by Meg Benjamin
He pushed the button for the doorbell, listening to the sound of faint ringing somewhere deep inside the house. At least Rosie’s place seemed welcoming, warm light spilling through the windows onto the trees. He could do with a little welcoming these days.
The porch light switched on over his head, and he heard footsteps inside. After another moment, the front door was flung wide. “Raymundo, you came.” Rosie grinned up at him, and he almost felt like sobbing with relief. Normal. Thank Christ.
“You want some dinner? I’ve got lots.” She slung her arm through his, pulling him into the hall.
“I’ve had dinner, thanks. You still have a bedroom you’re willing to spare?” A tight muscle in the back of his neck seemed to relax as he stepped inside.
“You need to ask? Where are your clothes? Don’t tell me you left them over at that house.” Rosie’s honey brown hair hung down to her shoulder in waves, her green eyes laughing. She wore a Jack Ingram T-shirt with cutoffs. The picture of mental and physical health. Lordy, he wished he could feel that way again himself. Maybe later.
“I’ll bring them over tomorrow. Thanks, sis.”
“Come on, sit with me while I finish dinner. You can have a beer while I eat.” She towed him into the large, well-lighted kitchen. Like the rest of the house it seemed blissfully free of both shadows and random spirits. His shoulders flexed for the first time in days.
Rosie opened her refrigerator and pulled out a can of beer, handing it to him. Her expression froze as she studied his face in the light. “Okay, what’s wrong? What happened to you?”
Crap. He’d been hoping that a day spent working and an evening in the company of Emma Shea would have helped him look a little less like a zombie. Apparently, it hadn’t. “I’m okay.”
“No, you’re not. Not at all. This is me, remember? I know what you look like when you’re upset. Now, what happened?” She pushed him into a chair at the kitchen table, dropping down opposite him.
Ray sighed. Rosie was a year older and they’d spent most of their childhood torturing each other. If anybody knew when he was in pain, it would be her since she’d inflicted so much of it. “Could I drink a little beer first?”
“Sure. Just remember, I’m not letting you off the hook.” She turned to her plate, digging into what looked like some very nice pasta with marinara.
He leaned against the chair across from her, considering how much to tell her. He sure as hell wasn’t going to get into last night’s dream—she was his sister, for Pete’s sake. He wasn’t going to discuss some weird sex thing with her. Actually, he didn’t want to discuss much of anything with her, but he knew better than to think he could get away with that.
“Well?” Rosie fixed him with a gimlet gaze.
He sighed again, running his hands through his hair. Might as well get it over with. “Okay, so I told you about the TV show, right? The American Medium thing?”
Her eyes narrowed. “Yeah.”
“So the woman in charge, the medium, did a run-through of her séance at the house a couple of nights ago, and since then things there have been sort of . . . weird.”
She put down her fork. “Weird how?”
He took a breath. “While she was holding the séance, stuff started happening in the room. The candles she had burning went out and then they fell on the floor. Doors slammed. Emma and I both got, well, groped, only nobody was there but us.”
Rosie stared at him. “Emma?”
“The medium’s assistant. Emma Shea. She and I were sitting at the table with DeVere, the medium.”
“That’s her? Gabrielle DeVere?”
He nodded.
“I’ve heard of her. She’s supposed to put on quite a show.”
He shrugged. “Maybe. I’ve never seen it.”
Rosie frowned. “Wait a second, back up. Groped?”
The tips of his ears began to heat up. His sister, for Pete’s sake. “Yeah, well . . . yeah.”
She leaned forward, resting her elbows on the table. “A ghost grabbed your junk.”
He closed his eyes. “Yeah, okay, I know how it sounds. It happened, Rosie.”
“Of course it happened. Go on.”
He opened his eyes again. That wasn’t exactly the response he’d been expecting. Rosie was still leaning forward, watching him intently.
“That’s it, mostly,” he said. “Emma and I both felt something while the séance was going on. DeVere didn’t—or at least she didn’t give any indication she did.”
“And this happened last night?”
“A couple of nights ago.”
“That isn’t all, though, is it? Something else happened to upset you. Tell me about it.”
He rubbed a hand across the back of his neck. “Dreams. I’ve been having bad dreams the last couple of nights.”
“What kind?”
“Well, you know, sexual,” he mumbled. His face was flaming. The only thing worse than this would be if he had to explain it all to his mother.
His sister leaned back in her chair. “How sexual?”
“Rosie, come on,” he groaned. Maybe there really wasn’t anything worse than this after all.
“Grow up,” she snapped. “This is serious. Very. Now tell me.”
He took a deep breath. He had no idea why his sister suddenly sounded like an expert, but at least she believed him. Maybe she’d studied some kind of abnormal psychology when she got her library degree. “The night right after the séance it was mainly just sort of a vivid dream, the kind where you wake up all hot and bothered but nothing more—you know what I mean?”
She nodded. “Who was in it? Female? Male? Multiple?”
He closed his eyes again. “Jesus, Rosie!”
She grimaced. “Oh don’t get all self-conscious about it. Just tell me.”
