by Tara Brown
His face is angry again. He gets angry fast. Like Emily.
He sputters things I don’t understand but they all sound like och and loch. He has a Scottish rage like I've never heard before. I don’t know what och means, but I think it's bad. He grabs his hair and pulls on it and then finally speaks calmly, “If you think that’s all I ever wanted you're mistaken, lass.” He froths and points at me. “I can have that any night of the week. That isn’t the part I want, Lorelei.”
I feel like he's kicked me in the stomach.
His mouth drops open when he sees my face.
“I meant your heart. I want your heart.” He puts a hand up, but I run. He can't catch me. He’s yelling at me but I don’t care. My hate is fresh all over again.
Chapter 14
Luke points and rattles on, “So the whole basement has been dug out and we stripped away the asbestos boards and pipe lining. I’ve been able to preserve some of the clapboard. The kitchen and butler's pantry have been stripped and everything is down to the studs. Some places, the whole wall is being replaced. We've drywalled and built rooms in the basement again. Some even got doors on them.”
He talks and I try not to notice his dimples.
I survey it all and smile. “It's amazing how much better it is with the mold and plants and cracks gone.”
He nods and crosses his thick arms. “I've also ordered the slate for the backsplash and the floor. Not matching, but keeping to a theme. And I was thinking maybe those cool, old-looking Viking appliances. Then they would be modern, but not too modern for the feel of the house.” He gives me another dimply grin and my dead heart flutters.
“Someone has a little flare for the design side of things. Maybe I'll cancel the designer coming in from New Orleans.”
He nods and looks around. “I'm a full-service contractor, Lorelei.”
“I'll keep that in mind.”
He slaps the old walls and brushes them, making dust linger in the thick night air. “Keep it in mind and consider us designing the house together. I really think we can.”
My stomach quivers. It’s not hunger. I won't be hungry again for a month. It's want. I like him.
My sister's voice breaks the awkward silence, “You must be the contractor Lorelei has spoken so highly of.”
I cringe and turn to see her sauntering toward us. She is dressed in a white vintage flapper dress and very high heels.
“You goin’ to a costume party, Emily?” I joke, hoping he thinks it’s funny and not crazy that my dead sister is here.
She grins. “Sort of.” She holds a hand out. I cringe as he takes her hand. It appears solid. He can touch her. It's not just me; she is like a real person. I'm still freaking out though.
He grins like a schoolboy. “Luke. Luke Derringer. Pleasure to meet you.”
She bats her fake lashes. “Charmed, Mr. Derringer. My sister seems to have forgotten her manners. I'm her younger sister, Emily. Emily Huntington.”
He blushes and watches her. “Pleasure, Miss Huntington.”
They look at me and I'm lost in a million thoughts. She is a ghost, ain't she? Am I hallucinating? Is he turning red and flirting with her?
He stammers and clears his throat. “Well, I was just telling your sister here that we will be replacing the windows. It's a sacrifice to the character but we have to. The heat bills will be outlandish with the old frames. And the plaster in the kitchen and tin ceiling in the dining room are gonna have to go.” He talks fast around her as though he's nervous.
Her responses and expressions suggest she is genuinely interested in him. It’s in her eyes. She looks at him the way she did Greg. She likes him. In all the weeks he's been here, she's been hiding out, but I wonder how long she has been watching him.
They ignore me completely and he starts taking her on a tour of the house.
I look back at the old staircase in front of us and marvel at how far his guys have come in a few weeks. I turn back to where Em has gone with Luke and hope he'll be okay with her. I take the first few steps and try not to remember my last night in this foyer. I touch the banister and shudder.
When I turn around, Whit's there. He sees the expression on my face and knows. He knows I'm thinking about it. He's standing in the front entryway watching me. He leans on the newly fixed doorway in fitted jeans and a charcoal-gray V-neck tee shirt.
His stare meets me with the same heat and intensity as always. I sit on the pile of wood and watch him.
We don’t move or speak.
We don’t have to.
