Cole slammed the door with extra force. “Yep. One I’ll pay the best medium to remove if she ever has need to visit this house again.”
“Aww. A housewarming present,” Kaitlyn said.
“You two are just full of jokes.” Cole tapped his fingers on the door panel.
After we ate dinner at Fatz and drove forty minutes back to the manor, Cole’s mood had lightened.
The whole drive to the house, we’d had light drizzle. With a right turn onto the property, the bottom fell out. With the hopes that we were closer to seeing the end of Grace Rollins, we all laughed as we ran into the house.
I was completely soaked by the time we made it to the entrance where Brooklyn, one of the quietest and hardest working staff members, held the door open for us. She was always right on time when I requested anything. One day, she’d thanked me for not being like Ava.
Apparently the appreciation for eccentricity stopped with Cole.
I grinned as we passed her. “Thank you. I’m so glad you were here. Another second in that and we might have been washed away.”
“My pleasure, Mrs. Kinsley.” It was the first time I’d heard anyone say my last name other than Cole and me in jesting. It sent chills unrelated to the cool rain down my spine.
Cole nodded to Brooklyn and she walked away.
“I love the sound of that.” He dipped his head and swooped in for a light kiss. “Let’s go check on your evil sibling. Hopefully, she hasn’t budged.”
I wrung water out of my shirt. “I’m going to get out of these wet clothes. I’ll meet you in the basement.”
“Before I take any clothes off, I’m going to make sure she’s not around to witness it. She has a way of catching you with your pants down.” Cole winked at me. That was for telling him about my steamy moment with the ghost Casanova.
“I didn’t mean to make out with the guy. I told you, he propositioned me. And he was good at it.” I gave Cole a wicked smile and continued up the stairs.
“You two act like you’ve been married for years.” Kaitlyn waved as she and her sister walked toward the ballroom doors where the basement entrance was off to the left.
Cole followed the girls. “Imagine how argumentative we’ll be when we’re eighty. And all that making up will be fun.”
Their voices were almost inaudible by the time Shelby replied. “That’s foreplay for you guys. I don’t even want to imagine you being frolicky at that age. Seriously. I haven’t eaten yet.”
Shaking my head, I pulled my bedroom doors shut and without flipping the lights on first, I stripped off my shirt. I could imagine he’d be sexy even when he had a few decades of age on him. Salt and pepper layered in his hair, and that same grin framed with a few wrinkles would be enticing even when we were too old to put as much effort into intimacy. There’s no way I would ever tire of him. He could be on his deathbed.
“You’ve only been married for a few days, and he’s already sick of you. He could have come up here and ravished you as soon as your clothes were a heap on the floor, but he wanted to see me first. I tried to warn you that he’d always come to me when he was done with you, when we were alive.” A decaying body sat on the side of my bed. “Oh, wait. You’re the only one who really counts as being alive right now. And for the first time, that’s the way I want you to stay. After Cole dies, I’m going to bring Colby with me to the In-between, I don’t want your cute little thieving spirit there with us being a distraction. And that’s exactly what you are. A distraction. With you out of the way, he won’t think twice about you. It’ll be all about me the way it was when we first started courting.”
My grip on my shirt went slack. It fell to the floor as my knees turned to mush.
The stench of dead animals permeated through the room, or had her body decayed that much in a few days?
Her lips were already black as she stepped from the shadows in my room. She held the bedpost as she sat on my bed. As she raked her dirty fingers across my white bedspread, she left a trail of animal guts.
My voice jerked, but I mustered words. “Are you… Are you dead?”
“Not just yet, but I learned something that might be useful later. If you don’t feed a body for days and leave it wounded in a pit of bacteria, it tends to hurt like a bitch. I haven’t felt pain or anything in so long, it’s almost refreshing. If I was truly alive and I wasn’t so classy, I’d probably be one of those people who cut themselves just to take the pain away. Or for attention. Emo, isn’t that what your youth calls it nowadays?” Grace stretched out her hand and gazed at her newly manicured, but now cracked fingernails.
