When Midnight Comes

a novella

© Lori Handeland, all rights reserved

originally published in ‘Trick or Treat‘ a Love Spell Halloween Anthology, 1997

Chapter One

New York City, 1869

Jack Keegan wandered the streets of his youth. He had come a long way from his boyhood days in this immigrant ghetto of New York City. He’d come even farther from the land of his birth.

Ireland. He remembered her well. A land of beauty so deep and mystical the memory made him ache. A land of ugliness so stark and painful he could still hear the howls of the hungry and the tears of the dying. Especially here, on this dark street where children starved in a land of plenty.

How long since he had said good-bye to this place? To his past? To her?

A lifetime. Where was she now? Was she well? Was she happy? Had she forgotten him? Despite his angry words and desperate need, he had never forgotten her. Despite his wealth and power and position, he was still a child of this place, a child of Ireland.

The mouth of a long, dark alley gaped before him. Jack took a deep breath, welcoming the burn of midnight air in to his chest, then stepped into his past. The smell remained the same—dirt, damp, death, and decay. In the depths of the darkness he heard scuffles and shuffles.

Rats. Dogs. People. Hiding from the unknown. For a moment he saw himself as they must see him, out of place here. A swell ripe for the picking.

A scrape from behind made Jack pause, then slowly turn. A boy, or perhaps a young man, small for his age most likely, growth stunted by starvation and depravation. The silver hint of a moon revealed the hopeless glint to the boy’s eyes and Jack tensed. He had been hopeless once and knew how desperate one became. This child could have been him twenty years ago, except for the knife. Jack had never relied on a knife to get what he wanted. He had cheated and he had stolen, but his wits had been his weapon.

“No need for that, son. I’ll give ye what I’ve got.”

The brogue Jack had fought so long and so hard to erase from his voice returned without warning. The boy’s eyes narrowed with suspicion and his fingers tightened on the knife.

“Here, boy.” Jack reached into his pocket. Without ever making a sound the child sprang forward, plunging the knife into Jack’s chest.

As Jack fell, he heard someone screaming his name from a very long way away. Jack recognized the voice—a voice that had haunted him for the past ten years.

“Lucia,” he whispered.

And then he died.

*

“Jack!”

Lucia Casale clutched her chest, feeling the slice of the knife deep into her own heart. They had been one person, one heart and one soul. Jack had turned away from her, but she had never turned away from him. Even in this purgatory where she existed, paying penance for sins she refused to acknowledge, she was still one with the man she had always, would always, love.

Once he had saved her from certain death, had kept her safe and warm and given her life. She must now try to do the same for him.

Her world was a gray place without substance. Lost and lonely souls haunted the murky mist, and she ran by each one without a word. She ran until her aching heart threatened to burst, and then she ran some more. At last she reached the place where the one who had power over them all could be found.

“Buon giorno!” she called. “Hello?”

The gray mist separated and he appeared, a tall, gentle-eyed man who reminded Lucia of her long-dead father.

“Lucia.” He sighed. “What is it now?”

“Jack. He’s dying.”

“He’s already dead, and on his way to…” He stopped, looked downward. Lucia winced. “Why would you want to help a man like him? A man who turned his back on your love? A man without faith, or hope, or charity. A selfish man who cares nothing for what is important and everything for what is not.”

Lucia ignored his assessment of Jack. She understood Jack better than anyone. She knew his soul, and it was not as black as it appeared. Desperate, she tried again.

“You have to do something.”

He was shaking his head even before she finished her plea. “You know I can do nothing.”

“You’re a saint and yet you can do nothing?”

St. Peter’s lips tightened at her borderline blasphemy, but he was used to her irreverence. During her lifetime she had been one of the faithful. But she had lost her faith and with it her chance to enter the realm beyond the gate he guarded.

“You know what I can do, and what you must do.”

“Then you will help him?”

St. Peter’s warm brown eyes saddened. “Not me.” He held out his hand. From his fingers dangled a worn, beaded necklace.

Lucia reached out and took the offering. With a deep sigh she fell to her knees and did what she had sworn never to do again. Her fingers trembled as they touched her forehead, her heart, shoulder to shoulder before she began: “I believe in God, the Father Almighty, Creator of heaven and earth…”

Her voice echoed throughout the realm of purgatory. Her plea reached toward heaven and was heard.

Blasting heat, the stench of sulfur, crying, screaming, moaning.

Jack awakened into the darkest darkness he had ever known. Not a speck of light penetrated the cloak of black surrounding him. He reached out and felt nothing. He stood, but the absence of sight made him stumble and sway.

Where was he? What had happened?

He remembered walking away from his office in Manhattan, all the way to the ghetto of his youth. And then…

The alley. The child. The knife.

Lucia’s voice.

“Well, hell,” he muttered.

“Got it on the first try, boyo.”

Jack started and bumped into the owner of the voice, who stood directly behind him. The scalding heat of the unknown being’s flesh made him back away. He did not want to touch that person again, nor be touched by him.

“Who’s there?”

“Who d’ ye think, Jackie, me boy?”

Horror flooded Jack. He had thought never to hear that voice again in his lifetime. But then, his lifetime seemed to be over. “Da?”

I never said ye weren’t a smart lad.”

“Wh-what are ye doin’ here?” Jack winced at his stutter, a certain sign of fear, and the return of his brogue, which made him again the child this man had terrorized.

“And did ye think I’d be anywhere else?”

True. If anyone belongs in Hell, that someone is Patrick Keegan.

“I didn’t know ye were dead.”

“And why would ye, runnin’ away from mother Ireland as ye did. And ye but nine years old. I thank the good Lord yer mother went t’ heaven long before ye left. It would have broken her heart t’ find ye gone, yer bein’ the only one of our eight t’ live.”

Jack refused to give voice to the grief and the guilt his father’s words brought him. He had loved his mother, but her devotion to the drunken, mean-spirited bastard she’d married had killed his respect for her long before she’d died, the year before he’d run off. She had always adored Jack, lavishing all her love on the one child who had managed to survive and thrive in their miserable world.

Beaten down by his father’s scorn and his fists, Jack had been lifted up by his mother’s love. He had begged her to leave Patrick, but she had clung to her stubborn belief in the sanctity of marriage. Her son’s refusal to honor his father and pray for the man’s soul had put a wall between them that could not be breached. She had died giving birth to her eighth child, the seventh to die, before Jack had been able to make things right between them. He’d lasted a year working alongside Patrick on their tenant farm, and then he had run to the land of promise—America.

Jack had not prayed since childhood. Throughout his life he had refused to believe in his mother’s version of Heaven and Hell, reward and damnation, but from where he stood now, his mother had been right.

“Ye always despised me for killin’ yer sainted mother with me base lust. Ye never understood what makes a man, but then ye were just as boy at the time. And what did I always tell ye, Jackie?”

“That I’d be just like you in the end. But I’m not,” Jack said, with the same belligerent denial he had always used when talking to his father.

“Yer not? I see ye in the same place as me. And this is the end of the line, boyo.”

He was not like his father. He was a successful, rich respected man. He had not married young and driven the woman he loved to an early grave.

A flash of Lucia’s face the last time he’d seen her entered his mind—sad eyes, angry mouth—he had lost her, but at least he had not killed her. He had much to regret in his life, but staying away from Lucia was not one of those things. He had, at that one point in time, acted selflessly.

“So, I’ll be tellin’ ye how Hell works, Jackie. It’s you and me, forever. Right here in this room. Explorin’ father and son joys, as it were. Joys wedidn’t get t’ share on the earth.”

Panic flared in Jack’s mind. Eternity with his father? Had he been as bad as all that?

“Wait,” he blurted, grasping at anything to keep his father at bay. “What about Satan, the devil, hellfire, and brimstone? Where’s that?”

“A myth, me boy. Just a myth. Hell is eternity with the one who frightens ye the most.”

“Wait,” Jack said again. “I doubt yer frightened of me. So why are ye here?”

Patrick laughed. “The miracle of Hell, boyo. I can be here, with you, forever. But me soul, the part of me that fears and loves and hates, is with the one I fear the most. Me own dear father.” Patrick clapped his hands, then laughed like a fiend. “Enough talkin’, let’s get started.”

Before Jack’s father could touch him a scuffle and the wet, sucking slide of a footfall nearby froze them both. Jack tensed as fierce heat slid across his face.

“What’s that?” Jack whispered.

His father sighed. “The boss.”

“Jack Keegan.”

The voice made Jack shiver, though the heat intensified until sweat ran into his eyes. He didn’t want to answer that voice, but when a hand shot out of the blackness and cuffed him along the ear so hard reality wavered, he croaked, “Aye.”

“You can’t stay here.”

“Now wait a minute, sir,” Patrick said. “He’s here; I’m here. I’ve been waitin’ a long time for this. Don’t be tellin’ me there’s a mistake.”

“He doesn’t belong here. Or at least he doesn’t yet. We have rules. Standards. Only truly black souls, like yourself, Pat, are gifted with eternal damnation. Jack has done wicked things, but he did not do them with evil intent. He did them to survive.”

“So?”

An angry sigh hissed through the room, and flames lit the air for just a moment. But that moment was enough for Jack to see into the eyes of “the boss,” and he knew he had to get out of there any way he could.

“Someone is praying for him. And if someone’s praying for him, he isn’t all bad. They want to see him upstairs.”

The moist, sucking sound came again, and Jack fought not to cringe form the sizzling, acrid scent that burned the inside of his nostrils and made his eyes water. “But if you fail in the quest they give you, Jack Keegan, remember this place. Remember me.”

A large, rough, pain-giving hand grabbed Jack by the chin and held him still. Sour, whiskey-pickled breath hit him in the face. “And me,” said the voice of his father.

Just as quickly as he had been in the darkest of dark places, Jack suddenly blinked in the lightest of light. A breeze the temperature of springtime brushed his face; he smelled flowers and freshly baked bread. He heard singing, laughter, and bells.

When his vision cleared, he looked up, up, up the heights of the tallest gates he’d ever seen. He couldn’t see the top, which disappeared into white clouds that matched the sheen of the gates. When he brought his gaze back down, his eyes widened at the sight of a man standing in front of him. Tall, thin, with long brown hair and mild brown eyes, his face was unlined, but his gaze held the wisdom of centuries.

“Jack Keegan.”

Though the words were not a question, Jack felt a need to answer. “Yes.” He was glad to hear his accent had disappeared along with some of his terror.

“I am called Peter.”

“Of course you are. That would be St. Peter? At the gates of heaven?”

Peter smiled. “Yes.”

“Are you going to let me in?”

The smile faded. “I’m afraid not.”

“Then why am I here?”

Peter glanced upward, as if listening to a voice Jack could not hear. Then his gaze returned to Jack’s face. “We have rules. Standards.”

“I heard that—ah—down there.”

Peter’s mouth twisted into a grimace, as if he’d just tasted a very sour lemon. “Yes, I suppose you did. Let me explain. You aren’t bad enough to stay there, nor good enough to enter here.”

“Send me back to my life.”

“Death doesn’t work that way.”

“I never heard it worked this way either.”

“And have you heard from many how it works?”

Jack stared at the saint for a long moment. Peter had a point. “I suppose I haven’t at that.”

Peter acknowledged Jack’s words with a slight bow of his head. “Allow me to continue. Someone has prayed for you. Prayed you be allowed a second chance.”

Relief flowed through Jack. “Wonderful. If I get back soon enough, I can be in my office before anyone ever notices I’m gone.”

