Silent Night, Haunted Night

by Terri Garey

  My mind was busy thinking up ways to snatch Selene baldheaded, so I wasn’t following him. “Why not?”

  “I told her you couldn’t help her because I knew you’d never deliberately call up a spirit. But now it doesn’t matter, because Mary has shown up all on her own.”

  “Wait a minute.” Joe never wanted me to “dabble”—never—even when I had no choice. “You actually expect me to help her?”

  There was dead silence on the other end of the line. Finally Joe said, “I’m surprised at you, Nicki. This isn’t like you.”

  “And this isn’t like you,” I returned heatedly. What the hell was going on? “I’ve told you I don’t trust Selene, that I don’t like Selene, that I don’t want to be anywhere near Selene, whether she’s supernatural or not.” Okay, so maybe I was exaggerating what I’d said in the heat of the moment, but why hadn’t he gotten the message yet?

  “The woman’s mother just died,” he said quietly. “Why are you being so hard on her?”

  I did the unthinkable. I hung up on him.

  I expected him to call me back.

  He didn’t.

  I waited about ten minutes, giving myself time to calm down. I was hurt, and I didn’t understand; Joe was a smart guy, and I was baffled as to why he wasn’t as suspicious of Selene as I was. I’d told him about the night visit, I’d told him my fears and suspicions. Could he actually be choosing not to believe me?

  The thought gave me a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach.

  Taking a deep breath, I called his cell phone.

  “This is Joe Bascombe. Please leave me a message.”

  Undeterred, I hung up, then hit redial. Maybe he was just calling me at the same time. Yeah, that was it. The third time I got his voice mail, I knew the ugly truth; he’d turned off his phone and wasn’t going to answer.

  Evidently, Joe did not appreciate being hung up on.

  “Oh, come on,” I said loudly, to no one in particular. “Is this the way it’s gonna be?”

  “Are you going to stay holed up in the office all day?” Evan asked, sticking his head in the office door.

  “Joe’s not taking my calls,” I said, angry all over again. “He actually wants me to help that horrible witch Selene speak to her dead mother. Can you believe it?”

  Evan’s eyes got big, either from what I was saying or how angry I was, I wasn’t sure.

  “I told him I don’t like her, I told him I don’t trust her—hell, I don’t even think her mother is dead, much less even her mother!”

  Evan’s look turned to one of wary confusion, and I knew I was making little sense.

  “Selene?” He came all the way into the office. “The hottie with the Furla?”

  Snapping my phone shut and tossing it onto my desk, I sighed. “Yes.” There was so much I hadn’t told him. My head ached at the thought of how much I hadn’t told him.

  “The one whose mother collapsed on the sidewalk?”

  “Yes,” I said again, wearily.

  “Her mother died?” Evan was like a dog with a bone. “You didn’t tell me that!”

  “Sorry.” One-word answers seemed to be all I had in me at the moment. Why wasn’t Joe answering his phone?

  A look of horror came over his face. “Oh. My. God. Do you think the old woman Butch saw in the bathroom is Selene’s mother?”

  Oh, crap. I had a sinking feeling of Titanic proportions. “Maybe. Kinda.” It was all so complicated. “Possibly.”

  “Then I agree with Joe,” Evan said decisively. “You have to help Selene, because you have to get that old lady out of here.”

  “You don’t understand—”

  “What’s to understand? I don’t want some old lady looking over my shoulder every time I need to tinkle, and neither do you.”

  “We don’t even know—”

  “Oh yes, we know,” he said, nodding his blond head energetically. “Don’t you even try and pretend like we don’t know. Butch saw her, and I’ve felt uncomfortable all day long, like someone was staring at me.” He looked around, involuntarily, and it made me feel bad to see it. Leaning in, he whispered, “I want her out of here. Gone, for good.”

  Hoisted on my own petard. I had no idea what that phrase even meant, but it leapt to mind. What little I’d told Evan of my suspicions had now come back to bite me, because he was now on Joe’s side. And if I tried to explain that this situation was far more complicated than he ever dreamed, I’d only frighten him more.

