Love & Ghosts: Crescent City Ghost Tours

by Pulkinen, Carrie

  “I heard something. What was it?”

  “Let me turn up the volume.” He pressed a button and the audio repeated more loudly. The voice was quiet, but she was just able to make out the words she’s pretty.

  She covered her mouth with her hand. “Is that for real? Did she say that?”

  His mouth quirked into a crooked grin. “Are you still accusing me of faking evidence when you’re sitting right here?”

  “No, I…”

  “She said it. And listen to this.” First his voice asking Alice what she wanted Emily to do. Then dance with you in the quiet, feminine tone.

  “She wants me to dance with you?”

  “She probably saw us at the masquerade.” He stood and offered her his hand. “How can you say no to such a cute little thing?”

  “I suppose we can’t.” She took his hand and let him lead her to the dance floor. “Although it won’t have the same effect without music.”

  “Got it covered.” He pressed his phone screen a few times and “Just the Way You Are” played through the speaker. The same song they first danced to at the ball. He winked and set the phone on a nearby table, then swept her into his arms and twirled her around.

  “You planned this, didn’t you?”

  “That feels like an accusation.” He turned her in another circle and pulled her body closer to his.

  “Don’t tell me you just happened to have this song cued up and ready to play.”

  He pressed his lips to her ear. “Truth?” The warmth of his breath sent shivers running down her legs.

  “Always.”

  “I was hoping to do this after everyone left. Just me and you. Alone in the ballroom. Doesn’t that sound romantic?”

  Her heart stuttered. “Yes, it does.”

  “But when Alice asked, I couldn’t tell her no. This is still romantic, isn’t it? Even with an audience?”

  As he turned her, she caught a glimpse of the others watching them. Heat flushed her cheeks, and she buried her face in his neck. “It was until I saw them staring at us.”

  “Ignore them, sweetheart. The song’s almost over.” He gave her a final spin and dipped her so low, her head nearly brushed the floor. When he pulled her upright, he caught her in his arms before she had a chance to stumble and captured her lips in a kiss.

  As she stood there in the center of the dance floor with Sean’s strong, warm arms wrapped around her, she felt another pair of ice-cold arms slide around her leg. She sucked in a sharp breath and looked down, but nothing in her field of vision matched the sensation she felt. She looked at Sean. “Is she…?”

  “She’s hugging you.”

  Tears stung her eyes, so she rested her head on his shoulder to hide them. She’d been lying to herself her entire life, convinced she’d be in danger if she believed in spirits. That they somehow possessed the power to control her mind, to hurt her. Maybe her sister’s obsession and eventual demise weren’t caused by spirits at all. Maybe it was a personality flaw. Jessica did have a tendency to fixate on things. And standing here in the middle of the haunted ballroom with Sean and his friends, she didn’t feel threatened or even frightened. Ghosts were just people without bodies, after all.

  The cold embrace on her leg dissipated, and Sean hugged her tighter. “How you doing, Buttercup? Not too freaked out?”

  “Not at all.” She blinked back her tears and pulled away to look at him. “This has been amazing. I’m so glad I came.”

  “You and me both.” Something over her shoulder caught his gaze, and he froze. At the same time, one of the REM pods sounded a high-pitched squeal, and lights flashed all over it. With one arm wrapped tightly around her waist, he rushed her off the dance floor, away from the culpable machine.

  “Who is it?” Jason bounded down the stairs to join them, and Emily’s sense of calm eroded into confusion.

  “What’s going on?” She looked to Sean and each of his friends as they gathered around her, but none of them answered. “Sean?”

  “Is it Eli?” Sydney asked.

  “He’s not showing himself to me, but if I had to wager a guess…” Before he could finish his sentence, the table shook, knocking his phone to the floor. It bounced off the carpet and landed face-down on the wood. “That better not be broken,” he muttered.

  The next table closer to them shook, and a chair turned on its side as if someone knocked it over. Emily gripped Sean’s arm and swallowed the bile that crept up her throat. The air filled with tingling energy, making every hair on her body stand on end.

