Reach For Me
by Elizabeth Cole
Malachy Salem is a fighter. He lets his brothers handle the spells and the sorcery—he just wants to rumble. He’s trained in mixed marital arts. He kills vampires, demons, and other nasties. Then he picks up a blonde for a one night stand, and gets gone before morning. Mal’s life is great…until the new, curvy, redheaded neighbor Cara shows up. She’s so not his type, but he can’t look away.
Cara Michaels is not looking for romance. She just wants to finish the job she’s on, which is to restore a historic Victorian home to its former glory. Her dedication and talent means she knows how to handle a hammer, a wrench, or a chainsaw. Handling a ghost is something else.
When the house Cara is working on erupts with paranormal activity, she finds out that Mal is not just a random, hot as hell neighbor. He and his brothers have been watching the house because there’s something very evil inside it. And it seems to want something from Cara. Mal’s finally got someone to fight for…if he can take the heat.
Copyright © 2019
Cover design by James T. Egan, www.bookflydesign.com.
Edited by Amanda Valentine, ayvalentine.com.
Also by Elizabeth Cole
Secrets of the Zodiac Novels
A Heartless Design
A Reckless Soul
A Shameless Angel
The Lady Dauntless
Beneath Sleepless Stars
A Mad and Mindless Night
A Most Relentless Gentleman
Swordcross Knights Novels
Honor & Roses
Choose the Sky
Raven’s Rise
Peregrine’s Call
The Brothers Salem Series
One Touch of Silver (Prequel)
Keep Me Close
Chapter 1
In the middle of the country, there was a midwestern state.
And in the middle of the midwestern state, there was a county.
And in the middle of the county, there was a town.
And way the hell on the edge of town, there was a hill.
And on that hill, there was a house.
And in that house was a…GHOST.
Or something like a ghost. Cara had to admit the house looked haunted.
But she wasn’t here to de-haunt the place. She was here to restore it.
Maybe that amounted to the same thing.
The house glowered down from the top of the hill. Cara peered through the windshield, craning her neck to catch the whole thing. She’d never seen it in person before, and none of the pictures did justice to the situation.
Built by an oil baron back when American oil barons were a thing, the house was a legitimate masterpiece: three stories of red brick, with a legit turret in the front corner, and lots of once-fancy details that were now rusting and rotting. Parts of the iron fence surrounding the yard had been stolen over the decades. The main part of the house and one wing still stood, but nearly all the windows were broken. Their shutters hung crazily or were missing altogether.
Not much survived the fire.
The fire happened in the late 1920s, and it destroyed a whole wing of the house, disrupting the symmetry of the design, and leaving the rest of the structure permanently damaged. Daniel Egan, the oil baron, apparently tried to repair it. But the Great Depression erased the Egan family fortune, and then World War II erased the Egan family bloodline, since both the sons died on the front. A trust maintained the property—barely—since then.
And then someone got the idea to restore it. And that was why Cara was here.
Cara Michaels knew the building industry inside and out, since she’d practically been raised on construction sites. She also had a genuine talent for woodworking. With that combination, her fledging business promised authentic historic home restoration no matter how unique the house.
Cara was excited beyond belief to get the job of restoring Egan House, undoubtedly the most unique and challenging site she’d ever heard of. If she succeeded here, she could bid for any job in the country. National landmarks, famous homes…anything.
“I got this,” she told herself, turning into the drive and plowing up the hill.
Up close, Egan House looked even more ramshackle and broken. Shrubbery and overgrowth obscured much of the first floor, but the parts she could see looked rough. Rotten door frames, worm-eaten wood, crumbling brick…
“This is going to be great!” Cara whispered, her nerdy historical restoration tendencies fully engaged.
She stopped the car behind the house and got out. The growing light was filling the sky, the sun itself about to rise over the eastern tree line. Cara stepped up onto the wide back porch, which creaked alarmingly.
The back door was open. Cold clamminess hit her the moment she crossed the threshold. The air here was still and almost icy, decades of solitude undisturbed. The past was almost palpable, pushing right up against the present, unwilling to be put aside.
“I’m going to make you shine,” Cara told the house. “We’re going to clean you up and make you just like you used to be. You’re going to be a home again.”
The house, of course, did not respond. Houses never did, because they were houses. Cara didn’t believe in much, and her house-whispering was just a quirk. But some old houses had personality, and she was getting a standoffish vibe from this one.
Oh, well. She’d bring it around. Cara was better with buildings than she was with people.
Her happy anticipation was cut short when she heard a sharp creak up above. Was someone in the house? No one was allowed to be here other than the work crew, and Cara was the first person to arrive on site. So why were there sounds?
Maybe it was just the house settling.
The distinctive patter of running footsteps quashed that theory.
She retreated to the car and pulled out a powerful flashlight from the toolbox in the back, the long one with the metal housing. It worked great as a flashlight, but it would also work great as a club, if it came to that. Cara marched back to the house, switched the flashlight on, and turned toward the sounds.
