When Hayden tried to speak to Tavistock, nothing came out of her mouth, and she could feel his body fading from her arms. She screamed, “No!” but everything went black and for a moment she was in no body.
The next minute Hayden opened her eyes and she was lying on a chaise in Milly’s Texas living room and staring into the eyes of some very frightened people.
No one said a word when she turned her head away and silent, hot tears began to run down her cheeks.
Part Four
44
Catherine was attached to you and didn’t want to be separated. Like Siamese twins who share one heart. When you returned, she tried to stay connected to you. Her body could not live.”
What Nora meant was that I had killed Catherine. When I left Catherine’s mind, she had clung to me—and a body without a spirit dies.
“And what of…of Tavey?” It hurt even to say the name.
Nora looked at me a long while before she spoke. “You are soul mates. You are the same. You are one.”
“That’s all very romantic,” I said, “but just exactly what does that mean?”
“Truthfully, I don’t know. Perhaps his spirit stayed there and waited for you.”
“You mean he’s the ghost of Peniman Manor?”
“Possibly. Or he could have followed you here.” She narrowed her eyes at me. “You made him swear he would return to 1994 with you. Perhaps he did.”
Obviously, she had not liked my using what I had learned about curses and vows holding true across centuries, but Nora’s displeasure seemed a small price to pay for getting back my soul mate.
I sat there with my mouth opening and closing as I tried to understand what she had said about Tavey following me. I couldn’t quite do it so I just whispered, “Tell me.”
Nora smiled, since I guess she understood my shock. “Catherine’s spirit left her body when yours did.”
“You mean she died.”
“In a manner of speaking.”
I was so eager to hear the story I didn’t even interrupt to comment that dead was dead, no matter how I spoke of it.
“When your…When Tavistock felt you leave the body, he couldn’t bear to live without you. I don’t know what happened next. Maybe his spirit clung to yours and followed you?”
Nora’s eyes showed bewilderment, and I realized I had come to depend on her answers to my questions. Now I had fallen into uncharted territory and was on my own. Everything that was most important to me hung in the balance, and without her guidance I felt bereft—orphaned.
“Do you think he’s inside me?”
Nora laughed. “No, his spirit would have been put inside the body of the man who he is in this life.”
Oh good, I thought, and didn’t bother to understand. I was sick of voodoo. I wanted flesh and blood. “How do I find him?”
“You must wait for him to find you.”
I said a very nasty word and got a chastising look from Nora. “Sorry,” I mumbled, “but I hate to wait.”
“You think I don’t know this?” Nora said with heavy sarcasm.
But it was my turn to be smug. I sent her thoughts that told her that if it hadn’t been for my inability to wait I wouldn’t be receiving Jamie/Tavey/Talis for another three lifetimes.
Nora smiled in answer to my silent thoughts. “Nothing ever happens that is not meant to be.”
“Oh. So now I guess I’m to believe I was predestined to return to Edwardian times even though you told me not to go.”