When he got it there, he was surprised to see Destiny get beneath it. "Morgan hold up the two wings, while I unhook and swing out the legs." She worked some kind of miracle down there, stood, and wiped her hands on her jeans. "You can let the table rest on the legs now. There you go. It's a gateleg table, now our dinner table. Two straight parlor chairs would work with it."

Morgan brought the chairs and set them in place. When he took a bite of her chicken cordon bleu and pan-roasted vegetables, he saw her in a new light. "This is better than restaurant food."

"I should hope so."

"But you acted like such a spoiled brat when I first met you."

"I did not. You disliked me on sight with no instigation from me."

"Maybe the snarky shirts you and your sisters wore had something to do with it. 'I'm a Witch with PMS. Any Questions? ' Plus, you'd just outed your triplet status and made us all feel pretty stupid for not figuring it out ourselves."

"King and Aiden didn't seem angry. I'm thinking the problem was you, not me."

Mentally, he slapped himself upside the head. It had been the triplet connection. Jealousy, plain and simple. He shook his head. "Maybe you're right. I'm not good with women."

Destiny choked on her tea. "Sweet stinging nettles, what did you say?"

"I did not say that out loud."

She put down her fork. "You know what, Morgan? I'm beginning to think that we don't know each other at all. Let me introduce myself. I'm Destiny Cartwright, the middle triplet. Abandoned at birth by our mother and raised by our alcoholic father, we are so not spoiled. If not for finding our half sister Vickie after we got thrown out of college for non-payment of tuition, we'd have ended up living in our van. But Vickie gave us a home and part ownership of the Immortal Classic."

"I like Vickie," Morgan said. "And now I respect her."

"Me, too. Anyway, I'm here to find my psychic mandate, my reason for being. My sisters have already found theirs. And frankly, I'm feeling a bit like the loser triplet, because Storm, the baby of the family, found her psychic goal before I did. Now, tell me about you."

"Morgan Jarvis, as you know. Your brother-in-law King's roommate senior year of high school. I'm an architect working on the castle and the windmill, and I'm planning on buying this place."

"My cup runneth over with knowledge," she said facetiously, picking up her fork. "So your life started when you became an architect?"

Morgan considered her question and nodded truthfully. "As a matter of fact, it did. Tell me about your walk. You seemed to be having a fascinating conversation with some imaginary friends?"

"I was walking with Horace. He told me some interesting things about the lighthouse. It's forty-six feet tall and holds secrets and treasures that nobody else knows about."

"I doubt that. I've explored every inch of the place."

"Okay, tell me about the cellar."

"It doesn't have a cellar."

"Wrong. Under the house is a maze of pilings. There's also an old cistern under the floor in the northeast corner. The maze leads to an escape hatch beneath the tower."

"Your source is suspect."

"You're jealous of a ghost."

"Ghosts don't exist, and I have my debunking equipment with me to prove it."

"Never mind. I can prove it." She got up from the table in the middle of her delicious dinner and went to the closet beneath the stairs. Morgan nearly had a heart attack.

"Here, I found it. Come see. A captain's chest, just like Horace said. It belonged to Nicodemus Paxton, who built Harmony and King's castle."

"That doesn't prove that your phantom lighthouse keeper exists," Morgan answered with relief. "Come and finish this nice dinner you made."

"Hey, this is weird," she said.

Morgan stood, ready to jump from his skin if she didn't finish her thought, but he didn't have to wait long.

She came into the kitchen carrying the hanger with the cassock on it, its stiff white collar stuffed into its pocket. "What do you suppose this is?" she asked. "It looks like something a priest would wear."

"Thanks for dinner," Morgan said, going out the kitchen door, unable to explain to Destiny what he was running from, and why, because he didn't quite know, himself.

"Are you some kind of priest?" she called after him.

He stopped. "No, damn it!" he shouted and started running.

Chapter Eleven.

DESTINY expected Morgan back before she finished the dishes, but he remained absent. She filled glass containers-beakers, cruets, jelly jars, and measuring cups made with swirls of color, of milk glass, or of opalescent glass-with the assortment of flowers and grasses she'd found. After distributing them to every room in the house, and setting her candles in old, unmatched candlesticks on every mantel, she wandered like a forlorn idiot, though her Samhain decorating cheered her somewhat.

She decided that she needed to occupy her mind, so she went to the room where she'd left the giant pickle jar of Chinese lanterns, maple sprigs, and marsh grasses, the room where books lined the walls. You could learn a lot about a man through his reading material, so she got nosy.

No doubt about it, Morgan's how-to books dominated his collection, five to one, and his fiction tastes varied widely, revealing hidden depths.

One stack of books, on a bottom shelf in a far corner, however, caught her eye simply because they'd been placed binding side in and shoved much farther back than the rest. She took them out, read their spines, and came face-to-face with a possible explanation for the priestly garb she'd found beneath the stairs.

This particular set of how-to books were about sex, mostly about how to keep a woman happy in bed by giving her multiple and long-lasting orgasms. Go, Morgan. The book about how a man should cultivate this skill through practice looked dog-eared and well-read. Hmm. A man who practiced his staying power. Destiny grinned while her body heated deliciously. She shivered.

In a clerical tome, which outnumbered his sex books-another clue-she searched for a picture of the priestly garb she'd found and finally identified the item. "Cassock: close-fitting, ankle-length garment worn by the clergy in the Roman Catholic church." The picture looked the same: black, long sleeves, buttons down the front. A stiff white band centered the thin, black, stand-up collar.