We have had these conversations a million times.
Just not with the other person there.
I know what I want to say to him.
I know what I want to do to him.
I want to rip a stake from the boards on the floor and stab him in the heart, like I did his friends at the hiding house.
That night is no longer the blur it was. Being in this house with him makes some memories clear for me: his lips on mine in the hidden shadows of the corner of the foyer, his dark blood greasing my lips and filling my throat. It had already coursed through my veins and made me stronger by the time I ran for the hiding house. It made my senses stronger. I ran faster. I moved quieter. I moved like a predator.
After the sun had burned me up and killed me, I woke, charred and half dead. I healed so slowly as I made my way to town. I changed alone in a bathroom stall of an abandoned roadside diner. Days had passed and I didn’t know how long it had been. I just knew I was hungry in a way I had never been. My throat burned to the point of me screaming and stumbling through the woods. I stumbled out into the night, trying not to cry out in agony. I passed out in the woods and woke to the second worst pain I've endured in my life.
The rising sun.
My body told me to run.
I scrambled up and ran away from the line of the sun. I ran until I reached an old cabin in the woods. I kicked the door in and hid under a bed. I slept and when I woke, I ate the two old people in the house, a man and a woman. I ate them and I never felt bad. They tasted good. It was the best thing I'd ever eaten.
I knew then, what I was. I knew what he had done to me and what he was. I knew I would never be the same again and I had no one left in the world who would care either way.
I ran.
I went to France and then every other country in the world. I traveled nonstop. Seeing things. Experiencing a half-life, living in the dark. Killing in the dark.
I glance up at him now and can't feel the same about him. I feel nothing but distrust and betrayal. All that he left me with. I finally feel the right things.
“If I could take it back I would. I would have changed you alone in a beautiful place and helped you.” It's as if he's read my mind. “I panicked. I ran out of time.”
“I don’t really want to hear it. I just want you gone.”
He seems broken and it hurts me. “I have two things to show you. I told you that. I promise to stalk you from a distance the minute I explain those two things.”
“I think you're full of shit.”
“I'm not. You need to see them to understand everything.”
I sigh and point at the door. “Fine. Let's just get the things you have to show me over with so you can go back to leaving me alone.”
His words stumble from him, “I never left you. I was with you every step.”
“You were a step behind.”
“I have watched you for forty-eight years, Lorelei. Almost every day. I found you as you were getting on a plane and flying to France.”
“Why didn’t you speak to me? How were you with me?”
He looks crushed. “I'm your maker. I made you so I know where you are at all times. You’re the only one I've ever made so I can follow you easily. My maker couldn’t distinguish me out of the many he's made. He wouldn’t be able to pick me out of the crowd. But you are my only one.”
I stand and walk to him and then past him and out the front door.
He fo
llows, still explaining, “I can only sense small things to help you if you need it. That’s the point of the master connection.”
The word flares anger inside me. I spin and point a finger at him. “You are not my master. You are my murderer.”
He pinches the bridge of his nose and walks by me. “Let's just do this before I lose my goddamned mind.” He never swears.
I follow him to the truck and try not to notice the way he makes me feel.
He mutters, “Forty-eight years, Lorelei. You can't hold a grudge for half a century.”
“You have no excuse for killing them. I saw you. I saw you slash your hand across his throat. I saw his blood shoot across the room and splash everywhere. It hit me. I have never even been able to process it properly. You killed me inside and my emotions wouldn’t attach to their deaths. So forgive me for not giving two shits about whatever you have to say.”
He sighs and we drive in silence.
He turns onto a bumpy road and instantly my stomach is in my throat. My skin crawls.
The world slows down as I press my face against the glass of the truck when we drive past it. My breathing speeds up. If I had a heartbeat, it would be going crazy too.
The trailer's roof has fallen in and the whole thing is covered in moss. It's decrepit and it's as if the arms of the swamp it sits on are reaching out and pulling it into the water. The black water.
