We sat in the parlor room of Jude’s mansion with a burning blaze heating up the room in the massive fireplace. Everyone from the Hero Society sat comfortably on the couches, ready for Jude to discuss whatever he called the meeting to speak about.
“We should have a party here.” Lilith smiled and danced around the room like a ballroom dancer. Leon shook his head and plopped on the sofa next to Asher. Lilith continued to dance to the music in her head, but I knew she would be listening to everything in the room.
“Feels weird here.” Rose added her opinion to the mansion and Draco wrapped his arms around her, bringing her body against his torso. Esme and Dorian sat on the sofa I was snuggled into while trying not to glance at them more than normal. Dorian was the only demigod left in the world. His presence here on our side was a big deal.
“Thank you guys for coming.” Jude stood by the fire, his pensive stare touched on every one of our faces, lingering on mine for more than a few seconds before addressing the group again.
“I’m sure Phillip has updated you. The gates to the other side are deteriorating. I’m not sure on the numbers but there are ghosts that have powers they shouldn’t. They are able to show themselves and touch things and people, then disappear. It’s dangerous, and people have already died at my show because of it.”
“Shouldn’t we be worried about ghosts hearing us right now?” Echo paced behind the couch while looking around, sniffing.
“No. I used my power to kick them out of the house. We can speak freely here.” Jude shoved his hands in his pockets to hide his nervousness. On the outside he looked completely calm, at peace even, but I knew underneath he didn’t feel comfortable. I understood his emotions. It was something we both had in common.
“So, what do we do about this?” Draco asked, his fingers lazily caressing Rose’s hand as he asked.
“I don’t know. None of your gifts are a match against the dead. I had hoped with you all here, we could discuss a plan of action.” Jude glanced at me, and I rushed to his side. The need to touch, to feel his skin against mine was unfathomable.
“Not sure what any of us can do against ghosts,” Dorian agreed, and the rest of us sat in silence while we thought about what we could do together. My hand squeezed Jude’s as he kissed my cheek.
“There’s a lot of magic here. We could tap into it and put a temporary bind on the break in the gates. It should stop anyone from escaping and stop it from spreading any further.” Asher offered up his idea, which sounded good to me, but I’m sure there would be a catch.
“How about we raise an army of the dead to battle the dead?” Lilith’s melodic voice rang around the room, and everybody tensed.
“I don’t think that’s a good idea.” Rose wrinkled her nose, and Jude’s body trembled beside me as his face paled.
“Could you do that?” I whispered, my curiosity wondering if he held that much power inside him. His lips tightened into a thin line as he nodded. Holy shit, he could raise an army of dead people. A tendril of death’s darkness leaked from Jude and curled around our joined hands. My body shuddered, but not from a chill or fear. I was drawn to Jude in a way that should scare me, being with him, it was immense and endless. I didn’t run from his dark power. I leaned into it, like a purring cat against its master.
“Anymore clues as to who is the murderer of your show?” Echo asked Jude, and he shook his head. I’d managed to talk to a few of the ghosts before the Hero Crew arrived, and I had my suspicion as to who the killer was but I needed more evidence before I made my thoughts known.
“We need to find that ghost. Put a band-aid on the gates if we can. Do we know how to repair it permanently, and fix this whole mess?” Phillip asked.
I rubbed my thumb against Jude’s hand tenderly.
“I have to die on Halloween, and everything will be fixed.” Jude stood tall, confident even, but I sensed the power beneath him pulse with fear.
“Is there a way we can do it that doesn’t involve you dying?” Esme spoke for the first time, and I watched as her fingers drifted toward the golden vein of her power on her arm. She had the gift of healing, but every time she used it, she grew closer to her own death.
“The gates sealed with thirty years blood paid, a deathly promise be made, until death do you bind shall the curse fade. That’s what my witch who knows the future said. She promises that the Mallory curse will end with me. My ghosts and I made a deal that they will give me one hell of a last year with the performances and then I’ll take them with me. A deathly promise.”
