Came Back Haunted: An Experiment in Terror Novel #10

by Halle, Karina

  There was definitely some extra meaning in that.

  “Sure,” I tell him, going around the back of the car, sliding in the passenger side.

  Here’s the thing about Jacob “The Cobb” Edwards: He’s not normal. And I don’t mean it in the way that I’m not normal, I mean it like I’m not sure he’s even mortal. While he looks like he’s in his late fifties, he’s been around since who knows when, not quite a guardian like Max, I suspect something of more importance and power. He used to be the manager for Sage Knightly’s rock band Hybrid in the 70s and he infamously died, buried beneath a pile of bones in a crypt in Prague.

  Alas, death never seems to be final for these gingers. Jacob said a friend pulled him out of Hell, and I have a feeling I know who it is. Now Jacob lives with the Knightlys next door.

  “Buckle up, love,” he says smoothly, putting the car in drive. “Can’t be too careful these days.”

  I fasten the seatbelt as he pulls the car around and heads down the street. I know Dex and my dad are probably still burying the birds so I send both Dex and Ada a quick text letting them know I’m with Jacob.

  I feel Jacob’s eyes on me, and I slide the phone back into my coat pocket.

  “Don’t want them to worry now, do we?” he says, reaching over to the console and turning up the heat, his gaudy gold watch glinting as we pass under the lights. The car is freezing, but I didn’t want to say anything.

  “How did you know I was going to talk to you?” I ask him, pulling my coat closed. Please don’t tell me he’s all-knowing, all-seeing, because that’s going to get really annoying.

  “Because you’re here,” he says, glancing at me. “Surely you have questions about Ada.”

  Okay, so he doesn’t know everything. I abandon my plans to ask him about Max for now.

  “What’s wrong with her?” I ask. “She seems tired and on edge but she won’t speak to me. She barely texts me anymore, doesn’t tell me shit. Even my dad seems like he’s falling apart.”

  “She’s been having a tough go of it lately,” he says. “Normally I wouldn’t confide in you behind her back, but I do have to keep the order of things, and things have certainly been going out of order.”

  My heart clenches, hating that I’ve been kept in the dark. “What happened?”

  “Not just one thing. Many things,” he says with a sigh, adjusting his grip on the steering wheel. In addition to the watch, he’s got some giant gold rings with gems in them, which strangely complement his brown velvet blazer and orange shirt. The man dresses in everything awful about the 70s, though tonight he’s a little more subdued.

  “And what are those things?” I ask, failing to hide my impatience.

  “She really doesn’t tell you anything?” he asks mildly, brow raised, and I have to say it hurts to hear. “Well then. Over the last year she’s been training, as you know. With me, with Jay. She’s become quite adept at opening and closing portals. She doesn’t quite do any fighting yet, but that will come. What happened with your mother and Legion, well that seemed to be a one-off thing.”

  “So she’s not Ada the Demon Slayer yet?” I ask. It feels ridiculous to say it like that, but that doesn’t stop it from being true. Besides, the more outlandish it sounds, the more it sounds fake, and the less I worry about her.

  “Not quite,” he says. “And luckily there hasn’t been a lot of need for it. Until recently.”

  “Why recently?”

  “I have some ideas. Energy is a strange beast. There aren’t a lot of you out there, the ones who can see behind the Veil, but you all seem to come together and find each other, don’t you?”

  I nod. I’m thinking of how Dex and I found each other. I’m also thinking about my doctor, Lana Leivo, and how she’s like me too.

  He goes on. “The Veil walls are growing weak in places, and it doesn’t help that Jay and Ada are…well, together.”

  Oh, so he knows about that. I was always under the impression they were hiding it from him.

  “I know you knew that,” he says, eyeing me. “And I have to say, they did a bloody good job of keeping it under wraps. Your sister is adept at putting up walls and keeping things from me. From you too, it looks like. Or perhaps all the Palomino women have this gift?”

  I say nothing.

