Ghost Hold (The PSS Chronicles, Book Two)

by Ripley Patton

  I found him sitting out on the back deck. It still had the slight smell of gasoline, but it wasn’t too bad. He was stretched out in a wooden lounge chair, staring out at the immaculate lawn and the woods and stream beyond. He looked good. Too damn good.

  I sat down in a second chair, and he glanced at me briefly, then resumed staring off into the distance. “You must be feeling better,” he said.

  “Yeah, I was feeling better,” I agreed. “And then Passion told me that you’re planning to attend the Eidolon.”

  “Did you know they have a problem with coyotes around here?” he asked, completely changing the subject. “They build these big houses, and they surround them with fields and woods and water. It’s the perfect habitat for wild things to flourish, and then they’re surprised when the coyotes take up residence and eat their cats.”

  “They eat cats?”

  “Of course they do,” he said. “Some little girl came by yesterday with a flyer for her missing cat, Snowball. Beautiful picture of a fluffy white Persian with a red collar and a heart-shaped tag. Only problem was I’d seen that collar and tag before, the night you saw Mike Palmer and we scoured the property.”

  “You saw her cat that night?”

  “Not her cat, no. Not exactly.” He looked at me. “I saw a pile of white fur and bones with the collar in the middle of it out there in the tall grass.”

  “Oh, ick! Poor thing. Did you tell her?”

  “No,” he said, shaking his head and looking away. “I’m not into breaking little girls’ hearts.”

  Well, I beg to differ.

  “Besides,” he said. “If you create the perfect place for wild things to thrive, you should be prepared to encounter the consequences that come with wild things.”

  “And that’s your rational for this?” I asked, finally making sense of his little interlude. “Samantha James is throwing a party for domesticated cats with PSS, and you’re the wild coyote that’s going to rush in and eat them all up?”

  “No metaphor is perfect,” he said, shrugging. “But as they go, it’s not bad.”

  “What are you even going to do? Passion isn’t going to change her mind about The Hold, and Samantha isn’t going to come with us willingly.”

  “Not willingly, no,” he said, not looking at me.

  “You’d take her by force?” I asked. “Isn’t that the exact reason you’re pissed off at The Hold? Because they tried to keep your mom against her will?”

  “You think a kid has any choice when they’re raised in a cult?” he asked vehemently. “Brainwashed by their own parents into believing something? She’s never had a choice.”

  “If she’s never wanted one, how does it even matter?”

  “She has wanted one,” he said, his brown eyes falling on me, pools of intensity. “She wanted to come when we left. She begged to come. But my parents said no. They couldn’t risk charges of kidnapping, on top of everything else. But I promised I’d come back for her.”

  “You promised Samantha James you’d come back for her when you were seven?” I stared at him, my mind racing like a hamster wheel. This thing with Samantha went way deeper than I’d ever suspected. It wasn’t just about redeeming what had happened to his mom. He had some kind of damsel-in-distress childhood fantasy about Samantha James that he’d been harboring all these years. Had they been in love? No, that was ridiculous. She’d been six and he’d been seven. Kids that age didn’t fall in love; they had crushes. But would a boy yanked away from his childhood crush directly before he’d watched his parents violently die, hold onto that crush like a lifeline? Would he believe in it like a fairy tale and pursue it like a dream he barely remembered?

  Shit. Was this why he’d broken up with me? Because we were getting close to Samantha, and when he finally confronted her, he wanted to be available?

  “You know,” he said, completely oblivious to the jealousy that was rolling over me like waves of the ocean. “I never thought you’d flip so easily and buy into The Hold. It’s no different than the CAMFers. They’re two sides of the same coin.”

  “That’s bullshit,” I said, unable to keep the heat out of my voice. “They’re exact opposites. You said so yourself back at the gun club. And for your information, I haven’t bought into The Hold. But I don’t see any other viable option at the moment.”

  “I’m not a viable option anymore?” he asked. “This group we’ve made, it doesn’t mean anything to you?”