When he said it like that, a little warning ran in my thoughts. His words didn’t sound right. There was something more to the saying, something we hadn’t thought of or were blind to, like those three cards Madam Tully gave me. I needed more information.
“Interesting. I still vote we find a way for you to not die. You’re one of us now.” Lilith stopped dancing and casually sat on Leon’s lap.
“I didn’t say I was—” Jude started to speak.
“Welcome to the hero family, Jude. We are so honored to have you! We’ll send the welcome packet in the mail soon.” Lilith clapped and everyone smiled at her theatrics.
“I’d just go with it.” I leaned in and whispered against his neck, then he shook his head slightly.
“Can we interview the ghosts today, maybe find out some history of your performers?” Echo was ready to get on with the investigation and so was I. The answers to preventing his death were right in front of me. I needed to find them.
“I’d like to talk with your witch, if that’s OK.” Asher stood. One of us would have to go with him to Madam Tully, and the other would have to help Echo with the interrogations since we were the only two in the room who could communicate with the dead.
“Yeah, she’d enjoy some company. Selene, you take Asher, and I’ll start bringing in some of my performers. If anyone doesn’t want to stay, I think this meeting can be over. We will try to bind the gates and keep what is happening in Seahill from reaching the rest of the world. Asher and Madam Tully might be able to come up with a way for you all to fight back a ghost, but we’ll see. Let’s monitor the situation, and hopefully we can fix it before it gets out of hand.” Jude talked to them like a leader, and they all responded with nods of agreement to his words.
“Let’s go talk to some dead folks.” I smiled and untangled my hand from Jude’s, ready to get the truth and help solve this case.
Chapter Twenty- Seven
Selene
I stared at my notes from the interrogations, and Madam Tully’s discussion with Asher that covered my dining table. Echo, Jude, Asher, Rose, Draco, and I talked to the performers until the sun crested over the graveyard behind the mansion. History. So much history weaved between the crew and Jude’s family. These people had been stuck there for so long, I wouldn’t be surprised to find out many of them were killing people for the sport of something to do. A little fun in their boring lives.
The muscles around my eyes ached from focusing intently on the handwriting before me. Some of the souls were good, just people caught in a tragic story, while others weren’t always on the right side of the moral border when they were alive. Ghosts loved to gossip. Lucy was the circus slut. She slept with everyone she could and tempted young men into leaving their families to join her on the road, only to move on to the next guy she found interesting. A fight starter, one of the trapeze artists called her, while giving me all the juicy details about each performer.
The little boy who had tried to spook me with the candelabra had been abandoned on the road, so he was given the job of caretaker over the baby elephant. He was eight years old and named Caleb. His pet he’d given the name of Titan. Everyone helped raised him the two years before the incident with Jude’s great-great-grandfather. The elephant chose to stay with his friend, instead of moving on to wherever animals go. It was the same for the tiger, who belonged to a woman named Joselyn, who was married to the original ringleader. He’d left before the curse too
k everyone down with them. He thought that performing for the rich folk at the mansion was beneath their talents. According to Joselyn, he not only left them before the show, but ran off with the future-telling gypsy. Maybe the gypsy had known what would happen, or maybe they just wanted a life together away from the circus.
Joselyn took over from then and never performed. She kept everyone in line. Draco spoke with her, through me, and decided they were similar in personality. Therefore she wasn’t the killer. I believed him. She seemed tired of being in the state of waiting. All she wanted was to move on. Most of them wanted that. Staying on Earth after death sounded fun at first, especially those who feared death, but after a few years of not truly living, dying got old.
