“So,” I said, keeping my voice tightly controlled. “That was my Christmas present?”

“That was going to be your Christmas present,” he explained cautiously. Then he leaned forward, scrutinizing me. “But you have a problem with it, don’t you? Even after finding out what I meant it for.”

Despite his effort to hold my gaze, I broke eye contact and stared down at my hands, which I’d absently begun to wring in my lap.

“Yes,” I said, and then shook my head. “No. I don’t know.”

With my eyes still cast downward, I sighed heavily and sank back into my chair. True to form, Joshua seized upon the opportunity that my ambivalence gave him. He leaned even closer and tucked his forefinger beneath my chin, lifting my head until I faced him again.

“I’m not going to push you into anything,” he said softly. “I’ve done that before, with some mixed results.”

I gave him a tense, close-lipped smile. “I can’t say I haven’t done it to you, too. O’Reilly’s barn burner comes to mind.”

Joshua chuckled quietly. Keeping his finger beneath my chin, he began to brush his thumb across my cheek. Where he touched, heat erupted in an arc. Like a blush, only better.

This time I didn’t pull my eyes from his. I stared at him until all I could see was midnight blue. Until all my warring thoughts quieted and left me with something that at least resembled peace.

Now calmer and more resolved, I gave him a stronger, broader smile—one that I didn’t necessarily feel, but certainly meant.

Joshua grinned back. “Does that smile mean you don’t hate me?”

I placed my hand over his, stopping his thumb but doubling the heat on my cheek. I didn’t speak. But an irresponsible part of me wished he’d read a reply in my eyes, one that revealed I could never hate him when I loved him this much.

After a prolonged silence I squeezed his hand and then released it. In a soft, almost unfamiliar voice, I said, “You won’t have your cousins to blame for staying out late tonight. So I guess you’d better start thinking of some excuse for why you need to go somewhere at midnight. Otherwise, you’re just going to have to sneak out.”

Joshua arched one eyebrow. “Oh, really?”

“Really.”

“What made you change your mind?”

“I hadn’t made my mind up against the idea,” I said. “It just kind of threw me for a loop, that’s all.”

“And … now?”

“Now I kind of want to see what happens. See if she can help me control the materializations and freaky dreams.”

Or even help me protect my loved ones without having to flee or join a troop of rogue ghosts, I thought. No harm in asking once we’re there.

The strained half smile tugged at my lips again, helping me to keep those thoughts from playing themselves out on my face.

“Just promise me one thing, okay?”

“Anything,” he said earnestly.

“If she’s lying, and she’s actually on the Ruth side of things … if she ends up trying to exorcise me—”

“We get the hell out of there,” he finished, and then gave me a surprisingly wolfish grin. “And stiff her the fifty bucks, of course.”

I laughed. “Of course.”

My one, weak laugh was all Joshua needed. Suddenly excited, he clutched both of my hands and gently pulled me forward until I balanced precariously on the edge of my chair. With my lips precariously close to his too.

“I really want her to help you tonight,” he whispered, serious again.

I sucked in a sharp breath, which brought with it the briefest scent of his cologne. When the scent evaporated, I nodded slightly, dizzily. I let Joshua hold me there—on the edge of my seat, and on the edge of something potentially momentous.

But I didn’t—and wouldn’t—tell him the truth: that I was knee-quaking, bone-shaking scared.

Not that I might see last night’s ghosts or demons spending the witching hour in what had to be one of the more haunted places in New Orleans. Not that Gabrielle—who struck me as someone with more than a few ulterior motives—might hurt me.

I was somewhat afraid of those very real threats, obviously. But they weren’t what filled my heart with an icy sort of dread; they weren’t what I struggled to hide from Joshua’s perceptive gaze.

Because, in the end, I was most afraid of what would happen if Gabrielle couldn’t do a damn thing for me.

The sun set too quickly that night, disappearing over the slate roofs of the Quarter and pulling the streets back into the shadows. I sat alone upon the front steps of the town house, with my arms wrapped around my legs, watching the darkness descend.

Inside, I could hear the raucous sounds of the Mayhew clan crowded around the dinner table. Tomorrow, the entire group would travel to one of the many gourmet restaurants in the Quarter to celebrate Christmas Eve in style. But tonight they were supposed to dine together in their family home, filling every available inch of the first floor.

The only exceptions to this tradition were the young Seers, who still hadn’t returned from their trip to Lafayette. (I couldn’t remember my own parents’ curfew rules, but I imagined they were far less lax than those of the Mayhews.) Sitting outside, I absently wondered whether Joshua missed their company.

If I listened carefully to the clamor, I could distinguish his voice as he laughed and joked with his younger cousins. If I stood up, I’m sure I could peer through the front window and see him sitting closest to the glass so that he could keep a watchful eye on me.

Considering what we might face in a few hours, I probably should’ve taken a covert place beside him in that cramped dining room. Especially since he’d warned me that this first family dinner might run long into the night, giving us no time alone together before we had to leave for the cemetery.

But like some scared little rabbit, I’d fled the house only minutes after I’d caught my first glimpse of someone I’d half expected never to see again.

I’d seen Ruth Mayhew before anyone else in the family had, standing at the top of the main staircase. In the shadows, she looked like some aging heroine in an antebellum movie, tall and grand and patrician, with one hand on the banister and the other clutched to her shawl.

Very briefly, I’d thought about confronting her—asserting my presence in this house for whatever limited period of time I intended to occupy it.

When she’d taken a few, unsteady steps down the main staircase, however, I took my own steps toward the front door, practically flinging Joshua against it and begging for him to let me outside. Somehow, being outdoors felt safer than staying inside with her.

But before Joshua had moved to shut the door behind me, a beam of light from the dining room fell across her face. At that moment I’d gasped. Even when the door closed, my mouth stayed open in shock.

I had no idea how someone could age so much in only three months, but tonight Ruth Mayhew didn’t even look like the same person. Her glossy white hair had dulled, and her skin had sagged even further. Instead of carrying herself ramrod straight, she now hunched like an old woman. Worst of all, her normally hawk-sharp eyes looked bloodshot and vague.

Granted, she was emerging from the stupor of a two-day migraine; anyone would look terrible after something like that. And she’d obviously had the energy, at some point between the time we’d arrived in New Orleans and the time I returned from Jackson Square, to decorate the back stoop with Voodoo dust.

But as I watched her through the dining-room window, I couldn’t help but notice that her relatives treated her like a helpless invalid. They very nearly carried her to the dining-room table and, once they had her there, flocked around her as if she couldn’t even lift a spoon. Which, judging by her shaking hands, she couldn’t.

Despite all the horrible things she’d said and done to me, I felt the strangest twinge of sympathy for her. People aged, people died—I knew that better than anyone. That didn’t mean I wished it upon Ruth, though. Nor did I want Joshua to have to watch it firsthand. Of course, there was nothing I could do to stop it from happening. And even if I could, I’m pretty sure Ruth would still use her last ounce of strength to banish me to the Antarctic or somewhere equally unpleasant.