She cuddled into Trey’s arms. His neck was sweaty and smelled like fresh soap and hard-working male. She rubbed her cheek there, reveling in afterglow.
A purr rumbled from him. “You keep that up, you’re going to get me hard again.”
Had any man ever wanted her this badly? Taken her so many times in one night? Been so devoted to her pleasure before his own? She felt special, beautiful.
She frowned. It shouldn’t be Trey making her feel special. It should be someone else. But who? A name flitted away before she could grab onto it.
Trey stroked her arm. “Baby, I’ve been wanting you since the day you came in to audition for Casey. You don’t disappoint.” His eyes gleamed with passion.
The fuzziness lifted, and her thoughts cleared. There was no possible way Trey had been wanting her. He was six-foot three, so hard with muscle you could go rock climbing on him, and in a committed gay relationship with Bentley, the DJ at the club on the next block.
A dream. This had to be a dream. Two thoughts tried to connect, but before she could fuse them together, Trey spoke up.
“Shh, don’t do that.” He rubbed his thumb where her eyebrows pinched together. “It’s just you and me right now. It can be just us for as long as we want. And guess what? I want you every night from now on. Every night…every night…every night.”
Trey’s voice echoed as she opened her eyes to her drape-darkened bedroom.
“Oh, hell.”
She didn’t need to stand up to know she’d wet the bed, so to speak. Not only that, but she was so sweaty her hair stuck to her face like she’d been tossing her head on the pillow.
Cursing, she climbed out of bed and lowered her sopped panties into the hamper. “Enough, already, subconscious.”
She would have thought she’d be in favor of orgasms all night long, but each night, she climbed into bed with a little more reluctance. Something was off about these dreams, and it felt like more than just wishing she’d dream about Emmett, already.
He’d asked her to church, stood her up, comforted her when she’d been a wreck, asked her out again, and she suspected he’d avoid her like the Plague if he found out she’d been an exotic dancer, but she couldn’t help the warm tingle in her stomach every time she thought about him. Maybe it made her an idiot, but she had a crush on her flirty church boy.
If she was going to have sex dreams, she wanted them to be about him. But that wasn’t all that bothered her about the dreams. When she was fifteen, she’d shoplifted a pair of earrings. Guilt gnawed at her until she’d discreetly returned them to the rack the next day. These dreams were like shoplifting sex. If she couldn’t come by great sex honestly, she didn’t want it at all.
She sat down to breakfast and firmly put the dreams out of her mind. She planned to visit Grandma Nina this morning, but it was still early. It would be smart to make some progress on the job-hunting front. Maybe she could squeeze in a workout too.
The Dover Towne Library was 1.4 miles from her house according to Google Maps. Of the seven libraries where she’d put in applications, that was the one she wanted to work at most. She could remember the first time Grandpa Earl had taken her to pick out a book. She’d been enamored of the building’s stone façade, heavy wooden doors, and the crenellations around the roof. Some whimsical soul had designed it to look like a miniature castle, a place where imagination couldn’t help but run free. It was her favorite building in Dover. It was also the first place where she’d discovered that distinctive old-manuscript smell.
But she was prepared to work at whatever library would have her. It was time to put her year-old degree in Classics to use. Paying her way through the Boston College program had been her motivation for working at The Palace, but after graduation, she’d realized two things. One, Classics was one of those degrees that prepares you for grad school and not much else, and two, she was better at dancing than she’d ever be at anything that required a college degree.
But she couldn’t shake her boobs for liquored up men forever, and if she didn’t start using her degree, she would forget everything she’d learned. Her GPA hadn’t been stellar, and she didn’t have any references, but she hoped her love of books and a degree confirming she knew two classical languages would be enough to land her a job with decent benefits.
She debated whether to call the Dover Towne Library to check on her application and decided it was too soon. She would give it a week. Instead, she found two more libraries, each an hour’s drive away. They’d be last resorts. She downloaded the applications to keep on her computer just in case.
