The Restorer

I let him out the same way we’d come in, and then I hurried through the house and parted the curtains at one of the front windows to watch him leave.

When he came around the side of the house, his appearance struck me again. Already his gait seemed heavier, and I couldn’t help thinking of his ghosts. I imagined them at his side, invisible in the sunlight, one at each arm, bound to him forever.

Whether I could see them or not, Devlin’s ghosts were always with him, making him the most dangerous man in Charleston for someone like me.

The rest of the day passed without incident…for the most part.

I took my car in to get the window replaced, and as I waited on the repair, I spent an obscene amount of time obsessing on my latest encounter with Devlin. It reminded me of Papa’s analogy about vampires—instead of blood, ghosts suck out our vitality. That was exactly the way it had felt to me earlier, as though my energy had been drained. But there had been no ghost in my office. Only Devlin.

If he had somehow fed on my energy, would it bind me to him the way blood connected a vampire to his victim?

A crazy notion, but under the circumstances, I excused my overzealous imagination. After a while, though, I tired of trying to make sense of the experience and put it out of my mind as I drove into the country to look at a family graveyard on the remains of an old rice plantation. I’d been asked by the new owners of the property to submit a bid for a complete restoration, and walking the burial sites was a welcome distraction.

And since I was so close to Trinity, I thought it would be an opportune time to pay my parents a visit. I hadn’t seen my mother in over a month, my father in even longer.

Mama and Aunt Lynrose were sitting on the front porch of our cozy white bungalow drinking lemonade when I drove up. They came down the front steps, all exclamations and admonishments, and the three of us shared a group hug in the front yard.

As always, they smelled wonderful, their scent a unique blend of the familiar and the exotic—honeysuckle, sandal-wood and Estée Lauder White Linen. They were both taller than I, their posture still arrow-straight, their figures as slender as the day they’d graduated from St. Agnes.

“What a nice surprise to find you here,” I said, slipping an arm around my aunt’s trim waist.

“Serendipitous, one might even say.” She reached over and patted my cheek. “Shame I have to come all this way to see my only niece when she lives not more than five minutes from me in Chaa’stun,” she drawled.

“Sorry. I’ve been meaning to get by for a visit. I’ve just been really busy lately.”

“With a new beau, dare I hope?”

“’Fraid not. Between my business and my blog, I don’t have time for a social life.”

“You have to make the time. You don’t want to end up an old maid like your favorite aunt, do you?”

I smiled. “I can think of worse fates.”

Her eyes gleamed with affection. “Nevertheless, there’s a time for work and a time for play.”

“Leave her alone, Lyn.”

“Leave her alone? Etta, have you seen your daughter’s skin? Brown as a berry and freckles all over the place. What do you put on your face at night?” she wanted to know. “Whatever’s handy.”

“Chile.” She clucked her tongue in disapproval. “I know a woman on Market Street makes the best face cream in the world. Don’t have a clue what she puts in it, but the smell is divine and the formula works like a charm. Next time you come see me, I’ll give you a jar.”

“Thanks.”

“Now let me see those hands.”

I held them out for inspection and she sighed. “Always, always wear gloves. It’s essential working outside the way you do. The hands are a terrible betrayer of a woman’s age.”

I looked down at my callused palms. They did look a little worse for the wear.

Mama had disappeared inside the house, but she came back out a moment later with a tall glass of lemonade, which she handed to me as I plopped down on the top step.

“You’re staying for supper.” I’d always loved the way she said “suppah.”

Since it wasn’t a question, I merely nodded. “What are we having?”

“Chicken and biscuits. Mashed potatoes and gravy. Collard greens. Sliced tomatoes. Roasted corn. Blackberry cobbler for dessert.”

“My mouth is watering already.” It seriously was, particularly for the homegrown vegetables.

“I never could fry chicken worth a flip,” Lynrose mused as she settled back down in a green metal glider, the gentle sway almost hypnotic in the somnolent heat. “It’s an art, you know. I must have tried a hundred different recipes over the years. Buttermilk batter, cornmeal breading, you name it. Finally just gave up. Now when I have a hankering for a drumstick, I get takeout, but it’s not the same.” She sighed. “Etta got the cooking gene in our family.”

