The telephone rang, startling a gasp out of her. She spun around and let out a strangled scream. She wasn’t alone anymore. The woman she’d seen outside now sat calmly at her kitchen table.
And Gracie’s eyes had not deceived her. It was her grandmother.
The woman’s face was deeply lined, aged since the last time Gracie had seen her, but unmistakable. She wore a housedress of pastel plaid, pearlescent snaps down the front with big square pockets. A lighter and box of Virginia Slims menthol cigarettes was in the right one. Numb, Gracie stared into her rheumy eyes and felt tears prick her own.
“Grandma Beck?” she whispered.
A sane part of her mind recognized that this could only be an illusion, but every beloved feature seemed so real. The gleam of pink scalp beneath the tufts of white hair, the downturn of her eyes at the corners, the deep groves around her lips from puckering as she drew on her cigarettes. Gracie smelled the smoke that clung to her and beneath it, the light scent of Skin So Soft bath oil, her grandmother’s favorite.
The phone rang again, insistent. Gracie ignored it. No one called the house phone anymore except telemarketers and politicians.
Grandma Beck said nothing. She lifted a book she held in her lap as if to show it. Frowning, Gracie tipped her head and stared at the worn, brown cover, the word Ledger embossed in elaborate scroll at the center. Her grandma’s hands shook as she held it out. Gracie reached for it as the phone rang again, a shrill demand. Annoyed, Gracie snatched the receiver from the cradle, intending to hang up on whoever called, but Grandma Beck began to fade.
“No,” Gracie said. “No, don’t go.”
Silly, when she knew her grandma wasn’t really there. A gentle smile curved the her familiar, thin lips and Grandma flickered, like a candle in a breeze, and vanished completely.
The third ring of the phone jerked her attention back to the receiver in her hand. Shaken, she jabbed the talk button. “What?” she demanded, still staring at the chair where her grandmother had sat, still smelling the faint scent of smoke and bath oil. Her heart hurt and those prickly tears began to spill. Some spiritual part of her recognized what had just happened, but she didn’t want to acknowledge it.
“Gracie Beck?”
The man’s voice on the other end stirred a memory, though she didn’t place it until he told her his name.
“Eddie Rodriguez?” she repeated with both confusion and disbelief.
“Yeah. Remember me?”
They’d gone to grade school, junior high, and high school together. How could she forget?
“Listen, Gracie, I’ve got some bad news. I think you’d better come home.”
“Home?” she said, reaching for the edge of the counter to brace herself. Diablo Springs was a lot of things to her. But it wasn’t home.
The tears came faster, and she clenched her eyes, the memory of her grandma seated at her table so sharp and poignant that she had to bite her lip to hold back the sob.
“It’s your grandma,” Eddie said, like she’d known he would.
He paused and took a breath. Gracie did, too, steeling herself for his next words. “I’m sorry. There’s no easy way to say it. Or explain it for that matter. Gracie, your grandma’s dead.”
The words rolled over her like a numbing tide.
“Are you there?”
“Yes. I’m here.”
“Okay.” He stopped again and this time it made Gracie’s heart lodge somewhere in her throat. “There’s more,” he said finally.
She swallowed, feeling like she’d been sealed in an airtight silo that filtered every sound but her thumping heart.
“Is— Gracie, do you have a daughter?”
CHAPTER 4
Reilly had always thought Diablo Springs looked like a Hollywood rendition of the town that time forgot. With the lightning storm giving it a strobe effect, it seemed to loom up like a spooky relic in a bad horror flick. Ironically, when he’d lived here, he’d thought the world ended at the town’s borders. He was right, he realized now, just not in the way he’d thought back then.
He glanced in his rearview mirror where Chloe, the Abraham Lincoln-vampire look-alike, and the priest with the gloves, followed in a minivan. He wondered if they were as freaked out by the weather as Reilly was by the turn of events that had unfolded in just one short night.
The clouds had gathered during the drive from Los Angeles, and each mile east had brought them deeper into brooding skies and quaking thunder. Now the storm seemed to hover just over Reilly’s SUV like a twelve gauge with a tight trigger. According to the weather report, this was just the precursor to a tropical storm blowing up from Mexico. He planned to be back home long before that one hit.