Peter’s sigh was long and aggrieved. “Second chances do not come so easily. You cannot just return to your life and go on being the way you’ve been. You must repent. You must learn right from wrong. You must change.”

“There’s nothing wrong with me.” The belligerent tone returned against Jack’s will as he recalled all the times his father had labeled him worthless through and through.

Peter raised one dark eyebrow. “Isn’t there?”

“No. I’m rich. I’m respected. I’m happy.”

“Are you?”

“Yes.”

“And do you recall how you came to be who and what you are?”

“I worked for it.”

“At the expense of others.”

Jack couldn’t look Peter in the eye any longer, so he looked away. “What are you saying?”

“A human being is the sum of the choices he makes. Some good, some bad, some right, some wrong. You will be given the chance to view three wrongs you have done to others in your lifetime. A chance to learn how your choices affected others and yourself. A chance to save your soul.”

“How?”

“All Hallows Eve is tonight.”

Jack glanced back at the saint and frowned. “What does All Hallows Eve have to do with anything?”

“On All Hallows Eve, the line between the living and the dead is at its thinnest. When midnight comes, return to the place I will send you. If you have learned wrong from right and come to understand what is truly of value, you will be given a second chance on earth.”

“And if I don’t?” Jack held his breath.

“You will wander the earth, alone, with but a lantern for company until you beg to be allowed the release of Hell.”

His pent-up breath came out in a rush as Jack recalled the wet, sliding step of “the boss” and the heated touch of his father’s fingers on his face. He swallowed the sizzling lump at the base of his throat. “I don’t think I’ll ever beg for that.”

Peter merely raised his eyebrows and did not comment.

“God be with you, Jack Keegan,” he said, and with a wave of his hand the gates of Heaven disappeared, and Jack stood in the midst of a graveyard at dawn.

He looked down at himself. He wore the same clothes of the night before, black frock coat, trousers, black shoes shined to a gloss, and black tie still tied about his neck. But the similarities did not astound him so much as the differences. His crisp, white shirt was as white as it had been when he dressed for the office the previous morning. No sign of a stab wound or the blood that must have flowed. His watch and chain were gone, as were his cuff links, tie pin, and hat.

Had he suffered some kind of memory loss, then been robbed while unconscious? Could he have dreamed all that happened to him during the night?

Jack let out a sigh of relief. His father’s touch and “the boss” had been but a nightmare. He would visit his personal physician before going into the office this morning and maker sure he suffered no ill affects from spending a night in the open.

Glancing around, Jack saw he stood in a graveyard attached to one of the Catholic churches in the Italian ghetto. From here he knew his way home.

Shoving his hands into his pockets to warm them, Jack started toward the gate and almost immediately paused.

Where had the fog come from? The pink hint of dawn stretched across the eastern horizon, but in the graveyard the sun’s rays did not penetrate the damp gloom. The gray mist swirled about the gravestones and rolled across the dew-sprinkled grass in his direction. Jack glanced down at his feet as the murky vapor washed over them. He shivered with sudden cold and glanced up just as a shrouded figure stepped from the dense fog and lifted a lantern.

The words of St. Peter came back to haunt him. “You will wander forever with but a lantern for company.”

Jack shook his head. That had been a dream, a nightmare, nothing more. Then the figure raised its free hand to push back the hood of the cloak.

“Buon giorno, Jack,” Lucia said.

He forgot everything but the flood of memories her presence brought to mind.

When Midnight Comes

is available exclusively by download from www.lorihandeland.com

Look for a new chapter each month beginning in August 2006.

When Midnight Comes a novella © Lori Handeland, all rights reserved

originally published in ‘Trick or Treat‘ a Love Spell Halloween Anthology, 1997

Chapter 2

Lucia watched the shift of emotions cross Jack’s face. Surprise, happiness, wariness, anger, then the blank, cold mask she had learned to despise. Ten years had passed, but he was still the same man she had loved and left.

Why had she hoped he would be any different? If he had been less selfish, less obsessed with wealth and power, if he had at last come to understand, somehow, the value of love above all else, there would be no need for what he had been sent here to do.

“Lucia,” he said, his voice reflecting none of the things she had seen for an instant in his eyes. “What are you doing here?”

She lowered the lantern and stepped closer. He took a step back, as if in fear, then caught himself and straightened, looking her square in the eye and raising one black eyebrow. She fought the shiver of awareness his too familiar expression brought her. She might be dead, but she wasn’t that dead. She wanted him still, despite everything.

Her gaze skittered over, then away from a nearby gravestone. She wasn’t ready to look at the name on that stone. Not yet. Perhaps not ever. But she had not come here for that. She had come here for Jack.

Lucia pulled the cloak tighter about her neck, the October dawn as chill as her blood. “We have one day to view the wrongs of a lifetime. If you do not wish to carry this cursed lantern about for eternity, we had best be on our way.” She placed the lantern at Jack’s feet. “Here you will find it waiting for you when midnight comes. If the lantern’s light glows, you will live again. If the flame has died, so have you.” She turned to go.

Jack’s fingers dug into her arms, and he yanked her about. Unused to her earthly body, she stumbled into him, her palms coming up to rest upon his chest. Against her will, her fingertips pressed into the bright white of his shirt, aching to touch the skin beneath and allow some of his warmth to warm her. Lucia swayed toward him, desperate to hold, to touch, to feel once more the arms that had held her close and soothed away the tears and the fears of her lifetime. Then she remembered why she could feel him at all, and she tore herself away.

His face gleamed as white as the fading stars against the midnight black of his hair. Those blue eyes she had envied for their beauty were clouded with shock. “Wh what are ye talkin’ about, Lucia?”

She’d never heard Jack stutter before. He had taken great pains to erase the lilt of Ireland from his speech, despite her love of that lilt. When she’d begged him not to deny the land of his birth, and in doing so deny a part of himself, he’d snarled that he would not “be talkin’ like a damned Paddy forevermore.” The fact that his cursed brogue was back now revealed Jack’s agitation as nothing else could.

“I have come to help you. To guide you. I have been asked to lead you to the place where your wrongs occurred. There you will see them again, learn how the decisions you made affected yourself and others, and you will be given the opportunity to understand what you did wrong.”

She had not believed it possible, but Jack’s face whitened more and his eyes widened further. “I thought that was but a dream,” he whispered.

“No Jack, not a dream.” She took a step forward in her earnestness, her hands clasped before her breasts. “You have been given a wonderful gift. A second chance. That does not happen every day.”

His gaze narrowed on her face, and Lucia had to fight not to look away. “And how did ye become enlisted into this venture? Did ye hear a voice from above, Lucia, me dear?”

“You might say that,” she answered, too quickly. He had to believe her still of this world and not the other. If he suspected her the ghost she was, he would never be able to achieve that which he must to survive. Luckily Jack did not seem to notice the desperation beneath her words.

“Hearing voices and ye didn’t think ye were daft?” He raised one finger. “Aah, but I ferget. Yer one of the faithful.”

He sneered the last word, as he had always done when speaking of such things. Jack had told her once of his mother’s endless faith, and how he had lost his own when she had died because of her refusal to deny the beliefs she held so dear. Since then he had not prayed and had always scorned her need for such comfort. What did he thing now, after a visit both to Hell and the gates of Heaven? He could no longer deny their existence.

His voice, still heavy with the brogue, broke into her musings. “But ye would not deny a voice from above. When God speaks, ye answer, don’t ye now?”

Lucia refused to be drawn into his sarcasm. She understood him better than anyone, knew he resorted to sarcasm when uncertain, and his brogue thickened when afraid. If she weren’t equally afraid of what might happen to them both, she would take him in her arms and soothe away his fears the way he had once soothed hers.

“And when God told ye t’ be helpin’ me, why didn’t ye refuse? The last time I saw ye, ye wished me t’ Hell and gone.”

“I never said such a thing.”

“Perhaps not t’ me face, but I’m sure later ye wished me there often enough.”

Lucia winced. She had wished him there more than once, but nine years in purgatory had made her regret those words, if nothing else. She would atone for them now.

“We are wasting time, Jack. Time you do not have.”

“One question first. Where have ye been all these years?”

Her face froze; her tongue went thick with fear. She did not know what to say, but she had to say something. “Why would you care?”

He ignored her question. “Ye didn’t marry that damned Paddy. He came lookin’ fer ye often enough.”

Her lips pursed at his insult. “I would be careful who I called a Paddy if I were one, too. And no, I did not marry him.”

“Then where have ye been?”

“Nowhere,” she answered in truth. “This is not about me, so, please, let me do what I have to do. It is your only chance.”

Jack’s lips thinned, those beautiful soft and full lips she had once kissed and would have endured another nine years in purgatory to kiss again. Then he gave a short nod, and looked away for a long moment, struggling to get himself under control. When he spoke, all traces of his brogue had fled. “All right. Let’s get this over with. I need to get back to the office.”

Lucia merely raised her eyebrows at that. Jack had no idea what was in store for him this day.

The sun rose, burning away the lingering mist. As they stepped out of the graveyard and onto the street, the city came alive. People walked by them, some nodded, others smiled, proving both Lucia and Jack did exist upon the earth—for the moment.

When a fruit-and-vegetable carter rolled by shouting, “Frutto! Verdura!” Lucia inhaled the scent of ripe tomatoes, the tang of apples, and sighed with pleasure. She had missed the sounds and smells and colors of earth.

“Where are we going?” Jack asked.

“You shall see.”

“Why do I have to go to the place? Why couldn’t St. Peter just show me my past?”

“Places have memories. The memory of what happened to you lives in the place where it happened. Together we will watch your past. You never had anyone to teach you right from wrong, Jack. God does not blame you for your mistakes, but you must learn from them now. Or pay the price.”

Lucia stopped at the narrow opening between two storefronts. Glancing up, she saw the names of the stores had changed. Twenty years did that to a place. On one side of the alley stood a dressmaker, on the other a baker. Heat and the scent of fresh bread wafted from a window, at war with the stench of garbage rotting in the alley.

“Why here?”” Jack’s breath brushed the back of her neck.

Lucia fought the urge to lean against the broad strength of his chest. Instead she held herself rigid so she would not touch him again. Touching him, even by accident, made her want to do so much more. “You do not remember?”

“Should I?”

She closed her eyes against the unexpected pain his question caused. She would never forget this place, for it was to her, despite the ugliness, a special place.

“You will.” Turning, she motioned him closer, and they watched their shared past.

The year was 1849, and Jack had been in America only a few months, but he was a clever boy. He had landed on his feet, despite landing on the shores near penniless. One of the youngest runners at ten, he was also the best. Already he made enough money to rent his own room. He no longer slept on the streets as so many others did.

Jack allowed himself a small smile. He was on the road to success. No more would his father be able to say Jack was a no-good mama’s boy, nose forever stuck in a useless book. Mrs. Keegan’s insistence that her only child learn to read and write and cipher had not gone unused in the New World. But Jack had to admit, no matter how much he despised his father; the old man’s viciousness had molded him into a streetwise boy. Without that edge, Jack would have been dead a within a week of arriving in America.

His youth was an asset in his line of work, as were his blue eyes and glib tongue. All combined, he could make anyone believe him honest. Especially the Irish immigrants, fresh off the boat, looking for a place to stay and a friendly Irish voice. They found both in Jack Keegan, who led them to Mr. Kerry’s rooming house, where they were overcharged for room and board and Jack was paid for every trusting soul he delivered to the Kerry doorstep. At this rate, starving in Ireland would be a memory before he reached twelve. By the time he was fifteen he planned to have his own rooming house and his own string of runners.

