Title: In the Midnight
Author: Ebony Silvers
Summary: Here's a little ghost story for you. I am very pleased to report that this story has already been awarded a "Plum's Picks" award!

In The Midnight

(Van Morrison)

In the lonely, dead of midnight
In the dimness, of the twilight
By the streetlight, by the lamplight
I'll be around

In the sunlight, in the daylight
And I'm working, on the insight
And I'm trying to keep, my game uptight
I'll be around

And your memory, I heard this lonely, lonely music once
And your memory, has been haunting me ever since

When I'm trying, trying to come down
In my world, my room keeps spinning round
And I'm trying to get my feet, back on the ground
You come around

In my memory, I heard the lonely, lonely music once
In my memory, its been haunting me ever since

In the lonely, dead of midnight
In the dimness of the twilight

New Orleans, Louisiana, Tuesday, 10:38 pm, May 12, 2020

'Jean, I love you, but you're crazy,' René said levelly. 'I ain't been anywhere but here all night.' It was true. He hadn't left the big house on Rue Royal all day. Tomorrow the family would celebrate the anniversary of his awakening and take on the town, but tonight he had wanted to be alone with Jean, Baby, and Spike. His wife and his father were delayed at a charity function but would be home after midnight. Jean had just stomped in, upset and radiating more anger than René usually saw from his even-tempered brother.

'I'm not crazy, though God knows you're trying to make me that way,' Jean said with more than a touch of irritation and annoyance. 'I'm just saying that this trick you're playing isn't funny.'

René handed his husband a drink. 'I ain't playing any tricks, Jean. I promise.' There was nothing but truth in his teal eyes. There was no duplicity in their consort bond either. Jean would know if his husband was lying to him. Besides, René never had been able to lie to Jean. He might be able to fool most of the world but he'd never been able to really lie to either of his spouses. Jean ran a distracted hand through his hair, disordering heavy brown curls. One fell across his forehead and René couldn't resist touching it. He smoothed the soft lock back into place. Unable to withstand the urge, he ran his hand through the thick silk stands. Jean was wearing his hair longer, more relaxed than he had in some time. It made him look absurdly young, incredibly handsome, and more vulnerable than René had ever imagined Jean could appear. René felt a rush of protectiveness. Something was making Jean unhappy and René was determined to stop whatever it was. Each passing year made Jean more precious to René. He was amazed at how stupid he'd been and how many years he'd wasted thinking he was protecting Jean when all he'd been doing was making them both miserable. With any luck, he'd have centuries to make it up to his brother. Right now, he intended to find whatever was causing Jean such distress and kill it. 'This really is getting to you, ain't it?'

'Don't be stupid! Of course it's getting to me. It's gotten so bad that every time I walk out of my office door I hear something!' Jean snapped and took a hefty sip of his drink. He took a deep breath and laid his hand over the one René still had resting on the side of his head. 'I hear someone whispering but there's no one there. Sometimes there's no one for blocks. It's damned eerie.'

René arched one perfect eyebrow. This really was bothering Jean; his lover was seldom sharp with him. He allowed his hand to drop from beneath Jean's and sat down beside him on the couch. 'You know I'm slow sometimes, Jean. Why don't you tell me exactly what's going on? From the beginning this time.'

Jean looked at the one man he loved more than any other and sighed. These encounters really were getting to him; otherwise, he never would have used the word 'stupid' in reference to René. 'You're not slow. You never have been.' He was afraid he'd hurt René's feelings now. 'Don't say that about yourself.' He knew it was hard for René. Surrounded by college-educated, often brilliant people, René sometimes felt inadequate. Jean, Wes, Jack, even Spike, all possessed doctorates. Baby had two Masters degrees. A GED gained in prison and an incomplete semester at Tulane just didn't seem to measure up and only increased René's sense of failure. It was a wound that while closed never quite healed. And sadly, Jack had become adept at picking at that particular scab. René dug at Jack about his youth, vampirically speaking, and the age that showed on his body. He emphasized the fact that Jack had yet to prove himself in combat against a master vampire. Jack retaliated with slurs about René's criminal background and his lack of education. René might be able to flaunt his youth, beauty, and deep bonds to Baby and Jean in front on the FBI director but when it came to a psychological battle, Jean had to admit that Jack was a much better fighter. With only a couple of sentences, Jack could set René to brooding for days. There were evenings Jean was ready to stake both of them. His Maman regularly threatened to knock the shit out of them.

