“What the hell are you two talking about?” Zeke crossed his arms over his chest.
As Asher opened his mouth to tell them. Miles silently strode across the space separating them and clocked him.
Asher fell back as my jaw dropped. A stunned heartbeat passed before Asher went after Miles. They fell back into the picnic area knocking the barbecue over. Ethan grabbed my arm and pulled me away from them. The dull thud of punches landing filled the air as the guys hit the ground and started grappling. Hades bolted out of the tent, only to get between me and the fighting, a growl rolled from his throat.
“Stop it!” My voice cracked. It didn’t matter; they couldn’t hear me over the fighting. Miles… had hit Asher….
Hades barked as Zeke and Isaac moved in and struggled to get their hands on them. Finally, they pulled the two apart. The whole food prep area was destroyed.
Asher strained against Zeke’s hold on him. “What the fuck did you think I would-”
“Stop!” Miles pulled at Isaac’s grip, his glasses gone. “It’s none of your damn business!”
“What the fuck is wrong with you two?” Zeke bellowed before pulling Asher back and shoving him away from Miles. He put himself in the middle and scowled at Asher. “What are you two fucking talking about?”
“He made out with Ally yesterday.” Asher announced. Silence fell like a bomb while tension skyrocketed. Hades didn’t move from his alert pose.
I couldn’t fucking believe this. “Asher, stop talking.”
“I’m tired of this. I’m tired of hearing everything and not knowing how I should feel about it.” Asher shook his head. “Fucking hearing you ask him to touch you? Do you think that’s easy for me?”
“Stop talking.” Miles strained against Isaac again, his face furious. “For your own sake, shut up.”
“I know what I fucking heard!” Asher shot at him.
“You didn’t seem to fucking mind in New Orleans.” I couldn’t keep the bite from my voice.
Asher’s face turned red. The anger in his eyes fading.
“Or is that different because it was you?” I waited for an answer.
“Answer her fucking question, Asher,” Isaac demanded.
“Oh, fuck you!” Asher went to open his mouth again.
Zeke’s hand wrapped around Asher’s throat cutting him off. “Stop. Fucking. Talking.”
Miles slipped Isaac’s grip. “Zeke.”
Zeke’s face was hard as stone. His eyes furious. Zeke shoved Asher back as he let him go.
“You’re just as pissed as I am!” Asher spat, his eyes lightening.
“No shit, I’m pissed.” Zeke ran his gaze over Asher.
“Asher. Stop.” I couldn’t fucking believe this. What the hell was wrong with him? Miles had just decked him! “So, you know what happened yesterday. You don’t have to announce it to everyone!”
“It concerns them too. You’re supposed to be making a choice.” He turned to me. “Or have you?”
Miles adjusted his glasses. “This isn’t the time-”
“Yeah, I have.” I looked at each of them and shook my head. “I can’t choose.”
“You mean you won’t,” Asher bit out.
“No. I mean I can’t.” I lifted one shoulder into a shrug. “I care about each of you so much. And I’m watching you tear at each other already. Do you guys really think it’ll stop if I choose one of you?”
I shook my head. I needed to rethink this. Rethink everything. Rethink what I was doing to them. “Maybe I just shouldn’t fucking be around you guys at all.” Not knowing what else to do, I walked out of the camp with Hades and down the trail.
Miles
I watched Lexie disappear on the trail before I turned back to the others and focused on Asher. “What the hell is wrong with you?”
The blood drained from Asher’s face.
“Do you even know what you just did?” I bit out. Cold rage spread from my chest.
Asher shook his head.
“First, you violated our privacy.” I fought to keep from shouting.
“I couldn’t help-”
“You couldn’t help but hear. I know.” I began tapping my thigh. “But you announced what you heard to everyone! That’s what I mean by violating our privacy. What is going on in your head?”
Asher shook his head again. “I don’t know…”
“You better fucking figure it out,” Isaac growled. “’Cause you might have just fucked us all over.”
Asher pressed his hands against his face hard.
“Lexie isn’t going to choose,” I stated. “It wasn’t just Asher that caused this, it’s been all of us.”
Asher dropped his hands and met my eyes. The lost look on his face… “I… I feel like I’m losing my mind.”
Everyone grew silent.
“What do you mean?” That could mean a lot of things.
Asher shook his head, walked over to the picnic table and sat down. “I get furious over fucking nothing. One of you touches her and… I lose my shit. Not just over yesterday.” He met my gaze again. “You touch her hand and I want to knock you away from her.”
We moved to stand in a semi-circle in front of him. Zeke planted himself directly between Asher and the trail that Lexie took. It didn’t go unnoticed. Asher glared at him but said nothing.
“That’s not a normal response.” I was out of my depth here. Not even Zeke was this bad. What did I know? I searched my memory for anything that might apply.
Asher shook his head again. “Isaac makes her laugh, and I want to hit him. That’s not normal. She goes off with one of you and I…” He shrugged.
“Does it only happen when she’s involved?” I had to know. If he was obsessed then we needed to know.
“No.” He met my gaze again. “I just can’t seem to control myself when it’s her.”
“When else?” Zeke crossed his arms over his chest.
