Magic

ONE

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.