Bonefinder

I brought a cigar along tonight because I knew Alan would want to light it...and if I did nothing else, I was going to make it his final act.

The last time I visited old Linton's Food & Mercantile in my hometown of Richmond, Texas, was a week ago, and the resident ghost tried to light me up with some pretty interesting pyrotechnics. Damn near brought the place down. I thought everything was pretty well settled, until I heard Renn Komenski's voice on the phone at one a.m. - "Deirdre Maddox, you're in deep shit..." - then I knew it was my last chance to get any kind of control over the troublemaker.

I hadn't said anything about that last visit to Renn. You see, I'm an archaeology instructor at the local junior college with a pretty decent reputation in the community. I'm not exactly someone who should be poking around crime scenes or forbidden property. Having said that, my bud, Renn, is the fire marshal for the area and sometimes he employs me for a particular skill I possess. We've known each other since high school and I get the skinny on all sorts of things; but he'd haul me off to jail if he knew I was in the habit of visiting this particular site without permission. That's why I rushed down to Linton's like a bat out of hell this wee hour of the morning. Guilt's a good motivator that way. So's losing my cell phone in Linton's. If Renn found it in the debris, it was over, friendship and everything.

Irregardless, asking me to meet him at this moment, at that location, definitely had to do with Alan Zehnder...and this time, I was going in prepared.

So here's the problem: Alan is a ghost. An intriguing, intelligent, all too realistic ghost...but a ghost nonetheless. You'd think he'd be easy for me to brush off, since I've moonlighted with the dead for many years now. This spook...well, he's different...and it bugs the hell out of me. He has a tenacious hold on this realm and he knows it. I realize I should be focused on unshackling him from his ties here, but the truth is, I'm fascinated. He's not a demon of any sort that I'm able to tell, but he does love fire. And flirting. God, what a flirt!

Oh, I know what you're thinking, and you can just get your mind out of whatever gutter you like to rollin. I do not make a habit of becoming some lost soul's girlfriend just because he blows ectoplasm up my skirt. This ain't my first paranormal rodeo, you know.

I just wish Alan wasn't so hell bent on making it my last.

"About time you showed up, Red," said Renn as I clambered out of my range rover. It was parked in front of the Quail Hollow Restaurant two blocks away and one block over from Linton's. In the sodium lights that lined the main street, the Victorian era buildings were more sinister than sleepy in humid washes of sepia. Linton's own yellow brick seemed to absorb the tone and reflect it back, a silent testimony to family tragedy.

The mercantile, a turn of the century edifice in the dead center of downtown, had been a bustling force of economic good in the 1930s - until Jay Linton's luck with the law ran out. After that, the store was boarded up, investments hustled to other parts, and the task of management passed to none-too-grateful children, all of whom did whatever they could to forget their family. While upscale cafes, clothing boutiques, lawyer offices, and art galleries ushered in revival efforts, the Linton family boarded up the store's bay windows, painted the transom glass, and resolutely refused to join the 21st century. Only when an alarm went off did anyone see the decaying inside, and then it was a fireman or police...or, in my recent case, a shovel bum playing ghost-buster.

I couldn't help but check Renn out as I got out of my car. He looked disheveled, with a sooty face and t-shirt, fire-retardant trousers, and fire-fighting boots with their broad band of light-reflective tape. Renn is a solid young man, my age of twenty six years. His oval face encompasses pleasant, regular features crowned with thick brown hair. He has the most winsome brown eyes I'd ever seen on a guy, and a mild, unflappable temperament that makes him popular with everyone, especially women. Not me, though; I'm immune to his charms. Honestly, I am! He reminds me too much of my two older brothers, who'd been firemen themselves before they signed up with the military. I think he's a sweetheart, just not the kind that makes my heart burn.

"I was beginning to think you'd fallen in a ditch somewhere," Renn added, as I pulled out a small backpack and closed my vehicle door.

"That's your thing, Ever Ready, " I replied, a nickname Renn had earned in his rookie days when his zealous response to a call landed one of the old fire department rigs in a deep ditch in the middle of a severe thunderstorm.

"It's your thing tonight," he replied, gruffly.

I studied Renn for a moment, tried to gauge his level of displeasure. I could see he was upset.

"What's wrong?" I asked as anxiety spiked in my chest. If Renn was disturbed, something was genuinely bad.

"You have your stick?" he asked.

I held up the one instrument of my extracurricular pastime, something that distinguished me from the myriad of paranormal trackers out there: a slender foot-long wand carved of fossil stone. It was a gift, one I received as a child when I got lost in the woods in Alabama during a family outing. I discovered early on that it allows me to talk to other-worldly entities and some-such. This wand is the reason why Renn contacts me from time to time, but always on the hush-hush. Secrecy doesn't bother me in the slightest, either. Just the opposite, in fact. The last thing that I, an archaeologist, want to be known for was 'mumbo jumbo' or weird New Age crap that claims all sorts of things about the Beyond. You've no idea how that would hurt my chances for advancement in the field of science.

"What is it this time?" I asked as I returned the wand to its specially designed pouch slung on the belt loop of my jeans.

"We found a body," he said. "Actually, it was a burnt skeleton, and yeah, I want you to do your voodoo thing, but over where we found it. Thing's already in storage at the local funeral home." As I protested, he brushed me off, "so if you want to wave your exorcism wand over that, it'll have to be later."

That wasn't exactly how my 'exorcisms' went, but explaining for the umpteenth time would be a waste of breath with Renn, so I asked "then why...?"

"I'm getting to it," Renn interjected, ready for me. "If it was a murder, it was a very old one. I have to call the owner come morning and I don't know how quickly they'll come running when I do. This was my one chance to get you in there before things get really hectic. State fire marshal's going to be coming, too, and I don't think the owners will blow it off as easily since a possible death is involved."

He paused. Something in his expression said he was fixing to lower the boom. My brain swirled with the new information and all its implications. My heart stopped and started several times. I could only think of the cell phone.

"What's wrong?" I asked in nonchalant concern.

"Your name, Deirdre," he blurted, his voice slightly rough with anger. "It's all over the place in there."

"What?" I asked, leaning against my vehicle to steady myself. "You think it had something to do with my...I mean, the ghost?"

"Your boyfriend," Renn replied, with disgust.

"He's not my boyfriend," I countered, defensive.

"Your boyfriend," he repeated with irritation, "must have used a chalk of some kind, or wrote with the soot. Don't roll your eyes! You and I both know it was him. I don't need to be a ghost-hunter to figure that out."

Renn can't see or sense ghosts like I can, but he'd been with me on enough cases to be a believer; and while he didn't know I'd been breaking and entering Linton's on my own, he'd encountered Alan once or twice himself.

