Page 104 of Ever After

He stares at me for a long moment. “If anyone can, I believe it is you and your husband. Please pass along my hopes that we will meet when this is resolved.”

“I will,” I promise.

“I think if anyone can understand love and loss, it is the two of you.”

I hesitate. “Do you ever see Boynton?”

His eyes sharpen even as his form begins to flicker. “I have never seen him since my death. He is not amongst the spirits that haunt this hall. Try as I might, I have never been able to leave the grounds. My feet will not allow me. I cannot even see anything past the gates apart from a thick mist that is alive with something I never wish to meet. Mayhap Boynton is somewhere out there. Perhaps at the vicarage although I never got the sense that he was attached to that place.”

“Did you get a sense of where he might have been attached?”

“I do not think he was a man who believed in much, which is why his occupation surprised me.” The gossamer thinness of his body solidifies for a moment.

“Your lordship,” Jowan warns in an urgent tone. “You’ll overdo yourself and you know what happens then.”

Xander waves his hand dismissively and asks me, “You think Boynton might be the key to solving this mystery, don’t you?”

“We do. That doesn’t surprise you?”

“No. I have had long to think on this. And to remember how, whenever he touched me, I felt…”

“Felt what?”

“Unclean. Like I had been touched by something monstrous.” We stare at each other and he grimaces in pain. “I must go,” he says.

“Thank you for staying so long. Do you have a message for Branok?”

“Tell my Bran that I think of him.” He smiles. “Always. Every day and every hour, just as I have always done. Death will never change that.”

“I’ll tell him.”

Then both he and Jowan are gone and the room is empty save for a trace of something sweet in the air. And I’m alone with no fucking idea of how to get out of here without being arrested for trespassing.

Blue

“I’m just saying it wasn’t that embarrassing,” I inform Levi as we climb the steps to the cottage. “I’m sure no one even noticed.”

“Easy for you to say. I’m fairly sure you’ve had much more embarrassing moments.”

“That is probably true.”

“Laura thought I was casing the joint to stage a later burglary.”

I snort as I remember Levi’s face as Laura escorted him through the hall. “What were you going to steal if you had been a master thief? Maybe Chinese wallpaper,” I add thoughtfully. “They obviously got a job lot of that judging by the tour I was forced to do.”

“Yes, I’m sure you had a very hard time on your tour.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

He rolls his eyes as we head through the front garden. “You were eating a scone when we came out, Blue.”

“So? Can’t I be worried and hungry? The scones were very nice. The cheese was the perfect amount and I’m sure they put mustard in it.”

“Yes, the scone was obviously important. You didn’t even drop it when she frog marched me to the car.”

I bite my lip to hold in a laugh. “One should never leave food uneaten,” I say in a pious tone.

“Hmm.” He digs in his pocket for the key. “I’m just saying I think I had the worse end of the deal today.”