  Ghosts could be dangerous, just like she’d thought.

  “Eli, I told you you aren’t welcome here today.” He patted her hand as if trying to comfort her. “Remember he’s just a person. He can’t hurt you without a body.”

  “If he can flip the chair over, I’m sure he can.” Panic tipped in her voice.

  “Leave, Eli.”

  “Leave, Eli,” Sydney repeated his words.

  Jason stepped forward. “Eli, go away.”

  “You aren’t welcome here, Eli,” Eric said. But the table didn’t stop shaking.

  “Emily, tell him to leave.”

  “Like that will help. He didn’t listen to any of you.” She stepped back, but her legs hit the edge of the stage.

  “We don’t own this space, so he doesn’t have to listen to us. But if everyone in the room orders him to go, he will. Tell him to leave.”

  “Go away.” Her voice came out as a tiny squeak.

  Sean squeezed her hand. “Use his name, and say it like you mean it.”

  “Go away, Eli.” As soon as the words left her mouth, the shaking stopped. The static charge in the air dissolved, and the heaviness in her chest lifted. Everyone around her relaxed, but she trembled as she tried to catch her breath.

  Sean rubbed her back and shook his head. “Sorry about that. We haven’t heard from Eli in nearly a year. I thought he’d moved on.”

  “Who?” She sucked in a shaky breath. “Who is Eli?”

  “Our best guess is he was some sort of criminal in the late 1800s. He likes to mess with people. Move stuff around. But it’s okay. We got rid of him.”

  “How did we get rid of him?”

  “Spirits have to obey the living. Once we all told him to go, he had no choice. If we owned this space, we could banish him for good. As it is, he can come back after we all leave, but he usually doesn’t cause any problems.”

  “Usually?” She wrapped her arms around herself and rocked back and forth. “He could have killed us.”

  “No, he…” Sean sighed. “Let’s pack it up, guys.” He picked up a recorder, but Sydney took it from his hands.

  “We’ll get the equipment. Go talk to her.”

  “Yeah.” He pried Emily’s hand away from her body and laced his fingers through hers. “Let’s get out of here, sweetheart. We need to talk.”

  * * *

  She was silent on the drive to Sean’s house, hardly sparing a glance for him as they entered the front door and went to his bedroom. He picked up a container of salt from the kitchen and poured a ring around the bed as Emily climbed onto the mattress. He sat next to her, but she still just stared at her hands clasped in her lap. She didn’t move when he tucked a strand of hair behind her ear and glided his fingers across her cheek.

  How could he have been so stupid? He should’ve at least prepared her for Eli. Told her there might be one that liked to move stuff around. Then maybe she wouldn’t have freaked. Or maybe she would have, but at least she would have been expecting it.

  “Sweetheart, talk to me. Tell me what you’re thinking.”

  She raised her gaze to his, her eyes full of distrust and confusion. “You had me going there for a while. I believed you.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “The whole ‘ghosts can’t hurt you’ thing. I fell for it hook, line, and sinker. I wanted to believe you, so I turned off the nagging little voice in my mind, the one that’s kept me safe all these years.”
>
  “You are safe, and ghosts can’t hurt you.”

  “He turned over a chair, Sean. And my sister might’ve been the one who tore my apartment up. If they’re strong enough to do that, they can hurt you.”

  He inhaled deeply and rubbed his forehead. How could he explain this so she’d understand? “This is our world. Spirit energy can’t touch us; it passes right through. If a ghost tried to hit you, his fist would fly through your body.”

  She shook her head. “I felt that little girl hug me.”

  “You felt her energy. Believe me, if she had hugged you any tighter, her arms would’ve passed through your leg. Alice has been a ghost for more than a hundred years. She knows how to touch people so they’ll feel it, but she can’t apply any type of pressure. None of them can.”

  “Then why can they move objects?”