"I think he's got it in for you and he's getting brazen. You've got to take care of this once and for all, hon, otherwise, someone...namely me...will have to summon you for far different reasons."

Not trusting myself to reply, I pressed the button of my automatic key to set the car alarm to break the tension. It blurted sharply in the night air. Both he and I glanced nervously down the main street to the far end where the Richmond fire station sat brilliantly lit. At one o'clock in the morning it was a superfluous act, as there were no other souls on the street; but considering our intentions, neither one of us was keen on taking chances with nocturnal witnesses. Fortunately, everything in every dark corner kept to itself.

"You have this one chance, Dee," Renn concluded, when our eyes met again. I knew he was serious when he used my preferred nick-name. Considering I have flaming auburn hair past my shoulders and freckles, I'd suffered several lifetimes of hearing the usual slurs against my kind. "Red," "bonfire," "carrot top." Worse yet are the nicknames that point out the generous dusting of freckles on my face and body. Renn is the only one who can call me Red and get away with it.

"You have until dawn to straighten this out," he said. "And don't do anything to the writing, okay? Pictures have already been taken. At best, it can be one of those mysteries that everyone will pretend they don't understand. But if you don't get him in your grips now, I can't shield for you later. Understand?"

"I'll take care of him," I told him, grimly.

"I have to tell you this as well," he added as the two of us walked around the corner to the back door. "It's strange enough the blaze was localized in the main room. The whole place should have gone up like tinder a long time ago, but it's always...well, the really weird part is where we found the remains."

The shadows in the alley were completely black and I could scarcely see anything at all. I waited for him to tell me as he carefully unlocked the door for me.

"It was in front of an altar, Dee," he whispered as I stepped through. "In the manager's office... no sign of burning in there, and right in front of this weird-ass altar. Stinks to high heaven, too. You know the history of the place. You know how thorough I've been in my investigations. There's never been anything in that room before."

He took hold of my arm before I immersed myself completely. "I'm not going to go in with you this time. I'd have to explain myself in a report I already filed and...well, be extremely careful. That thing scared the hell out of me, more so than your dick of a ghost ever did."

~ @~ @~ @ ~

Once I got through the little storage area, apparently also untouched and as full of cobwebs and dust as it had ever been, I entered the main grocer's gallery and waited for my eyes to adjust to the dimness of the room. I took my flashlight from my backpack and flicked the light to scan the floor for solid places to step. The place smelled of old musty burned wood, dusty rotted wood, and waterlogged wood, layered over with chemicals used to squelch fire. I made my cautious way into the middle - enough floor remained there for me to move toward the last place I had seen my phone. Some of the glass cases were smashed. Memory came to me of dropping my phone near one of them before dashing for the back door. They'd been whole the last time.

I stood staring at the ruins in dismay. I'd be here all night.

Shoving aside my bitterness for the moment, I returned to scanning the area with my flashlight. A slow reveal of the walls showed the handiwork Renn warned me about - my name in clear letters in various positions, as if a finger had been drawn across the soot or a stick used to etch my name in highly visible spots. I wanted to cry.

That's when I heard it: an exhalation...relief, tinged with desire.

Deirdre...

Okay. Here he comes.

When he chooses to appear, Alan flaunts a cigarette, a finely tailored suit, and a fedora cocked in that slanted tilt that only men in the 40s knew how to make. Anyone could see that when living, he had sported the rakish good looks of a golden era movie star - square jaw, uncompromising mouth, eyes shadowed with hardship. He often spoke with soft, flat tones, even when I lost my temper, the epitome of Joe Cool in the face of rebellion. It was always a shock to see how handsome he was. The ghosts that I usually encountered were often contorted or incomplete. Not Alan. He looks every bit the whole man when he manifests. It's probably why I keep forgetting to dispel him. I'm certain that in his day, he killed them with charm...not much different from the present, I suppose.

"What are you trying to do to me, Alan?" I called out. Even if Renn hadn't given me an ultimatum, I was prepared to duke things out to the last breath. I had reached containment level.

Out of the mild sauna of the smoldering room came a jet rush of air, flowing down and around me just strong enough to imply hands curling around my neck, my face, and running down my back and waist, lingering at the wand. It was just enough sensation to tell me it was no mere breeze. It was an echo of what he had tried on me the last time: full contact and more than enough seduction.

"Stop that!" I cried, shuddering hard. "Gah! Do all our sessions have to start with copping a feel?"

Tall shelves lined the far wall to my left, all empty but for limp webs. The air in front of them took on a hard, knotted quality. Darkness pooled to form a solid mass and out of that drifted the steady white shade of Alan Zehnder. He leant against the skeleton edge of one counter as though at a bar, one hand holding his perennially lit cigarette, the other tucking back the fedora on his head.

"In my day," he grinned, after taking a draw, "we called it pitching woo." The ghostly smoke escaped his mouth and curled sensuously around his face.

"Well, this is the 21st century...my day...and you'll get decked and arrested for doing that," I retorted.

"You should have stuck around last visit, then," Alan, straightened, and slipped his hand into his breast pocket. He pulled out a lighter and held it up significantly. "By now, you'd be in the perfect position to slap me around all you like."

"Would it have worked? Seems like you can't even finish a fire. Doesn't exactly give a girl any confidence," I countered.

He laughed. Score one for me.

"Is that a stogie in your pocket or are you just here to take your phone away?" he asked, pointing to the fallen beam beside me. I turned and saw in the beam of my flashlight the perfectly safe and unmarred cellular phone, as if I had just laid it there by mistake.

"My phone!" I snatched it up and glared at Alan, knowing there could be only one explanation.

"Those cats couldn't find a hairball in a hailstorm," Alan grumbled, looking pleased with himself. "So I saved it for you."

"You mean you hid it," I surmised.

He shrugged and took another draw, an enigmatic expression on his outlined face.

Well, that was one crisis resolved. I had to proceed carefully now. I pulled out the hidden cigar and tried not to think about how he sensed it.

"I came to see if I could indulge another bad habit of yours," I offered, hoping to sound as cool as a cucumber.

Alan appeared unimpressed, but he drifted closer to the temptation, close enough for me to spot the two bullet holes that appeared in the left panel of his jacket, a detail I had never noticed before.

"Habits do have a way of ruining your life," he remarked.

"Kinda like you, huh?" I snipped. A slow smile was my reward. "Are you going to behave this time or shall I just proceed straight to the fire department phone call?" I asked as another shiver snaked through me. Those smiles of his conveyed warmth and danger in ways that weren't human. I couldn't decide if I liked it or not.

"Why don't you light it up?" he suggested.

"And deny you yet another pyrotechnic opportunity? Alan," I remonstrated, "you disappoint me."

