“I’m a volunteer. I’m also in one of your classes at Emerson.”
“So that’s where I’ve seen you.” As he slowly came into the room, Ree fought the urge to retreat. Why had she never noticed before the almost serpentine grace of his walk?
“Your lecture last week on human emotion and cognition was…it was brilliant,” she stammered.
“I’ll assume you weren’t the one snoring from the back row then.”
Was that amusement she heard in his voice? At one time, Ree would have been charmed by his self-effacement, but now she had to suppress a shudder.
She drew another quick breath and smiled. “Never. I always look forward to your class.”
“How long have you volunteered here?” he asked. “And why have I not seen you around before tonight?”
“I’ve only been here two months and I’m assigned mostly to the south wing.”
Maybe it was her imagination, but Ree thought his attention quickened. His appraisal, however, remained subtle. “Then you must know one of my favorite patients. Violet Tisdale.”
Not her imagination, Ree decided. Mentioning Miss Violet out of all the patients in the south wing couldn’t be a coincidence. Which meant he must suspect she’d overheard at least a portion of that incriminating argument. Now he was testing her, observing her response to the name.
She forced a wistful tone to her voice. “Miss Violet was also one of my favorites.”
An elegant brow shot up. “Was?”
Now it was Ree’s turn to gauge his reaction. “Oh…you haven’t heard? Miss Violet passed away a little while ago.”
No more than a flicker of emotion crossed his handsome countenance. “No, I hadn’t heard.”
“Maybe I shouldn’t have said anything. It wasn’t my place—”
“Was she alone?”
Before tonight, Ree wouldn’t have given his query a second thought, but now the question seemed fraught with subtext.
“No. As a matter of fact, I was with her when she died.”
“Did she say anything?”
Fraught with subtext. “She went quietly in her sleep.”
“That’s that then,” he murmured and Ree could have sworn she heard genuine regret in his voice.
But what she saw in his eyes chilled her to the bone.
A strange disquiet followed Ree down the stairs and through the maze of soft green corridors. In the sections where security was more stringent, the patients had already been confined to their rooms for the night and the hallways were eerily silent.
As Ree hurried back to the south wing, she reminded herself yet again that nothing she’d overheard was her concern. Best to just put the whole sordid mess out of her mind. Dr. Farrante had an almost godlike standing in the field of developmental psychology. The last thing Ree needed was an enemy so powerful he could quash her career before it even started.
But she was nothing if not Jack Hutchins’s daughter. He was one of the best private detectives ever licensed by the state of South Carolina and there was a time not so long ago when Ree had wanted more than anything to follow in his footsteps. She’d dreamed of the two of them starting their own agency, but that was before he’d fallen for one of his clients and left her mother heartbroken. Before he’d quit his old firm and moved to Atlanta to pursue his new life.
Even after the divorce, Ree had privately nursed those same aspirations, but then she’d come to realize that teaming up with her father would seem like yet another betrayal to her mother. So she’d enrolled at Emerson University as a psych major and here she was at twenty-four, in hot pursuit of her master’s.
Still, it was hard to suppress her natural tendencies. She had an innate curiosity and a flair for detective work. That overheard conversation was like a dangling carrot and Ree found herself anticipating some alone time so that she could sort through the puzzle pieces—Miss Violet…Ilsa Tisdale…Oak Grove Cemetery…a secret society called the Order of the Coffin and the Claw.
Strange that out of all the curiosities she’d overheard, Ree’s thoughts kept returning to one name. Amelia Gray. So familiar and yet so hazy. A memory that floated just out of her grasp.
And then as she pushed through the double doors into the south wing, she finally had it. She’d gone to school in Trinity—a small town north of Charleston—with a girl by that name. That Amelia Gray had been a few grades ahead of her so they hadn’t known each other well. But now that Ree had tapped into her memory, an image of a quiet, pretty blonde formed in her head. And with it came other recollections. Something about a graveyard…
Yes, that was it. Amelia’s father had been a caretaker and they’d lived in a white house near Rosehill Cemetery.
When Ree was little, her grandmother had loved old graveyards. Rosehill was one of her favorite destinations and sometimes after church on Sunday, she and Ree would take a picnic lunch out there and eat in the shade of the two-hundred-year-old oaks that ringed the grounds. On those lazy summer afternoons with the sun shimmering on the statues and headstones and the air redolent with the climbing roses that spilled over the fences and down through the trees, the cemetery had seemed like a place of enchantment.
On one particular afternoon, Ree had skipped away while her grandmother dozed in the shade. The old section of the cemetery was normally closed to the public, but the gate was open that day. Always intrepid and not a little curious, she’d slipped inside and wandered along stone paths that meandered through a primordial forest of cool, lush ferns and thick gray-green curtains of Spanish moss. In that gothic fairyland, amidst an audience of stone angels, Ree had stumbled upon Amelia Gray holding court.
She was dressed in some flowing garment that looked fashioned from an old silk dress. The gossamer fabric fluttered like fairy wings when she moved, and atop her golden head, she wore a crown of rosebuds and clover. She must have been about ten at the time and to Ree’s seven-year-old sensibilities, the most mystical creature she’d ever encountered.
Ree had made an inadvertent sound—a surprised, little gasp—but Amelia wasn’t startled. Moments ticked by before she slowly turned, her gaze seeking Ree’s. Her eyes were very clear, Ree remembered. She’d thought them blue at first, but as the girl came toward her, she realized they were gray. Or were they green?
“Where did you come from?” Amelia had asked in a feather-soft voice.
Finding herself unaccustomedly tongue-tied, Ree pointed toward the gate.
Amelia bit her lip. “I must have forgotten to shut it. I’d better go lock it before Papa finds out. Come on. I’ll walk you back.”
But Ree held her ground, her curious gaze taking in all the stone angels. She’d never seen so many. It was like a silent, weeping army.
“They’re magic,” Amelia said. Her eyes took on a dreamy, faraway look. “Sometimes just before dusk, when the light hits them just right, they come to life.”
Ree finally found her voice, and much to her chagrin, her practical side emerged. “There’s no such thing as magic.”
“Of course there is. There’s magic all around us. You just can’t see it.”
“Can you?”
“Sometimes.” Amelia’s smile disappeared and she glanced away. “But I’m safe here.”
“Why?”
She waved an arm, encompassing the crumbling angels and the surrounding cemetery. “Because these are my guardians,” she said. “And this is my kingdom….”
The memory faded as Ree rounded a corner and almost skidded into Trudy McIntyre. She was escorting Alice Canton, a young woman with paranoid schizophrenic tendencies, back to her room. Alice was pale and fragile with an emaciated body and wide, tragic eyes.
She stopped dead in her tracks to gape at Ree as they passed in the hallway.
“Come along, Alice,” Trudy coaxed. “Let’s get you settled in for the night.”