“Of course you do,” he said. His smile was chilling and Jackie fidgeted under his unflinching gaze. There was a red shine to his dark eyes. Like the dog. Like the damned dog.
“Who are you?”
“A messenger,” he said.
“Like a courier? I didn’t order any FedEx pickups. No one sends me anything.”
“I’m not that kind of messenger.”
“Then get your goddamned foot out of my goddamned door,” she snarled.
“You have something that belongs to us,” he said. “It has to be returned.”
“Look, I don’t know what you’re talking about, and I will call the cops. Don’t even test me!”
He winked at her and Jackie’s stomach tightened. “Call whoever you want,” he said. “They won’t believe you.”
“Fuck. Off.”
The man nodded and stepped back. Jackie wasted no time in slamming the door in his face. She turned the deadbolt and slid the chain lock into place with shaking fingers.
This was too much. None of it was real. None of it was true.
A black cat.
A dog.
Now a hot guy on her doorstep asking for something she didn’t have.
But she did have it.
The lantern.
It was in her bag.
Her appetite gone, Jackie ran to her bedroom and pulled her bag from under the bed. She unzipped it and dumped its contents onto her mess of blankets. The lantern bounced out and rolled toward the edge. She dropped the bag and caught the lantern before it could fall.
She cradled it in her hands and stared down at it in disbelief.
“Fuck.”
Why had she taken it? Why hadn’t she just left it on the director’s desk?
“Fuck!”
She walked out to the kitchen with the lantern in her hands and set it down on the counter next to her pizza. She pulled another slice out of the box and sank down onto one of the stools beside the kitchen bar. It rocked unsteadily and she braced herself on the counter. She took a bite of the pizza in her hand and stared at the lantern while she chewed.
What was happening to her?
Had she hit her head harder than she’d realized?
Maybe she needed to go to urgent care—but she couldn’t afford that. Maybe she was dehydrated…
She lurched off the stool and grabbed for a glass. She filled it with water from the tap and chugged it down and gasped at the cold of the water as it coursed through her.
Jackie leaned against the counter and shook her head. She had to get rid of the lantern. She shouldn’t have it. She just wanted to forget that the last twenty-four hours had even happened.
“Bullshit,” she muttered. “It’s all bullshit.”
She tapped her fingers against the lantern’s glass and then rubbed her fingers over the raised letters on the edge of the lantern. She didn’t know any Latin, but she remembered the words that Mr. Talbot had said.
“From outside of time, deep calleth to deep, to claim the rewards of sin,” she murmured. “What the hell does that even mean?”
Her phone vibrated on the counter and this time Jackie grabbed for it and stabbed her finger into the screen to accept the call.
Katie’s voice echoed in the kitchen before she could even bring the phone to her ear.
“Where have you been? I’ve been calling all day!”
Jackie rubbed a hand over her forehead and then winced as she remembered that her fingers were covered in pizza grease. “Sorry, working nights is a bit rough,” she said with a sigh.
“You’ve been sleeping all this time?” Katie shouted.
“I mean. Some of it, sure. Look, Katie, thanks for thinking of me for that job, but next time just… forget you know me, okay?”
“I’m ready to do that right now,” Katie fumed. “How could you do this to me?”
Jackie frowned. “Do what? Did something happen?”
“You messed up,” Katie snarled. “Big time!”
“What? How? I left that place sparkling!”
“No. No, you bloody hell didn’t! There were dirty footprints all through the chapel, the bathroom sink was covered in blood—what the fuck were you doing there? I almost lost my goddamn job, Jackie! I had to beg for them not to fire me! Do you know how hard it is to beg for a job like that? The fucking flowers were dumped all over the floor!”
“Noooo.” Jackie wished that she could sink into the floor. Nothing made any sense. She knew she’d cleaned the funeral home. She’d cleaned the chapel. She’d cleaned the bathroom. Set up the flowers perfectly.
