“The big stretch limousine pulled out of the porte cochere, and I started to cry like a little boy.

“ ‘You just don’t understand,’ I said. ‘She saw Goblin. And I’m in love with her. She’s the most radiant gemstone of a creature that I’ve ever seen.’ ”

CHAPTER 22

22

“THAT NIGHT I connected with Nash as I have connected with few people in my life, and we forged a bond which lasted for my mortal lifetime and beyond it. He sat up with me for hours, comforting me as I poured out my soul, as I agonized over my fatal glimpse of Mona Mayfair.

“I made him privy to every nuance of the panic I’d been experiencing since Lynelle died, and I even dared to tell him in profound words and circuitous sentences of how I feared the recent shifts of emotional temperature in Goblin.

“Of course I told him about the stranger, the stranger in whom no one believed, apparently, and that I expected in short order to be accused of having actually written myself the stranger’s letter to me.

“I positively raved about Lynelle’s loss. I could do no less when I thought of it.

“Nash’s deep voice, his strong arm around my shoulders, his gentle hand on my knee, it was beyond comforting. And there was something about him that was so proper yet relaxed, so inherently gentlemanly yet natural, that I felt I could trust him with my whole soul—even with the erotic adventures I’d had with my beloved Goblin and my terrifying Rebecca. I even told him about my sleeping with Jasmine.

“What did Nash really believe? Did he think I was insane? I didn’t know. I only knew that he was being very honest with me in every word that he spoke and in every gesture. I knew that he respected me, and this respect counted for everything.

“I knew that he felt compassion for me just because I was young, yet he took me seriously, and he said time and again as the night wore on that he understood and remembered what it had been like for him at my age.

“We started our marathon conversation in the front parlor, thankfully deserted early by our few guests, and we ended at the kitchen table, drinking coffee like fuel, though I kept lacing mine with luscious amounts of cream and sugar.

“Only when Big Ramona ran us out did we walk down to the old cemetery, and I told him all about the spirits I’d seen. I told him the things I wanted to tell Mona.

“We were under the big oak when the dawn came with its soft silent and shimmering light, and it was there that I told him I would always love him.