by Lisa Cach
“I don’t need ghosts for that,” Eric said.
Megan got off her rock. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve managed to give myself a headache.” She moved toward the ladder, then turned with her hand on a rung. “I don’t think you two should stay down here. It feels like something wants to happen down here.”
“Like what?” Case asked.
“I don’t know. That’s what scares me.”
Nineteen
Megan lay in the dappled light under a big-leaf maple tree, listening to the crows and to the occasional high-up rumble of passing aircraft. In the spaces of quiet between the two, there was the rustle of leaves in the breeze to entertain her.
She lay on a blanket, a T-shirt over her eyes as a makeshift sleeping mask. Darkness soothed her headache, as did being out of the house.
In the crevice room, Case and Eric had declared themselves spelunkers. They had temporarily set aside their differences in a male way that was beyond Megan’s comprehension. As she lay there, they were no doubt finishing up their system of ropes, pulleys, lights, and harnesses and preparing to descend into the fissure in search of Zachariah’s bones.
Fine, Megan thought. Let them break their legs and bang their heads and be frightened by ghosts. Let them kill each other. She’d had enough of both of them.
Case, of course, didn’t believe there were bones to be found, but the crevice was a mystery he couldn’t resist exploring. Eric thought that bringing up the bones might help release Zachariah from the house. It usually helped in the movies.
But Megan didn’t think it was going to work out that way.
No, something or someone had trapped Zachariah, or he himself had trapped others, including the woman who whispered to Megan. In either case, the question was why?
Revenge? Love? Obsession? Spite?
Or was it something about the very earth the house sat on that trapped souls?
Beside her was an armful of books she’d dug out of the house’s library, intent on continuing her research into what the sisters had been up to with their séances and psychics. An hour’s reading about spells and potions had been as much as Megan could stand, though. She refused to believe that sprinkling herbs around a house while drinking red wine and chanting could have any effect on the dead. The spells seemed to be meant purely for the peace of mind of the living.
Perhaps she was too strongly rooted in her own century. She had more faith in Eric’s electronic gizmos than in potions of fennel and pine and penta-grams drawn on the floor.
Megan heard someone approaching through the grass, the blades whishing against feet. She pulled the T-shirt off her face and turned her head, squinting up at the interloper.
Case sat down beside her, almost close enough for his hip to touch hers. She inched away. Was he there to apologize?
His gaze wandered over the garden. “It’s really a mess, isn’t it?”
“But it’s so quiet that I forget we’re only a handful of blocks from downtown.”
He set something beside her on her blanket. “I thought you might want to see this.”
Megan pushed herself up into a sitting position, staring at the item. “A gold watch. It was Zachariah’s?”
“It was in the rotted bits of cloth that were once his clothes.”
She grimaced. “And what else was inside those clothes?”
“Bones. Not all of them, of course. Some must have fallen deeper into the fissure, including his skull.” He was quiet a moment, then touched the pocket watch with his fingertip. “Funny that I should have first met you over a watch.”
“I can’t say I’m enjoying the coincidence.”
He crooked a smile at her, seeming uncomfortable. “But maybe it wasn’t such a coincidence that I chose a watch to bring you. You said the house could be influencing us in subtle ways. Maybe it influenced me to choose that. God knows there are fifty other things in the house I could have brought to you.”
“You’re not talking like the skeptical Case I know,” she said.
“Maybe I’m finding it hard to argue with a body hidden in a room I didn’t even know existed until you found it.” He nudged the watch. “You don’t want to touch it, to get a reading?”
She shook her head. “I’d rather not. Not now, anyway.”
They were both quiet, the watch sitting beside them, a symbol of life ended too soon. Of chances lost.
“Megan, I…” Case started, then stopped.
“Yes?”
He blew out a breath, ran his hand through his hair, then plunged ahead. “I feel like I owe you an apology. Not for being skeptical but for being determined from the beginning that you were a fraud and then letting that belief color my perception of you. It was unfair.”
She watched him in silence, watched the nervousness in his movements. She wasn’t going to let him off easy. “I cared what you thought about me, you know,” she said. “It hurt when you said those things.”
“I can’t excuse my behavior, but you need to understand, you weren’t the first so-called medium I’d met in my life. My mother was addicted to them. I saw the whole gamut, from palm readers to faith healers to aura photographers and spoon benders.” His voice grew angry at the memories. “They were blood-sucking frauds, each and every one.”
“Some of them probably believed in what they were doing, thought they were helping people.”
Case shook his head, a quick, angry denial. “All I know is that our phone and electricity got turned off when Mom spent all her money on psychics instead of paying the bills. So you can see that I didn’t have a very high opinion of anyone in the profession.”
Megan bit her lower lip, taking in what he’d said, trying to see things from his perspective. Truth be told, she didn’t think much of most psychics, either, and thought even less of the ones who would take money from those who couldn’t afford it. “Do you know what your mom was looking for?” she asked in a softer voice.
“Who the hell knows? Hope, I guess. After watching her, I swore I’d never fall for any of that crap. Which makes it ironic, doesn’t it, that I should end up buying a house like this and hiring ghost hunters to help me.”
