by Lisa Cach
She blinked, surprised by her own thought.
It wasn’t dealing with the dead that scared her. She didn’t fear what was “out there.” She feared her own lack of competence.
“Well, crap,” she said, taken aback. She hadn’t considered that it was fear of failure that stopped her from doing things.
Was it fear of failure that kept her at the shop instead of trying something new? Even worse, was it fear that had kept her dating men she knew she could dominate, as Tracie had said?
Case scared her a little bit, despite the delicious things he’d done to her under the maple tree. There was no way to control him, no way to tame him. That thrilled her, but it made her afraid to show her whole heart to him and risk annihilation.
She was a coward. In work, in love—a miserable, yellow-bellied coward.
“You going up to bed soon?” Case asked.
Megan started. Case was poking his head in the doorway to the kitchen. “Bedtime?” she squeaked.
“It’s almost eleven, but Eric is still as bright-eyed as a squirrel and running around the house with his sensors.”
“Oh,” she said, a world of disappointment in the sound.
“He can’t stay up all night.”
“The guy’s nocturnal.”
“We’ll have the morning to ourselves, then,” Case said with a deliberate leer.
Megan smiled.
Case stepped fully into the room. “Find anything interesting in the newspapers?”
“An ad for an elixir that promises to cure both gout and baldness, some fancy women’s hairpieces for sale, but other than that, no.”
He nodded, unsurprised. “So. Coming up to bed?”
“You go on ahead, get some sleep. Gather your energy,” she said, waggling her brows suggestively. “I want to tidy up a bit down here, then maybe take a bath.”
“Okay. Holler if you need anything.”
He kissed her forehead, then tilted her head up and kissed her on the lips. It was a soft and tender kiss, but it went right to the core of Megan’s unsatisfied hunger. She kissed him back, her hand going around his neck to bring him closer. She was rewarded with a low moan in his throat, his arm going around her and starting to raise her out of her chair.
A loud thump in the hallway startled them apart. They both stared at the empty doorway, waiting, Megan’s heart tripping.
“God damn it!” Eric said from the hall, his butt appearing as he bent over, half out of sight. A moment later, he was upright and looking in at them, a piece of broken equipment in his hands. He held up the thing in his hands. “Can you believe it? Flew right out of my hands. If I didn’t know better, I’d say the ghosts did it. But they’re not going to out-smart me so easily, oh, no, not if I have to stay up all night.”
“Good for you,” Megan said, and didn’t mean a word of it.
Case lay awake in bed, listening to the muffled, barely audible sound of the generator down in the cellar, to Eric’s occasional swear words from down the hall near the sisters’ rooms as he struggled with disobedient equipment, and to the faint hints of movement that told him Megan was taking a bath.
She was so close, so naked, so willing, and so completely out of reach as long as Eric was prowling the halls. Case blew out a breath of frustration. He should stop thinking about her naked body, her hands soaping her breasts, the sheen of water on her buttocks…
He rolled onto his side and shut his eyes, willing his exhaustion to overcome his lust. Nixon. Think of Nixon!
And for God’s sake, don’t make another move in this house without a condom in your pocket.
He had reached a light sleep when, like so many times before, he felt a hand sliding up his thigh.
Only this time, the hand was warm.
His eyes popped open, staring straight ahead into the darkness of the room. This was real. Elation and surprise mixed together, keeping him motionless as she made her move.
He felt the covers lift behind him, then the mattress shifted with Megan’s weight. She snuggled up behind him, her nightgown between her soft body and his back.
“Hi,” he said softly, feeling his arousal stir.
“Hi,” she said, her voice a hoarse whisper. He felt her breath on the back of his neck and then her lips pressing against the skin at his nape. Her hand slid around his pelvis and reached for his groin, finding his sex and cupping it.
Something suddenly seemed not quite right.
Her hand was big. Too big. And her arm—surely it couldn’t be that heavy?
The hand encircled his penis and began to move up and down in a well-practiced motion. At the same time, Case felt a nudge against his buttocks. A type of nudge he had never felt before but had undoubtedly given to women in his bed.
Understanding dawned, and in a sudden frenzy of motion, Case scrambled out of bed, the covers tangling in his limbs. He fell to the floor with a thud and was as quickly on his feet again.
“Darling,” the whisper came out of the dark. “Darling, what’s the matter?”
“Eric! God damn it! What the hell do you think you’re doing?” Case shouted.
There was a soft giggle from his bed. “I’m not Eric, you silly,” the whisper said.
The hair rose on Case’s skin. “Then who are you?”
He heard the rustle of movement, the squeak of the bed. “I’m the one you’ve been dreaming of,” the voice said.
In the faint light from the window, Case saw a tall shape moving toward him. Horror crept up his spine, terror flushing through his blood and making his ears ring. It moved toward him, the dark shape of its arms rising as if to embrace him.
Without thinking, Case hauled back and punched the thing where he thought its face was.
His fist met solid flesh. The shape grunted and dropped to the floor, the force of the fall shaking the floorboards.
The connecting door flew open, light spilling into the room. “Case! Are you okay?” Megan cried.
Case’s gaze went from Megan to the shape lying at the foot of his bed. It was Eric.
