"How dare you!" Susanna seemed to grow several inches as she stiffened with indignation.
Julian didn't care. His own indignation had managed to banish his terror, and he used it to advantage. "Don't get huffy with me, Miss Clement. You expect me to write an article about how wonderful your great-aunt was, but I'll be damned if I'll inflict some romantic balderdash about a female chained in a castle dungeon on the readers of the Denver Post. They'd laugh me out of town! I need facts. Solid, immutable facts. They won't accept your dream as proof, my dear, no matter how bad it was."
She was puffing up like an adder. Julian enjoyed the effect of her fury on her bodice, even if he was irked with her.
"It wasn't a dream!"
"Yeah, you've said that before."
"Just a minute, children. Try not to kill each other until we've got to the bottom of this, if you will."
Danilo's wry voice cut through the tension between Julian and Susanna like a knife. Both of them turned to glare at him. He looked merely supercilious. "I hate to admit it," he said when he had their attention, "but Mr. Kittrick is right."
Susanna seemed to deflate. "Blast!"
It was Julian's turn to smirk. "Told you so."
Danilo glared at him. "No matter how misguided and wrongheaded he is."
"Hey! I am not—"
Holding up his hand in an imperious gesture, Danilo cut Julian's protest short. "Don't interrupt me, young man." He skewered Julian with a sharp glance, as if he'd just remembered something. "By the way, it might interest you to know that your parents didn't abandon you on the streets of New York willy-nilly. They died of the cholera, and tried with their last breath to secure your future. The illness got to them first. Your mother has been miserable about it ever since. She's pleased to know you survived." Danilo sniffed. "I didn't tell her you've taken to such an unworthy occupation as yellow journalism."
Julian's mouth dropped open and his brain turned off. He couldn't think. He couldn't believe the words he'd just heard.
Evidently that was the exact effect Danilo had been hoping to achieve when he dropped his little tidbit into the conversation. He turned his back on Julian and faced Susanna.
Julian shook his head hard, trying to assimilate the information Danilo had given him. It wouldn't be assimilated. "Wait!"
Danilo turned and frowned at him. Julian ignored his sour mien.
"Wait," he said again, less sharply. "Do you mean to tell me you've communicated with my parents?"
He glanced at Susanna and found her watching him closely, a soft expression on her face. He couldn't tolerate compassion at the moment, and resolutely turned away from her. He was unsettled enough already and was fearful lest he burst into tears and disgrace himself and his profession. Her sympathy might just make the dam overflow.
"Tell me what you mean," he said to the ghost. Danilo stiffened, and he added, "Please?" God, he sounded pathetic. He couldn't help it.
Smirking again—Danilo seemed to reserve his smirks for Julian—the ghost said, "Yes, Mr. Kittrick. Not only did I speak to your parents, but I sought them out solely for your benefit. Even though you don't deserve my consideration because you're hoping to discover scandal and disgrace about the woman I love, I wanted you to know that I appreciate you looking into Magdalena's fate."
"What—what were their names? Who were they? When did they die?"
Something else struck him suddenly. He swallowed the lump in his throat and asked, his voice shaky, "When is my real birthday? Did they tell you?" It had always seemed disgraceful to him that he didn't even know the date of his own birth. He'd covered it up, but not knowing had always hurt. A person's birthday was such a personal thing, and it was something most folks didn't even have to think about. Not Julian Kittrick, who until this moment had believed he'd been abandoned on the streets of New York by the two people who should have done their best to see to his welfare. He couldn't quite comprehend the fullness of Danilo's revelation.
He had to swallow again when Danilo gave him a considering look that lasted much too long for Julian's peace of mind. After several moments the ghost said, "I'll ask them about your birthday."
It was all Julian could do to get out the one word. "Thanks."
"And their names were Emmett and Kathleen Kittrick."
Julian nodded numbly. The only thing he'd remembered about his birth family during his entire thirty-two years on earth were his first and last names. Sometimes he'd doubted even that, but had clung to it doggedly as the only relic left to him by his parents. He wondered if they'd given him a middle name, but his heart was too heavy to ask.
"Can't Mr. Kittrick's parents appear to him?"
Julian had forgotten all about Susanna, which surprised him when he pondered it later. She'd been all he could think about for days. Her voice, which was gentle and thick with emotion, caught him off guard, though, and he jerked toward her. She'd been wiping her eyes with her hankie, but stuffed it into her skirt pocket when Julian turned.
"Appearing to living people isn't as easy as I've made it out to be," Danilo informed them as if he were lecturing a class. "The circumstances have to be perfect."
"They do?" Susanna sniffed loudly and looked embarrassed when she had to whip out her hankie again to wipe her nose.
"What constitutes perfect circumstances?" Julian was glad to get off the topic of his own abysmal infancy for a moment, even though he was fairly bursting to learn more about it.
"For one thing, if a person dies with all or most of his personal life's problems in order, he seldom takes to haunting."
"Why not?" Julian noticed that Susanna didn't thrust her handkerchief back into her pocket, but clung to it, evidently fearing she might still need it. He hoped she was wrong.
"If a person has no unresolved issues on this mortal coil, why should he want to stick around down here? Believe me, the afterlife affords more beauty and peace than this rotten place." Danilo glanced around with a look of disgust on his transparent face.
Julian had to clear his throat before his voice would work. "And my parents didn't have unresolved issues down here?" He wanted to ask what he was if not an unresolved issue, but it hurt too much and he didn't.
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