A ship had come in that morn, and Jack raced south towards the tip of Manhattan. Each ghetto he ran through became more poverty-stricken, the wealthier immigrants living as far north of the near destitute southern sections as they were able.

He jogged through the small Italian region where there lived, for the most part, political refugees come to the United States to escape one revolution or another. The Italians were no good to him. Most had enough money to make their way in the world. Jack’s prey was the needy.

As he passed a tiny opening between two buildings, Jack heard a soft, distressed cry. He had places to go, people to cheat, but the tone of that cry stopped him dead. Peering into the dimly lit aperture, Jack heard the sound again. A movement deep within drew him forward.

“Hello?” he called. “Who’s cryin’”

He wrinkled his nose with distaste at the odor of rotting food, then began to move back toward the sunshine, but the sight of a tiny face, peeking about a pile of garbage, made Jack stop. He had never seen such large, brown, sad eyes in his life. The child’s face was dirty, streaked with tears, her black hair a puff of tangles and her clothes torn and wet. Still, she was the prettiest thing he’d ever seen.

Jack went down on one knee and held out his hand. “Come here, then.”

Amazingly, she crept toward him, her eyes on his all the while. Jack nodded his approval. She might be only five or six years old, but she’d been on the streets long enough to know trouble flared first in an enemy’s eyes.

She stopped, far enough away so he could not grab her. Jack smiled. “What are ye cryin’ fer, miss? Are ye all alone?”

She nodded, all solemn eyes and unsmiling face.

“Are ye hungry?”

Again, the same nod.

Jack sighed. He had to go. Why he had turned into this alley he’d never know. He’d heard cries before, seen much worse than this a thousand times. But for some reason this little girl touched his callous heart—and that he could not allow. To survive in New York he must be the toughest, to thrive he must be the coldest, to succeed he must be the most devious. Soft feelings for an orphan Italian girl were out of the question.

“Here.” Jack reached for his pocket, and the child skittered backward, frightened by the sudden movement. “No, I won’t hurt ye,” he said, using his most practiced, most soothing tone. “Take this and get yerself somethin’ t’ eat.” He held out a few coins. She stared at them but did not move.

Jack placed the money on the ground. “After ye eat, go t’ St. Mary’s. Right down this street. The sisters will take ye in. D’ ye understand what I’m sayin’?”

She gave him another solemn nod.

“What’s yer name?” he asked.

She didn’t answer, just stared at him with those so sad, too adult eyes. Perhaps she didn’t understand English after all, but he knew no Italian. Jack sighed. He’d done what he could and he had to go. Jack turned away, but just before he left the gray alley and emerged into the bright light of day, he heard a whisper.

“Lucia Casale.”

Jack smiled and continued on, whistling all the way to the docks. It wasn’t until later in the day, after he’d done his cheating and lying and returned to his small room in the Irish section of town, that Jack realized the happiness he’d felt after helping Lucia had disappeared once he went to work. Even though today had been one of his best days, and his pocket hung heavy with payoffs, he could not recapture his earlier desire to whistle.

Jack threw himself down on his rough bed and stared at the stained ceiling. What ailed him? He couldn’t afford to get soft now. He had to make his way in this city. He must become someone. Otherwise his father’s taunts of Jack never being more than his father before him would come true. And that Jack could not bear.

A scratching at the door made him bolt upright. Had someone come to steal the money he had sold his soul to make? Jack slid a knife from beneath the bed. He couldn’t allow such a thing to happen.

Weapon at the ready, he stalked across the room and yanked open the door, tensing in expectation of an attack. Instead Lucia Casale stared, transfixed, at the knife. Then, slowly, she raised her dark, silent gaze to his. Though she never spoke, never changed expression, he felt chastised just the same. Without a word she walked past him, climbed onto his bed, popped her thumb into her mouth, and closed her eyes.

“Wait just a minute,” Jack began, but when she fought to open her eyes and lost the battle, curling her knees up to her chest and sighing around her thumb, he didn’t have the heart to wake her. The poor things probably hadn’t had a decent night’s sleep since her parents left, or died, or whatever had happened. He could just as easily take her to the sisters in the morning as now.

Jack crossed the room and stared down at the sleeping child. She must have followed him around all day. How else would she have found his room? Small wonder she was tired. He had been back and forth from the ship to the boardinghouses lining the dingy side streets near the docks at least five times. He was exhausted.

Jack hid the knife high in a cupboard, then spread a blanket on the floor and took his rest. When he awoke in the morning, he found Lucia cuddled against his chest, one of her hands holding one of his. Her soft, trusting breath tickled his chin, and her cheek pressed against his neck. When she awoke, she yawned, opened her big, brown eyes, and smiled into his face with such adoration his heart thudded hard and heavy.

Jack never took her to the sisters. Not that day, nor any other.

*

The scene faded, and Jack stood again at the mouth of the alley, Lucia just behind him. People passed on the street, but no one paid them any mind. Jack fought to get himself under control. The memory, or vision, or whatever the hell it had been had disturbed him more than he cared to admit. Things had been so different then. He had been different. Or had he?

Wasn’t that desperate child still within him, driving him to succeed, to make more and more money even though he had enough now for several lifetimes?

Jack turned and met the gaze that had haunted him for so many years. The adoration had died long ago, killed by the realization that he could not given her what she needed the most. Even though she had given him everything she had. Now those brown, beautiful eyes studied him too closely, as if he were some interesting specimen brought out for her perusal. She could still unnerve him with her quiet, contemplative gaze and her too-still face.

“And whom did I wrong there, Lucia? You? Should I have taken you to the sisters? Let them bring you up instead of me? I don’t think I did too badly, considering I was as much a child as you.”

Her smile was sad as she turned away and began to walk down the street. He fell into step beside her. “You were never a child, Jack. At least not as long as I knew you. But no, this is not about me. You saved my life, and I will always be grateful.”

The temper he had held in check, snapped. “I don’t want yer blasted gratitude!”

She turned her annoyingly calm face to his. “I know.”

“Then what?” He shouted the words, causing several early-morning vendors to frown and cast concerned glances at Lucia. He swore and walked on. “Where are ye takin’ me now?”

“You shall see.”

They continued, passing the offices of Keegan Company, one of several buildings jack owned in the city. He had made his fortune through hard work and perseverance, but he had also had an intuition about business few could match. He had seen long before the War Between the States erupted that a war would come, and he had convinced a wealthy man to begin a munitions factory. Jack had invested all he had and served as the supervisor. Instead of fighting on the front, Jack had fought from the rear, and his foresight saved many lives. President Lincoln himself had lauded him as a hero, and by the time the war ended Jack had become a very wealthy man.

The munitions factory went the way of the peace, but these days Jack had his fingers in many pies, and he oversaw each one from his private office overlooking the streets where he had once lived.

Jack pointed out the building to Lucia. She smiled with her mouth and not her eyes, then shook her head at him as though he were a little lost lamb. Jack gritted his teeth and followed her onward. It wasn’t until he smelled the sea that Jack realized they were heading south. Once there, Lucia stopped and stared out at the endless water.

Jack waited, but when she was not forthcoming, his impatience got the best of him. “What did I do wrong that day?” he demanded. “Or am I supposed to guess and guess until I hit on it myself?”

She continued to stare out to sea, running her thumb along her lower lip, a remnant from her thumb-sucking days. When she did that, Lucia was quite distressed.

“No, I will tell you what you did wrong. It is up to you to discover the lesson.” She turned and the sunlight caught gray strands threading her black hair. Twenty-six and life had marked her already. Where had she been? What had she done? How had she lived since he’d last seen her face? Before he could ask again the question she had never answered, Lucia continued. “You lied and cheated for money.”

Jack gave a snort of laughter. “That day and countless others. What of it?”

“You hurt people, Jack.”

“If it hadn’t been me, it would have been someone else.”

“That doesn’t make what you did right. Do you remember how you felt after you helped me? How you whistled for hours after you’d given for no other reason than just to give? Then later, when you’d spent a day taking and taking and taking, you could no longer whistle, though you could not understand why?”

Jack contemplated her with narrowed eyes. She knew what he’d been thinking, feeling, during the replay of his past. The thought made him uncomfortable, but what could he do? She was in charge of this day. “Yes, I remember. What of it?”

“You knew in your heart right from wrong. But that knowledge faded year by year.”

“What can I do now?”

“Nothing. That is the tragedy of the decisions you have made.”

She nodded behind him. Jack turned, then blinked in shock. Davey Delaney stood right in front of him. Davey Delaney was long dead. Caught the pox in ’59 and went to see “the boss” years before Jack.

“You had a chance that day, Jack,” Lucia said softly. “A chance to change your life, to stop hurting others, and you made the wrong decision. Watch and try to learn.”

Jack ran down the dock, skidding to a stop just before he knocked Davey into the drink.

“Jacko, my friend!” Davey clapped him on the back. “Things’ll be changin’ now. I swear the damned Irish are getting’ dumber and dumber with every boat that comes across.” He slid a glance at Jack. “No offense.”

Jack shrugged. Delaney insulted his own ancestry as well as Jack’s, and for the money Delaney paid him, Jack could care less what the man said about the Irish.

“We’ll be chargin’ em double what we have been. And I want ye t’ start stealin’ their baggage, too. Tell ‘em you’ll bring their things t’ the boardin’ house. They’ll believe anything ye say, boy.” He laughed and grabbed Jack’s chin in his grimy, meaty hand. “Ye must be the prettiest damned things I’ve ever seen, and with them Irish eyes and that sweet, bonny lilt, ah Jacko, yer a prince. A prince of thieves, that is.”

Davey laughed so hard he had to bend over and cough. His considerable belly shook with his mirth, and his face reddened until Jack thought he might die right there. Instead, he hauled in a deep, hacking breath and straightened. “Run along now, Jacko, and do the deed.”

Jack had run along, and he had stolen more and cheated more and profited to higher heights than he had ever imagined. Until this moment he had forgotten what happened right after Davey encouraged him to “do the deed.”

An older man, with a cart and a horse, hailed Jack as he ran toward the newly arrived ship.

“Boy, be ye needin’ a good honest job? I could use a strong lad like you. Just lost me the last one t’ the likes of Davey Delaney. All ye’d need to do is drive the horse and cart from me ships t’ me warehouse. No liftin’, no loadin’, just drivin’. An honest day’s wage fer an honest day’s work.”

The scene in front of Jack froze. A sea breeze wafted across his face. Instead of fish and salt, he smelled flames and sulfur. Instead of the caw of seagulls, he heard the whisper of his father’s voice and the approach of a sucking, sliding footfall.

He took a step back, bumped into Lucia, whirled to face her.

“What?” he shouted. “What do you want me to learn?”

She didn’t even lift a brow at his loss of composure. “You could have taken an honest job that day.”

“And made a piddling bit of money for it too. I would have never gotten anywhere working for that man.”

“Was it so bad, the way we were? I was happy then. Weren’t you?”

“No. I’m happy now.”

“How can you be happy knowing your decisions have hurt others?”

“I don’t know anything of the kind.”

“That is the trouble. Not only do you not know, but you do not care. How can you repent if you do not care about anyone but yourself? Every decision you made, every single thing you did changed someone’s life. People starved because of you. They lived in hellholes. They died alone and crying. Because of you, Jack. Think about that and then tell me you were right to live the way you lived.”

