Page 71 of This Haunted Heart

Her hands went back to her hair, fisting the curls. She made a frustrated noise in her throat. “Goddamn it, Loch!” she shouted. “Do you have any idea how it feels to listen to you tell me that I broke your hearttwice? That I left you and then had the audacity to still be alive after all this time!”

“That’snotwhat I said!”

“That’s how it feels! Like you want me to apologize for not being a ghost!” she howled. Tears fell in rivulets down her reddened cheeks.

“Stop crying at me,” I begged her, my own gaze clouding with moisture.

“I can’t help it,” she sobbed, pressing her palms to her eyes. “I’m not doing it to hurt you! My tears aren’t weapons!”

“Well, they feel like arrows!” I rubbed my chest and yanked my collar loose. It was strangling me.

Ghosts pressed in around us, attracted to our anger and grief. They chilled the room, frosting the windows. I could see my breath mingling with Rynn’s.

“Get out!” I shouted at them.

“Gladly,” Rynn snapped, marching for the archway.

“Not you.” I caught her arm and swung her around, drawing her deeper into the room. “You stay right where you are.”

The ghosts departed, and the air began to warm once more. A fire caught in the hearth, as it did every evening at this time. Darkness had fallen while we argued, and the lone gaslight wasn’t enough to illuminate the large space by itself.

“Thank you, Gertrude,” I said, then I felt the prickle down my neck as her spirit passed by.

“Yes, thank you, Gertrude,” Rynn said grudgingly.

In silence, we stared at the flames, our own anger finally burned out, leaving us hollow wrecks.

Rynn rubbed a hand down her face. “I’ve got nothing left to say, Loch. Nothing that will make any difference.” She marched for the archway and stopped. “Drat.”

“What’s wrong?”

Rynn stared at the line of shadows that separated the threshold from the lit drawing room. “I left my lantern back in the library.”

“There’s one in— Oh.” I realized a moment too late that she’d carried the drawing room lantern with her earlier. I moved in as close to that line of darkness as I dared, and I peeked through the doorway down the hall.

A long stretch of night separated us from the dull, distantglow of the torchier in the foyer.

“It’s too dark,” she whispered.

“Too dark and too many ghosts,” I added.

She peered up at me. “Would the spirits tethered to you fetch it for us if you asked?”

I shook my head. “They stick to tasks that became habits for them when they were alive. I have to be careful where I put things. If it’s not where they expect, they can’t use it.”

“That’s a shame.” She nodded absent-mindedly as her arms came up around herself, her whole focus on that gaping dark, and I saw the love of my youth facing the terror years of torture had instilled in her.

I held out my hand. “Rynn.” My throat was hoarse from all the yelling.

Tearing her gaze from the hallway, she looked at my hand as though it were a foreign object. And then she came to me.

I led her to the small sofa, the only one in the whole room. I lay down on it, and she let go my hand to remove her floral tea gown, throwing it over a chair to prevent wrinkles—a wasted effort. It was full of creases already. With a great sigh, she came to my end of the sofa.

Rynn stretched out over me, laying her cheek on my chest. My heart still hurt, but our battle had dulled the ache. Letting all that out of me had felt good, and her weight was like a warm compress pressed against the parts of me that were wounded and sore. I craned my neck and kissed the top of her head. Her hair smelled like rose water.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered a little later.

“I know,” I whispered back.

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