René shrugged, Jean's words rolling off his inner defenses. He knew his own weaknesses. 'Now tell me what happened.'

Jean took another drink. He needed it. He still felt chilled from the latest encounter. Each one was more frightening than the one before. And it had started so simply. As Devereau grew and began to play throughout the house, his baby squeals and laughter ringing through the halls, Jean became increasingly concerned about his safety. Any number of demons and vampires passed through his office daily. Humans of a far less than savory variety were common visitors. They were necessary to the running of Spike's empire. Jean couldn't refuse to see a Mafia boss who paid them millions of dollars in protection money yearly just because he didn't want Dev exposed to such a person. Likewise, he couldn't turn away the head of a demon clan that had sworn loyalty to Spike. As Crown Prince, it was his duty to both Spike's subjects and to his father to tend to requests made under liege law. But by inviting them into the house, there was always the chance that they would return and harm the baby. There was also the chance that any of them might be an assassin sent by Spike's enemies to kill Nina or Dev. As humans, they were the most vulnerable members of the family. As important, well-loved members, they were prime targets. Jean had finally decided to open a separate office somewhere nearby, removing the threat. He bought a house a few blocks up Royal Street and had it refurbished and turned into proper offices for his staff and meeting areas for anyone he or Spike might want to see.

It seemed the perfect solution, but problems had begun the first night he used his new office. Finishing with his work for the night, he'd been the only one there. It was late but not very, only about eleven o'clock, when he thought he heard gunshots. He'd gone outside but had seen and smelled nothing. At that hour, the north end of Royal was quiet and there was no one on the street. The stillness had been almost uncanny, in fact. It was so quiet he had no trouble hearing the sound of breathing from the humans locked inside their houses around him. The cars on the elevated interstate sounded loud though they were blocks away. He'd stood on the top step with the door open for long minutes, unable to shake a sense of expectancy. He was turning to go back inside when he heard a whisper, little more than the sigh of the wind, except there was no wind. 'You lied.' There was still no one anywhere nearby.

It wasn't the only time it had happened. Not every night, but often he heard shots. It was always the same; three shots in rapid succession followed by a peculiar metallic rattle and a thud like something soft hitting something hard. Jean had heard the sound often enough to be able to identify it. It was a body hitting pavement. As often as he heard the same sequence of sounds, nearly weekly, even more often he heard that soft, pained whisper. 'You lied. You lied to me.' It had reached the point where he was actually creeped out by the thought of going to his office alone.

Then he'd started seeing someone near the office, never clearly, never close enough that he could actually see their face. Most often he saw them in the parking lot but sometimes he saw someone sitting on the steps leading to his office door or standing by the gate that led back to his courtyard. They neither breathed nor had a heartbeat. Tonight he'd seen them more clearly than ever before, someone so closely resembling his brother in form that he'd called out to him. And tonight, the voice had been the clearest it had yet been. The accent, the tone, he'd know it anywhere. It was René's voice that accused him of lying.

René was on his feet already. 'Come show me this office of yours, frère. Someone's messing with you, making it look like me, and I don't like that shit, no.' He gathered his guns and tucked them into their holsters. Whatever was persecuting Jean was going to die.

