She pushed the brooch and the coin into the small pocket in her skirt for safekeeping.
Her weird meter had undoubtedly changed significantly since her passing and afterlife in Hedgewitch Cove. She’d gone from knowing nothing of the supernatural to considering herself something of an expert on the subject matter. But even she had to admit, this was up there with the top ten weird things that had ever happened to her.
“Where am I?” she asked, hoping the answer would come to her.
It didn’t.
She realized she was in an alley of a large city. As she glanced sideways, she saw cars at the end of the alley, out on the street, going by, as well as people walking.
At first, she couldn’t put her finger on what was off, aside from the obvious, which was not being in Hedgewitch Cove any longer. That wasn’t exactly strange. Not with what her not-so-alive life had become. But there was certainly something that wasn’t right with the scene before her.
When she looked harder and really took note of not only the vehicles she was seeing but the clothing everyone had on, a sinking feeling came over her. Reaching up, she rubbed her eyes, positive they were deceiving her.
Surely she wasn’t seeing all the shoulder-pad-loving outfits she thought she was seeing. And what was with all the parachute pants? Had there been a run on vintage clothing that she’d not been alerted to?
A loose flyer blew down the alley at her, and she caught it quickly. As she flipped it over and read it, her breath caught.
It was an announcement for the very concert she’d died at thirty years prior.
Every clue around her that she wasn’t in the time she’d started in struck her at once, and she scrambled to her feet. She ran in the direction of people, expecting to go unnoticed by them as was always the case unless she was actively showing herself.
When she collided with a man in pegged jeans, slide-on tennis shoes, a yellow shirt, and a sweatshirt tied over his shoulders, she jerked back. He stopped talking on his oversize cell phone and lowered his Ray-Bans to look her up and down. He then grinned in a way that said he was fine with being run into by her, and that he could most certainly see her.
“Sorry,” she said fast, her pulse racing as she took off in a run down the street. “Luc!”
He didn’t respond, and she didn’t stop running until she spotted a newspaper stand.
She launched herself at the papers, desperate to know the date. When she saw it, she fought the urge to be sick. “No. It can’t be.”
“Can’t be what?” asked the man in a leather cap who was running the stand.
She pointed to the front of the paper. “Is this date right?”
The man stared at her a second and then sighed. “Drugs. Messes with your mind. Of course it’s the right day. What other day would it be?”
Part of her hoped she’d figure out she was dreaming and not really back in time.
In the very year and day that she’d died.
Chapter Seven
There was a commotion from upstairs, and within seconds Betty was at the doorway to the vault. She stopped just shy of entering, looking as sweet and demure as ever. She stared in at the boxes and then at York. “Why are you here? You should already be there.”
Luc sighed. “Betty, you should be at the inn. Bob was supposed to be keeping an eye on you.”
“If I’m there, I can’t be here, sweet boy,” she said to the devil, as if she were his grandmother and he wasn’t the guy in charge of all evil.
The strangest feeling that Morgan was present struck him hard.
“Morgan!” shouted York, hoping she was in the area and would reply.
She didn’t.
He tried two more times before yanking his phone from his pocket, his intent to call the inn to speak to her.
Betty laughed. “You’re going to need a very good coverage plan to reach her where she is now.”
His stomach dropped. “Where she is now?”
Petey stepped up closer to him. “Betty, where exactly is Morgan? She didn’t go into no light, did she? Remember when Carol Ann did that? Was all the rage too when that Hollywood guy heard about her. Went and made a movie about her. Don’t know why they had that actress girl getting sucked into a television. We all know it was a radio. Remember when everyone in town could only get the same station? The one with children’s songs playing? That’s what happens when kids get sucked into radio airwaves by the supernatural.”
York had heard mention of the incident several times in the past, but it predated him and it wasn’t his primary concern at the moment. Morgan was. “Betty, do you know where Morgan is?”
She nodded but said nothing.
“Well?” demanded York, earning him a hard grunt from Luc.