Rudy, the friend who had been upset about Lucy not choosing him for a bedmate, was a character. He’d been a floater in the circus before, the type of man who could do anything. His bright smile lit up the room, and his charismatic personality drew everyone toward him naturally. But I could see his issue with Lucy causing a rift in the group. He was stuck in the friend zone, forever longing to be more in her eyes. While he wasn’t my top suspect, I couldn’t cross his name off my list. He had an underlying monster hiding behind that smile. Rose confirmed it to be jealousy. Jealous of what, though? Could have been the love he saw between Rose and Draco or that Echo turned into a viper to see if she could pick up a different heat signature than a warm-bodied person.
Listening to Madam Tully and Asher gave me a headache. They talked about a binding spell for the gate. Both seemed confident it could work. Although it would be a temporary fix, it could give us the time to break the curse and restore the balance between the living and the dead. However, she didn’t give me any more hints as to how I could help Jude with his fate.
“You already have the truth. It’s all within you.” She pulled me into a tight embrace before telling us to go join the others.
It had been hours since I had left the mansion, and all I’d managed to decipher from the mess on my table was that I was in way over my head. My focus drifted toward the three cards I’d placed near Madam Tully’s notes. I wished I understood the secrets they held for the situation at hand. The clock continued to tick while we searched frantically for a way to end the curse and find a killer. Halloween was in one week and then time would be up. I’d spent nearly every night with Jude, and my days working on ferreting out the truth of his world. He’d had a show go on without someone dying, which made his success grow further. I loved seeing his smiling face from the crowd’s applause. He lived for entertaining the masses and he was very good at it. But despite the cease of murders at his show, unexplained crimes in Seahill had skyrocketed. The Hero Society tried their best to contain the souls, but they didn’t have the right gifts to really deal with a ghost.
A welcomed knock on my door gave me the excuse to walk away from my notes. I needed a breather, and talking to someone else would be nice for a change. Jude was supposed to be dropping by soon, so I opened the door without even looking to see who stood on the other side. I should have thought about that decision more methodically.
Hands clamped over my mouth as an arm banded around my waist, pulling me into my home as I thrashed for my life.
“I’m gonna take my hand off you, and you’re not gonna scream. Understood?”
The hand disappeared and I whirled around to see Rudy standing in my living room, the faint shimmering of his ghostly soul bouncing off my pale green walls.
“How the hell are you here? Why are you here?” The barely contained anger in my voice made Rudy’s expression tense, but he held his ground.
“Only a few more days until the curse is over, and its power over us is fading. I came to warn you. Some of the others are plotting to hurt you and your friends. They think Jude is going to go back on his word with us because he has you now.” He reached out to gently caress my cheek, and I smacked his hand away. He smiled from the sensation of my touch. An eerie awareness slid down my spine, but I bit back the disgust riled in my belly.
“Thanks for the update. Any way I could get you to tell me who exactly is after me and my friends?” Despite the gossip and how the crew fought with each other, they were very tight-knit group, more like a family.
“I can’t but I just want you to watch out. Jude really cares for you, and I’d hate to see anything come between that.” His voice switched into a different accent with ease.
“Thanks.” This whole discussion made me wary.
“For what it’s worth, I hope he gets what he wants with you. Maybe you guys will get married soon. At least one of us will get the girl.” He winked, while his hand lifted and a single finger pointed toward my nose and tapped it lightly. He disappeared like . . . well . . . a ghost.
By the time Jude arrived, I hadn’t moved. “Hey, Selene, you left your door open—” If he was going to say anything else, the words were lost as soon as he saw me trembling.
“I sense death here. What happened?” Jude’s armed surrounded me, and I crumpled against him.
Chapter Twenty- Eight
Jude
I understood Rudy’s wild actions, but he shouldn’t have done them. He should have fucking talked to me. As soon as Selene collapsed in my arms, I carried her to the couch where she sobbed and told me what happened between them.
Some of the performers were plotting against her and the Hero Society? I’d have some big words to say about that when I got back to the mansion. I’d bind their asses to the floor with my power until the curse took us all. I didn’t give a fuck. One threat against my woman’s life was one too many.
