by K. J. Emrick
He met her outside the bedroom, his eyebrows scrunched down with curiosity. He saw the statue she was holding, but that only made his eyebrows drop lower.
“What are you…?”
His voice trailed off as they heard a siren coming up the street. Grace and the cavalry were coming.
“Let’s do this outside,” she suggested. “I can tell you and Grace at the same time and you can tell me if this sounds crazy or not.”
“Your theories usually do,” he said, but then added, “and they’re usually right. Okay. I don’t think Mason’s going to just get up and walk away if we take a breather outside. Um. I don’t suppose you’ve seen his ghost?”
Darcy shook her head. It was a fair question but no, not this time. Sometimes when people died, their ghosts were right there, standing over their bodies and waiting for Darcy to notice them. Other times, they came to her weeks, months, even years later. Sometimes, they never came to her at all. She could do a spirit communication later and call up Mason’s ghost if they needed it, but she thought maybe they had a good handle on the investigation now that a few things had come together in her mind.
“No, I haven’t seen him,” she told Jon. “I’ll let you know if I do. Come on. Let’s get outside to meet Grace.”
“Yeah. Well, so much for this being a simple investigation, just small-time crime with nobody dying.”
“I hate to say it,” Darcy sighed, “but I guess we should have expected it.”
When they got to the front door again, and stepped outside, the snow had stopped falling. Around the edges of the house, swirls of white flakes stirred themselves, lifting up in little clouds…like mist on the wind.
It was like an omen. Like something bad was coming.
Or was already here.
Going to sleep that night wasn’t easy for Darcy. There was too much going through her mind. They hadn’t finished the investigation. There were things they had to do. Questions they needed to ask and answers they needed to find.
And once again, someone had been murdered in their town.
Even so, she laid herself down in her nightgown and her socks, Tiptoe at her feet, the kids tucked in their beds, and the furnace rumbling quietly as it sent warmth through the house. She tried to let sleep come. Jon was still at the office finishing paperwork and giving instructions to the nightshift, so she had the whole bed to herself. Plus, after the day they’d both had, she was exhausted. It should have been easy to let herself just drift off, with her head on the pillow, and the comforter snuggled up around her neck.
But she just couldn’t get her brain to turn off. She tossed, and turned, and at one point she punched her fist into her pillow although she had no idea what that was supposed to do for her. It was just something they always did in the movies when they couldn’t sleep.
Lying there in the silence, staring at the ceiling, she was startled by Tiptoe whipping her head up suddenly. The gray cat twisted her ears back and forth. Her eyes flashed in the glow from the unicorn nightlight.
Darcy rolled up onto her elbow. “What’s up with you, kitten?”
Tiptoe twisted her head around to give her an annoyed look. “You know I hate it when you call me that. I’m not a little girl anymore.”
“That’s not why I…”
Darcy blinked. Cat’s only talked…in a dream. She was having a dream, which meant that at some point she must have fallen asleep even with her mind still spinning like a top. It had been a long time since Tiptoe had spoken to her like this. Even longer since her daddy, Smudge, had come to visit her while she was sleeping. She liked to think his spirit was still out there somewhere, watching over her and Tiptoe both.
“Tiptoe,” she said, careful to use the cat’s given name, “you seem like you were upset about something. What’s going on? Did you see something?”
She flicked a furry ear at Darcy. “I hear everything. Right now, what I’m hearing is someone coming.”
Darcy waved a hand dismissively through the air. “It’s probably just Jon coming home, walking up the stairs to get into bed.”
Tiptoe’s fur ruffled. “You don’t think I know what Jon’s footsteps sound like?”
“Well, of course you would, but I mean—”
“I’ve lived in this house for years, Darcy.”
“Well, sure, but it’s not like you can see who it is.”
“Cat’s ears are far more sensitive than a humans. We see the world a lot more clearly, with heightened senses.”
“So do I,” Darcy told her, reaching down to scratch between Tiptoe’s marvelous, better-than-people’s ears.
In spite of how she was trying to act offended, Tiptoe purred and pushed into Darcy’s fingertips. “Fine, I guess I can forgive you. You’ve got your sixth sense, and I’ve got my cat senses. All I’m saying is I know what Jon sounds like. I know what you sound like. I know what Zane and Colby sound like.” The way she said Colby’s name made it obvious she thought Darcy’s daughter was actually the most important person in the house. She pulled away and sat up on all fours.
“And,” she continued with a flick of her tail, “I know what she sounds like.”
When the cat nodded toward the far corner with her chin, Darcy looked that way to find a throne had appeared in her bedroom. An honest-to-God throne, with red velvet cushions and gilded filigree on the high frame and on the arms and the curving legs.
In the chair sat Willamena Duell. She was in a slightly skimpier version of the black dress she favored, the plunging neckline showing off the sides of her breasts, one leg crossed over her knee, her bare foot bobbing in the air.
She hummed melodramatically. “I was wondering when you were going to notice me.”
Darcy tossed the covers aside. “A throne? Seriously?” She was never happy to see this woman, dream or no dream, and she was going to be even less thrilled if she started treating herself like a queen. “Did you honestly pop yourself into my bedroom sitting on a throne?”
