nursing home in Cambridge for ten years, and hadn’t spoken at all for the last year. That night I was here in Washington to speak with, um, a member of that administration, and I was sound asleep in my hotel room. I woke suddenly with the sense that someone was bending over me . . . and she was. She was wearing a pale blue nightgown and robe I remember from when I was small, and she smelled of White Shoulders. My father gave her White Shoulders every year at Christmas, and she wore the scent every day until he died. Never again after that. Her hair was brown and curly. She’d worn glasses for the last forty years of her life. They were gone. So were all the other accoutrements of aging . . . she tucked me in,” he finished simply. “Gave me a kiss and smiled, then she was gone. I looked around and saw the clock. It changed to 12:06 at that moment.”
“Wow.”
“The scent of White Shoulders lingered for several minutes.”
“That’s incredible. It must have been . . .” Lily shook her head, unable to say what the experience had been like, other than powerful. “Did she physically tuck you in? Actually move the covers, I mean. Did you feel the kiss?”
“No and no. Her actions did not affect the physical world.”
“But you smelled her favorite scent.” Scent was physical, but scent memories could be triggered in the brain, so that didn’t prove that she’d been physically present. “You mentioned the color of her hair and her nightgown. Did she look solid?”
“Almost.” His voice turned dreamy. “She was unusually vivid, but not quite solid, no. I knew she was a ghost right away.”
“And you’re certain about the times.”
“As I said, I saw the clock click over. As soon as she vanished, I called the nursing home and insisted that they check on her. They discovered her in respiratory distress, but still alive by all the measures we use to determine life. Medical personnel were in attendance from that point on. At 12:49, heartbeat and respiration ceased.”
“A ghost that appears before death. I’ve never heard of that.” She considered it. “Is such a visitor really a ghost? A woman I know—a highly Gifted medium—would probably say it depends on how we define ghost.”
“Exactly.” He broke into a smile like the merry gamin he must have been back when a woman in a pale blue nightgown and robe tucked him in routinely. “It started me on my little hobby of collecting ghost stories. At first I looked for those like mine—and I found a few—but I grew interested in the question of how and why some people without a mediumistic Gift see ghosts. You’re wearing agate.”
She blinked. “I am?”
“Your necklace. The white stones are agates. Were you wearing it when you saw your ghost?”
“It’s not my ghost.” Lily was already sick of that phrase. “And no, I wasn’t.”
“You donned it to protect you from the ghost?”
“I donned it because Rule gave it to me. This evening. Just before we came here.”
He chuckled. “Perhaps I’m confusing causality with coincidence. White agate is said to enhance dreams and concentration. Because of its connection to the crown chakra, some consider it a way of enhancing spiritual communication, while others wear it for protection from malign or confused spiritual influences. Ghosts, in other words.”
“Oh. Well, unless Rule has suddenly developed a precog Gift to rival Ruben’s, me wearing agate tonight was a coincidence. You mentioned a theory.”
“Also intrusive personal questions. This one, however, is not too intrusive. Tell me about the ghost you saw.”
Lily described it briefly. “. . . so this wasn’t like your experience. Misty form, no color, just a shape, and as far as I know, I’ve got no personal connection to the deceased.”
“Hmm. Have you ever died?”
“I . . .” For several heartbeats Lily didn’t know what to say. The story behind “yes” was both complicated and not for public consumption, since it involved the opening of a hellgate. “That’s not a question I get asked every day. I’m going to say yes, but I can’t give any details.”
“Excellent.” He beamed. “The stories of ghost sightings by non-mediums that I’ve collected fall into three categories. In one, there’s an intimate connection between the corporeal person and the ghost. In the second, the ghost itself appears to be responsible, having acquired the ability to manifest itself visually. For whatever reason,” he added, “English haunts seem to be especially adept