Page 138 of When We Touch

Justin was oblivious to having left his sister. Long strides brought him across the room. He fell to his knees at Arianna’s side. “Arianna!” he breathed again.

“He knows her name,” Mireau commented.

Justin took the girl’s hand reverently. He stared, fraught with worry, at her still face. Then, delicately, lightly, he kissed her lips.

The girl stirred. Her eyes very slowly opened. “You!” she breathed.

“But they’ve met, haven’t they?” Mireau said, confused.

“They have now,” Cecilia said. “How darling!”

“Indeed, just adorable.” Maggie grinned, and then the night proved to be just too much, and she sagged into Mireau’s arms in a dead faint.

* * *

She awoke much later, sometime the following day. She heard birds, and the sounds of their chirping seemed a miracle. Her eyes opened very slowly. Her throat hurt terribly. In fact, she had pains everywhere. She remembered the cobblestones that had embraced her when she had fallen from the lamppost.

“Maggie?”

She turned her head. Even doing so hurt.

Jamie was there. He was a mess. He had been up all the night, she knew.

“Maggie . . . I . . . I should give you a sound thrashing!” he said.

She tried to smile. “I’m not sure it could hurt much worse than what I’m already feeling,” she told him. And he smiled and shook his head, touching her cheek very tenderly. “We didn’t get him. You wounded him . . . you did get him with a shot . . . but he didn’t die. He escaped. We looked all night.”

“But . . . Arianna is home.”

He nodded. “Charles would have been very proud of you, you know.”

“I’m glad.”

“I’m still ready to thrash you! You should have told me.”

“I couldn’t tell you . . . I had to get her out first, or you would come there ready to be shot yourself and you both might have died. You hadn’t been there, and actually, I was going to tell you, but—”

“But I behaved like the biggest ass in the world,” he said ruefully.

“But . . . it didn’t really matter. Honestly, it didn’t work out quite as I had planned it, but we are all alive, and Arianna is home, and . . . Jamie?” she asked, suddenly wincing in pain. “Do you think that . . . that he might be the killer as well? I tried to tell the police everything he said. And I told them that he’d come to the séance the night before after the murders had occurred, and when he took my hands, his were wet. All wet, as if he’d washed them.”

“I don’t know, Maggie. I do know that he’s still on the loose out there, somewhere, and that we’ve got to find him.” He leaned forward, kissing her forehead. For a moment he paused there, and she felt him trembling. “You’re all right,” he said softly. “Dr. Mayer says that, amazingly, you’ve not got a single broken bone. You’ll not feel great for a few days, but . . .”

He sat back again. “I’ve got to change. I’ve got to have a bath, change . . . get some sleep myself. You, rest. If you even think about getting out of that bed, leaving this room—I will beat you to within an inch of your life!”

She tried not to smile. He’d saved her life. He’d never hurt her, and she knew it.

But she hadn’t the strength to argue. Not then.

And so she nodded, and her eyes closed again.

The next time she awoke, it was to Arianna’s face. The girl sat by her side, watching her so anxiously. And when her eyes opened, Arianna cried out, “Oh, Maggie!”

The hug that she gave her hurt. Maggie managed not to cry out. It was far too precious a hug to refuse.

* * *

Three days later, her throat no longer hurt, her voice seemed just fine, and even the little aches and pains that had plagued her had subsided.