by Lisa Kessler
Table of Contents
Dedication
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Discover more Amara titles… Bait N’ Witch
Arctic Bite
Night’s Kiss
Coldest Fire
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
Copyright © 2020 by Lisa Kessler. All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce, distribute, or transmit in any form or by any means. For information regarding subsidiary rights, please contact the Publisher.
Entangled Publishing, LLC
10940 S Parker Rd
Suite 327
Parker, CO 80134
[email protected]
Amara is an imprint of Entangled Publishing, LLC.
Edited by Liz Pelletier and Lydia Sharp
Cover design by PSHousini/Miguel Parisi
Cover photography by KDdesignphoto and f11photo/Shutterstock
ISBN 978-1-64063-806-8
Manufactured in the United States of America
First Edition June 2020
Dear Reader,
Thank you for supporting a small publisher! Entangled prides itself on bringing you the highest quality romance you’ve come to expect, and we couldn’t do it without your continued support. We love romance, and we hope this book leaves you with a smile on your face and joy in your heart.
xoxo
Liz Pelletier, Publisher
This one is for my son, Reno.
Hearing you playing online games with your friends always makes me smile.
Chapter One
It all started with a little ghost boy…
Heather Storrey rolled her eyes. This was not the time to be plotting out the autobiography she’d probably never find time to write. Besides, who would read it? Her family was gone, and her only friend these days was online.
A gust of cold wind stung her cheeks, sending a chill down her back. Fall in Savannah meant cooler days and nights that carried a bite that hinted at the winter to come. Her boots crunched against the cracked tabby concrete drive, the sound marking the increased speed of her strides.
Leaving the massive pillars of the abandoned WWII hospital and research facility behind, she headed for her car. Quickly. As a respected medium, her work in the haunted city never slowed, but lately…paranormal activity had been picking up.
Then there was the little boy.
She shoved the thought away. Her work here was done. The boy hadn’t been part of this job. In fact, he shouldn’t have even been part of this island.
Oatland no longer quarantined patients with infectious diseases. The city closed the facility years ago, and recently the island had been transformed from a hospital and laboratory into a wildlife refuge and zoo. Every day, different Savannah school buses crossed the bridge over the Wilmington River, most of them completely unaware of the restless spirits wandering the halls of the main building. The multistoried structure stood empty, the syphilis and malaria experiments for the Centers for Disease Control long forgotten.
The dead remembered.
The torment had never ended for the two entities she connected with tonight. The male ghosts had been patients at one time, grateful she could hear their pleas. She had no trouble calming them.
It was the little boy wearing clothes much older than any of the structures on Oatland Island that made her hustle for her car.
He hadn’t spoken, just watched her with yearning in his eyes. Haunting.
And “seeing” the dead wasn’t usually her thing. She grew up hearing them. Many had final words for loved ones, some ached for justice, and none of them frightened her.
Maybe frightened wasn’t the right word. Concerned.
Either way, something was wrong here. A disturbance just below the surface of this plane seemed to be shaking the fragile balance between the world of the living and the dead. She couldn’t put her finger on it yet, but she would.
The boy couldn’t have perished on Oatland, and she didn’t recognize him as a relation to her or her family, so how did he end up here, and why? That question had her on edge.
Oatland Island wasn’t the only location around Savannah experiencing an uptick in paranormal activity. The small island had always been haunted. The spectral inhabitants had remained unobtrusive to the employees and visitors until recently. She checked with the management and there hadn’t been any ghost tour companies using the property, stirring up paranormal energy with EMF meters and ghost boxes. Nights on the island had been quiet.
Things changed over the past two weeks. The agitated animals sensed danger, and the night watchman reported lights flickering upstairs in the main building. Skeptics might try to blame it on faulty wiring from 1927, but the city cut the power to the upper floors years ago.
Savannah was no stranger to ghosts and hauntings. Most tour companies touted it as the “city built upon its dead.” However, this energy seemed new.
Halloween was still a few weeks away, so she couldn’t blame it on the thinning of the veil between the living and the dead. And the spirits she’d connected with didn’t seem to know any more than she did. One of them pointed to the water, and an image of a black ship with sails darker than night filled her head. She’d have to do some research later.
The boy did no tricks, nor had he talked. He simply watched her.
A security guard approached as she neared her car. His gaze wandered in every direction. Anywhere except her face. “Everything settled in the main building, ma’am?”
“For now.” Heather smiled, sliding her hand into the pocket of her cape and waiting for him to brave eye contact. The second he looked at her, she held out her business card. “I’m Heather, by the way.”
He took the card with an awkward smile. “They told us you were coming out for the ghost problem.”