I backed toward the door, but the lock mechanism clicked into place. “I promised if Cole crossed me I’d make your life a living hell. I could start by locking you in here with a rotting corpse for hours on end, and no one could do a thing about it. If they tried to break down the door, I’d just maim you so badly Colby would never turn a wandering eye in your direction again.”
My blood curdled. This could not be happening. Shelby was supposed to have her under a sleep spell. We’d been so close to finding the answer to all our questions. It was too soon for her to be awake.
“Before those idiots realize I’ve climbed out of that pit of stench, and out of duty to a damsel in distress, Cole comes charging to your rescue like one of King Arthur’s knights, let’s get you to the pond. That’s where the real action is going to take place tonight.” As Grace stood, her joints made a disgusting popping noise. She left a spot of decayed animal juice on my bed. “That’s where the action has always been. I’m sure you loved the story of how Colby gave his virginity to me. I can’t stop thinking about it.”
My stomach churned into knots, and bile rose in my throat.
With a wave of her hand, Grace’s dark magic slammed the doors open. “We’re closest to the front door, so when we get to the bottom of the stairs, we’ll go out that way. We don’t want to run into your little group of misled followers.”
Taking one whiff of her breath was akin to sticking your head into a dumpster full of rotting baby diapers. Chunks of dinner crowded the back of my throat. I almost choked.
She was sick.
I had known she was mentally off before. I’d heard stories, and I’d seen what she’d done with Colby’s bones, but this…stealing an innocent woman’s body and allowing it to die for her own personal gain was beyond any act of selfishness she’d staged so far.
With a floppy arm, Sage slapped me in the back. Her teeth chattered and black liquid slipped down the side of her face as sounds moved across her vocal cords. “Go. Now.”
The farther away from the house Grace took me, the more difficult it would be to hear me cry out in distress. If I could cry out at all. I couldn’t catch my breath and could barely function due to the dizziness Grace had started with her macabre show of mental illness.
Grace shoved me out the door. “If they only knew how selfish you were, they wouldn’t love you as much as they do. You’ve always taken everything I’ve ever loved and kept it for yourself.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. You act as if I remember the past. That’s your fault.” Nausea abated and anger replaced it as she bit into my upper arm with Sage’s long, cracking nails.
“You’re a pitiful excuse for a wife. You know that? You can’t even keep your hands to yourself for a week. You’ve already cheated on my sweet Colby. Add that to the list of reasons you don’t deserve him.” She jerked me down the last few steps.
I almost stumbled onto the floor.
Just as the idea to think to Cole crossed my mind, Grace turned on me. With her moldy hands, she jerked me out the front door, slammed it shut, and shoved me against it with so much force it knocked the wind out of me. “And don’t even think about doing that mind talking stuff. I know Colby can hear you. It didn’t take long to figure out that you all have a secret way of communicating. As much as I hate to hear all your voices, there are too many t
imes that you’re silent. So if you think one thought in his direction, and I find out about it, I’ll be sure to make his untimely death as painful as possible.”
I clamped my mouth shut as if that would stop the thoughts. I thought of sunny days and humid nights on a beach far from my current location.
“Grace is gone! Are you okay? Please tell me she’s not with you.” Cole’s sensual voice broke as it reverberated through my head.
What could I think back to him and not purposely give away my situation? Being abducted by a demented bitch who was playing puppet master to a dead body sort of made it hard to focus.
Cole didn’t give me long to respond before he pressed the thoughts into my head with a force I’d never felt. “You sounded weird a few minutes ago. I’m on my way up. You had better be in the shower where you can’t hear me. If not, I’ll tear this place apart searching for you.”
I held both sides of my temple. With every word Cole forced into my head, the pressure became painful.