She turned on her heel and walked away. He followed, wrestling with decisions long ago made and realities he had never considered.

When Midnight Comes

is available exclusively by download from www.lorihandeland.com

Look for a new chapter each month beginning in August 2006.

When Midnight Comes a novella © Lori Handeland, all rights reserved

originally published in ‘Trick or Treat‘ a Love Spell Halloween Anthology, 1997

Chapter Three

Lucia cast a furtive glance back at Jack. He was lost in thought. She took a deep, soothing breath. Good. There was so much he needed to learn, and very little time to learn it. If he refused to see the truth, all would be lost.

Her part in Jack’s task was going to be much harder than she had thought. Lucia had believed that while her love for jack had not died with her nine years ago, her adoration of him had. That while her heart cried out for him, her mind despised him. She was finding her beliefs less true with every moment she spent in his presence.

Selfish, greedy, manipulative, he did not understand what was truly important on this earth. But he was her Jack. The hero of her childhood, the prince of her adolescence, the bane of her womanhood. She had lived with him for longer than she’d lived with her parents, having lost both of them to ship fever on the trip from Italy to America. She had reached the shores of the New World alone, her single asset and understanding of the language drilled into her by her mother in the months before they escaped the political unrest of their homeland. She had been alone until jack found her. No matter what he had done, she would always owe him her life, and so much more. She believed there existed an innate goodness in jack that all of his machinations could not kill. It was that goodness she had to uncover in order to save his soul.

But first she had to find a way to stop the treacherous need within her to touch him, just once, with love. Jack had always needed her love, even when they were children. Though he was the sharpest, toughest runner on the streets, when they were together he had been the gentlest of boys. They had often slept holding hands, and when she had a nightmare, he had allowed her to crawl in to bed next to him, and he had held her until the dawn. She had never been cold or frightened once Jack came into her life. After she left him, she had been nothing but.

“Where now?” he asked.

Lucia started and tore herself free of her memories to find Jack had torn free of his. She stopped and waited for him to catch up to her. For a long moment she relished her chance to just look at him once again.

The years had changed him little. Stronger and taller, his midnight blue eyes still held a soul-deep hunger that would never die. His face, always beautiful to her, had matured, making him beautiful, no doubt, to many women. She frowned at the stab of jealously. Such emotions were not for her any longer.

“Lucia? Are you alright?”

“Fine,” she said, a bit too sharply. “It is getting on to mid-day. We must continue.”

The location of his second wrong was not very far away. They had lived their youth in the Irish section of the city. Lucia had always felt out of place there and had wandered often to the Italian section just to hear the language of her parents. But she had been out of place there too—an Italian girl raised by an Irish boy who remembered the language of home but little else.

The only place she’d ever belonged was with Jack, and she had left him of her own free will. He had not come for her, though she’d hoped he might until the day she died. She had been too stubborn, too proud, to go back to him after their last encounter. She still loved him, but she could not forgive him for taking from her all she had to give and never looking back.

Lucia stopped and gestured to the road, dotted with all manner of refuse. Since the city fathers had banned the pigs that used to wander the streets eating the garbage, the mess had gotten out of hand.

Lucia glanced at Jack. His nose wrinkled with distaste. He had obviously not been on these streets lately, but then, why would he be? He lived now in a luxurious house to the north. He only worked near the ghetto, and even then, she was sure, he never ventured outside. Except last night, to be robbed and killed. The very fact that he had allowed himself to die in such a way showed the changes in Jack. Once he would have seen the lad’s intention well before the act.

“Remember?” she asked, sweeping out her hand to indicate the filthy gutter before them.

Jack took a step back, as though afraid that if he touched the film he might return to the days when he had not even noticed it there. His face revealed his confusion even before he spoke. “Should I?”

Lucia sighed. How could he forget such momentous occurrences? But then, most people did not realize at the time of such happenings their significance in the grand scheme of their lives.

“Watch,” she said, and like the last time, the past came alive before their eyes.

Jack, now sixteen and lean with growth, ran for home. He had worked from dawn until the sun had long set. Lucia would be waiting, done with her day’s sewing of piecework for the ready-made clothing manufacturer who employed her. He wished she did not have to toil so long and so hard for so little. But she insisted on making her way so she would not be a complete burden to him. As if she could ever be that. Lucia’s adoration and unconditional love were his only warmth in a world that constantly tried to drag him back into poverty.

Jack slipped his hand into his jacket, curling his fingers around the money her carried.

Payday.

Soon he would have enough money to finance his dream of owning his own boardinghouse, employing his own set of runners. He could not exist forever in the ghetto. He’d rather be dead than poor for the rest of his life.

A scuffle, a cry, and a thump from around the corner just ahead made Jack pause, then approach cautiously. He peered around the building just in time to see a young man, about his own age, raise a knife and plunge the weapon into his victim, who lay half in the street. Surprise made Jack shout, “Hey, what d’ye think yer doin’!”

The youth spun around, fear ripe in his eyes that stared from a gaunt, desperate face. One look at Jack and he ran for his life. Jack hurried over to the injured man, who still breathed, but not for long. He knelt, and the man grasped his arm in a surprisingly strong grip for the dying. Blood soaked Jack’s sleeve, and he pulled back, repelled.

“I’ll get the police,” he said, but the man shook his head and motioned Jack closer. He tried to speak, but nothing came from his mouth but a pink spray of spittle. The man sank back, patting his pocket, his hands as frantic as the expression in his eyes. Then he tried to struggle upward again but failed, slumping into the garbage lining the street. His eyes stared sightless at the moon.

Jack reached into the pocket the man had been so concerned about and pulled out a wad of bills so thick his heart turned over in shock. A movement fro ma nearby storefront and the distant but approaching whistle of the police brought Jack to his senses. He had a dead man at his feet, a wad of money in his hands, and blood all over his jacket. With a last look into the dead man’s face, Jack shoved the cash into his coat and ran away.

The past disappeared, and Jack stood next to Lucia at the place where the unknown man had died. The afternoon had darkened, and Jack threw a quick glance at the sky, half afraid he had been lost in his past for too long and midnight approached too soon. But instead of encroaching night, he saw encroaching storm clouds and heard the distant bellow of thunder. The earlier chill of the fog-shrouded morning had disappeared with the advent of sunlight, but now, with the loss of that light, the chill returned and settled deep in Jack’s bones. He shivered and tugged his coat closed.

He had been scared that night, more scared than he could ever recall being. At least on this earth.

So many things could have happened. He could have arrived a few minutes earlier and been the one with the knife in his chest. He could have arrived a few minutes later and lost the money that had helped bring him the success he now enjoyed. He could have waited too long and been hung for a murder he had not committed. But what had he done wrong?

Jack looked at Lucia. “I tried to help him.”

Lucia still stared at the gutter where the man had died nearly fourteen years ago. “Thou shalt not steal, Jack,” was all she said.

Jack shook his head, confused. “He was dead. He pointed me to that money. He wanted me to have it. For helping him.”

“You always could find an excuse for your behavior. That does not change what you did.”

“What was I supposed to do? He was dead. The money was there. I used that money to buy my first boardinghouse.”

“Where you proceeded to lie and cheat and steal from your countrymen at an even greater rate than Davey Delaney.”

“You benefited from it, too, Lucia. You didn’t have to work your fingers raw sewing for someone else’s gain.”

She flinched and hunched her shoulders, the dark cloak shifting forward to swirl about her ankles. Taking a deep breath—for patience or strength, he didn’t know which—she turned and stared at the storefront behind them. The storefront where he’d heard a sound that night.

Jack reached for her shoulder, amazed to see that his fingers trembled with the need to touch her. Before he could, she turned. Her gaze fell to his hand, then shifted to his eyes. What he saw there made Jack lower his arm slowly back to his side. When had she begun to fear him?

He tucked his treacherous hands, which ached to take her in his arms and soothe away her fear, into his pockets, then he rocked back on his heels and stared at the now abandoned storefront. “So what did I do wrong?”

“The man had a son. A little boy who hid right there.” She pointed to the storefront. “He wanted you to use the money to help the child. When you ran away, so did the child. He lived on the streets, almost starved, and eventually became a murderer and a thief just like the man who killed his father, just like you, Jack.”

“I’m not a murderer.”

“But you are a thief, despite the expensive clothes and the society parties.”

Jack closed his eyes against the unaccustomed shame that washed over him. He had always done what he had to do to survive and to thrive. He had not paused to feel guilt or regret. Lucia had never before said a word of recrimination to him about the way he made his living. She’d known what he did and how he did it. Still she had adored him. Somehow her adoration had made everything he’d done all right in Jack’s mind.

“I’ll find the boy,” he offered. “I’ll give back what I took and then some. Will that make everything all right again?”

Lucia sighed, long and aggrieved, and looked at him as if he were muck upon her shoe. “You cannot change what he’s endured by giving him money.” She spat the last word from her mouth like a sour pill. “You have to change, Jack. You have to learn what is important in life. God will not give you the precious gift of a second chance to have you waste it as you wasted the first one.” Her fingers crept up, pushing aside the heavy cloak to reveal a gray, shapeless dress decorated only by the rosary around her neck.

She had always worn that rosary, he recalled. It had been her mother’s. Jack’s gaze strayed to her hand as she worked the beads, the elegant, slim fingers moving in a rhythm he no longer remembered. Lucia only fingered the beads when she wanted something desperately.

“You will wander like the jack of the lantern in the legends of old,” she said, the cool, quiet tone of her voice warmed by the cadence of her native language. “With but a lantern for company, alone, lonely, never finding warmth or love on this earth.” She stared into his face, searching, and his anger turned to dismay at the heartbreak in her eyes. “Until the end of time you will wander, or until you beg for Hell, whichever comes first. And believe me, Jack, you will want to die. You will do anything to get free of this earth, because being alone and unloved is the worst punishment any of us could ever dream of.”

He reached out and grabbed her wrist before she could move away. Her hand worked on the beads, making the fine bones beneath his fingers twist and shift. Her eyes widened and her lips parted. Fascinated, he watched her breath quicken, coming in little puffs of steam, warm and moist against the cool approach of the storm, faster and faster, through open, russet lips.

“You sound as if you know of what you speak, Lucia. Tell me, what happened to you after you left me? Did you wander this earth alone and unloved until you wished for death? You had but to knock on my door and I’d have taken you back in. You were a part of me. Since we were children we were together. How could ye leave me when I needed ye so much?”

For a moment her eyes softened, and he glimpsed the girl he had always known behind the impassive face and eerie, calm voice. She tugged on the wrist he still held imprisoned, and he released her. Her fingertips scraped against the stubble on his jaw. She had always touched him thus, right before they kissed. Jack began to lower his lips to hers, bringing his face close enough for her to—

Crack!

Her palm connected with his cheek, bringing tears to his eyes. Jack straightened, putting his fingers to his burning face as he stared at her. Her dark eyes snapped fury such as he had never seen in them before.

“It is always about you, is it not? What you need. When you need it.” She turned, the ankle-length black material of her cloak billowing out like a thundercloud behind her. The sky rumbled, giving sound to the illusion. She stamped past the few amazed onlookers, who had stopped in their midday rush when the pretty Italian girl had slapped the Irish swell, without a second glance. When she realized he wasn’t beside her, she stopped, put her hands on her hips, and turned to glare. “Come along now, Jack Keegan, and I will show you your final wrong. Then you can see why what you need does not matter to me any longer.”

