Every Breath You Take

by Chris Marie Green

“Amanda Lee,” I said, gesturing toward the grinning spirit in the T-shirt and blue jeans, “finally meet fake Dean.”

  Ah yes, she knew just who he was. Her gaze widened ever so slightly.

  He gave her a respectful nod. “Happy to meet you, ma’am.”

  “Oh. My.” Amanda Lee didn’t often lose her composure, but there it went.

  To her credit, she tried to recover as she walked over to me, leaving a confused Sierra behind midsentence so she could take a better look at the powerful spirit I’d told her about on more than one occasion.

  While she gave him a thorough scan, she whispered so only I could hear. “I can’t see him very well, but now that you say it . . . He does look like the old pictures I found on the computer of the real Dean.”

  As if he wouldn’t hear that.

  He gave her one of those casual jerks of the chin. “Thanks, ma’am. I appreciate that. I take pride in all my appearances.”

  Amanda Lee gave a slight nod, but she couldn’t take her eyes off him.

  Sierra interrupted. “Ms. Minter?”

  “A moment, please.” Amanda Lee had turned her gaze to me now, surveying my colored-up, Dean-influenced body. Then she talked halfway over her shoulder to the crew, still inspecting me then fake Dean. “I thought I felt a negative spirit present, and I wanted to clear my head over here.”

  The excuse was good enough to make J.J. pull his EMF meter like a Colt .45. He started waving it around.

  Sierra laughed. “Nothing but positive energy for me, Ms. Minter! So, what do you think about staying on as a consultant . . . ?”

  With a frustrated frown—I was sure Amanda Lee wanted to continue her microscopic surveillance of me and fake Dean—she turned around to go back and continue the private conversation.

  Naturally, fake Dean had one more thing to say to her. “I’ll have Jensen home at a decent time, after we have ourselves an intimate talk. Catching up. All that.”

  “Not intimate,” I called to her. “It won’t even be close.”

  Amanda Lee sent one last look behind her as I rolled my eyes, then walked over to him, my arms crossed over my chest. If he wanted a talk, he’d have it. Might as well get it over with.

  I actually walked right past him, and he chuckled and followed me into a thicker copse of trees.

  “Feisty as ever,” he said. “You’d never know that you invited me.”

  Keep walking. “I did not.”

  “I believe you did.”

  “Give me a break.”

  “Well, I’ll be damned, then.”

  I could hear his footsteps slow to a halt in the leaves, and I paused. My heartbeat was fluttering the veins in my throat, adrenaline twirling through me. Part of it was the fight-or-flight response he always brought out in me. Part of it was just him.

  God, I hated having a body that could betray my better instincts, even while I loved having skin again, blood, breath, and goose bumps.

  When I glanced back at him, he was leaning against a tree, idly tracing a finger down the bark. My temporary skin tingled.

  “Wait,” he said, snapping his fingers and tapping his forehead. “I know why I got called down here.”

  “Enlighten me.”

  And . . . yes, the smug grin returns.

  “You were thinking of me. And not with only a fleeting wisp of memory, either. You had a moment of strong emotion, and I was enticed by it.”

  “Oh, because we’re connected or something.”

  “More than you’d like to admit, Jenny.”

  The real Dean had called me Jenny. He’d been the only one, and hearing it made my chest feel like it was caving in.

  I started walking again, aimless, until I realized that my death spot was about a hundred feet to the right. This would be an excellent time to charge up and block him out. “Consider yourself uninvited, okay?”

  “I know. You’ve got places to be, ghosts to save, mysteries to solve.” His deep voice was like the light touch of fingertips down my back.

  “Listen, I thought you cut me loose, Replica. Why’re you desperate for my attention again?”

  “Replica? Ouch. Right in the heart. We’ve had some moments together that weren’t so false, wouldn’t you say?”