  “I don’t know. That’s just how it is. I’ve done a lot of research, talked to a lot of people, and everyone has the same consensus. Spirits can focus their energy to move inanimate objects, but not living flesh.”

  “How?”

  “I don’t know how. I’m sure there’s a scientific explanation, but it doesn’t matter. It is what it is, and that’s always been good enough for me.”

  “It’s not good enough for me.”

  “Well, sweetheart, it’s going to have to be. I don’t have another way to explain it. And what happened tonight with Eli…with the chair…that can happen in front of anyone, whether you have the gift or not.”

  She pulled her knees up to her chin and wrapped her arms around her legs. “What if he channeled his angry energy into you or one of the guys? You could have hurt one of us.”

  “Eli is just a person without a body. He can’t do much more than what you saw. Ghosts can’t affect your mood or your mind.” Demons certainly could, but he wasn’t about to bring up nonhuman entities when she still wouldn’t accept human ones.

  “So my sister…” She rested the side of her face on her knees and gazed up at him.

  “A ghost didn’t make her go crazy.”

  She closed her eyes for a long blink and unfolded her body. Scooting closer, she snuggled into his side, and the knot in his chest untied. He hadn’t lost her just yet.

  “I’m scared, Sean.”

  “I know. But I’m still the same guy. The only difference is now maybe I can talk about my work with you. Share more of myself, because I want to give you everything I have. Can you handle all of me?”

  “I’m going to try.”

  He hugged her tighter and kissed the top of her head. “That’s all I ask.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  “Thank goodness for slow days.” Emily sat behind the reception desk with Trish and caught up on her paperwork. She had an office in the back of the clinic, but she preferred the company of her friend over the stuffy matchbox room.

  Trish minimized her browser and spun around in her chair. “How have things been going with…you know?”

  She shrugged and signed the last document before closing the folder and setting it aside. “Fine, actually.” She could hear the surprise in her own voice. “It’s been two weeks since the ghost hunt, and nothing really has changed.”

  “Is that a good thing or a bad thing?”

  “I suppose it’s good. Sean seems even happier, if that’s possible. He talks about ghosts every now and then, but not constantly like I’d expected. He doesn’t seem obsessed like Jessica was.”

  “And you don’t feel like anything’s messing with your mind?”

  “He assured me ghosts can’t do that.”

  Trish furrowed her brow and bit her bottom lip. “So back when we were kids…what you saw in the cemetery? And the wind and stuff?”

  She took a deep breath and nodded. “It was real. It’s always been real; I’ve been in denial.” She’d been using logic as an excuse to convince herself ghosts didn’t exist, but her reasoning hadn’t been logical at all. She’d seen the spirits with her own eyes, and she’d been lying to herself ever since. “But that’s over. I’m moving on, and I’m happy now.” She relaxed the muscles in her clenched jaw.

  Her friend beamed a smile. “And I’m happy for you. Of course, I’m sure staying with Dreamboat for the past two weeks has helped with the happiness factor too. You aren’t sick of him yet?”

  “Not in the slightest. But they’re done with the mold repair. We’ll be staying at my house tonight.”

  “That was fast. I thought mold problems took forever to solve.”

  Emily shrugged. “It was such a small amount and only in the kitchen. I must be super sensitive to it because they said most people wouldn’t have noticed it until it got out of control.”

  “Huh. Lucky you.”

  The door chimed, signaling the entrance of a customer, so Emily rose to her feet to greet him. As soon as her gaze met those pale blue eyes, she froze. Her stomach dipped, and a flush of irritation warmed her veins. “What are you doing here, Phillip?”

  Trish stood next to Emily and crossed her arms over her chest. “You’ve got some nerve, buddy.”

  Phillip spread his hands. “Em, baby, come on. You know you’re happy to see me.”

  She crossed her arms to mirror Trish’s posture and clamped her mouth shut. It’d been nearly eight months since she caught the lying snake cheating on her, and she wasn’t the least bit happy to see him now.

