Of Ash and Spirit: Piper Lancaster Series

by D. G. Swank

  “I was worried you’d change your mind,” Jack said.

  “No. You have potential answers,” I said. “And I really need answers.”

  He looked slightly disappointed, but the expression was gone too quickly for me to be sure. As soon as he recovered, he gestured to the chair next to him. “Have a seat.”

  I walked over to the table, and he held out the chair for me.

  “I hope Becca didn’t give you a hard time,” he said as he took his own seat.

  I laughed. “No. Quite the opposite. She says I’m her new best friend.”

  He ducked his head with a sheepish grin. “Oh dear.”

  “I think it was because I called Othello’s the hottest new restaurant in town.”

  “That would do it. She and Max have worked hard to make this place a success.”

  “Is Max the brother who says you can’t use stained glass in your pickup lines?”

  “The very one.”

  I almost told him to ignore his brother. Jack Owen could talk about drying paint, and it would be fascinating if his mouth uttered the words, but I wisely kept that to myself. This was awkward enough. “So the restaurant is a family business?” I said, fiddling with my fork. “How did you manage to escape?”

  He released a nervous laugh and pulled a wine bottle from the ice bucket. “Lucky, I guess.” He held up the bottle. “Max sent this Pinot Gris before I got here. He said it goes well with the meal he’s serving.” He cringed. “Max has a new dish that’s not on the menu yet, and he insists on serving us. It’s something with chicken and asparagus, but if you want something else or a different type of wine, I can have Becca take care of it.”

  “No. It sounds great. Rhys will be totally jealous when she finds out.”

  “You’re lucky to have a friend who’s so understanding,” he said with a hitch in his voice.

  “I am lucky. I actually have two friends who . . . understand, Rhys and Hudson.”

  “Hudson?” There was a bit of speculation in the way he said it.

  “He’s my best friend. We’ve been friends since sixth grade.” I studied him. “This afternoon at the church, you thought someone had sent us to trick you.” I paused. “Did no one believe you about being attacked by a demon?”

  His jaw tightened and he swallowed before he said, “Not many.”

  “What happened to you, Jack? May I ask?”

  “Yes, of course,” he said. “I’ll tell you anything you want to know.”

  I opened my mouth to say something, but the door opened and Becca burst in with a platter. “Sorry to interrupt. I brought appetizers.”

  Jack looked irritated. “Becca, I told you we only wanted dinner.”

  She shook her head as she walked in and set the platter on the table. “Piper can’t eat at Othello’s and not have the bacon-wrapped figs and feta. It would be criminal.”

  “I’ve had enough run-ins with the police,” I said with an ornery grin. “Thanks for saving me any more trips down to the station.”

  Becca’s mouth dropped open; then she laughed. “I really like her, Jack.”

  “I already told you it’s not like that,” Jack said, but the tips of his ears looked a bit pink. “Don’t come back until dinner’s ready.” After she left, he said, “Sorry. Coming here might have been a bad idea. I just thought—”

  I smiled. “I think it’s sweet. She cares about you. I would love to have a sister to pester me.”

  “Only child?” he asked.

  “Yeah, and you have no idea how much I always wished I had a sister or brother.”

  “Your parents only wanted one?”

  “My mother had trouble getting pregnant again after she had me. They were about to try in vitro, but they didn’t get the chance. They died when I was ten.”

  He cringed. “Piper. I’m sorry.”

  I shook my head. “There’s nothing to apologize for.” But I didn’t want to talk about my parents. Not right now. I suspected that topic would come up later. “Any siblings other than Becca and Max?”

  Amusement filled his eyes. “Trust me, the two of them are enough.”

  I grinned. “You must be a middle child.”

  “And you must be psychic.”

  “Nope. So far my supernatural talent seems to extend only to talking to ghosts, and apparently a demon.”

  He gave me an awkward glance. “We could jump right into the reason we’re here, but I suspect Becca will be back in five to ten minutes with the main course. If we wait, I’ll lock the door after she brings our food.”