Flipping her laptop closed, she called the job search good for the day. With the responsible stuff done, she cranked up the suitcase-sized radio in the living room and danced through the house in an impromptu workout.
Dancing always made her feel beautiful and strong. Stretching her arms over her head, she gyrated down until her bottom was three inches off the floor. Then back up. The burn in her thighs put a smile on her face. Positive thoughts flooded her.
She had a date with a sweet hottie tonight, a big house to live in rent-free until she found work, a college degree she was finally getting around to using, and great hair, which she tossed around with abandon.
She lost herself in movement and music. While she was bent forward at the waist whipping her hair in circles, a burst of frosty air hit the back of her neck.
She straightened up so fast she got dizzy and stumbled. The mustard-yellow ottoman caught her behind the knees and sent her toppling backwards. Her head connected with the arm of the couch, which was more startling than painful.
While she struggled to free herself from her awkward folded position, her gaze fell on none other than the shadow man.
Chapter Seven
He stood against the wall in the hallway, framed by the arched living room entry like a picture-perfect nightmare. His cape jumped in sharp waves, as if whipped by some unseen wind, but his body and top hat were stock-still.
Jade’s heart pounded. She froze in place. Even her lungs refused to take in more than the shallowest of breaths. She felt like a rabbit going still under a predator’s gaze.
His jaw was moving. He was speaking to her, or at least trying to. She heard nothing except the blaring of the music from the radio and the rush of blood in her veins.
Clawing her way into a crouch behind the ottoman, she gathered her courage and shouted, “I don’t want you here! Stop trying to scare me!”
The shadow turned his head from side to side, saying no. Oh, so he was going to play it that way. Fine. This ghost was messing with the wrong girl.
She got to her feet. “This isn’t your home! It’s my grandmother’s! I’m taking care of it for her, and I want you out!”
The shadow reached up his shadow arm and took off his hat. From what she could make out, he was holding the hat in front with both hands. The gesture struck her as oddly polite.
“Don’t you try to sweet-talk me.” She stepped around the ottoman but didn’t venture any closer. “I mean it, you stubborn bastard. Go away.”
The shadow moved again, playing tricks on her eyes. She blinked, trying to reconcile what she was seeing. A black, misty arm lifted away from the wall. The shadow was pointing at her.
Oh, shit, shit, shit.
She knew he could come away from the wall. How else would he have gotten the candlestick onto the dining room table? But seeing the proof right before her eyes turned her knees to Jell-o. She held onto the arm of the couch to keep her feet.
The shadow crooked a black finger, asking her to come to him.
“No.” All her bravado slipped away on the whisper.
Terror became a bitter taste on her tongue. Why was this happening to her? Weren’t ghosts supposed to go away if you stood up to them? What more could she do?
Run.
But she couldn’t. She didn’t have anywhere to run to. This was her home now. And she would be damned if she’d leave town while Grandma Nina was in the hosp
ital.
She lifted her chin. “I’ll call a priest. I’ll bring in some ghost hunters to stick a microphone in your face and ask you to do tricks.”
The shadow dropped his arm back to the wall. He hung his head.
Her courage returned.
“That’s right, buddy. I’m not messing around. You get out of this house, or I’ll do it. I swear to God I will. I’ll make your life…or death or whatever miserable.”
The shadow man hunched his shoulders and glided toward the basement door.
Emboldened by her success, she strode into the hall in time to see him dip around the corner toward the basement stairs. “Oh no you don’t. The door’s that way.” She jabbed a finger at the front door.
Closer now, she could make out the ghost’s facial features. A shadow nose. A shadow mouth. Eyes like darker shadows within shadows. His eyes blinked.
Her stomach shriveled into a prune.
“Oh, God,” she breathed, backing up until she was plastered against the front door, hand over her heart. The shadow disappeared through the basement door, but the image of blinking shadow eyes had branded itself in her memory. Mr. Shadow had looked kind of…depressed.
