Page 42 of Thus with a Kiss I Die

Heads turned between Imogene and me.

Mamma used both of her joined hands to stroke her belly in her calming manner, and perhaps she brought the child into the circle, for he subsided.

Yes, I’d said I’d communicated with Elder; that was what had given Nonna Ursula the idea of a séance. However, for the first time, she considered that what she viewed as a jest could be the truth, and turned to me. “Do you truly see him? Is he here?”

I should lie and save myself from possible incarceration or accusations of witchcraft. I knew it. But the meanest old woman in Verona trembled and looked on the verge of tears, carried there by hope and a half-realized belief that her son was almost within reach. “Yes.”

Nonna Ursula brushed at her damp lashes, recovered in typical iron-lady fashion, and fixed her ruined vision on me. “Why doeshenot tell you who killed him?”

“He doesn’t know. He was drugged. The villain wore a mask.” I’d quickly reached the point where speaking to and for Elder seemed—dare I say it—normal?

Nonna Ursula leaned back in astonishment. “You really have confidence my son’s ghost is haunting you.”

“I’m not haunting her,” Elder snapped at his mother. “I gave her a task, and she’s doing a damnable poor job of accomplishing it.”

“You know why we’re sitting around this little table holding hands.” I was speaking to him. “This is for you!”

But Nonna Ursula answered: “Don’t use that tone with me!”

“Not you.Him.” I tried to point toward the hovering spirit.

Katherina hung on to my hand as though I was drowning, and only she could save me.

“My son?”Nonna Ursula was clearly disbelieving. “You’re talking tomy sonin that tone?”

“What’s he going to do, Nonna?Hauntme some more?”

“I said I’m not haunting, I’m—” Elder caught sight of my smirk. “You’re mocking me.”

“You and your son are such upright autocrats, it’s hard not to tweak you both a little,” I told her.

Elder stared at me as if I was quacking a message. “Tweak me a little? I’m the prince of Verona!”

“You’re themurderedprince of Verona. The long-dead, moldering-in-the-grave prince of Verona.” I was not trying to put him in his place, but to give him a sense of historical perspective. “Which, by the way, helps not at all. If you seek to know who killed you, why are you hanging around the palace? Surely, it would be easier if you wandered about Verona or Padua or Venice or wherever the suspects inhabit and see what they’re up to!”

“I can’t leave the palace. The bounds of this property hold me.”

“You didn’t tell me that!”

“When I first returned, after I tested Cal and realized he couldn’t help me, I determined that in Verona, there must be some wise man who could help me. I hurried toward the gate that guards the palazzo—and it was like lightning striking. With a flash of light and pain, I was flung back into the garden, weakened and amazed. I tried again.”

“Of course, you did,” I muttered.

“I’m confined, unable to leave these boundaries. I can’t move beyond these walls.”

“Why?”

“No one explained the rules,” he said testily. “I was alive, then I woke up dead. There wasn’t a ‘Dear Prince Escalus the elder, Welcome to the Other Realm Dinner Party and Ball.’ ”

“Probably because you’d argue about who should sit at the head of the table, you or the Lord God Himself.” I clapped my hand over my mouth. Blasphemy most dreadful, and I waited to be wiped from the face of the earth.

Hands separated.

Everyone at the table crossed themselves.

Mamma crossed herself. “Rosaline Hortensa Magdelina Eleanor!”

Elder himself looked around as if alarmed.