Chapter Ten

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It's later than I meant it to be by the time I get home, having been waylaid by not one, but two ghosts of Creek past. When Gramps's snores greet me in the foyer, relief drops my shoulders from their tense position around my ears. The sound breaks off before I make it into the living room, though, and his sleep-hazed eyes poke me with reproach. It changes to concern in a blink, reminding me of the state of my face.

"It's okay, Gramps. I tripped and caught the edge of a cart, that's all."

"Always were clumsy. Get that from your mother. That girl couldn't go half a day without breaking something in the house or on her body. Cost me a bloody fortune." He pulls his thoughts from the past and points at his watch. "Been worried, Gracie-baby."

I lean over and kiss his papery cheek, then put my arms around his neck and lay my head on his shoulder. "I'm sorry. I felt like a walk after that meatloaf, that's all. I didn't want to wake you."

"Leave me a note next time, please." His smile is wry. "I know you're not a little girl anymore but humor an old man."

"Okay, Gramps." I kiss him again, press my ear to his hearing aid, then pull away with a grin. "You want some ice cream?"

It's a silly question. Ice cream is never a bad call, and I dish up two bowls of Neapolitan. There's extra strawberry in Gramps's, not enough that he'll call me out for cheating but enough to make him happy. The baseball games are wrapped up for the night, so we eat our bedtime snack to the quiet cadence of the local news. I've heard that in big cities the news is depressing, all about murders and violence and missing kids, but in towns like Iowa City and Heron Creek, it's about people taking food to the flood victims up the coast or the guy determined to open a farm and fill it with abused rescue animals, with the occasional scary story ripped from national headlines.

On really good days, we'll get an awesome story about a local hillbilly getting drunk on his own moonshine and giving the cops hell during an arrest.

"Haven't seen William for a while. You two aren't going to let an old romance ruin a fifteen-year friendship, are you?"

Fifteen years is an exaggeration, but it's a different way of looking at things. Will and I were friends longer than were a couple, and if I'm being honest with myself, it's his level head and commonsense advice that I'm missing the most. Have missed the most, since we said good-bye.

David was never particularly interested in my problems, or in reigning in my wild side with any kind of patience or love. Will adored my tendency to play the daredevil, even as he tried to point out the obvious downsides to my misadventures. David tended to favor disdain and the liberal use of the word stupid.

"We're going to be okay, Gramps. If you want to see him and Grant, I'll invite them over for a game. Or maybe a picnic? I was thinking it might be fun to traipse down to the docks for lunch on Sunday."

"Fun, maybe, but you're not getting these old legs through the swamp."

"It's a marsh, and you leave that to me." I take his bowl and mine into the kitchen, rinsing them out and wondering if Will's parents still have a smart car. They'd let me borrow it to get Gramps around, for sure.

He holds up a hand when I get back to the living room, letting me haul him to his feet. His weight, or lack thereof, saddens me as I support him easily into the hallway and up the stairs, then run back to bring his walker while he's in the bathroom.

My face aches and throbs, the three Advil I popped in the kitchen doing little to take the edge off. I'm going to try Aleve next time, and maybe wash it down with some vodka. I think I deserve it, but despite the pain, my eyes are heavy. It's been a long day, and as much as reading over the files from the archives in good light appeals to me, sleep sounds better.

Then a smell drifts into the hallway, leaving no doubt that there's a visitor in my room who might have other ideas. It doesn't startle me like it has in the past, given the warning, but it does wake me all the way up.

Inside my room, the sight of Anne's ghost perched on the edge of my clean, soft, blue-and-cream down heaven pisses me off.

I close the door and cross my arms over my chest, letting my anger build unchecked. I've already smashed my face and gotten busted trespassing in the service of her wild-goose chase tonight, and now she's funkifying my favorite place in the world.

"What do you want, woman? You can't just pop in and stink up my life whenever you feel like it. I mean, maybe you think I don't have much of a life to begin with, and you might be right but at least I'm not dead." Guilt twists my stomach, even though she's a stupid ghost and whether or not she even had feelings while she was alive is up for debate. And she is dead. "I mean, I'm just saying I could use a little help here. If you're showing up just to cuddle and point fingers, I'll pass."

