A look of sympathy crossed her face, overriding what might have been exasperation.
Great. Now even his hallucination felt sorry for him.
He raised his voice a bit. “Whoever is behind this, ha, ha. Great joke. You’ve really pulled a good one. You must introduce yourself sometime so that I can fully express my appreciation for your inventiveness. And now, if you’ll excuse me, I have things to do inside. You can turn off your projector.”
The woman didn’t leave. She reached out a hand to him, her dark eyes beseeching.
“Great effect,” he muttered, shaken despite himself by the appeal in her...well, her haunted eyes. “But wouldn’t it have been spookier at night?”
He shrugged. “I’ll make it easier for you,” he said to whoever was listening. “I’ll turn around. When I turn back, the ‘ghost’ will have vanished, okay?”
Her lips moved. He thought she said, “Wait.”
He turned. Counted to fifty. Then to seventy-five, just to make sure he’d allowed the prankster plenty of time to comply with his demand. When he turned back, the woman was gone.
Exhaling in relief, Dean briefly considered searching the grounds, finding the practical joker and rearranging his teeth. He restrained the uncharacteristically ferocious impulse with a proud lift of his chin. Dean Gates could take a joke as well as anyone. He wouldn’t have his new neighbors snickering and saying otherwise.
“Welcome to Destiny,” he muttered, shaking his head as he strode impatiently back to his supposedly haunted inn. “Home of ghosts and fruitcakes.”
He sincerely hoped his first day here hadn’t set a pattern for the rest of his stay, however long that might be.
“I TOLD YOU he wouldn’t be able to hear you,” Ian couldn’t seem to resist pointing out.
Watching wistfully as the man strode angrily down the path toward the inn, Anna sighed. “At least you have to acknowledge that he saw us that time.”
“You,” he corrected. “He saw you.”
“I’m sure he saw us both. It’s just that I was the one trying to speak to him. I was so sure he’d be able to hear me.”
“Sweetheart, you are a ghost. He can’t hear you. I’m not even sure he really saw you.”
“He saw me,” Anna insisted stubbornly. “And somehow, I’m going to make him hear me. I just ha
ve to try harder next time.”
“Anna—”
She whirled on him. “Do you have any better suggestions?” she demanded. “What do you want to do, drift around in limbo for eternity? At least I’m trying to free us!”
“I just don’t want you to be disappointed. It’s hard enough not knowing what happened to us, or why. We don’t know why we’re here, we don’t know what, if anything, can free us—or where we’d go if we could leave.”
“I know why we’re here. I’m certain it’s to clear our names, change the lies that we’ve heard told about us all these years. All we need is someone to help us find out the truth, someone who’ll tell everyone what really happened, and we’ll be free. It’s the only possibility that makes sense to me.”
Ian refused to argue with her anymore. After all, they’d been having this same pointless discussion for three-quarters of a century.
Anna turned away. Her brother was as tenacious as the blue-eyed man she’d been trying to talk to. She couldn’t help smiling as she thought of the man’s adamant insistence that he didn’t believe in ghosts, despite the evidence in front of him. He was a stubborn one, she mused.
But then, so was she.
2
Was it a vision, or a waking dream?
—John Keats
DEAN AND MAE had just finished dinner when the old-fashioned, 1950s-era doorbell clanged, announcing a caller at the inn’s front door. Having hardly touched his meal, Dean sprang to his feet to answer the summons.
He welcomed the diversion from the disturbing thoughts that had been troubling him all evening, making him a less-than-scintillating dinner companion for his poor, curious aunt.