She all but floated to the haphazard shelves and rickety cases lining the long chamber.
As one could never do in a museum, she reached out trembling, elegant fingers and tested the sharpness of a saber mounted on the wall or threaded them through the plume on a hat. It was as if she could see with her eyes, but never truly had a vision of anything until she’d experienced it through touch.
John found himself wanting to trade places with inanimate objects as she caressed them with the reverence of a lover. Buckles. Buttons. A rifle, a medal of valor, irons for captives, chains and whips and other implements of violence and war.
She didn’t belong in this place, this so-called Chamber of Sorrows. She was a creature of light and joy. One to whom melancholy and sorrow did not attach itself for long.
What must it be like to move in the world in such a way?
Vanessa Latimer had transfixed him like nothing or no one had done before.
Everything she did, every gesture she made was attractive to him. From the way she blinked the fans of her eyelashes, to the swift, almost sparrow-like movements of her graceful neck as she tried to look at everything all at once. The sway of her skirts soothed him, drew him toward her as she ventured deeper into the long chamber, which was actually more a corridor that ran the length of the inn.
She paused at a small table upon which letters and miniature portraits of women or children were stacked neatly. As if understanding they might disintegrate if she touched them, her hands hovered like butterfly wings above the loops of writing often stained with blood.
He’d known her for such a short time, and yet he understood that she burned to stop and read every word, absorbing it into her memory.
Eventually, she glanced back at him, her gaze brimming with so many things. “Have you read these?” she asked hopefully.
Once again, he hated to disappoint her. “This is maybe the third time anyone has ever brought a light in here when I was awake. I’ve rarely been able to truly examine these things, and when I could I was searching for something that might belong to me.”
“You need light to see?” The very idea seemed to surprise her.
He felt his features melt, quirking into an endlessly amused half-smile. “I’m a ghost, not a vampire.”
She rolled her eyes at his teasing, swatting at him with no real heat. “How should I know the rules? I mean, you float above the floor and you can walk through walls.”
“Sadly, I cannot see in the dark.” Or through things. Like her clothing.
She made a noncommittal noise as she moved further along the chamber. Her ankle rolled beneath her skirts and she nearly lost her footing.
Reflexively, he reached for her, but she righted herself before he could do anything.
Clearing her embarrassment from her throat, she pointed beneath her and offered an abashed explanation. “The floor is uneven.”
He nodded his head, his heart too much in his throat to reply.
She returned to examining every single treasure. “Are you sure none of this is familiar? These sabers, a hat, perhaps? Even a button?” She sounded almost desperate now.
He shook his head. “No, none of these are mine. Though I recognize a few of them as belonging to compatriots.”
Ones he mourned for many years.
She ran her hands across a bayonet, testing its edge. “You said you sleep a great deal. Is that truly what it’s like to be…” She made an uncomfortable gesture at his general personage.
“Dead?” he clipped.
“Well I didn’t want to seem indelicate.”
She was so delicate, she’d never seem anything but.
“It’s just I have so many questions. And I am afraid to ask them, but when else will I get the chance? Is there a light anywhere like people have claimed, at the end of a tunnel perhaps? Have you met others like yourself? Or angels? Or—or anyone else out of the ordinary? Out of our limited mortal understanding, I mean.”
He wished he could spin her a hypnotic yarn that would make death seem less depressing, but he was an honest ghost, and a boring one, evidently.
“I’ve met no other apparitions and my torpor, it’s—not even like sleep, exactly. It’s nothingness.” He almost hated to admit it, because sometimes the void terrified him. “I want to say darkness, but it’s not even that tangible. I am gone, and then I surface. I am here, but I have no part of myself. I have nothing but a vague sense of who I am. And each time I go under…I stay for longer. There are days I fear I’ll become one with nothing, and every part of who I was will be lost.”
What he didn’t say was that each time he went under, he was always disappointed to be brought back. He would rail and stomp and use what little power he had to throw things. To rattle the bedposts and windows and make the stones of his cage tremble. He’d frighten people just to do it. Because now that he’d found himself again, he’d have to dread the next time he was lost.
She blinked watery eyes up at him, her sharp chin pitting and quivering with emotion. “How do you endure it?”
“How can I do anything but?” he replied, his finger aching to smooth an unruly tendril of hair away from her furrowed brow.
Her throat worked over a difficult swallow. “I wish I could save you, somehow.”
A tenderness welled in him in that moment and threatened to spill over into emotion he had no idea what to do with. What a Countess she’d have made. So small and yet regal. So soft-spoken and yet brave. Independent. Unbiased. Kind. Honest.
God. He’d have offered for her hand after one chaperoned meeting. He’d have claimed her and planted children inside of her, creating an undeniable legacy of which any man would be proud.
It was almost worth one hundred and fifty years of loneliness to have met her.
She’d brought him back to himself, somehow.
Whatever she saw in his eyes caused her to step in toward him. And, once again, she stumbled.
Catching herself this time, she lifted her skirt to examine the packed earth beneath her.
Whatever she found caused her to gasp.
“Hold on.” Rushing past him—nearly rushing through him had he not moved out of the way in time—she retrieved the lantern from the entry and plucked a bayonet from the wall.
Returning, she shocked him by placing the lantern on the ground, kneeling down in a pool of her skirts, and using the bayonet to scratch and dig into the dirt.
“What the devil are you about?” He hovered over her, worried that she’d finally reached the edge of her sanity.
“This floor has a dip right here about the size of my shoe,” she said around the labor of her digging. “After I tripped this last time, I thought, if Carrie was a clever girl, she might bury her most prized possessions to make certain they weren’t discovered. Even if the Chamber of Sorrows was.”
Something within him ignited. He wished he could grab something and rake at the earth next to her. That he could reach into it and pull whatever might be down there above ground. But the bland weight of weakness still tugged his limbs until they were heavy, and he began to admit to himself that the torpor was calling to him.
Every moment he spent with her cost him, dearly.
But the darkness would have to drag him away. He’d not go willingly. Not while he could bask in her presence for one more moment.
She worked until she was winded, and the helplessness he felt made him want to throw things. To shake his fist at whichever angry god cursed him to such an existence.