“Hello?” Cara called. “Who’s up there?”
There was no answer, but Cara smelled smoke.
Without thinking twice, she ran up the central staircase. If some homeless person was squatting here and started a fire, her job could go up in flames before she even got a chance to pick up a hammer.
“Hey!” she yelled as she reached the second-floor landing. “Who’s here? If you started a fire, you gotta put it out now. I won’t call the cops on you, but it’s not safe here!”
No answer.
Cara sniffed, and again caught the smell of smoke. She moved to the left-hand side of the hallway, where it seemed to be coming from.
The first room was empty, but a connecting door led to another room, and the smoke was stronger there.
“Hello?” she called again, nervous that the unseen person might get violent. “Is someone up here?”
She heard a scraping sound, like a door opening over a gritty surface. Cara rushed into the next room, hoping to catch whoever it was.
But this room was empty too. Cara looked around in frustration. There was a closed door on the far wall, and a faint sound from beyond. The person was hiding from her.
Her anger growing stronger than her fear, Cara stalked over to the door and wrenched it open, remembering too late that if you suspected a fire, you weren’t supposed to open doors, and you should check if the doorknobs felt hot.
All she saw was yet another empty room. Empty of people, that was. A few wooden chairs lay on their sides, one smashed to bits, as if someone hurled it across the room. No trace of fire. No charred wood. No ashes.
In fact, the room was cold as ice. Cara
shivered and wrapped her arms around herself, the flashlight’s beam bouncing around the room as she did.
Just as the beam careened across the wall, Cara spied a figure in the brief spot of light.
She screamed before she could stop herself. Just a tiny yelp, but embarrassing even in her terror. Cara fumbled the light back to the right spot. No one was there.
“What the hell?” Cara’s voice sounded weak in the empty room, the sound ricocheting off the walls. “Who’s here?”
She spun around with her light, circling the room to catch the other person. But there was nothing to see. Cara’s skin prickled and she winced as a wave of dizziness hit her after the sudden spin.
GO AWAY.
It wasn’t a voice in the air, but in her heart.
Cara backed up, startled and ready to run.
GO AWAY.
The order came at her with the force of a battering ram, and Cara’s knees wobbled.
Ok. Leaving. Leaving now, she told herself.
She raced through the rooms in reverse order. She knew the blueprints of this house, but at the moment, her mind was a total blank. She couldn’t say which doors went where. Was she too far to the south? How big was this wing?
At last she reached the central landing with the staircase. Cara stepped gingerly as she realized just how shaky the stairs were. She reached the bottom, and then heard what could only be described as a shriek from up above.
Cara didn’t wait. She hurled herself toward the doorway she’d entered from, panic rising. She had to GO outside, AWAY from this awful house.
She didn’t see or hear anything else as she crossed the threshold.
Until she ran smack into a body.
And what a body.
The man who stood there was…hot. He wore nothing but gym shorts that came to his knees. Which left the rest of him fully on display.
He stood over six feet, making him almost a foot taller than Cara. He was big too, with broad shoulders and a chest that might have its own zip code. But none of that bulk was fat. It was all muscle. Big biceps, sinewy tough arms. His legs looked even more cut, if that were possible. Even his feet and hands looked like they could crush steel.
Cara always figured that six-pack abs were something faked with Photoshop. Nope. This guy had them.
He looked like a fighter, one of those guys who fought in matches in Vegas.
Cara took a breath to steady herself, and simultaneously remembered the reason she smacked right into this guy. She asked, “Do you smell smoke?”
“What?”
“Do you smell smoke?” she repeated. “I thought I did. That’s why I went inside.”
He went still, as if his whole being was trying to identify any smoke in the air. He looked tense, but then shook his head slowly. “No. No smoke.”
Cara sniffed the air again. Damp, musty, mildewy. But not smoky. “Maybe it was just something in the wind?” she asked, more to herself than him.
“I would have seen smoke or flames coming up the drive.”
“Why are you here, by the way? This is a work site, and only workers can have access.”
He nodded as if she were an idiot. “Yeah. I’m a worker. My name’s Malachy. Malachy East.”
“Workers wear shirts,” she said, rather tartly. “And pants.”
“I’m going to change. Shift doesn’t start for a half hour. I was just making this the end point of my morning workout.”
He must work out full-time to achieve that physique. Cara wished her own decidedly not buff body would melt into a puddle and flow right into the nearest ditch.
After way too awkward a silence, he said, “I’m a worker. What’s your excuse?”
She pulled herself to her full five feet two inches. “I’m Cara Michaels. I’m the foreman.”
“Wouldn’t it be forewoman?”
She raised her chin. “I’m de-gendering the term.”
“How woke of you.”
Ok, enough chitchat. “I’m pretty conservative actually, Mr. East. Like with my insistence that workers be dressed.”
“Call me Mal.” He said his name just slow enough that the sound had substance to it. Maaaaalll, like slow moving honey.