He scared her when he grabbed her, and even though she deals with dead people daily with her gift, they’ve never come into her house or touched her.
My fists throbbed with the need to smash something, to bang on my chest, and protect my Selene from any threat.
Every thought in my head told me to race back to the mansion and do something, but I couldn’t leave Selene like this. We needed to live in this moment, to feel the love we shared with every breath we shared.
I knew she loved me. I may be shit with the emotions of the living but I could decipher love when I saw it. My mother loved my father so much it destroyed her, but in death they still had each other. They had looked at one another like they were the only light in their dark lives. Madam Tully looks at me with a different kind of love, the type a mother would give to her son. Since my parents were so absorbed in themselves most of the time, Madam Tully was more of a parent than they ever were to me.
My heart thumped harder. Selene had no idea how open she was to those around her. It was like gazing into her bright soul with every glance I could steal. “Let’s go lay down.” I stood with her cradled in my arms and walked us to her cozy bed. It wasn’t as big as mine or as elegantly decorated, but I loved it anyway. I loved her home, and how warm it felt. My mansion was cold and dead like the inhabitants floating around in it.
“Will you stay with me?” She’d stopped crying a few minutes ago, upset at herself for displaying her emotions.
“Of course.” I kicked off my shoes and laid down in the bed with her still in my embrace. She didn’t need to apologize for her emotions. They weren’t going to chase me away. It was a healthy response to what had happened. Her head rested against my chest as we snuggled on top of the blue comforter, my fingers moving up the side of her body to gently massage her scalp.
“I’m afraid,” she whispered, so quietly her voice almost blended with the chilling wind outside the window.
“You don’t need to be afraid of Rudy or any of the performers. I’ll take care of— “
“I’m not afraid of your crew or Rudy. I mean it wasn’t fun what Rudy did but if the curse is fading, then I could probably deport all their asses to hell if I wanted to. My body screams for me to do my job around them. So it wouldn’t bother me. I’m afraid to lose you.”
A lump settled in my throat, blocking the words to ease her worrying mind. I couldn�
�t truly promise anything. Time wasn’t on our side, and this pain of her kiss trembling against my cheek made everything worse. I had feared this moment all of my life.
“It’s not over yet,” I murmured, as I shifted my body to kiss her. We didn’t have much time, and even though I hated that I’d be leaving Selene behind with a broken heart, I wouldn’t give up these last few days living with her as mine, loving her.
“I love you, Jude.” She breathed those precious words against my lips and my heart swelled so much it hurt in my chest.
“It’s OK if you don’t love me, and I know it seems crazy because it’s so soon, but I’ve always known that tomorrow isn’t promised for anyone. I refuse to live in regret because I didn’t tell you how I felt.”
My brave Selene. She didn’t know the effects she had on me. I’d been ready to die months ago, wishing I could speed up the curse’s deadline and get it over with. Now, she made me want to live, not just exist. She gave me courage, and with her I had something I never thought I needed.
“I love you, Selene. You are my heaven in a life of hell.”
“We’ll figure it out. Then on November first, we’ll do something crazy to celebrate.” She smiled and sealed her lips against mine again and again.
Slowly, almost painfully slow, our clothes began to disappear. Teeth and tongues clashed, then explored the bare flesh of one another. I’d never made love before. My thoughts of making love always drifted toward how stupid it seemed. Sex was sex. Only when you did it with someone you truly cared for, it was something entirely different. I worshipped Selene with my body, giving her all my strength, my power, and my heart. Moans of never letting go became our soundtrack, and I’d forever keep the blissful sound on repeat.
The scent of our sweat and sex coated the air, mingling with our panting breaths after release barreled into both of us. Moments later, Selene wiggled against my side, then fell asleep with a smile on her face. I watched her chest heave with life of every breath in her lungs. The pink tinge of her heated skin would forever be burned into my memory, for however long I had it.
Fall (Hero Society Book 6) Page 11