Luc went to Betty, taking a different approach with her. “Betty, did you see Morgan?”
“I did,” said Betty, pride in her voice. “She was upstairs, running like a banshee from down this way. Have you ever seen a banshee run? It’s quite a sight, especially since they don’t have feet. What was Morgan running from? Was it Christmas music? That will be starting before you know it. Downright terrifying if you ask me. All that jingling, merriment, and good cheer.”
She shuddered.
“Thank the hellions, Howie isn’t around to hear it. That boy has a real fear of Jolly Old Saint Nick. I offered to eat Santa. I’m sure he’s delicious with all those extra pounds and being stuffed full of cookies. But, alas, do-gooders give me indigestion.”
Luc cleared his throat. “Focus for me, Betty. Morgan was just here in the shop?”
“Oh yes. She was. I think she might have heard all the fuss about her,” said Betty, sliding her gaze toward York. “Heard that you don’t trust her. That you think she’s with the Collective. That wasn’t very nice, York. You should really tell her you’re sorry. If you don’t, I might get the urge to bake you a pie. You wouldn’t want that, would you?”
Louis laughed and partially covered it with a cough. “Shark pie. It will be a hot seller at the local bake sale.”
York sighed. “No, I wouldn’t like that. Betty, I opened my mouth and inserted my foot. I don’t think she’s the enemy. I just…it’s just…”
“She’s your mate and confuses you?” asked Betty.
“Yes,” replied York, before shaking his head fast. “No. I mean, she’s just…I don’t know.”
Louis gasped. “Brother, your gut reaction to Betty’s question was yes, Morgan is your mate. Is that true? Is Morgan your special someone?”
“She’s dead,” said York, understanding that meant she couldn’t be his mate. That his mate would be alive. “She can’t be mine.”
“But you wish she was,” said Louis, earning him a hard glare from York, who wanted the topic to end. He wasn’t the type to lay his feelings out on the line in front of others. At least not feelings that left him vulnerable. And the way he felt for Morgan certainly did just that. He felt stripped bare when it came to her, and knowing he’d upset her the way he had was like pouring salt in a wound.
Had he just kept his temper in check and his mouth shut, all would be fine. Now he had to hunt her down and find a way back into her good graces. Did the woman even have those when it came to him? He wasn’t sure. She mostly seemed annoyed by his very presence. Not that he could blame her. He was on the annoying side.
Luc crossed his arms over his chest, his chin out, his shoulders back as he surveyed York. “Well? Do you want her to be your special someone or not?”
“He gets a choice?” asked Petey, making himself known in the conversation once more. “I didn’t know we got choices.”
“You don’t,” snapped Luc, his irritation clearly with York, not Petey. “The choice is made for each of you long before you ever come to be. I just want to hear what York has to say on the matter.”
Petey bit at his lower lip. “I can’t tell if you’re rooting for him to want it or for him not to want it. I’m confused.”
Betty smiled sweetl
y. “Join the club, dear. I’m always confused anymore.”
Luc’s gaze narrowed on York. “I don’t know which I’m hoping for. Part of me wants to snap York in half for daring to have feelings for Morgan. Though it’s not exactly a shock to me. Still, I don’t know that I like it.”
“I don’t have…well…I might have some small feelings for her,” corrected York before defeat set in. “Okay. More than a small amount.”
Luc made a move to come at him, but Betty was quick to step in the devil’s path, putting up her small hand, halting Luc’s progress instantly. “Now, now. No eating him. If I’m not allowed to, neither can you. Fair is fair.”
“I don’t eat people,” said Luc firmly. “Normally. Though I would be willing to make an exception. I could grow to like the taste of marine life. I’m sure.”
Petey tipped his head in York’s direction. “Way to go. You stepped in it with the devil. Even I got more sense than that.”
“Just how much more than a small amount are we talking about here,” demanded Luc about York’s feelings for Morgan.
