Staked (The Iron Druid Chronicles, #8)(16)

“Gwendolyn? It’s me, Nigel. I would like to speak with you, please.” I kept going on in that vein for a long while, repeating my name and hers and my wish to speak. My knees began to throb after an hour, and I considered that perhaps Gwendolyn had moved on. It would hardly be surprising—what would keep her lingering here after the supposed betrayal she’d suffered?

“Well,” I said, getting to my feet. “I just wanted to say I’m sorry.”

“Sssssorry for what?” an ethereal voice whispered, and there, across the room, a red vision floated above the professor’s lectern.

“Sorry I wasn’t there for you when you needed me. When you were trampled by that horse in the street.”

“That is alllll?”

“I’ve never forgiven myself for that. Your death could have been prevented if I had only come out to meet you.”

“Annnd what about the other womannnn?”

“What? There is no other woman. There never has been and never will be.”

“I ssssaw you, Nigel! I ssssaw you with herrr!” Furniture shifted around, scraping against the tile. I was going to be bombarded with flying desks soon. Before that became too much to bear, I had to convince her that she hadn’t seen her Nigel with another woman—for she truly hadn’t. He’d been faithful to her, as far as I could discover from my historical research.

My plan relied on the idea that ghosts have one thing in common with hounds—they’re not too clear on the passage of time. As far as Gwendolyn was concerned, Nigel was not only still alive, he was still attending his Baptist seminary in the nineteenth century. Things like cars driving on paved roads outside and electricity inside—those simply didn’t penetrate whatever consciousness she had. The only thing that mattered to her was her relationship with Nigel, which was probably why she ignored or simply did not see minor differences in our appearance and voice. If she was ever to have a chance of moving on, she needed to repair that relationship with Nigel and get a sense of closure.

So now I had to be the man himself.

“I don’t know what you saw, Gwendolyn, but whoever it was, it wasn’t me! I would never do that to you. There is a lad here at the college who looks a lot like me, though. Maybe you mistook him for me.”

“Nnno! It was you! You were wearing that suit! Sssshe kept saying your naaame. Sssshe called you Nigel!”

Desks levitated off the floor, twitching and spinning, and one of them rocketed at my head as I shouted a desperate response and ducked. It still clipped me painfully on the forearm I had raised to protect my head. “Gray suits are common as corn, Gwendolyn! And whoever the woman was that you saw called him Nigel, not me. Did he say his name was Nigel?”

That made her pause and she forgot about the desks, allowing gravity to pull them down to the floor again with a crash. “Nnnooo.”

“What did he say his name was?”

“Hhhee didn’t. Just that it wasn’t Nigel.”

“Well, there you have it.”

“Then whyyyy did sssshe call him that?”

“I haven’t the slightest notion. People do strange things, Gwen. I have heard—I wouldn’t know, of course—that some people enjoy role-playing. Perhaps that was what you stumbled across.”

“Rrrole-playing?”

That was a rabbit hole I didn’t want to explore, especially since I was playing a role at that very moment, so I hurried past it. “Yes. I am so very sorry that you have been plagued with doubts, but it gives me so much joy to see you again.”

“Joy ssssseeing me like thisss? Do you nnnot think me damned?” she said.

“Not at all,” I replied, which I knew had to be the right answer—one hardly tells one’s fiancée that she’s damned—but then I had to think of why that would be so. Traditionally a ghost would be at minimum cursed if not damned in the eyes of a Protestant minister, provided that a minister believed his eyes. But then I recalled that Spiritualism was quite popular in the Victorian era and was bound to have some influence on the Nigel of the past—the idea that spirits not only could communicate with the living but were predisposed to do so. Nigel hadn’t been a black-clad Puritan and he wasn’t some modern Fundamentalist. He’d been a product of his time. “You’re just waiting before you move on. You still have something to do here—something to teach me, or to teach us all. And I want to help you, Gwendolyn.”

“Hhhow?”

“The man who ran you down—I know where to find him. He needs to be stopped before he hurts anyone else with his carelessness.”

“I don’t want revennnge.”

“No, no, me neither. This is simple justice. And peace of mind. I worry about who else he might hurt. You can leave this place, right?”

“Yess, but I don’t want to leave. I want to talk to you.”

“And I want to talk to you. But I think it’s important to stop this man first, and then we can talk all you want.” She nodded her agreement, and then I held up a finger. “Just one moment while I make arrangements? Wait here for me for a small while?”

“I willlll wait. I have been waiting allllready.”

“I’ll be right outside the door and return for you as soon as possible.”

I grinned at her as I climbed to my feet and scooted for the door. Once in the hallway I turned on my cell phone and immediately got pinged with missed calls. One of them was from Hal Hauk, my attorney, with whom I wished to speak anyway, so I thumbed the callback button.