He still couldn’t believe he was on his way back to Diablo Springs. What had possessed him to go home? To pack his bags and hit the road with complete strangers? Chloe said he needed a story, and God knew it was true. But no story was compelling enough to drag him across the desert to his home town ... except his own.
Sure, Chloe walking into the bookstore with her entourage of weirdos and her bizarre claims that she’d been called to Diablo Springs by ghosts had piqued his interest. He couldn’t pretend that he wasn’t intrigued by the fact that she’d shown up to take him with her, either. But, in truth, he’d come for only one reason: It was time to finally write the painful ending to his brother’s chapter and reclaim the pieces of himself that had been torn out by Diablo Springs.
Honestly, he’d been stewing over it for weeks, months even. Since he’d learned that Matt had died. Since he’d acknowledged the relief he’d felt—the kind of relief that came from offloading the two-ton ball and chain he’d been dragging most of his life.
Matt’s death, however, hadn’t put an end to anything. In fact, it had opened flood gates inside Reilly and spewed a toxic mix of memories into his bloodstream. He’d sent instructions to Digger Young—Diablo Spring’s undertaker—to have Matt cremated and shipped to him in Los Angeles. He’d locked the ashes up with his memories and gone on like neither existed. But each day since, getting out of bed had been a little harder. Going to the computer, a bit more difficult. Facing himself in the mirror, a lot more painful.
He’d lost weight, lost his drive. Last week he’d shaved his fucking head. Next week he might move onto something more permanent ... like maybe shave a few years from his life. The fact of the matter was, he needed to bury his ghosts and Matt was only one of them. Diablo Springs and all the blood and pain of his history there—that one needed to be buried, too.
He’d made the decision to come in a split second, because he knew if he thought about it, he’d talk himself out of doing it. And every survival instinct he possessed was telling him now or never. Deal with the shit or let it suck him down so deep he’d never come out.
Chloe Lamont was merely the resounding clap that began the avalanche, the instigator of a collapse long in coming. Reilly either came home and faced his past or he would self-destruct. Simple as that.
But how had she known that Carolina Beck would be the bait that made him snap? What did Chloe know about her or Gracie Beck, her granddaughter?
He turned after the Circle K—run-down but holding on even here—and made his way into downtown Diablo Springs. Feeling pensive, he passed Rough Street and glanced at the fourth house on the left where he’d been raised. Now, it was boarded up and overrun with scrub and, most likely, rodents and bugs. This was the desert and no place on earth was more hospitable to vermin. He’d written a number-one single and two bestsellers about the things that creeped and crawled across the hot sands of Arizona.
At last he parked at the curb in front of the Diablo Springs Hotel, where they’d be staying for the next few days if Chloe could be believed, and just sat there for a moment as memories flashed in his head like the storm in the sky.
Gracie Beck, the girl not quite next door, but close enough to walk. She’d been sixteen to his eighteen and she’d lived here with her grandmother. Gracie Beck,
so beautiful his heart had clenched whenever he looked at her. He’d known even then that he wasn’t good enough for her, but in his youth he’d thought love was stronger than blood, even bad blood. The night before The End, he’d learned otherwise.
Chloe had told him that she’d spoken to Carolina Beck just yesterday and confirmed reservations for herself, her two companions, and one Nathan Reilly Alexander. He would’ve argued, but he sure as hell couldn’t stay in his old house and the Diablo was the only place for a hundred miles in any direction.
The Diablo Springs Hotel might have been considered prime accommodations in the 1800s when it was built, but by today’s standards it was just a big house with six bedrooms and saggy eaves. Carolina Beck had lived there for her entire life. From where he sat, it looked like a good wind could blow it over, but as a hard gust rocked the SUV, the hotel stood steady, letting him know it was sturdier than it looked.
Lightning sizzled and sparked overhead, turning the windows of the Diablo into jack-o’-lantern eyes. The howling wind pounded the giant mesquite and sucked the grit from the rock and cactus garden along the walkway. On cue, a tumbleweed bounced its way past them to lodge in the neighbor’s fence.
