ONE
Florence, Italy
July 2016
Jack Knight-Snow, Lord Knight
The facts are straightforward.
I am a ghost.
Loss defines me.
(Though other terms also come to mind—lost, losing, loser—words that are kissing cousins to loss.)
As a ghost, I have lost everything.
Not only my physical body . . . my ability to touch and feel and smell and taste. Not just the family and friends who died generations ago. Not simply my money and my estates.
I have lost my very name.
I was born John Alexander Frederick Knight-Snow when George III was King of England. In 1812, I inherited my father’s title, becoming the sixth Baron Knight.
For the first twenty-nine years of my existence, I was Someone Important. I sat in the House of Lords. I debated parliamentary bills and wrote laws. I had the care of thousands of people on my shoulders.
I mattered.
Now, I am just . . . Jack.
Jack the Ghost.
Beyond these basic facts, I know one more truth—
A ghost is an echo.
A clinging memory of what once was.
Currently, I have no relevance. My existence has no meaning.
Shakespeare once said: “We are such stuff as dreams are made on, and our little life is rounded with a sleep.”
I am a never ending dream.
I am worse than a nobody.
I am a nothing.
Ironically, this sense of nothingness creates restlessness. Sitting still, not doing anything . . . it is a slow spreading poison.
I am decidedly not a spirit at rest. I grasp for any sense of import, a goal that would give my life—half-formed and half-lived as it is—meaning.
To that end, this particular afternoon, I pushed myself into the wall between the stairwell and outside entrance to the palazzo where I ‘lived’ in central Florence.
The density of the hard stone slid through me. It wasn’t uncomfortable. There was no real sensation, I supposed. Just darkness and the knowledge that I was in a wall, which was instinctively unnerving and slightly panic-inducing. But hiding in the wall was a necessity. How else was I to covertly observe the man and woman on the other side?
“I told you, Gianni, I’m so done with this. You were texting your ex during lunch.” Chiara’s staccato Italian carried through the dark of the stone wall, muffled but clear.
Watching over Chiara D’Angelo had become my life’s purpose. I was her self-appointed guardian angel of sorts.
Chiara was my house mate, teacher of all things modern and Kate to my Petruchio. Though I hadn’t decided if she and I were engaged in a Shakespearean comedy or tragedy. Time would tell.
I inched closer to the outside edge of the stone wall, all the while diligently ignoring the stern Regency-gentleman voice in my head clamoring that lords did not hide in walls to spy on unmarried women.
“Woman! Stop being so paranoid. She was just asking a question about my mom.” That voice belonged to Gianni, Chiara’s latest ‘manwhore fiasco’—her descriptor, not mine.
I would describe Gianni as a rakehell of the first order with pockets to let, but that was my inner nineteenth century British nobleman speaking.
Chiara snorted. Keys jangled.
That same restlessness driving me, I moved up the wall, making sure I was well above their heads. I angled my forehead and pushed my right eye out of the stone so I could see. In my short tenure as a ghost, I had realized that people rarely glanced upward, allowing me to hide in plain sight.
I looked down on the scene.
The main door into the palazzo rested inside an arched corridor which ran the breadth of the building from the street to the courtyard behind.
Chiara stood with her back to the door, keys loose in her hands. I could only see the top of her sleek, dark hair and the tapping of one red, stylishly-clad foot.
A man leaned over her. A shockingly handsome man with copious amounts of precisely coiffed hair. Outward perfection was Gianni’s one and only selling point. Why a perceptive, intelligent woman like Chiara bought it, I would never understand.
“Please, Gianni, I’m hardly that stupid,” Chiara scoffed. “You were asking her what she was doing later on.”
“What? Not even. Again, you’re being paranoid, Chiara.” He trilled her name in Italian staccato, rolling the ‘r’ until it almost sounded like a ‘d’— Kee-AHR-uh.
“Uh, hello? No, I’m not. I checked when you went to the bathroom.”
Gianni’s head reared up, brows frowning. “You what?! You looked at my phone?”
“Of course I checked your phone.” Chiara threw up her hands. “You left it on the table. It was like you wanted me to look. Classic subliminal messaging.”
“That’s a total invasion of my privacy!”
“Not if you leave your phone lying around it’s not!”