“And you got the gift of gab,” Mama said.

I smiled as Lynrose flashed me a conspiratorial wink. She was the only person I knew who could tease out my somber mother’s sly sense of humor. When I was a child, I loved when she came for visits. Mama always seemed so carefree with her sister.

The last time I’d seen them together was a month ago when Mama had driven into Charleston for her birthday. She’d spent the weekend with Lynrose and the three of us had gone out to celebrate. We’d had enough wine with dinner to laugh ourselves silly over some ridiculous play my aunt had dragged us to. I’d never seen my mother so giddy. It was a sight to behold. She’d turned sixty that day, but neither she nor my aunt looked a day over forty. I’d always thought them the most beautiful women in the world. I still did.

Now I searched my mother’s features, hoping to find a bit of that same girlish mirth I’d witnessed on her birthday. Instead, I noticed how fragile and gaunt she looked. How tired she seemed. The dark circles under her eyes reminded me of John Devlin.

A shiver ran through me and I glanced away.

“Where’s Papa?” I asked.

“Rosehill,” Mama said. “He still likes to putter around out there even though the county hired a full-time caretaker last year.”

“Did he finish the angels?”

A faint smile touched her lips. “Yes. They are quite something, aren’t they, Lyn? You’ll have to go down and take a look at them before you leave.”

“I will.”

“Speaking of angels,” my aunt said lazily. “Do you remember Angel Peppercorn? Tall gal with a rather unfortunate overbite. I ran into her the other day in a little tea shop on Church Street. You know the one I mean, Amelia. Has that cute black-and-yellow awning? Anyway, turns out her son, Jackson, is in the movie business. She says he’s a famous director out in Hollywood, but I heard through the grapevine he’s in the adult entertainment industry. I can’t say I’m surprised. Always was something a little perverted about that boy,” she said with malicious glee.

As my aunt prattled on, I began to relax, letting my worries over Mama’s health and those dark memories of Oak Grove slip away. We spent a pleasant afternoon gossiping on the front porch, only stirring when Mama rose to start dinner. My aunt and I offered to help, but she would have none of it.

“I don’t know which of you is more helpless in the kitchen,” she said. “Last thing I need is the both of you under foot.”

After she went inside, I settled back against the post as my aunt launched into a new story. I waited for a lull, then said casually, “Aunt Lynrose, are you acquainted with any Devlins in Charleston?”

“Would that be the South of Broad Devlins?” she asked, naming the most prestigious and historic area of the city.

“I don’t think so. The Devlin I met is a cop.”

“Probably not one of the Devlins then. Unless he’s a distant cousin. Plenty of those around, I would imagine, since their roots go all the way back to the seventeenth century. Of course, they’re dying out now. Bennett Devlin’s only son and daughter-in-law were killed in a boating accident years ago. The grandson came to live with him for a while, but they had a falling out. I seem to recall hearing that the boy got himself involved in some scandal or other.”

My ears perked up. “What kind of scandal?”

“The usual. Fell in with a bad crowd, took the wrong sort of wife.” She shrugged. “I’ve forgotten the particulars.”

I tried to recall if I’d seen a wedding ring on Devlin’s finger. I was pretty sure I would have noticed something like that.

“You say the Devlin you met is a cop? You’re not in some kind of trouble, are you?” my aunt teased.

“Hardly. I’m doing some consulting work for the Charleston Police Department.”

“My goodness, that sounds important.” She eyed me with unabashed curiosity.

“Actually, that’s one of the reasons I drove up this afternoon. I wanted to tell Mama before she heard about it from someone else. A body was found in the cemetery where I’ve been working. A murder victim.”

“Lord have mercy.” My aunt pressed a hand to her heart. “Chile, are you all right?”

“Yes, I’m fine. I was never in any danger,” I said, conveniently ignoring the stolen briefcase. “My involvement is minor, but my name was mentioned in the Post and Courier article this morning. I’m surprised you didn’t see it.”

“I spent the night here with Etta. I haven’t even looked at a paper.”

“Anyway, Detective Devlin asked that I be present for the exhumation and I agreed.”