  With a sigh, I leaned forward, resting my weight on my elbows. “What happened to saying no to the spirits more often?”

  He arched an eyebrow at me, obviously resolved. “Say it to someone else’s spirit, and get this one out of our store.”

  Before I did something stupid like drive straight to Joe’s apartment and pick another fight over Selene, I went out back where I had a little privacy, and leaned against my car while calling my sister. “Why is he even talking to her? Why is he taking her side in this?”

  “Slow down,” Kelly said. “I’m not sure I understand.”

  “It’s like the nightmare just goes on and on,” I said, not slowing down. “Every time I turn around, there’s Selene, or something to do with Selene. Selene, Selene, Selene…it’s all I hear. She’s everywhere, particularly if there’s a chance that Joe might be in the vicinity.”

  “Nicki,” my sister said firmly, “calm down. You’re starting to sound crazy.”

  With a sigh, I tried to regroup. “She’s after him, Kelly. I’ve tried to tell him who she really is, but he doesn’t see it! Now he’s mad at me for not being ‘sympathetic’ enough toward her. Can you believe it?”

  “Joe always sees the good in people,” Kelly said quietly. “Even when they’re not so good.”

  “Exactly.” Exactly.

  “She keeps throwing herself at him,” I went on, “every chance she gets. She practically announced her intentions to steal him from me yesterday at the store when she just ‘happened’ to show up. The little girl is seriously creepy, by the way.”

  “You’re talking about them like they’re human,” Kelly said. “Yesterday you thought they were the Moirae.”

  “They are human,” I said impatiently, “or they might as well be. Just like Sammy could appear in the flesh—”

  Sammy. Just like Sammy.

  “Ah,” Kelly breathed, at the same time I did. “Do you think he sent them?”

  It certainly made sense, and it wasn’t the first time I’d suspected it. “I thought he was gone,” I said quietly.

  “Grandma Bijou says he’s never gone,” Kelly answered, just as quietly.

  If Sammy had sent them, then where was Sammy? It wasn’t like him to miss out on the fun of tormenting me in person.

  “I don’t think so,” I said thoughtfully. “I can’t see his hand in it.” I didn’t want to, actually. If Sammy had sent his minions to bug me without showing up himself, that meant I’d moved down his list in the food chain. The teeny stab of loss I felt at the thought was surely proof of my twisted nature.

  “Anyway, it doesn’t matter. I just need to get Joe to understand how dangerous she is, and he won’t even answer the phone!” I took refuge in the anger that prompted my call in the first place.

  Kelly sighed. “What are you doing, Nicki?”

  Baffled at her tone, I snipped, “I’m talking to you.”

  “You need to be talking to Joe,” she said. “And when you do, you need to be nice to him. If he has to choose between a gorgeous damsel in distress and an angry girlfriend, which one do you think he’ll pick? Don’t give him a reason to pull away from you.”

  My jaw dropped. “Are you suggesting that I be nice to him on purpose, just so Selene doesn’t win?” Made sense, actually. “I’m kind of pissed at him at the moment, if you hadn’t noticed.”

  “Let me be blunt,” she said bluntly. “I’m suggesting that you drive to Joe’s house, get naked, and crawl into bed with him. It’s called make-up sex. It’ll work wonders
.”

  Unable to believe I was hearing her correctly, I burst out laughing.

  “It always works with Spider,” she said cheerfully. “Sometimes I think we fight just so we can get to the good part.”

  “That is way too much information, sis.”

  “I think he’s going to ask me to marry him, Nicki.” Kelly’s words changed the whole focus of the conversation. “I overheard him talking to Grandma Bijou about her favorite jeweler, and she’s been beaming at me like she knows something I don’t.”

  “She always knows something you don’t,” I said dryly. “She’s a sensitive.”

  It wasn’t exactly a shock, except for the suddenness of it. Kelly and Spider hadn’t been together nearly as long as Joe and I, and here they were, already taking things to the next level. “What do you think? Are you going to say yes?”

  “Of course I’m going to say yes,” she said immediately. “I’m nuts about the guy. I can’t wait to see what the ring looks like.”

