Rockwell Agency: Boxset

by Dee Bridgnorth

  “I thought that people were superstitious about rabbits’ feet.”

  Ryan shook his head. “Maybe they are, but that’s not real. Not as far as I know. But a pig’s hoof protects from evil spirits. We’re about to open up the connection between this world and the next. We want to talk to Leanna Bard. We do not want to talk to or interact with whatever evil spirit might be loitering, waiting for a window into this world. The pig feet will ward those spirits off.”

  “Convenient.”

  He completed the circle, which consisted of bayou silt, sage, and the glowing embers. Around the circle, he placed various charmed or powerful items, which would serve specific purposes. They would protect, or strengthen the connection, or give off an aura of trust and peace that would keep all of them calm. Pig feet at the north, south, east, and west of the circle, one in each place. And Ryan stood in the middle, holding his hand out to Angela.

  “Are you ready?”

  “Not at all,” she said, taking his hand anyway and stepping into the circle with him. She took a deep breath, not releasing his hand even after she was standing fully in the circle. “This doesn’t seem real.”

  “That’s okay,” he said, kneeling down in front of her and tugging at her hand. “Sit with me.”

  She followed him, and they both sat cross-legged within the circle, staring at each other. He had both of her hands in his. Their fingers laced together between them, and Ryan felt so much more than just the spirit power in the room. Her hands were warm and slight, and they felt good wrapped in his. He stroked his thumb over her finger, caressing her lightly. It was too intimate a gesture, but it felt right, and when she lifted her eyes up to his, he could see that the caress had an impact on her.

  “Close your eyes,” he murmured.

  She did, shuttering off her brown doe eyes from his view. Her lashes rested against the curve of her cheek, and her hair, dried now, fell down around her shoulders. He looked at her for a long moment, drinking her in, and then he put such thoughts and the desires they stirred from his mind and focused.

  “I’m going to do the heavy lifting here,” he said. “All you have to do is sit there, keep holding my hands so we stay connected, and keep your mind as open and relaxed as you can. Your primary job is to keep your body from tensing up and blocking the connection I’m going to create.”

  Angela winced, her eyes staying closed. “I think that will be easier said than done, but all right. I will try.”

  “Good,” Ryan said, pressing her fingers warmly. He closed his own eyes and let reality fade away from his thoughts. It was not his first séance, by any means, and he had always found it relatively easy to connect to the spirit world. This time was no different as he dwelt on the power he sensed from the sage and the embers. He let the power simmer around him, using his own heightened senses and supernatural strength to draw from them. Before long, he felt as though he was floating, which was the first step towards reaching the spirit world. He held onto Angela, bringing her along with him as he floated. Her fingers were still gripping his, and he could feel her tension. He tried to ease it by letting some of the floating sensation he was having travel through his body and into hers. Her fingers relaxed slightly, and he smiled, liking how easily she responded.

  As he grew closer to the spirit world, images began to flash around him. He could see a black dragon, flying. That image was always present whenever he drifted to the other side. It represented his identity. His person. He was still here, in his truest form, watching over them. He saw a green dragon as well, the symbol of the Rockwell Clan. Those images were just for him. But then he saw trees, and he reached for them, not knowing their significance, but knowing that it must mean something if they appeared now, while he was reaching for a connection.

  He began to murmur softly. “We’re here as friends. We want to see you. We only want to talk so that we can help you. You can trust us.”

  The trees grew closer and closer, and any moment, Ryan expected to see Leanna Bard walking out towards them. He had been saying her name over and over again in his mind, directing the connection he was building, and it was working. The connection he felt was stronger than ever. Angela would see the trees, just as he was seeing them. She was doing a good job of keeping herself calm and steady.

  This was going to work.

  “Leanna,” Ryan murmured out loud. “We’re here to help you. We want to know what you need from us. Come talk to us. We’re here as friends.”