He pointed to the ponytail that bound my auburn hair. "Go ahead, doll. I'll smoke with you...and while you're at it, let down your hair. Life is short. It may end sooner than you think."

"I intend to keep mine for as long as I can, thank you," I replied. "I know you're wanting to spark something, so here's your chance."

"I always was a sucker for redheads," he said ruefully, and with an elegant flip of his hand, presented a ghost-flame to the end of my cigar. The tip lit up, red coal brilliant against the cold color of Alan's form. I noticed how long his fingers were, and how deft he was at making them unobtrusive. What really caught my attention, though, was the brief flutter of emotion on his face. It wasn't the usual seduction or amusement. There was genuine wincing pain.

"Alan, why are you trying to get me into trouble?" I asked, after my first long draw. I don't often smoke these things, but when I do, I like a little luxury in the flavor, so I brought one infused with berry and cognac. It was French perfume next to the rancid pall of the burned wood. "What point is it to hide my phone from the nice firemen when you scrawl my name all over the place? Did you think no one would figure it out?"

"I was counting on it," Alan said. "That contraption would have been hard evidence of your malfeasance. This way your boyfriend, Renn, can only chalk it up to freak circumstance. Am I right? Unless you told him," he added. "Besides...I couldn't figure out how to call you on that ridiculous thing. I needed to get your attention somehow."

"Maybe that's a sign," I shot back, angered once more by the 'b' word. "You couldn't reach me because you're dead. Time for you to cross over to a place where it's not possible to be such a nuisance. You do want to cross over, don't you?"

He studied me for several long seconds, flicked his ghostly stub away, then lit another one. I wondered if he ever ran out.

"Alan...this has gone on long enough. It's the 21st century. You're from my great-grandpa's time. Whoever it is you're looking for has long gone," I went on in a pleading voice, even though this is exactly how the fight started last time. Hey, I said I was an archaeologist, not a ghost therapist. "They're probably over there, on some sandy beach, sipping margaritas, going 'hey, Roscoe, where's that two-bit gangster, Alan? Ain't he gonna get wise?'"

"The guys and I have been wagging our chins," he declared, as if I'd said nothing about booting him across the Spiritual Divide. "We want you to use that wand of yours."

"Wand? What wand?" I feigned ignorance.

It was Alan's turn to remonstrate. "Kitten..."

I yanked out the incriminating artifact, wishing I could just zap him - and I can - but I rarely used it like that. When I did, there were consequences. All I ever really used it for was to take readings on a ghost, like a geologist would a seismic anomaly or a doctor of a patient. If I was lucky, the readings I got led me to a gravesite, or clues that the police needed to solve a case. The ghost itself, if it was still around, and if it was seeking a way to leave, would gain some kind of pulse, a burst of power it needed to move on to that Great Beyond. A lot of the times, ghosts were grateful for the chance. Some preferred to stay and I preferred to let it be, unless they were just too difficult for the living. They certainly never gave me as much trouble as Alan. He just wouldn't take 'boo' for an answer.

Still, I had a real affection for him. He had spirit for a spirit. If there was such a thing as Karma in the afterlife, I wanted as many ghosts like him on my side when I got there.

"I think this is a chance to prove yourself," Alan added. "You bragged about it during your last visit. Now we want to see it in action."

"Who's this 'we'?" I pursued. The nerve of this guy! Prove myself?

"We. Us. Them. The others who got sucked into this place against their will," Alan groused. "I'm not even supposed to be here."

I rolled my eyes. Duh!

"Are you going to help us or not?" There was a tinge of desperation in his voice.

"With what, Alan?" I was not about to be bullied. "If you're not willing to go on your own, there's nothing I can do."

"We'll deal with me later, doll," Alan replied, looking even more unhappy. "It's the others that need your help."

"Fiiiine." My drawl gets stronger when I'm frustrated. "I'll come back when you're more in the mood."

Alan swept in front of me and I felt, rather than saw, a wall of fire spring up behind me.

"We don't got a lot of time, sweetheart," he insisted.

"No, no no! Not this again!" I stormed. "I'm not going through this again!"

To my surprise, the wall dropped.

"You're going to have to trust me," Alan said, and it must have been the pleading in his voice that got to me. This was different! "We need you."

"You want me to do readings for everyone?" I asked, incredulous. "So why haven't they..." I stopped then, suddenly on my guard. Something was...off.

Most haunted places rarely have just one spirit hanging about, and not every ghost is looking for a way out. Linton's was not any different, not whenever I came to visit. At any given moment, one or two of them would float by, out of curiosity, out of fear, out of some desperate need of their own. But now...the place was an empty shell...and it felt awful, like a compression chamber. In fact, the atmosphere was growing more awful by the second.

Not one of the resident specters had made an appearance by this time.

"Wait a sec...this place is usually teeming," I observed. "Where is everyone?"

"Ah. At last, she crabs it," Alan snipped, sticking his hands in his pockets. He looked insulted. "For a minute there, I thought I was going to have to explain myself."

"What have you done, Alan?"

"You're the ghost shooter here," he said. "The witch-woman with the wand. You tell me."

"I'm an archaeologist," I replied, indignant. "A scientist. We only observe and study things, not try to burn them up or spell-craft them out."

As you can see, I get a little testy when I'm called paranormal...even though the wand proves it.

"Dapple-face, you're a lot of things, but observant you're not," he remarked and poked his finger in the direction of the space behind me.

The tone of his voice told me it would do no good to argue with his choice of nicknames for me, poetic as it was. When I turned around to look, I immediately knew I'd have more to worry about than Alan's incendiary remarks.

A vortex. There was a brand new vortex in Linton's, transecting the wall between the main grocery and the store manager's office. How in the hell did I miss that?

I don't deal with vortices. I chalk them up as one of those anomalies best left to the adventuresome and foolhardy. I give them a very wide berth whenever possible. Vortices are typical of places where someone has deliberately tried to open the spiritual world; or, if you wanted a really broad definition, a waypoint along ley lines where power was more concentrated. They'll usually manifest themselves as amorphous cold spots that travel, appearing and reappearing in no logical method. More to the point, a vortex serves as some kind of doorway for ghosts, the closest thing to a wormhole one could expect to run across in this realm or on this planet. They're fairly common and I knew of some ghosts that had shown up because of one, but I didn't dare try to tackle the things themselves. For one thing, you just never knew what grappling with a vortex will provoke or inflame. I've heard it described like standing in the middle of an interstate intersection and foolishly expecting traffic to bump into you like pillows, while getting flooded with every emotion in the human and spiritual spectrum, with no hope of reclaiming yourself. Not a pleasant experience for someone sensitive to the ghost realm, and definitely dangerous for the psyche.