Grace tugged me along but stopped when she saw my reaction to whatever was going on inside my head.
“You had better make damn sure he doesn’t interrupt us.” The stench of her breath slammed into me.
I wretched but found the breath to respond aloud. “Can’t a girl take a shower in peace?”
“Good girl.” Grace’s clammy hand dug into my skin. “Hurry up. We haven’t all day.”
Chapter 14
In a pace so quick my calves burned, Grace yanked me stumbling and tripping on anything that appeared in our path all the way to the pond. “You’re probably dying to know what the importance of the pond is. First of all, I want to show you the exact spot where Colby and I made love. I want to see the look on your face and absorb your pain when you realize how erotic it was. I want to see your eyes when you picture our naked bodies writhing all over the overgrown grass. And boy did he ever writhe. I feel sure he’ll never forget our night together.”
Blood pulsed through my temples, threatening to burst through.
No thoughts, Allie. No thoughts.
“And when he was slick with so much sweat that it dripped off of him, I caressed every inch of his skin. It was the most amazing night I’ve ever had. And I had plenty of men to compare him with. They lined up. That’s probably why Colby felt so intimidated. I don’t blame him. My prospects were alarming in number.” Grace sighed but it came out as a death rattle.
Weak with disgust and the length in which we’d traveled, I gripped the railing to the new steps I’d built to the pond.
Grace shoved me down the steps.
One thing I could think and not give away my location was that Grace was more demented than I ever thought she was. She had deluded herself into thinking Cole loved her and he was just passing time with me. It would have been sad if she hadn’t turned herself into such a vile excuse for a human. Spirit or not.
There had been times I’d felt sorry for her.
Tonight that ended.
Now that I’d witnessed her true mental sickness, I could see why Colby and Grace’s mother would have concocted such a plan to commit her to the confines of an asylum. At first it seemed devious, but I saw what they had to contend with.
It would have sucked to live around her. Then, she had to have been at least half as dangerous as she was now. It still eluded me how I had, and couldn’t remember any of her outrageous antics.
“You’re too quiet. You’d better hope you didn’t do any of that telepathy.” Grace shoved me to the ground when we got to the pond bank. “Lie on your backside.”
I did as she ordered.
“Now, imagine him beckoning me to him as he lay there. Picture it.” Grace paced, gesturing emphatically as she droned on. “And that night in the motel room. He didn’t stop immediately the way he proposed to you that he did. We were well into the act of foreplay before he stopped. He was so scared he’d harm me, he sent me away until we could do away with you. He says differently, but I know him much better than you.” Grace glared at me.
“Now, since I know you weren’t upstairs to witness Thing One and Thing Two gathering the ingredients for my demise, you wouldn’t be aware that they would have to exhume my remains. If they can’t find my body, then they can’t send me to hell. Little do they know, we’re going to fetch my body and hide it. I know it’s dark under that murky water, but you’ve done this all before in a dream. I’m sure it will be second nature.” Grace used invisible force to shove me over the pond bank.
I sputtered water from my mouth and held on to roots. She just had to throw me into the deepest side. The cold water wrapped around me and took me deep into the dream I’d had on the airplane.
I had done this before, and I sure as hell wasn’t going down there again. Not for her, anyway.
With the same ability she used to shove me in, she shoved me under. I fought my way up and grabbed mud, roots, and rocks to pull my head above the water.
I shook my head frantically as I coughed.
Grace planted her hands on her hips and sent me a malicious grin. “I’ll give you a rest. I don’t want you to drown before you retrieve the sacred remains. Don’t you want to know why they need them?”
With a stare full of contempt, I didn’t give her the satisfaction of fighting anymore.
Maybe fetching her body would help more than I realized. If it could be used against her, then throwing up for hours afterward would be worth the retching.