  There was a whisper of sensation behind him, and a shiver ran down his back. There was a spirit in the room with them. She hadn’t appeared at the tree line yet, but he could feel the presence of the spirit all around him. It was rushing through the air, almost playfully.

  Ryan smiled. There were few things like successfully connecting to the spirit world. It was a unique experience. Some found it terrifying and arrogant. Ryan found it fascinating. He was captivated by the thought of another place where spirits lived, waiting to be invited to speak to the living.

  Any moment now, he would hear her voice—Leanna’s voice. It would be the voice that he had heard come out of Angela’s mouth the night before—the voice that hadn’t been hers.

  “Leanna,” he called. “Leanna, we’re ready to hear you.”

  “I’m not Leanna.”

  The voice shocked him to his core. It wasn’t a female voice. It was a male voice. A young male voice, one just shy of puberty. It had a Louisiana twang to it, and it was painfully familiar.

  Then, at the line of trees, the young boy appeared, smiled, and waved at him.

  “Hello, Ryan. Remember me?”

  He panicked, acting on sheer instinct. He broke the connection with the other side, throwing himself from the spirit world with such force and abruptness that he fell into nothingness. Pain seared through him and darkness encompassed him.

  It was better.

  It was better to face pain and darkness than to face that young boy.

  Chapter 22

  Angela

  One moment she was floating, a hazy line of trees in the distance of her vision. Ryan’s voice was low and almost seductive, calling Leanna to them. She was calm. Steady. The impact of what they were doing thudded in the back of her mind, but she was able to keep it there, oddly fascinated by what was taking place within her and around her.

  The next moment, pain ripped through her, and the trees vanished, the floating sensation disappeared, and her eyes flew open as she was thrown back against the floor. Flames erupted from the embers, flashing around in a circle and singeing her hair and clothing. They disappeared as quickly as they had erupted, and she was left, lying on her back, staring up at the ceiling of Ryan’s house, her chest heaving as she tried to stave off panic and pain.

  “Ryan,” Angela managed to say, her hand feeling around for him. “Ryan, what happened? Ryan!”

  He wasn’t answering her. Angela pushed herself up and felt another surge of panic as she saw Ryan lying on the floor, his eyes closed, and his head lolled to the side. His body was limp, and his limbs were askew. He looked unconscious. No—he looked dead.

  “Ryan!” Angela was on her knees, her own pain and fear forgotten as she grabbed Ryan’s shoulders and began to shake him, trying to wake him. “Ryan!”

  A swooping sound behind her sent the hair on her arms standing straight up and a thrill of fear ran down her spine. She felt the wind of something flying around her, and she hunched over, trying to protect herself as something else swooped.

  “Go away!” she shouted, grabbing for a pig’s hoof and clutching it to her chest as she covered Ryan’s body with hers. “Leave us alone! Leave!”

  There was a faint sound of laughter, and then breath at her ear.

  “I’ll never leave you alone,” the voice said.

  And then the room went deadly still. Nothing swooped. There was no wind. It was stiller than still—it was eerily still, as though no life could exist within that space.

  Her heart was pounding fu
riously in her chest, but Angela didn’t have time to be afraid. She didn’t know what was wrong with Ryan, or how much danger he was in. She could hardly call for an ambulance out in the bayou, and even if she could, how would she explain that he had fainted in the middle of a séance meant to contact the spirit possessing her body?

  “Ryan!”

  She shook him again, but he still didn’t respond. Fear clawing at her throat, she began to pat him down until she located his phone in his back pocket. Pulling it out, she used his fingerprint to open it, and then she scrolled through his contacts until she found a name that was familiar to her. She felt safe with him—safer than with any of the names of his colleagues that she was only vaguely familiar with.

  The phone rang and rang, and she squeezed her eyes shut, anxiously listening for the voice. “Answer, answer, answer,” she pleaded, whispering under her breath.

  “Hello?”

  “Norman!” Angela gripped the phone, her body almost sagging with relief. “I need your help.”

  “Who is this?” Norman asked. “Is this Angela?”