And yet it wasn’t.
Megan’s eyes followed his. “Holy mother of—” she whispered. And then, her voice too flat to be bemused, “So that’s what happened to my nightgown.”
Case barked a laugh and felt his muscles trembling with adrenaline. He sat on his bed, fearing his legs would give out beneath him. He grabbed a corner of the sheet and pulled it up over his bare lap.
Megan inched forward, holding the candle over Eric’s supine form. “He got into my makeup, too.” She looked at Case as he bent forward, examining Eric’s crudely made-up face. “Is that lipstick on the back of your neck?” Megan asked.
His hand went to where he’d felt Eric’s lips and rubbed viciously at the spot. “Would it be asking too much of life,” he said dryly, “if once—just once!—when I woke up in the middle of the night with hands on me, they were the hands of a living woman?”
He looked up at Megan.
She blinked at him. “Eric—”
He shuddered. “Yes.” He frowned down at the unconscious man. “What the hell got into him?”
Megan cocked her head, examining Eric herself. “Maybe not what. Who.”
Eric moaned, his eyelids fluttering. Megan knelt down beside him in her bathrobe. “Eric?”
Case grabbed his pants and quickly put them on. There were times when a man wanted serious clothing between himself and the world around him.
“Eric, can you hear me?”
Eric blinked his eyes open. “Megan? What’s going on?”
Case and Megan helped Eric into a sitting position. The nightgown was rucked up around his thighs, perilously close to his goods.
“Eric, do you remember what happened to you?” Megan said.
He looked from her to Case, then gingerly touched his jaw. “I feel like I was punched in the face.”
“You were,” Case said.
Concern pinched Eric’s features. “I don’t remember being in a fight.”
“There wasn’t a fight,” Megan said softly. “You got into Case’s bed and kissed him.”
Eric’s eyes widened, his mouth falling open. Then he blinked rapidly. “Like hell I did!”
Megan put her hand on his shoulder. “Eric, you’re wearing my nightgown and makeup.”
He looked down at himself and sucked in a breath. His wide eyes lifted to Case. “Jesus Christ, man. You know I’m not—”
“Yeah, yeah, I know,” Case said, wanting him to shut up. He didn’t want to rehash the situation.
“What did I—”
“Never mind! What was the last thing you remember?”
Eric lifted his arm, staring at the white cotton covering it.
“Eric, what do you remember?” Case asked. “The last I knew, you were down the hall, messing with your equipment.”
Eric stared into space, a small frown between his brows. “Yeah, I remember that. Then I went down to the salon to go over some data, and while I was there, I thought I saw something on one of the live monitors. The one for the sub-basement. I left a camera down there, working on generator power like the rest of my equipment.”
“What did you see?” Megan asked.
He shook his head. “I don’t know. It was just a white blur of movement. It was being digitally recorded, of course, so I replayed it. Slowed it down. Still couldn’t see what it was. So I decided to go check it out.” He blinked at Megan, then at Case, helplessness in his eyes. “I don’t remember anything after that. I got down there, and…and here I am.” The corners of his mouth quivered and pulled down, his eyes squeezing shut. “Oh, God, oh, God…”
Case slapped his hand down on Eric’s shoulder, making him jump. “You’ll just have to chalk this up as one of the lousiest nights of your life. Come on, get up,” he said, standing himself and grabbing Eric’s hand, tugging him upward. “Go wash that crap off your face.” Case nudged Eric ahead of him toward the door, pausing only to light his own candle off Megan’s. “You make a god-awful ugly woman, you know that?” he said to Eric.
Megan gaped at him. He gave her a reassuring wink. “He’ll be fine. Go on back to bed. We can talk about this tomorrow.”
She nodded and turned to go back to her own room.
Case led Eric toward the bathroom, shaking his head as the magnitude of what had happened sank in. There’d been a shift in the game the ghosts were playing; it was hardball now.
The score in this new game was Ghosts 1, Living People 0.
It was time to even up the score.
Twenty-One
“That was it!” Megan said, her fingers working on one of Eric’s keyboards.
“I missed it.”
“Here, let me play it again.”
On-screen, the fissure room sat empty. Through the speakers came the rumbling chugga chugga of the generator in the cellars above. Megan put her finger to the screen. “Watch right there.”
Something wide and white blurred across the screen, the sound from the speakers turning to static for a brief moment. And then the white was gone, the generator chugging along as normal.
“Christ, I can’t believe he went down there,” Case said.
“You remember how impatient he was last night.”
“Is he brave or an idiot?”
“I really couldn’t say,” Megan said, and tapped the keys again, setting the recording back to play. “Let’s see what he does.”
They watched the screen in silence, waiting for Eric’s appearance. A minute went by. Then another. Almost five minutes passed before bright green glowed and wavered at the edge of the screen: Eric, coming down the ladder with a flashlight.
The light steadied, the scene thrown into sharp black and pale green relief. The camera auto-adjusted to the change in light level, evening out the contrast.
Eric moved into view.
He stood, staring into the fissure, then turned around and reached for something on the ground. Megan couldn’t quite see what it was.
The screen flashed white, then went black.