  I clenched my teeth to keep from answering. And to keep myself from blushing at his comment. Before he’d cut me loose, we’d gotten a little . . . carried away with each other. But, jeez, he could be so persuasive, especially since his main goal seemed to be getting me to become a willing part of his ghost collection up in his star place. At first I’d thought he was a reaper, but, in reality, he was what you’d call a keeper.

  My death spot waited, ghoulishly close to a long, thick oak branch slithering nearby over the dirt and creating what looked to be a tree chair. The ground started drawing me in, welcoming me while revolting me at the same time. It was like it knew that the farther a ghost got from the place she’d croaked, the easier she’d get drained, and it only wanted to nourish me with its bad memories.

  “Home, sweet home,” fake Dean murmured. “But wouldn’t you rather hang out at the home I gave you to haunt?”

  My little cottage. “Seriously—are we talking about homes? Because you kicked me out of your star place, and now you’re acting like it never happened. Stop being weird.”

  “Who’s the one making up odd fairy tales to tell that ghost team? You know that your killer’s not going to like that when he hears about it.”

  Ten feet away from my death spot, I stopped, realizing that there’d be no peace from fake Dean unless I did more than give lip service to the conversation he was so obviously panting for.

  “Why even bring up my killer?” I asked, turning to him. My heart blasted against my chest all over again—his blond hair, laughing eyes, hormones. Gah. “It’s not like you’re ever going to help me find him or even give me an iota of information that’ll ever help.”

  He started to respond, but I interrupted, mocking his voice.

  “‘But, Jenny, I am a cryptic, sexy thing who cannot lend you that sort of information. The big events must take their course, and I am not to interfere.’”

  “I couldn’t have said it better myself.” He ambled over to the seatlike branch near my death spot, bracing his foot against the wood, then leaning an arm on his leg, as he lazily smiled at me.

  I wouldn’t even bother asking him where my killer was right now or what other ghost he was terrifying out in Boo World. Sure, there was a remorseful shadow in fake Dean’s eyes about his so-called inability to help me, like he truly wanted to protect me by telling me everything his all-seeing gaze could spare. But he said the rules of his own world just wouldn’t let him. That didn’t mean I couldn’t still despise him because of it.

  The guy wouldn’t even tell me his real name—something about how it’d take his power away. Whatever.

  The spot where I’d died—hit by that ax, never to regain consciousness—pulled at me even harder, and fake Dean was watching me resist the lure.

  “Jenny,” he said. “I know you need to juice up, but don’t tell me that you’d rather go through the trauma of reliving your death over refusing what I could easily give you . . . if you’d just come on over here.”

  I shook my head. Like I’d let him, Mr. I Can Give You a Charge, juice me up instead.

  “Jenny . . .”

  He crooked his finger at me, and my feet almost started moving, even while my brain was screaming at them to stay put.

  Fake Dean’s low, smooth voice didn’t exactly do wonders for my willpower, either. I was starting to ache in my belly, and even lower. Dammit.

  He laughed at my stubbornness. “It wasn’t that long ago you offered me one night with you.”

  Oh yeah. That. “And if you’d helped me save the life of the human I was working with a few weeks ago, you could’ve had
it.” Shame—and the thought of what that night might’ve been like—burned me. “But you didn’t come through for me, and you didn’t want a thing to do with me after I pulled my offer.”

  How could he forget that he’d kicked my ass out of the star place, the spot where he kept all those “collectible” spirits hanging like fluorescent stars, feeding off their dreams and giving them eternal happily-ever-afters?

  “So you’re being extra difficult with me because I changed my mind about seeing you again,” he said. “Why should women be the only ones who have that prerogative?”

  Yeesh. “Have you ever experienced a woman’s temper after she’s dumped?”

  “How do you know I wasn’t just testing your feelings for me?”

  I let out a sharp laugh. “You’re just full of the funny today, aren’t you? And full of lies, but that’s nothing new. You got bored, Replica, and that’s the only reason you’re here again. Aren’t all the stars you’ve collected enough to interest you anymore?”