  “Okay.” Part of me was happy, but I wasn’t sure if it was because I was simply relieved to put it off for a bit . . . or if I was enjoying his company too much to mar it with talk about demons.

  “Becca’s right,” Jack said. “These figs are too good to pass up.”

  “How did your meeting with the bishop go?”

  He seemed surprised I’d remembered. “Not as I’d hoped.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “How did your meeting with your ghost go?” he asked.

  I hesitated and searched his face. “Do you really want to know?”

  His gaze softened. “Yeah, Piper. I do.”

  “I think that’s a discussion that should wait until the main course.”

  “That bad, huh?”

  I picked up a fig and took a bite. “This is delicious.”

  He smiled, but I could see in his eyes that he knew I’d purposefully dodged the question.

  “What made you decide to be a priest?”

  “You mean instead of going into the restaurant business with my brother and sister?” He paused. “I was about to give you my standard answer, but I think you deserve the real one.”

  That caught me by surprise. “Thank you.”

  “I wasn’t very religious when I was a boy, so everyone was shocked when I said I was going to the seminary.”

  “Why did you?”

  He studied me for a few moments, then said, “Because I believed God told me to. I know it sounds crazy—”

  “Jack, please. I would be the last person to call you crazy.”

  Relief filled his eyes. “So I went to seminary, and although I’m a believer, I didn’t feel worthy of my calling. Nor did I really want to lead a flock. Especially since my interests seemed to lean far away from pastoral work. I had many second and third thoughts.”

  “But you followed through anyway.”

  “Once again, I asked God for guidance and He told me it was His plan. I could literally hear his voice, Piper.” He paused, then asked in a wry tone, “Think I’m crazy now? Want to get those bacon-wrapped figs to go?”

  I could see he’d been hurt before, ridiculed for his experience. The pain in his eyes was my undoing, and I reached over and covered the back of his hand with my own. “No. You can’t get rid of me that easily, Jack. I’m here.” I offered him a warm smile. “You forget I hear voices too.”

  His gaze held mine and an array of emotions cycled through them. Shock. Relief. Then something else I couldn’t give name to other than tenderness.

  “How did you react when you heard God’s voice?” I asked quietly, then realized I was still touching him. I jerked back in my seat, resting my hand in my lap.

  “I’m sure I ran the same gamut you did when you first heard your voices. Disbelief. Concern for my mental health. I would have completely dismissed it if it hadn’t felt so utterly right. So, even though it didn’t seem like a good fit, I figured God had a plan. I decided to worry about the rest later.”

  My mouth twisted to the side in a wry grin. “I know what it’s like to follow a life plan that doesn’t feel right.”

  “Your ghost-hunting business?”

  “No. Believe it or not, law school. Both of my parents were lawyers. I still have a partial ownership in my dad’s law firm.”

  “So you’re an attorney?” he asked in surprise.

  “No. I quit school last year. At the beginning of my final year. I
t was the first week of class. I sat down and started listening to a professor talk about torts, and I heard a voice say, ‘Go home, Piper.’” I shook my head and glanced out the windows that looked down onto the street below. From the corner of my eye, I caught a glimpse of a tall, bearded man. Could it be Abel? Before I got a good look, he was gone. I was clearly seeing things. “Uh . . . so I did. I got up, unenrolled, and came home. At first I told myself it was just a break, but part of me knew I was never going back.”

  “How could you be so trusting of the voice?”

  I found myself glancing back down to the street. Focus, Piper. I turned back to Jack with a tight grin. “Because it was like the voice you heard . . . it felt so right. Like it was preordained.” I cringed, horrified I’d revealed so much. “Now you might be the one who wants to run.”

  “No, Piper,” he said softly. “I’m not going anywhere.”

  “I’ve never told anyone that, you know.” I glanced back at him. “Not even Rhys or Hudson.”