Nothing.
“Shoot,” Megan said under her breath. “It went dead.” She fast-forwarded, but there was nothing to see.
“That’s suspiciously convenient,” Case said.
“Convenient for whom?”
“The ghosts. Or Eric. That could have been a power cable he reached for. He may have shut it off himself.”
Megan shook her head. “To what end? Nothing is real to him unless it’s recorded.”
“I’m not saying I can see a reason. But it’s possible.”
“Or the ghosts could have shut it off, so we couldn’t see what happened.”
“That sounds like premeditation. If you wanted to look at it that way, then Eric was lured down there.”
Megan rewound the footage to the white blur, freezing the image on-screen. They both stared at it.
“It seems elaborate, for a ghost,” Megan said. “Using technology to lure someone? It speaks of an understanding of how the cameras work and that Eric is watching from another room.”
“It’s the same thing as them slamming doors on other floors,” Case said. “Only this time, they refined the act. Unless Eric doctored the footage and shut off the camera himself.”
“And purposefully put on my nightgown and makeup and got into bed with you? I don’t think so. You’re cute, but not that cute.”
“Is that a compliment or an insult?”
“Neither. Eric’s not gay.”
“Bi?”
Megan shrugged. “Not that I know of. I suppose he could surprise me, though. You think this was all an elaborate scheme on his part, so that he’d have an excuse to get into bed with you?”
Case was silent, mulling it over, then shook his head. “The guy was too upset after he woke up. He flinched when he saw himself in the bathroom mirror. I thought he was going to start crying again.”
Megan sat back, trying to piece it all together. “Tell me again what he said to you in your bed?”
Case repeated what had happened.
“It does seem that the simplest explanation is that he was possessed by the spirit that’s been visiting your bed. But how did it get hold of Eric?”
“Maybe the same way that dark entity got hold of you a couple of years ago,” Case suggested. “Maybe it was the helmet that Eric was reaching for when the camera went out. He might have gone down there thinking he was going to communicate with whatever had flashed across the screen.”
“Which was exactly what the spirit wanted,” Megan agreed. “Eric wouldn’t have any psychic defenses, especially not down there, where everything is magnified. The ghost got inside him and took the chance to lay her hands on you for real. After making herself pretty with my things, of course. The better to seduce you.”
Case grimaced. “She’s a horny old hen, I’ll give her that.”
Megan felt a smile tug at the corner of her mouth. “She didn’t seem to like being punched in the face, though. It chased her right out of him. Who knows how long it’s been since she felt real physical pain?”
“A little more of it might be a good thing for her.”
“I wonder if it’s Isabella,” Megan mused. “She seems to have been a passionate woman in life. I’m fairly certain that she had to be the one who led me to the letters in the trunk. She wanted me to know that Zachariah loved her.” Megan chewed her bottom lip, thinking of her vision in the hallway, of Zachariah’s murder. Penelope, disheveled, watching it happen. Isabella not being told for several weeks.
“I wonder if Penelope tried to steal Zachariah away from her sister,” Megan said. “Maybe Penelope got herself into a compromising position with Zachariah and was discovered in the act by her father.”
“Maybe Zachariah tried to rape her?” Case suggested. “That would infuriate any father to the point of murder.”
“Maybe. Or maybe he assumed his daughter had to be a victim, not a seductress.”
“‘I earn my fate,’” Case quoted
. “Did Zachariah earn his?”
“Or was it the sisters who somehow earned theirs, spending their lives together in this house, spinsters to the end?” Megan tapped her bottom lip, thinking. “Do you suppose they hated each another? Supposedly, they went everywhere together, but maybe that was just because they didn’t trust each other. Maybe the day they died, Penelope wasn’t trying to carry Isabella to safety. Maybe she was trying to dump her out at the curb like a piece of trash.”
“That’s a bit too harsh to believe.”
“I suppose if she hated her that much, she probably would have found a way to hurt her much earlier.”
“I suddenly find myself hoping it was Isabella who was in my bed. Under this theory, Penelope was a piece of work.”
“But it’s still just a theory.” Megan’s stomach rumbled, and she looked at her watch. “It’s nearly noon, and Eric’s still not up. Last night must have drained him.”
“Let the guy sleep. I’m sure he’d just as soon put off remembering last night.”
“Despite myself, I feel kind of sorry for him,” she admitted.
“You have a tender heart.”
“I never thought I did. But to have your whole body taken over by something else…I couldn’t wish that on him.”
He took her hand and squeezed it. “Promise me one thing?”
“What?”
“Never wear that helmet again.”
“I can handle it better than Eric.”
His hand tightened on hers. “I don’t want you to have to try.”
“You’re not afraid of me crawling into your bed at night, are you?” she teased.
“I don’t want you there if it’s not really you. It’s not just your body that I want.”
“Glad to hear it.”
He laughed and stood, releasing her hand. “How about lunch?”
She rose from her chair. “Lunch, yes.” Where she could digest the fact that they hadn’t had the wild sexual romp of a morning that she’d been hoping for. Gee, thanks, Eric, for making sex the last thing on Case’s mind! If Eric weren’t in such sad shape, she’d have punched him again herself.