Grace rattled off more of her delusions. “Your devout followers plan to do something even worse than what Cole did to me. Thinking back, I can’t blame him. I’d killed myself. He saw me as a monster for mutilating our chances of ever truly being together. So he mutilated me. It was symbolism. He’s so poetic. At the time, I probably shouldn’t have been so harsh, but I was furious beyond reason too. He lay in the bed, holding your dead body instead of mine. Of course, he didn’t want the locals and our family to know he’d been involved with me. He was afraid it would ruin his good name.”
It would have helped if they’d told me what use her bones would have been or if she’d just shut up with her rabid delusions and tell me herself.
“Colby acts as though he hates me, but he would never tell any of you that he loves me so much he wants to put my body in the ground so my soul can be put to rest. He probably thinks that’s what I want. What I need. He always did put my feelings before his own. I was so mad at him when he broke our engagement off that I could barely hold on to my sanity. If you think about it, though, I’m sure he considered being a poor farmhand wasn’t good enough for me. Even now, he probably feels the same way. When we meet our maker, he’ll understand my true devotion.”
Her maker was Satan and her permanent home would be hell when I was done with her.
“Where the hell are you? If you’re with Grace, you have to control your anger so I can hear you.” Cole’s furious thought-speak throbbed through my head. “Your shirt is the only wet piece of clothing in your room. I know you didn’t decide to take a stroll around the property wearing wet pants. Allie!”
“I can’t tell you. She’ll do even more horrible things to you all if you try to find me. Please don’t.” I finally gave in. “I’ll bring you your body. Just don’t hurt any of them.”
Grace’s incensed face melted into a pleased expression. “You’ve got a deal.”
The cold, murky thickness surrounded me as I delved under the water. Seconds felt like minutes, and my lungs ached. Thick mud suctioned against my feet as I landed on the bottom of the pond.
Through the frothy murk, a rectangular box emerged, a casket of rotting wood and rusted latches embedded in green sludge.
My heart did a staccato against my chest, and my lungs burned deeper. I hurried toward the wooden hatch on the coffin.
With little force, the latches broke free.
I pushed the lid upward. The wood fell away from Grace’s remains.
Grace’s stringy hair
lifted with the current. Through the settling hair, leathery gray skin stretched across a deformed skull.
Cole had in fact beaten her so badly the bones of her face were unrecognizable.
The mud on the floor of the pond became even more difficult to work against. It trapped my feet as I reached forward.
My own hair tangled around my face, making it difficult to see. I tugged at a large rock, the only thing that held her bones at the bottom of the pond.
Pushing off from the bottom and fighting the suction of mud to do so, I flailed against the water.
Air. I had to get air.
After gasping and coughing at the surface, I didn’t bother with Grace. I tread water long enough to gain the strength to dive again.
When I thought I might have the breath to go back, I used all the force I could muster to reach the bottom. With a final angered jerk, I slung the rock away. Just before I tugged at her corpse, something caught my eye. I swam over to it, swiped it from the pond floor, and stuffed it into my pocket. With new determination, I scooped one arm around her bones.
Once at the surface, I dragged the slimy bones to the edge of the pond where the water was the shallowest. I tossed the remains onto the bank and began to pull myself up.
“No, no, no. Remember. My hands are down there. You have to search for them too.” Grace pointed to the pond. “They were just off the bank. It’s pretty shallow. You should have no trouble.”
That was it. Every ounce of my moral fiber had never made up the strength I found in that moment. “Maim me. Torture every person I love. Do whatever you have to do. Cole might not care, but my friends love me enough to die martyrs. That’s something you never had. Not because people didn’t want to love you. You shoved them all away. You did everything in your power to make your family hate you. Mama even hated you. The person who spent hours birthing you into this world and nurturing you into a young adult she could be proud of. But you took all her efforts and spit them back in her face with your treachery and lies. I won’t be a part of your life any more. And no one who loves me would want me to do the things you ask. Even if it meant their own personal pain and suffering. How does that feel? To know they love me that much.”
Ever Tempted Page 19