Mystically Bound (Frostbite, Book Three)

by Stacey Kennedy

  I peeked around Kipp and anger blasted into every molecule of my body at who stood by one of the thick pillars in the barn. “Oh. My. God.” Would these damn ghosts never learn?

  Sammy smiled shyly. “Can we talk—”

  Why wouldn’t he go away? How many times could I possibly tell him that right now wasn’t a good time? I let my aggravation show and said through clenched teeth, “If you want me to help you, like I’ve told you before, you need to leave me alone until this is finished.”

  “But—”

  I raised my hand, cutting him off. “No.” I threw up my hands, more than aggravated. “Honestly, I have enough going on with the now. I seriously cannot take on your problems. Please. Please, you need to be patient. I promise I’ll do what I can to help you…later.”

  “That’s not—”

  I plugged my ears. “This is me ignoring you. Learn from it. The more you push. The more I’ll ignore. Go away.”

  I couldn’t hear his sigh because my ears were presently stuffed, but I saw it. Frustration edged into his face and with a firm shake of his head, he winked out of existence.

  “Good.” Blowing out a loud breath, I dropped my hands. “He’s gone.” I shook out my hands to shed the anger raging through me. Good grief, couldn’t the ghost back off? While normally, I probably would’ve felt bad for him, I was honestly at my end. I could not handle anything more. As it was, with the serious throb to my head, my limit had been reached on crazy-ass adventures.

  When I turned from the spot Sammy vanished from, Kipp was giving me a curious look. “Who was that?”

  “A damn ghost who will not leave me alone.” I snorted. “Honest to god, as if I don’t have enough trouble as it is.”

  Kipp chuckled. “Follows you everywhere you go, huh?”

  Yeah, it did and it still annoyed me. Sure, I didn’t mind helping ghosts, but on my terms, not theirs. I had created rules they needed to follow for that very reason. The top rule: don’t bug me, which they tended to never adhere to. “It never stops,” I grumbled.

  Kipp crossed his arms, giving me his focused cop-look. “Do you think maybe you should listen to him?”

  “No friggin’ way,” I snapped. “Every time I listen to ghosts…” I gave him a pointed look to prove my point. He’d done the same thing to me, not to say that I minded it with him. “I get thrown into a new adventure that ends up being entirely dangerous.”

  At the pain in Kipp’s eyes, I realized the harshness in my voice, and softened my tone. “Listen, I helped Victoria—another ghost—and I will help him. But we need to finish this first with you. I think for once I can be selfish, don’t you?”

  Kipp brushed his icy finger across my cheek and smiled softly. “You’re right. You can.”

  “Great. Then we agree.”

  With that nonsense over, I turned back to the book, eyeing the spider to ensure it stayed put, which it thankfully did. I flipped the page open to Nettie’s picture and used my flashlight to scan over her photo as Kipp stepped in next to me.

  His icy presence brought forth goose bumps on my arms, making me shiver, even if I welcomed that sensation a thousand times over. Him, close to me like this, was a good thing. But noticing it made me even more aware of how connected I was to the Netherworld and I wasn’t sure how I felt about that. Without my ties to the Netherworld, I wouldn’t have met Kipp, but it freaked me out to know I could cross into a mystical world.

  To say I was conflicted was the understatement of the century, but also something I had to get a grip on at another time.

  When I went to turn the page, Kipp reached for my arm, which obviously only sent a freezing cold wisp up my arm. “Hold up a sec. Let me see her.”

  I laid the cover flat again, angling my light down to the picture. Kipp leaned down and looked closely at the photo before his eyes widened. “That’s the woman I met in the Netherworld.”

  “Pardon me?” I gasped.

  “I’m sure of it.” He finally looked at me with a measured expression. “Remember when I told you I talked to a woman and she explained things to me, well…that…” he pointed at the picture, “is her.”

  I inhaled sharply in surprise, scenting the dust and mold around me, and rubbed my nose. “Why would she stay in the Netherworld, all this time?”

  He lifted a lazy shoulder. “Didn’t think to ask her, since I was a bit shell-shocked at being on Mars.”

