Free A Coming Evil by Vivian Vande Velde Page B

leave, or I'll count the time you took to get the brush."
    "Hmph!" Cecile said.
    Lisette had to assume that signified agreement. She closed the kitchen door behind her quietly so as not to rouse Aunt Josephine. As she closed the porch door, a gray and white paw reached out through the wooden steps, just barely missing her leg with outstretched claws.
    "See if you get fed today," Lisette told the cat, then dashed across the lawn and up the hill.
    "Gerard! Gerard!" she cried. It had started raining once again. Did ghosts come out in the rain? It seemed a ridiculous question, but what did she know of ghosts?
    "Lisette," Gerard said as clearly as though there had never been a problem with hearing him. He stepped out from among the trees and put his hands out as though to take hers; but then he remembered in time. Looking at her quizzically, he said, "Thou art wet."
    "It
is
raining," she pointed out.
    But perhaps it wasn't as obvious as she had thought, for he looked around, then said, "Oh."
    In the gloomy light he wasn't nearly as transparent as he'd seemed that first day. But she could see well enough to tell that the rain went right through him. Then again, that was normal. As normal as things were around him.
    "Gerard," she said, "I have to talk to you, and I only have a few minutes." Were minutes too advanced a concept for someone from the fourteenth century?
His expression was tense and wary, but that may have been due to the way she was acting, which she knew was less than calm and reasonable. Where should she begin? Did he know that he was a ghost? Should she tell him, or would that somehow change things irrevocably—cause him to disappear or, worse yet, start haunting in earnest? She couldn't believe that. She remembered his tendency to make the sign of the cross when startled or worried, and how Aunt Josephine had described him as looking sweet and lost, and how he'd been around Maurice for nearly a quarter century without ever doing anything to make Maurice frightened of him. He'd tried to keep her from falling down the hill—or rather, as he'd seen it, to keep the hill from swallowing her up. That wasn't someone to be afraid of.
    "Yes?" he prompted, waiting for her questions.
    "How..." she asked, "do you see me? I mean—"
    "Thou—you are a ghost," he told her.
    Well, at least she knew the word didn't have any magical effects.
    He looked away, hugging himself as if for warmth. "At least," his voice had dropped to almost a whisper, "that is what I thought at first." His brown eyes met hers again. "But you aren't, art thou?
You,
" he corrected himself impatiently.
    She shook her head.
    "I have seen ghosts before," he told her, "and at the start you were just as they were. But the more
often I see thee, the more substance you have. And now..."
    "Yes?" she asked, halfway between whisper and exhalation.
    "My world is fading. And it is not only you that I can see, but..." he paused and gestured helplessly. "Ghost trees? Ghost squirrels?" He asked it as though she knew more than he did. "And though I know it is not raining, I can see the rain, not just because thy face and clothing are wet, but ... as a shadow. Is there such a thing as ghost rain? The fading is worst when you are here with me, but even when you are not..."
    "You're aware of the passing of time?" Lisette asked. Somehow, she'd thought of him as existing only when she was looking at him. With a start, she realized he'd just told her that he'd thought the same about her.
    "Yes," he said slowly. "But sometimes time seems to be standing still, and other times it bounds forth in great leaps, as a deer that breaks cover and flees."
    "A day," she told him, "between each of my visits."
    He was surprised, she could tell, even if he didn't say anything. Instead he asked, "Do th—Do
you
feel ... the same sort of fading?"
    Lisette shook her head.
    "Well," Gerard said softly. "And do you remember dying?"
    Lisette's breath caught in her throat.
    Apparently that was