Page 25 of Ghost Walk
“Good Christ, woman. You’re stiff as a board and your eyes are darting about like you’re expecting the devil himself to be after ya.Relax. You could not be looking more suspicious if you were trying.”
“You’rereallynot helping.” She couldn’t do this. The longer she stood there, the more she realized it was impossible. She would be caught. She’d go to jail. She’d lose her job. She’d be thrown out of her apartment and have to live on the streets. She’d…
“Grace.” Jamie’s voice broke through her escalating panic and she automatically looked his way. He caught hold of her eyes and didn’t let go. “It will be alright.” He said quietly. “I promise you, I’ll keep you safe.”
Drat.
Grace moved. Without making the conscious decision to take even a single step, she was suddenly halfway across the room. She made it to the doorway and tried to remember how to breathe. So far so good. Now how was she going to do the rest of this? “Go check if anyone is coming down the hall.” She got out frantically. “I don’t want to get caught.”
Jamie rolled his eyes like she was being silly. “I used to make my living sneaking about the seven seas, you know. And a ship is a great deal harder to hide than a wee girl. I think I know how to…”
“Just go do it!”
Jamie held up his hands in surrender. (God, he had beautiful hands.) “Fine.” He strolled his invisible self into the hallway and made a production of looking around. “You see? No constables are coming to arrest you. I told you, I will let nothing happen to you.”
Peaceful green cornfields.
Peaceful green cornfields.
Peaceful green cornfields.
Grace took a deep breath and skirted into the hall. She ducked under the velvet ropes cordoning off the steps and hurried up the steps two at a time. It only took five seconds, but by the time she reached the upper landing, she was pretty sure she was having a heart attack from panic. No one had seen her. Or at least no alarms and sirens were blaring. That was good news. Right?
God, she was losing her mind.
How in the world had he convinced her to do that? Why had she felt safe enough to try? Grace never felt safe withanyone, but now she was willing to trust an adrenaline junkie ghost? Maybe she was sick. She paused in the shadows to take her pulse, already expecting the worse. See? Her heart was going too fast. First she’d keel over of a coronary andthenshe’d get tossed in a prison cell, all because of Jamie.
The oblivious moron wore an encouraging grin. “You’ve done it! And faster than I ever expected, given your natural pessimism. I knew you had it in ya! It can be quite fun to break the rules, when you give it a go.”
Satisfied she wasn’t having a heart attack (yet), Grace focused on the idiot ruining her life. “This is not fun, Jamie.” She hissed. “I just want to get it over with as quickly as possible, so I can go home and take a Valium.”
He made a tsk sound. “You’ve got to overcome your weak spirit, lass. It’s stifling all your potential. There’s nothing wrong with being a bit of an odd-duck. Live your truth.”
Grace rolled her eyes. He did love his pop-psych crap. She seriously needed to call her cousin Blessing for an anti-ghost spell.
…Or maybe not. The last spell Blessing cast gave Grace green hair for three weeks. Spellsalwayswent wrong. They were the worst kind of magic, in her opinion. Totally unpredictable. She’d probably just end up withtwoJamies bitching at her.
“I’mnotweak spirited or an odd-duck.” Grace scowledat him. “I just like to follow the speed limit, pay my taxes on time, and obey the law. That’s being a responsible adult.”
“It’s being a smashingly dull adult.”
“At least no one’s lynched me, yet.” Grace headed down the upstairs corridor. “Is her room this way?”
“Aye, last one on the left.” Jamie followed along behind her, looking irritated. “I wasn’t lynched for anything Idid, ya know. My having a bit of fun with Lucinda and dancing at a ball didn’t kill those girls. Hardly fair to blame me for the town being so bloody stupid.”
“You were a convenient scapegoat, given your reputation.” She glanced up at him. “I don’t suppose you have an alibi for any of the disappearances?”
“I was getting drunk at The Raven when Lucinda disappeared. I was there late into the night and then I was passed out in my cabin on theSea Serpent.”
“None of your men could verify that.”
“Because they were drunk, too! They were bloody sailors!”
Grace rolled her eyes again. “What about when the other girls went missing?”
“How the hell should I know where I was back then? It’s damnably hard to recall all the details, when I’m not even sure exactlywhenthey vanished.”
“Well, the ‘details’ mean the difference between solving this case or not, so I suggest you try to regain your memory.” She arched a brow, just to needle him. “Unless you have areasonfor your amnesia. The murders stopped after you died, after all. Gregory Maxwell’s book tells us that no other girl’s disappeared after you were gone. The Hero of Yorktown found that very coincidental.”