Annoyingly, he was not just ripped, he had great features too. Strong cheekbones and jaw, not to mention big brown eyes and very dark hair that hung long, almost to the base of his neck.
The kind of guy who never looked twice at Cara.
Except that he was looking at her hard now. “Why are you the foreman? Did you buy the property?”
“Like I could afford it,” she said, far more bitterly than she intended. “I’m a licensed carpenter, and I specialize in historic restorations. This place is going to look amazing when it’s done.” Cara was unable to restrain herself from boasting a bit.
“Better post a bunch of before shots on Instagram, or no one will believe you.”
“No photos! You can’t post anything. No one can,” Cara snapped back. It was one of the injunctions Mr. Morningside, the attorney, had laid down when she took the job. She wasn’t allowed to let anyone on the property other than the hired workers and any inspectors who might be needed. She could take photos to chronicle her work, but she wasn’t allowed to publish anything until the project was completed. “My client is very concerned about privacy.”
Mal’s lip curled into a sneer. “I bet.”
Cara couldn’t parse that response, and didn’t want to. “Get changed into work gear, East. And next time I see you, you’d better be wearing a hard hat.”
“You’re not local.”
Cara blinked at the non sequitur. “No. Why?”
Mal gave her a smile that made her body go all warm and buzzy. “Maybe you need someone to show you around.”
“From what I can tell, there’s not that much around to show.”
“Oh, there’s a few places. How about dinner tomorrow?”
The warm feeling spiked into an unpleasant heat as embarrassment washed over her. Cara just met this smoking-hot guy she was going to work with, and he was asking her to dinner? What kind of nasty trick was he planning? Hauling Cara to an all-you-can-eat buffet and leaving her there?
“How about no.”
His forehead wrinkled a bit, like he didn’t understand the words she spoke. “No?” he echoed.
“No. Not tomorrow, not ever.”
Mal said nothing, still looking confused. He blinked, and then said once more, “No?”
“It means the opposite of yes,” Cara explained as she maneuvered around him, intent on walking to her car and then to the prefab office trailer that had been delivered to the site. “If you’re actually here at the beginning of the shift, you’ll hear the spiel. Later, Malachy East.”
Chapter 2
Mal watched the woman sweep past him on her way to her car. When she first ran into him, he caught only an impression of lushness, the smell of coffee and sawdust, and then a vivid sight when the morning sun hit her hair. Bright red like a fire engine, long and heavy. He could practically feel it against his fingers.
Her personality didn’t match the soft look, to judge by how no-nonsense she was. She quizzed him and basically doubted he was really a worker. And then slammed down a simple invitation to dinner. Mal saw the way she’d looked at him before she got all salty about his wardrobe. Definitely interested.
But Cara went cold fast, ignoring him as she went to her car. She leaned into the back seat, putting one knee on the upholstery, and treated Mal to another look at her very full backside as she pawed through the stuff on the seat. A perfect ass. Big, beautiful, grabbable.
For a moment, she was just a leg, encased in tight jeans, revealed inch by inch as she crawled back out. Shapely calf, downright plump thigh. Then she wiggled back into open air, her hands hooked into a bankers box that must have weighed a ton, with yet more rolled papers stacked on the top.
He almost offered to help carry the box, except that she locked eyes with him and gave him a death glare.
Ok, no chivalry this morning.
She huffed out a breath, kicked the door closed, and made her way to the boxy, prefab office trailer that all construction sites seemed to require. She didn’t appear again, and Mal realized that he really did need to get dressed, or he’d get fired before he even picked up a hammer.
A half hour later, Mal was back on site, dressed and ready for work, exchanging small talk with the other guys who showed up. None of them knew each other, and all applied for the job online, just like Mal. However, he doubted any of the other guys knew the history of Egan House. To them, it was just a paycheck.
Mal was hoping to save the world.
Unknown to Cara Michaels, Mal lived right across the street from Egan House, and he was familiar with its features. Specifically, it sat on an interdimensional portal.
The fire that destroyed the house back in the day apparently also blocked the portal to the otherworlds—colloquially known as a hellhole.
The Salem family had known about the hellhole for years. That was why Aunt Josephine originally got the house across the street. It was a good assignment for a mostly retired demon-hunter. And Aunt Jo had been quite a hunter in her day.
But age caught up with her, and mounting health problems meant that she couldn’t keep watch on the hellhole if it did become active again. The Salem family convened, as it did regularly, and discussed the matter of Aunt Jo’s assignment. It was decided that “the boys” would be the best choice to take over. They were young, without attachments to anyone but each other, and none of them owned any place. Aunt Jo grumbled about it, but she acceded to the family’s decision.
For the better part of a year, Dominic, Mal, and Lex lived at the old house. Their job was to continue Jo’s work. Mal quickly got sick of watching the house because nothing evil seemed to be happening. But watching the house was his job. More than his job. His duty.
Salems fought evil. Hellholes were evil.
Or rather, hellholes allowed evil into the world. So Mal had to watch it, and whenever the evil started to emerge, he could go and kick evil’s ass.
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