  Even while I was tossing vinegar at him, my body was still alive with need. Every move he made, every word he said—they were undoing me second by second, and I didn’t know how much longer I could withstand him.

  The jerk knew it, too. His grin told me so.

  “Jenny,” he said softly. “Just step away from your death spot and get over here.”

  No. No. No.

  Yes.

  Crap.

  Suddenly, I was pulling myself away from the lure of my death spot, a long, silent groan tumbling through my body, scratching through me with heated, raw yearning. I took the first step toward fake Dean.

  Then another.

  He didn’t wait for me to get there on my own, and moved away from the oak branch to close the distance between us.

  His gaze burned with urgency, and I hauled in a short breath, while my pulse banged. Then he tugged me to him, sending a blast of electricity through my body.

  He crushed his mouth down on mine, hungry and needy, his hand gripping my hair. As my body nearly exploded with his infusion of energy, my knees turned to ether, taking me down. But he caught me with his other hand at the small of my back, bringing me toward him to feel just how much he really had missed me.

  I sucked in a charged breath, surprised and not surprised. And my body . . . Man, I’d missed having one—missed how it could throb in places that reminded me of how much I’d always wanted some bad boy in my life, how I’d wanted my real Dean to drop all his tender, gentlemanly rules and kiss me dirty, running his hand from my back to my stomach and making my muscles jump with small, sharp shocks as he crept his fingers underneath my tank top.

  And, idiot me, I was kissing this Dean just as hard as he was kissing me, both my hands in his hair as he trailed his fingers down, between my legs, pressing up and against the piercing ache there, circling and making me go hotter and dizzier.

  Dirty.

  Exciting.

  I stumbled backward, toward my death spot, which was still grabbing at me with its dark attraction, but fake Dean yanked me back to him. He turned both of us around, making me fall backward until I felt the trunk of a tree behind me.

  I pressed against it, angling my head away from his mouth so that I could breathe again—one gasp after another as his hand kept working me, bringing out a moan here, a wince there. He kissed my neck, nipping at it with sparking kisses, making me slide down the tree.

  My head went misty, and instead of seeing the darkness of my death, lightness came, turning black into purple, forcing pinpricks of starlike illumination to bleed into me. . . .

  Before I knew it, fake Dean had duped me again.

  The bastard had transported me to his star place, just like he’d done on more than a few occasions, tricking me every single time with seduction.

  The thing was, right now I didn’t give a shit if I never learned my lesson. Right now he was still sucking at my neck, giving me a pulsing hickey that imprinted on me. It’d never last, though, so I let him do it.

  Hell, yeah, I let him.

  We were floating in his star place, and I cloudily took it all in, clinging to him, inhaling his soap, salt, and skin smell while my head spun at the endless purple sky around us, the glare coming from the lotus pool on one side and the so-called stars everywhere else.

  Not stars, I thought as fake Dean lowered me toward the invisible floor. Spiritual bodies, suspended and glowing, all collected by this thing that calls itself Dean.

  And he wanted me to be one of them, mindless and happy, numb to how I’d died and instead brimming with the pure happiness that he fed off of.

  “No,” I whispered. “I can’t . . . won’t . . .”

  “Jenny . . .” he breathed against my neck, sending fritzing shivers through me. “Don’t make me beg.”

  Such emotion, such wounded desire. But if I knew anything about fake Dean, it was that he was a liar through and through.

  I grabbed his hair, looking into his blazing eyes. They’d turned dark, and fear crashed through me. He’d shown me what I thought was his true face a couple of times, and I didn’t want to see it now.

  Beastly.

  Roaring.

  Sublime . . .

  “Never,” I said, my voice strengthening.

  Instead of getting angry, he closed his eyes, leaning his forehead against mine. He couldn’t force me to be one of his stars, and he knew it.

  But why would he expect me to change my mind this time?

  We drifted down to what there was of a floor, but instead of being held up by the invisible ceiling, we seeped through, falling into the sky, floating and floating . . .

  Another trick. He was full of them.