She had thought she’d enjoy seeing him apologize, but without his skepticism, he seemed fragile and at a loss. “Maybe you bought the house because, deep down, you knew it was haunted. They say that we seek out the same problems in life, over and over again, until we learn how to overcome them.”
“So, I unconsciously bought the house as therapy?” He laughed. “I don’t think so.”
“Do any of us truly have free will or know why we make the choices we do?”
He looked up at the house, his amusement fading. “It was love at first sight with this house.”
“It has something you need, even if you don’t know what that is. You may never know.”
He looked back at her. “Megan, I don’t want you to hate me. Can you forgive me?”
It would be so easy to say yes, but one thing stood in her way. “You’re buying my building,” she said quietly.
“Could you really have afforded nine hundred thousand dollars?”
Megan’s jaw dropped. “Nine hundred thousand? I thought it was only worth five or six. The place is almost a tear-down.”
“You’d need at least forty percent down if you wanted to break even every month, more likely fifty. Do you have that?”
“I have one hundred and fifty thousand dollars.” It suddenly seemed a pittance, as she did the math in her head. “You were right,” she said, the utter hopelessness of it coming clear to her. She saw now that she had been a dreaming fool. “All those years of saving, of my mother and me planning what we’d do when the building was ours. It was never going to happen.”
“Not unless you got a loan on your house to finance it.”
“I thought of that but was afraid I’d be stretched too thin.”
“You would have been. A hundred and fifty thousand, huh?”
“Yeah.” She smiled sa
dly. “I guess I can afford to take a vacation now.”
“Yeah. Or…” He trailed off.
She waited.
“Or I could let you buy into the building. You could afford an eighth share without getting a loan or a quarter share with a small loan.”
Her heart thudded. “You’d let me do that?”
He nodded. “I don’t like having partners in real estate, but I’m feeling guilty.”
She put her hand over her lips to hide the trembling. “You’d do that? Partners. Really?”
“We’d fight a lot. I have ideas for the place that you won’t like, and you’d have to listen to me since I’d be the majority owner.”
“The building’s a wreck. You can’t hurt it.”
“You’d still have to pay rent.” He met her eyes. “This isn’t a free ride.”
“I know.” But letting her buy into the building was a sign of respect. He never would have offered, guilty feelings or no, if his opinion of her had not changed. She ducked her face, smiling, her heart filled with light and hope where it had been dark moments before. She slid her hand toward his on the blanket, then entwined her fingers with his. “Thank you.”
His fingers tightened on hers. “Are we friends, then?”
“Of course.”
He lifted her hand and kissed its back. Then he pulled her toward him slowly, the determination in his face bringing a flutter of alarm and of arousal to Megan. He tilted his head and kissed her hard. Her lips parted under his, allowing him entrance, and as he plundered her mouth, her fingers dug into his flesh. A soft cry of pleasure tightened her throat.
The next thing she knew, he was lowering her to the blanket, his body covering hers. He held one of her hands and raised it above her head, pinning it to the ground while his other hand went to her waist, finding the soft flesh beneath the hem of her T-shirt. His palm stroked her waist, then up her rib cage, while his lips moved to her ear, his tongue teasing her lobe and the small space behind it, then tracing down the line of her neck and sucking hard at its base.
His palm brushed over her breast, then again, and she felt her nipple responding through the cloth of her thin bra. He shoved the meager garment up, his palm meeting her flesh-to-flesh.
He left her breast for just long enough to grab her other wrist and raise it above her head, too, insisting she keep both hands there with a noise in his throat. She clenched her fists and obeyed, her back forced into an arch that raised her breasts. She felt a deep, primal pleasure at his sexual hunger. She instinctively understood that for this moment, he didn’t want her to do anything but submit.
Her obedience was rewarded with a quick removal of her shirt and bra, and then his hands were at her jeans, unfastening and pulling them off with her panties, leaving her naked on the blanket with the gentle breeze on her skin.
He met her eyes, checking her willingness, perhaps remembering how she had stopped him when he was in her bed.
She didn’t want to stop him now.
He read the answer on her face, and a devilish pleasure filled his eyes. His mouth explored her breasts while his hand stroked her hip and along her thigh. He laved her nipple, then moved up her neck, returning to her mouth, distracting her with the invasion of his tongue as his hand moved from her thigh to the mound of her sex. He cupped his palm over her, his strong fingers barely touching the folds beneath. Megan moaned deep in her throat, tilting her pelvis and parting her thighs, trying to bring herself into stronger contact with his hand.
He had no intention of fulfilling her wish. With the delicate precision of a musician, he stroked his fingertips over her folds with the gentlest, lightest of touches, a bare skimming that set her nerve endings on fire. Again and again, he barely touched her, his fingertips a mere whisper against the apex of her desire. The kiss broke off, and he lay half over her, his mouth near her ear, his breath warm in the crook of her neck. She could feel his concentration and control in the tenseness of his body, and she lowered her hands to his shoulders, gripping his shirt.