It's nice to talk to her in a normal tone of voice instead of a whisper—or in this case, a louder than normal tone of voice—without fear of being overheard. When she climbs off the bed and lumbers silently toward me, a bolt of uncertainty makes me wish I hadn't yelled. Or insulted her. Or basically acted as though she's everything that's wrong with my nonlife, when in truth she's only a small percentage.

My body shrinks back, not bothering to ask if I'd like to go out of the world cowering like a little bitch, until the doorknob jabs into my spine. The ghost doesn't take her watery gaze off my face and bares her cracked, yellowed teeth at my obvious fear. She's part woman, part animal, all instinct, and leaves no doubt in my mind that in life, Anne Bonny must have been a fearsome creature.

She stops a foot away, the smell of unwashed skin and salty rope gathering in my nose and on my tongue. My stomach begs to rid itself of dinner and ice cream but gets distracted when she unclasps her hands from behind her back and swings them around to the front. It's on the tip of my tongue to tell her that if she plans on more pointing, I'd rather she go ahead and torture me, but the last scraps of my sass dry up at the sight of my car keys dangling from her fingers.

What the hey?

Despite my moment of dumbfounded shock at the revelation that my ghost can pick up inanimate objects, it's clear what she wants. And I am so not on board.

"Oh, no. I'm not going anywhere with you." I eye her, managing to ease off the doorknob and relieve the knot in my back. "I have a feeling you've not exactly a reliable GPS."

She ignores me, and I don't reach out to take the keys. My lack of movement relates partially to the idea of accidentally touching her, the memory of the last time chilling my bones all over again. We're at a stalemate, but she moves her chess piece first. The ghost gives me a shrug, as though telling me she doesn't care what I say or do, then walks through the door, each body part disappearing as it touches the flimsy wood. With my keys.

I open it and peer out in time to see her white-gray figure stomp noiselessly down the hall, then float over the top step and out of sight. I have no idea what she'll do if I don't follow, but seeing as she lived in the eighteen hundreds, I doubt she's going anywhere with my car.

Even so, the inaction of the past couple of weeks and the lack of obvious answers at the library tonight taunts me. There's too much inaction in my life, too little of the old, impulsive Graciela. I wonder what Will would say if I told him I'm considering hopping in the car for a ghostly road trip. I feel sure David would throw me in a straightjacket and lock me away forever, which is the thought that sends me hustling after her.

It's not as though I have anything better to do, unless I count sleeping or drinking. Sad, but true.

By the time I reach the foyer, Anne's out the front door. Through the front door, whatever. Trepidation and common sense try to urge me back to my room, but the reality is that Anne's not going to leave me alone until we figure out what exactly she wants my help with—and if I can figure out why she's so keen on it being my help in the process, so much the better.

The wind has picked up since I got home from my little breaking and entering excursion. It blows strands of hair from my haphazard bun into my smashed-up face as the fronds of the palmetto trees rustle a loud greeting to the approaching storm. The electric scent in the air obscures Anne's briny odor until I climb into the car.

She's in the backseat. I meet her impatient, sorrowful gaze in the rearview mirror, wondering if she'd let me stay home if I asked. So far she's been insistent but not forceful. There's no way to know what she's capable of, or if the inclinations of our living bodies follow us into death. If so, a visit from a quiet Southern belle would be preferable to a deadly pirate.

"You know, you can sit up front if you want. I don't even have a chauffeur license." She doesn't reply, and I know she won't, but the nerves bouncing around inside me have control of my tongue. "Are you afraid someone would see you? Can other people see you? Am I crazy?"

Her eyes gleam bright like a cat's but hold nothing in the way of a reply. Part of me is glad she's unable to answer that last one, and I know the answer to the second. Other people have seen her, or at least claim they have. Never heard of her stalking anyone else, though. Graciela Anne Harper, the Heron Creek stalker magnet.

I sigh. "So, where are we going?"

She leans forward and points to the passenger seat. The plastic bag of documents I took from the archives lies on the stained cloth, which is weird because it was on the dresser in my bedroom.