“I almost lost my shit with Jason last month.” He swallowed hard. “He was trying to pull Jess off the stairs and make her go somewhere with him.”
“That would have set me off too.” Zeke frowned, not understanding.
I shook my head and met his gaze. “Not like this. I dragged him out of the house and threw him off the porch.”
I stopped tapping. That was strange for Asher. He’d normally just ask him to leave. He would be intimidating but he’d never get physical first.
“She cried for a while. Then I wanted to pound my fist into his face until he stopped breathing.” His voice rasped. “I… I ended up running four miles that night.”
“Anything else?” I needed to know it all.
“Besides weird dreams?” He shook his head. “I’m wanting to hit something a hundred times a day.”
Maybe it was physical? “When we get back, we’ll have the doctor look at you. It might be a problem with your adrenal system… It could be a lot of things.” I made a point to keep my voice calm. There was no use in speculating when we didn’t have a clue.
Asher swallowed hard. “That’d be good.” He looked up at and met my gaze, his right eye already turning dark. “Maybe, we should keep me away from Ally until we know what’s going on.”
Isaac and Ethan chuckled darkly and shook their heads.
“What?” Not getting it, I wiped my fingers over a cut under my eye and winced at the raw skin. That was going to be a bruise.
Isaac turned to me. “He just hurt Red’s feelings or at the very least pissed her off.” Isaac turned back to Asher. “There’s no keeping you away from her. When she gets back, she’s gonna rip you a new one.”
“And you deserve it,” Ethan added.
“I know.” Asher’s face was resigned. What was wrong with him?
Lexie
Furious, I followed the trail through the woods, not paying attention to where I was going.
Miles had hit Asher. Hit him! Sweet, mild and polite Miles! Out of everything that I thought could happen on this trip, that sure as hell wasn
’t on the list. What the hell was happening to us? To everyone? Miles had hit him…
It took two hours for me to finally cool down enough to look around and realize I was lost. Oh, shit.
Great. I was lost. The lake wasn’t in view through the trees. I couldn’t hear anything. I pulled my phone and tried to get a location, only to find I had no signal. Perfect. At least I was still on the trail or… a trail. I turned around and started back down. If the guys had to come out and look for me, I was never going to hear the end of it from Zeke. I could already hear his lecture, “What do you mean you weren’t paying attention? How could you not be paying attention?” I muttered under my breath. “Do you know what could have happened to you?”
Hades strolled happily beside me as I rolled my eyes and kept walking. Only to realize I really had no memory of walking through here. “Oh, shit.”
I tried to retrace my steps for the next hour and I still didn’t recognize anything. I had passed several other path connections but none of them looked familiar either. “Okay, I might be in trouble.” The trail had taken off west and went around the lake to the east then into the woods…. right? So, if I keep going west on a path then I would run into the lake or another trail… right?
I checked the time, it was around noon. Great. I needed a damn compass. Cursing myself, I kept walking, hoping that I wasn’t going the wrong way.
That chill ran down my neck. I stopped and looked around. “I know you’re there.”
The soul of a man stepped out of the trees. He wore green pants and a yellow button up long sleeve shirt, a hard hat and had a pack on his back. His shirt was smeared with black soot along with his face. He couldn’t have been older than twenty-five.
“Hi.” I gestured around me. “I’m lost. Can you point me back toward the lake?”
He looked at me, stunned. “You can see me?”
I nodded. “Yeah, I can see the dead.”
“Well, that’s new.” He smiled as he came down the hill. “How?”
“I’m a necromancer.” I shrugged. “We’re kind of rare.”
He stepped off the hill onto the path. “I’m Jack.”
“Lexie. Nice to meet you.” I gestured at the trees. “I have no clue where I am.”
He chuckled. “What camp did you come from?”
“Um, the group campsite on the north side of Swan Lake?” I didn’t actually remember the name of the campgrounds.
Jack shook his head. “I know the site, it’s about three miles west.”
“I was going in the wrong direction, wasn’t I?” I cringed.
He held his fingers up barely an inch apart from each other. “A little bit. You were actually heading south.”
“Can you please take me to the lake?”
“No problem.” Jack led the way. “So, how did you get lost?”
“Oh, you know.” I followed, watching my step. “My friends got in a fight, I yelled at them and walked off.”
“And got lost.”
“Yeah, not my finest hour.” I chuckled.
“Don’t feel so bad. People get lost on this trail all the time.” He looked over his shoulder at me. “It’s why I stick around.”
“Oh, yeah?” We turned a bend in the path. The path split off, he led me to the right.
“Yeah, usually I manage to get people back on track with broken branches or weird noises.” He chuckled. “You’ll be a lot easier.”
“It helps that I can see ya.” I smiled. “So, you help lost people often?”
“Not as often as you’d think.” His voice grew sad. “I was working with a crew fighting a wild fire in the sticks back there.” He stopped at the next branching and waited for me to catch up. “It was my job to keep us on the right path.” I reached his side. “I screwed up. Got us lost and when the fire got the wind behind it…”
“It overtook your crew.” I had hoped this wasn’t where he was going.
He nodded. “Yeah. Everyone died.”
