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  Bong... Bong...

  Thomas or Travis—whatever name he called himself these days—scrambled back a few feet, a difficult chore with his shirt tangled about his arms. His gaze shot toward the origin of the sound.

  Bong....

  The grandfather clock hidden beneath a dust-covered tarp in a far corner of the foyer signaled the lateness of the evening.

  She glanced at him and saw him staring at the faint, ghostly white sheeting that covered the clock. With a sigh, she floated over to the clock and yanked the tarp away. Unfortunately, that sent a storm of dust particles into the air.

  He went into another fit of sneezes.

  “Je suis désolé,” she said by way of apology and rushed to his side to create a cool breeze that kept the particles from bothering him.

  He shuddered, yanked his shirt back into place, and rubbed his arms. He knuckled his eyes, glanced at the clock barely visible in the moonlit room, and let out a self-deprecating laugh.

  “Hoisted on my own petard by a grandfather clock. I swear I’m losing my ever-loving mind,” he muttered, climbing to his feet. “That’s it. Too much work lately...too much travel. I’ve been away from home too damn long.”

  “I agree, Thomas. Entirely too long. I’ve missed you.” She approached him slowly, reaching out to touch him again, but stopped short.

  “That does it.” He dropped to his knees again and felt around for his bags. “My name is Travis. Got it? I’m not your long lost lover. He’s dead, and so are you. This is not my home. I’m only here to help you move toward the light.” He pulled out a small box in one hand and held up a stick attached to it with the other, pointing it first in one direction then another. “You don’t belong here.”

  She frowned.

  His hand with the stick paused, the tip pointing a little off to her left. Funny click and squeal sounds came from the box. He squinted at the thing and muttered about the lack of light. And she made her decision....

  She lowered her hand and channeled her energies into materializing. She’d provide him with the illumination he sought, and maybe then he would see the light. Maybe if he saw her, he’d realize she was here because of him...had been waiting for him to return.

  “You have to let go,” he was saying, “and cross over to the Other Side....” His voice drifted off as she materialized before him.

  He’d still be able to see through her, but her appearance did provide some light.

  “Travis,” she whispered, purposely using the name he preferred.

  His hands dropped to his sides, and his gaze moved to the hem of her transparent skirts then climbed up her form to stop on her face. “Who are you?”

  The wonder in his voice made her smile. “Don’t you recognize me?”

  “I...” He shook his head and blinked.

  “You called me Dominique. That has always been my name.”

  “Dominique...”

  “You see now? You see me,” she reached for him, forgetting that in her visibility she lost her ability to touch. She realized her error when her fingertips disappeared through his shirt. She frowned, met his gaze with a questioning look, and wondered what to do next.

  “I see a lonely spirit who needs help moving on.”

  “Yes!” She grinned. “Now that you’re home, now that you’ve returned as master of Beau Vista, I’m free and can finally live in peace.”

  He shook his head again, his expression turning sad. “I’m not the owner of Beau Vista. The owners hired me to help rid—to help you move toward the light. You have to go. Thomas awaits you on the Other Side.”

  She frowned. “No. It can’t be. There is no light. I can’t go now, can’t you see? You must be the master. I need you here. You belong here, Thomas.” Her energies fluctuated, making her appearance flicker. She needed to calm down, but how could she with all his talk of leaving?

  “Your life here ended long ago, and mine is back in New York, where I belong. It’s time for you to leave, Dominique, so I, too, can go home.”

  She shook her head frantically, panic setting in. Leave? He couldn’t leave! “Non!”

  Her energy snapped, and she vanished.

  Chapter Three

  Thrown back into complete darkness, Travis blinked. The air still crackled with her energy, but she’d poofed out like a blown light bulb. There’d even been a small, audible pop.

  Very strange, he thought as he went down on his knees again and finally located his flashlight. He’d never encountered a promiscuous ghost. Hell, he’d never experienced a tangible touch from one either. Other than the surrounding coldness, that kiss had been… He chuckled and clicked on the Maglite, throwing a comforting glow into the room. Dominique’s kiss had felt pretty damn real. And way too arousing for his peace of mind. He couldn’t believe he’d actually allowed it, let alone got lost in the kiss.

  Add getting laid to the To Do list upon return to New York. It’s obviously been way too long.

  Pushing to his feet, he swung the light through the room, then back toward the door. He tried the doorknob again, and it turned freely. He pulled the door open and glanced outside. The fog had grown even thicker, the grounds completely covered, the car invisible through it, and the thick mist floated up the steps. It looked as though the house was floating on a cloud. He shut the door and found a light switch a few steps along the wall.

  Light flooded the room from a dust-coated brass chandelier overhead. A wide staircase swept up the side of the room leading to the second floor. Canvas tarps covered furnishings, while plastic sheeting covered the hardwood floor, and now he could see the damnable dust and sawdust coating everything. He hoped he still had a couple antihistamines in his bag.

