The Paris Mysteries (Confessions #3)(36)

I heard a sound system, Dr. Someone being paged. I grabbed for the bed rails, ready to fight to the death. Any minute now, some stiffly smiling doctor or fakey-nice nurse was going to ask me if I was ready for my next treatment.

I would yell “No no no!” and I would lash out with my fists.

Straps would be tightened. A gag would go in my mouth. An IV line with knockout drugs would drip into me, and then—oh, God, the electric shock.

I couldn’t let them do that to me.

Not again.

I shouted, “James!”

How could he have left me here alone?

I felt a hand on my arm. I wrenched it away.

“Tandy. It’s me. You’re okay.”

I opened my eyes. It was dark in the room. The buzzing sound was coming from a monitor to my right, and in a chair to my left—Jacob. He was alive. I knew him. I hadn’t made him up. Had I?

“Tandy?”

Jacob was silhouetted by the windows behind him, and by a night sky full of city lights. I said something so trite, I wish I could have taken it back and said something more clever.

“Where am I?” I said.

“The American Hospital.”

So I was really in Paris?

“There was a fire,” Uncle Jacob said. “But everyone is okay.”

I gasped as the memory of the thick, life-snuffing smoke and searing flames came back.

And I remembered my rescuer.

“Jacob. Where is James? He saved my life.”

Jacob spoke as if I hadn’t mentioned James at all.

“The fire started in the kitchen. Did someone leave the stove on? I don’t know. Or maybe one of our modern appliances overrode the house’s very old circuitry. Hugo was so brave, Tandy. He ran upstairs to find me. Through the fire.”

“And Harry?” I bit the back of my hand. I needed to hear details. I needed more than that Harry was “okay.”

“Harry hadn’t yet come home,” Jacob said. “He was still at the club when the fire happened.”

That’s when I noticed the pale bandages wrapped around Jacob’s forearms all the way down to his fingers.

“You’re hurt!”

He shook his head and said to me, “You weren’t in your room. The fire was shooting up through the stairwell, and I could hardly see. I had a last-minute thought of the attic… I got there without a second to spare. I wasn’t even sure you were still breathing, Tandy. I’m not joking, but I felt your grandmother in the room with us. She showed me where you were. She showed me.”

I started to cry; then I collapsed into deep, heaving sobs. Jacob had risked his life for me, and this wasn’t the first time. I thanked him. He hushed me. I reached for him. He hugged me awkwardly with his bandaged arms.

“The house is gone. Burned to the ground.”

I wiped my face on the cotton of my hospital gown. I put my hands to my head. My hair was just a cap of frizz. But I was coming back to myself. And I hated to say what I was thinking. But I wasn’t crazy. I just knew.

I said, “I think we’re getting close to something we’re not supposed to know.”

“What are you saying, Tandy?”

“This was no accidental house fire, Uncle Jacob. Someone is trying to kill us.”





This is hard to say… James hadn’t saved me from the fire, but I know I felt him moving around the hospital room as I lay, sedated, under layers of cotton sheets.

His presence was shadowy, and he hovered around my bed in the dark. He seemed occupied with thoughts that had nothing to do with me, and he seemed happy, which only made me feel sadder and more alone.

I tried to ignore him.

He was a hallucination. But still, there he was at the edge of my vision, standing beside the window, reclining in the chair, walking to the doorway before sitting on the bed, casually putting his hand on my thigh.

James.

Speak to me.

I heard only the sounds of soft footsteps outside my room, rubber-soled shoes walking along the hospital corridor.

James?

No answer.

I spoke to this ghostly James, whoever, whatever he was.

James. Listen to me. I miss you so much. I wish there was a way I could talk to you. I would tell you about all the terrible things that have happened since we were last together, events I only half understand.

And I wish you would tell me what you’ve been doing and thinking and feeling.

Do you miss me? Is that why I feel your presence here in my room?

I wish you were lying beside me and that we were laughing and whispering to each other again.

The truth is, James, I would give almost everything I have to be with you.

Your true Angel,

Tandy





Two days after the fire, only an hour after my release from the hospital, I was in a police interrogation room, where cops were accusing me of torching my grandmother’s house.

They had no evidence, of course, but they’d cooked up a variety of bogus motives for me, which, where I come from, is called a fishing expedition.

They had one suspect, me. And they wanted to hook me, reel me in, and toss me into an ice locker—today.

The false accusation was insane, and I was already in an angry depression.

The fire had taken my computer, consumed the last letter from James. Clothes my mother had given me were destroyed, and so were Katherine’s boxes. And so was Gram Hilda’s gorgeous house and everything in it. I felt as if my grandmother had died all over again.