  “Those are two different questions,” I pointed out. He was really starting to piss me off. He’d kept this secret about Samantha, and broken up with me, and now he was complaining that I didn’t consider him an option. “Besides, I don’t even know what this group is once we’ve crossed off everything on your list. We’ve found Samantha. We know who Kaylee Pas Nova is. But now what? Even if Samantha comes with us, and we get away from The Hold, what then? We can’t keep driving around on ATVs and living in the woods the rest of our lives.”

  “What about your sister? You don’t want to try and find her?”

  “You mean my sister who went missing twenty-three years ago? The one Alexander James looked for with unlimited resources and couldn’t find?”

  “You’re satisfied to know she disappeared and that’s it?” he asked, sounding completely disappointed in me.

  “I’d have no idea where to even start looking,” I said. But honestly, I hadn’t thought about it. She wasn’t real to me. I couldn’t wrap my mind around her existence.

  “I certainly know the first place I’d look,” Marcus said. “The CAMFer compound where Danielle and I were held had numerous holding cells. I doubt we were the first prisoners there.”

  “And you also said it was secured like a fortress after you escaped. You couldn’t even get near it.”

  “Yeah, but that was eight months ago. And I was by myself.”

  “Fine. Why don’t we tell Alexander James where it is, and let him bang at the doors with the power of The Hold?”

  “No.” Marcus glared at me. “I’m not aligning myself with that man. Ever. And neither should you.”

  “And that leaves me going back home with my mother,” I said. I couldn’t imagine going back to Greenfield after all I’d been through. Maybe it had only been a few weeks since I’d left, but it felt like a lifetime. So much had changed. I had changed. My mother had changed. And I couldn’t imagine navigating the whole issue of my long lost sister with her. I couldn’t fit back into that small-town world again. Too much had happened.

  “If that’s what you want,” Marcus said coldly, looking back out toward the woods.

  What I wanted was him. I wanted us back. I wanted that feeling when I’d wrapped my legs around him in that steamy bathroom and we’d almost lost ourselves in each other.

  But now Samantha and all his other secrets were standing between us, and he was going to have to figure that shit out on his own. God, I was glad I hadn’t told Passion he’d known Samantha. Or told Marcus that Passion and Samantha were becoming a thing. But if he came to the Eidolon he’d see it. Seems Samantha wasn’t the only one who was going to get a surprise when he showed up. How upset would he be when the dream of rescuing his childhood love came crashing down?

  “You’re bringing guns to the Eidolon, aren’t you?” I asked, fear stealing into my heart.

  “Of course not,” he said, his voice dripping with sarcasm. “We thought it would be better to go into an unknown situation like that completely unarmed.”

  “It’s a bunch of teenagers throwing a party,” I said. “Come talk to Samantha if you have to. Find out if she still wants to leave The Hold, but please don’t bring guns.”

  “You don’t remember what happened last time you asked that of me?”

  “You are such an idiot,” I said, starting to get up from my chair, but he put out a hand and said, “Shhh, don’t move.”

  I followed his gaze, and saw what he saw; a lanky dog-wolf creature, wheat-colored with the sun shining golden on it, loping along
the manicured path, moving quickly and stealthily, but completely without regard for us.

  The hair on the back of my neck stood up and goose bumps blossomed on my arms, as the lone coyote loped out of sight around a bend in the path. He was so like Marcus. They were so like each other.

  “Promise me something,” Marcus said, after a long stretch of silence.

  “What?”

  “Wear your dog tags to this Eidolon thing.”

  “Why? Everyone already knows about my ghost hand.”

  “Just in case,” he said. “For me.”

  “Sure. Whatever,” I said, and I left him on the deck to make my way back to my room.

  “How did it go?” Passion asked, hopefully. “Did you guys make up?”

  “Um, no,” I said. “But it’s fine. Probably better this way.”

  I was almost as bad of a liar as Marcus was.

  28

  FRIDAY

  Friday morning, Passion and I got ready for school and went out to the car sitting across the street.

  “Good morning,” Leo greeted us as we walked up. He looked fresh and well kept, so they must have switched surveillance detail sometime in the early morning. “You girls hoping for a ride?”