What I had not seen because of my determination to face off with Alan was the truly heinous creature that now sat by the doorway of the store manager's office, watching the two of us, silent and seething. It was frog-like in appearance. At least, it squatted like one. It's color matched that of slimy mud. Short front legs, bulging back legs, large bulbous eyes all congealed to form a fat-lipped, flat-headed lump of pure throat muscle. No human expression could match the malevolence that glowed from its eyes. It blinked at us as if it had been waiting for a chance to laugh at our horror. I had the distinct impression it had been eating.

"Well, well, aren't we behind the eight ball?" I asked, forcibly slowing my breath to keep calm. For the first time since meeting him, I wished Alan was actually corporeal. At least then I could hide behind him.

Alan only gave me another one of his looks.

"What the hell is that?" I asked.

"Powers of deduction escape you, don't they?"

"At this particular moment, yes! Please tell me this has nothing to do with you!" Panic was starting to form a tight knot in my chest. I pointed the wand at the frog, but found I was trembling. I wouldn't know what to do if that thing attacked me.

"It has everything to do with me. But I didn't summon it, if that's what you want to know."

I looked back at him, and even with all of my suspicion and anger at the situation, I could see that he was earnest.

"What is it?" I asked again.

"A shiv...a knife, a thug...someone who does the dirty work to tighten the screws. There's two of them. Second one's in the office. They were sent to eliminate the others." He came to stand next to me. He brightened, like a lamp when the rotator switch is turned, when he came close to the wand. "They won't be able to hurt you. It's me they're after."

"Can't you make it go away?"

"I need you to use that wand," he said. "I've tried my own methods. They didn't work." He motioned to the scorched hollow of the store around us.

"But that's not what the wand is for..." I protested. "I mean, I can help you get across the Divide, Alan, but its not for blasting little beasties away. You don't have to stay here. You can escape."

"Listen, I know more about that wand than you think." Alan snapped, impatient. He flickered as if the light in him were losing power. "And it's not for the shivs or that vortex. It's for that altar in there. Just walk past the shivs. They're the least of your problems."

"I came in here to get my phone and get rid of you!" I shot back, my temper frayed. "That's all!"

"You have your phone and if you don't do something, the shivs'll do the honors!" Alan's voice rose in tandem with mine.

I broke. I couldn't take anymore. What he was saying didn't making sense at all and the growing lack of control I felt in the presence of that creature, as well as the vortex, began to close in on me. I can be brave most of the time, foolhardy even; but when I sense that things will end badly, I have no qualms about ducking out. As much as Alan intrigued me, and as much as it would cost me to let him continue causing trouble, it was becoming enormously clear that I was getting railroaded into a situation that would not have a happy ending.

"I told you, I don't use the wand to make things disappear!" I cried. "I only use it to gather information. If the ghosts are already gone, then so am I! Good-bye, Alan. Have a nice...death. When you're ready to face facts and leave this place, don't call me. Don't write my name, either. I won't come!"

I turned to make my way back through the store.

"Guess I'll just have to keep trying to burn this place down, then," I heard him say with a finality I did not like. I turned to find he had pulled out his lighter again and held it to a nearby piece of wood. His eyes were closed and he was fading, as if he was willing himself into oblivion. A single flame snapped into existence at his fingers. It burned blue and leapt onto the wood like a little imp, running and multiplying in tongues along the board towards more fertile fuel. Uh oh.

Then I heard the sound of the back door where I had entered slam loudly, as if to emphasize his next words:

"This time," he growled, "I'm taking you with me."

"Whoa, whoa, whoa!" I shouted in horror. "I'll do it! I'll do what you ask!"

Alan hesitated, his handsome face dark with anger.

"I promise. I'll do what you want," I gasped, horrified by the realization that Alan had complete control of the situation.

He snapped his fingers and the blue flames disappeared. He nearly faded to a mere wisp and I realized he was getting drained. I'm ashamed to say that it crossed my mind to hold out until he was drained altogether, but Alan had made a clear imprint upon me. I would probably lose before that ever happened.

"If I do this, then will you leave me the hell alone?" I tried to negotiate. "If I do this...whatever it is you want me to do, will you not set fire to the place anymore...or write my name everywhere? Just...go to the Light? Go home?"

Alan considered me for some very long tense moments. I could see every nuance of expression as if he were real, which made the brief passage of hurt across his face even more disturbing. I knew that a ghost could and would attach itself to the living to maintain energy and connection, but it surprised me that Alan, my dapper 40s stranger out of supernatural nowhere, was reacting as if I had just asked for a divorce. This was not a good sign.

"Sure, doll," he relented, the tone in his voice hard and unemotional. "If that's what you want."

"What am I supposed to do now?"

"Get past the shiv...avoid the vortex..." he explained. "It's just a simple drawing on the far wall. That's all you have to deal with...but listen to me, Deirdre. You must draw a square around it using that wand. Just a simple square in a single unbroken line...got that?"

I stared at him, almost disappointed with his instructions. Was he crazy? Was I?

"I can't do the magic, hon," Alan said, desperation showing in his eyes. "I won't lie: he'll throw every bit of nastiness at you, but you've got to stay with it. Just a square, no breaks. Once you do that, I can leave."

"So...I ignore the shivs, and the vortex, and go draw a line on a picture on the wall. Is that what you're telling me?" I asked. Incredulity made my voice break.

"Just that," he replied.

"Just what is it that I'm dealing with, Alan?" He had to understand: I wasn't going to go in unless armored with something more than a thumbnail full of faith.

"A sorcerer," was his short reply.

Somehow this made perfect sense.

Not.

"And you think my wand has the ability to wreck his world?" I challenged him.

"Honey, that thing's a powerhouse."

I frowned at him.

"The wand was once used to protect something of great power, an artifact you will find in that altar. You do this for me, dollface, I'll tell you anything you want to know about it."

I didn't know what to say. How many fairy tales ended badly because someone retrieved an item at the request of some desperate being?

The shiv in the doorway burped.

"It's what'll help me pass over, Daps," Alan said, pleading once more. Damn it, I just couldn't resist him! "I need it to go home."

"Well, then," I hedged. I saw out of the corner of my eye the shiv inch closer to us. I shuddered, tried to find some secure spot of reason to land my sense of balance. None of what I came in to do was going according to plan. "That's what it's all about, then, isn't it?"

"Hurry," Alan urged.

~ @~ @~ @ ~

It was no comfort at all to remember the shiv wasn't interested in me, because taking those steps past him was a discovery of horror that I had never before encountered, namely in the form of a second beast, same as the first, positioned beside the vortex inside the office. By all appearances it sat with the same indifference as the other, except it had been eating the ghosts that made their haunting here.

Eating.