“That doesn’t make any sense, Katie,” she said desperately. “I did everything exactly the way you asked me to!”
“So you expect me to believe that someone just waltzed in and messed up your work just for fun? Huh? Is that what you want me to believe?”
“I have no idea,” Jackie whispered. “I’m so sorry, Katie. You have to believe me, I totally left it perfectly clean. I promise. The director was driving up just as I was leaving… there wouldn’t have been any time for anyone to do anything—”
“I can’t listen to you,” Katie snapped. “You lie like it’s your job, Jackie. I’m so tired of this. I’m so tired of trying to bail you out and having you throw it all back in my face like I’m the loser!”
“Hey— That’s not fair—”
“Fair?” Katie raged. “What’s not fair is getting a call at 5am on my long weekend telling me that I’m fired for something I didn’t even do!”
“Look, I’m sorry,” Jackie said flatly. “You’ve got your job back and everything is okay, right?”
She looked at the lantern sitting on her kitchen counter and felt cold. Nothing about this was right. Nothing made any sense.
“Yeah,” Katie mocked her. “I got my job and everything is just peachy keen. Thanks for nothing, Jackie. Do me a favor and lose my goddamn number.”
Jackie opened her mouth to argue, but the line went dead.
“What the literal fuck,” she whispered. Tears pricked at her eyelashes and she blinked them away. This wasn’t worth crying about. She was upset. But she was angry. She knew that she’d done the job Katie had given her. Everything had been perfect when she left the funeral home. And she’d locked the door behind her so there was no way anyone would have been able to get in, and even if anyone had gotten in, they wouldn’t have had time to make a mess of the place before the director walked in.
It was impossible.
Improbable.
Completely and totally fucked up.
“Great. Just great.”
She closed the pizza box and shoved it into the fridge beside an empty bottle of mustard. No groceries. No job. No appetite. And now no friends.
All she had was the stupid lantern and a headache that just wouldn’t go away.
Jackie glared at the lantern. “This is all your fault.”
She grabbed the lantern, carried it into her bedroom, and set it down on her dresser.
It wasn’t dark yet, but exhaustion hit her like a wave and she staggered back to the living room to retrieve the blanket she’d dropped there only a few hours earlier. She took more tylenol and gulped down another glass of water before she scrambled out of her jeans, crawled into bed, and pulled the blanket over her head.
“Fuck. Everything,” she muttered into her pillow.
At least the goddamn dog wasn’t barking anymore.
Something woke her in the dark and Jackie sat up with a jolt that made her head throb. She moaned softly and pressed her palm against the lump on her head.
A glimmer of light caught her eye, and she squinted at it, trying to make out the shape. A flickering orange glow—was it a candle? A fire?
She pushed herself out of bed and walked toward it. This all felt too familiar, but she couldn’t stop walking.
“What the hell is going on?”
As she got closer, Jackie realized that the small flame was actually a small fire, and then a blazing one
as tall as her waist. She held up a hand to shield herself from the heat of the flames and winced as she felt it flex against her skin.
All at once, the flames surged, and she stepped back in alarm. But then the flames shrank down and became a small flickering light trapped inside the glass globe of a lantern.
She knelt down beside it and reached out to touch the handle. She had expected it to be hot, but it was cool to the touch. “This doesn’t make any sense— Why is this here?”
“It’s here for you,” a voice said from behind her.
She spun around, expecting to see a familiar face, but there was no one there.
“Who’s there?” she called out. Her voice sounded strange in the dark. There was no echo, as though all of the sound had been absorbed by something she couldn't see. She held up the lantern and walked a few steps forward, but the darkness was thick and the light of the lantern did not penetrate it. And then she saw it, a shimmer of another light. There was someone else nearby.
“Hello?” she called out. But the sound was flat and disappeared once more.
The light drew closer, and grew larger as she walked toward it. And there was something else. A white shape behind the orange light.
She walked quicker, almost running, and the shapes became clearer. A lamp, and a figure in a flowing white dress. “Hello? Hey! Who are you? Who’s there!”