Flashes of the present mix with memories of the past and I can't seem to focus. One second I'm in the car with Grandmamma and my granddaddy is standing there with his pit stains and disgusting green pants. He has greasy, thinning hair that’s combed over his sweaty head. For a second, I think he knows who I am. I'm transparent and terrified. I'm terrified he is gonna grab me and the swamp is gonna drag us both into the black water. I'm scared it will suck my soul out like it did my momma's.
The next second he is gone and I almost wish he was still there.
My granddaddy, who is as undead and dead as I am.
Nonexistent.
The truck bumps down the road and I feel lost. The memories have stirred up my own black water and my granddaddy's face is floating in my mind. He is dead for real and that piece of my history is gone. He was the proof I was real once. Proof that I once had a heartbeat. Pretty sad when even the granddaddy that I never knew is dead. I have no one. No kin. I have Tessa whose elevator only stops on one floor—the crazy one—and my ghost aunt and my ghost sister.
I glance at him and know he took it all away. My love for him ruined everything. I can hold this grudge for another forty-eight years, easily.
The truck stops and he hops out.
“Grandmamma Holt's cottage? Why are we here? Surely, she is dead. She was seventy when Ramón died.”
I climb out and notice the cabin's life is still there. Its internal heartbeat still ticks; the swamp is held back by that. Louisiana swamps can't claim things that people still love. This cabin is loved.
It's small and brown and quaint. I've only been here with Ramón and I feel weird without him.
I stumble past Whit and brush my fingers against the hard door. The short brown door is etched with flowers and a pond. My fingers trace the flowers. A black tear has slipped down my cheek.
He grabs my hand and his eyes dart nervously at the door. “You're here by her request. I've never explained this, at her request. I'll be out here, for you.”
I scowl and put my hand up to knock but the door opens as my knuckles touch a flower. A woman, who looks identical to Grandmamma, stands in the front entryway.
“Child, you done gone and died inside. Your soul is leaking out your eyes.” She sounds like Grandmamma Holt. She steps back. “You may enter my home, Lorelei.”
My feet move before I take a step and I'm inside. The door slams, leaving him outside. I don’t know what moved me but I feel strange from it.
She chuckles just like Grandmamma. “I never liked his kind, but I gots to say, if you has to be with one of dem suckas.” She turns around and starts stirring something on her stove. The cabin is a tiny one-room home. “Of course now you're one of dem suckas, ain't you, child?” It's Grandmamma. There is no doubt. Her white eyes don't freak me out like they did when I was a teenager and she lost her sight. Her grin is the same. “You done got stunned by dem too? You gots no tongue no longer?”
“Yes, ma'am, I mean no, ma'am, I'm just confused.”
She nods vigorously. “I see dat about you. I also sense dat if yous give him time to explain, you gonna find he ain't so bad as you tinks he is. Ramón, stop being so chicken.”
I blink my eyes. “Grandmamma, you called me Ramón.”
She shakes her head and squints her white eyes. “Oh no I didn’t, child. Ramón, now you show yerself before I gets angry.”
The room doesn't change and the air doesn't sparkle, but before I can comprehend what's happening, Ramón is standing in front of me.
He's in a white tee shirt and tight black jeans with the cuffs rolled, and he doesn't look no different than he did before. No different than the moment he left me in the car to seek help. No animal markings or blood covering him.
He smiles and wipes his brow with his handkerchief. There is no sweat, but it was his nervous habit, before.
I burst. So many things that needed catching up, do it in that moment. I drop to my knees and sob like a baby.
Grandmamma clucks her tongue at me. “Tsk, tsk, tsk, you best not be crying dem devil's tears in my house, Miss Lorelei.”
I ignore her and sob. His arms encompass me, and I have no choice but to lean into him. I don’t have the strength to hold myself up.
“I needed you. I needed you,” I bawl through the black water running down my cheeks.
He wipes my face and grimaces. “I'm here. You got some nasty tears now, baby.”
I laugh. His voice is the same. He looks the same. He is the same and the hole in my heart fills in a little bit. Emily and Ramón have filled in the spots they left empty when they died.
