A dead girl on the tester bed in a cold room, Declan thought, and the pasta lodged in his throat like glue. He picked up the fizzy water, drank deep. "Did they look for her?”

"Her family looked everywhere. It's said Lucian haunted the bayou until the day he died. When he wasn't looking there, he was in town trying to find a trace of her. He never did, and didn't live long himself. With him gone, and the twin his mother favored by all accounts, dead as well, Miss Josephine had the baby taken to Abigail's parents. You've gone pale, Declan.”

"I feel pale. Go on.”

This time, when she broke off a hunk of bread, she buttered it, handed it to him. Her grandmama was right, Lena thought, the man needed to eat.

"The baby was my grandmama's grandmama. The Manets cast her out, claiming she was a bastard and no blood of theirs. They brought her to the Rouses with the dress she had on, a small bag of crib toys. Only thing she had from the Hall was the watch pin Claudine gave to her that had been Abigail's.”

Declan's hand shot out to cover hers. "Is the pin still around?”

"We hand such things down, daughter to daughter. My grandmama gave it to me on my sixteenth birthday. Why?”

"Enameled watch, hanging from small, gold wings.”

Color stained her cheeks. "How do you know?”

"I saw it." The chill danced up his spine. "Sitting on the dresser in the bedroom that must have been hers. An empty room," he continued, "with phantom furniture. The room where Effie saw a dead girl laid out on the bed. They killed her, didn't they?”

Something in the way he said it, so flat, so cold, had her stomach dropping. "That's what people think. People in my family.”

"In the nursery.”

"I don't know. You're spooking me some, Declan.”

"You?" He passed a hand over his face. "Well, I guess I know who my ghost is. Poor Abigail, wandering the Hall and waiting for Lucian to come home."

"But if she did die in the Hall, who killed her?”

"Maybe that's what I'm supposed to find out, so she can … you know. Rest.”

He wasn't pale now, Lena thought. His face had toughened, hardened. That core of determination again. "Why should it be you?”

"Why not? It had to be one of the Manets. The mother, the father, the brother. Then they buried her somewhere and claimed she ran away. I need to find out more about her.”

"I imagine you will. You've got a mulish look about you, cher. Don't know why that should be so appealing to me. Talk to my grandmama. She might know more, or she'll know who does.”

She nudged her empty plate back. "Now you buy us some cappuccino.”

"Want dessert?”

"No room for that." She opened her purse, pulled out a pack of cigarettes.

"I didn't know you smoked.”

"I get one pack a month." She tapped one out, ran her fingers up and down its length.

"One a month? What's the point?”

She put the cigarette between her lips, flicked the flame on a slim silver lighter. As she had with the first bite of pasta, she sighed over that first deep drag. "Pleasure, cher. There are twenty cigarettes in a pack, thirty or thirty-one days to a month. 'Cept for February. I dearly love the month of February. Now, I can smoke up the whole pack in a day, and just about lose my mind for the rest of the month. Or I can dole them out, slow and careful, and make them last. Because there's no buying another pack before the first of the month.”

"How many do you bum from other people during the month?”

Her eyes glittered through the haze of smoke. "That would be cheating. I don't cheat. Pleasure's nothing, sugar, unless you got the willpower to hold off until you really appreciate it.”

She trailed a fingertip over the back of his hand, and for the hell of it, rubbed the side of her foot against his leg under the table. "How are you on willpower?" she asked.

"We're going to find out.”

It was dusk when he got back to the house. The back of his four-wheel was loaded with treasures he'd hunted up in antique shops. But the best was the kitchen cabinet he'd found, and had begged and bribed to have delivered the next day.

He carried what he could on the first trip and, when he stepped inside, set everything down in the foyer. He closed the door behind him, then stood very still.

"Abigail." He said the name, listened to it echo through the house. And waited.

But he felt no rush of cold air, no sudden shift in the silence.

And standing at the base of the grand staircase, he couldn't explain how he knew he wasn't alone.

He woke to a crashing thunderstorm, but at least he woke in his own bed. Lightning slashed outside the windows and burst a nova of light through the room.

