring.

“I trust your...issue is resolved?” His eyebrows rose slightly.

Stammering, she answered, “Uh, well, yes.” A stroke of the cat's fur. “Yes,” she sighed. “It is resolved.”

“Very good to hear. I hope to see you at my next lecture,” he said.

“I fear that will not be so,” she replied. “I leave for Toronto tomorrow.”

“For a short trip?”

“No. To settle. My mother's family is from the city.”

“David!” shouted a tall, rakish-looking man. Dr. Burnham glanced at him, held up one finger to ask for more time, and then doffed his hat.

“Good day, then, Miss Stone. I wish you well in your new city.”

“Yes. Good day to you, and thank you. For everything.”

And with that he walked away.

Lilith leaned down and kissed the kitten's head. “You need a name, kitten. I think I shall call you James.”

THE END

Legs
(A Reincarnation Romance)

Whose romance are you reliving 100 years later?

S
O IF LOVE NEVER DIES, THEN
where does it go? One hundred years after James and Lilith find – and lose – each other, recurring dreams haunt history scholar Jill Knowles. Sometimes she's in a foreign country, where a lover betrays her, wearing clothes from a century ago. Sometimes she's making love with the same man, dreams so erotic that she wakes up burning with desire.

Fellow grad student Seth Hines has been having the same erotic dreams. Neither links the dreams to the other, not even when a surprise encounter that feels more like déjà vu than chance leads them into an unexpected affair. Sex deepens into love, until an enemy tricks Jill into believing Seth will betray her, exactly as the lover in her dreams betrayed her.

Even as she runs away, Jill's research leads her to believe her dreams may be memories of another woman's life; on his own, Seth realizes they may be reliving a painful love story. Now Seth must win back Jill's trust before history repeats.

Read a sample from Legs now:

Chapter One

“
T
HE
F
OX SISTERS
were well-known psychic, or spiritualist, frauds in their time,” Jill Knowles began, hands trembling slightly as she referred to her notes. Her hands felt like ice cubes, fingers so cold she couldn't grip the pages of her outline. “But even after news of their deception was well-known, well-to-do women such as Lilith Stone and, in particular, her mother, Margaret, frequented mediums for seances.”

“Like the 1910s version of The Psychic Friends Network?” She looked up quickly, but couldn't catch the source of the question. Probably Miles Loring, the resident grad student blowhard. He made every 20
^th
Century America seminar difficult, but today, her day to present research on the role of spiritualism in the women's rights movement in the 1910s, he would become the academic equivalent of Zuul from Ghostbusters.

Where was the Sta-Puf Marshmallow Man when you needed him?

“Not quite,” she replied, controlling her expression and voice. A bored tone would hit its target better than anger, and his dark brow furrowed, clearly displeased with her lack of a reaction.

“So why would Lilith Stone, a well-established women's rights crusader and a confirmed skeptic, go to a séance? And especially one with Evangeline Wolf, of all people?” Relief flooded her and she nearly mouthed a silent “thank you” as Seth Hines asked the question.

“And,” he added dryly, turning to Miles, “did Miss Cleo give you a bad reading, Miles? At $3.99 a minute, I hope you got your money's worth. Or did you dial the wrong 1-900 line and get Miss Cleo by accident?” A ripple of tittering floated around the table.

“I've never called one of those – ”

“Jill, please continue.” Dr. Andrew Miller-Konitz, their professor and chair of the history department, took command. Jill glanced at him, all grizzled and grandfatherly, overgrown ear hair and eyebrows that spiraled out like a chia pet on steroids, and shot him a grateful look. Then she glared at Miles, her bright blue eyes locked with his dark orbs, and resumed her presentation.

“Good question, Seth. We don't know why she went. That's one question I need to answer when I do research next year in the archives in Toronto. She left her letters there, and not here in Boston, where she was born and raised. It would have been easier to uncover more.”

“No kidding,” Miles said flatly. He stretched his short, thick legs and cracked his neck, tongue rolling between his teeth and cheek, and let out an enormous, overly dramatic sigh.

Everyone ignored him. “I've been to Cambridge and toured the townhome where Evangeline Wolf held her seances and talked to some Unitarian archivists to ask about the link between Lilith and spiritualism, but there isn't much to go on.”

Seth nodded and gestured for her to continue. Warm, kind brown eyes countered Miles' assholery. Wavy chestnut hair, just long enough to be a bit mussed. Broad shoulders strengthened by volleyball and biking. Strong arms stretched across his t-shirt covered chest, and she swallowed, hard, as she wondered how his calloused hands would feel on her –

Dr. Miller-Konitz cleared his throat. “Jill?”

“Yes?” She inhaled and shook her head slightly, clearing her thoughts. “Yes. So, Lilith Stone. We know that she visited Evangeline Wolf twice, in fact. Once with her mother and once, later, just before she moved from Boston to Toronto and assumed her exile. There may be documents indicating she visited a medium one other time, with her purported lover, Esther Nourse, but I won't know that for some time. Need to get in the archives and dig through the documents.”

Out of the corner of her eye she watched Seth. Friends since they both entered the Ph.D. program in History two years ago, Jill had spent most of that time trying not to be attracted to him. Avoiding him had been easy.