Reilly glanced at his watch. It was nearly midnight, but lights blazed on the ground floor, sending a tickle of unease down Reilly’s spine. Carolina Beck was the kind of woman who rose with the sun and worked like a farmer’s wife until dusk. She’d never burned the midnight oil.
The brooding storm intensified the oppressive heat as he climbed out of the Jeep. It felt like he’d stepped into the swaddle of a damp electric blanket with a buzzing short deep within its circuitry. In the distance, the ruins of the old hot springs stuck up like black bones against the lightning-struck sky. Reilly squinted as spinning flashes of blue and red whirled against the backdrop. Police cars? He frowned, wondering if the Dead Lights had lured another victim into the cavernous pit of the dried-up springs.
The minivan that had followed him out of Los Angeles pulled up behind his Jeep and the old woman and her two companions piled out. Between Count Lincoln, Father Ghoul, and Chloe the Gypsy Queen, he couldn’t say which of the three was the strangest.
The air held a fetid smell that brought home a million memories. Hot summer nights swimming with his brother, Matt, in Danny Green’s aboveground pool. They’d frozen water in milk jugs and floated them in a vain effort to cool it off. They’d slept on cots in the backyard, braving the bugs for the chance of a breeze. They’d learned the sun could be an enemy. And so could a lightning storm, like the electric light show going on now.
As Reilly grabbed his bag from the back of the SUV, the sharp scent of sulfur joined the loamy smells in the air. No rain yet, just a few sprinkles that seemed to evaporate before they reached earth, leaving a filmy steam that made his skin sticky and the air thick.
Chloe Lamont approached, followed closely by the Count, who Reilly guessed to be her bodyguard or an adopted son ... or maybe her significant other. Hard to say. He easily topped Reilly’s own six foot two and looked like he might never have seen the sun.
“Nathan,” Chloe said in her soft, mysteriously accented voice. “Do you feel them?”
“No.”
“Liar. I know you sense them. You’ve always sensed them.”
Even if it was true, he wouldn’t have admitted to it. “I sense we’re going to get hit by lightning if we don’t get inside.”
Her grin was smug. He gritted his teeth.
“We’re late,” she said, unconcerned with his prediction. “Not too late, but late. Let’s go in.”
Reilly gave one more glance at the police lights out at the dried-up springs and then followed Chloe and the Count up the walkway. The priest fell in step behind him.
Chloe paused on the porch, looking at him expectantly as he joined her.
“No one home?” he asked.
She gave a shrug that conveyed absolutely nothing. “You go first,” she said. “You’ll have to face ... Is it Faith?” She tilted her head to the side and narrowed her eyes. “No, it’s Grace, isn’t it?”
“Gracie?” Reilly glanced at the front door and then back to Chloe.
Chloe gave him an enigmatic smile. “Gracie, yes, of course. You didn’t really think you were through with her, did you?”
“Gracie’s here?” he repeated with a step back.
“Not yet.”
It took a moment for common sense to overpower his knee-jerk reaction. He gave a low laugh. “You’ve got your wires crossed, Chloe. Gracie Beck hasn’t been back to Diablo Springs since she took off. She’s never coming back.”
“That’s what they say about you.”
The door swung silently open as a huge bolt of lightning struck nearby with a crack and a hiss, releasing a smattering of raindrops that broke through the vapors. It seemed they should sizzle as they hit the ground below.
A diminutive gentleman in a gray sweater and black trousers stood on the threshold. He gave them a benevolent smile and stood aside for them to enter.
“I wondered if you’d beat the storm,” he said.
Reilly didn’t know who he was, but he seemed at home here.
They filed through the door in twos, like kids using the buddy system for their field trip. Reilly dropped his bags and closed the door behind them. Every light in the house seemed to be on, but there was no sign of life anywhere.
“I’m Jonathan Stevens. Welcome to the Diablo,” he said, holding out a hand. Reilly shook and introduced himself. Then, because it seemed to be expected, he said, “This is Chloe Lamont and ...”