York stared down at the fallen newspaper clippings with Morgan’s photo on them. He opened his mouth to lie about not wanting her, but the truth popped out. “I want her more than I’ve ever wanted anything. Mostly though, I want her to know how sorry I am for what I said. For thinking the worst of her. I don’t know why she’s never showed herself to me, but that doesn’t matter. What matters is she knows I do trust her. That I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be silly, New York,” said Betty sternly. “The poor child hasn’t shown herself to you because deep down, a part of her knew the two of you are connected. Wouldn’t have done her a lot of good to have you looking at her with stars in your eyes when you were just a boy. She had to wait until you were a grown man. And then she had to wait until the time was right. When that time came, I think she felt the urge but denied it, worried because she’s not like the women you traipse around with. She’s better. Much better.”
York just stood there, his mouth partially open as if he were catching flies, as he took his verbal scolding from a woman who frequently seemed out of her mind but currently sounded as though she knew exactly what she was talking about.
Louis grinned. “She’s not wrong.”
Luc nodded. “True. Betty, where is Morgan?”
“You mean when, dear,” said Betty, making Luc’s entire body stiffen.
York caught the response and worry slashed through him. “What does she mean by when?”
Luc’s gaze narrowed on Betty. “They were to go back together. York was supposed to be with her, to help her find the contract her parents signed, and then be what tethers her to time—to the here and now—to his rightful time. Tell me she’s not in the past, alone.”
York had heard and seen a lot of weird things in his life. So much so that not many things made him take pause. But this did. “What? Are you telling me she time-traveled into the past? That’s not possible.”
Louis put a hand up, and then with his other hand, he pointed at Luc, pretending to block the motion. “Pretty sure the devil can time jump with ease. Guessing it’s very possible.”
“I can see and hear you,” said Luc with an annoyed huff.
York didn’t have time for the level of crazy Hedgewitch Cove residents tended to bring to every situation. He needed to find Morgan, and fast. He darted around Betty and raced up the stairs to the main room, only to find it in shambles. The shark in him instantly took note of the scent of blood and his mouth burned with the need to shift shapes.
The mess hadn’t been here only minutes prior. If Morgan had been up here, what had happened to her? Had someone attacked her?
Louis ran into him from behind, nearly knocking him over. “What happened up here?”
“Morgan!” shouted York through the beginning of a shifting mouth. “Something is wrong.”
“Nonsense,” said Betty, meandering up alongside the men as if she didn’t have a care in the world. “Something is right. She’s gone back to where it began.”
Luc was suddenly there as well. “She traveled back to the day she died?”
Betty nodded.
Luc paled. “As I said, York was supposed to be with her. I saw him years ago. He’s the one who kills some of the Collective members sent to steal her soul. If she’s there, alone, they’ll win. They’ll take her soul. One I’ve kept guarded for decades from them. This is playing out all wrong!”
Betty patted the man’s forearm. “No. It’s playing out as it should. She has my brooch.”
Luc closed his eyes and hung his head in defeat. “We’re going to lose her to the enemy. They’ll whisk her soul off to a location even I can’t get to, and her body, which I’ve kept in a mystical stasis, will rot and die. Her soul and her body are still mystically linked. One can’t be without the other. It’s part of the price to be paid for what I did.”
Louis shot a hand in the air. “Her what that you did what with?”
Petey entered the main area of the shop. He took a look at the items on the floor and let out a low, long whistle. “It’s been raining fake body parts in here. Better than that one freak storm we got around here when it rained real body parts.”
“Says you,” corrected Betty. “That was one of my favorite days. I really wish my sisters had been here for it. Leva-Joyce could have made her famous beans with leg calves and Mildred could have done her biscuits and blood gravy. Oh, I’m hungry just thinking about all the wonderful dishes we could have made together.”
York dismissed Betty’s ramblings and focused in on the mess on the floor, where he continued to smell blood. He pushed through the wooden body parts and bent, his finger connecting with a small drop of crimson on the floor. The second the red liquid made contact with his skin, his finger heated, and his senses went into overdrive. “It’s blood.”