“You’re crazy, woman. Like . . . seriously messed.”
In Gianni’s defense, Chiara was a wee bit nutty. Generally her personality quirks fell into the cute and harmless category, but every now and again, they overspilled the banks and flowed into the Fields of Psychosis.
“Don’t you even start with me, Gianni. Looking at your phone was simply payback,” she snapped. “I know you were the one who took that hundred euros from my purse.”
Gianni jerked as if slapped. An ugly look washed across his attractive face.
“You must have dropped it somewhere,” he said. “I keep telling you it wasn’t me.”
It absolutely was him. I had witnessed it.
I took my guardian angel role seriously.
“First, you’re spying on my texts, and now you’re accusing me of taking your money. Why you gotta have such trust issues?” Gianni huffed out a breath, threading his fingers into his hair, tilting his head upward.
We locked eyes, Gianni and I—his two to my one.
Gianni flinched backward with a loud yelp.
Blast.
I instantly pulled myself back through the wall and into the stairwell. Trust Gianni to break with convention and look up.
“An eye! There was an eye in the wall!” Gianni screeched like a little girl, his voice carrying through the shut door.
A shuffling sound.
“Seriously? There’s nothing there.”
“I swear! It was right there!”
“Whatever, Gianni. Walls don’t have eyes. Stop being so dramatic.” Chiara’s tone was all irritation.
“It was there! I’m telling you!”
Keys jingled in the lock.
“I’m not up for dealing with this. Have fun with your ex. Ciao, Gianni.”
The door swung open. I pressed myself into the space behind it, not wanting the wood to pass through me.
“Wait!” Gianni yelled. “Chiara—”
Chiara slammed the door shut. Gianni continued to call her name, pounding on the door.
She whirled and stared up at me, that toe tapping again. As her shoes were a glossy cherry red and her heels a solid four inches high, the toe tapping was hard to miss.
It matched the restless, jittery energy banding my chest.
Chiara shook her head, the motion more resigned than angry. Resigned was not a common emotion for her. She tended to prefer frustration, irritation and annoyance where I was concerned.
Alarm bells sounded in my mind.
She jabbed a finger at me, pointed it at herself and then nodded toward the ceiling.
You. Me. Upstairs. Now.
Chiara was a skilled conversationalist. And clearly not amused (again) by my self-appointed, guardian angel-ship.
I had a feeling I was in for a lengthy, not altogether unjustified scold.
She turned and went up the stairs, shoes clicking on the stone. I trudged along behind her—silently, of course—staring at her spiky heels all the way. Even though I had no mass as a ghost, I still had to propel myself forward or upwards through space.
I also wasn’t worried about anyone in the apartment building seeing me. The entire palazzo belonged to the D’Angelo family—Chiara, her triplet older brothers, her mother and grandmother—and they all knew me and my story. This palazzo was a place of refuge.
Chiara’s heels flashed as we passed the first floor apartment door where her brother, Dante, and his wife, Claire, lived. Past the second floor apartment where Chiara’s grandmother, Nonna, and another brother, Branwell, lived. Further upward to the third floor apartment where Chiara lived with her mother, Judith. Her third brother, Tennyson, resided away from them all on the family estate—Villa Maledetti—located in the Tuscan countryside north of Volterra.
Chiara flung open her apartment door. Notably, however, she did not slam it in my face. Slamming things was a typical Chiara reaction to vexation and exasperation—two more emotions I seemed to regularly elicit from her.
But today, Chiara opened the door and then stood politely to one side, motioning me across the threshold with a dramatic sweep of her arm.
Yes. I was definitely in hot water.
Have I mentioned that Chiara is Italian?
Granted her mother is American and Chiara had spent much of her childhood in the United States, but she had sidestepped that part of her heritage and run one hundred percent to the Italian side of the family.
Petite and short with dark eyes and hair, Chiara was a blur of constant motion. She spoke as much with her hands as her mouth. She loved her family and friends with every last molecule in her body and never missed a chance to involve herself in others’ affairs—characteristics which surely drove her employment as a research specialist and part-time private investigator.
Unfortunately, these same characteristics came with the side effect of making her somewhat obnoxious and controlling in romantic relationships.