  I laughed, happy for her. Spider was cool, tattoos and all, and Kelly was obviously on cloud nine.

  True love. What more was there?

  CHAPTER 12

  Eight o’clock that evening found me pulling into the parking lot of Joe’s apartment complex. His BMW was in its usual place, but there were no lights on in his apartment. Part of me felt guilty over what I was about to do, but a bigger part of me didn’t.

  He could sleep later, when I was done with him.

  I was wearing my tightest jeans, my tightest sweater, and nothing at all underneath. I’d showered, smoothed and perfumed every inch of my skin, and unless Joe was made of stone—which he wasn’t—I was about to follow my sister’s advice to the letter.

  I’d made up my mind. Selene wasn’t going to drive a wedge between Joe and me. It was time to fight fire with fire, and I had more than a few sparks in my arsenal.

  Instead of knocking on his door, I let myself in with my key. The apartment was dark, so I switched on the light in the foyer, took off my coat and shoes, and padded down the hall to his bedroom in my socks.

  His bedroom door was open. I could hear him breathing, deep and even. I stood there in the doorway, listening, letting my eyes adjust. The light from the foyer barely reached here, but after a moment, I could make out his shape in the bed. That curve was his shoulder, that shadow his dark hair on the pillow.

  Quietly, so I wouldn’t wake him, I unzipped my jeans and pulled them off, along with my socks. It took only a second to draw the sweater over my head, and then I was naked, nipples immediately goose pebbling in the cool night air.

  If he’d been awake, and wanted to, I’d have been willing to talk out our earlier disagreement until we were both satisfied, but right now I had satisfaction of a different sort in mind.

  We’d have plenty of time to talk later.

  The bed dipped as I got into it, but Joe didn’t stir. I touched his shoulder and tucked my nose into his back, my belly to his bottom, and was rewarded by a warm “mmm” that told me I’d gotten his attention.

  “Hey,” I whispered, kissing the back of his neck as my palm wandered over the muscles of his bare arm and shoulder. Another murmur of sleepy pleasure from Joe as I savored the feel of his nakedness. The sheets smelled of him, and the bed was warm and familiar. I was nearly overcome with a wave of lust and love, and knew, in that instant, that I’d never felt this way about anyone before.

  And never would again.

  Smiling against Joe’s bare shoulder, I let my hand slip down to his belly, then let it slip farther still.

  He tried to roll onto his back, but I held him with the weight of my body, filling my palm with his maleness, soft with sleep, heavy with the weight of him.

  Tenderness filled me, the heat from his body seeping into my skin everywhere we touched. I kissed his shoulder, cradling him in my palm, stroking and squeezing to my heart’s content.

  “Mmm,” he moaned, louder now, and shifted so I had no choice but to let him onto his back. I settled myself in the curve of his shoulder without removing my hand, kissing the skin of his chest as it presented itself to me during the move.

  “You’re insatiable,” he murmured sleepily, kissing the top of my head. “But I need a chance to recover.”

  My growing daze of pleasure was pierced by a brush of ice down my spine.

  Joe stayed slack beneath my hand, his body boneless in relaxation as he nuzzled his nose in my hair. “So good, Selene,” he mumbled. “That was so good.”

  I sat bolt upright, pushing off his groin and chest with a little more force than necessary.

  “Hey!” he protested my rude handling, coming fully awake.

  “Are you awake now? Good. Because my name is Nicki, not Selene!”

  “What the—” Joe pulled himself up on his elbows, groggy with sleep. “What are you mad about now? What’s the matter?”

  What are you mad about now? The way he said it made it sound like I was mad all the time, which usually wasn’t true. The only reason I’d been mad at him lately was because of Selene, and that was because she was out to get him however she could…

  “Oh no,” I gasped, in dawning horror.

  “What the hell is going on?” Joe was wide-awake now, and obviously annoyed. “I was sleeping. What’s the problem?”

  He’d been sleeping. Just like he’d been sleeping when I found him in the living room, paying erotic homage to the moon. Just like I’d been sleeping when Selene first came to me, and first laid eyes on him.

  “She got here first,” I said stupidly, stricken.

