The Prophet. Amanda Stevens

to see me,” I blurted. “I wasn’t sure I’d have the nerve to knock on your door.”

       “It takes nerve to knock on my door?”

       I sighed. “Yes, and you know why.”

       It was all I could do to keep from reaching out to him, so magnetic was his presence. I let my gaze drift over him again. He’d buttoned his shirt while he was outside. The cut, as always, was perfection. He had an eye for clothes and the money to indulge his refined tastes. But there was an edge to the way he dressed, a hint of the rebellious nature that had driven him away from his elite upbringing and into the arms of Mariama Goodwine.

       “So, why did you want to see me?” he asked carefully.

       He was still staring out through the leaded glass panel in the front door. I focused my gaze on his profile and shivered. “I got your messages. I didn’t have a chance to ask you about them last evening.”

       Slowly, he turned back to me. “What messages?”

       “The ones you sent while I was away. The text came on my way back from Asher Falls.”

       “Asher Falls?”

       “It’s a small town in the Blue Ridge foothills near Woodberry. I had a restoration there, but then I had to leave suddenly, and I was on the ferry when I received your text.”

       Something flitted across his face. “I never texted you.”

       “But…the message came from your phone. I’m certain of it.”

       “I didn’t send it,” he insisted.

       “Then who did?”

       “I have no idea. Did you save it?”

       “I had to replace my phone recently, and I lost everything. But it was sent from your number. I’m sure of it. And before that, I received an email from you. I suppose you didn’t send that, either?”

       “No.”

       “Well this is very strange.” And more than a little unsettling. “I don’t know what to say. I’m not making this up.”

       He smiled thinly. “I never thought you were.”

       I felt like bursting into tears. I’d been so certain the messages had come from him. And now to find out that he hadn’t tried to contact me… .

       It was foolish to feel so devastated, I told myself. And yet I did.

       “Who could have sent them?”

       “I don’t know,” Devlin said. “But I intend to find out.”

       As I watched him, heart in my throat—and in my eyes—Mariama floated between us. I tried not to track her with my gaze.

       How could he not feel the cold? How could he not flinch from her touch?

      Go away, I thought.

       I could hear her taunting laughter in my head. You go away.

       Was I mad? I wondered. Had my years of living with ghosts finally driven me over the edge? Ever since Asher Falls, not only could I see specters, but I could hear them.

       “What’s wrong?” Devlin asked.

       “I was just wondering why someone would go to the trouble of making me think the messages were from you. They must have somehow gained access to your phone, your email…” I trailed off as Fremont’s cryptic words came back to me yet again.

       “That’s not likely,” Devlin said.