The Other Side - J. D. Robb [71]
Nice bed. He imagined Miss Darlington in it. Something about her appealed to him in spite of the fact that she seemed to have his number. Or . . . maybe that was what did appeal to him, no in spite of about it. She was nobody’s fool. And in his present circumstances, it was flattering to be seen through.
Also, she had nice ankles. Very small ears. Pretty skin. He fell asleep wondering how long her shiny, dark hair would be if she ever let it down.
The music didn’t wake up Astra, the world’s laziest terrier, and it only woke Henry gradually, gently, like a whisper in his ear. Piano music. Light as air, a quick, melodic tune. Gypsy music.
Well, well.
He’d gone to bed in his underwear, not expecting to have to get up, because he never had before, not once in his year-and-a-half-long career as a ghost detective. Where were his trousers? He fumbled with the switch on the wall, click-click, click-click. Nothing. No electricity.
Well, well, well.
“Don’t you hear that?” he complained to Astra, who was finally yawning and stretching, scratching his ear. “You’re not from Calcutta anymore, by the way, you’re from someplace north. You’re from . . . ” Hell if he knew. Have to look it up in a damn atlas.
Luckily there was a nearly full moon; he didn’t bother lighting the oil lamp. He could see fine. He could even check his . . . check his . . .
He stopped dead in front of the mirror over the bureau. His skin prickled with a cold that began in his bones and seeped into his blood—until his brain engaged and he started thinking, not just feeling. Scrawled on the mirror were the words:
Death stifles not the breath of true love
All right, she’d come into the room. How, though? Quietly, very quietly; Astra was a lazy cow, but he wasn’t deaf. Then, too, it was her room, so she’d know how, which floorboards creaked, that sort of thing. Still, it was unnerving to think he and his dog had slept through such an intimate invasion.
He was halfway down the stairs when the music stopped. He sprinted the rest of the way, cursing himself for his slowness. No one in the shadowy foyer. No one in the dark hall. He raced to the music room door, bare feet skidding on the floor, Astra behind him.
Nothing. Unless she was—no, not inside the piano, and he felt like an idiot as soon as he looked. He tried the light switch—still off. Smart ghost; she must’ve done something to the circuit. Could she have gotten out of this room without him seeing her? Or was there a secret panel? Then he really felt like an idiot. “Secret panel”—the very words made him cringe. Of course she could have gotten out, and run down the hall to the kitchen, through the back door, out into the yard. She was probably halfway to Lexington Street by now.
But she wasn’t. She was here. He didn’t intuit it—he heard music again.
This time a violin. Very versatile ghost. More Gypsy music, in a tragic minor key. Henry crept out into the hall, listening, turning his head to discern the direction. “This is supposed to be your job,” he muttered to Astra, who looked nothing but game and interested—not frightened, not threatened. Which was good. Henry had to admit that was reassuring.
He followed the music—“haunting” was really the only word for it—back the way he’d come, to the front of the house. It seemed for a moment, as he stood in the spacious hall, to come from everywhere. Then it stopped.
He thought at first it was his imagination that things were getting brighter, or maybe he thought the moon was coming out from behind a cloud. But no, this light slowly grew stronger from above, from upstairs,