It didn't take many minutes for the brothers to walk the few blocks that separated Spike's house from Jean's office. As they stood across the street from the old house Jean had purchased, René frowned. He recognized it. 'I wouldn't come down here for nobody but you, Jean,' he stated as he stepped out into the street. His attention was focused on the parking lot next to the house. He'd died there the first time. It wasn't a site he cared to visit. He'd avoided it for years, always walking on the other side of the street when he was forced to pass this way. He shivered. It was bad enough that it was the anniversary of his death but it was the same day of the week and about the same time. He looked up at the gibbous moon; even its dying face was nearly the same as it had been nineteen years ago. Just standing there gave him the shakes. He'd walked past this very stoop only minutes before he'd been shot. He'd tossed his cigarette through the gate into the damp green grass of the path to the courtyard, never imagining that it would be his last. 'What the hell made you pick this house, Jean? There ain't nothing here but bad memories.'

Jean nodded. 'I know, but I had to have somewhere with parking and I didn't want to be too far from home.' He began to key in his entrance code.

René finally stepped up onto the sidewalk and was slammed against the wall of the house. A furious wind sprang into being, whirling though the empty street, howling and crying. 'Thief!' It held him pinned against the old brick. The chain link fence surrounding the parking area rattled and chimed with the sound Jean always heard following the ring of gunshots. The trees bent in the gale, young leaves torn from the branches, blossoms spinning in wailing currents, their softness turned sharp and stinging as they beat against René's skin. The wind whipped René's dark hair across his face, the ebony strands thrashing against his teal eyes, tiny sharp flails that sent tears cascading from their ocean depths down his cheeks. 'Robber!' the wind cried. René was lifted by the tempest, thrown past Jean and slammed against the fence with enough force that bright splotches of light played across his vision as his head slammed into one of the steel posts. The metal links tore into his shirt. The wind ripped at his clothes, tearing them. Debris whisked up by the hurricane grated against his skin, seeking to tear it the way it was shredding the delicate silk of his shirt. It shrieked in his ears, deafening him, labeling him a thief. Sand, blown by the maelstrom filled his eyes, further blinding him. He felt as though someone was raining hard blows from determined fists on his face and body. He could feel unseen knuckles, cruel and stony, pounding against his cheek bone, against his stomach. Disoriented by the blast of sound and the might of the wind, he couldn't battle the force that held him pinned to the fence. There was only the wind, the noise of it overpowering and unstoppable. He could barely hear Jean calling out to him but Jean's hands were strong and solid as his brother pulled and tugged, trying to drag them both to some sort of shelter. René felt the inside of his mouth split as one of the phantom blows drove his teeth against his lip. Blood, salty and metallic, flowed across his tongue and dripped from the corner of his mouth. Jean smelled it and threw himself against his husband, trying to shield René from this invisible attacker. Wrapping his arms tightly around the slim form he'd sworn more than once to love and protect, Jean threw them both out into the street, intending to head for whatever safety and help they could find at their father's house.

The wind died as quickly as it had sprung up. The night was peaceful and calm, the only sounds crickets in the hidden courtyards and the soft beating of human hearts behind the walls of shuttered houses. Further away there was music and the hum of tourists and distant traffic. But here the French Quarter was quiet. There was no evidence that a hurricane had swept down Royal Street except the sound of the brothers' rough breathing and the tang of René's blood on the still air. Lying in the middle of the street, they both heard the dying whisper of that illusory wind: 'Thief!'

*

New Orleans, Louisiana, Tuesday, 11:49 pm, May 12, 2020

Jean tossed the last bit of gauze away and took René's right hand in both of his. Baby already had hold of René's left one. Dressed in a clean shirt, the innumerable tiny scratches and abrasions on his face and upper body cleaned and tended, René looked as though he'd been in a fight with dozens of tiny cat-clawed demons. One cheek was bruised and there was purpling around his left eye. His lower lip was slightly swollen and puffy.

Jack shook his head. 'Damn, you look like Hell.'

René agreed. 'I didn't get this beat up when I took Macon, and God knows that redneck cracker and his brothers were tough!' He wasn't terribly happy to see Jack but since his nephew had been attending the same function as his parents, it wasn't surprising that the man had joined Baby and Spike in their rush back to the house in response to Jean's call. Jack was seldom far from Baby's skirts in any case. And as Spike said, Jack was their best researcher and René wanted to find out what was going on quickly.