He brushes my hair out of my face. “I was there. I was always there. You just couldn’t see me. You can only see me here.”
I look up at him through my thick, wet lashes and smirk. “You haunted me?”
He nods and wipes his hands on his pants, trying to hide the disgust on his face. “I tried to. It was hard.”
I gasp. “The hospital bed? I saw you that night.”
“I did try to warn you they was coming for you.”
Grandmamma leans on his shoulder and watches me with her spooky white eyes. “You be eating people all dis time and you ain't never been haunted by one of dem?”
“Just my aunt Maria for some crazy reason, but I didn’t eat her. She knew about the vampires. She tried to warn me.”
Grandmamma snaps her fingers. “Dem be the icy breaths in your room at night. Maria be trying to warn you because dat be how she died. She wouldn’t talk to me when I was coming der. She be linked to you. Her being kin and all.” Her white eyes sparkle. “Damn, I kept her outta dat room for you. She be trying to save you and my magic kept her from helping.” She crosses herself and closes the curtains and windows and mumbles things. She lights a bunch of long dried grass and waves the smoke around the house.
In a hushed voice she speaks, constantly staring around the room, “Your momma done found dem fanged monsters in da bayou when she was a girl. That be how she paid for dem fancy clothes and da fancy education. She done traded her blood for der help.”
I shake my head and side-glance at Ramón. He rolls his eyes. “Girl, yo momma has always been evil. Don’t look confused.”
“What kind of evil?”
He gives me his best diva look and I'm instantly transported back forty-eight years. I leap into his arms and hug him.
“I'm never letting you go. I missed you,” I whisper.
He chuckles. “Me too. But Lorelei, there is something you gotta know.” He pulls me off him. His eyes are worried and tense. Even the sparkle of ghost eyes is muted by th
e emotion.
“What?”
Grandmamma gives him a poke and turns her white eyes on me. “Your momma, she a witch. No regular witch neither. She a Blackwater witch.”
“Okay? But she's dead. I watched her die.”
She clucks her tongue at me. “You seen nothing. She no die. She too evil to die.” She turns and toddles back over to the long grass and starts burning it again.
My stomach swirls. “Where is she?”
Ramón purses his lips and finally speaks, “She in a mansion, not far from Huntington Manor. She got herself a fancy house and a fancy man. She looks different, Lorelei. She ain't aged a day—shit, I think she looks younger.”
I chew my lower lip and process it. “I'm not sure I want to know what that means, but if she's alive, why the hell did she leave the mansion to rot?”
He sighs. “She left it and moved on. She got what she wanted. The life insurance on your daddy and all his inheritance.”
“I don’t understand?”
“She ain't gonna be none too happy you alive, Lorelei,” Ramón says quietly.
I put my hands on my hips. “What does this have to do with the price of tea in China?” I ask my grandma's favorite sarcastic question.
Ramón shakes his head. “She didn’t get everything she wanted that night. The one thing she wanted was for you to suffer through some of the life she had. She had a plan. She was gonna steal your body, but she couldn’t get you to look the way she wanted you to, so she moved on to Emily. You always were too fat for her liking. She starved your ass for years, trying to make it look right. I never knew it until I was dead and Maria explained everything to me. Your momma had a plan and your man out there, he ruined it.”
I scowl. “What more could she have wanted? She clearly ain't aging and she has money and a new man. She ruined my life; she killed my daddy and Emily.”
“She wanted Emily alive, cherie.”
I furrow my brow. “Emily?”
Grandmamma waves the smoke in my face, making my eyes sting. “She wanted to become your sister, ma cherie. She switched bodies. Take yours and trap ya inside her aging one. She was about to do it to Emily. She just need ya outta the picture, married off. She had it all planned out. Only ya woulda noticed if Emily was different. She was going to let ya marry that Martin and then murder ya off.” She waves the smoke and gives me the scariest stare ever with her white eyes. “She done it before.”