The red eyes ahead of her glittered with anger.
He’s lying. You know what you have to do.
Of course Miles was lying. She listened to the voice as though to an old friend. The voice knew she couldn’t survive losing Miles’s love.
“Let me go, Miles,” she said evenly.
“Never,” he insisted. “I’ll never let you go.”
For all his determination, he sounded in such despair. Regret lurked beneath her serenity, but not strongly enough to make her pause. If only he understood that she did this for him. “You have to.”
With a strength she didn’t know she possessed, she managed to tug free of him. She made no conscious effort to move, but suddenly she was several paces away from him, standing beside the carved post at the far corner of the staircase. In the bright, eerie light, she read the denial, the disbelief, the confusion in Miles’s beautiful eyes.
“Farewell, my beloved,” she whispered and turned inexorably toward the grand staircase.
Chapter Six
JOSIAH LURCHED FORWARD to wrench Calista to safety but his grip slid uselessly away. His dead man’s hands could gain no purchase on living flesh.
Her eyes were dazed as she stared ahead, listening to voices he couldn’t hear. A fusillade of sparking red lights circled angrily around her like darting ruby swallows.
Some disturbance in the air had drawn Josiah to the landing above the great hall, as though the encroaching evil demanded that he witnessed its latest triumph. He glanced up in despairing frustration and met Isabella’s anguished gaze. She stood just behind Miles and the furious sorrow in her expression scored Josiah’s heart.
Miles hadn’t moved since Calista had struggled free and teetered toward the lip of the stair. “Calista, look at me.”
When something in his commanding tone compelled the girl’s attention, the lights burst into a storm of flying vermillion. Jerkily, as though some force resisted her action, she turned to face him. In her loose white nightgown, she looked like she already hovered on the edge of the spirit world.
“This is for the best. You know it is.” She didn’t sound nearly as tranquil as she had and Josiah read something in her blank blue eyes that looked like terror.
Miles was pale and a muscle jerked in his lean cheek, but he didn’t shift toward her. Josiah guessed the man recognized that any reckless move would prompt disaster. “Do you love me, my darling?”
Her face was ashen with sorrow and regret. Her slender throat moved as she swallowed. “I’m doing this because I love you.”
The mortal participants in this drama were lit as brightly as if they stood on stage at the Theatre Royal. Calista looked torn and distraught. Miles’s jaw set with a stubbornness that indicated he intended to fight whatever forces threatened his beloved—and prevail. His eyes were dark with torment and his hands opened and closed at his sides as though he struggled against grabbing Calista and defying the powers that possessed her.
“No, you’re not,” Miles said with absolute certainty.
The girl cast a longing glance down the stairs but, thank God, didn’t move. “All right, I’m doing this because you don’t love me.”
“You know that’s not true. You’re doing this because you don’t trust me.”
“Yes, I do.”
“Then you’re doing this because you don’t trust yourself.”
“Why wouldn’t I trust myself?” she asked with a hint of irritation.
“Because you never have. You don’t think you’re worthy of my love.”
She licked lips reddened with kisses, or Josiah was no judge of women. “I’m not.”
“Yes, you are. I’ll spend the rest of my life proving how remarkable you are, if only you’ll give me the chance.” Miles paused and Josiah could see that he frantically scrambled for words to convince Calista to stay with him, to resist the baleful presence that hunted her.
Miles stared straight at her and his voice rang out. “Come to me, my darling. Break away from whatever holds you and come to me.”
She faltered toward him before she stopped, trembling. “I…I can’t.”
“Yes, you can.”