Heather chuckled. “The ghosts think we’re the problem.”
His eyes widened slightly. “Are they…dangerous?”
His fear of ghosts seemed to distract him from his uncertainty about her. She was used to the wariness of strangers. Her pale skin, silver hair, and ice-blue eyes made it impossible for her to blend in. Most of the time people struggled not to stare, but the effort to keep from staring usually ended up making the situation even more awkward. As a child, her grandmother told her the albinism that produced a lack of pigment gave her an ethereal look, like an angel.
Childhood bullies said otherwise.
Luckily, Heather was never really alone. The ghosts were never far away.
; “They’re not usually a threat.” Heather shook her head at the security guard. “Poltergeists can be dicey because they can touch objects on our plane. The spirits I met tonight weren’t like that. They were patients of the hospital. Things should be quieter now, but you have my card if you need me to visit again.”
His shoulders visibly relaxed and he smiled. “Thanks, Miss Storrey.”
“Heather.” She offered her hand.
He paused for a moment and finally reached out, accepting her greeting. “Heather.” He released her hand and cleared his throat. “Sorry about before…I”—he shook his head—“I’ve never seen someone so—” He closed his mouth, obviously certain he was about to insert his foot.
“Unique?” Heather offered with a raised brow.
He nodded, eager to accept her description. “I didn’t mean any offense.”
“None taken.” And she meant it.
As a teen, his reaction might’ve bothered her, but with her thirtieth birthday coming up, she’d learned to be comfortable in her own skin. Every day she gave less fucks about the approval of others and embraced the reality that if she took offense every time someone gawked as she passed by, she’d never get a chance to smile.
Life was too short to allow others to determine her mood.
She hadn’t always been so self-assured. She’d spent much of her childhood envying her twin sister, Ashley.
Their unique birth made the local newspapers at the time. Although they were identical twins born only a few minutes apart, they were opposites. A rare genetic anomaly gave Ashley a head full of chocolate-brown hair, while Heather’s was snow-white. She dyed her hair for a year of high school in an effort to fit in. It hadn’t worked.
The security guard tucked her business card into his shirt pocket and tugged the brim of his hat. “Drive carefully.”
“Thank you.” She continued to her car, but as she reached for the door, a small hand slipped into hers, sending an icy chill up her arm.
Heather fought the urge to turn for a better look at the boy in the corner of her eye. Usually she heard the dead; seeing them and feeling their touch was rare. The few times it had happened, their forms were visible only in her peripheral vision. If she turned to look, they were gone.
“Please don’t let them take me back,” the boy pleaded.
He wore black breeches and a dirtied white loose-fitting shirt with laces. Maybe Jacobite? Either way, they were far from the fashions she would expect on a Southern boy from the 1920s, and his accent wasn’t the familiar Southern drawl of the area, either. Instead, it was notably British, bordering on Cockney. Definitely not from around Savannah.
So how did he get here and why?
“Who is after you?” she whispered.
“The witches. They pulled me out of the ocean. Please help.” The sensation of weight in her hand vanished, and his image thinned. The boy’s eyes widened with panic. “They’ll drive him mad!” The boy panted. “Promise you will protect him.”
Heather frowned. “Who?”
“My uncle. He thinks it’s his fault.”
Deciphering messages from spirits often resembled piecing together a jigsaw puzzle, but this time she had so few pieces. “What’s his fault?”
The boy glanced around, flickering in and out of view. “They’re coming. Protect my uncle. Please.”
“I will.” Heather nodded, without turning and losing the vision. “Tell me who.”
“Drake Cole.”
She blinked. She recognized that name. A few weeks ago, Drake put himself between her and a bullet. He was tall, with broad shoulders, a chiseled jaw, and strong hands. Other than a sizable jagged scar over his right eye, she might’ve mistaken him for Thor straight out of the Avengers movies. Unlike the Norse god, Drake’s deep blue eyes opened a window into the soul of a man who had lost too much for his young age.
He couldn’t possibly be the uncle of this boy who must’ve perished lifetimes ago.
Before she could question him further, the apparition was gone.
…
Drake Cole cursed under his breath as the top runner of the twelve-foot mahogany door missed the track inside the pocket of the wall. His voice was more of a grunt as he bore the weight of the antique door against his shoulder and glanced up at Jax perched at the top of the ladder. “I can’t hold it much longer.”
“I’m sorry,” she muttered, readjusting the slides. “If you can lift it just half an inch more, I should be able to…” The track creaked as the wheels caught the groove. “Got it!”