But there was no answer. She was almost upon the other person, they were close enough now that she could see that the figure in white was a young woman with long dark hair, holding a lantern just like the one she gripped tightly.
She ran toward the other person, calling out, but getting no reply, until she collided with something solid that knocked the breath from her lungs and sent her sprawling to the ground. The lantern tumbled out of her hand and the glass door opened. Fire spilled out, igniting the dry grass. Jackie scrambled away from it, but became tangled in the skirts of the white dress she wore.
“What the hell,” she whispered. She clambered to her feet and tried to run away from the fire, but she struck the invisible wall once more. This time she stopped herself from falling and held her hands out in front of her. Her fingers came up against a smooth, cold surface, and she could see the blurry reflection of her own face; pale and frightened.
Glass. It was a wall made of glass.
“What the—” she whispered.
Behind her, she could feel the heat of the fire as it ignited more and more of the dry grass. It crackled and popped, and she felt panic rising in her throat.
She kept her hand on the glass wall and ran in the opposite direction of the fire, but it seemed to follow her just as quickly as she fled.
With desperate tears choking her, Jackie turned and ran as fast as she could, headlong into the dark. The dry grass was sharp beneath her bare feet and she stumbled, but caught her feet before she fell. She ran harder, trying to stay ahead of the fire, but she could feel the heat of it licking at her shoulders and the soles of her feet.
She couldn’t outrun the fire, couldn’t escape. The walls of glass kept her from turning away and the tears she’d been fighting coursed down her cheeks in hot streaks.
“Help!” she cried out, but the sound was swallowed by the crackling of the fire.
She stumbled again, caught in the hem of the white dress, and this time she tumbled over, headfirst at the ground. She brought her arms up to shield her face, expecting to feel the hard ground smashing into her skin, but nothing happened. She was falling into darkness, tumbling over, and over. She screamed, but the darkness swallowed the sound of her fear as she plummeted down into nothing.
Four
Jackie woke up screaming.
She sat up, sweating, her head pounded with pain and she rubbed her hands over her face. Her palms were cold and clammy, but her cheeks were hot.
“What the fuck was thaaaaat,” she whispered.
She groaned and reached down to push the blankets away. It was morning, thankfully, but she felt hungover. It was a familiar feeling, as though she’d downed a litre of wine the night before on an empty stomach.
But she hadn’t done that.
She’d gone to bed miserable and frustrated. Not drunk.
She staggered to the bathroom and splashed cold water on her face. The dream had been way too vivid. Way too real. Like the one she’d had in the graveyard. But that hadn’t been a dream. That had been the start of the waking nightmare her life had somehow morphed into.
Going back to sleep seemed like a guaranteed mistake, and she stared into the mirror as she brushed her teeth. Get your shit together. Take the lantern back to Barren Field Memorial Gardens and forget any of this happened. If that guy with the bad hair and the hot leather jacket wanted the lantern, he could bloody well have it.
She threw her toothbrush back into its holder and grabbed for her brush. She pulled it through her hair angrily and winced at the snarls it encountered. She pulled her hands through her dark hair and frowned slightly at the texture of the ends. It hadn’t been that long since her last haircut… She lifted a chunk of hair up to examine it closer and recoiled in horror. Those weren’t split ends. Her hair had been singed.
“What—” she whispered. Dreams weren’t supposed to be this real. They weren’t supposed to be this—
She tied her hair into a messy bun on top of her head and ran back to the bedroom. She pulled on the same pair of jeans she’d worn the day before and a sweatshirt that hid the fact that she couldn’t be bothered to find a bra. Priorities.
She had to get that goddamned lantern back to the funeral home where it belonged.
Jackie grabbed the lantern and marched out into the living room. She briefly considered eating a slice of pizza, but there would be plenty of time for that later. She did need coffee.
The strong stuff.
Gas station coffee.