  Since he’d performed enough interviews to get tidbits of information, he knew that the ghost wasn’t limited to only one room of the mansion. She seemed to move freely within the house. He’d set up one camera and sound recorder here in the foyer, then the rest in various rooms on the first and second floor.

  He stopped in the process of setting up one of the camera tripods when something she said came back to him. She’d said there was no light. There was always a light. Spirits didn’t cross over, effectively ignoring the light, because they felt they had unfinished business. Once they understood that they needed to cross over, they willingly made the transition to the Other Side.

  Dominique, like so many earthbound spirits, didn’t realize that there was nothing left here for her.

  He popped the legs up on the tripod and reached for the 35mm quad camera. It was designed to snap four consecutive pictures of the same area in rapid succession so that there’d be no mistake what was there—if there was something there. He had no doubt Dominique was real. His skin still prickled from her touch.

  He set the camera on auto then set the electrical monitoring device at a ninety-degree angle to it, so that when an electrical disturbance registered, it would snap pictures.

  After he finished setting up the sound monitors—damn, he wish he could have recorded her voice—he lifted his bags and moved throughout the house, repeating the process until all his equipment was ready and waiting for any more electrical fluxes.

  Finally, carrying his laptop case, he found the kitchen and pulled open the refrigerator. Some bottled water, a tub of peanut butter, a jar of blueberry jelly, and a loaf of bread. Well, it wasn’t the Ritz, but at least he wouldn’t starve. The construction crew must have left it. He grabbed a bottle of water and withdrew his computer.

  He had a cooler of colas and sandwiches in the car, but…

  “Wimp,” he said to himself. “So what if I don’t want to go out in the strange fog and darkness in an unfamiliar place?”

  At least with the lack of an assistant, no one would ever be the wiser that he had a life-long fear of the dark. His addiction to Stephen King and Clive Barker horror novels didn’t help any, either. And he had to admit this place, with its eerie fog-draped lawn and soon-to-be full moon, would be a perfect setting for a werewolf
movie. Or would they call ’em loup garou in Louisiana? How many horror books put werewolves in a bayou?

  He chuckled at his own musings. At least he wasn’t afraid of the spirits he helped. Spirits couldn’t hurt a person—well, Dominique sure felt solid enough to cause harm if she wanted, and she’d scared the hell out of the construction workers by shooting off a high-powered nail gun that could cause serious injury—but he’d never encountered a ghost who wanted to harm anyone. They were usually just…annoying.

  The living were much more dangerous.

  First things first. He had to get information on the plantation. How long had Dominique been wandering around this big ol’ house? Thomas St. Maurice, she’d said. “Thanks for the info,” he muttered as he booted up the laptop and slipped the wireless satellite connector into the slot on the side. At least now he had a place to start.

  First he Googled the name she’d given him. Came up with a Thomas Maurice who was the assistant librarian at the British Museum in London in 1810. Scratch that. The date doesn’t seem right.

  St. Thomas and St. Maurice. Definitely wrong dates on those guys.

  He did a quick visual scan of the first sixty Google hits on the name and came up completely empty.

  He typed in Beau Vista Plantation.

  Bingo!

  On a page put up by the Natchitoches Historical Society, he read:

  Located on a tract of land (4000 acres) between Cane River at Natchitoches and the ferry landing on the Red River, Beau Vista was a thriving cotton plantation in the decades before the Civil War and, at one time, was the largest producer of cotton in central Louisiana.

  Built in 1826 by William St. Maurice and the nearly one hundred slaves he brought from South Carolina, the mansion and several of the outbuildings survived the Union campaign to capture Shreveport. The St. Maurice patriarch, however, died in his sleep on April 15, 1864, the day after the Confederate victory against a half dozen Union gunboats on the Red River near the plantation.

  After the war, with the loss of slave labor, the main house and cotton fields fell into ruin under the direction of the widow, Margaret St. Maurice, and large portions of the property were sold off, little by little.

  Today the mansion and a few surrounding acres are privately owned. The skeletal remains of the cotton gin can still be seen among the trees, and a bell tower, once used to call slaves for meals, still stands just to the north of the mansion, but the bell was removed and sold, and still rings to this day every Sunday at St. Mary’s Cathedral in Winn Parish.

  Damn, Travis thought. All he really learned was the name of the original owner. Not much to go on, though he had the same last name as Thomas. Most likely Thomas was William’s son or grandson. At least he had a date to start with. Dominique must have been Thomas’ wife. That’s the only logical conclusion he could come up with. Poor woman, hanging around this place for the last century and a half awaiting the return of her beloved.