'You have anything, Jack?' Spike asked as he turned René's shredded shirt over and over in his hands. He could smell the faint taint of his son's blood on the ruined garment.

'Give me just another second. I think I'm onto something,' his grandson responded as his fingers danced over the computer keyboard.

Spike nodded and turned a concerned glance on his consort. Baby had been oddly quiet ever since Jean and René had related their story. She simply sat and held René's hand so tightly that had he been human, she would have snapped several of his bones by now. Still dressed in her midnight blue evening gown with her hair swept up in a diamond clip, she almost seemed a stranger. Spike couldn't help but feel that some days they were drifting further and further from each other. Tonight, when he should have felt close to her, offering her solace and support in her worry, easing her concern for René, he felt further than ever. On the ride over, it had been Jack's hand that she clung to and his soft assurances she'd listened to. And here at the house, she'd drawn away again, merely sitting beside René, holding his hand and saying little. Spike couldn't help but worry.

'Got it,' Jack said. He looked up at his grandsire. 'Okay, this is crazy. Does someone want to explain this to me?' He began to read the article he'd found. 'A New Haunting? Maybe a new site needs to be added to the famous Ghost Tour. For the last two decades, visitors and residents alike have been reporting odd occurrences on Royal Street. At a certain spot in this historic district, people report being stopped by a beautiful young man. In Cajun accents he invariably asks after a red-haired woman. When he doesn't receive the answer he's seeking, he fades away before the astonished visitor's eyes. Should the visitor happen to be a red-haired woman, she is left with something a bit more tangible. The young man is said to shake his head sadly, touch her shoulder and say, 'You're not her,' before fading away. His touch leaves a mark like a bloody handprint that no dry cleaner can remove. Some have reported that blood begins to seep from the man's chest just before he vanishes. Because of his accent and his outstanding good looks, the local ghost aficionados are calling him the Beau. It would appear that New Orleans has a new ghost to add to its list of historic figures such as... Blah, blah, blah.' He looked at his uncles. 'So, does that give anyone any ideas?'

Baby leaned her head on René's shoulder and began to cry softly. Her young husband put his arm around her and glanced from his father to his brother. Jean looked more than a bit sick to his stomach. 'No wonder he said I lied. Oh mon Dieu!'

Spike sat down heavily in a chair. 'Bloody Hell,' he murmured. 'I never thought... bloody Hell.'

Jack sighed. 'So we're looking at pretty boy's ghost then?' he said with a nod toward René. 'Someone want to explain the logistics of that to me? How can his ghost be haunting a parking lot when he's right here annoying decent people?'

'Jack, please. Not tonight,' Spike sighed.

'It's alright, Papa,' René said. 'One day Maman will get tired of him and then she'll let me kill him.' Never taking his eyes from Jack's, he leant over and kissed Baby on top of her head. He pulled Jean close. 'After all, he's not married to them. I am.'

'Stop it. Both of you,' Spike ordered. 'Jack's family now. You're both going to have to learn to get along.'

Baby lifted tear-filled eyes, golden-green meeting gray-green. She held out her hand. 'Jack.' There was no rebuke in her tone, just need.

He was kneeling before her in an instant. 'I'm sorry, sweetheart. I'll be good.' He kissed her fingers. 'I'll be whatever you need me to be.' She didn't say anything but her grip on his fingers was tight and didn't loosen. He looked up at Jean. 'So you want to tell me what's going on?'

Jean nodded. 'René, Papa, and I are full vampires. We don't have our souls like you and Maman.' Jack nodded his understanding and Jean continued, 'When the human 'us' died, our souls left. They went wherever they were supposed to go.'

'I figured mine went to Hell, considering what I was,' René said with a slight grimace. Jack looked at him in surprise. He hadn't expected René to admit the sort of man he'd been. 'Looks like I was wrong,' René added.