She shoved a few bills into the pocket of her jeans and opened the front door. She stepped out without looking and almost tripped over the guy sitting on her front stairs.
“What the hell,” she shouted. “You could have killed me!”
He looked over his shoulder at her. “Why didn’t you look?”
“It’s my house, I don’t expect anyone to be sitting on my goddamned stairs when I come out!”
“Well… you should have looked. I’ve been here for a while.”
Jackie stared at him incredulously. “A few HOURS? You creep!”
She pulled her phone out of her pocket and stabbed her finger into the screen.
“What are you doing?”
“Calling the cops, you stalker. What the hell do you think I’m doing?”
“That’s not going to do you any good,” he said.
“Like hell it’s not,” she growled.
She held the phone to her ear and jumped off the side of the stairs to avoid walking past him. It rang twice, but the sound was strange and tinny, like a toy phone. No one picked up.
“What the hell, 9-1-1 always picks up,” she muttered.
The guy on the stairs smirked. “I told you it wouldn’t do you any good.”
Jackie shoved her phone back in her pocket and glared at him. “Look, I don’t know who you think you are, or what the hell you’re doing here, but you can fuck right off. I don't have time for bullshit this morning.”
The guy smiled and leaned back on his elbows. “I’ll tell you who I am, but you have to ask nicely,” he said.
“Ask nicely?” Jackie snapped. “I don’t give a shit who you are, I have things to do. By the time I get back, you’d better be gone.”
“Where are you going?”
“As if I’m going to tell you, stalker. Fuck off. Get the hell off my stairs. I should spray you with the hose.”
She pushed her sunglasses onto her face and turned to stomp away down the street. She needed coffee and a bus. And she needed to get the hell away from the guy on her front stairs. Sure, he was cute, but he was still a stalker… and that kind of took the shine off of
how hot he was.
She looked over her shoulder to make sure the guy wasn’t following her, and then turned the corner toward the gas station.
Her boots thudded against the concrete as she walked and she felt hotter and angrier with every step.
“Where are you going?”
The guy’s voice came out of nowhere, startling her. Jackie spun around and saw the guy sitting on a stone wall just in front of her.
“Where the hell did you come from?”
The guy smirked. “Funny you should say that.”
“Why?”
“Becuase I am from Hell, actually. If you really want to know.”
Jackie blinked at him. “What?”
He shrugged. “You asked where I came from. I answered. Hell. I came from hell.”
Jackie laughed nervously. “Sure, whatever. Will you leave me alone now? I’m serious about calling the cops. They don’t treat stalkers very nicely.”
“I’m not a stalker,” he said. “I’m a hellhound.”
Jackie stopped dead in her tracks. “A whatnow?”
“A hellhound. A hound. From hell.”
He was speaking very casually, as though they were having a conversation about the weather.
“You’re full of shit,” Jackie whispered. “First you stalk me, now you’re spewing bullshit at me for no reason… I don’t even know you. Get the hell away from me!”
“I can’t leave you,” he said. “You have something that doesn’t belong to you, and it has to be returned.”
Jackie held up the lantern. “This? This is what you want?” The guy nodded. Jackie snorted and tossed it at him. “Here. Fucking take it.”
The lantern struck him in the chest—or at least it would have, except it passed straight through him and bounced onto the lawn behind him. He turned to look at it and then looked back at her and shrugged again. “Nice try. But I can’t touch it.”
“What?!”
“I can’t touch it. Only you can. I don’t make the rules.”
“That doesn’t make any goddamn sense.”
“Of course it does,” he said calmly. “You were chosen. So, only you can carry the lantern.”
Jackie shook her head. “Carry it? Chosen? This is fucking crazy. I’m taking it back to the funeral home, and I’m going to leave it for the director to deal with. I tripped over it last night while I was in the graveyard chasing a goddamned cat and now I can’t sleep properly and I have a goddamn headache.”
Wicked Souls: A Limited Edition Reverse Harem Romance Collection Page 128