  “Not even a little bit?” He held his thumb and index finger close together to indicate a small size.

  “Please tell me you didn’t come all the way out here to talk to me?”

  “Oh.” He forced out a chuckle. “Nah, I’m here with Bobby for the Saints game. You being here too is a bonus.”

  Her lip curled as she stared at the man in disgust. His slicked-back blond hair and narrow eyes. The cocky smile that used to melt her heart. All those things now screamed “cheater.” How could she have ever been attracted to such a slimy snake?

  “Well,” she picked up a patient file and clutched it to her chest, “I don’t want to keep you from your game.”

  He moved closer to the reception desk. “It’s not till tomorrow night. You get off at seven, right? We can have dinner.”

  “I don’t want to have dinner with you.”

  “Coffee?”

  “Goodbye, Phillip.”

  He let out a dramatic sigh and shoved his hands into his pockets. “I miss you.”

  She tightened her grip on the folder, crumpling the edges. “Goodbye, Phillip.”

  “Bye, Emily.” He shuffled out the door, and Emily plopped into a chair.

  “Did you know he was in town?” Trish rubbed her shoulder and pulled out a chair next to her.

  “I had no idea. He stopped texting me after I talked to him on the phone. But I had location sharing turned on all that time. He knows about everywhere I’ve been.”

  “Hopefully he’ll take the hint and leave you alone.”

  She drummed her fingers on the desk. “You warned me not to date him. Remember?”

  Trish laughed. “But you didn’t listen. You were in love with being in love.”

  She squeezed her eyes shut and rubbed her forehead. “Am I doing the same thing with Sean? I mean, he’s the first guy I’ve dated since Phillip. Am I being blind again?”

  “Oh, hell no. Sean’s different. And you didn’t latch on to him the first time you saw him.”

  “I wanted to.”

  “But you didn’t. You let it simmer. You thought about it. Trust me, I’d tell you if I saw any red flags, and I don’t. Sean is perfect for you.”

  The tension in her shoulders loosened, and she sat up straighter. “He is, isn’t he?”

  “So perfect, in fact, if you weren’t my best friend, I’d try to steal him for myself.”

  She arched an eyebrow at her friend.

  “I’m kidding. But seriously, Mr. Perfect actually is perfect in this case. Don’t let your past sway your thoughts on your future.”

  “Wise words from a single
woman.”

  Trish flipped her hair off her shoulder. “Hey, I’m single by choice.”

  “I know.”

  * * *

  Sean followed Emily into her apartment and set her suitcase by the door. A little pang shot through his heart at the thought of having to spend his nights alone now that she had her own place back. He’d gotten used to spending every evening with her, waking up with her by his side. But he couldn’t keep playing house with her. She needed her own space. While she seemed to be adjusting to him talking about his ability, her jaw still tensed every time he mentioned ghosts.

  He watched her walk the space, running her hand along the new sheetrock in the kitchen, trailing her gaze over the living room. A sad smile curved her lips, and her eyes didn’t hold the excitement or relief he’d expected to see.

  “Home sweet home.” She shrugged and stepped toward him, pulling him into a hug. “Thanks for letting me stay with you.”

  “Sweetheart, the pleasure has been all mine, believe me.” He closed his eyes and inhaled the sweet floral scent of her hair. He’d miss that scent lingering on the sheets after she crawled out of bed each morning. “It’ll be nice to have your own place again. To not have to deal with me every night, right?”

  “I guess.”

  He pulled back to look at her. “You guess?”

  She slid her hands into his back pockets. “Maybe I like dealing with you.”

  The temperature around them plummeted, and Emily shivered. “It’s cold in here. Let me turn the heater on.”

  Her sister’s ghost appeared near the door, but Emily didn’t seem to notice as she shuffled toward the thermostat. He cut his gaze between the spirit and Emily as thoughts tumbled through his head. He hadn’t seen nor heard from Jessica since Emily started staying at his house. How odd for her to suddenly appear when they came back to the apartment. Could she be attached to something here?