I shot Chiara my brightest smile and walked past her into the apartment. The room opened immediately into a single expansive space that encompassed a kitchen, dining room and sitting area. A large, marble-topped island separated the kitchen from a dining table. Beyond the table, a sitting area of couches and tufted chairs flanked an enormous flat screen on the wall.
As usual, I sensed no change between the stairwell and the apartment. No smells, no difference in temperature. Nothing.
The lack of change unnerved me. After only three weeks in my current state, I struggled to adjust to being a ghost.
I missed physical sensation with a horrific ache. Taste, touch and smell were all denied me. Those seemed like small things—and perhaps taste and smell are not shattering things to lose—but touch?
The complete lack of physical touch was driving me mad. As human beings, we are meant to be touched, hugged, held. Floating in a world without any physical stimuli terrified me.
Would I ever adjust to the loss of sensation? And did I want to lose that last bit of humanity?
Chiara shut the door behind me before tossing her keys onto the marble counter top. She moved around it while stepping out of her heels (reducing her height from average to pocket-sized) and collapsed onto an overstuffed couch, her long hair tumbling around her shoulders. Normally, her movements would be dramatic. But today, they were small. Instead of sprawling on the couch, she sat at the edge, shoulders hunched inward. Her body language clearly closed and resigned.
“This has to stop, Jack.” American twang infused her English. “You have to quit spying on me. It’s a terrible invasion of my privacy.”
Her voice was soft. No anger. Just hurt and tired.
Her tone spiked my anxiety. Chiara subdued was an aberration of nature.
Besides, how could she assume I was the only problem here? I crossed the room and sat down in a velvet-covered club chair opposite her.
“You have heard the saying about the pot and the kettle and black, have you not?” I gestured toward the stairwell and her recent conversation with Gianni.
“Please don’t throw this back at me.” She sat upright with a huff, hands exploding around her as she talked.
That was more the Chiara I knew. Whew.
“My looking at Gianni’s phone isn’t the same thing at all,” she continued.
I simply raised an eyebrow.
She glowered, dark eyebrows drawing down over her large brown eyes. It should have been unattractive, but I doubted any expression would render Chiara’s pixie-pretty face unattractive.
“By all means, explain the difference.” I reclined back in the chair and folded my arms across my chest, stretching my neck to the side. It was an instinctual move. It wasn’t as if I had neck muscles to get stiff, but I was desperate to release some of this fidgety restlessness.
“No.” She deflated again, rubbing a finger between her eyes. “You don’t get to play that game.”
“I’m not playing any game.”
“Yes, you are. You’re playing the Chiara Is a Hypocrite game.”
She had a point.
“You are being a hypocrite. There’s no game about it.” I said. “You’re just annoyed that I’m right.” I may have also smirked.
She sighed, nostrils flaring.
Chiara D’Angelo hated losing. Almost as much as she hated cleaning and talking quietly. Competitive to the core was Chiara.
“You shouldn’t be spying on me, Jack. Even lofty British lords know that.”
Touché
I waited for her to follow up her observation with some scathing quip. Instead, she simply sat back, body melting into the couch.
Blast. Something was definitely afoot. “Chiara, could you please explain what is wrong?”
She sighed while locking eyes with me. “I don’t think this is working out as we had hoped.” She waved a hand back and forth between us, her nose crinkling into a cute squinch.
“Pardon? What do you mean, ‘not working out’?” I leaned forward with my elbows on the armrests of the chair, knee bouncing, chest inexplicably tight. “We are researching and trying to solve the riddle of my current state of existence. Things only ‘work out’ once we find an answer.”
My ghost-like state was odd, even among ghosts, I supposed.
The story of how I became a ghost went something like this—
Boy meets girl. Boy falls for girl.
Girl betrays boy and, in a moment of crazed anguish, boy gets sucked into a shadow world where he languishes for two hundred years before being partially brought back into the world of the living via an ancient, cursed object—
Or something like that.
So maybe Chiara wasn’t the only one with emotional neuroses when dealing with the opposite sex.
As I became a ghost without actually dying, we assumed there might be a way to bring my body fully into this world. Or, at the very least, push me entirely into the next.
Some days I wasn’t sure which option I preferred.
I was staying with Chiara because she was the professional researcher in the family and had agreed to help find a solution.