  “We thought you might as well,” I said, “since you’re going to follow us anyway.”

  “Hop in then,” he said, and we did.

  There were a lot more people at school than I’d expected. Everyone from Samantha’s gang was back in commission and very amped up about the impending Eidolon. And from what I could tell from their enthusiastic, glance-at-my-right-hand greetings, Samantha had informed them of my new status in the group. I was no longer a groupie; I was an equal. Renzo even started openly flirting with me, which was both flattering and a bit disconcerting. I couldn’t even chant “I have a boyfriend,” in my head to disarm the effects of it. Because I didn’t. So, I might have flirted back a little.

  Passion was thrilled to see Samantha, and vice versa, and I was happy to see that Samantha’s eye was only a little puffy. Both Passion and I tried to extract more information from the group about what the Eidolon was, and what to expect, but everyone just smiled and said, “You’ll see.” Samantha did tell us that Renzo would pick us up at our house at dusk, that we should wear comfortable, warm clothes and shoes, and that we’d be home by dawn.

  “Oh, I have good news.” Passion told Samantha “Clay and his friends decided to come. They can drive and follow Renzo, if that’s okay?”

  “Awesome,” Samantha beamed, turning to me. “Anne, did you talk your brother into it?”

  She was still calling me Anne, even though I was sure her father had told her who I really was. But whatever. I’d play along.

  “No, I actually tried to talk him out of it,” I said. “He’s a serious buzz kill.”

  Everyone laughed at that, even though it hadn’t been a joke. Then Samantha said something about how family members could be the most challenging when it came to understanding our PSS, and she put her arm around me like we were best friends or something. It was weird.

  Thankfully, the rest of the day flew by, even though I was a little jumpy, worrying that my mom was going to show up any minute and drag me out of there by my ear. What if Alexander James had a change of heart and decided to tell her before Monday? And what if he felt so guilty he took back his offer about The Hold?

  In reality, according to Samantha, he was consumed by preparations for the art gala. He probably wasn’t thinking about me or my mother at all.

  Apparently, he wasn’t the only one distracted by the upcoming event. The teachers certainly were. And the students. Even the janitorial staff was, whose job appeared to be plastering the school hallways with James Foundation Annual Art Gala Posters and cleaning them up when they fell down to be trampled by the student body.

  I’d been seeing the posters all over Indy since the first day we’d arrived in the city, long before I’d known anything about Alexander James or The Hold, but there was a newer version up now. Never Before Seen Art Collection Unveiled, it said. Wow. Was Alexander James going to unveil his PSS art collection in public? Was he going to let Kaylee Pas Nova out to play? Why would he do that after all these years of hiding her? And was this, perhaps, the chance the CAMFers were counting on to get their hands on The Hold’s iconic painting? No wonder Mr. James had beefed up his security this year.

  After school, Renzo and Samantha walked Passion and me out to the car that was waiting to take us home.

  “See you tonight,” Renzo said, leaning in my window and smiling cockily like we had a date or something.

  “Yep,” I said, blushing and rolling my window up so he had to jump back to avoid being reverse-guillotined by it.

  I turned to Passion in time to see her and Samantha exchange a cute little kiss goodbye through her open window.

  “I’m glad that your cousin and his friends are coming,” Samantha said. “They’re going to love it. I know it.”

  I doubted she’d be nearly that excited if she realized they’d all be coming armed and with significant ill intent.

  “I can’t wait,” Passion said, and we pulled away, the two of them waving at one another until we were out of sight.

  It was a long impatient wait until dusk back at the McMansion.

  Marcus was in a foul mood and barely spoke to me, let alone shared any of his plans for the evening. I guess our role as fake brother and sister at the Eidolon was going to be as siblings who didn’t get along very well. I did hear Yale talking excitedly about finally getting to drive the Porsche, and I was tempted to ask him if it bothered him that the trunk would be full of guns, but I didn’t work up the nerve. Yale, Nose, and Jason had been Marcus’s friends first, and I hadn’t gotten too close to them. Maybe that was my fault for pairing up with him. Maybe it was because I wasn’t a guy. Maybe it was because I still couldn’t bring myself to trust the three of them after they’d turned on me in Mike Palmer’s garage. Whatever the reason, they clearly belonged to Marcus, not me.