  “Right, guess you would be.” I glanced back at the picture, mulling it over. “I suppose you wouldn’t have known who she was anyway.” I glanced sideways at him. “It doesn’t make sense that she wouldn’t cross over.” Then a slow horror crept over me as I realized another alternative. “Do you think she’s trapped there?”

  “I have no idea.” Kipp sighed, long and deep. “She never said she was and she also didn’t seem frightened.”

  Part of me seriously worried she could be trapped. That because she had traveled there when she shouldn’t have, when she died she got stuck, or something. What else could be the reason for staying there and for as long as she had? “Well, what did she say to you?”

  Kipp’s gaze swept back over her picture again before it returned to mine. “She told me where I was and what was going on.”

  “Like a guide?” Alexander asked.

  Kipp nodded. “That’s what I took her to be, yes.”

  I remembered what I’d read in her diary about how she felt as if she belonged there and I could only assume maybe she’d chosen to stay, but why on earth would anyone want to stay there?

  Meaning, her being stuck in the Netherworld seemed more accurate. Both were entirely plausible, but something about all this seemed amiss. To Kipp, I asked, “How do you recognize her?”

  He stared at me as if I had three eyeballs. “Because she looks exactly as she does in her picture.”

  “She does?” That didn’t correlate with what I knew of ghosts. They didn’t die old and come back looking young again when they became spirits. They looked the same age as they did when they died. “But Wayde said she died in her eighties, so how does she look so young in the Netherworld?”

  “She didn’t die in old age,” Alexander cut in. “Tess, I think you need to read that book.”

  With my heart hammering in my ears, I turned to the book and flipped through the pages. I passed by the diary entry Wayde had showed me. “No, this can’t be.” I flipped through the pages in a rapid speed, but what I saw remained, which was absolutely nothing. “What the hell?”

  Kipp’s icy finger once again slid up my arm. “Problem?”

  My breath caught in my throat, not only from his touch, but from sheer shock before I forced my voice out. “There’s nothing else in here.” I continued like a mad woman to find anything written, something at all showing what happened to Nettie after she entered the Netherworld. Now I realized Dane had been right—Wayde didn’t lock the diary away, because it held no information at all.

  Once I reached the last page and turned it, I notice a newspaper clipping. I grabbed the old piece of paper, opened it over top of the book, and angled my flashlight down. I only had to read for one second before the floor dropped out from under me. “Oh, shit.”

  “What?”

  Kipp’s full hand rested on my arm, causing me to grit my teeth from the frostbite rushing through my veins. I slowly glanced up at him and raised the newspaper in my shaky hand. “Nettie died the night after she made the journal entry I read.”

  Wayde had lied—she didn’t die of old age. And stupid me, I hadn’t pressed Alexander when he told me she had passed away, since I hadn’t even considered that Wayde hadn’t told the truth.

  Kipp cocked his head, his eyes searching mine. “Meaning, she remained in the Netherworld after her second trip there?”

  Dropping the newspaper clipping onto the workbench, I raised my hands to my face in absolute horror.

  If things could get any worse, they just did.

  Chapter Twenty Three

  I didn’t k
now for sure if it had any connection at all, but it wasn’t a coincidence that could be overlooked. Had Nettie died because she traveled to the Netherworld?

  What frightened me most, as it seemed, that first trip I took to find Kipp had been my second time in the Netherworld. “Oh my God, I’ve been there two times—the same amount of times Nettie went before she died.” I looked at Alexander, who stood off to the side of the workbench. “Do you think these headaches mean I’m going to die?”

  His eyes went huge and he shook his head. “I don’t think so.”

  “Nah, it doesn’t make sense,” Kipp agreed, cool and collected. “If Nettie died after, you shouldn’t have been able to ever come back. You’ve been there two times, so that doesn’t add up.”

  While his theory did seem accurate, the awareness I might have become stuck in the Netherworld was so scary my heart skipped a beat.

  “But a thought…” Tension radiated off Kipp, his eyes blazing. “If Wayde knew that Nettie never returned after she went into the Netherworld, do you think…”

  A sudden loud creak echoed throughout the barn and I jerked toward the entrance.