“You mean you were there when they dug up the body?” Aunt Lynrose held out her arm. “Look at that. You done gave me chills.”

“Sorry.”

I caught a movement behind the screen door and wondered how long my mother had been standing there listening to us.

“Mama? You need some help now?”

“You can go find your papa, tell him we’re ready to eat.”

“Okay.”

As I walked across the front yard toward the road, I heard the screen door squeak. Glancing over my shoulder, I saw that Mama had come out on the porch and she and my aunt were speaking in low tones the way they once had when I was little. This time, I was pretty sure they were talking about me.

Instead of driving around the road, I took the shortcut through the woods and went straight back to the old section. The gate was locked, but I knew where Papa had always kept a spare key.

I let myself in, closed the gate behind me, then wandered down a soft incline, along fern-edged pathways and through thick, silvery curtains of Spanish moss to the angels.

There were fifty-seven of them.

Fifty-seven angels adorning fifty-seven tiny graves. The victims of a fire that had ravaged an orphanage in 1907.

The people in the surrounding counties had taken up a collection to buy the first angel, and every year thereafter, a new one had been added, except during the two world wars and the Great Depression.

By the time the final angel had been placed on the remaining grave, some of the earlier statues had fallen victim to weather and vandalism. Papa had been working for years to restore all fifty-seven with nothing more than patience and a set of vintage masonry tools.

When I was little, those angels had been my only companions. There were no other children around where we lived, but I don’t think the solitude had much to do with my loneliness. It was inherent, and once the ghosts came along, it was constant.

The sun had already begun its slow glide toward the horizon when I found a patch of warm clover and slid to the ground. Hugging my knees tightly, I waited.

After a few moments, the air stilled in a prelude redolent with summer.

And then it happened.

The sun sank with a gasping flare, a dying day’s last breath that gilded the treetops and shot a volley of golden arrows down through the leaves. Light danced off stone so that for one split second, the angels shimmered with life, a fleeting animation that always took my breath away.

As the angels slept under the soft blanket of dusk, I sat waiting for Papa. Finally, I got up and walked back toward the gate. I saw someone standing just outside and I started to call out to him.

Then with a shudder, I realized it wasn’t Papa. But I knew him. It was the ghost of the old man I’d seen when I was nine years old. I stood on hallowed ground, so he posed no immediate threat to me, but he terrified me just the same. His presence after all these years seemed menacing, a manifestation of the unrest that had afflicted my ordered little kingdom.

He looked exactly as I remembered him. Tall, gaunt, with long white hair brushing the collar of his suit coat. Glacial eyes and a faintly sinister demeanor.

I felt another presence and glanced over my shoulder.

Papa had come up behind me. His hair was white, too, but he kept it cropped close to his head and his eyes were faded, his demeanor remote but not at all threatening.

He seemed focused on some distant point, but I knew the ghost had caught his attention.

“You see him, too, don’t you?” I whispered as my gaze strayed back to the gate.

“Don’t look at him!”

His harsh tone startled me, though I didn’t outwardly re act. “I’m not.”

“Here.” He took my arm and turned me toward the angels. “Let’s sit a spell.”

We sank to the ground, our backs to the ghost, just as we had when I was nine. For the longest time, neither of us spoke, but I could sense Papa’s tension and what I thought might be fear. I shivered in the gathering darkness and drew up my legs, resting my chin on my knees.

“Papa, who is he? What is he?” I finally asked.

He wouldn’t look at me, but fixed his gaze instead on the statues. “A harbinger…a messenger. I don’t know.”

The chill inside me deepened. A harbinger of what? A messenger for whom? “Have you seen him before? I mean…since that day?”

“No.”

“Why has he come back? Why now after all these years?”

“Maybe it’s a warning,” Papa said.

“What kind of warning?”

Slowly, he turned to face me. “You tell me, child. Has something happened?”

And then I knew. Something had happened. Something had shifted in this world and the next. Everything had been changing from the moment John Devlin had stepped out of the mist.

My arms tightened around my legs. I couldn’t stop shaking.

Papa placed a gentle hand on my shoulder. “What have you done, Amelia?”