  In the next flash of a second, we were on the earthly plane again, except not in the woods.

  Definitely not in the woods.

  One of those red San Diego trolleys flew past us on its tracks, so close that it ruffled my hardly-a-ghost skin and lifted my hair.

  I pushed off fake Dean, who casually strolled away from the windy chaos toward a sad apartment complex. In the near distance, I could see the downtown skyline, coated by the beginning of dusk. But we were definitely on the wrong side of the tracks from the Gaslamp Quarter. An abandoned shopping cart littered the complex’s driveway, and red and black graffiti had been sprayed over the walls.

  “Are you tossing me out here like a soda can because you’re pissed at me again?” I yelled after him. Even my voice sounded like it was loaded with color, thanks to him.

  He talked to me over his shoulder, his hands in his pockets. “Not quite.”

  Was he ticked off or just . . . bummed?

  Nah. I didn’t have the power to break fake Dean’s heart. He had to be setting me up for another try at the star place. If anything, he wasn’t a quitter.

  “I’m not playing along this time,” I said as a wino with a bottle wrapped in a paper bag staggered toward me. I didn’t bother to move out of his way, and even though I had what felt like a body, he walked through my left side.

  He sucked in a breath and shivered, drawing his tattered shirt around him and clutching his bottle as he made his way toward the corner.

  Dean kept walking through the complex’s small parking lot, and I gradually realized that I knew this place. I’d visited it when I’d first become a ghost and looked up the people I’d known. But it wasn’t until I saw a vintage silver Corvette waiting in front of a stairway that I realized fake Dean had brought me here for something other than seduction.

  Gavin Edgett owned a car like that. Gavin—the first human I’d haunted. A suspect in Elizabeth Dalton’s murder, and Amanda Lee’s object of revenge, until we’d found out he was innocent.

  Even from here, I could feel his life force. It fascinated me. He fascinated me. And fake Dean knew it.

  Was this his true reason for coming down
to see me again? So he could persuade me to be with him by using Gavin this time? But how would he manage that?

  Cautious and curious—and knowing the last one could be my downfall someday—I jogged to catch up with him in the parking lot. The buildings themselves weren’t as grungy as the outside of the walls near the street. Someone had made an attempt to pretty up the downtrodden place with bushes and flowers, and there was fresh paint on the doors, the brass mail slots shining.

  Dean had stopped at the foot of the stairway, looking straight ahead at a first-floor door.

  Without an explanation, he motioned with his hand, and the front wall of the apartment disappeared to reveal a modest living room with an old TV, a case full of books, and a couch from my best friend Suze’s childhood home.

  Dean glanced at me. “This’ll be better than looking through a window, just like you did at first, when you wanted to see where Suze was these days, how she was doing.”

  Suze’s voice rang out before I even saw her. “How many times can I say it? I can’t afford a nicer place.”

  I turned to find her walking into the room, two glasses of lemonade in hand. It was like she was surreally moving around in one of the dioramas I used to make when I was a kid, using scraps of material to design bedrooms where people slept and never had nightmares.

  And Suze did look like she’d been sleeping better these days. Her curly brown hair, which she’d dyed recently, was up in a bouncy ponytail, making her seem younger than her fifties, and she was dressed in summer shorts and sandals with a white work T-shirt.

  I smiled, just because seeing her did that to me. After I’d revealed myself to her for the first time a few weeks ago, I’d started visiting Suze regularly at the bar where she worked. Good friendships never died.

  But then the one thing that had started to test our friendship—at least for me—walked into the room after her.

  Gavin.

  I tried not to react to him, but how could I help it? In his white button-down, with its sleeves rolled over his thick forearms, he wasn’t handsome in the usual way guys in their early thirties can be, but there was something about his rough face with the pale blue eyes. His brown hair was short, his arms crossed over his bulky chest, giving him an edge. He was gentle and hard at the same time, like a wrestler who was constantly beating down and subduing monsters for everyone he loved while protecting their secrets, too.