  He shifted himself higher in the bed. “What are you talking about?” He looked at the digital clock beside the bed. “You’ve been here over an hour. We just spent forty-five minutes—”

  “No!” I shouted, startling us both. Scrabbling up off the bed, I headed toward my discarded clothes as my world came crashing down. I didn’t want to hear what he’d been about to say. “We haven’t been doing anything! It was her…it was Selene.”

  Joe’s groan of frustration was almost as loud as my shout. Even in the dark I could see him raise both hands to his head. “Why are you doing this?” he asked angrily. “Why do you keep bringing her into everything?”

  “Because she keeps putting herself into everything,” I shot back, the tears having begun. “Tell me…tell me the truth, Joe…have you been dreaming of her?”

  Silence answered me.

  “She’s the reason you were sleepwalking, wasn’t she, the night I found you in the living room.” I didn’t expect him to confirm or deny anything at this point. My voice was shaky, and he had to know I was crying. “You dreamed of her tonight, too. You dreamed about sex with her.”

  “People can’t help what they dream, Nicki,” he said, in a low voice.

  “She’s not what she seems,” I said, as calmly as I could, which wasn’t very. I felt like I’d been cheated on, though Joe had done nothing wrong. Beneath the hurt she’d caused was a very real fear—what did I have to do to get rid of her? “She’s not going to give up until she’s in your bed for real.”

  Abruptly, he twitched aside the covers and stood up, striding to his dresser for a pair of boxers. He pulled them on in jerky, angry movements.

  “I’ve had enough of this, Nicki,” he said stiffly. “I’m tired, and I need some sleep. We can talk about this another time.”

  I stared at him in silence, knowing he couldn’t see my tears in the dark.

  “In fact, maybe you should sleep in your own bed tonight.”

  And then he turned and went into the bathroom.

  I gathered up my things and left, closing the door very softly behind me.

  Marley’s Bar was a dump, but it was a fairly quiet dump, and that was just what I needed right now. At nine o’clock on a weeknight, the place was empty except for a fat old guy sitting at the bar, and the hard-faced woman who worked behind it. They were both watching some sports show on the TV, while background music was piped in low through t
he speakers. I headed toward a booth near the back, as far away from the bar as I could.

  “What’ll it be?” asked the fat guy, getting up from his stool as I walked past him.

  “Jack and Coke,” I said automatically. Damn the red wine for my wimpy heart. I needed something stronger tonight.

  Sliding into the booth, my back to the couple at the bar, I closed my eyes and leaned my head against the seat. It smelled like old cigarettes and beer, but I didn’t care. I let it ground me, help me stop the feeling that my world was spinning out of control.

  What was happening? Joe and I had never been this far apart before. Every time I tried to make it better it got worse. I didn’t know what to do.

  He hadn’t actually cheated on me, but it felt like he had. He’d also taken on the role of Selene’s champion, which was troubling me even more than the dreams. The two things together, though…that was too much.

  Every time I tried to say anything about Selene, he defended her. Anytime he tried to say anything about Selene, I got angry.

  Selene. It was always about Selene.

  She’d insinuated her way into everything, including Joe’s dreams. What if she won?

  “Here you go,” said the fat guy, at my elbow. He slid a glass onto the table. “Wanna run a tab?”

  I nodded, reaching for the drink. It was easy on the Coke, heavy on the Jack, so much so I coughed a little as it went down.

  “You’re welcome,” said the fat man, heading back toward the bar. “Looked like you needed a stiff one.”

  Cautious now, I took another sip and put my head back again, closing my eyes to concentrate on the burn. I needed to feel something besides this ache in my heart and the prickling of my eyelids.

  “It’s man trouble, ain’t it?”

  The woman’s voice made me jump. I opened my eyes to see the hard-faced woman from behind the bar sliding into the other side of my booth.

  Appalled she’d be so pushy, I gave her a stony stare and didn’t answer, figuring she’d take the hint.

  She didn’t. “I can spot man trouble a mile away,” she said, nodding her head. “Pretty girl like you, coming into a dump like this all alone on a weeknight. Just had a fight with your boyfriend, didn’t you?”