My heart ached. “I’m sorry.”
He shook his head. “It was my fault. The others moved on, and I stayed to… help.”
“And I’m sure you have.” I tilted my head to the side. “You’re saving my ass.”
He snorted before gesturing down the trail to the left. “Which is why I keep doing it.” He led me down the left path.
“Have you been to town?” I asked, hoping.
“Not since most of the other souls disappeared.” He glanced over his shoulder at me.
“What do you mean, disappeared?” I stopped walking.
He turned and shrugged. “There were a lot of other souls around the lake, in town. It was busy. Then they started disappearing.”
“I’m seeing that back home.” I looked up at him. “So, no warning? No rotting? They’re just gone?”
He nodded. “Yeah. And I don’t think all of them moved on.”
“Do you have any idea how long it took?” I needed answers.
“Um.” His eyes unfocused. “It started slow. I’d say, a year and a half.”
Wait… “A year and a half?” That was before I even moved here.
“Yeah, it started small. Just a couple here and there. Then groups started going missing.” He looked out at the woods. “Now, the town is empty. And I’m the only one left.”
The only one left? “Do any of them have anything in common? Did they interact with the same ghosts? Go to the same places?”
He turned to me and ran his eyes over my face. “Why do you care?”
I explained to him what the Veil was, how someone had closed it, and that I was trying to fix it.
His eyes narrowed on me. “There’s one thing.”
“What? I’ll take anything at this point.” I honestly had no idea where to start.
“The only thing I heard was about a ravine.” He shrugged. “Rumors really.”
“What kind of rumors?”
“The ‘don’t go there’ kind.” He shook his head. “I wasn’t in town much but rumor was, ghosts were going in that ravine and not coming out.”
A chill ran down my spine. “Where?”
* * *
When I reached the camp I didn’t bother to say hi. “Get your hiking boots on.”
Miles and Asher turned in their chairs to watch me head to my tent.
“Lexie.” Miles’ voice had me looking over my shoulder. “Asher has something to say to you.”
I shook my head and started opening my tent. “Not now. We might actually have a chance to figure out what happened to the disappearing ghosts.”
“How?” Miles’ voice came closer as I sat on my bed and opened my bag.
“I got lost and ran into a ghost.” I pulled off my sneakers. “He says the place was full of souls a year and a half ago.”
“What happened?” Miles came to my tent as I pulled on a pair of socks.
“Exactly what is happening back home.” I grabbed my boots and shoved my feet into them. “They disappeared.”
“Asher needs to talk to you,” he said again.
Anger boiled through me again. “Well, I’m not fucking ready to talk to him.” I finished tying my boot and looked up at him. “And since you’re telling me, I highly doubt he’s ready to talk to me.”
“He wants to make things okay between you two.” Miles began to tap his leg.
I scoffed as I tied my other boot. “Right now, I’m still pissed. And have other things to do besides cater to everyone.” I got to my feet and climbed out of my tent. “I’m not ready to talk.”
“Ally.”
I turned to look up at Asher. “Not. Now.”
His eyes were rough when they met mine. “Okay.”
I swallowed hard and unclenched my jaw as I turned to Miles. “I need your keys.”
Miles pulled his keys out of his pocket and handed them to Asher. “Drive her.”
“Miles!” I couldn’t believe he just did that.
Miles turned to me. “The two of you are going alone. Work this
out.”
Without another word, I headed toward the parking lot. Jack was waiting next to the trucks.
“Who are you?” Asher headed for the driver’s side.
“That’s Jack. He’s going to take us to the valley that ghosts are rumored to go missing in.” I opened the back door. Jack got in and I closed it behind him.
“Where are we going?” Asher closed his door and started the car.
I climbed in and closed my door. “Back towards town.”
On the drive, I was quiet while Jack and Asher talked.
What the hell was I expecting in that valley? The person that closed the Veil? Some great clue that will solve everything? It looked like ghosts had disappeared here first. So… the reason had to be here, right?
“Here. Pull over into that lot.” Jack pointed between the seats.
Asher hit his blinker and pulled into the lot.
“It’s not too far from the trail near town.” Jack went through the door to get outside while I climbed out.
“How far?” Asher got out of the other side.
“Not even a mile.” Jack started down the dirt path.
I fell into step behind him. Asher followed. The hike wasn’t much of a walk..
We followed Jack through the woods to a spot where the hillside was split down the middle creating a ravine.
“This is it.” Jack turned to us. “There’s no way I’m going in there.”
“You don’t have to.” I turned to him. “Do you want me to cross you over before we go in?”
Jack shook his head. “No, I have more that I need to make up for.”
I smiled. “If you ever do, you can find me in Spring Mountain.”
“Thanks.” Jack started back down the path.
Asher eyed the small valley. “Do you know what we’re looking for?”
“Nope.” I started down the barely visible path. “Look for anything weird.”
We walked into the ravine with our eyes peeled. The rocky walls were far enough out that getting through wasn’t a problem. Trees had sprouted from the soft dirt floor and even from some ledges on the walls. It was rather pretty. Focus, Lexie. Geeze.
When the Dead Have It Easy Page 20