Clare went to the table, opened the sack, and took out the box. Frowning, she stood directly under the light and studied it, tilted her head, then pushed down near the end of one side. Nothing happened. “I think it’s supposed to be like a teeter-totter,” she said. “But it’s stuck. Maybe I should get some wood oil or something.”

“Maybe I could try?” Zach held out his hand.

She walked over and gave it to him. “That’s the top, and the panel that should move. I had a puzzle box when I was a kid, and you slid a couple of pieces of wood to open it, so that’s how I thought this one opened.”

Something was a little off here that Zach couldn’t put his finger on. “But now you think it needs to be pushed.”

“Yes,” she said in a stifled voice, rubbing goose bumps on her arms.

He reached out and put his arm around her waist, tugged her to stand beside him. With her came a nice trickle of cool air that seemed to swirl around his foot. Holding one end of the box, he pressed down with his thumb, felt a little give. He pushed harder, keeping the pressure steady. With an odd creak the box opened.

His breath whooshed out. Clare gave a strangled cry.

Inside was a mummified human ear.

TWELVE

“I SHOULD HAVE expected this,” Clare said, her voice high to her own ears. Enzo sat next to Zach, tongue hanging out in a doggie grin. The shadow near her bedroom doorway was her imaginary friend, Jack Slade. Both Enzo and the apparition had told her how to open the box.

She shivered with cold and fear, glad she hadn’t eaten anything for dinner since it might have spewed up.

Zach looked up from the box, face inscrutable, his pupils wide in the gloom, with only a faint rim of blue-green iris. “That ear looks damn old.”

“The box is from about 1863, I think,” she said.

“This has to do with Jack Slade, the gunman.”

Clare twitched her lips up in a little smile at Zach’s deduction and avoided looking at the secret cache in the box. “You know the story.”

“Jack Slade cut off the ears of Jules Beni and wore one as a watch fob.”

“Jules Beni was the man who ambushed Jack Slade and emptied a revolverful of bullets into him as well as a shotgun!” She didn’t know why she defended the ghost.

Zach grunted. “They say Slade killed Beni.”

Not true, said the slender ghost in shadows of black and white and gray, drifting closer.

“I . . . I like to think his men did it. Beni had stolen horses that were for the stagecoach and Pony Express. He’d returned to the area Slade had warned him out of. Slade put a reward out for Beni and told the military in Fort Laramie that he’d be hunting the man before his men found Beni,” Clare said.

That is absolutely correct. The image of Jack Slade smiled at her.

“Not the sharpest knife in the drawer, Beni,” Zach said. He actually touched the ear, lifted it out of the box, sniffed at it.

“Is it real?” Clare asked, though she had no doubt.

“Seems like.” The grisly thing lay on his palm. Zach studied her again. “Where did all this happen again?”

Clare bent down and flipped open an atlas that she’d marked on the coffee table. She’d put small sticky notes on the places that kept showing up in her dream conversations: Julesburg, where Slade had been shot; the general area of Cold Springs Station where Beni had been killed—that was taking some time for Clare to pinpoint; and Virginia Dale, the station Slade had founded for his headquarters and lived in until his drinking and shooting up Sutler’s store that had cost him his job. She pointed at the map. “In far northern Colorado and southeastern Wyoming.”

Zach rubbed the ear with his thumb. Ewwww. “And when was Beni killed?”

Clare frowned, searching her memory. “Late August 1861.”

“Seems to me an ear cut off in the August heat in southeastern Wyoming might mummify and still be around after more than a hundred and fifty years.”

Gulping, Clare nodded.

A short honk came from the street. “I guess my car’s here.” Zach put the ear back in the box, then tilted the lid closed. Clare let out a little breath.

“I seem to recollect,” Zach started in that Colorado ranch drawl Clare had noticed before, “that Jack Slade cut off both of Beni’s ears.”

“That’s the legend,” Clare whispered.

That is the truth, Jack Slade the specter said mournfully. That’s my great sin I need you to help me to rectify so I might pass on.

Her inner shivers were getting stronger, and she might not be able to hide them from Zach. She wanted him gone before he noticed the tremors, and she wanted him to stay, just because he was Zach.

“And Jack Slade wore one of Beni’s ears as a watch fob?” Zach said. “That’s a story that sticks in the head.”

Also true, the collection of shadows said. Involuntarily she looked at the vision. Yes, he wore a watch chain. No ghostly ear attached.

“So they say,” Clare croaked, holding herself so she wouldn’t shudder.

“No hole in this ear,” Zach tapped the box as he leaned forward and put it on the coffee table. He stood, and when he smiled at Clare with masculine appreciation in his eyes, she forgot about her hallucinations. He stepped closer to her, lifted his hand as if to touch the vicinity of her chin, and she ran backward a step or two. “Don’t you touch me with that hand!”

Zach blinked, then his head tilted back as he roared a laugh. When he was done he just shook his head and strode to the kitchen and washed his hands, Clare stood at the threshold and made sure he did so thoroughly.

When he came back she let him tilt up her chin and kiss her, more than just a press of lips; his tongue sought her own and she opened her mouth, gave in again to sweet desire. To blessed warmth.

Again he was the one to draw away and she was left aching, spinning in time and space and needing more, more heat and sizzle and release to this desire he stoked.

He walked to the doorway. “I like you, Clare Cermak. See you at tea at Mrs. Flinton’s tomorrow.”

The very idea cleared her mind a bit. “You? Tea?”

His smile flashed, easier than she’d seen before. The depressing fog of emotions that he’d seemed wrapped in earlier that day appeared diminished. If she’d had anything to do with that—well, probably just the notion of sex for him, she supposed—anyway, she was glad.

He said, “Mrs. Flinton offered me an apartment. I think I’ll take her up on it. See you later.”

The screen door slammed behind him when he left. She went to the front door and saw him wave to two men in a car that looked a lot like the one Mrs. Flinton had been driven away in. Clare wondered about the car service. Probably top of the line, and the one she was using was good enough and no doubt less expensive. Sounded like Zach had also signed on with a premier firm. Envy stabbed her; she’d been with the best accounting business in Denver. Zach got into a shiny newer-model car and drove off, giving her a wave, too.

She smiled reflexively at him, then shut the door to keep any cooler night air from getting into the house, which felt chilly enough. She touched the arm of the couch and thought she felt Zach’s warmth, so she took the wool blanket she’d gotten out of the closet and folded over the couch, wrapped the throw around herself, and perched on the arm, not looking at the box. Enzo hopped onto the couch and stood staring at her with sad eyes.

You ignored me ALL NIGHT LONG!

“I didn’t want to be taken for insane,” she snapped.

Enzo slid her a sly glance. Mrs. Flinton believes in me. We will have a fine tea tomorrow.