Abe the Vampire held out his hand. “Bill Barnes.” He flashed a frosty glance at Reilly. “It’s easier to remember than Abraham.”
Reilly’s eyes widened. The guy could read minds?
“Michael,” the priest mumbled, but he didn’t offer to shake. Instead he clasped his gloved hands behind him defensively.
“I’m sorry Ms. Beck isn’t here to greet you,” Jonathan said.
“Where is she?” Reilly asked.
“It’s not my place to say.”
Reilly shot a sideways glance at Chloe. The old woman looked solemnly back.
“Your rooms are ready, however, and I’ll take your bags right up. Feel free to make yourselves at home during your stay. I can make coffee if you’d care for it.”
“No, thanks,” Reilly said and the others declined as well.
They didn’t have a lot of baggage—if you didn’t count the figurative kind—but Reilly helped carry it upstairs. When he returned, the others had moved into the front room. Reilly followed, feeling like he was stepping back in time.
“It’s changed, since the last time you were here, no?” Chloe’s voice came deep and melodic, and way too close. She was like a spider, creeping up on him.
“I only made it past the porch once,” he muttered.
Although her granddaughter had loved Reilly, Carolina Beck had made no pretense of overlooking his inferiority. Matt and Reilly Alexander gave white trash new standards. The first time Gracie had brought him home had been the last. After that, he and Gracie had met in secret.
From that one brief encounter, Reilly remembered the place as being bright and cheery, though. TV-mom clean and neat. In this room, there’d been a serviceable sofa of everyday blue and a matching chair in front of a console television set. Nondescript, outdoorsy paintings had adorned the walls and blue-checked curtains covered the windows. It had looked clean and happy. He’d felt like he sullied the place just by being there.
What he saw now was the opposite of that. A long, gleaming bar stretched the length of the western wall and hardwood tables with stiff, spindle-back chairs filled in the space where that sofa had been. The bar wasn’t stocked—not even a glass waited to be filled behind it—and the empty shelves had an eerie feel to them that was almost as disturbing as the strange change in décor.
“Maybe she was trying to bring in tourists with the rustic feel,” he said, confused.
“Maybe,” Chloe answered with a smile that mocked him.
Ornately framed pictures of people long dead perched on yellowed doilies atop the mantel or hung from big heavy frames on the walls. The subjects in the pictures seemed to look out, watching him back as he stared in disbelief. The room was still, the wood dark, the curtains heavy, and the cloying atmosphere smelled of old sex and booze.
Jonathan entered, looking like Mr. Rodgers mistakenly cast in an episode of Gunsmoke.
“Ms. Beck remodeled,” Reilly said.
“A few years ago,” Jonathan answered. “Right after I started working for her.”
Carolina had a suspicious nature that didn’t lend itself to live-in help. He was surprised she’d hired Jonathan at all.
“She wanted the Diablo restored to its original glory,” he went on. “All of this came from the attic.”
“Huh.”
Reilly wandered to the fireplace where of a faded picture of four women in various stages of undress hung. The women sat at a table in front of a bar—the bar in this very room, from the looks of it—pinned in place like butterflies on a board by the sharp rays of sunlight cutting through cloudy windows. None of them looked old enough to be in the profession their attire suggested. Until you looked at their disillusioned eyes.
Beyond their circle of light, a scattering of dusty and disreputable men watched, as if picture taking was the most interesting thing to behold. A large black woman stood in the background, balefully eyeing the men watching the women.
Reilly used his sleeve to rub away a smudge on the glass, his gaze caught by one of the women sitting at the table. There was something hauntingly familiar about her clear, light eyes, but it took a full minute before he realized what it was. She looked like Gracie Beck. She looked a lot like Gracie Beck had the last time he’d seen her.
She stared back at him, her gaze filled with questions, accusations ... hurt. He felt trapped by the weight of guilt that look dredged up. Which was stupid. It wasn’t Gracie in the picture and even if it was, Gracie had moved on without a backwards glance. What did he have to feel guilty about?
Bad Boys of the Night: Eight Sizzling Paranormal Romances: Paranormal Romance Boxed Set Page 169