The ghost leaped up off the table and stood glaring at me. I couldn't help but look at where the cloth had fallen from.
"Eep," I said, my eyes close to bugging out of my head.
He snarled something and grabbed the cloth from the floor, wrapping it around his hips. "By all the saints, will you just leave me in peace?" Oddly enough, that beautiful, silky voice didn't lose any of its charm even when it was bellowing at me.
I dislike being yelled at, however. It takes me back to the days when I was married and didn't have enough brains to know that I didn't have to take either the verbal or physical abuse. For that reason, I tend to be a bit snappish when someone starts lighting into me. "That's what I'm trying to do, give you peace, you stupid spook! Now lie down and shut up!"
I had dropped my notebook again when he leaped off the table, and bent down to pick it up, secretly amused by the stunned expression on the ghost's face. My amusement died when I picked up the notebook. It was sticky with wetness. I flipped it open and noticed that everywhere I touched I left red smears.
Smears of blood.
I stared at my hands for a second, then down at the floor where the ghost's blood had collected.
"What is… Is it ectoplasm?"
The ghost raised his hands to the heavens. "In all my years I have never been so plagued as I am at this moment! No, it is not ectoplasm!"
I touched a wet spot on my notebook, then looked at a cut on his chest that was slowly seeping blood. Hesitantly I reached out and pressed a finger against his flesh. It was warm, firm, and felt like the softest velvet over steel. I instantly wanted to touch more, much more.
Then I realized what it meant. I blinked. I swallowed. I cleared my throat. "You're not a ghost."
The nonghost seemed to be breathing hard, which made his wounds seep blood all that much faster.
"I am not a ghost," he acknowledged, his teeth still apparently doing the grinding thing. "I have told you that at least six times now—"
"Twice."
Breath hissed out his really nice lips. His eyes darkened until they were obsidian. His fingers clenched. "Twice what?"
"You said you weren't a ghost twice, not six times. Must be the blood loss making you a bit woozy."
Muscles in his chest rippled. I tried not to notice them, feeling it was rude to stare at such a magnificent—if bloody—chest when its owner was clearly in need of deep psychiatric and immediate medical care.
"I have never been spoken to as you have spoken to me."
"Is that so?"
"I do not like it," he continued, just as if I hadn't said anything. "You will cease it immediately and leave."
"Leave. As in… now?" Clearly he wasn't thinking straight. It behooved me to try to calm him down before he did any more damage to himself.
"Yes, now," he answered me, a muscle in his jaw twitching. "You need to leave right now, before you ruin—" His lips clamped down on the words, cutting them off.
"Ruin what?" I couldn't help but ask. "I realize it's a bit nosy of me, but I don't often find naked men slowly bleeding to death in the basement of haunted inns. Call me silly, but I think you still need help. It can't be good for you to slice yourself up like that and then lie around in the damp and drip blood everywhere. I'm sure there are some very nice doctors who would be happy to take care of you—"
He said something in a language I didn't recognize, but which sounded suspiciously like it was swearing, then froze and looked at the doorway. There was a soft noise from the upper level that sounded a whole lot like someone had just closed the back door.
"Peste," the man snarled, whirling around to leap back on the table. His voice deepened until it felt like the richest velvet brushing against my skin. "I command you to go now, without allowing the others to see you. You will forget everything you have seen here tonight."
"You know, I was married to an arrogant, domineering, tyrannical sort of man who thought he could control me. You can just take it as a given that the high-and-mighty act isn't going to cut any ice with me."
The man banged his head on the table twice. I winced for him. The table sounded awfully solid.
A faint echo of a voice reached me. I turned my back on the crazy man and rushed to the door. "Hello? Is there someone up there? Listen, I need some help down here. There's a guy who needs a doctor and… uh… a policeman. Hello?"
Hushed voices whispered to each other for a moment.
"You know, there's some really bad karma to be had from refusing to help someone when they're injured," I yelled up the stairs. "If you don't want to come down here and help me restrain this guy, the least you can do is call for—"
A hand wrapped itself around my mouth and pulled me backward against a warm, hard body.
"Now listen carefully," the man said in my ear, the silk of his voice doing all sorts of naughty things to me. "You will heed my words and do as I command."
It was the word command that did it. Ever since Timothy, I react badly to it. Without even the merest thought about the repercussions of my actions on an obviously insane and badly wounded man, I stomped my boot down on his bare foot and slammed my elbow back into his belly. He grunted in pain and doubled up as I lunged forward and raced up the stairs. I knew it was the sheerest folly to leave a lunatic with a bag full of expensive equipment, but I had no choice. Whoever he was waiting for, whoever had left without having the decency to help, clearly wasn't going to call the police or medical aid. I leaped up the stairs, ignoring the pain in my leg and the stitch that instantly formed in my side as I ran down the hallway to the door. I had remembered seeing a callbox down the block. I'd call for help, then sneak back into the inn and keep an eye on the poor, handsome, utterly deranged man.
It was raining—a cold, nasty, sleety type of rain—as I galloped awkwardly down the road to the call box. It took me three tries to dial 999, but at last I was connected with an emergency dispatcher. Two minutes later, having described where I was and what the problem was with the man, I headed back to the old inn at a slower pace, worried that my escape might have sent the poor man over the deep end.
I crept into the hallway and stood with my back to a moldy wall, keeping an eye on the stairs to the basement. It seemed like it was an hour before the sound of a police car siren Dopplered against the building, but according to my watch it was only eight and a half minutes. I greeted the two policemen, explained quickly what I had seen, and followed them down the stairs to the now closed door. They switched on powerful flashlights and cautiously opened the door.
The room was empty.
Not only was the room empty, the table was gone, and the pool of blood on the floor had vanished. My bag and piece of chalk and flashlight were still there, but everything else was gone.
"Wait a minute—I… There was… He was right here! How could he… And the blood, it was right there—that table must have weighed a ton! How could he have moved it so quickly?"
"Madam," said the smaller of the two policemen, shining his flashlight right on my face. I heard him gasp as I turned away so I was in profile. "Madam," he said again, his voice a bit shaky. "Are you aware of the fact that it is a crime to call the police out on a nonemergency situation?"
"But…" I looked around the room, keeping my head tipped so they couldn't see directly into my eyes. There was nothing here but an empty room, two cops, and my bag of tricks. "He was here! I swear to you, he was here! Bleeding all over the place, and naked as the day he was born."