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shimmered, and once again Lucien felt hands on his body. Bold, caressing, cold hands.
    "Viola?" he whispered.
    The spirit answered, or at least she tried. He could almost hear her. It was as if she spoke beyond his hearing, as she had last night when she'd pleaded for her life, but the sound was less distinct than it had been last night, just as Viola herself was less distinct. She was a shimmer, a glow flitting around the bed and over his body. She was very close for a moment, and then she skittered away.
    He couldn't save her, he couldn't stop the murder that had taken her young life. But he could guide her spirit to a place of peace. It was what he did, after all.
    "I'm here to help you." He scooted to the edge of the bed and reached down to snag the sheet. Ghost or living being, dead or alive, Viola Stamper was still a woman. He pulled the sheet across his midsection and sat up. "Let me help you."
    Lucien inhaled deeply and took himself to that place he and very few others could find. He opened himself to the endless possibilities of this vast universe, he shut out the world as most people saw it. He left a part of himself behind and opened his mind to the other side.
    "Viola," he whispered.
    She joined him on the bed, hovering above and all around him. He saw her, in a glimmer of light and a shift of the air. For a moment, a split second, it was as if he truly saw her, then she was a vague light once again.
    "Alistair." The single word drifted to him, almost out of reach but much clearer than before.
    "Is he here, also?" Lucien didn't see Viola's husband, but that didn't mean he wasn't present.
    A hand appeared for a moment and reached for him, before dissolving. "Yes, you are here."
    "No," Lucien said, realizing the spirit's mistake. She was confusing the living with the dead. She was confusing him with her husband. "I am not..."
    He felt her chilly hands on his neck, hands he could no longer see but which he felt quite well. Those hands drifted lower, caressing his chest again. Fingers fluttered. She was alternately bold and afraid.
    "Why?" she asked, her voice heartbreakingly sad. "I loved you. Why?" Her hands moved lower. "Do you only love me for my body? Does my heart mean nothing to you? I gave you my heart, Alistair."
    Lucien had been talking to spirits all his life, but only once before had he communicated with a ghost who actually formed a voice others could hear, as Viola and Alistair did. They were strong spirits, capable of almost anything. That kind of power could be very dangerous, though at the moment Viola didn't seem at all frightening. She was lonely, and very confused. She continued to caress him, easy one moment and then so boldly he felt the touch to his very bones.
    "Viola, you must listen to me," Lucien said sternly. "I am not Alistair. My name is Lucien, and I am here to guide you home."
    She would not be so easily dissuaded. And her hands were maddeningly cold and moving ever lower. "I am home," a disembodied voice whispered. Icy fingers brushed against his lower belly, delved beneath the sheet and took hold...
    "Viola!" he shouted, shocked by her touch and the unbearable iciness of her fingers on his privates.
    She released him and faded away, slowly, surely, and one last time he heard her wail, "Why?"
    The door to the room flew open and Eve rushed in. She tripped over the throw rug by the door, stumbled across the room with arms flailing as she attempted to right herself, and fell onto the bed. Her momentum carried her squarely across Lucien's torso and knocked him flat.
    Embarrassed and flustered, Eve blushed a pretty pink. Dressed primly in matronly brown, her hair tightly restrained but for a few errant curls, she was the picture of propriety—except that she now found herself lying crosswise over a naked man. She tried to find a safe space to look and could not. Apparently she had forgotten all about the spider-web in the far corner, as her gaze landed on his legs, his chest, his face. She