“Please,” she said, arching her hips.
He pressed his lips against the side of her neck and held steady there while his fingers continued their sweet torture.
“Case, please.”
“My kingdom for a condom,” he said hoarsely, and then, before she could respond, his hand moved lower, and his fingertips swirled in the damp opening to her sex. One strong finger gently parted her, then began to slip inside with slow, shallow thrusts.
His mouth left her neck as he slid his whole body down until his head was level with her hips. His finger thrust fully inside her as his mouth came down on her folds. His lips captured her clitoris, sucking it while his tongue moved in expert circles. His hand continued its thrusting, the finger inside her stroking up against a place she hadn’t known was there, a place that seemed directly tied to the movements of his tongue on her clit.
The tension in her body quickly built, like an ocean wave swelling in size. “Case, oh, God, what are you—”
He stopped, mouth and hand going motionless as she hung on the peak of the wave, every muscle in her body tight. For a long, exquisite moment, she balanced there, and then his finger moved once more inside her, his tongue stroked her, and waves of pleasure rolled through her body.
When the last of the pleasure receded, Case moved up beside her on the blanket and pulled her against his side. She lay in blissful contentment, gazing up into the green leaves of the maple, the pale blue sky in broken pieces of mosaic behind it. Then her hand inched down his flat belly to the buckle of his belt, and she gave back to him all that she had received.
Twenty
“So!” Eric said, rubbing his hands together in glee. “Séance tonight in the subcellar, yes?”
Megan turned around from drying the dinner dishes. “Tonight?” she squeaked. “Go down there tonight?”
It was the last thing she wanted. All through dinner and cleanup, she’d been daydreaming about Case and just what they might do tonight. It had been lovely out there under the maple, but her body wanted a deeper satisfaction. She’d been counting the minutes until they could all retire for the night.
“I’ve got everything set up down there. Temporal lobe stimulater, EM blaster, computer, even a chair for you, Megan. Got a power cable running to a rented generator so there’s less danger of losing juice. We’re all set. If we can’t figure this all out tonight, then we’re a sorry bunch of losers!”
“Eric, the last thing I want to do is go down to that subterranean chamber of horrors in the middle of the night and put on that helmet.”
“It’ll be phenomenal! There’s no scenario we’ve ever encountered that is so ripe for investigation and resolution! How can you not want to do it?”
“Quite frankly, I’m scared,” Megan admitted.
“She has good reason,” Case said.
Eric gaped at them. “But you’ve both used the helmet. You know it’s safe!”
“Don’t be obtuse,” Megan said. “You know that’s not what I’m afraid of.”
“But we have Zachariah’s bones. This is the moment! The iron is hot!”
“I don’t want to go down there at night,” she said simply. “I don’t know how well I’d be able to resist whatever might happen, especially if my mind’s been opened up with that helmet.”
“I agree,” Case said. “It’s too great a risk. We’ll go down there tomorrow and try something during the daylight hours.”
Eric looked from one of them to the other, suspicion and disbelief mingling on his face. He shook his head. “There’s no point in going down there for a séance if it’s not during the night, when the total effect will be strongest. You both know that. What’s the deal? You have other plans for tonight?”
Megan involuntarily glanced at Case.
Eric caught it. “What? What’s going on?”
“Nothing’s going on,” Case said. “I think we’ve both spent more than enough time down there today.”
“W
ell, it’s not like we can watch TV tonight. What else are we going to do? Play Scrabble?”
“I thought I’d read through the rest of those copies from the Seattle Times. Maybe there’s something more there,” Megan said. It was the best she could come up with.
“By candlelight? Not good for your eyes.”
“I’ve got paperwork to catch up on,” Case said.
Eric blew out a breath. “So busywork is taking precedence over some active investigation.” He shrugged. “Okay, have it your way! You want the ghosts to have the run of the house for another night, that’s your decision.”
“What are you going to do?” Megan asked.
“Same thing I always do. Tweak the equipment, review recordings. Guess I’ll fill the long, lonely hours somehow.” He looked from one of them to the other.
Megan pressed her lips together, refusing to be manipulated into offering to spend the evening with him.
A few hours later, Megan put the newspaper she had been reading down on the kitchen table and rubbed her eyes. Eric had been right about the candlelight.
She listened to the noises of the house: creakings and cracks, the hum of the refrigerator. No door bangings, though, or ghostly footsteps.
The last she’d seen, Eric had been in the salon. Case had worked on his laptop at the kitchen table, until the battery got low, and then he kissed her on the forehead and said he’d see her later tonight, after the house had settled down.
She remembered the feel of Case’s mouth on her sex and closed her eyes as the memories of pleasure passed over her. Megan bit her lip, a moment of doubt hitting her. Was she really ready for sex with Case, when earlier in the same day she had been cursing him? Maybe the house was pushing her toward it.
She’d be glad when this was all over, if it was ever all over. She had no way to tell if they’d be able to rid the house of ghosts. The uncertainty of how to deal with the situation had been quietly eating at her since the day Case first tried to hire her.