Jaxton Raine was a college intern from SCAD. When the Savannah College of Art and Design first opened, Drake had accepted a few students to intern with him, but eventually he stopped. Mingling with mortals served no good purpose. It led to complicated friendships that required more lies to hide his secret. Jax had been the first apprentice he’d agreed to mentor in years.
Apparently, she’d been a proud Girl Scout for most of her life, and she also fostered a strong interest in woodworking with an emphasis on furniture construction. When she’d heard the Juliette Gordon Low house had a restoration project underway, she researched the contractors and looked him up. Her tenacity made it tough to refuse her.
Besides, it was a short-term commitment. No chance of entanglements he didn’t need.
He straightened up, rubbing his lower back as he admired the newly refinished door. Historic restorations were his specialty, and being inside Juliette Gordon Low’s house again felt oddly comforting. No one would have guessed he was the original craftsman who carved and finished these doors over a hundred years ago.
Hand carving the trim had taken weeks back then; now he could see his hard work paid off. Other than needing to be sanded and protected with a new coat of stain, the doors were still in immaculate condition.
“They look amazing,” Jax enthused as she climbed down the ladder. Her dreadlocks were pulled back into a ponytail, and the fire in her dark eyes made him grateful he’d accepted her offer to apprentice with him.
She would be a damned fine designer someday.
Her bright grin lit up her face as she stopped beside him. “You do good work.”
“Thanks.” He wiped his hands on his jeans. “Couldn’t have gotten them rehung without your help. You still think you want to specialize in restoration design?”
She nodded. “For sure. And I happen to have a line on this amazing subcontractor to use for the carpentry projects.”
“You know where to find me.” Drake rubbed the back of his neck and bent to gather up his tools. “Thanks for your help with this one.”
Jax held up her right hand. “It was my honor,” she said, reciting the Girl Scout promise. She lowered it again and chuckled. “Cookie-selling champ of my troop back in the day.” She checked her cell phone and met his eyes. “Are we finished here?”
“Yeah.” He closed the ladder. “I can load up the tools. Thanks, Jax.”
“I’ll see you next weekend.” She spun on her heel, her footsteps thumping down the creaky old staircase, leaving him behind in blessed silence.
He collected his tools, scanning the empty rooms. Thousands of visitors from around the world walked through this house every year. They came for tours, to hear the history of Juliette Gordon Low, the founder of Girl Scouts.
He’d known her as Daisy, and he hadn’t aged a day since. Memories like that weighed heavy on him. Eternity could turn into an abyss if he allowed himself to remember all the mortals he cared about as lifetimes came and went.
He rubbed a hand down his face and shook his head. “Enough.”
Lately, he’d been second guessing his choice to take another drink from the Holy Grail, and being here, in this empty house full of ghosts from his past, wasn’t helping. He’d been the ship’s carpenter on the Sea Dog until the day she sank at the mouth of the Savannah River i
n 1795. The Holy Grail had been their final plunder, granting each of them immortality. Last year, when the spell started wearing off, the crew took one more swallow.
Maybe it would have been better to reject it. Too late now.
He carried his toolbox in one hand and his ladder under his other arm. He left the final invoice with the night manager downstairs and headed for his truck.
It might be time to try something new. Maybe over two hundred years of working with his hands was long enough. Caleb, their navigator, had pursued multiple college degrees. Drake could follow his path into academia. Anything to keep busy and take his mind off the years passing him by.
“Excuse me. Drake?”
He turned at the sound of a woman’s voice to find a face he would never forget. “Heather? What are you doing here?”
Heather Storrey was a sought-after medium in Savannah. He’d met her in person a few weeks ago during the showdown with the Serpent Society in the Bonaventure Cemetery. He’d never seen another woman like her, and that was saying something, since he’d been alive nearly two hundred and fifty years. Her pale skin glowed in the moonlight like a porcelain doll, and her bright, ice-blue eyes stared directly into his soul. She wore her long silver hair down tonight, tempting him to run his fingers through it.
She glanced up and down the street before crossing over from her parked car. Closer now, she met his eyes again. “You’re in danger.”
He followed her gaze down the darkened, empty road and raised a brow. “How so?”
“Please just take my word for it. We don’t know each other well, so you’re going to have to trust me when I say I’m not one for dramatics.” When he continued to stare, she rolled her eyes. “You’re never going to believe me if I try to explain.”
Tip of the iceberg. This woman might speak to the dead, but she would laugh in his face if he told her he’d lived through more than two centuries already, and he’d most likely be here for at least two more.
He placed his ladder into the bed of his truck and turned to face her. The determination in her gaze reminded him that, although she looked fragile, she possessed the heart of a warrior. She’d proven it the night they met. She’d nearly gotten herself killed trying to protect a federal agent in the Bonaventure Cemetery.