  “Yes,” Angela said, not knowing or needing to know how he had known it was her. “I’m with Ryan. We were doing a séance, and now he’s unconscious. I can’t tell if he’s breathing. Well, he is breathing, yes. But I don’t know what’s wrong with him. Please—you have to help me.”

  “Calm down, now,” Norman said, comfortingly. “You’ve called the wrong person, dear.”

  “No,” Angela said. “I haven’t. I need you to help me. Please—you helped me before.”

  “I’m going to help you,” Norman said. “I am just not the one you need. You need my son, Barrett. He’ll know just what to do. Now, you have Ryan’s phone, don’t you? Find Barrett’s name and call him. Can you do that for me?”

  Angela couldn’t take her eyes off Ryan’s lifeless face. “Yes. All right.”

  “Good girl,” Norman said, praising her. “Do it right now, then. Everything will be all right.”

  She hung up, clinging to the man’s words. Everything had to be all right, because if it wasn’t, then not only was Ryan’s death her fault, but she was also stuck with the spirit possessing her—the spirit who had caused all of this. “I hate you, Leanna,” she said out loud. “I hope you can hear me, and I hope you know that I hate you.”

  Angela clicked on Barrett’s name, calling him instead. She wasn’t nearly as comfortable with Barrett as she was with Norman, but her comfort didn’t matter. If Barrett could help them, then she would talk to him all day long.

  “Ryan—I’m glad you called,” Barrett said when he answered. He launched into information without waiting for a reply. “I’m at the office. Remember that documentation I was talking to you about? You did give it to me. I have that record here. And now I can’t find what I did with it. It’s impossible. I know I didn’t just …lose that money. I can remember having it now. I know I had it, and I know I reimbursed the company, so where is it?”

  “This isn’t Ryan,” Angela said, breaking into the man’s stream of thought. “This is Angela Winston. Ryan is working my case, and something terrible has happened to him.”

  “What happened?” Barrett said, his tone changing completely. “Where are you, Angela?”

  “I’m at Ryan’s house. We were doing a séance.”

  There were sounds of Barrett moving around in the background of the call, and Angela hoped he was getting into his car to come to her. “What happened during the séance?”

  “I don’t know,” Angela said. “I thought it was working, but then all of a sudden we were ripped apart. It was painful, and I was thrown to the ground. He was, too. Flames jumped up all around us and then disappeared, and now he won’t respond. He looks dead.”

  “He’s not dead,” Barrett said, “and he’s not going to die either. I’m coming to you now, okay? I don’t know what happened in the séance, but if something goes wrong, it can shock the host of the séance and send him into a miniature coma. He’ll come out of it, but there’s no telling when—and when he does, he won’t be happy. Just stay with him, okay? You’re at his house, right? I’m on my way there.”

  Angela sat back on her heels, closing her eyes as she lingered in her relief. “He’s not going to die?”

  “Definitely not.”

  “Okay,” Angela said. “Don’t worry—I’ll be here.”

  “It’ll take me thirty minutes. See you then.”

  Angela hung up the phone and sat down beside Ryan, taking his hand in hers. There was still no other sign of supernatural activity in the room, and she was glad of it. She could still hear the whisper in her ear, and what had felt like the touch of a hand tracing down her spine. Just the memory made her shiver. The lights had all come on—she didn’t know when that happened. But she was glad it had, because she couldn’t have sat there in the dark.

  Even with all of the lights on and Ryan’s hand safely in hers, she was afraid. Leanna might return at any moment, or she might take her over. There should be peace in knowing that it was not Angela’s own mind that was troubled, but there was little peace to be found in the concept that another human being was sharing her body and her mind with her. She had felt Leanna’s presence far too closely, and she never wanted to feel it again.

  “I need you to come back to me,” Angela told Ryan, holding his hand tightly and staring down into his handsome face. “You can’t be in a coma, Ryan. I don’t know what to do. You’re the only one who can help me.”