'So that's your ghost? Your human soul that's haunting people?' Jack asked.

René nodded. 'I guess so. Looks like I didn't go anywhere.'

Spike got up and poured himself a drink. 'I promised a dying man that he would come back. But of course, he didn't.' He cupped René's jaw with one white hand, lifting his son's head. 'You did. Same body, all the same memories, same basic personality, but still different.' Jack shivered as Spike kissed René's forehead. Jack didn't want to think of leaving his body for a demon to inhabit. He knew that he was different from the others, different even from Baby and Wes, who were souled. He didn't feel the duality they all talked about so freely. He didn't even really understand it. From his point of view, he'd simply woken up one night a hell of a lot better off. He'd actually thought the others were more than a little nuts when they talked about the two halves of their being. He guessed this ghost thing proved he was wrong about that.

Spike was smiling down at René. 'I thank God nightly for you and Jean. I wouldn't be the man I am without you two.' He kissed Jean's upturned lips before he turned back to René. 'But it looks like I've done a terrible wrong to the man you were. And I need to see if I can talk to him.'

*

New Orleans, Louisiana, Wednesday, 1:48 am, May 13, 2020

Jack flanked Baby as they stood across the street from Jean's office. René stood on her other side. Spike had wanted them to remain back at the house but Baby had insisted on coming. René refused to let her come without him. Whole corrals full of wild horses wouldn't have kept Jack away. Jean insisted on accompanying his father. He maintained that the ghost had never offered him violence; even when it was injuring René, none of the hostility had been directed at him personally. He'd caught some of the fallout but only because he'd been trying to help René.

Spike and Jean stood in the middle of the street now, surveying the parking lot. It looked peaceful enough but Jean knew just how quickly that could change. Taking a deep breath, Jean stepped onto the sidewalk and headed for the door. There was no reaction. The night remained calm and peaceful. As he turned the doorknob, though, a voice spoke out clearly. 'Liar.'

Jack grabbed Baby's hand as he felt her distress bloom through their link. He squeezed her fingers tightly and she locked her grasp around his. 'That was definitely René's voice,' he said. Spike nodded and headed for the parking lot.

'Liar!' René's voice rang out forcefully. 'Deceiver!' A cyclone began to whirl about the Master. It lifted him from his feet and threw him against the fence only inches from where René's body had rebounded from the links. 'You promised!' Spike fell, landing in the exact spot René had fallen all those years ago, blood pouring from the wounds of an assassin's gun. A puddle of gleaming crimson spread around Spike, sticky and smelling of old death. It clung to his clothes when he was picked up and tossed against the fence again. 'You lied!' Spike felt a hard blow and a gash appeared across his cheek. He was shaken by unseen hands and slammed against a tree trunk. Jean, attempting to help him, was flung back and away so forcefully he landed nearly in the street.

Baby broke from Jack and René's protection and ran to her husband. Spike's head was pounded against the tree while the wind howled its litany of 'Liar, Deceiver.'

'René! Stop!' she called as she ran. 'Please sweetheart, stop!'

As her delicate pump touched the specter blood staining the asphalt, the wind died away; the storm calmed. Spike slid down the tree trunk and put a hand to the back of his throbbing head. Jack was beside him instantly even as René was helping Jean to his feet. Spike's hand closed painfully around Jack's arm just as the agent heard Jean breathe an awed 'Mother of God.' Jack followed the Master's gaze and his jaw slowly dropped open.

Baby stood beneath a lamp, her beaded gown sparkling in the darkness, phantom blood pooled at her feet, the diamonds in her hair glittering like the stars above her. And surrounded by ethereal fire, glowing like the night around her, René coalesced from the moonlight shining through the live oak branches. With a hand as pale and luminous as the disc riding the night sky, he reached out for her, that gentle hand stroking her hair. 'I found you,' he whispered in a voice formed from the breeze that ruffled the leaves above him. 'They took you from me and I couldn't find you.'