"You're getting a tad bold, ghost lady." I put the packet gingerly on my lap, worried all over again about taking them out of the temperature-regulated environment. She watches as I pull the documents out one at a time, holding them up for her perusal before getting a tight shake of the head. "This sure would be simpler if you could talk, you know. Or knew sign language. Then again, I don't know sign language."

Her big green eyes pop open at a particular piece of paper, the deed and land survey detailing her father's original property.

"This? You want to go home? That's pretty cheesy." I poke some coordinates into Google Earth, then glance at Anne while a map of Charleston pulls up on my cell phone. "Especially for someone who burned her home down and ran away."

The look she gives me could curdle milk, but then again, not one of these documents, or any of the online histories, suggests she had even the barest sense of humor. The map finishes loading while I rethink this whole thing, all the way back to the possibility that I'm having a complete psychotic break by seeing her in the first place.

The land where her father once lived is still intact and now exists as a plantation home and museum. Rebuilt, obviously. I snicker at my second joke at the expense of Anne's teenage psychotic episode but keep my mouth shut as she glares at me harder. I steer the car out of Heron Creek and onto the road toward Charleston, concentrating on the map and not the fact that I'm basically not only off my rocker but impaled on the splintered remains. Following a damn ghost into a stormy night.

In the past week, between my job and spending time with Beau, not to mention quite a bit less drinking, I've been feeling better. Maybe I've passed the midway point of my tunnel, with the tiniest pinprick of light winking at me from the far faraway distance. The thought of sexy Mayor Beau makes me wish my lifeboat moved a little bit faster, but it goes as it goes, my Grams would say.

Anne and I pass the rest of the thirty-minute drive in silence, which is expected, but her jaw is hard and she refuses to even try to respond to my conversation attempts. Fantastic. Even though I'm her chauffeur, the woman doing her bidding at midnight on a Wednesday, she's apparently big on holding grudges. I'm also too wimpy to say any of that to her pasty face, since she does have a sword.

A ghost sword. I wonder if it's still sharp.

I pull off the road just past the entrance to William Cormac's former property. It's gated and locked, at least to cars, and my feet crunch too loudly on the gravel. Anne's out of the car and standing inside the gate, waiting for me with an impatient set to her strong shoulders.

The wind blows harder here, snatching dirt and particles from their perches and flinging them into my eyes. The storm marches forward, gathering force on the horizon before making its full-on assault, but there's no doubt it's coming. It would be best to take an umbrella, but there isn't one in my car even though I'm sure there had been when I'd left Iowa. Maybe she stole that, too, and her goal is to get me soaked and laugh it up.

No. Whatever Anne is, whatever she wants, it's not about pranks or haunts. She has a purpose.

The ghost moves on, hiking down the lane that would eventually lead to the house and museum. Giant live oaks with trunks so wide it would take ten of me to ring them tower over the path, playing unwilling host to heavy curtains of Spanish moss that twist in the wind. Anne turns off the path before the house comes into view, and I follow, despite the fact that the wind rustling the trees grows stronger. The world blurs no matter how hard I blink, making me wish I'd gotten Lasik the twenty-seventh time David mentioned how dorky I look in glasses, instead of contacts. Perhaps stubborn defiance has not always served me well.

Anne Bonny realizes I've stopped to try to wipe the dirt from my eyes and pauses, turning back to watch me. My vision clears for a moment, and when our eyes meet, there's nothing of her previous smoldering anger, or even the frustration of our previous meetings.

Tears roll down my face before my brain registers that I'm crying. Her anguished desperation is palpable; it pounds me with more ferocity than the wind, with more poignancy than even my own depression. It pushes me to my knees, the heartache that crashes into me, ripping at my heart with a kind of torment that seems too pervasive, too merciless to be real.

It starts to ease when our gazes pull apart, but even the memory of it makes me gasp. Several moments pass before I climb back to my feet, ignoring the globs of dirt and pine needles sticking to my bare knees. Jeans would have been a better choice, but she didn't inform me the evening plans included hiking.