  “Why are you telling me?”

  “Because I thought you might truly understand.”

  The gratitude on his face told me I had been right to share the truth with him, and in that moment, I felt a bond with Jack that superseded what I had with Rhys or Hudson. He truly understood what I’d experienced because he’d experienced something like it too.

  “Sorry.” I glanced down at the table before shifting my gaze back up at him. “I interrupted you.”

  “I’m not.” His gaze held mine. “You have no idea how relieved I am—on multiple levels—to hear your story.”

  I smiled. “Well, you might change your mind when you hear the rest of it.” I told him about the past six months of my life—how everything had taken a deep dive south after I opened my father’s codicil, though I didn’t go into any of the strange stipulations. “I felt like I was in limbo,” I finished, “waiting on further instructions.” I’d never admitted it to myself before, but it felt true. My subconscious had trusted that the voice had a plan. All those random, directionless months, I’d just been waiting to hear what it wanted.

  “And you started getting your instructions when your ability began to emerge.”

  “Yeah, I guess I did . . .” But my mind was still whirring, and I took a moment to find the right words. “I feel like I’m part of something big, too big for me to understand.” That sensation—that I fit into some unknown plan—had throbbed to life again this morning, when Abel and I had talked outside of the police station. Whatever plan I was a part of, he was part of it too . . . which was something I didn’t feel comfortable talking about with Jack.

  It belatedly occurred to me that I sounded beyond conceited. I cringed. “Does that make me sound like I’m full of myself?”

  “No,” he said reverently. “I feel the exact same way.”

  I studied him. Where did Jack fit into everything, and why didn’t I have the same weird fate feeling with him that I had with Abel? Was it because my instincts recognized Abel could help me more? Or did the strange pull I felt toward him mean something else?

  None of this is about romance, Piper, I chastised myself. This is serious business and you need to focus on the important part—not getting killed. While I knew I was right, my gaze was pulled to the window. I wanted the guy I’d seen to be Abel. I wanted him to be out there waiting for me. As soon as I realized what I was doing, I forced myself to turn back to Jack. He was the one in front of me, giving me answers. He was the one willing to help me.

  Realizing I’d taken too long with my thoughts, I said, “What about you? You’re a reverend, so you obviously finished your schooling.”

  “I did,” he said. “Although I was still unsure about my calling, I plugged along. I was assigned to be an associate pastor at St. Mark’s. Last month, a parishioner said she thought her house was possessed. The senior pastor was sure the woman was crazy, but I’d always been drawn to tales of demons and possession, so I went to her house to investigate. If nothing else, to assure myself that the whole Roanoke thing was a scam . . . that the supernatural world had not just been jarred awake.”

  “And?”

  He picked up his glass of wine and took a sip. I didn’t think he was going to answer, but he surprised me. “I saw what she was experiencing firsthand.” He took a bigger sip of his wine before setting the glass on the table. “It was like you described in the Crawford house. Things moving around and objects being propelled across the room. The kind of things that couldn’t be explained away. I couldn’t see anything on that first visit, but I heard snatches of words, which was more than the homeowner could hear. On the third visit, I could see the demon, but—like I told you—it was hazy. My parishioner had found a lot of dead animals around her property. Animal control would pick them up and find no sign of trauma or blood loss. They were just . . . dead. On the fourth visit, I asked the voice if it knew what was happening to the animals. It laughed and said they were food. I believed it because its voice had grown stronger and louder. The activity in the house had become more violent.”

  “Is that the demon that hurt you?”

  His hand shook as he picked up his wine again and drained a good portion of the glass. “Yes.”

  “I thought you said it happened near Zealandia Castle.”

  He gave his wine glass his full attention. “It was a point of reference. It really happened at a home on the south side of the bridge.”

  “Helen’s Bridge? How close to it?”

  He seemed reluctant, yet he said, “A few hundred feet.”