In Morgan's makeshift art studio, Destiny began to paint a picture of a male version of Meggie: Morgan wearing a cassock as a boy, a bit, but not much older than Meggie had been when she died.

How could she see Morgan wearing a cassock at such a young age, when she usually saw the future, not the past? She continued painting, hoping to see more of his past, of his and Meggie's pasts together, but those visions eluded her.

She heard a heavy step on the sloped plank path from the marsh toward the lighthouse-sloped, because the lighthouse sat on an oval stone base about sixty feet around and twelve feet deep, according to Horace, three-quarters on marshland, hence the plank, and one-quarter extending beyond the natural beach into the sea.

In case it was Morgan, Destiny left the painting in an empty drawer of an old bureau in the studio and scooted into the bedroom, hoping she would look like she'd been asleep for a while when he came up.

If he came up.

He poked around downstairs, and when she finally heard the creak of the stairs, she closed her eyes.

He came in and stopped next to her side of the bed. She heard him breathing. Difficult to keep your eyes closed and pretend to sleep when the person you were playing possum for stood watching you.

She swallowed the hitch in her breathing as he traced her silver chain down to the butterfly between her breasts, around its filigreed wings, and back up to her nape. The butterfly, her symbol for fate, destiny-for coming out of one's cocoon-seemed to have a strange effect on Morgan, as if he was shedding his inhibitions at this very moment.

When he stopped, she might have cried out, if she wasn't trying so hard to let him think she slept to allow him to be himself. He went to the foot of the bed, flipped the blanket off her feet-she peeked; she couldn't help it-and he stooped down to examine the butterfly tattoo on her ankle. He traced that, too, and she closed her eyes to let the wonder of his touch radiate through her.

When his hand traced higher, and higher still, keeping her breathing steady became a problem. His finger slid up along the side of her knee, rising toward- Shocked, she squeaked, and sat up. "Where were you going with that finger?"

"The lure of the unknown," he said. "I wanted to see how far you'd let me go. I know you just came to bed. I sat outside on one of the stone benches watching you paint until a short while ago. For a psychic, you sure are dense about being watched."

For a sexual being, he sure was dense about taking up the practice.

He'd been watching her. Maybe she got such a good vision of him, because he was as tuned into her as she was to him, though she wouldn't tell him so. He'd probably block her the way he blocked what he was supposed to remember, according to Meggie.

Destiny raised herself on an elbow. "I pretended to sleep because I didn't want to make you uncomfortable if you didn't want to talk. I was giving you an out."

"Thanks. I'll take the out. What does your bed shirt say?" He took his own shirt off.

Nice chest. She could usually see a part of it beneath the open shirts he liked to wear, but she liked seeing the whole thing. Touchable. "Blonde and Bitchin', my shirt says."

He lowered the blanket to her waist to double-check. "Not so long ago, I would have thought it should say Blonde and Bitchy, but I've revised my initial impression. And your panties? What do they say?"

"Why don't you just pull my blanket off entirely, and you can read my ass yourself?"

He took her up on her offer, and she rolled to her side to give him a peek. "Bite Me," he read. "Does that mean your ass is none of my business, or is it a delightful invitation for me to nibble on that fine portion of your anatomy?" He palmed her bottom and primed her at the same time.

"Bummer," she said. "I interpreted it as an insult, not an invitation."

He retrieved his hand and went to his side of the bed, so she could no longer see him. "Too bad," he said, dropping his jeans. She heard them hit the floor. Then his shoes landed, one by one, and he lay in the bed beside her, the walls of Jericho keeping her from seeing any visible evidence that he'd be inclined to accept an ass-nibbling invitation.

"Are you going to rhyme us another good night prayer?" he asked.

"Sniffling sneezeweed, have you come a long way. You're dense, though. Very dense."

"He sees more than I think

And wants more than he'll say.

I see more than I say

And want more than he'll give.

"When it comes to sex,

Tenderness beats skill.

Hands 'neath the curtain

Are a sign of goodwill."

Half a beat, and his hand met hers beneath the curtain. He held tight. "Do you mean what I think you do?" he asked.

"My spells are my prayers. You were right about that. And this one is open to interpretation. Some are not, but this one is."

"Thank you." A minute later, his breathing evened out in sleep.

He'd hardly slept the night before, but sweet sassafras tea, he'd left her wanting.

She didn't know what he'd thanked her for, the spell or her offer to give him sex lessons-in the event she correctly understood his need, and he caught her less-than-subtle offer. Everything about him seemed to be a matter of psychic speculation and as open to interpretation as her spell.

Closing her eyes while aching for him and holding his hand, however, opened a window in her mind to his past-so odd when she normally saw the future, though she and her sisters each carried a bit of the others' gifts.

She might need to glimpse Morgan's past to help him remember it, so he could move on to his future, her area of psychic expertise.

With any psychic gift, linked thoughts, and especially linked hands, or the sense of touch, strengthened vision. Him touching her in the bed, earlier, might have dialed up her vision. It had certainly dialed up her desire.

She saw him wearing his cassock, a boy, a minute or so older than Meggie, kneeling in the grass, tracing her name and date of birth chiseled into a huge pink granite gravestone-topped by an angel lacking Buffy's features, though similar in stature-towering over the cemetery.

Morgan the boy doubled over and sobbed, guilt welling up in him, in Destiny, choking them both, until her own racking sobs overwhelmed her.