  “Unfortunately, it is forbidden all the same. The more they are together, the worse things will get, and when they were out there trying to push back demons and close portals, things got sloppy. They got sloppy because they are too entwined with each other and not thinking clearly. So I did what I had to do.”

  I think about what Ada said, that Jay is gone.

  “You killed him?” I whisper in horror.

  Jacob laughs. “Oh, love. Where your mind goes shouldn’t surprise me.” He gives me a wry smile. “No, I didn’t kill him. I just transferred him to someone else.”

  “Oh my god. That’s somehow worse.”

  “It’s not worse,” he says, his gaze growing sharp. “They both knew this could happen. They knew the risks.”

  “So she’s never going to see him again?” Like, holy shit, how the hell is Ada even handling this right now? No wonder she was crying over the birds.

  “She’ll see him again,” he says. “This is just to break their bond. He’s taking care of someone else right now and eventually he’ll come back to her. They can start fresh.”

  I shake my head, feeling absolutely awful for my sister. I hunch forward in my seat, my stomach hurting. “They’re in love with each other,” I manage to say. At least Ada is madly in love with him.

  “All love stories must end,” he says rather cryptically. “They all have their bumps in the road.”

  “Those are two different things,” I snap at him. “How could you do this to her? To Jay? To one of your own?”

  “Perry,” he says, his voice growing hard, his eyes brimming with importance. “You must realize this, for your own sake. I don’t do these things to punish anyone or to make anyone suffer. I do these things for the greater good. That is how I’ve always operated and I’m unable to operate any other way. Do you understand that? That is written in my code. I manage things. I’m a manager. I try to make things fair. And when it looks like something will be a problem, it is my literal job to fix it. In the case of Ada and Jay, they can’t be together. Their energy is too wild, too chaotic, and in the end Jay will end up making the wrong choice.”

  “You’re afraid Jay will go rogue and give up his immortality. Isn’t that his choice to make?”

  He clears his throat. “It is,” he says after a beat. “And if or when that happens, I can’t do anything to stop it. But in the meantime, I will do what I can, even if my actions seem a little extreme, even if it makes people hate me. Possibly want to kill me. I do these things because it is the only way. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

  I nod. I get it, but I don’t like it.

  “How is your marriage, by the way?” he asks, voice lighter now.

  I give him a sharp look. “It’s great. Why?”

  “No reason,” he says. “Just curious. You’re quite the pair, speaking of people with energy and chaos between them.”

  I stiffen. “I’d like to think whatever chaos we have can be attributed to a normal marriage.”

  He gives me a quick, crooked smile. “You’re right about that.” He pauses. “Just, do me a favor and keep an eye on yourselves.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means that for a couple such as yourself, changes can be harmful. Especially big changes. Better to keep the status quo, for both your sakes.”

  I don’t know why my stomach seems to sink with dread.

  What kind of changes? I want to ask.

  But I’m afraid to know the answer. I’m afraid that Jacob might do something I don’t want him to do, even though I don’t know what that is.

  I have to change the subject.

  “You know, the real reason I wanted to talk to you wasn’t because of
Ada, though I’m grateful you filled me in on that,” I tell him.

  “Oh?”

  “I saw Maximus.”

  “I see.”

  “In a house. In Seattle. I take it you’re aware of this?”

  “I wasn’t aware that you were there, but I know the house.”

  “He told me what you did. He said you pulled him out of Hell.”

  He doesn’t say anything and I can’t get a read on his eyes. Then again, I can never get a read on him.

  “He said that the house was as far as you could take him. Is that true? Was that really him?”

  Eventually he nods. “That was him.” He gives me a quick smile. “We go back a long time. Did you know that when Hybrid was on their tour of Europe, Max was there with us? Thank god for that, because when I died and went to Hell, he was able to go in and get me. Took a lot of courage. Only fair I do the same for him.”

  “But why that house? And why didn’t you pull him all the way out?”

  “Because I can’t,” he says simply. “I tried. That was my intention. But…I couldn’t.”

  “And the house?”