Tears glinted star-like on her cheeks. 'I'm so sorry, my darling. I'm so sorry.' She reached up and touched a perfect face made of moon-glow, his eyes formed from the midnight sky. Stars flickered in their depths, galaxies turning in the void of eternity. Love burned at the heart of them. 'I didn't know, sweetheart. I would have come sooner.'

Glowing fingers plucked the clip from her hair, dropping it, a fallen star splashing and twinkling in the gore at her feet. Tresses red as the blood the diamonds swam in floated about her pale shoulders. Moonlight fingers lifted the soft curls as a night-dark head bent close. Gardenia wafted on the gentle breeze. 'Je t'aime.' The first words he had ever spoken to her and his last as he lay dying in her arms. 'Je t'ai aime toujours.'

She smiled sadly and guided phantom lips composed of moonlight and stardust to her own cool, dead ones. 'I know, darling. I know you'll love me forever. You love me so much that your body remembered that love.' She swallowed back sobs of grief for what might have been in another time and place. 'Your love for me is so strong that it lived on even when you were gone.' She kissed glowing lips. She motioned for Jack to get Spike to safety.

'They took you from me,' the ghost said, an angry breeze dancing across Baby's hair. 'Liars! Thieves! They took my love away from you.'

'Shh. No.' She kissed him again. 'Your love's never been away from me. Not for a single second. It's always been there, protecting me. Can you see inside me? Can you feel me?' Her fingers twined in hair as soft and ephemeral as the dusk. 'Your love is still there.'

Grief and rage warred in the star-flung void of his eyes. 'He's there! The thief!'

'No, not a thief,' she insisted and kissed him again. 'A protector. He's guarded your love all these years, nurtured it, kept it alive. Your love lives because he carries it in his own heart.' She took his hands; they were warm. She had no memory of René having warm hands. Her lover's hands had always been cool. 'He loves me with your love.'

The revenant smiled. 'But now I can love you. You can stay with me now.' Cosmic zephyrs stirred his jet locks, stardust flashing blue and silver about his head.

She shook her head. 'I'm sorry, my darling.' She stepped back. 'We can't be together.' Her fingers slipped from his. 'We weren't meant to be.'

'No.' The devastation in his voice tore at her heart.

'Rose, you have to come away now,' Spike called softly. He knew the ghost would try to keep her with him forever, not understanding that he'd destroy her.

She stepped further away from her true love's specter. She'd felt her consort's call and knew he was right. 'I have to go.'

'No! Stay!' The wind cried high in the treetops.

'I'll come back. But I have to go now.' She edged away slowly. 'It's only for a little while.'

'No. You're mine.' There was a gale blowing now, high above the street, singing across the slate roofs. 'You have to stay with me.' Incandescent arms reached for her. 'I won't let you go!'

She was frozen, ice glinting in the moonbeams of his smile. She couldn't move. Her soul was being sucked away by his night-sky eyes. She would join him forever in the void. Formless, his love would give her shape and aspect. He didn't understand that she was both demon and soul now, joined forever and incapable of existing as he did. Like a flower on a clear winter night, she would freeze and die.

Jack slammed into her, the force carrying them away from the phantom toward the street. Jack gathered his sire into his arms and ran for all he was worth. When the whirlwind descended, it was too late, two steps against its fury and he had her safely in the center of the street. A cry of pain and anguish such as Jack had never heard echoed through the galleries. Moonlight shattering, crystal starlight splintering, the ghost fell to his knees. Kneeling in his own blood, a phantasm of night skies and lost love, he held out his pale arms to her. 'Don't go! Don't leave me alone!'

Clasping her tightly to him, Jack strode away, leaving the grieving ghost behind, willing his sire the strength to resist that pitiable call. Baby buried her head in Jack's chest and mourned for a man she had never really considered dead until that moment.