  Reaching out, she brushed his hair back from his forehead, then traced her fingers along the strong line of his brows. Her fingers skimmed the sharp line of his cheekbone and then along his jaw. One finger slowly traced the fullness of his lips, and another shiver went through her, though this one was far from supernatural. It was a totally natural, physical reaction to being able to touch him and feel his skin beneath her fingers.

  She laid down, resting her head on his chest and putting her arms around him. “I don’t want you to come back to me just to help me,” she whispered. “I need you to come back so that I can hear your voice and see your eyes again. I miss them already, and you haven’t even been gone five minutes. No—even that sounds selfish … Just come back, Ryan. Please. Come back for me. Come back for you. Just come back. I don’t know what to do without you.”

  Chapter 23

  Barrett

  Barrett knew the route to Ryan’s house like the back of his hand, so the drive gave him plenty of time to think about other things. He was worried about Ryan because a séance coma could be serious if the break had been too hard. Breaking the connection with the supernatural world without proper warning or time could cause the brain to temporarily shut down, and if the break was particularly brutal, then the brain could shut down for a good long while. He didn’t know what had happened to Ryan, but he knew that it had the potential to impact him for some time to come. It was true that Ryan wasn’t going to die—he hadn’t lied to Angela. But he also hadn’t told her that a séance coma could have long-lasting effects on a person. He hadn’t wanted to worry her unnecessarily.

  But as worried as he was about Ryan, he was also worried about what he had been doing when Angela had called. There was a lot of responsibility on Barrett’s shoulders. He came from a long line of Rockwell’s, and it was his responsibility to run the iconic Rockwell Agency with efficiency, integrity, and effectiveness. It was his birthright, as the only child of Seth and Jaden Rockwell, the previous leaders of the Rockwell Dragon Shifters. He was more than up to the task. Except that things kept going missing.

  It wasn’t just the money Ryan had borrowed. It was other little things. Case files that were missing. Financial records that were incomplete. Now, missing money. He was so careful. So organized. So dedicated to proving that he could follow in his parents’ footsteps.

  But he couldn’t get it right, and it didn’t make any sense, because Barrett knew that he was capable of doing his job. He knew it more than he knew anything else about himsel
f. So constantly having to face new problems at the agency was not only worrying him—it was making him angry.

  Every time he thought he had traced the problem to someone else, it turned out that the other person had done what they were supposed to do, and the blame for the mistake rested on Barrett’s shoulders.

  It just wasn’t possible. He knew it wasn’t.

  But disappearing paperwork would have to wait. Something had gone terribly wrong with Ryan’s séance, and if he wasn’t retrieved from the blank state he was in, then he could end up in a great deal of trouble. As Barrett guided his car carefully down the lane that would lead to the closest reasonable parking spot near Ryan’s house, Barrett forced himself to focus on what he would need to do.

  He would need to keep Angela calm and give her only the information that she had to have.

  He would have to recreate the séance environment alone. Just him and Ryan. And he would have to go back to the point where Ryan had broken the connection improperly and restore it. Barrett knew that Ryan was experienced with contacting the spirit world, so something strange must have happened to cause him to abandon the séance without proper caution.

  Barrett thought he might know what that something strange was.

  He jogged down the pathway to Ryan’s house and didn’t bother to knock on the door before entering. Ryan rarely locked his front door because he lived in such an isolated spot. It was hardly likely that a common thief was going to be trolling the bayou, looking for a house to rob. And if a common thief did happen to enter the house, Ryan could easily take him.

  So Barrett walked right in, stepping into the middle of a troubled scene. Angela was lying down beside Ryan, her head on his chest and his hand in hers. She had been crying at some point, though the tear streaks down her cheeks were dried now as she opened her eyes and looked up at him. Ryan lay askew on the floor, his eyes closed, his mouth slack, and his skin much too pale.

  “Dammit,” Barrett said, moving forward towards the body. “He really got a shock, didn’t he?”