Remnants hung from its fat lips, including what I recognized in a few dazed moments as a bonnet that had graced one of the lady spirits that frequented the place, a woman from the 1880s. Littering the floor of the chamber were ghostly shoes, arms, parts of heads, teeth. To add to my everlasting disgust, the second shiv drooled ectoplasm onto the floor. It mingled with the parts in unnerving trails. My thoughts churned as if on a tilt-a-whirl. I argued fervently against the flight instinct. My specialty in school had been forensic anthropology, so I had been through quite a few cases dealing with the leftovers of a crime scene, never a pleasant thing. But they had all been tissue and bone. This, in a very surreal way, was pure obscenity.

I took a deep breath and forced myself to turn toward the altar.

Everything I had ever encountered in the ghost realm, all the dig sites I had been involved with that were haunted by lingering spirits, all the houses I had been paid to exorcise, none of them had presented quite the evil that emanated from the pile of refuse clustered at the far wall. It appeared to be a table or bureau coated in a mixture of drooping candles and ephemera, a grotesque assortment of reeking appeasements: rotten food, dismembered animals, used sanitary napkins, and bottles of liquid. What really struck me was the picture plastered above it all. It was large like a political poster and colored in the grim leavings of time and decay. The face alone would have seemed cartoonish to the secular eye, but my sixth sense felt malevolence pour from it in waves, the tilted almond eyes filled with hate, a mass of stringy hair like a river of pestilence. I realized I had been foolish to worry about attention from the shiv: I was in the middle of the full beam of this picture's gaze...and I feared for my life.

Instantly, all of its will clamped down on me. It needed nothing more than an audience, and I was caught. I could even feel a certain smugness in its aura: the sorcerer had broken the bonds of time and space where no one would think of it until it was too late. And, with a burst of , it sensed the wand.

My arms felt heavy, as if blocks of lead had landed on them, and my fingers felt blood pooling, circulation cut off, trembling to release the wand. Despair filled me. I don't think Alan understood what he was asking of me! I dealt only with the lost ghosts, the ones who missed the exit and couldn't quite find the road back. This entity was beyond my experience!

I felt a light breath, an in spiritu movement, and an image filtered into my mind's eye: a red square. The lead weights on my arms lightened and my hands rose. I had something to focus on now, my original directive. I pointed the tip to a spot in the top left corner of the image and began to trace.

A red light trail appeared. I was so amazed, I nearly dropped the wand.

Malice pounced, knocking me back. A force like a multitude of leeches stuck to me like gum, rolling over me, turning me around, grabbing at me, pinching, punching and for a few moments all I could do was react. Get off, get off! I turned the wand on myself and the force was kicked away. I don't remember how I got back onto my feet, but I fastened the wand's aim once again and this time bore down on it, pushing against the strength of the image as if shoving against a stream of electricity. It took eons to get to the top right corner. When I did, I pulled down, drew the second line, then the third. Not a word, not a sound, not a motion occurred other than my wand hand, but I knew the presence behind the face was struggling against me.

A last ditch effort shoved at me again and I felt hands around my throat. The same sense of inspiration that had helped me draw the first line told me that the unseen power was weakened, so I pushed against it with every bit of concentration I could muster. I struggled to a half crouch, knowing that if it succeeded in getting me prostrate, it was over. My arm was shaking. I raised the wand and tried to connect the dots...my palm was sweating and the fossil stone of the wand slid in my grip...my aim wobbled, the line wobbled...I wobbled, between life and death, air seeping away, pain, oppression...

Three lines...almost four...

Now the frog creature took notice of me! It scooched closer, dropped the bonnet from its mouth. Then, it leapt.

The only pain I felt from the blow was the weight landing on my chest, flattening me upon my back. Its rubbery mouth opened; I strained against it, focusing all intent on the wand in my hand. I might disappear into the maw of that thing, but I would damn well keep that wand aimed!

Centimeters to the mark, but it felt as if I had to cross a chasm to finish.

The shiv looked up...a shadow crossed overhead. A hand gripped mine...

All that foulness, all that terrible will, let out one last screech, then the square snapped it off, and I lay on the floor, hardly able to gasp, disbelief warring with the joy of not being dead.

Dark, dark moments passed. I struggled with my eyesight to clear it of residue. I saw light flare. A small gas-lamp appeared, set on the floor. I tried to sit up and found myself too weak.

Confusion reigned until I saw Alan kneel beside me in his quiet flowing way, fedora hiding the shadows of his eyes. I could tell by his voice that things were different now.

"Bet you could use some hooch," he said to me, teeth gleaming in the dim light.

"Can go now," I rasped, wishing for a tall glass of water. Air rushed painfully into my lungs. I wanted to lay still and insist that nothing else happen.

"Go where, Daps?" he asked.

I blinked up at him like an owl. I was too weak to complain about the nick-name.

"The Light. You're free," I reasoned.

"Oh." He sat back on his heels, expression unreadable.

"Had a deal!" I squeaked after several moments of his scrutiny.

He only nodded. Long fingers lit another cigarette. The pale glow illuminated the warm tones of a planed face.

"Something's off," I announced and tried to sit up. Alan grabbed my hand and pulled me straight.

I stared bug-eyed up at him as the momentous gesture slowly sank in. The bricklayer's line of his lips was smug. Smoke puffed from his nostrils, and his eyes held mine. They were blue...such a pure blue.

Then he said, "wait here," and turned swiftly to the altar. The picture hung in tatters on the wall, its eminence now as flat and ineffective as the paper it was printed on. Alan shoved the debris of the altar aside and kicked its trash with his feet until he hit against something metal. Crushing his cigarette out, he picked up a container the size of a post box. I called out to him, but he ignored me, fingers twisting at the lock until it bent like aluminum foil and flung back the lid. Deft fingers cupped an item within and held it up into the light.

Joy and rage flushed across his features like shadows, curving the lines of his face into an image I would not soon forget. Unless my eyes were playing tricks on me (still), the white lump looked suspiciously like a bone fragment. After careful examination of it, Alan slipped it into his coat pocket. If he thought to explain himself at that moment, he was interrupted by the startling blurt of a train whistle: a locomotive engine barreled down the tracks one street over from Linton's.

We both listened to it in taut silence. Then, he took my arm and gently pulled me to a stand, his grip firm and warm. Real flesh. The gas-lamp backlit his masculine profile with solid concrete lines. The last iota of doubt I had was destroyed.

Alan Zehnder wasn't a ghost. He was something else.

"You alright?" He asked, his tone amused. He picked up the wand from the floor and handed it to me. "No missing pieces?"

I could only shake my head. Things had not stopped happening after all.

"We should notify your boyfriend out there that you're alright," he remarked, in the same tone of disdain Renn as before. "He'll think something hinky is going on."

That damned 'b' word again!