“From how worked up you’re getting, I’m going to assume that is Morgan’s blood,” said Petey.
“Ghosts bleed?” asked Louis, stealing York’s very words.
Luc bent near York, and the forlorn look on the devil’s face worried him. “She’s not a ghost, per se.”
York’s body tensed. “Then what, exactly, is she?”
Swallowing hard, Luc met his gaze. “My goddaughter. A person I’ve viewed as a daughter all of her life, and someone I knew from the first breath she took was created for someone important to me. That person was you. I’ve struggled with that knowledge for years. See, I may be the devil, but Morgan is special to me. I’d rather she join a convent than have any man touch her. So, while I like you, I pretty much want to smite you because you’re male and into her. And yes, I know you weren’t born yet back when all this first went down, but I’m in touch with things on a level I can’t explain in words to you.
“I knew from day one she was, is, important. That she helps tip the scale of good and evil. And I did all I could to talk her parents out of signing a contract for her soul. They wouldn’t listen, and I’m only allowed to interfere to a point, then anything I do is undone but with worse consequences. It’s the laws of nature, and even I can only bend them so far without them breaking.”
York opened his mouth to question Luc, but the devil kept ranting.
“When I learned she’d been marked by a powerful master vampire for conversion because of who her parents were, I stepped in then. The vampire sent one of his top men after Morgan, unbeknownst to her. I turned that vampire into a bat, and then gave it to her as a pet; its penance was having to always protect her. I did the same thing to the first demon who came for her, when she was in her teens. Turned him into a hedgehog though. Same deal. He had to protect her. And they did. I thought I’d solved all the problems. Then I got her tickets to a concert for her birthday, and was called away for work when I felt it—her death.”
Chapter Eight
Louis and York shared dual shocked expressions.
“You’re Morgan’s godfather?” asked York.
L
uc nodded.
Petey put his hand up slightly. “I knew that. She confessed it to me during one of our late-night talks. She was trying to help me fight off the urge to shift and run in the full moon. I’m not as young as I used to be. Shifting fully can take it out of me. She’s a good girl. Doesn’t know she’s not a ghost though.
“When Betty told me you’d hidden Morgan’s human body in a secure room in hell, where no one would think to look or bother it, where it wouldn’t age but could heal slowly, and that you brought Morgan’s soul here to Hedgewitch Cove, knowing the town’s spells would protect it from detection by the Collective, I understood the evil genius side of your reputation. Then I saw you turn your nose up at a ham sandwich with potato chips, ketchup, and hot sauce, and began to rethink it all. Ain’t nobody with a lick of sense gonna turn their noses up at that sandwich. It’s delicious.”
Morgan’s body was hidden away? This was news to York. He’d always just assumed she was a ghost with no body tucked safely away. Once, he’d come close to asking Luc what cemetery Morgan had been buried in because he wanted to go to it and be sure the site was tended to. Ultimately, he’d been unable to bring himself to ask the question, worried that seeing a headstone with her name on it would toy with his mind too much.
All this time he’d been unable to come face-to-face with the reality that she was dead and gone, and she wasn’t?
York stood quickly, his mind racing. “So, she’s not dead?”
“She’s not,” said Luc.
“And you have her body somewhere?” asked York.
Luc nodded. “I do. It’s safe. It’s in the only place I could think that no one would enter in hell.”
“The laundry room? I hate doing laundry,” said Petey.
Luc rolled his eyes. “No. The chapel.”
“Hell has a church?” questioned Louis.
“Not the point here, brother,” warned York. “The point is, Morgan isn’t dead, and Luc has her body tucked away.”
“Maybe. Maybe not,” said Betty.
Luc rose as well, his gaze sweeping to Betty. Surprise was etched on the man’s face. “You swore to keep the secret always.”
Do You Really Want to Haunt Me: A Happily Everlasting World Novel (Bewitchingly Ever After Book 3) Page 7