Now it was I who couldn’t look at him. “I met someone. A police detective named John Devlin. He’s haunted by two ghosts, a woman and a little girl. Last night the ghost child came to my garden. Papa, she knew I could see her. She tried to communicate with me. And then this morning, I found a tiny ring in the garden where I saw her disappear.”

“What did you do with this ring?”

“I buried it where I found it.”

“You have to rid yourself of it,” he said, and then his voice took on an edge of something I’d never heard from him before. I couldn’t quite put a name to it. “You have to return it from where it came.”

I looked at him, startled. “Return it…to the ghost?”

“Take it to the place where the child died. Or to her grave. Just get rid of it. And promise me you will never see this man again.”

“I’m not sure it’s that simple.”

“It is that simple,” he insisted. “There are consequences to breaking the rules. You know that.”

His stern voice put me on the defensive. “But I didn’t break the rules—”

“Keep your distance from those who are haunted,” he recited. “If they seek you out, turn away from them, for they constitute a terrible threat and cannot be trusted.”

I thought of Devlin asleep in my office, draining me of energy. I didn’t dare tell Papa about that.

“You must not allow this man into your life,” he warned. “You must not tempt fate.”

“Papa—”

“Listen to me, Amelia. There are entities you’ve never seen before. Forces I dare not even speak of. They are colder, stronger, hungrier than any presence you can imagine.”

I caught my breath. “What are you talking about? You mean…ghosts?”

“I call them the Others,” he said and I had never heard so much dread and despair in a human voice.

The Others. My heart knocked painfully against my chest. “Why can’t I see them?”

“Be thankful that you can’t, child. And take care you don’t let them in. Once that door has opened…it cannot be closed.”

I lowered my voice to a whisper. “Have you seen them, Papa?”

He closed his eyes. “Yes,” he said. “I’ve seen them.”

EIGHT

The way Papa described the Others—colder, stronger, hungrier than any presence I’d ever known—was terrifying. And yet even on the drive home, a part of me wondered about the timing of such a revelation. Why was he only now telling me about another realm of ghosts that I couldn’t see?

Was it because he feared the power of the forbidden, the allure of the taboo? Did he want to spook me so thoroughly I’d keep my distance from Devlin?

It might have worked, too, if Camille Ashby hadn’t called the next day.

At least that’s what I told myself.

Not only was Camille my current employer, but she was also one of the most well-connected people in Charleston. In addition to her current position at Emerson University, she sat on the board of almost every historical preservation association in the city. A nod from her was a veritable PR gold mine in my field. So when she called and asked to meet at the cemetery, I knew better than to blow her off.

I was nervous about seeing Devlin again—especially after Papa’s warning—but I had managed to disabuse myself of the notion that he’d somehow drained my energy while he lay sleeping in my office. Only a ghost could feed on human vitality and Devlin was no apparition. He was a flesh and blood man, handsome and darkly charismatic. The weakness I’d experienced in his presence was nothing more than a physical manifestation of my attraction to him.

And I was attracted to him. I could admit that now, though I would never admit it to Papa. Devlin’s secretive eyes and brooding demeanor were powerful libations to a closet romantic like me. In spite of his modern trappings, he had an old-world air about him. An intoxicating fusion of Byron, Brontë and Poe with a modern twist.

And like the fictional creations of the aforementioned, he had a deadly weakness. He was a haunted man.

For obvious reasons, his ghost child had made a strong impression on me, but my thoughts turned now to the woman. I still wasn’t certain of her relationship to the little girl. I’d sensed a distance between them, an odd disconnect that seemed to belie a motherly bond. She seemed more guardian than maternal protector.

It was all very mystifying and I had so many questions. Why had the little girl come alone to my garden? If she’d left the ring for me to find, what did it mean? And was Papa right? Should I find a way to return it?

Now that some time had passed since her visit, the thought of a ghostly communication wasn’t as frightening as it had been. And that in itself was pretty scary—that I could ponder almost casually her motivation in trying to contact me. Even more disturbing, a part of me wanted to find out what she wanted instead of fortifying my defenses against her.