"No," I snapped, without thinking. "Don't. Explain." I couldn't form full sentences. I was too stunned. I certainly didn't want Renn and his friggin' procedures around to complicate matters, not until I had both feet on the ground. My monkey-brain wouldn't let go of the idea that Alan should be dissipated by now, spirited to a Great Beyond...unless, this was just more sorcery...

"Go on, doll. I know you want to ask," Alan urged.

"What are you?" I managed to say, my heart hammering hard enough to choke me.

"You really want to know?" he asked. "I could just walk away and let you have your life back. No more pitching woo."

I blinked. Words I had used were being tossed back at me and that hurt, more than expected.

"Tell me. I did what you asked," I challenged. "What are you?"

"Yes, you did," he murmured, and the look on his face spoke of his respect. He then stepped closer, until our faces were mere inches apart. No longer was he the amorphous ghost with which I had become familiar. No longer cold, ethereal, liminal vapor. A gentle heat radiated from him and I could scarcely look at him.

Tucking a finger under my chin, he lifted my face so I would meet his gaze. I tried to protest, to reason with him. I can't remember what I wanted to say. He just shook his head: no. Then, he brought his mouth down on mine, sealed our lips together in one breath.

The kiss was tender, eager. He tasted of bourbon-laced smoke and sweet cinnamon fire. We parted slowly.

"Rwy'n ddraig ac rydych hachub mi," he rumbled in husky tones.

A more romantically pliable woman would have just filled in the blanks. She'd melt into a pile of accepting goo right then and there and not care what language had been spoken, as long as it was in that sultry deep voice, with that bone-softening kiss.

But I'm not romantic; at least, not in the conventional sense. I'm definitely not pliable.

"That's not fair," I groused, barely opening my eyes. "I don't speak...whatever it is that you said."

He smiled a brilliant smile I didn't think humanly possible. It sent my toes curling. He traced a finger along my cheek, entangled it with a stray curl of my red hair.

"It's Welsh. Are you ready to hear what it means, Daps?" he asked, tenderly.

When I nodded, he bent to my ear and whispered, "I'm a dragon...and you saved me."

"What the hell?"

That's what I was going to ask! But for the fact that Alan's eyes were now trained on a spot behind me, I could have sworn I said those words. Turning, I saw Renn standing in the doorway of the office, eyes bugged out from the wreckage of the altar and the imposing figure of Alan. He glared at the both of us in such an expression of dismay and betrayal that I fell against Alan to hold myself up. I knew through lifelong familiarity that Renn's bulldog frown meant he was very, very angry.

"You're about to become the new suspect," he said.

Uh oh.

"Now wait a minute, bud..." Alan began, but I stepped in between.

"You trusted me to do this, Renn!" I exclaimed, cheeks hot from guilt. How long had he been standing there? "Turn me in and it'll be the last conversation you and I ever have!"

"That's what I came to warn you about," Renn growled. "I just heard on the scanner that activity's been spotted here. I don't know who's watching the place, but if you don't get the hell out of here pronto, it's out of my control and any conversation we do have will be used against us."

I grabbed Alan's hand and pulled him along. I couldn't stop to wonder at his physicality anymore, even though it felt surreal to be exiting his ghostly home while his large, warm hand was wrapped in mine. The night air was cool and refreshing compared to what I had been breathing for the last hour or so. Alan seemed to be affected by it, as well, as he gasped when he first stepped through the back door, and stumbled along in the alley to follow us as we made our way to some of the darker shadows of the block. One of the many hundred-year old spreading oaks that punctuated the streets of Richmond offered the darkest sort of cover for us and we huddled against its rough bark, as much out of sight of his vehicle as we could manage. Renn turned to us and gave us more instructions, his voice rough.

"Whatever the hell you do, do not show yourselves! I have a cover story worked out but one peep out of you and hell will break loose...and I might join in with them." I couldn't see his face in the dark but I knew it well enough to know he was boiling with fury. I could only nod. Things were happening again and I was unable to find a place to stand firm. "I'm going to go deflect their curiosity. You...get lost." He was looking at me when he said this, but I sensed he really meant Alan.

"Is there a spot further away from here?" Alan asked of me in a soft whisper, as Renn jogged back to his truck. My heart was beating in such an odd gallop, I had difficulty finding the breath to reply.

"My range rover," I whispered back. In spite of this new danger of discovery, or probably because of it, I had not let go of his hand, had pressed myself to him. The burn of the kiss still hovered around my lips and the fact that he was real, so very real, had begun to sink in. "It's just a couple of blocks away. We have to be careful though."

He seemed to know exactly how to go from shadowy spot to shadowy passage, and swept me along so efficiently I was amazed. We had just arrived by my vehicle when we saw three sets of red, white, and blue lights flashing down the street. One of them headed directly towards us!

Alan had a solution.

"It's a crass and over-used tactic," he told me, "but it works...most of the time."

"What works?" I demanded in alarm.

With one smooth pull, he positioned me to stand between him and my car, stepped in between my legs and pressed me to the door with his own body, hitching me up a bit. The tactic was all too clear.

"Follow my lead," he demanded, as I stiffened in dismay.

There was the sound of tires on the asphalt. I threw my arms and one leg around him. His hand yanked at my shirt until it hung out of my jeans, then slid up inside and his other arm encircled my head so that I could relax against it while he pressed his lips against mine.

Well, it wasn't quite like our first kiss; but I gotta tell you, I almost didn't hear the blurp of the siren, so enthralled was I. Alan pulled away to turn and glare at the headlights of the police car as it slowed to a stop just feet away, then stepped in front of me to shield me as I tucked my shirt back in and tried to regain some dignity.

"Step away from her," said the driver of the car as he got out and pointed a flashlight at Alan's face. "You all right, ma'am?"

I nodded my head vigorously, squinting in the bright lights.

"Is there a problem, officer?" Alan asked, tone neutral, but I could see the glint of his blue eyes.

"Show me your ID," the man said, hand on his pistol as he rounded the door of his car. I panicked. Would Alan have anything like that?

The officer stopped short.

"Is that you, Deirdre?" he asked of me.

A name sprang to mind: Nick. I couldn't remember his last name, but he had conversed with Renn often enough for me to be able to pick him out of the cadre of police that lived here. He trained his flashlight back on Alan, but seemed intent on determining who I was.

"Guilty as charged. Can't a girl go on a date?" I asked, defensively.

"As long as it's that only that," Nick replied.

"She was aggressive, you know. I didn't know how to stop her," my erstwhile ghost friend said. Nick didn't laugh, but the tension eased a bit.

"I'm fine," I reassured with a smile. "Honest, I'm not hurt in any way."

"Been a long time since I've seen her. Guess I got carried away," Alan added.

"We'll, take it home then," Nick said, reluctant to let the moment pass without a diktat. "Before you scare the horses."