  He shook his head and scanned information about the march on Shreveport. Maybe Thomas was killed in battle….

  Another hour went by and he’d found absolutely nothing on Thomas, though he knew much more about the Civil War than he ever had before. If Thomas had been in the war at all, he wasn’t a high-ranking officer.

  Leaning back in the creaky chair, he stretched his back, then glanced at his watch. Nearly two in the morning—the time when most spirits started making their presence known. Between 2 a.m. and 5 a.m. was the most active time. The natural energies of the earth were less binding, and they were able to cross into the dimension of the living with less difficulty.

  “So, where’d you go?” he whispered.

  He heard the distinct click and whir of the quad camera in the next room. His computer screen went fuzzy with snow, and he quickly shut it down before his motherboard fried. He’d spent more on computer equipment in the last ten years than he wanted to think about.

  The air in the room crackled with energy. The temperature dropped. “Welcome back,” he said, not moving from his chair. “Are you ready to make your transition to the Other Side?”

  He waited for her to speak, bracing himself for another touch of her cool fingers. He could feel her presence in the room, but had no idea where she was.

  “Dominique,” he said, keeping his voice low. “I know you’re frightened, but it’s time to let go of this world. There is nothing here for you. Thomas awaits you on the Other Side. Go to him and find peace.”

  He heard a soft sob and for some odd reason, it nearly ripped his heart out. A crying ghost was extremely common, and for the most part he felt sympathy for the grounded soul, but Dominique’s muffled sound of distress made him want to…

  He shook his head. Holding and comforting a ghost was not only impossible, it was a neon sign that he needed a vacation.

  A deserted island somewhere in the middle of the South Pacific—a place where no mortals had ever lived or died, where no spirits could find him—was looking real good right about now.

  “You must go to him,” he said again. If her love for Thomas kept her tied to the mortal level of being, then she had to believe he was waiting for her.

  “You are my Thomas,” she said, her voice soft and quavering, coming from only a short distance away. “Why do you not believe?”

  He sighed. “I am Dr. Travis Moreland. I was hired to help you cross over, to help you leave this dwelling so that the owners can renovate it. You are frightening the construction workers.”

  “They come and go, different people, different clothes, but they are all the same. They do not belong here.”

  “You do not belong here, Dominique.” His voice rose to an authoritative pitch. “It is time for you to go. Now.”

  “I would if I could!”

  Pop. Crackle. The room warmed.

  She’d disappeared. Again.

  Chapter Four

  That stupid thing on sticks kept flashing at her whenever she floated through the foyer, so Dominique threw the sheet that had covered the grandfather clock over it as she went in search of Thom—Travis.

  He wasn’t where she’d last spotted him before losing herself to haywire emotions. She really must learn to curb her tendency to short-circuit whenever her emotions got the better of her. Panicking was always the worst. Upset or startle her and poof; she was a goner.

  If she kept disappearing, how would she ever convince Travis to stay?

  Stepping out onto the porch, she stopped well short of the elegant and dangerously long front staircase, and peered across the lawn shrouded in a glittering morning mist as the sun peeked over the horizon.

  Good. His conveyance was still parked in the front drive. She’d feared once she regained control of her energies that she’d return to find him gone forever.

  She had to find a way to get him to stay, to show him that he was the rightful master of what had once been the most beautiful plantation in the Louisiana Purchase. Otherwise, she was truly condemned.

  He’d said she should move toward the light, but there was no light for her, no chance to ‘live another day’ on this side or the other until a son of Margaret St. Maurice was again home where he belonged.

  With one last glance down the staircase, she went back inside in search of the elusive, and stubborn, Dr. Travis Moreland.

  She found him in the study, or at least that’s what it was now. The room had once been Mistress Margaret’s parlor, where she received her guests.

  Travis reclined in a large leather chair positioned behind a sheet-draped desk. Some of his gadgets sat on the desktop, but he paid them no mind. As she floated near, she realized he’d drifted off to sleep.

  Sitting on the corner of the desk, she smiled and watched him for long minutes.

  His hands lay on his flat stomach, his fingers laced together. With eyes closed, head tilted back, and mouth slightly open, he provided an adorably peaceful picture of male exhaustion.

  Soon he’d wake up, however, and it was up to her to help him awaken to t
he reality of who he really was. He may not be the reincarnated Thomas St. Maurice, but he was his heir. A part of Thomas’ spirit was in the man now sleeping before her. She knew it, could feel it.

  Hundreds of men had climbed the steps to Beau Vista, crossed its threshold, and walked its halls. Some she’d even toyed with, either for her own enjoyment or to send them packing. But in all that time, none had made her...what? Yearn? Need?

  Just looking at Travis made her long for more. More days on this earth to spend learning all about him and his life now. More time to convince him that Beau Vista was where he belonged. More chances to touch him.