When Midnight Comes

is available exclusively by download from www.lorihandeland.com

Look for a new chapter each month beginning in August 2006.

When Midnight Comes a novella © Lori Handeland, all rights reserved

originally published in ‘Trick or Treat‘ a Love Spell Halloween Anthology, 1997

Chapter 4

The anger felt good. Much better than the pain and the longing. Anger was hot and warmed the chill Lucia couldn’t seem to dispel from her blood. But then why should she be able to? She was dead, after all; her earthly body but a loan until midnight came. Then her spirit would return to purgatory and her body, as they said, ashes to ashes, dust to dust.

Lucia didn’t turn about to see if Jack followed her toward the location of his final wrong. She couldn’t bear to look at him right now, to see again the need in his eyes that matched the need she hid in her heart. What was to come would be painful—for both of them.

Night approached—early, she thought, but winter approached as well, strangling daylight more and more with each passing day. The storm didn’t help, darkening the sky faster than the sun’s fading light.

Before they reached their destination, the storm came upon them with fury, the wind whipping Lucia’s cloak, sending cold shafts of air up her skirt and ending the momentary warmth she’d treasured. Icy rain drenched her hair; thunder and lightning made her flinch and hurry along. This was how it had all begun so long ago. There had been a storm that night, too.

Jack appeared beside her, yanking the hood of her cloak up to shield her head, then placing a warm, helping hand at the small of her back. When Lucia would have pulled away, he grasped her elbow and held her firmly to his side.

“Don’t be stubborn, Lucia, there is time enough to see what else I’ve done wrong. Let’s get out of the storm.”

“It doesn’t matter,” she said. “The place is right here.”

Lucia ducked beneath the awning of an ancient brick building and opened the door. Heated air, ripe with the smell of last night’s potatoes and cabbage, hit her in the face.

She smiled. Home at last.

Water dripped from her cloak onto the floor, the plunk, plunk, plunk thunderous in the silence that greeted them. Lucia turned to find Jack standing out in the rain. Droplets ran down his stark, white face, catching on his black eyelashes, hanging for a long second, then dripping onto his already soaked coat.

Lucia beckoned him inside. He backed away, shaking his head. “Not here,” he whispered.

She had no time for soothing words or gentle persuasion. If Jack bolted now, all would be lost. So Lucia grabbed his hand and yanked with all her strength. Caught unaware, he stumbled into the rooming house.

The wind caught the door and slammed it shut behind him. Startled, he gasped and nearly yanked his hand from hers. She gentled her grasp, folding her fingers between his, reveling for a moment in the simple pleasure of palm meeting palm, but they did not have time to linger in the dark, dank entryway holding hands like two young lovers with their lives before them. Neither of them could lay claim to that any longer.

“Come along, Jack.” Her voice was sharper than she’d meant, but Jack did not notice. He stared upward, his gaze fastened on the gloom and murk that obscured the upper levels of the stairway. Shadows danced an evening waltz with the minute bit of light creeping in through a hole in the roof.

When she tugged on his hand, he looked up at her and gave a slight nod. He was ready, as was she. Together they climbed the stairs to the third floor, the warped wood creaking beneath their feet, the sound almost drowned out by the shriek of the wind through the cracks about the windows and the doors. One particularly high-pitched screech, sounding nearly human, brought a memory, unbidden to Lucia’s mind. Once she had screamed like that—in pain, in fear, in despair.

She pushed the sob that threatened back into her heart with all the others, then forced herself not to shake and shiver as she continued to climb the stairs at the side of the man who had brought her both the most joy and the most pain she had ever known.

The building had not changed much in ten years, becoming older and more run down, as buildings and people were wont to do. Immigrants able to afford a room of their own for their family still resided here, better off than many who lived six or more families to a cellar in the depths of the city. Families, making their way the best they could. Once she and Jack had been a family, and here they had lived.

Without a word between them, they stopped outside the room that had been theirs. Lucia let go of Jack’s hand to turn the doorknob. The door swung open to reveal an empty room.

Jack took a deep breath. “Is this necessary, Lucia?”

“You know it is.”

He let out the breath he’d held in wait for her answer, then stepped closer to her and slid his hand beneath her wet hair to curl about her neck. The familiarity of the gesture made tears well in her eyes. What she wouldn’t give for one more chance to love him.

“I’ll tell ye right now, I don’t regret what happened in this room.” His fingers tightened on her neck, and he shook her just once. “None of it, d’ ye hear?”

Before she could answer by word or gesture, he released her and turned to view another episode of his past.

Jack ran through the streets of the city, joy filling his heart. He had at last earned enough money to buy a second rooming house. Little by little he was making his way in the world. Someday Jack Keegan would be the richest man in Manhattan. Then no one would dare call him an Irish nobody again. He had but to work hard and never veer from his course. That was the wonder of America. Hard work was rewarded. Those who knew what was important prospered. And Jack knew what was important in life— money, position, success. He would have them all one day soon.

He burst into the boardinghouse and pounded up the stairs, then let himself into the small room he shared with Lucia, surprised not to find her at home. Though he had returned earlier than usual, he had never known her to venture out this late in the day.

Jack removed his coat, frowning at the distant rumble of thunder. Where was she? Perhaps he should go searching before the storm hit.

Quiet voices from the other side of the door caught his attention. Wasn’t that Lucia’s voice? And the voice of a man? The joy in Jack’s heart began to fade, though he could not put his finger on why. Who was she talking to? Where had she been?

Jack strode across the room and opened the door—just in time to see Timothy Monihan kiss Lucia full on the lips.

Jack froze. He could not breathe, could not think for the fury coursing through him. How dare Monihan touch her? She was a child. A child who was Jack’s responsibility.

“Just what the hell d’ ye think yer doin’, Monihan?” he growled.

The two sprang apart, guilt plain upon their faces. Lucia would not look at him, staring instead at the hem of her blue gown, which peeked from beneath her ankle-length cloak. Monihan was not so shy. After the initial flush of embarrassment across his cheeks, he raised his chin, grabbed Lucia’s hand, and looked Jack right in the eye.

“I’m doin’ nothin’ I should be ashamed of doin’, Keegan. Unlike you.”

Jack, who had been staring at their joined hands, a physical show of unity that made him realize this was not the first time they had met, nor likely the first time they had kissed, returned his gaze to Monihan’s. Lucia made a soft sound of distress, which she silenced when Monihan pulled her closer to his side.

“And what might I have t’ be ashamed of?”

“Keepin’ her here with you. Ruinin’ her reputation by livin’ in sin.”

Jack’s mouth fell open. He had never heard such insanity in his life. Before he could answer, Monihan continued. “She swears yer not but brother and sister. Still, no one believes her but me.” He glanced at Lucia, and some of the anger in his face faded as love took its place. “I love the girl and I believe whatever she says. T’ tell ye true, I do not care if she’s known ye. I do not care if she loves ye. Ye don’t have it in ye t’ love her back. Not in the way she needs.”

Jack glanced at Lucia but could only see the top of her head as she continued to study her boots. She’d always been quiet, but never had she been this quiet, and especially when she was being discussed as if she weren’t present to hear.

“Loves me? What are ye blatherin’ about, Monihan?”

The young man made a disgusted sound deep in his throat. “Are ye so blind ye cannot see she cares for ye? Are ye so caught up in yer cursed ambition ye don’t know a girl of sixteen should not be livin’ with a man of twenty? Not unless she’s his mistress. But she will hear none of it. She continues t’ insist she cannot leave ye. Ye need her. But I think ye need no one but yerself and yer money. The time has come t’ make her honest or leave her go.”

Jack was having a hard time following the conversation. His mind kept floundering at the idea of Lucia with another man. Lucia having grown into a woman, loving him, as a woman loved a man, it seemed, and he had not noticed.

As Lucia turned her attention from the rapt contemplation of her boots toward her suitor, Jack took the opportunity to study her. She had always been small, her bones fine, her hands slim and elegant. Her face had matured, but the huge dark eyes, the high, exotic cheekbones, looked the same as on the day he had first found her. Beneath her coat, perhaps, lay the body of a woman, but Jack had to admit, he had never looked at her in such a way.

“I’ve asked her t’ marry me,” Monihan said.

Panic flashed through Jack’s mind. Marriage? He would lose her forever. “Now just a minute, she is but a child. Ye cannot marry her. I forbid it.”

Monihan dropped Lucia’s hand and turned to Jack with fists clenched. “Who are ye t’ forbid her a life of her own? Yer not her father, nor her brother. She says yer not her lover, but ye’ve not the guts t’ maker her yer wife. Ye have no rights t’ Lucia; she’s mine.”

Anger drowned Jack’s confusion. “She is not yers, nor mine, Monihan. She is her own. This’ll be her decision, and I’ll not have ye forcin’ her into anything.” Jack put his hand on Lucia’s shoulder. She started but did not look at him even then. “Is this what ye want, Lucia?” he asked gently, even though he wanted to shout and pound his fists against something, or someone, at the thought of losing her.

She took a deep breath, her shoulder rising and lowering beneath Jack’s fingers, and he tightened them for a moment, in support or supplication he knew not which. At last she looked at him, and in her eyes she saw the truth. She was a woman, and she loved him.

Well, hell, he thought, what am I t’ do now?

“Tell him, Lucia,” Tim urged. “Tell him ye will not stay here with him anymore. Come away with me now and I’ll marry ye tonight. The priest will waive the bans if I tell him what you’ve been through.”

Lucia didn’t spare her suitor a glance. Instead she stared into Jack’s eyes, waiting, hope alight in her face. Jack didn’t know what to say, what to do. He didn’t want her to go, but could he ask her to stay?

Jack turned away from what he saw in her face, turned his back on her need and her love. “Do what is best fer yerself, Lucia. All I want is fer ye t’ be happy.” He clattered down the stairs and out into the street, but not before he heard Lucia’s sob, a sound that broke the heart he did not want to have.

Jack wandered the streets, alone, lonely. He would have to get used to feeling thus. Soon his rooming house, his runners, and his ambition would be all he had. They should be enough. They would be enough.

The storm that had threatened hovered and rumbled but did not break. The air, unnaturally hot for October, seemed to pulse with warmth, electricity, and expectation. The tension within Jack mirrored the pressure of the waiting storm. He wanted to scream and run and do violence to anything in his path. Instead he walked and walked as the thunder rumbled and heat lightning flared over the ocean but did not drift toward the shore.

When he could no longer bear the presence of the storm, which seemed to mock him with its inability to explode, he returned to his room. Stepping inside, the quiet and the darkness gave voice to the state of his life. He would have to become accustomed to her absence.

Shunning a candle, he made his way to the narrow bed behind the curtain on his side of the room, stripped off his clothes, and lay down to stare at the night, which pulsed so loudly with silence he thought he might run mad.

And then he heard it, the steady cadence of her breathing. Jack jerked his head to the side but could not see her bed through the combination of darkness and the wall of his curtain and hers. But he did not need to see her to know the truth.

She had not left him! Joy filled his heart, and some of the mind-numbing tension faded. He relaxed and, listening to the soothing sound of her breath moving past her lips, he slept.

In the morning she smiled at him as she did every morning. Or was her smile different now? And if so, was it a change in him, in her, or in the nature of their relationship?

“I thought ye’d be gone,” he said.

Her smile froze, and he cursed himself for bringing up yesterday’s scene. “No,” she whispered, ducking her head, avoiding his gaze, “I could not leave you. We need each other.”