"Some lead you are," I groused to Alan as Nick drove away. We could see other police vehicles driving to meet with Holt. "Now the gossip's gonna run through town like wildfire."

"They'll be talking about what a vixen you are, instead of whether or not you were in that building," Alan replied, amused but pragmatic.

How logical. I stared at him, realizing that at last there was a moment where dire necessity wasn't forcing the both of us to ram our personalities or will at each other.

"You've got some explaining to do," I said.

"You've got that cigar to give me. More where that came from?"

"At my place."

Alan's smile had the lasciviousness I had come to know and feel ambivalent about.

"Good," he said. "Another chance for pitching woo."

He was actually a perfect gentleman the whole ride home. I didn't have far to go: over the railroad track and into the darker, older parts of town. It was a small wood-frame house originally built by one of the many founding fathers back when the area was still part of Old Mexico. It was as modern as it could be inside, complete with central air and heat and a stainless steel stove and my computer in the living room. If the forties-era man (er, did he say dragon? That had to have been a mistake...) was phased by any of this, he didn't let on, simply propped his fedora on the lamp by my couch and stood looking around as if uncertain where to go next. After I poured him a drink - gin was all I could offer - and brought him a fresh cigar, I reminded him of his promise to explain.

"I was in Chicago at the time," he began, after a few appreciative puffs, "nineteen forty-three. I was part of Pinkerton's investigative outfit and the goons we were tailing got the drop on us."

"Is that how you got the bullet holes?" I pointed out the round spots to him.

He looked down, mildly surprised. "Oh, yeah. I forgot about those."

"But why here?" I asked. My mind raced to pick out what bits of knowledge I had about the Pinkerton Detective Agency. I found I didn't know much, which just added to the confusion. Witchcraft and America's oldest security service did not compute! "Why this little town in Texas, of all places? We're not exactly a suburb of Chicago."

"Is that where I am?" It was Alan's turn for bemusement. "Well, anyway, there was some...distress. Turned out to be a trap. A sorcerer named Azdaja laid it for all of us. When I tried to help my friends, I got caught in one of his little whirlwinds."

For every sentence Alan spoke, a hundred more questions filled me. I clutched at one of the pillows on the couch, holding myself back. Patience was not a virtue I found easy to practice.

"The vortex allowed other ghosts to come and go," Alan continued, "and as long as that went on, I had some chance of keeping solid. Took me some time to realize I had skipped a few decades. Then, Azdaja...the sorcerer...sent the shiv, which began slicing them all off. They weren't able to withstand it. You saw. They all got devoured. But getting rid of them wasn't the purpose. Azdaja was trying to get at me. Once I gave in, that was it. And the less buffer I had, the easier it was to drain the last of me. It got so that the only way I could stop him was to try and burn the building down. It got so that no matter what I did, those firemen would show up and ruin it."

He paused here to rake me over with an all-too-familiar look of appreciation, gave me a wink to counteract it. "Imagine my delight when you turned up with your wand."

"Why didn't you just say that was what you needed me there for?" I asked in exasperation.

"I had to be careful," he replied. "It was safer to let everyone, including you, think I was a ghost that refused to go away, that I was just part of the backdrop."

"But you looked like a ghost..."

"A sign of how weak I'd become, Daps. That was the point. I was dying slowly, but not because of any bullets. As far as I could tell, Azdaja wasn't aware of the wand...and every time you showed up to use it on me, there was a chance he'd figure it out. For a while, the wall stayed up...until it didn't..."

Something clicked.

"The skeleton and altar. That's why they appeared out of nowhere!"

Alan grimaced.

"Who was it?" I asked, the million-dollar question for any self-respecting forensic detective.

Alan shook his head. "Hell if I know. That's when I knew I had to up the ante."

"Is that why my name was spewed all over?" I asked.

"You wouldn't believe they were passionate declarations of my devotion to you, would you?" Alan asked with a grin of his own. I shook my head. "Ah, well...dizzy for dames was always my jam."

Now that we were in a more relaxed setting, I found myself taking particular pleasure out of the antiquated hard-boil he slung into his speech. Maybe it was all the noir I had indulged in all my life, or the fatigue from the lack of joy in today's slang, but Alan's voice had a bracing effect, as if he were the only one who knew how to lift my spirits. This was vastly different than our previous encounters, and I was enjoying it. I found myself melting into the cushions of the couch, trusting him to unfold all that I'd been unable to crack open.

He sat down at last, drank his gin and finished the cigar. I admired the square lines of his shoulders and the classic profile. He turned to me and stared back, the smile still hovering around the lips that had claimed me earlier. I straightened, alarmed. I was either going to fall asleep in front of a total stranger or stare back at him for the rest of the night like a love-struck schoolgirl.

"Why you?" I asked before my brain clicked into gear and reminded me that I had a dozen other questions to ask before getting more personal. "Why didn't he just come get you himself?"

"You might say he wanted to add me to his collection," Alan replied. "But catching someone like me is tricky and sorcerers don't need to be nearby to exert their power. That picture alone was enough for him. That's why I wanted you to use the wand to seal it off."

Okay. Maybe that explained some of his pushiness.

"But...why?" I asked again. It all came back to the fossil wand. "What does my wand have anything to do with a sorcerer I never met and a pseudo-ghost who turns out....turns into you? You told me you knew more about the wand than I did," I exclaimed, frustration returning.

"I did."

"And you threatened to burn me down with the building!"

"I'm sorry about that. I was desperate to make you do what needed to be done."

"So what does this have to do with that thing you got out of the altar? What could you possibly tell me that would explain all of it?"

Alan sighed, mulled over a thought or two and stood once more, stuck his hand into a deep pocket and pulled out the item.

"It's part of a skull," he informed me.

He placed it gently in my palm. It had the heft of a fossilized ethmoid process, the conjunction of bones that sat between the eye sockets of an animal's head, the one barrier between someone's fist and the more vital parts of the brain. I knew human bone better than animal, but even I could see there was an anomaly to its interior structure: a rounded cavity that had no apparent purpose. The calcareous substance of the fragment glimmered with a deep ivory sheen.

"It's a dinosaur bone," I observed, as if he were the not-so-astute one.

"It's dragon bone." His tone was unequivocal.

I frowned, wondering if I was just so tired that I was imagining things said and done. I stood up, deciding then I would have to choose between one of two reactions: either send him out the door, now that he was free, or go to bed and deal with it when I had my sanity back. I returned it to him. I just couldn't process anymore.

"Prove it," I commanded, almost as a throwaway remark.

I shouldn't have done that, you know: challenge him. I can't say it was the scientist in me this time, just pure unmitigated frustration.

Apparently, he felt the same way.