“Sure we’re researching your situation,” Chiara began, “but lately, it seems like you’re more preoccupied with my personal life than solving your own problems. You hover and constantly question my decisions. It’s not healthy for either of us.”
I lowered my eyebrows at her.
“And I refuse to allow your Lord Knight stare to intimidate me,” Chiara continued.
“Pardon?”
“You know, that deep, scowly look that is half inbred snootiness and half constipation.”
She mimed said look by forcing her eyebrows into a uni-brow and puckering her lips. She looked like an angry hedgehog. It was adorable and not the least bit intimidating.
“A lady should not speak of bodily functions,” I intoned, mostly because I felt like being a twit.
“Since when am I a lady?” Chiara scoffed.
“You are the daughter and sister of an earl. In British peerage terms, that would make you Lady Chiara.” I shook my head, continuing to indulge in whatever constituted my Lord Knight stare.
That agitated fluttering constricted my chest. I channeled the energy into my knee, bouncing it up and down.
A beat of silence.
Chiara glared at me, clearly not amused.
Honestly. Sometimes I wished my ghost-like state allowed me to develop a headache. Or at least imbibe a solid five fingers of excellent scotch.
“Why do you continue to step out with ill-bred rake shames?” I asked.
“Jack.” A warning. “This sort of question is exactly what I’m talking about.”
I grumbled. “Even you admit that the men you associate with are, by and large, failures of the male species. There is something wrong with this.”
“You’ve been watching too much Dr. Phil.”
“That is beside the point.”
I had been watching an absurd amount of television. It was instructional and, at times, entertaining. It was also the only mind-numbing activity currently available, as brandy, sleep and beating my head against a stone wall were all denied me.
She shook her head, lips frozen into a tight line.
She had a glorious smile, Chiara did. I devoted absurd amounts of time to trying to coax one out of her.
I also spent hours wondering if her skin was as petal-soft as it looked. If her petite body would fit against mine as perfectly as it seemed. If she would smell like springtime and fresh air. If her heartbeat would synchronize with mine into one.
Have I neglected to mention that I was madly in love with Chiara, neurotic issues and all?
Calf-eyed. Moonstruck. Head-over-heels.
And clearly a bit of an ass when it came to showing it. But I would sooner cut off an arm than let her know how I felt.
If I could cut off an arm. Ghost problems.
“My questions aren’t the problem. You just don’t like that I call you out for your neurotic behavior,” I said.
“ My neurotic behavior? Says the man who can’t stop staring at me because I look like Grauntie Sofia.”
A jolt shook me at the mention of Sofia’s name.
Sofia D’Angelo.
Chiara’s great-great-whatever aunt—Grauntie Sofia, for short.
For the record, Chiara didn’t just resemble Sofia. She was Sofia’s twin. A frighteningly uncanny physical similarity. And, to be honest, a similar propensity toward somewhat irrational conduct.
But beyond that, the women diverged. Chiara was warm and sunny to Sofia’s cool and aloof. Chiara laughed and teased and loved indiscriminately. Sofia had not.
Sofia abandoned me at the altar on our wedding day in 1818. Technically, that day was nearly two hundred years in the past. However, to me, Sofia’s cruel behavior had happened mere months ago.
Sofia’s words that morning rang in my memory— You are not the man of my heart.
The restlessness in my chest increased. Was this jittery sensation the only physical way my phantom body could feel loss and grief and pain?
As one might expect, I had reacted . . . badly . . . to Sofia’s rejection at the time. I thoroughly lost my temper, wrecking first the chapel where our nuptials were to be held and later my townhouse. In the process, I attempted to destroy an ancient artifact I considered the source of my unlucky sorrows.
That unfortunate choice caused me to be sucked into a shadow world. A place of in-between. I had not really been fully conscious for most of my sojourn in the shadow world, time skimming past me in largely ignored chunks.
Chiara’s older brothers—the D’Angelo triplets, Dante, Branwell and Tennyson—had been my saviors, particularly Branwell. Their gifts of Second Sight plucked me from the shadow world and gave me my current existence, half-formed as it was.
“I think you’re still trying to deal with Sofia’s betrayal,” Chiara began.
I snorted and looked away. That was an understatement of Herculean proportions.