Fear and sympathy clashed in her gut. She stood in her front hall shaking like a leaf until a man with a car dealership in Wilmington shouted at her from the radio. She went to the living room to turn off the stereo. Her hand shook as she punched the power button.
She was cold. Cold to the bone.
She fled to the kitchen, keeping the basement door in view until she was secure in a wash of warm sunlight. Sliding open the glass door, she stepped onto the deck.
Ah, that was better. Life not death. Light not shadow.
With her face tilted to the sun and minutes of calming-down time between her and “the incident,” she realized the shadow man had listened to her. Sort of. He hadn’t left the house like she’d demanded, but he’d gone away, eventually. It was a triumph, really, if she looked at it the right way.
Choosing to remain positive, she decided threats were the way to go. Better yet, she’d make good on her current threat. She had twenty minutes left before she planned to leave to visit Grandma Nina. Marching inside, she flipped up the lid of her laptop.
“Hope you enjoyed your stay,” she muttered as the screen came to life. “‘Cuz momma’s shopping for an exorcist.”
*****
After his stunt, Joshua’s essence was perilously close to dispersing. Every fiber of his being trembled with the effort of holding himself together against the storm of the physical plane. He barely made it back to the unaware Draonius in one piece.
He wasn’t sure what would happen to him if he dispersed. He might end up in hell. He might cease to exist. His soul, which belonged to Draonius now, would surely never find Heaven’s peace. He was damned as surely as he was dead. All that was left for him was to do what good he could and find a way to survive this barren existence.
Once, he had believed his soul safe in his Savior’s hands. He’d thought a believer in Christ Jesus could never be harmed by one of the Devil’s minions. How wrong he’d been.
He’d lost his life-and his faith-three weeks from his twenty-first birthday and five weeks from his wedding day. Mercy had invited him to meet her at midnight down by the pond. When he’d found her, she’d had five candles set in a circle. He knew now the configuration had represented the points of a pentagram, but at the time, his mind had been too clouded with the promise of illicit pleasure to notice.
He’d endeavored to take his time with his beloved fiancée, to show her how special she was to him, but she’d had other plans. Within a scant handful of minutes, she’d had him nude and pressing into her welcoming body. In a handful more, he’d given his love to her in the most intimate way imaginable.
That very moment, she stabbed him in the heart with a blade she’d had hidden in the folds of the quilt they lay on. His life had ended, and worse. His soul had been stolen by a demon, Mercy’s demon lover. Draonius.
Who would have guessed his sweet fiancée would betray him so thoroughly? Who would have thought the minister’s daughter might be a witch?
Because of her treachery, he’d become just another plate in a demon’s armor. One more inconsequential layer in his master’s cloak of stolen power. Mercy was there, too, having died shortly after him.
In his darkest moments, Joshua had tried to take pleasure in Mercy’s comeuppance, but he couldn’t rouse anything more than pity for her. What Draonius had done to Mercy was a thousand times worse than what he’d done to Joshua. His thoughts were still his own, whereas there was almost nothing left of the woman he had loved. The demon had reduced her to a witless wretch, a slave to his promises.
He supposed Mercy had earned a fair reward for dealing with the devil, but he hadn’t dealt with the devil. Why had God forsaken him? Was this his punishment for the sin of fornication? For lust? For naively loving the wrong woman?
He coiled with bitter humor as he pulled strength from Draonius, strength that, if his luck held, the demon would never miss. Perhaps Almighty God had not truly forsaken him. He still had his wits left to him. He could move about in the physical plane while Draonius slept each day away in a stupor of power after glutting himself on the dreams of the woman who lived in Mercy’s old house. He could show himself to the woman, Jade, who for some reason had always been able to see him, even when she’d been too young to appeal to the demon. Mercy could do none of those things. He suspected not even Draonius could, though with this new abundance of power, who knew what he might be capable of.
He shuddered. A few days ago, the demon’s highest aspiration was to merely enjoy a decent meal. Now, Joshua feared he planned something even more nefarious, for he was hording power, so much power the air was charged with it.