With a swiftness that took my breath, he grabbed my wrist and shoved the rough bone into my palm, covering it with his other hand so that our fingers were clenched around the object. All walls around me disappeared and I was suspended in a haze of heat and earth and rain. Bright lines ran out from me, and through me, and I saw shadows rise, wings of acanthus leather flutter up and out, a head arching downward to meet me. The skin of his neck and head shimmered copper and blue, color running together like the veins of an autumn leaf, and brilliant blue eyes locked me in their gaze. I was petrified.

As suddenly as it had appeared, the vision melted to the square lines of Alan before me. The corners of his mouth twitched into a small smile - he was trying not to appear smug. The breath dissipated into a flow of longing energy between the two of us.

"As I said, I would have explained sooner," he rumbled. "But there was no time."? Shaken, I sat back down upon the couch. He joined me and took my hand, sans dragon bone; held it, as tender as a lover. I clung to his fingers, his palms, acutely aware of how real he was once more. I'm a woman of science: if I see, hear, taste, experience, I am assured of its probability. So what was it that intrigued me more: the fact that he was some non-existent mythical creature, or hearing that the wand that I had come to know as my moonlighting boon belonged to someone else? I wasn't too happy to realize that the many illusions I'd created about it, and myself, were suddenly null and void. The way his touch made my blood hum through my veins was in direct opposition to the caution I should have been exercising.

"It was my great-grandfather's," Alan began, focused now on fulfilling his promise to me. "I don't know how Azdaja got a hold of it, but he did and he's been using it against me, against...a lot of people. And if he had known soon enough about that wand, he'd have found a way to trap you...through me, if possible." He took a deep breath. "Wherever did you find it?"

"I was a child...six years old. We...my aunt and uncle and two older brothers...were vacationing in Alabama, and I got lost in the woods," I replied after a moment's thought. It was not an event in my life that I spend a lot of my time recalling; not to mention the fact that I grew up in a household where "don't ask, don't tell" was the abiding policy of my Southern belle aunt, bless her heart. "All I remember is falling asleep in a shelter of rocks and I woke up and these little people were standing around me. They gave me the wand and then one of them led me to a clearing where they, my brothers, found me."

"You didn't speak with them?"

"I remember they made me feel safe, happy. I wasn't worried anymore, and they seemed to know that I was lost. But..." I shook my head. "I can't remember anything they specifically told me. They just made it known that they didn't want the wand anymore."

Alan's far-off look meant he was absorbing this story and filing it away. He stood once more and I watched him pace the living room, wondering what new revelations would rock my world.

"There was a war," he began.

"Of course," I sighed. I glanced at the clock on the coffee table. The time was so close to dawn I decided it would be fruitless to try and go to bed at this hour.

"You've heard of the legend of Madoc?"

"Yeah...It was one of those tales borne out of a hopeful attempt to one-up an enemy in the race to claim sovereignty, a story of a medieval Welsh prince who left his country in search for a more peaceful place to live, away from the violent political contests of his clansmen, and found the Gulf of Mexico, where he sailed upstream into the interior...and essentially began a whole new war with the Natives whilst also creating a whole new tribe that retained Welsh culture. Assumptions about the many stone fortifications found in the Appalachians concluded that the walls were too 'advanced' for people like the Cherokee to construct - it had to have been a lost colony of Europeans, right?

"Isn't true," Alan said. "It wasn't humans that came over, at any rate. It was the Fae who were traveling back and forth to the New World...only it wasn't so new for them. They'd been doing that for time immemorial. They weren't interested in claiming the land for anyone, they just became a part of it. The Madoc tale borrowed from a period when the last colony set out, before the ones who stayed behind cut them off forever. There was a war in the New World and the Fae who settled here called upon dragons they knew to assist them. My great-grandfather led that war, and his bones are now deep beneath the earth, revered by those Fae that remained. The wand itself is meant to locate and protect them."

"Well, that begs the question of just how your sorcerer friend even got a hold of the bone," I interjected.

"That it does."

"And that brings me full circle, Alan," I added, standing up to join him. "Why me? It's taken me a lifetime to accept it as it is, and now this?"

"How does the wand work for you?" He asked.

I sighed. One these days, I guess, I'll get used to his left-field way of answering my question with another question.

"When I'm asked to go to a ghost job, if there's a one I can talk to, I point and locate their bones, if there are any," I replied. "It buzzes me...or sends me signals." I gestured what I meant by making wiping motions over my face. "Then I know where to find what's been hidden or missing."

"Anything else?"

"I see what caused their death. I'm able to find out their life story. Then I help them let go."

"Then I'd have to say you're descended from those Fae, Deirdre," Alan concluded. I knew he was feeling more like himself, because the long slender fingers picked up a second cigar and tucked into his mouth. "You use it exactly for the purpose it was intended. There was an agreement made between the Fae and my great grandfather, a special guardianship created to protect the wand. When the war ended, the Fae were decimated and the Nunnehai agreed to watch over it...until the rightful guardian came along. Don't scoff, Daps! The 'little people,' as you called them, don't relinquish to false people or give away foolishly. Many have died to protect the wand. When they found you, they knew what had to be done."

"And all this for a dragon?"

"The Fae were committed to the dragons." He lit the cigar and, with one gustatory puff of smoke, got a dreamy look on his face. "Very committed."

"Committed...as in kamikaze committed?" I squeaked.

He just smiled and winked at me.

I felt shattered by the whole deal. In one night, one confrontation, my entire perception of everything in my life was up-ended...and replaced with more questions than I had ever encountered in an archaeological dig.

"Face it, doll," Alan continued, and his voice held a tone of absolute certainty, "I'm your destiny. That wand brought me here, and we're meant to be together."

"How can you be so sure?"

"You helped me," he said. "Now I can help you. You've been too long conflicted about it."

"I know all I want to know," I replied, but even I could tell by the sound of my voice I was no longer willing to treat the wand as a by-product of my fortune.

"Maybe, but when the time comes for more, and there will be, doll...will you be able walk away?" Alan challenged. "You can't. You won't."

He made his point. He knew me all too well.

"What are you getting me into, Alan?" The last time I had asked that question, he'd sent me into hell.

His answer was to gingerly cup my face, a tender gesture that sent new tingles of chemistry through me, emotions of fear, amazement, attraction...and trust. I believed him! I reached my own hand up, not to remove it but to hold his palm in place. Nothing I had ever thought to expect when I went into Linton's tonight had happened...but that was okay! Somewhere back there, when I first began to realize he was no ordinary ghost, I must have decided to believe him whole-heartedly, implicitly.

"We have time now, Deirdre," he whispered. "Can you trust me?"

When my eyes met his once again, he opened his mouth to speak, but I shook my head: Yes.

Then, I kissed him.