  “Dane?”

  At Amelia’s soft voice, I exhaled a long breath, relieved it was her at the door and not some crazy-ass killer coming to remove my head with the gardening tools. Sure, maybe I was in full-out panic mode and not thinking entirely straight, but this barn, the dark night, the eerie silence—it all freaked me out.

  At the same time, I wondered how Amelia had known we came into the barn. Either Kipp’s idea was stupid and she noticed my dull flashlight from outside, or she’d been watching us to see where we went, which I doubted, since…why would she be watching us?

  Opening the door farther, she stepped into the barn and shut it behind her with a loud bang, sending dust to fly through the beam of my flashlight. “Why are you in here?” she asked.

  “Tess is getting Nettie’s diary,” Dane replied.

  “It’s hidden in here?” She eyed him suspiciously before she approached, the floorboards creaking loudly under her footsteps. “How did you find it?”

  Dane didn’t hesitate. “Gretchen did a locating spell on the book and discovered Wayde had hid it in the barn.”

  Two things with his statement worried me. First, Gretchen wasn’t here to confirm that lie, since she was packing our things in the house and I made a mental note to ensure I told her later. Second, Dane had lied so easily. Why should I trust a man who could think up a lie that quickly? I always stumbled over my thoughts when confronted and needed to bullshit my way through it. It definitely rubbed me wrong he could do it without a hitch to his breath.

  Especially considering that trusting Dane was a new development I still wasn’t entirely comfortable with. I regarded him closely and the love for his wife was clear-cut in his warm eyes. He lied to protect her. Just like he had lied to protect Kipp and I. Truth was, without the angry looks and without the evil I swore I spotted in Dane’s gaze, he started to make a lot more sense to me. If it meant protecting Kipp or saving him, I would have no remorse telling a lie.

  Amelia continued her approach through the squeaky old barn, sending horrible noises to echo around me while she frowned at him. “Okay, but why are you in here?”

  “Tess knows,” was all he said.

  Amelia skipped a step, stopping dead in her tracks, and blinked in surprise. “You told her the truth?”

  “I did.”

  “Well…” She glanced over at me with an extremely hard look. “So, now you know that this might relate to your gifts, but I don’t know why you’re looking for Nettie’s diary. How will this help in finding my father’s killer?”

  “She doesn’t appear to blame you for his death,” Kipp whispered.

  His whispering was beyond amusing, since no one could hear him except Alexander and I, but I stayed focused on Amelia. It did make me happy she didn’t blame me, considering it wasn’t at all my fault. I hadn’t asked for my gifts and I certainly hadn’t meant to cause her father’s death, even if that was still unbelievable.

  Sadly, though, I doubted my answer would make her as happy as me, since locating the diary had nothing to do with finding Alexander’s murderer and was more for personal reasons. But I liked that she said the truth, because it only confirmed what Dane had told me in the bedroom wasn’t another lie.

  “We need her diary because I’ve been getting these headaches…” Headaches that now I really hoped didn’t mean my demise,“ so we needed to find out the repercussions of going into the Netherworld.”

  She finally settled in next to Dane and regarded me. “Why are you so concerned of that? You came back, so clearly, there’s nothing to worry about.”

  I paused at her questions. Why was she drilling me? And I didn’t like how she looked at me. Creepy crawlers ran across my skin as if that spider scurried up my arm, making me shift uneasily on my feet.

  Sure, she didn’t seem angry that apparently, my gifts caused her father’s death, but she definitely seemed annoyed. “Because it could be a danger to me.” Did I even need to explain that?

  She studied me a moment longer and then her features softened under the beam of my flashlight. “Have you found anything else about my father?”

  I forced myself not to look at Alexander, and instead focused on Dane. Odd, that he never told his wife that Alexander possessed Caley, but I figured his reasoning was as it had been so far, emotionally related.

  His worried gaze and the slight shake of his head begged me not to tell her. I suspected that might be because we had no answers for her yet. Her knowing her deceased father was with us would only cause her more despair, because we had no way to help him. “We have no further developments.”

