Excerpt: Melissa's Ghost

"Your Highness?"

No answer. But Melissa had seen his absences before. He came and went according to ghost logic, when perhaps the castle or perhaps the dead Prince had a memory flare-up, much as Melissa herself was having and trying to avoid: the memory of Freddie in her nightshirt sitting on her bed and saying, We don't hold out on each other, right? To drown out the memory, Melissa shouted louder: "Your Highness! Will you grant me audience?"

His footsteps sounded upon the Great Stair, and her heart quickened. Now she remembered the way he embraced her when she was just 16 and beginning to realize what else he might have wanted from her. It had made her uncomfortable; it had made her damp between the legs, and that had scared her. She was reacting similarly now, but without the fear. Then he was there, blue velvet and lace and blood stains, no older than she, or nearly so, looking at her as though he'd never seen her and was trying to fit her into his memories. "Your Highness," she said, "It's Melissa. I've come back."

He approached her, falling into a deep bow as he drew near. He gathered up her right hand in his and kissed it. She remembered the way he'd done that the first time they'd met. This was different. This was worlds away and ages older. "My lady," he murmured, "had I seen you before I would have surely remembered it. Do me the supreme honor of giving me your name?"

"Melissa," Melissa said again. "Melissa Wisdom."

He kissed her hand again. "I beg you, your name, that I know how to address my angel."

"It's Melissa, I said already."

"Go nameless if you wish; I will honor you all the same. Will you dance with me, my lady?" He bowed again, held his arms wide. Music filled the air; out of the corner of her eye Melissa saw a minstrel quartet across from the ever-full banquet table. She turned to take them in. The fellow on lute had a black eye as though he'd been in a tavern fight the night before; the young man with the hand drum looked drugged. "Just one dance," the Prince was saying, "and I will count myself blessed among men."

Melissa gave up. He wasn't hearing her; he was lost in memory again. It had happened sometimes; as a child, she'd been frightened the first time he'd stopped seeming to see and hear her, as on the day when she first had witnessed him reliving his death. She wondered who had killed him--the green-clad lady's father, perhaps, or brother? Someone protecting her besmirched honor, as they would have called it back then...

She took his proffered hand and let him lead her in a dance no one in the 21st century knew. And as she raised her arms and found herself stumbling through the stately steps, she saw that instead of her turtleneck sleeve she was wearing a long green sleeve with trailing cuffs. Multilayered green skirts brushed her thighs. Her rambling jeans were gone.

"Name me," she whispered. "What was her name?" But the Prince did not hear her, lost as he was in one of the landmark memories of his life.