Page 54 of Ghost Walk
“For what?”
“Something that was around when Anabel was here. Something that wouldn’t have changed.” For a woman who’dnearly hyperventilated at the Wentworth’s house, she seemed fine with entering the garden without permission to find a blood-soaked crime scene. Probably because she’d forgotten she was trying to fit in with “normal” society.
Grace was kidding herself if she thought she could be anything but brilliant and brave and bursting with enchantment. Her insistence on being “normal” was like a butterfly wanting to cut off its wings and turn back into a caterpillar. You couldn’t suppress magic like Grace possessed. The fearless spirit and the love of adventure. Underneath that uptight exterior, the woman had the soul of a pirate. No doubt, her living, breathing, husband-materially Partner was aching to show her how much fun that could be.
Just the idea of it made Jamie crazy.
What the fuck was he going to do?
Grace’s camera was looped around her neck. She adjusted the setting to something called “IR” and snapped a picture of a cupid statue. The image that popped up on screen looked… strange. The colors were all wrong. The plants showed up as white and the sky glowed orangey-pink.
“Your camera will show us something?” He asked. Focusing on the past seemed far easier than thinking about the future.
She nodded and kept walking. “Infrared lens can detect blood that’s been painted over.”
“Like magic.”
She shot him a quick look. “It’snotmagic, Jamie. It’s science.”
“Not much of a difference, if you ask me. They both make impossible things into reality.” No wonder she missed her forensic job. Grace’s blood cried out for enchantment and investigating crime gave it to her. “Speaking of which, I never did get a chance to ask you… What’s theotherspell you can cast?”
“What?”
“Yesterday, when Robert attacked you, you said you only knew two spells. One was for menstrual cramps. What’sthe second?”
Grace hesitated. “The Rivera Doomsday Spell.” She finally muttered.
“Doomsday Spell? Well, that sounds quite promising. What does it do?”
Grace gave a superior sniff. “I don’t ever plan to use it, so it doesn’t matter.” She took another picture, this time of an arrangement of decorative rocks. “Darn it.” She looked back at the map and picked another path, clearly not willing to discuss magic. “Okay, so let’s pretend you’re Anabel Maxwell. You’re at a party, at night, playing in the hedge maze with someone. Is there anything particular you might have done in here?”
He arched a brow at her.
“…Besidesthe obvious.”
Jamie chuckled at her prim tone. The woman never failed to delight him. “It doesn’t much seem like Anabel to be in the hedge maze, a’tall.” He told her. “She wasn’t a fun-loving lass, like Lucinda. A man would have to do some fast talking to have her risking her reputation for some frolic in the gardens. She must have known him quite well.”
Grace mulled that over. “Was she dating anyone? Orcourtingor whatever you called it in 1789?”
“I have no idea. I barely knew the girl. The whole family were bloody idiots, so I had no desire to socialize with them. Her blockheaded brother nearly lost us the Battle of Yorktown.” Two centuries had past and it still annoyed him.
“Gregory Maxwell was theHeroof Yorktown. Everyone knows that.”
“Bullshit.”
“You’re just mad he wroteHorror in Harrisonburg, detailing all the reasons you were the killer.”
Jamie ignored that, because it was patently impossible that that numb-skull wrote any book beyond a “How To” guide on general stupidity. “I wasatYorktown, so I vividly recall that jackass nearly…”
“Shh!” Grace suddenly put her finger against her lips to hush him, even though she was the only one who could hear him anyway. “I think someone’s coming.”
Jamie listened for a moment and --sure enough-- he could hear movement in the hedgerows. “Stay here.” He walked through the walls of the maze, scanning up and down the long, green aisles. Near the entrance, he spotted two Harrisonburg employees looking around.
Shit.
“Everything seems okay to me, Morris.” One of the guys said. He was college-aged, with a bad goatee and a name badge that read “Emmett.”
“I’m telling you, I saw somebody come in here.” The boy named Morris was about the same age, with equally atrocious facial hair. His wide hazel eyes were darting around. “It was a pretty woman in an old-fashion dress, just wallllking into the maaaaze.” His voice lilted across the words, stretching out the syllables so they had the spooky cadence of a narrator from an old B movie. “She was talking to someone who wasn’t there. Like maybe she didn’t know she was dead or something.”