  Tears welled in her eyes. “Have you seen him again?”

  I seriously did not want to lie to the woman, since she’d been nothing but kind to me and made me incredibly amazing food, so I simply shook my head.

  “I’m sure Tess will figure out what happened,” Alexander said.

  Amelia narrowed her eyes on what she thought was Caley. “I’m not sure why you are here, either.” She looked at Dane. “I don’t approve—my father wouldn’t approve—of having outsiders know about us.”

  Dane looked as if he were annoyed, even though I knew he wasn’t. “I’m afraid we are out of choices now, Amelia. Tess wants her friend with her, and we need Tess. We have to compromise.”

  She stared her husband down for a long moment, but finally huffed. “Okay.” To me, she asked, “With you leaving the house now, how are you going to talk to my father again?”

  Dammit, I hadn’t thought up a good reason yet. What she didn’t know is that I wasn’t necessarily working the case anymore. From all we’d learned, we’d never find out who killed Alexander. No one at the house had a motive and they all wanted to solve his murder enough they made me bind the promise.

  The feat of finding any evidence was impossible and at this moment, I was more concerned with Kipp. In addition to finding a solution that would also save Alexander from his predicament. “Well, to be honest, he’s not stuck at this house or anything, so maybe he’ll find me.”

  Her eyebrows rose. “Maybe?”

  “She’s right.” Dane wrapped an arm around his wife, tugging her into his side, sending more horribly creaking sounds to echo in the barn. “Alexander knows her now and would have touched on her energy. If he wants to find her, he can.”

  Little did she know, her father was standing right beside me and I almost felt a pang of shame. All she wanted was to find justice for her dad. The whole thing topped the list of things I never wanted to repeat in my future.

  Amelia gave him a sweet smile. “Okay, you’re right; he would be able to find her.” She exhaled a long breath, then added, “I’ve finished in the house and packed our things.”

  “Where are you going?” I blurted out.

  Dane arched an eyebrow at me. “Do you think I’d allow her to stay in this house now?”
>
  Something fluttered over my head and I ducked slightly, horrified that a bat was in this creepy place with me, even more horrified there were probably hundreds of them. “Um…” I hated to point this out, “you sensed the magic the other night and she stayed here.”

  “Exactly,” Kipp muttered.

  Dane’s eyes narrowed into slits, only hearing my remark, but his gaze held little heat as it once did. “Because I wasn’t worried about the magic, but now…” his eyes flicked to Kipp, where I assumed he thought he was standing from when I’d been talking to him, “I’m more concerned.”

  Meaning, he thought something was about to go down and that sure-as-shit worried me, too. “Gotcha.” I gave a firm nod. “It’s not safe for anyone to be here. But what are you going to do? Stay away from the Animus forever?”

  He shook his head. “Once we find out what’s going on here with Alexander and get this all straightened out, we can look into more what spell has been used in the house and then we can break it. Right now, we have more important matters to attend to.”

  “Sounds like a good plan.” Even though, we’d never find out what was going on with Alexander, not that I’d tell Amelia that, especially since Dane did his best to hide it from her. For now, I pushed it aside, sticking to present problems. “Okay, I’m done here. Not like I really found out anything at all, except that Nettie died after going into the Netherworld.”

  Kipp nodded. “Not sure how that helps you, either.”

  Turning toward the workbench, I nodded in agreement, trying to hide it from Amelia. Dane hadn’t mentioned to Amelia that Kipp had returned and I figured he had a good reason behind the silence. Besides, even I could see the darkness under her eyes and the weakness I’d first spotted when I had met her. And well, I could understand wanting to protect someone. That’s why I now stood in this scary barn—to find a way to protect Kipp and save him.

  As I looked at the book, I noticed the spider had left its spot, and I hurried to get the book back in the drawer, hoping to hell it wouldn’t pounce on me. I closed the drawer with a slam, since what good was the diary to me anyway, expect to make me wonder what happened to Nettie. “All right.” I turned to Dane. “Let’s get the hell out of here.”