  “It exists on a different plane.”

  “But don’t you think it’s weird that I was there?”

  “Not at all. It makes sense. Energy attracts energy. There are no coincidences.”

  “Then what am I supposed to do?”

  He pulls the car into the parking lot of a 7-11 and turns it off, twisting in his seat to face me. “You keep saying I instead of we. Dex wasn’t there?”

  “He was there. But Max said Dex wouldn’t be able to see him.”

  He seems to ponder over that, sucking at his teeth for a moment. “Why were you there?”

  “We were filming…”

  “You’ve gone back to the show.”

  “No, this is something different. Dex thinks we could become paranormal investigators. To help instead of exploit.”

  “I see. And why that house?”

  “Because we were hired to…try and talk to a man’s dead wife.”

  He mulls that over. “What is the name of the wife?”

  “I think it’s Samantha Poe.”

  “Poe?” He looks surprised.

  “Yeah. Like Edgar Allan Poe. But not. Actually, the son, Atlas, says he’s his descendant but I looked it up. Poe didn’t have any children.”

  “No legitimate ones, no,” Jacob muses. “And have you talked to Samantha?”

  “We don’t know. Max is the only one I could say for sure. There’s a lot going on in that house.”

  “So it would seem.”

  “I’m just wondering, if you can’t pull Max out the rest of the way, maybe Dex and I can.”

  Jacob stares straight ahead, thinking. I’m so tempted to try and slip inside his mind, but I know he’d block me in a second.

  He turns his head to look at me in amusement and I know he could tell what I was thinking.

  Don’t even try it, he says inside my head. A smirk follows.

  “Don’t try to read your mind or don’t try to rescue Max?”

  “Both,” he says. Then he opens the car door. “I’ll be right back.”

  I watch as he goes, briefly wondering what it must be like to have lived so long, to find yourself in this crazy fucking decade.

  Then I think about what he said.

  That we shouldn’t try to bring Max out.

  I sigh, not sure what the hell I’m supposed to do now. Just leave Max stuck there for eternity? Granted, I’m sure it’s a lot better than Hell, but still. Maybe being tied to that house as a ghost is its own form of Hell.

  Jacob comes back, a pack of cigarettes in one hand, a bottle of champagne in the other. He gets in the car and hands the champagne to me.

  “Happy birthday, love. It’s the finest that 7-11 had to offer.”

  “Thank you,” I tell him, touched by the gesture. Seems like the universe is telling me to get drunk today.

  He starts the car then pulls a cigarette from the pack, popping it into his mouth. “Do you mind?” he asks, the cigarette bobbing as he talks.

  “No.” I shake my head. “Those things will kill you, you know.”

  He grins at my choice of words and rolls the window down a crack before lighting it with an old tarnished gold lighter. “No, they won’t.”

  He takes a puff, trying to blow it out through the crack, and reverses out of the space, pulling the car back onto the road.

  “So, why can’t we try to bring out Max?” I ask him after a few minutes of driving in silence.

  “You really love to question everything, don’t you?”

  I shrug, watching and waiting for an answer.

  He puts the cigarette to his lips and takes a drag, in no fucking hurry at all.

  “I’m not sure that you and Dex can,” he eventually says. “If I couldn’t, then I’m not sure why you’d be able to. But even if you are successful, it’s far too dangerous.”

  “Why?”

  “You said there’s a lot going on in that house, including Samantha Poe. Don’t be mistaken in thinking this is an ordinary woman you’re dealing with. She’s not.”

  “She’s not? How do you know?”

  “Call it intuition. Nonetheless, it’s hard to bring people out of the Veil without other entities hitching a ride. I know you know this firsthand. If you bring out Max, who is to say that he’ll come alone?”

  “You think Samantha will come with him?”

  “Perhaps.” I watch as the smoke falls from his mouth.

  “And that’s a problem because?”

  “Because I don’t think you know who you’re dealing with. Perhaps you need to figure that out first. At any rate, if you were to bring Max out, you would need someone to make sure he comes alone. Someone that can push her back in and close the portal.”