  “Jack, if you don’t want to tell me this—”

  His blue eyes had darkened, and it was easy to see whatever had happened in that house still haunted him. “No. I feel like you’re the only one who will understand.”

  I nodded, feeling unworthy to hear his story. Jack was a man of God who had been attacked by a demon while trying to protect his parishioner. I was a con woman who could suddenly do what I’d been pretending to do for months.

  Why me?

  He finished off his wine and set the glass on the table. “I decided to perform an exorcism. To do such a thing, you need permission from the bishop, but I knew he’d never give it, so I didn’t seek it.”

  “You went rogue,” I said in a teasing voice.

  He grinned with appreciation. “Yeah, I guess you could say I went rogue.”

  I lifted my brow playfully. “My kind of guy. I would have done the same thing.”

  Oh crap. Too late, I realized how my statement might have been construed, but thankfully, he didn’t dwell on it. Instead, his demeanor turned serious.

  “Like I told you earlier at the church, I’d studied spirits, both in sanctioned and unsanctioned texts. Christian, Judaism, Hindu, Buddhist, Islam—they all have their own stories to tell about spirits that range from mischievous to downright evil.” He looked into my eyes, his brilliant blue gaze holding my attention. “But I was Father Owen, so I went with a traditional Catholic house-cleansing exorcism.”

  “Did it work?”

  “Yeah. It did. The demon was exorcised from the house, but not before I caught a good glimpse of it.”

  “What did it look like?”

  “Big and dark gray.” He held his hands out a few inches from his sides. “A fat body. Long arms. Stubby legs. But the claws . . .” He took a breath. “It had a somewhat human head. It was ugly.”

  “Did it leave behind a pile of ash?”

  His eyes widened. “Yes.”

  “That’s what I saw at the Crawfords’ house.” I wasn’t sure whether to feel relieved or horrified. What did any of it mean?

  He nodded. “I was shocked when the exorcism worked.” He gave me a wry look. “But it wasn’t dead . . . which you already know because you saw it yourself. It wasn’t even really gone. I heard a noise in the parishioner’s backyard, an animal squealing in pain. Armed with my crucifix and my holy water, I went to investigate.” He paused. “Thank goodness I’d sent the homeowners away.�
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  I held my breath, afraid to hear what came next.

  “Like a lot of houses on Beaucatcher Mountain, this one has trees bordering the property. It was sunset, so it took a moment for my eyes to adjust. But then I saw an inky black haze hovering over the ground about twenty feet away. It was pinning a rabbit to the ground while it consumed its . . . life essence.”

  “You mean its soul?”

  “Most Christians don’t believe animals have a soul.”

  “What do you believe?” The look on his face suggested he didn’t buy it.

  He appeared to be choosing his words carefully. “I believe that all living creatures were created by God.”

  A non-answer if I’d ever heard one, but I decided to let it go for now. “What did you do when you saw the demon eating the rabbit’s soul?”

  His gaze held mine and I wondered if he was going to correct me, but he said, “I was devastated and so angry. I wasn’t thinking. I just knew I had to kill it, so I charged forward with my crucifix and my holy water, confident that I could handle the situation like I had in the house. I was so wrong.”

  The blood in my veins turned to ice.

  “You see,” he said in a wry tone, “I’d poured a circle of holy water around myself in the house, but I had attributed my escape to my aptitude, not to the fact that I was standing in a holy circle.”

  “It attacked you in the yard.”

  “My arrogance was my downfall.”

  “Jack . . .”

  He shook his head and looked away from me. “The demon had just finished siphoning off the animal’s . . . soul when I reached it—I could see it, Piper. It looked like a tiny light that extinguished the moment it hit the demon’s body. I could also see the demon gained just a tiny fraction of strength from it. But I didn’t have any time to react before it charged and tackled me to the ground. I was covered in an icy presence, and incredible pain shot through my body as it clawed my back, digging through skin and muscle. But worse, I could feel it latching on to my soul.”