Willamena stroked her right index finger slowly along the edge of one curving, velvet chair arm. “I thought that it suited me,” she crooned in her sultry French accent.
“I think a jailcell would suit you better, considering the things I know you did in your past.”
“Like what?” she asked with her lower lip stuck out petulantly. “I’m practically an angel.”
“So was Satan. Where’s Great Aunt Millie? Why isn’t she here?”
“Your aunt, she is busy somewhere else.”
“Busy? She’s a ghost. How can she be busy?”
Willamena narrowed her eyes. “We may be dead, sweet Darcy, but we are not without our uses, non?”
“Whatever. Look, Willa, if I’m actually asleep now I’d kind of like to enjoy some rest, so why don’t you just tell me—”
Thump.
The door of her closet was closed, and something had just bumped hard against it from the inside.
Darcy swung her feet over the edge of the mattress. “What was that?”
“I’m out of here,” Tiptoe said, jumping off the bed. “Gonna sleep with Colby. At least her dreams are about fun stuff, like riding bikes.”
“You can ride a bike?” Darcy asked, but the cat was already darting out of the room.
Thump, went the closet door again.
“What in the world is that?” Darcy took a step closer, down to the end of the bed, right next to the throne and the ghost sitting in it.
“That,” Willamena said to her, “is what I came to warn you about.”
“Warn me?”
“But of course. You know that I am at your disposal. I am here to help.”
“And you’re doing a bang-up job, as usual.” Darcy got up, giving the witch woman a glare. “I swear if this is supposed to be one of your life lessons, I’m not in the mood.”
Thump.
With a heavy sigh Willamena crossed her legs over the other way, showing off her milky white skin through the slit in the side of the dress, a slit that went all the way up to t
he middle of her thigh. “I have asked you to listen to me, again and again. Sometimes I don’t know why I bother to try telling you anything.”
“You haven’t told me anything at all.”
Thump.
“Mais oui, I have told you everything you need to know.”
“Then what’s in the closet, Willa? If you’ve told me everything then what’s in there?”
Thump.
“That, my dear,” the ghost of the witch woman said, “is exactly what you need to figure out.”
“Oh, yeah. That’s real helpful. So, what are you saying? I’m just supposed to open the door to the loud banging thing hiding out in my closet?”
Willamena clapped her fingertips daintily against her opposite palm. “She can be taught.”
Darcy gave her a glare that would have melted ice, but she knew how dreams went. She wasn’t going to get any real rest unless she actually went ahead and did what she was meant to do. In this case, that meant—
Thump.
—opening the closet door.
“Fine. Whatever.” She reached a hand out to the little wooden knob…
THUMP.
This time the door strained against its hinges with a violence that shook the wall. The thing on the other side was desperate to get at her. Darcy drew her hand back, rubbing her fingers together as if they’d been physically struck even though she hadn’t been quite that close.
“Come on,” Willamena goaded her. “All you have to do is open the door and find your answers.”
“Answers to what?” Darcy snapped.
“To the thing you need to know.”
“You like to talk in circles, don’t you?”
In a huff, Willamena leaned forward and draped her arm over her knee. “Darcy Sweet, you know what I am talking about. For weeks now a dream has kept your nerves on their edge. It has been getting stronger, and closer, and now you have the chance to understand and I am trying to help you!”
“Help me, huh? Then why don’t you open it.”
Willamena’s pretty mouth set itself into a pout. “Because I’m just a shade. Just a shadow of my former self. What is on the other side of that door isn’t for me, mon cher. It is for those who still have to worry about the cares of the living. It is, I am sad to say, for you.”
Darcy stared at her closet, waiting for the next bang on the door. She didn’t know what was in there, but she knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that she was scared out of her wits right now. Dream or not, she didn’t want to see what was in there. She didn’t want to know anything about it at all.
According to Willamena Duell, she didn’t have a choice.
“Know what?” she said to both the witch woman and the thing in her closet. “I’ve changed my mind. I’m going back to bed.”
“You really should take a look,” Willamena urged. “It is very important.”
“If it’s that important, it will wait until next time. I’m sure you’ll be here to haunt me tomorrow night, too.” She sat down on the edge of the bed, stuffing her feet under the covers, moving her pillow over to the middle of the mattress. “Let’s pick this up then, okay? I had a long day, Jon and I have several things to do tomorrow, and you aren’t helping anything. I’m going to get some good sleep now. Night, night.”
“You may wish to reconsider, sweet Darcy.”
“Nope. Not tonight.” She fussed with the blankets until she could find the top edge.
“Darcy.”
“What?”
Willamena gave her a saccharin-sweet smile. “You really should learn to listen to me.”
The witch woman disappeared, her empty throne evaporating a split second after, leaving her alone.
Darcy sighed, glad to be alone again, and flipped the blankets up to slide herself in—
From underneath, a hand reached out to her, and a woman crawled on her belly, and Darcy nearly jumped out of her skin as she watched herself—watched Darcy Sweet—come wriggling out into the stark illumination of the nightlight. Fingers clawed at her. Wide eyes shimmered with fear.