A glance at the bedside clock showed him a minute to midnight. But that had to be wrong, Declan thought. He hadn't gone to bed until after one. Wondering if the storm had knocked out his power, he turned the switch on the bedside lamp.

Light speared out, half blinding him.

"Damn it." He rubbed his shocked eyes, then grabbed the bottle of water he'd set on the table next to the bed. And rising, went out on the gallery to watch the show.

It was worth the price of a ticket, he decided. Lashing rain, pitchfork lightning, and a wind that was whipping through the trees in moans and howls. He could hear the excited clanging of the spirit bottles and the fierce jungle war of thunder.

And the baby crying.

The water bottle slid out of his fingers, bounced at his feet, and soaked them.

He wasn't dreaming, he told himself, and reached out to grip the wet baluster. He wasn't sleepwalking. He was awake, fully aware of his surroundings. And he heard the baby crying.

He had to order himself to move, but he walked back into the bedroom, dragged on sweats, checked his flashlight. Barefoot, shirtless, he left the security of his room and started toward the third floor.

He waited for the panic to come-that clutching in the belly, the sudden shortness of breath, the pounding of his heart.

But it didn't come this time. The steps were just steps now, the door just a door with a brass knob that needed polishing.

And the baby wasn't crying any longer.

"Come this far," he grumbled.

His palms were sweaty, but it was nerves instead of fear. He reached out, turned the knob. The door opened with a whine of hinges.

There was a low fire in the hearth. Its light, and the light of candles, danced in pretty patterns over walls of pale, pale peach. At the windows were deep blue drapes with lacy under curtains. The floor was polished like a mirror with two area rugs in a pattern of peaches and blues.

There was a crib with turned rails, a small iron cot made up with white linen.

She sat in a rocking chair, a baby at her breast. He could see the baby's hand on it, white against gold. Her hair was down, spilling over her shoulders, over the arms of the rocker.

Her lips moved, in song or story he didn't know. He couldn't hear. But she stared down at the child as she nursed, and her face was lit with love.

"You never left her," Declan said quietly. "You couldn't have.”

She looked up, toward the doorway where he stood so that for one heart-stopping second, he thought she'd heard him. Would speak to him. When she smiled, when she held out a hand, he took a step toward her.

Then his knees went loose as he saw the man cross the room-pass through him like air-and walk to her.

His hair was golden blond. He was tall and slim of build. He wore some sort of robe in a deep burgundy. When he knelt by the rocker, he stroked a fingertip over the baby's cheek, then over the tiny fingers that kneaded at the woman's breast.

The woman, Abigail, lifted her hand, pressed it over his. And there, surrounded by that soft light, the three of them linked while the baby's milky mouth suckled and the woman gently rocked.

"No. You never left them. I'll find out what they did to you. To all of you.”

As he spoke, the door slammed shut behind him. He jolted, spun and found himself plunged back into the dark, with only the lightning blasts and the beam of his flashlight. The weight fell into his chest like a rock, cutting off his air. The room was empty, freezing, and the panic leaped at his throat.

He dragged at the doorknob, his sweat– slicked hands sliding off the icy brass. He could feel his choked gasps wanting to rise into shouts and screams, pleas and prayers. Dizziness drove him down to his knees, where he fumbled frantically with the knob, wrenched and tugged at the door.

When he managed to pull it open, he crawled out on his hands and knees, then lay facedown on the floor with his heart thundering in his chest as the storm thundered over the house.

"Okay, I'm okay. I'm okay, goddamn it, and I'm getting up off the floor and going back to bed.”

He might be losing sleep, Declan thought as he got shakily to his feet, but he'd learned a couple of things.

If what he'd seen inside the nursery was truth and not some self-generated fantasy, Abigail Rouse Manet hadn't left Manet Hall of her own free will.

And he had more than one ghost on his hands.

She was probably making a mistake, Lena thought as she slicked a little black dress down her body. She'd already made several small mistakes where Declan Fitzgerald was concerned. It irritated her, as she rarely made mistakes when it came to men.

If there was one thing she'd learned from her mother, it was how to handle the male species. It was a reverse tutelage. She made a habit of doing exactly the opposite of what Lilibeth did and had done when it came to relationships.