I follow Anne with renewed dedication, suddenly finding a purpose of my own. If I can help fix whatever tortures her after two-hundred-plus years, I'm going to do it. I haven't the slightest idea what plagues her, but I couldn't be happier it didn't happen to me.

We trek through the trees, sticking close together. She'd better know where she's going, because after five minutes of twists and turns, there's no way I'm finding my way back to my car on my own. It's hard to know how far our hike has taken us before she stops at the edge of a clearing, staring across a pond of waist-high grasses crawling with who knows what kind of bugs and other creepies waiting to infect me with tropical diseases.

The only tree is on the far edge, a magnolia so huge it doesn't look real. Moss creeps up its trunk, and its thick branches twist and turn in a gorgeous, somehow threatening display of nature.

The ghost steps toward it, her pace faster, almost running now. She slips around to the opposite side, the girth of the trunk more than enough to hide her wispy form, and I follow, scared to lose sight of her in this strange place. My feet tangle in the roots, sending me crashing to my hands and knees, twisting my ankle in the process. It's the same one that betrayed me with Will earlier, but this time the pain that shoots right up the bone is no joke.

I sit on the ground, breathing through the pain and poking at the new scrapes up my legs, not realizing right away that Anne's disappeared. Panic sets in, because it's about to storm and I'm trespassing for the second time in the same day, with no way to get out, but I squash it down. She'll be back.

Instead of curling up in the fetal position and crying, which might make me feel better for a second but won't do a smidgen of good in the long run, I turn on the flashlight app on my phone and go searching for what tripped me, mostly so I can chuck it against the tree.

Or at least spit on it.

My free hand finds a cool, smooth rock three-quarters buried in the damp ground. Then another, and another, and I put down my phone, exploring with both hands until I've uncovered a dozen grapefruit-sized stones embedded in the soft ground, glowing pale in the strikes of lightning.

They're too perfect to be naturally occurring accidents, not to mention that nothing but human hands could have placed them so carefully between the magnolia's twisted, exposed roots. They almost look like marble against the backdrop of the velvety black night.

The first drop of rain maneuvers its way through the thick canopy of leaves, plopping on my cheek with a good measure of defiance. Great. Anne Bonny's ghost brought me out here, watched me trip over some weird rocks, and then left me trapped in a coming rainstorm. The tree will provide some cover, because the number of splashes hitting the leaves outnumbers those dropping onto my skin, but it's a small comfort.

Uncomfortable or not, without Anne or good light, there's no way I'm finding the car.

My attention turns back to the rocks, if only to use the mystery to calm my panic, which still teeters on the edge of a screaming freak-out. I'm enough of a country girl to know that the first rule of being lost in the woods is to not lose my shit.

I brush away leaves and dirt from the sleek white rocks, until I've uncovered all of them—sixteen in total, that shape a crudely formed X. It almost makes me laugh, because for all Anne's bluster and evil looks, I'm following around a pirate cliché.

Then again, are you a cliché if you're one of the people who set the standard?

It's a question for another, drier, possibly saner time. If I have any of those left.

"Anne! What am I supposed to do now, you sadistic bitch? Sit here and get soaked? What'd you drag me out here for?"

No answer, but of course the answer lies in front of me. X marks the spot, after all, so as more fat, chilly raindrops decorate my goose-pimpled skin, I search for a stick for a minute before finding one thick enough to help me dig. Time passes, and mud builds up on my arms and legs like a second skin as I work the four rocks in the middle loose with my stick and my hands, sacrificing four fingernails to the effort.

The stick scrapes against something that doesn't sound like dirt or roots, and I toss it aside in favor of the gentler ministrations of my fingertips. It's a trick I recall from a couple of archaeology classes, to abandon sharp tools when unearthing artifacts.

My hands find the smooth wooden surface that turns out to be the top of a small box. The bottom is half rotted away, but an oily piece of cloth covers the item inside, protecting it from the elements with a fair amount of success. It goes against all of my training to open such a thing in the rain, so I leave everything inside the smelly, half-damp box and tuck it under my shirt.

Anne's traitorous ass is nowhere to be seen, and fear or not, I'm going to give her a piece of my mind the next time she shows up. Of course, if this little present is

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