He considered the top of her head for a moment. He did need her, but was he being selfish, as Monihan said, to allow her to stay with him? He could not marry her. If he married Lucia, children would follow, each one dragging him further into the bog of poverty never to climb out. He could not bear to live like that, nor could he bear to sentence her to such a life. He wanted things to continue just as they were.

“Well, I’ll be going to work then,” he said, and with her nod he convinced himself things were just as they had been for so long.

But over the days that followed, as the storm continued to threaten but never broke and time moved from mid-October toward All Hallows Eve, Jack learned that nothing would ever be the same between them again. Jack learned what it was like to burn for something he could never have.

For every time he looked at her, he saw a woman where he had once seen a girl. Her smile made his breath catch in his throat; her scent made his arms trill with gooseflesh; her laugh made his chest ache. He didn’t even want to think about the sleep he lost every night, listening to her breathe and sigh a few feet away from him.

Then one night, when he had just fallen asleep, he heard her cry out, as she often did with nightmares. Before he came fully awake and realized what he was doing, he had yanked on his pants and crossed the room to stand beside her bed.

“Mi madre, mi padre,” she mumbled and shifted, then sighed a sigh of intense pain.

Jack swallowed the lump that sprang to his throat. Despite the lack of light, he could see tears tracking across her cheeks. She dreamt again of her parents.

Gently he put his hand to her shoulder. “Lucia, wake up. It’s but a dream.”

She came awake with a gasp, sitting up and taking his hand, pressing it between hers against her chest, partially bared by her shift. Her eyes, wide and wet, found his. Their gazes held.

Her hair, damp with sweat, clung to her forehead. He dropped to his knees, reaching out to push the loose, tangled strands from her face. Jack couldn’t seem to speak, to move, to do anything but stare into her face and feel the desire spreading through his body, clouding his mind, making him want to bury his fingers in her hair, plunder her mouth with kisses, press her back onto the bed and maker her his forever.

The thought broke the spell and he cursed, yanking his hand from hers and backing away, as if terrified of the sight of her.

“Jack?”

“Dammit, Lucia, can’t ye see what’s happening here? Monihan’s right. I’m a selfish bastard t’ keep ye with me.” He turned and stumbled back to his side of the room, pulling on the first shirt he found, shoving his feet into his shoes and heading for the door.

“Where are you going?”

He stopped with his fingers on the doorknob. “Out,” he snapped. “Before I do something we’ll both regret. I cannot be what ye want, Lucia, what ye need. Fer yer own good, go before I get back. Go t’ Monihan. He’ll love ye. I cannot.”

Before she could argue e jerked open the door and ran from the room, down the stairs, bursting out onto the silent street. The air still throbbed wit the storm, just as his blood throbbed with Lucia. Jack ran until sweat filled his eyes, and still he ran some more. The streets were deserted, unusually so.

Then he remembered. Tonight was All Hallows Eve. The dead walked this night, or so they said. The immigrants who graced these streets, a superstitious lot, would stay inside to be safe, but he would rather be alone with the dead than alone with Lucia.

At last the storm hit the city, bringing relief from the heat and the strain of the waiting. Icy rain pelted Jack’s cheeks, froze his hair, soaked through his shirt, and ran down his collar. Yet he still wandered on. He would give Lucia time to gather her things, time to leave him forever. If he saw her again, he just might give in to his sudden and amazing desire to kiss her. To kiss her and so much more.

What ailed him? He had held Lucia in his arms, as one might hold a sister, yet now his treacherous mind had begun to think of her as something else entirely. Had he noticed in some secret part of his mind that Lucia had become a woman? Had he given her any indication that there might be a chance for a future between them as man and wife? Jack didn’t think so, but then how had she come to hope for such a thing?

When the night reached its darkest and the storm its most furious, Jack climbed the stairs. His steps were heavy, defeated, his body cold, wet, and bone-deep weary, yet the thought of entering their room and seeing it half empty almost made Jack return to the storm-scented night. As he reached the top of the second flight of stairs, the glow from beneath his doorway drew him forward. Shadows danced wit the light, and he stared transfixed as they played upon the floor in front of his feet. Quietly, cautiously he crept forward, placed his hand on the knob, and opened the door.

Lucia stood at the washbasin, in her shift and nothing else. Her skin glistened with water; the golden droplets mirrored the flickering candlelight. When she turned and saw him in the doorway, her startled gasp sliced through the silence that hung heavy in the room. Jack’s breath caught in his throat at what she revealed when she turned his way.

Her breasts, high and firm and full, strained at the too-tight material of her shift. Captivated, he stared at them, watching as they rose and fell with every breath she took. He could see the outline of her nipples, round and red, enticing despite the white cotton that covered them. Unable to stop himself, Jack’s gaze wandered downward. The lamplight shone through the thin material, outlining her waist, her hips, her thighs, all rounded and soft, just as a woman’s should be.

His own breathing quickened, and the chill that had invaded his blood while he walked through the storm dissipated. The heat of his skin beneath his wet clothes seemed to cause steam to waft into his face.

“Jack?”

Her voice, familiar as his own, but unsure, a little frightened, brought him to his senses. What was he doing staring at her as if she were a whore purchased for his pleasure?

Jack nearly groaned, then cursed beneath his breath. He didn’t even know himself anymore. When had his protective urges for Lucia changed to the urges of a man for a woman? He slammed the door behind him, making Lucia jump and grab for her robe, clutching the garment to her chin.

“I told ye t’ be gone,” he snarled, stalking across the room to hide behind the curtain that shielded his bed from hers. He yanked off his soaked shirt and grabbed a towel to dry himself.

“N-no.” Her voice came from the other side of the cloth partition. Jack spun around and saw her silhouette, stark against the threadbare curtain. “I-I could not go,” she said.

He could smell her on the steamy air, a combination of soap and a particular scent that was Lucia—summer-warmed earth and wild flowers. Jack pressed his face into the towel to stop the temptation from possessing his mind, praying his body would stop reacting to her in this new and unacceptable way.

Had the God he denied for so long decided to punish him at last? Or was Satan rewarding him for his selfishness and greed? He was no virgin, should know by now how to control his urges, yet the flare in his blood and the ache in his loins reminded him of the first time he had been with a woman.

Jack made the futile wish that he had never seen Lucia and Monihan kiss, never heard Monihan’s accusations or looked at Lucia with the eyes of a man. Though he had hoped, he knew now they could never return to the way things had been.

“Jack?” Lucia said again, and the sound of her voice sent gooseflesh sliding down his arms.

He lowered the towel and briskly rubbed the chill away. “Aye?”

“We must talk. I do not want to marry Tim. I want to stay here.” She took a deep breath, the shadow of her breasts rising, thrusting, begging him with their perfection just as her voice begged him with words. Her hand rose to her mouth, and she stroked her bottom lip with her thumb to relieve some of her distress. “I want to stay here with you.”

He sat down on his bed, closed his eyes against all enticements, and said the words he knew must be said. “Ye cannot and well ye know it, girl. Monihan is right about one thing, I’m doin’ ye harm by allowin’ ye t’ stay here. I had not realized, and I’m sorry fer it.”

Before he knew what she was about, she drew aside the curtain. Jack’s eyes snapped at the sound, then widened at the sight. She stood too close and too unclothed, her breasts level with the top of his head. He stared at the golden shade of flesh peaking through a small hole in the fabric near her rib cage, his mouth, even with her belly, eased forward—

Jack bit back a curse and put his hand to his head. “Lucia, go away. Run away. Are ye crazy t’ come t’ me half-naked? I’m but a man, and I can see very well yer a woman now. Ye should not be here.”

“I belong nowhere but with you. Since the day you saved my life, took me in, raised me, I have belonged to you.”

“Don’t say that!” His voice was too loud, too ragged, too desperate, and Jack forced himself to take a calming breath and speak more quietly. “I told Monihan and I’ll tell ye, too—ye belong t’ no one but yerself, Lucia.”

“You said you wished me to go. But I cannot believe you would be so heartless. You wish for me to marry Tim and never see you again? Because he will not let me see you, Jack. Never. If I leave, everything we have shared, everything we have done, everything we have worked and lived for will be over. I will be Tim’s wife and you will be alone.”

Jack clenched his jaw to stop his treacherous tongue from begging her to stay. He had not realized until she said it how much he feared being alone in the world. His work and his ambition had kept him from making friends. He and Lucia had had only each other fro most of their lives, and that had been enough. Jack hated to think of what his life would be like without her. Dark, lonely, joyless. Exactly what his life had been in Ireland before he escaped.

Her fingers touched his hair, smoothed back the ragged tresses he never seemed to remember to cut. Then she stepped forward, and the heat of her skin beneath the snow-white cotton warmed his cold lips. A fold of her chemise brushed his cheek and he was lost.

He pressed his lips to her belly. She gasped, and her fingers clenched in his hair, bringing him closer, holding him to her. He should have stopped right then. Could have, would have, if she hadn’t suddenly framed his face with her hands and tilted his head back so her dark, grave eyes peered down into his. “Ah, Jack, please do not send me away. You are all I have. All I have ever had. All I will ever want on this earth.”

Before he could think or reply, she leaned forward and pressed her mouth to his. Jack froze as the lust he’d held at bay ignited within him, sudden and impossible to resist, though he tried with the last vestige of decency he owned.

He stood, trying to hold her away, but she struggled to remain, sliding closer, pressing her barely covered breasts to his naked chest, twining her fingers in his hair and stroking her lips with her tongue. Not untutored in the art of kissing, her mouth moved against his with a skill that made his body harden and strain for release.

Then suddenly they were on his bed, mouth-to-mouth, chest-to-chest, hip-to-hip. She rained kisses across his face, and he reveled in the gentle urgency of her touch. They had loved each other so long, sweetly, innocently, wasn’t it natural their love had matured along with their bodies, their hearts, and their minds? He had not realized how very much he needed the touch of someone who loved him until he felt Lucia’s touch all the way to his wildly beating heart.

He tried very hard to be gentle, to go slow. But the passion they had hidden even from themselves soared out of control. She was a different person tonight from the sweet and solemn girl he had raised. A woman now, her instincts outweighed her innocence.

Her fingers fluttered over the naked length of his back, then around to his chest. He watched her explore him, learning the texture and the taste of his skin, and the seriousness of her expression, the concentration that creased her forehead, made him smile. In some ways she was very much the same.

Having known him all her life, she possessed no shyness in touching him. Her knuckles brushed the hardness beneath his trousers and he tensed. Her dark gaze shot up to his, gauging his reaction. Then, with a smile that was all woman, she curled her fingers about him and pressed her palm to his fullness, flexing and cupping in a rhythm she should not know.

He gritted his teeth and grasped her wrist, but she made a sound of denial and struggled to touch him again, pressing her mouth against his and using her tongue to drive him to distraction.

All his good intentions fled, and he tore her chemise in his desire to feel her firm, soft flesh in his hands. She sighed deep in her throat when his palms cupped and lifted her breasts and his thumbs stroked her nipples. He pulled his mouth from hers and leaned back to see if he had frightened her with his need. But her face reflected pleasure, her lips, red and swollen, mouthed his name, and when he lowered his mouth to her breasts her gasp of delight and the firm stroke of her fingers along his shaft showed she did not fear him.

He learned her tasted as she had learned his. He memorized the softness of her skin with the tips of his fingers. He made them both mad with desire, and when she begged him for what she did not understand, his trousers joined her chemise on the floor as he lifted himself above her.