I supposed like any nightmare, daylight had diluted its power, and as my natural curiosity about her rose to the surface, I had to remind myself yet again of Rules One and Four:

Never acknowledge a ghost’s presence and never, ever tempt fate.

If only I had followed those rules. If only I’d heeded my father’s warning…

But on that balmy summer afternoon, it was a little too easy to shove aside those early misgivings as I pulled in behind a row of police cruisers and unmarked vehicles parked at the edge of the road.

Oak Grove was well off the beaten track. At one time, a crude trail led up to the gates, but the ruts had long since been obscured by a thick tangle of scrub brush, vines and the thorny yucca that originally had been planted near certain graves to inhibit a spirit’s movement around the cemetery. Over time the prickly vegetation had spread outside the walls and now served to thwart would-be trespassers rather than ghosts, though apparently not murderers.

Kicking off my sandals, I reached over the seat for my boots. I never tired of tramping around in old cemeteries, but they were not without hidden dangers. The sunken graves and fallen headstones made perfect sanctuaries for the eastern diamondback. Papa had once told me about finding a den of rattlesnakes in a small graveyard near Trinity. He’d killed twenty-three in one day.

During the cleanup stage of restorations, I routinely came across all manner of snakes, lizards and newts. The run-of-the-mill creepy-crawlies didn’t concern me; I paid them little mind. But the poisonous snakes got my attention, as did the spiders. I was on high alert as I waded through the tall weeds toward the gates.

A uniformed officer stood guard at the entrance and I gave him my name. Since I was early for my meeting with Camille and didn’t see her around, I asked for Devlin.

“He’s expecting me,” I told the officer.

“You’re the graveyard expert, right? Gate’s open. Keep to the paths and stay out of the cordoned-off area.”

I nodded. “Do you have any idea where I might find him?”

“No, but it’s pretty quiet in there. Give a holler. He’s bound to hear you.”

Thanking him, I passed through the heavy iron gates and paused just inside to glance around. I didn’t see Devlin, or anyone else for that matter, but I had no intention of breaching the solemnity of the cemetery by calling out to him. Papa had taught me early on to treat each graveyard as though I were a guest. Respect the dead, respect the property. Take nothing, leave nothing behind.

I thought about the basket of shells and pebbles I’d collected as a child from the hallowed ground at Rosehill. I’d never told my father about that stash just as I’d kept silent about the episode with Devlin in my office. Papa wasn’t the only one who had secrets.

Clouds scuttled over the sun and a welcome breeze wafted across the graves, carrying the distant rumble of conversation somewhere along the wall, where I presumed the police were concentrating their search efforts. As I knelt on one of the mossy stones to tie my boot lace, a female voice drifted down the pathway, followed by the lower cadence of a familiar baritone.

Why the mere sound of his voice should make me so uneasy, I didn’t know. My first inclination was to hurry away before he could see me. Instead, I ignored my instincts and held my ground, and I would later look back on that decision as a turning point in my relationship with Devlin. I would soon realize that was the moment when the door Papa had warned me about opened a little wider.

NINE

I was so caught off guard by Devlin’s nearness that it took me a second to recognize Camille Ashby’s voice and another moment to realize that I might be listening in on a private conversation. Even then, I didn’t make my presence immediately known, but took my time retying my lace.

“…must be family or friends, someone who is missing her. Surely one of them will come forward now that the story is front-page news,” Camille was saying.

“One would hope.”

A pause. “Whoever she is, she can’t be associated with Emerson. I think you understand what I’m saying. The last thing we need is some nosy reporter trying to connect this murder to the other one.”

“Both bodies were found in the same cemetery,” Devlin said. “A certain amount of speculation is to be expected.”

A tiny thrill prickled at the base of my spine. Another body had been found in Oak Grove?

The voices were closing in on me. I rose and made some noise on the stepping stones to give them fair warning. Even so, when they rounded the monument that had hidden me from their view, they both stopped cold.

I didn’t know why they seemed so shocked to see me or why the sight of them together made me so uncomfortable. I suspected the latter had something to do with the way Camille touched Devlin’s arm when she saw me on the path. The familiarity of that gesture struck me most of all because Devlin had always seemed so remote, so untouchable, but apparently not to Camille Ashby.