“I don’t know that being around me is helping you,” she continued. “It most certainly is distracting me from researching your situation, which I think we all agree is important. I wonder if it wouldn’t be good for you to spend some time elsewhere for a while.”
“Pardon?” Panic swept me with brutal force.
She couldn’t do this. She couldn’t send me away.
“You need to heal and move on from Sofia. But with me here, looking so much like her . . .” Chiara stared ahead for a second and then swung her eyes back to mine. “For the record, Jack. I am not Sofia.” Her voice was firm.
I laughed. It was a bitter, angry sound. “I am well aware that you are not Sofia, Chiara.”
Her eyebrows shot up to her hairline, every line of her expressing disbelief. But I had spoken truth.
Yes, Sofia’s betrayal still raged within me. But I saw Chiara clearly. She was light and hope.
Me? I was utterly adrift. A ship-wrecked sailor who knew his homeland was forever lost.
A tightness clutched the back of my throat. It wasn’t tears—I was incapable of crying—but rather a clenching sort of emotion. A painful fracturing.
Light and hope were two things I desperately clung to at this point. Did Chiara not see how badly I needed her?
Anger flooded in, washing over the pain of losing Sofia. I lashed out, as I was unfortunately prone to do when upset.
“What about you?” I asked.
“What about me?” Suspicion clouded her beautiful face.
“When will you acknowledge that your somewhat erratic behaviors contribute to your string of unsuccessful courtships?”
“Excuse me?”
“You only step out with men who are emotionally immature and are unlikely to want a more permanent relationship.”
“That . . .” She spluttered, floundering. “Th-that is not true.”
It was absolutely true.
She had started this pissing match between us. I had no intention of backing down.
“Do you truly prefer men who treat you poorly?” I asked. “Or is it that your own personal idiosyncrasies repulse more emotionally stable gentlemen? And you say I have issues.”
Ah. If looks could kill . . .
“I am done with this conversation. This has nothing to do with researching a solution to your ghostliness. My personal life is irrelevant.” She pushed off the couch, heading for the hallway and her bedroom. “I still stand by what I said. I think some space would be good for both of us. I’m trying to help, Jack, not get a lecture.”
“No. You don’t get to dodge or run away from this, Chiara. What has you in such a panic? Can’t handle the thought of building a truly adult relationship?”
She whirled on me. “I am not panicking.”
“Rapid breathing. Accelerated heart rate. Dilated pupils. You present every sign of panic. Why do you avoid emotional intimacy?”
“We’ve known each other for three weeks, Jack! You’re hardly an expert on my emotions. Again, my personal life is none of your business.”
“Hah! You don’t deny it.”
“I’m done with this conversation, Jack. We can talk about it when we both cool down.” She slammed her bedroom door.
As if that could stop me.
“Don’t even think about it.” She popped her head out. “You know the rules.”
She tapped the piece of paper tacked to her door. It featured a Ghostbusters logo with the words: No ghosts allowed in personal spaces. She glared at me and slammed her door shut again.
The papers had appeared after I had angrily chased Chiara into her bedroom during an argument the week before. In my defense, it was an honest mistake. I knew a gentleman should never wander into a lady’s bedroom, but I was still adjusting to my altered state of corporeality.
I stood before her door, clenching and unclenching my fists. That tightness in my chest flared, constricting my movements.
I had chased her away. Again. Why did I keep arguing with her? Why did I lash out like this?
Even as I voiced the question, I knew the answer.
Not long ago, I was a lord. I was a Someone.
I inhabited a world that made sense to me. I had a definite past and a clear, bright future. Ironically, the horror of my current situation muted the pain of Sofia’s betrayal. At least if I were still living in 1818, I would have my title and wealth and the ability to woo another woman like Sofia.
But now?
Gone.
Everything. Everyone.
My mother. Brother. Sisters. All my relatives. Friends. My entire world, vanished in a blink.
Lost.
I stood bereft with a past no one understood and an endless future of stasis. No change. Not even a whisper of physical sensation.
I inhabited a liminal space—a slice of reality trapped between life and death.
Vastly alone.
The echo that no one hears.
Chiara was the lifeline I clutched. Without her . . .
I swallowed.
Without her, I had nothing.