They were both damp with sweat and breathless with the wonder of each other. He probed at her moist entrance, hesitant to hurt her, but her eyes opened, dazed, glazed, and she rose to meet him, breaking the barrier of her innocence herself, then pulling him all the way into her body.

He heard not a whisper of pain from her mouth; only his name and Italian endearments met his ears before he lost all sense of anything but the two of them. He slid in and out of her body in the rhythm as old as eternity. He had never felt so complete in his life. He who had always striven for the next mountain, to have more, more, more than what he already had, at last knew what it was like to possess for an instant all that was important in the world.

He held back his release while she tightened around him. Her breath caught in surprise and wonder as he sank himself h into her welcoming warmth one last time and rode the waves of her pleasure. Despite his loss of control in taking her innocence, a portion of his mind warned him before it was too late, and he pulled free of her body to shudder his release alone. He would not risk giving her a child and dooming them all to Hell on earth.

When they both lay spent and exhausted, Lucia cupped his head with her hands and lifted his face so she could stare into his eyes. She smiled a new smile—one that erased the ever-present sadness in her eyes.

“Ah, Jack. I knew I could not love you this much and be all alone in my love. I promise I will make you happy. Perhaps we can go west and work a farm. I have always loved the land. We can do anything together. I know we can. You will never regret marrying me, this I swear.”

Jack, who had been floating on a warm cloud of fulfillment and happiness, went cold with dread. A farm? He swallowed a sudden sickness at the back of his throat. He had farmed himself nearly to death in Ireland. He despised farming. And love? Marriage? He had but to remember his mother, her life and her death, to feel sick all over again at the prospect of either.

Lucia saw the truth in his face and the sadness returned. “You are not going to marry me.” She did not question, she knew. She had always known him better than anyone.

Her gaze slid from his. She shoved at him, and Jack shifted so she could scramble free. The loss of her warmth made him shiver. Would he ever feel such warmth again?

Lucia picked up her shift and found it ruined. She stood there for a moment staring at the garment, transfixed. Her hair hung about her face, the black strands emphasizing the sudden paleness of her skin, her usual healthy, golden tinge replaced by a deathlike pallor. She cast the shift to the ground and began to laugh, a sound without mirth that caused Jack to sit up, alarmed.

“Lucia?” He did not know what else to say. He dare not ask her what was wrong. He knew all too well.

She told him anyway, standing naked with naught but her hair to cover the breasts he had so recently worshipped. “I am a fool. But then, you knew that. Most likely took advantage of that fact, just as Tim said you would. I defended you. I always have.”

Jack’s shame turned slowly to anger. He had not meant for this to happen. He had told her go to. Twice. Yet she had remained.

“I am only thinkin’ of you. Yer too young t’ be a wife. T’ be a mother. I’ll ruin ye.”

Her eyes narrowed. “You already have.”

Her quiet pronouncement fell between them, and Jack drowned shame with more anger. “Will ye be sayin’ I seduced ye, then? Ye know that is not the case. Just because I cannot love ye nor marry ye does not mean I do not have feelings for ye. I’ll take care of ye just as I always have. I swear.”

She started to laugh again, and he resisted the urge to shake her until she stopped. That laugh grated on his ears, scraped along the tender thread of guilt within him. “I am sure you will always take care of me. But, I think, not as you always have.” She glanced pointedly at the bed, then took a deep breath, closed her eyes, and reached for the rosary that usually hung about her neck. The necklace was absent, most likely lying by the washbasin, and her hand fell back to her side as her eyes opened and stared into his. “I will be leaving you, Jack. If you decide to listen to your heart instead of the lure of your ambition and greed, I would be willing to see you again. If not, please do not come after me. I cannot bear to look at you and know you have so little respect for love and honor.”

“Dammit, Lucia, how can ye walk away from what we just shared? This was more than a mere tumble and well ye know it.”

“Yes, I do know it. But you, it seems, do not.” She turned and walked to her side of the room, dressing quickly and throwing some clothes into a bag. Then she moved to the washbasin, picked up the rosary, and dropped the necklace over her head. The beads clicked together, sounding loud and hollow in the tense silence between them. She stopped with her hand on the door.

“Good-bye, Jack,” she whispered without looking about.

The way she said good-bye, the finality, the despair, infuriated Jack. He needed her; he had always needed her. Just as his mother had needed his father, and she had died, old before her time, mourning the loss of yet another child, dirt poor and starving despite all the love and the need and the honor.

He could still hear his mother’s voice begging her husband to stay, telling of her need and her love. Later, when Patrick had gone out to drink, Jack would hear her praying, begging God for the same thing. He could still feel the shame that had enveloped him every time she had begged, his disgust for her weakness at war with his love for her. Over her grave he had sworn never to beg for love, never to need anyone, and never to pray again.

“Go then,” he spat, tearing himself from the memories. “I’ll not stop ye. But don’t expect me t’ beg ye t’ come back. If ye want me, then ye’ll have t’ take me on my terms, and ye’ll have t’ come back t’ me.”

His only answer was the closing of the door.

When Midnight Comes

is available exclusively by download from www.lorihandeland.com

Look for a new chapter each month beginning in August 2006.

When Midnight Comes a novella © Lori Handeland, all rights reserved

originally published in ‘Trick or Treat‘ a Love Spell Halloween Anthology, 1997

Chapter 5

The past receded, and Lucia braced herself for what the future would bring. She stood just inside the doorway, remembering, watching the rain mix with the dirt upon the windows, then trace a leisurely path downward. So much remained the same, so much did not. She had walked through the rain that night to Saint Mary’s. They had taken her in, and she had never left there. Alive, at any rate.

The room hovered between dusk and night, difficult to distinguish because of the gray, storm-clouded sky, but the dwindling light combined with the intense urge to finish this and return to the graveyard made Lucia think night fast approached. On the heels of eve, midnight would come.

Even though the scene had disappeared, Jack remained next to the bed, staring down at the worn mattress with intense concentration. That night had been the most wonderful and the most horrible of Lucia’s life. She had experienced the fulfillment of her heart’s desire only to have joy snatched from her grasping fingers. The wrong that had occurred here, on that bed and afterward, had been as much hers as Jack’s. That was one reason she had been allowed to return to earth as his guide. He might have three wrongs to learn, but she had one—and hers had contributed to his. She must admit her wrong now.

Lucia crossed the room and stood behind Jack, close enough to touch if she gave in to the need. Instead, she allowed herself a moment to feel his warmth caressing her chill. Drawing in a deep breath, she committed the scent of rain and earth and man to memory. She hoped the essence of Jack would remain with her when she returned to the Hell that was hers.

He spun around before she could speak. Fury contorted the beauty of his face, and Lucia stepped back, for a brief second afraid, even though he could do nothing to hurt her anymore.

“I will not repent what happened on this bed. Say I seduced ye. I took yer innocence. Say what ye will. Perhaps I was wrong t’ make love t’ ye, but it is the only fine memory I have, and I cannot regret it.”

His eyes were wild, his hair damp and tousled about his face. How she loved him, despite everything. She wanted nothing more than to take him in her arms, pull him onto the bed that concerned them both so much, and invited him back into her body one final time. But she had one last thing she must do.

“I have not the power to make you repent anything.” She gave a slight smile, hoping the calm of her expression, false though it was, would tame some of his fury. He blinked, as if seeing something in her for the first time, then reached out and cupped her cheek in his hand. Though she longed to turn her mouth and touch her lips to the center of his palm with a flare that seared her soul, she resisted and took his hand from her face to hold it captive between them.

“I was wrong, too, Jack.”

“No. You could never do any wrong.”

“I did not mean to, but I could not help myself. You were my hero, my savior, both the brother I always wanted and the man I came to dream of.” She paused and he squeezed her fingers, comforting her without thought as he always had. She took what solace she could and moved on. “I loved you too much. I never said a word when you lied and you cheated and you stole. I knew you could not bear to be criticized. I knew your burning desire to succeed, to be a rich and respected man, though I did not know why you had so deep a need for something so shallow. I prayed you would stop, that my love would be enough for you. That someday you would see what was important just by looking in my eyes. And on our last night, I begged with all my soul that when you were inside my body you would feel the magic and give up your obsession. I hoped, and I prayed, and I begged, but I never said a thing to you, Jack, and there lay my mistake.”

He frowned. “I don’t understand.”

“I should have told you you were wrong. That you were hurting people, hurting me. I knew wrong from right, and I should have tried to make you see it, too. And if you did not listen, I should have left you long before the night we made love on this bed.”

“You think I would have listened to you?”

“I do not know, but at least I would have tried. Perhaps you did not love me enough, but I loved too much, and sometimes that can be just as bad.”

Jack yanked his hand from hers and stepped away from the bed, away from her. “And what should I do to right this wrong I did to you, Lucia?”

“Again I must tell you, you cannot change the hurt you caused. You have to learn what is important. What is right. This is all about you. Your life and your death. Each wrong you committed, you committed because of a lack in you.”

His eyes darkened along with his expression. Instead of backing away he stepped toward her. “Ye say my wrong came about from a lack in me. Well, as I recall, Monihan told me I could not love ye the way ye needed me to. So if I love ye now, will I have learned the lesson I was set t’ learn?”

Fascinated with the fury and the passion in his eyes, Lucia could only stare at him, unable to speak. Before she could answer, deny him or agree, his mouth crushed down upon hers, and she was lost in the tempest between them.

She opened her mouth beneath his onslaught, meeting his desperate kiss with a desperation of her own. She didn’t care if she was cast into Hell for this, she would love him one last time.

They fell onto the ancient cot, tearing at each others’ clothes, hands frantic, mouths nipping, tasting, soothing. No words were spoken; all that needed to be said right now would be said with their bodies alone.

He pushed inside her with a mumbled curse, and she shattered immediately. Then his mouth gentled and his body slowed. As frantic as they’d joined, they moved toward mutual fulfillment at a more tranquil pace. This time, instead of leaving her empty and alone when he found his release, he held her closer, then lifted his head from her shoulder. Their gazes held as they went over the edge together.

How wonderful their joining felt. So right. So complete. But different from the last time, and that difference she must question even though she wanted nothing more tan to hold him in silence for as long as she was able.

Hesitant, unsure, Lucia reached up and traced her knuckles along his cheekbone. “Why did you stay with me this time?”

His gaze skittered way from hers. “I couldn’t risk a child ten years ago.”

“Why?”

His eyes came back to hers, and in them she saw the pain he’d always kept to himself. “My father killed my mother by marrying her. He killed her with his love and his lust. She died birthing his babe, the eighth she’d lost. If they’d been any more than dirt farmers, and if she’d not been have starved, she might have survived. But she loved him. She would not leave him. And he would not leave her be.”

“What does that have to do with us?”

“I swore I’d never be like him.”

“You are not him.”

“But if I’d given you a child back then, when we were poor and had nothing but each other, I would have been exactly like him. And I would never have become what I am.”

Lucia closed her eyes against the unyielding pain about her heart. “And now?”

“I love you, Lucia,” he whispered, his breath brushing her cheek. Her eyes snapped open and stared into his, searching. “I always have. I was mistaken to run from your love. I was afraid and I was wrong.” He lowed his forehead to hers, and his hair slid against her temples, causing a shiver of awareness to chill her bare flesh. “I truly believed you were better off without me. I did not want to hurt you anymore than I already had.”

“Or was not hurting me a convenient excuse for keeping to your ambitious course?”