“A woman,” he said through gritted teeth. “I couldn’t see her clearly. One woman.”
“Okay, so that’s what happened on the night of the séance. What about last night?”
He rubbed his eyes, thinking. “Same woman—I think. Only . . . a lot more, sort of, vivid.”
Rosie drummed her fingers on the table. “Okay, how vivid? What happened?”
He sighed, then turned his back, pulling up his shirt.
He heard her quick inhale. “The woman in the dream did that?”
He turned back to her. “Yeah, she did. I don’t know how it happened. I mean, it was a dream.”
“Yes, it was.” Rosie frowned. “Sort of.”
He dropped back into his chair. “Sort of?”
“Did you, you know . . . reach satisfaction?” For the first time his sister looked a little embarrassed herself.
Ray stared down at the floor, wishing he could sink into it. “No. Somebody else was there. An old lady. She told me to push the other woman away.”
“An old lady?”
He looked up again. “Yeah. I gave the sexy one a couple of shoves and she disappeared.”
Rosie was frowning again. “What did she look like?”
“The old lady?” He shrugged. “I couldn’t see her that well because it was sort of foggy. She was tall and was wearing a long dress. And she had a stick.”
“A stick?”
“A cane, I guess. She had this walking stick thing she was leaning on.”
His sister nodded slowly. “Did she speak to you after she told you to get rid of the woman?”
“She said the house was dangerous—which I’d already figured out, believe me—and she told me to listen to the sensitive, whatever the hell that means.”
Rosie stared off into the darkness beyond her kitchen window. “The sensitive. That’s interesting.”
“Rosie, it’s nuts,” he growled. “The whole thing is nuts. Are you telling me this makes some kind of sense to you?”
She nodded again. “Parts of it. I’ll have to do some research before I understand it all, though.”
He picked up his forgotten beer, taking a healthy pull. “Research how? You mean like psychiatric care?”
She grimaced. “Of course not. You’re not nuts, Ray, you’ve been haunted. By something very nasty. I’m guessing it’s related to that house, though, and not something that’s specific to you personally. I still need to do some checking around.”
“Emma’s researching the house at the historical society.”
Rosie’s lips quirked up slightly. “Emma is?”
He nodded, avoiding her gaze. “Yeah, well, like I said, she works for DeVere. She usually researches the houses.”
“But she isn’t usually groped by the ghosts, I’m assuming.”
He shook his head, his jaw tensing again. “Not that I know of.”
Rosie’s grin turned wry. “Okay, I’ll leave the house to her. I’ll concentrate on the ghosts.”
“Why?” He finally leaned back again. “You sound like an expert all of a sudden. Since when do you know anything about ghosts, sis?”
She stared down at her pasta. “That’s a conversation we need to have, but I’m not sure now is the best time.”
He braced his hands on the table. Fuck it. “Rosie, I’ve had two days of hell. If you know anything that would make me feel better, I’d really like to hear it. And yeah, now is absolutely the best time.”
She glanced up at him, her emerald eyes troubled. “This is really Mom’s thing. She’d explain it a lot better than I will.”
“Ma’s cruising the Inside Passage at the moment.” He gritted his teeth. “We’re here.”
“Yeah, I know. I’m just afraid I’ll screw this up.” She pressed her fingers to her lips for a moment. “Our family has some history with this.”
“With what?”
“Ghosts. The dead.” She sighed. “We—the Riordans, that is—we come from a long line of people who communicate with the dead. Mediums, in other words.”
Ray stared back for a long moment, trying to decide if she was serious. Then, once it was clear that she was, trying decide how he was supposed to react. Laugh? Snarl? Shake his head? Head back to his haunted house for the night?
Definitely not that last one. “You know how that sounds, right?”
“It is what it is. At this point you might be a little more inclined to take it seriously than you were a week ago.”
He shook his head. “To tell you the truth, I’m not sure what I’m inclined to do anymore. What am I supposed to think about this information? I don’t even know what you’re talking about.”
“Oh for God’s sake, Ray, it’s the key here.” Rosie pushed herself to her feet, carrying her plate to the sink. “You keep asking what happened at that séance. You should be asking why it happened. I know all about Gabrielle DeVere—she’s been in the medium business for a long time, way before she ever went on TV. She’s sort of a celebrity ghost hunter. Only I never heard of her being able to do anything remotely like what you just described. So what was different about that séance this time?” She turned back to face him again.
He shrugged. “It was in that house. The Allard Hampton house.”
Rosie leaned back against the counter. “Which has never had the reputation of being haunted before so far as you know, right?”
He blew out a breath. “Not so far as I know.”
“Okay then, scratch the house. I’ll ask you again: What was different this time?”
His shoulders clenched painfully. “You mean it happened because I was there?”
She nodded. “It sounds like it to me. You were there. You may not have known what was going on, but you were there. And because you were there, you may have made contact with something in that house.”
He shook his head slowly. “No. It wasn’t me. It couldn’t have been me. I’m not some woo-woo nut job.”
His sister dropped into the chair across from him again, reaching for his hand almost like the way Emma had put her hand over his at the restaurant. Jesus, was he that much of a basket case?