Her own face stared up at her, contorted with an unimaginable pain.
“…help…me…”
She woke up for real that time, pushing herself out of the blankets, falling off the edge of the mattress and landing on the floor with a hard shock to her hip bone. She bit down on her lip to hold back the scream that was trying to tear itself up out of her throat. Her heels dug into the floor and her legs pumped and she pushed herself back from the bed where the nightmare had clawed for her. She kept moving back, until she hit the wall.
The sheets and blankets were mussed and flat. There was nothing there. There never had been anything there, in fact. She was alone in the room. The ghost of Darcy Sweet was gone again.
At least, for now.
Chapter 8
“I just think we should have done this last night.” Darcy finished the last of her coffee and got up from the kitchen table to put the cup in the sink.
“We went over that, remember?” Jon handed her his plate after hastily scraping up the last piece of his eggs. She took it, but gave him a nasty look for making her do it.
He’d gotten home late. Or early, depending on how you viewed three-thirty in the morning. Darcy had slept fitfully since the end of her dream and his body sliding up next to hers, warm and perfect, had been just what she needed. For the rest of the night she had been able to sleep deeply, and she woke up pretty well rested, all things considered.
She hadn’t told him what she had seen in the middle of the night. In the morning when they woke up, she smiled at him, and he smiled back, and they had lost themselves in each other for several long, glorious minutes.
Now, they needed to get back to what Darcy thought they should have done yesterday.
“We couldn’t do it last night,” he told her. “Mayor Andy decided he was too busy last night to meet with us on this. The first opening he had in his schedule was this morning.”
Darcy scoffed. “You don’t believe that, do you?”
“No, I think he’s totally ducking us and I think we both know why. But short of putting him in handcuffs and putting his feet in cement, I can’t force the mayor of our town to do anything he doesn’t want to. He said he couldn’t meet us until this morning, and so we have our nine a.m. appointment.”
“Did it have to be so ungodly early?”
“What’s the matter, didn’t sleep well? I know you fell asleep hard after I finally got to bed.”
“Nightmare,” she mumbled, standing over the sink and staring into the collection of cereal bowls and plates and forks.
He didn’t ask her what the nightmare was about. She wasn’t going to tell him, but he knew. He always knew. “Tonight I’ll come to bed with you at the same time you lay down. Maybe that will help.”
Jon’s arms wrapped around her, his body nestled up against her back, certainly couldn’t hurt. She didn’t know if it would stop this particular dream, but it was worth trying if only for the sensual way it sparked ideas in her head. “You don’t have to,” she told him, eyes still focused on the collection of dirty dishes.
“I want to. Valentine’s Day is coming up soon, after all.”
“That’s not until the end of the week.”
“But I already love you today.”
“In that case, you’ve got a deal,” she told him. “That is, as long as today goes the way we expect it to. Nine o’clock, huh?”
“Yup. Everybody will be there at nine. That’ll give us time to drop the kids off to Grace and Aaron so they can hang out with their cousins for a while. Izzy’s watching the bookstore today to make up for taking an extra day off. With a lot of luck, we’ll have the whole murder-and-theft mystery wrapped up by lunchtime.”
“Hmph,” she griped. “When have we ever had that kind of luck?”
“Well, there was that one time.”
“When?”
“You remember, that time when we…with the thing…and then the gu
y…” He blinked at himself as he trailed off. “Okay, fine, we don’t really have a frame of reference for that, but it doesn’t mean it won’t happen this time.”
They could always dream, she supposed. “Did you at least have a good talk with Aaron at dinner last night?”
He gave her a wink. “Men never share those secrets.”
“Jon…”
“Okay, okay. You’re my wife so I guess I can let you know a few of my secrets. Let’s just say Aaron might surprise you, and your sister, too.”
“This is important to Grace.”
“I know it is. Valentine’s Day is a day of love, and she doesn’t want to feel like she’s being left out.”
“That’s exactly what Grace told me she was worried about.”
“Aaron knows that, believe it or not. He’s not as clueless as you might think.”
“Let’s hope not,” she told him, “because no woman wants to be forgotten on Valentine’s Day.”
“Ah, which means I’d better step my game up, too?” he asked.
Darcy didn’t push him on it, because Grace had been right. She and Jon could stay home on Valentine’s Day and fall asleep on the couch and it would still feel special to them. But if she was being honest with herself, she didn’t want it to turn into just another day. Even women as lucky as Darcy Sweet liked to feel special. Well. More special than usual.
Last night she and Colby had talked about Valentine’s Day plans while her daddy was still out. They’d talked about a lot of things, actually. School, her friend Audrey, and just life in general. Darcy’s original plan of going for a haircut and some mother and daughter time together had been derailed by this new mystery, and the time she and Jon were putting into solving it. So, they had made popcorn and sat in the living room watching television with Zane, and together they had come up with a few things they could do for Jon. Valentine’s Day wasn’t just for lovers. It was for family, too.
She didn’t want to spoil the surprise by continuing to talk about it, though, so she went back to the somewhat more important topic of who had killed Mason Barnes.
“You’ve got all of our props?”