  When a dark blue Mercedes pulled up outside the McMansion at dusk, Passion, Marcus and I made our way out to it.

  The driver’s side door opened and Renzo stepped out. He’d opted for an eye patch instead of his sunglasses, and I had to admit he looked like some kind of handsome modern-day pirate. “Hey, Anne.” He sidled up to me and, for a moment, I thought he might embrace me. “You look beautiful tonight.”

  I glanced down at what I was wearing: black Docs, dark jeans, and a bomber jacket over a t-shirt. Fashion that, at its best, could only be described as combat chic.

  “What about me?” Passion teased. “How do I look?”

  “You look great too,” he said. “And you must be Anne’s brother.” He held out his hand to Marcus. “I’m Renzo.”

  “I’m Clay,” Marcus said, putting his hand in Renzo’s.

  There was a nervous moment while they shook hands when I thought Renzo might force Marcus into The Hold handclasp like Shotgun had at the gun club, but he didn’t. Renzo obviously didn’t know Marcus from his long lost past. Thank God.

  “So, what’s the deal with the rides?” Renzo asked. “I’ve only got room for Passion and Anne, ’cause I’m picking Dimitri up on the way out of town.”

  “No problem,” Marcus said, “We have a car.” He nodded toward the garage where the Porsche was emerging, a grinning Yale behind the wheel with Jason and Nose in the back.

  “Nice car,” Renzo said. “It might even keep up with mine.”

  “In case it doesn’t,” Marcus said, “where exactly are we going?”

  “Out of town,” Renzo said. “Way out of town to a little state park called Shades.”

  “Shades?” Marcus and I blurted at once.

  Oh, shit. Don’t go to Shades. That is what Mike Palmer’s matchbook had told us. The matchbook that was tucked in my jeans pocket at that very moment along with the torn scrap of backing paper from The Other Olivia with my dad’s dedication to my missing sister on it. I
’d gotten into the habit of keeping them both with me like weird souvenirs of places I’d never been.

  “Yeah, you know it?” Renzo asked.

  “No,” Marcus said, looking at me, glancing at my neck to make sure I had the dog tags on, which I did. “Never heard of it.”

  “That’s a weird name for a state park,” Passion said. I’d never shown her the message on the matchbook. It seemed I was as good as Marcus at keeping things to myself.

  “Oh, you have no idea,” Renzo said. “It used to be called Shades of Death by the early settlers and Native Americans, but when Parks and Recreation took it over in the forties they shortened the name to Shades. I guess they thought it had a nicer ring to it.”

  “Why was it called Shades of Death?” Passion asked, starting to sound a bit concerned.

  “You’ll see,” Renzo grinned wickedly. “I wouldn’t want to spoil the surprise.”

  “Yeah, I don’t think we should go,” I said, stepping away from Renzo and looking at Marcus. We had to abort this fucking mission. Somehow, Mike Palmer had known a week ago that the Eidolon was going to be at Shades, and he had warned us not to go. Granted, he was my sworn enemy, so maybe we should do the exact opposite of what he’d told us. But if he’d known where the Eidolon was going to be, that meant the CAMFers knew as well. Better to hide in the McMansion than risk this. I had lost my enthusiasm for the Eidolon completely.

  “What? Hey, come on,” Renzo said, frowning. “Don’t let a little name thing freak you out.” He reached out and put his arm around my shoulder, pulling me into him. “It’s one of the most beautiful parks in Indiana, I promise. Besides, I’ll be there to keep you safe.”

  “Stay home if you want, Sis,” Marcus said, his eyes piercing into me as I stood there with Renzo draped all over me. “But I’m going. We’ll see you there,” he said to Renzo, turning on his heel and walking stiffly up the driveway to the Porsche.