  “Ada.”

  “Not Ada,” he says quickly. “She can’t handle it.”

  “Then you.”

  “I need to stay with Ada,” he says. “Now that Jay is gone, I’m all she has. But I’m sure you’ll figure it out.”

  Figure it out? What other option is there?

  “What should I tell Max?” I say. “I want to go back there. I can’t just leave him there.”

  “What if I told you it’s not a good idea?”

  “I’d ask why.”

  “And what if I told you to just trust me on it.”

  “Then I’ll do the opposite of what you say.”

  Because I don’t trust you.

  He glares at me in annoyance. “You and Ada really are sisters, aren’t you?”

  “Last I checked,” I tell him.

  The ride back to the house seems to go quickly, and by the time we pull up, both Ada and Dex are on the street, looking extremely annoyed.

  “Fuck,” I swear to Jacob. “I told them not to freak out.”

  Jacob chuckles. “Oh, Perry. You’d think you’d learn by now.” He turns to me. “Before you go, let me just say this. I’ve never been married but I’ve seen a lot of marriages” —he nods at Dawn and Sage Knightly’s house— “and I know this much. It’s healthy to have a few secrets. Don’t doubt yourself when you need to hold something close to your chest.”

  Then he gets out of the car and strides toward the house, not even giving Ada or Dex a second glance.

  Okay. That was weird. As much as what he said enables me, I don’t think I’ll be taking marriage advice from Jacob Edwards.

  In fact, I don’t know if I’ll take much of what he said to heart.

  I get out of the car, clutching the bottle close to me, while Dex comes striding over. “What the hell were you doing?” he asks angrily.

  “I went for a drive,” I tell him.

  “I told you she was fine,” Ada says, though she sounds annoyed as well. The poor girl. I really need to talk to her.

  “With Jacob?” he asks.

  I shrug. “The birds flying into the window freaked me out, and I wanted to talk to him about
it. Not to mention the monster I saw earlier today.”

  “Hold on, wait, what?” Ada says, coming forward, her blue eyes like saucers. “You saw a monster? Where?”

  “In our parking garage.”

  She visibly shudders.

  “You said it could have been a racoon,” Dex says.

  “No, you said that. And maybe it was. So I wanted to talk to someone who might know.”

  “And what did he say?” Ada asks, looking a tad suspicious.

  “That it was nothing.”

  “Nothing?” she repeats.

  “Yes. Nothing.” I’m lying, I know. I don’t want to get into what Jacob told me about Ada and Jay in front of Dex, just because I know she’ll clam up more. “Anyway, look.” I wave the bottle at them. “This is a sign that we need to get drinking. It’s still my birthday, you know.”

  “Oh, and I have to give you your present,” Ada says, perking up.

  We head back toward the house. Ada goes in first, but Dex pulls me back, putting his arm around my waist and leaning in. “Are you sure you’re okay?”

  “I never said I wasn’t.”

  “The birds freaked you out.”

  “Well, yeah. I assume burying them wasn’t a lot of fun either.”

  He looks grim as he shakes his head. “No.”

  “Is my dad okay?”

  Hesitation flashes across his eyes. Then he says, “He’s fine.”

  Something twitches in my brain and I try to get a read on his thoughts because that didn’t sound remotely true. But there’s nothing there. Dex is either blocking me or it’s happening instinctively.

  “Although I do think it sobered him up a little,” Dex adds, his breath creating a cloud in the cold air. He studies me closely. “So that’s all you guys talked about? You and the Ginger Hellmaster?”

  “Actually,” I say, glancing briefly at the house, “he told me some bad news about Ada.”

  “What bad news?”

  “That she and Jay broke up.”

  He frowns. “They broke up?”

  “Not by choice either. Jacob put the kibosh on their relationship and sent him packing to help someone else.”

  “Holy shit,” he says. “That fucking sucks. God, no wonder she seems so emo today. I can’t believe she hasn’t said anything to you about it.”