*

Spike wasn't surprised when Baby and René latched onto each other and stayed that way. Jean settled himself against his sire, both seeking and offering support. Jack was perfectly content to keep a watchful eye on his sire and accepted Spike's thank-you with a grin and a nod. Spike gratefully accepted the drink Jack handed him before watching his grandson press a cup of warm blood into René's hands. 'Make her drink that,' Jack ordered. For once, René didn't demur. A similar cup was pressed on Jean with orders to not argue, just drink. When René held out Baby's empty mug, a full one replaced it. Surprise bloomed in René's eyes when Jack stated flatly, 'That one's for you.' Spike couldn't help but grin.

'What now, Papa?' Jean asked wearily. He was bone-tired and could only imagine how his three bond-mates must feel.

Spike sighed. 'I suppose we send for Easy and ask him to perform an exorcism and send the ghost on its way to where it belongs.'

'No.' Baby's denial was calm, forceful, and offered no possibility for rebuttal. She didn't give Jack a chance to ask his question. 'If you exorcise René's ghost you'll be sending his soul to Hell. I won't do that. And I won't let anyone else do that either.'

Jack, thinking of the pain of the phantom's last cry, had to ask: 'Could Hell be worse than what he's facing now?'

Baby looked at Spike. He'd seen her punishment. 'Oh yeah. It can be much worse. Believe me. I know.'

'So what do we do, then?' Jean asked.

The eyes Baby lifted to look at her beloved son were as tormented as those of the ghost that cried for lost love. 'Nothing. We do nothing. Sell your office. I'll buy you a new one somewhere else. Don't go back there. The same goes for you, René. Don't ever go near there again.' She looked at her husband. 'I don't have to tell you not to set foot near there, Spike. You know it already.'

The Master nodded. One look at her set face and he knew she wouldn't be gainsaid on this. Still, he had to be certain. 'Dove, are you sure?'

Her eyes were empty. 'I won't send René to Hell. End of story.'

Spike nodded again. 'As you will, pet.'

*

New Orleans, Louisiana, Tuesday, 7:39 pm, December 12, 2220

The tour guide pointed to a small area of greenery in the midst of the old French Quarter. 'This is Le Parc Des Amoureux,' she stated. 'Founded in the early twenty-first century by the Roxton family, it's one of the area's newer parks.'

A faint floral scent reached the tourists. 'What's that smell?'

'That's one of the noted peculiarities of the Lovers' Park,' the guide said. 'Even in the dead of winter, gardenias bloom there. Only a few feet away, here in the planters and across the street, they go dormant, but inside the park they bloom continuously. Since Le Parc Des Amoureux is private property, there have never been any scientific surveys to see what causes this phenomena. The locals say that it's the ghost known as Le Beau that keeps them blooming.' She opened the beautifully wrought iron gate that was only locked on March 12 th, February 12 th, and May 16 th. As she led her tour though the small garden, she related the story of Le Beau and his endless search for his red-haired love. 'Rumor has it that he finally found her and isn't completely alone. The locals say that she built this garden for him and that even now, centuries later, she's still alive and visits him.'

One of the more skeptical and less romantic of her charges scoffed. 'Yeah, right. I can see how that's possible.'

Before he could elaborate, the gate opened to admit an exquisitely dressed woman. Her dark red hair was piled fashionably on her head and she carried a bouquet of flowers. Golden eyes cold and distant, she weighed the skeptic and found him wanting. 'Leave now,' she said to the guide.

The young woman didn't hesitate. 'Yes ma'am. If you would all follow me, please. Our next destination is quite interesting...'

As the tourists trooped out, a tall man with brown hair and green eyes laid a hand on the skeptic's shoulder. 'Open your eyes and you might see something some time.'

The man, along with several others of the tour, looked back toward the garden. The red-haired woman was now seated on a simple marble bench watching expectantly as the moonlight coalesced into the most beautiful man any of them had ever seen. Glowing with starlight, he sat down beside her and took her hands. The green-eyed man smiled. 'She's come every week for the last two hundred years. She never forgets.'

The once-cynical man swallowed nervously. 'How, how do you know?'

Jack smiled. 'Because I always come with her.'