Perhaps Almighty God had a purpose in Joshua’s captivity. Perhaps, if he could warn Jade away from the house, away from Draonius, God might see fit to save him, after all.
The prickly tingle of daylight still warmed his essence, and he had regained his strength without waking the demon. He should try again. Perhaps, if he concentrated hard enough, he could make himself more than a shadow.
*****
It was close to 11 AM by the time Jade made it to the hospital. Once she’d started researching ways to evict the livingly challenged, she’d lost track of time. Then she’d gone to the strip mall in Wilmington for a little something she hoped would cheer up Grandma Nina.
When she walked into her grandmother’s room and found her lying in bed with her eyes closed, panic made a fist around her heart. Until she noticed the white cords winding from her ears down to her tablet and heard her grandmother’s soft humming. From the tune, she guessed Grandma Nina was listening to Lady Gaga.
“Hi Grandma,” she said, loud enough, hopefully, to be heard over the music.
Grandma Nina’s eyes popped open, and she pulled the earbuds out. “Oh, honey, hi!” Her cheek-wrinkling smile made Jade feel warm all over.
“How are you feeling?”
Her smile fell. “Tired, honey. Real tired. How’s the house?”
She sank into the visitor’s chair, setting her shopping bag on the floor. Haunted as a graveyard on Halloween. Empty and lonely. “Fine. The lawn looks good. I brought you something.” She handed over the distinctive white shopping bag with the gold logo of the candy shop that made her grandmother’s favorite caramels.
“Oh, Jade, how sweet.” She lifted the white box with its gold ribbon from the bag. A tear rolled down her cheek.
Her throat felt tight. “Stop it, Grandma. You’re going to make me cry.”
Grandma Nina sniffed once then composed her face into a determined carefree mask.
It didn’t convince Jade. Her grandmother was shaken. She’d had a scare yesterday.
“Thank you, honey. I love these, and haven’t had them in a while.” Her hand rested on the box like it was a treasure.
“You’re welcome. Is there an
ything else you’ve been hankering for that I can bring you?”
“You know, I’ve been thinking about my photo albums. They’re probably in the sitting room. Or I might have moved them up to your grandfather’s study. If you come across them, you could bring one or two. The one with the red cover and the black spine, that one would be wonderful.”
That one held the pictures from Grandma Nina and Grandpa Earl’s wedding from way back when. Back then, they didn’t march the whole family and wedding party in front of the camera. There were just two pictures of her and Grandpa Earl. One where their fresh, happy faces beamed at each other and one where they looked at the camera and managed to wrangle their smiles into decorum. The red album also had pictures of Jade’s mom as a baby and a little girl. There were some department-store shots of her and Jilly with a stuffed panda bear between them and of Jade covered in pink icing in a high-chair in Grandma Nina’s dining room. It was the album for remembering happier times.
Grandma Nina was smiling, but her eyes were sad as they stared out the window. Her hand still rested on the box of caramels. The only movement was the slight rise and fall of her thin chest beneath the hospital gown. She looked so old and frail without her tracksuit and without any lipstick on or her eyebrows penciled in.
“So many ghosts in that house,” she said.
Jade’s fingers clenched the arms of the chair. “What?”
Her grandmother startled. “Did I say that out loud? I’m sorry, sweetheart. I suppose yesterday just got me thinking about the past a bit. I wouldn’t mind seeing the house again when I get out of here. Your grandfather did so much work on the place when we were younger.” She launched into a recounting of Grandpa Earl’s many projects, some of which had ended in emergency phone calls to the handyman.
Jade leaned back in her chair and listened, liking the ghosts Grandma Nina was thinking about much better than the one she was dealing with. An hour into their visit, Grandma Nina fell asleep, and Jade tiptoed out of the room, letting the door quietly snick shut behind her.
Sadness blanketed her. She’d never seen her grandmother so down in the dumps. The smile the caramels had put on her face had lasted less than a minute. It was going to take more than candy to cheer her up. She just wished she knew what.
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