His shoulders rose, then released on a sigh. “You’ve always known me better than I know myself. I’m sorry for the past, but I want to make things right. Will you marry me? Tonight?”

Lucia tensed and tears filled her eyes. She was thankful he kept his forehead pressed to hers so he could not see her pain. There would be no life with Jack for her. Hell was not to come; Hell was here and now—when everything she’d ever dreamed of or wanted was offered, and she could not have it. Ever.

He lifted his head, and in his urgency to convince her to agree, he did not notice the too-bright sheen to her eyes. “I can give you everything you’ve every dreamed of. I’m rich now, Lucia. Richer than I ever believed possible.”

Lucia winced. Jack saw and frowned. “What is it? Are you married? Dear God, Lucia, don’t tell me you belong to someone else.”

She shook her head, helpless, her voice deserting her. He had not learned a single thing.

“Let me up,” she whispered, and the fierceness beneath the words made him move aside. She dressed, not looking at him, her mind frantically searching for the way to make him see his life would be better for the changes he could make.

When she turned to look at him, he’d put on his trousers but nothing more. The sight of his bare chest, the light dusting of black hair at the center trailing down to disappear at the waistband, made her swallow against the earthly lust that still possessed her. Her shoulders slumped in defeat and she glanced out the window. The storm had fled, and a full moon shone, bright and silver, despite the muddy windowpane. “Midnight comes. You must return to the graveyard.”

He blinked. “Why? I’ve learned my mistake. I admitted my love for you.”

Lucia sighed. Love was not the problem, had never been the problem. Just because he had not said he loved her all those years ago had not meant he did not love her. His wrong had been something else.

“Still you must return, when midnight comes. That is what I was told. That is what you were told. The lantern awaits to tell you your fate. If you have learned what you must, you will live. If not… Well, you know better than I what will happen. I will give you one last piece of advice, Jack Keegan: look around when you return to the graveyard. Look around for the truth of your past. Then you will know the answer to every question you ask.”

She began to turn away toward the door, but he sprang from the bed and caught her before she could move a step. “Ye aren’t coming with me?”

His eyes were frightened, the eyes of the little boy he’d never been, and she could not say good-bye as she should. He was her weakness still: he always would be. Instead, she reached up and kissed him with her whole heart and soul. He clung to her as she’d once clung to him, proving again, if his words had not already, that he did love her the best he knew how.

“I cannot come with you. You must meet your fate alone.”

“Y-ye won’t leave me again?”

She shook her head. “I will never leave you. Always, I will be right here.” She put her palm against the left side of his chest, memorizing the strength and the warmth of Jack. “Even when you cannot see me or touch me.”

He placed his hand over hers, holding her to him. Her words must have given him the comfort he needed, for when he spoke again, the accent she loved so much had fled. “Where can I find you if I’ve gained my second chance?”

With reluctance she tugged her hand from beneath his. “Have no fear. If you look around to see, you will find me.”

Then Lucia turned and ran from the room before he could touch her again. As soon as the door closed behind her, she disappeared as if she had never walked the earth.

When Midnight Comes

is available exclusively by download from www.lorihandeland.com

Look for a new chapter each month beginning in August 2006.

When Midnight Comes a novella © Lori Handeland, all rights reserved

originally published in ‘Trick or Treat‘ a Love Spell Halloween Anthology, 1997

Chapter Six

Jack stood in the middle of the room staring at the closed door. With the loss of her presence the air took on a damp chill that made him shiver and reach absently for his discarded shirt. He shoved his arms into the sleeves as he crossed the room in three long strides and yanked open the door.

“Lucia—“ Jack stopped and stared. Gone, though he could still smell her scent, earth and wildflowers, upon the air. He stepped into the hall but saw no sign of her. How had she left so quickly?

Jack dressed and hurried through the silver-tinged streets, alert to any shrouded movements from the alleyways. He did not need to be murdered twice. But he seemed to lead as charmed a life this night as he’d led a doomed one on the last.

Through the ghetto of his youth Jack ran, past the children who slept in the doorways, through the Irish section and many others until he reached the Italian part of town. Just as he gained the street where St. Mary’s stood, the cathedral clock began to toll midnight.

He burst through the cemetery gate as the clock struck a second time. He could see the lantern in the midst of the headstones, still burning, and he caught his breath. He would live, it seemed.

Jack picked his way through the tombstones, which shone bright white in the light of the silver moon. Just as he reached the lantern, an icy breeze swept the graveyard, tossing his hair into his eyes, then out again in time for him to see the glow flicker and threaten to die.

“No!” he shouted, as if the flame could hear him, and fell to his knees to shade the fire from the wind.

Still the flame sputtered. A result of the storm or a message from above? The clock continued to toll—five, six.

Through his panic a sense of calm penetrated as he remembered Lucia’s words. She would always be with him, even when he could not see her. He took a deep breath and did as she’d bid him. He looked around—and he saw.

In front of his face two gravestones emerged from the earth—one large, one small. He squinted against the darkness, and the flickering shadows of the lantern threw their dying light upon the names inscribed there.

Lucia Casale. Angelia Giovanna Casale.

Jack stared, blinked, swallowed. The date beneath Lucia’s name was eight months after she had left him ten years ago. The date beneath the name he did not know was the same. Only one date on the tiny tombstone—date of birth and date of death.

Jack had learned enough Italian during the years he’d lived with Lucia to interpret the name. Angelia meant angel. Giovanna meant John—his real name, though he had always gone by the nickname Jack. The child was his, and she was dead, just as Lucia was dead.

But how? He had made love to her not more than an hour ago. She had been a woman—warm, responsive, breathing. Alive as he was. The thought made Jack pause and consider. He had been murdered last eve, died and gone to Hell, then Heaven. Was he alive? Or somewhere in between? And if he could exist on this earth in such a state, then Lucia could do the same.

Jack dropped his hands from the lantern, no longer caring if the flame went out. All those years he had spent trying to make money, to show his father he would amount to something, that he was different from the old man in every way, but he was the same, despite all his struggles. He had killed the woman he loved with his lust.

He couldn’t even say he was the same as his father; he was worse. For his da had never left his mother. Pat had been there when she died. Because of Jack’s pride and his ambition and his hell-bent selfishness, Lucia had died alone along with their child.

Jack lifted his head and stared at the still flickering lamp. What was the blasted thing trying to tell him?

The ninth strike of the clock sounded. Panic flared.

“All right,” he shouted. “Take me, then. I’ll gladly go t’ Hell if ye let her live.”

Psst. Psst.

The flame sputtered as if in anger. The clock struck ten.

“What? What haven’t I done? What haven’t I learned? I’ll do anything. Nothing matters but her.”

The wind came again, harder than before, but this time Jack had no care for the flame. A strange rattle came from Lucia’s grave. He crawled toward the sound and saw something hanging over the edge of the stone.

Her rosary. He dived for the beads as if they were a lifeline. His fingers closed around them, and he searched for the words from his childhood. But he had denied them for so long, they denied him now. So instead of the litany, he spoke from his breaking heart.

“Dear God, she did not deserve t’ die. I did. I do. I was ever selfish, ambitious, prideful, stubborn, and despite the chance ye tried t’ give me, I did not learn a thing. The money, the position means nothing without her. Take it, take me. Do with me what ye will. I do not deserve a second chance, she does. I beg of ye. Please. Please. Please.”

The final three words he spoke in tandem with the final strikes of the clock. Storm clouds drifted over the moon, and midnight descended upon him.

He could not raise his head for fear of what he’d see. So he knelt there on Lucia’s grave, fingering her rosary, whispering her name as tears soaked his face.

The wind blew again, this time not cold but warm, scented with flowers birthed in sun-warmed earth. He looked up and there she was. Beautiful, ethereal. A ghost, or an angel.

“What did you learn, Jack?”

He glanced at the lantern where a tiny flame burned against the darkest of night. Jack thought back on all he’d seen and all she’d said that day, trying to understand what he had been unable to understand all his life. He no longer lied or cheated or stole. He had admitted loving her; he had thrown his wealth and power to the winds, yet still it wasn’t enough. Then he remembered something Lucia had said—that it wasn’t the lying or the cheating as much as not caring about what happened to those he’d wronged. He might no longer be a thief in deed, but he was a thief at heart.

He returned his gaze to Lucia, who waited, hope alight upon her face. “I have to change myself. I cannot go back to the same life I’ve lived. I have to start again. I have to look at my decisions and make them based on what is best for everyone and not just me. To take my second chance and use it in the same way I did my first is wasting my life.”

She smiled. “Yes.”

He hurried on, afraid she would fade before he said all he needed to say. “But I don’t want my second chance. I want to be with you. And…” He glanced at the tiny headstone and his eyes burned. “And her. Why didn’t you come to me when you learned of the child?”

“And make your nightmare come true? I could not do that to you, Jack. I loved you too much.”

“I let you go so a child would not happen.” He shook his head at the irony of it all.

“A child is something we do not control.”

His groan was heavy with despair, frustration, and pain. “I’m sorry. I was stupid and stubborn, and you paid for my mistakes. If I could do it over again, I’d change everything.”

“How would you change it?”

“I would not change making love to you, Lucia. As I said, that memory is worth a thousand nights with my father. But I would marry you, immediately, and raise our girl away from here. I would see where true riches lie, in the love of the heart, the wealth of the soul, and the memories we make together. You and me and our children would be all I would ever need.”

Incredibly, she laughed, a bright, happy sound in direct contrast to the darkness and sadness of the place that surrounded them. Suddenly she knelt next to him on her own grave, no longer ethereal but solid and warm and alive. She threw herself into his arms and held him to her.

“I hope you do not live to regret your vow, Jack Keegan. Because you have been give your second chance.”

He turned his head to look at the flame, though he kept his arms around her, frightened she would disappear if he let her go for even an instant. But the sight of the lantern, burning high and bright and full, caused his fears to recede. He glanced back at

her with a frown.

“What about you?”

“I existed in purgatory for nine years, Jack. My wrong was loving you too much. Forgiving you everything. Even when I died along with our own daughter, I did not blame you, I blamed God. And you, who did not know I had died, could not pray for my soul, even if you would have. But tonight you did, and you set me free.”

Jack stood and helped her to her feet. He put his arm about her and held her close to his side. Then he turned to look at the graves, but they were gone, the grass at their feet unmarred by death and its symbols.

“What happened?”

“You said if you could change things you would. You would marry me, immediately, and take me away from here.”

“Aye, and I will.”

She bent to pick up the lantern and held it aloft. The now merry glow lighted her face, and Jack’s heart tightened with love and the promise of their future. “Then let’s be about the rest of our lives.”

He hesitated. “What about the child?”

“The wonderful thing about miracles is how miraculous they are.” She took his hand and placed his palm to her stomach. Her smile lit her face brighter than the lantern’s light, and the sadness that had always lurked in her eyes had been replaced by delight and wonder. “She is right here, awaiting her second chance.”

Joy spread through Jack, warming the chill that lingered from the despair and the fear and the night. He looked down into her face and knew he had at last found all the wealth the world had to offer. Lowering his head, he kissed her, his hand protecting the miracle returned to them.

When the kiss ended, he looked into her eyes. “I never want to spend another day apart from you.”

The corners of Lucia’s lips turned upward in a smile full of sensual promise. “What about the nights?”

“I swear when every midnight comes, I’ll be in your arms from now until the end of time.”

The End

When Midnight Comes

is available exclusively by download from www.lorihandeland.com

A new chapter was made available each month from August 2006 through January 2007— this is the final installment.