“Ray, it’s tough to accept,” she said softly. “Believe me, I know. It’s been tough on all of us. Give yourself some time to process this. It’s not so bad, really.”
He raised his gaze to hers again. “What do you mean all of us?”
She frowned. “I’ve got the power. So does Danny. We’ve both had stuff happen with ghosts and haunting. It’s like this genetic thing we inherited, straight down from Great-grandma Siobhan and Grandma Caroline Riordan.”
His pulse thundered in his ears. Giving himself time to process this was probably good advice. Too bad he wasn’t ready to take it. “Danny? The real estate king is a medium?”
“Yeah, like I say. We all have it to some degree. Danny too.”
He shook his head. “I can’t buy that. Danny’s a whiz at real estate, but he’s no . . . medium.”
She grimaced. “Stop saying medium as if it were a synonym for con artist. A medium is just someone who can contact the dead, who serves as a medium of communication between two realms. Grandma did that. So did Great-grandma. Mom can but she doesn’t usually. Danny can. I can. Now it looks like you can too, so you’d better stop behaving as if it’s some kind of Mark of Cain.”
Ray’s head seemed to be swimming all of a sudden. “Grandma. And Mom.”
“Genetic. Like I said.”
“Why didn’t anybody tell me about this?” he said. “You all knew. Why didn’t I?”
She sighed. “Because I think we all hoped you didn’t have it too. I mean, we thought maybe you’d take after Dad instead of Mom and Grandma. If you didn’t have the whole medium thing to contend with yourself, we wouldn’t have needed to tell you about it. Maybe that was a stupid thing to do, but it seemed logical at the time. Dad doesn’t know anything about it either, by the way, although I’m pretty sure he knows that Grandma Caroline had some kind of special power.”
Ray rubbed his hands over his face, trying to decide what to ask. There were so many things he didn’t understand that he didn’t exactly know where to start. “So how does this work? You sit in a dark room like DeVere did and hold hands until something speaks to you? How do you know if it’s real or not?”
His sister waved an impatient hand. “It isn’t like the mediums on TV or in the movies. Or like Gabrielle DeVere. You don’t have to hold séances. Hell, you don’t even have to tell people—I’d strongly advise you not to. Other people frequently assume you’re nuts if you do, based on my experience anyway.”
“Don’t worry. I can’t think of anybody I’d want to tell.” Except possibly Emma Shea. His shoulders tensed again. No, definitely not Emma Shea.
“It’s not so bad, Ray, honestly. Danny doesn’t do much of anything with it except, you know, it probably helps him sell houses.”
He frowned. “Helps him how?”
“I think he senses things about them. You know they used to call him the house whisperer because he could always figure out the house’s story. Mom thinks he was hearing the spirits in the house.”
Ray bit back his immediate sarcastic reply. There was nothing even vaguely humorous about this conversation. “What about you?”
She raised an eyebrow. “Me?”
“You. What do you do with this ‘gift’ we all inherited?”
Rosie’s expression turned bland. “It helps me in my research.”
“Helps you how?”
She shrugged. Clearly she wasn’t going down that road. At least not yet.
He blew out a breath. “Do they, like, talk to you? Should I expect to hear voices?”
Her jaw tightened. “It’s not uniform—each of us reacts differently. Sometimes you do have, well, conversations, but not always. The old lady in your dream was probably a spirit of some kind, and she c
ould talk to you—at least in a dream.”
“So the dreams are ghost-related?”
“Probably.” She grimaced. “I’d say almost certainly. You didn’t have them until after the séance, right?”
He nodded. “Okay, if I can talk to this ghost, does that mean I should just go back to the house? Try to have a conversation with her or something?”
Rosie frowned, shaking her head. “No. Bad idea. We don’t know enough about the ghost who came after you, about her motives or who she is. There are some very dangerous spirits out there. I don’t want you to end up taking one of them on if you don’t have to.”
He took a long pull on his beer. Alcohol seemed like a good idea right then. “Dangerous? Like how?”
His sister stared down at the table, frowning. “You remember that house that burned down last year, the one Danny was trying to sell here in the district?”
“The one where he and Biddy almost got trapped inside? Yeah, I remember. Mom was there too, right?”
She paused for a moment, then blew out a breath. “A ghost was involved in that, a bad one. It tried to kill them, but they managed to escape.”
Ray felt the beginning of a headache stirring at the base of his skull. “You’re saying that fire had something to do with Danny being a medium?”
She nodded. “Danny stirred a ghost up in that house without realizing it. Sort of like what’s happening to you. Then he had to try to control it. Only controlling something like that is really dicey sometimes.”
The pain in his head seemed to intensify. “You think I’ve got something similar at the Hampton house?”
She shrugged. “It’s possible. The Riordan family has some special problems along those lines. We’ve got some ghosts that aren’t exactly fond of us.”
“Some ghosts? We’ve got enemy ghosts?” He took another swallow of beer. He’d given up trying to be even slightly skeptical about this. He was just trying to hang on to his sanity until Rosie finished.