by Lisa Cach
“What’s she doing?” Eric asked.
“She’s hesitant. I don’t think she’s the one who talked to me before. She looks…yes, she looks like Isabella Smithson, as a young woman.”
Megan fell silent, and Case’s muscles tightened yet further. He knew from before that she might now be holding a silent conversation with the spirit, but anything could be going on inside that helmet, and there was nothing he could do to protect her.
He glanced over at the laptop screen. The brain-wave patterns seemed erratic. “Eric!” Case whispered. “Eric, is that right?”
Eric glanced at him and then to where Case pointed. “It’s fine.”
“I don’t remember it like that last time.”
“It’s nothing, just a fluctuation.” Eric got a better grip on the EM blaster and checked its settings.
“Shouldn’t you be monitoring the patterns?”
“I am! And trying to make sure the one weapon we have to defend ourselves with is in working order. If you don’t mind?”
Case scowled but held his peace when he looked at Megan and saw that she appeared perfectly relaxed. She looked almost Buddha-like, cross-legged with her wrists resting on her knees.
“She’s coming closer,” Megan said. “Slowly closer. Like she’s scared to.”
“Closer, Isabella,” Eric said in a high-pitched whisper, moving closer to Megan, the EM blaster held steadily in front of him at hip height. “A little closer, Bella.”
A sound moved past Case’s ear, like an insect buzzing by. He jerked his head and swatted reflexively.
The buzzing pass came again and a flash of movement in the corner of his eye. He turned around, seeking explanation in the darkness.
“A little closer,” Eric whispered.
Stop them, a male voice said in Case’s ear.
He jerked around, eyes seeking the source. In the corner of his vision, a face appeared at his shoulder, indistinguishable except for two dark eyes. Stop them, it said.
“Stop who?” Case asked.
Save her!
Her. Megan?
Case turned quickly around. Eric had the EM blaster pointed at Megan’s head, the wide cone almost touching the side of the helmet.
Save her! the voice demanded.
“Closer, Bella,” Eric whispered in a falsetto.
The hair rose on the back of Case’s neck. It was the same falsetto he’d heard last night in his bedroom.
“There you go,” Eric said, and his finger moved toward the trigger.
“No!” Case cried, and launched himself over Megan, knocking her over as he tackled Eric, knocking the blaster away from the helmet.
Eric screamed and fought back, struggling to bring the blaster back around toward Megan. Case fought him for it and in the struggle knocked it away from him. It skittered across the dirt and rock floor to the edge of the fissure.
“No! No!” Eric cried, and lunged for it.
Case threw himself over Eric and hit the blaster with his fist, trying to knock it over the edge. His fist made contact, but it was the trigger that was the point of impact. Case felt it give way under him an instant before the blaster fell over the edge.
The construction light blew in a flash as Eric rolled out from beneath Case, reaching for the blaster that was no longer there. “No!” Eric cried.
Utter darkness fell upon them, not even the light from the laptop surviving the electromagnetic blast.
“Megan!” Case yelled, in terror for her soul. He’d triggered the damn thing himself! God damn it! “Megan, are you okay? Can you hear me?”
“Worry about yourself,” Eric said, and Case suddenly found himself engaged in a battle for his life, the edge of the fissure invisible in the darkness. “Meet the end you deserve!” Eric shrieked in a female voice utterly unlike his own, a preternatural strength powering his muscles as he grappled with Case.
Case knew it wasn’t just Eric he was fighting; it was one of the sisters. “I deserve better than you, you selfish bitch!” Case grunted out, struggling in the dark to get a hold on his insane adversary.
They rolled across the floor, Case feeling the helmet hit up against his back.
Megan. Oh, God, what had they done to her?
A fist hit awkwardly at his head. Case shoved the heel of his hand hard against the underside of Eric’s jaw, snapping his head back.
Eric’s grip on him loosened, and Case took advantage of the weakness, shoving him onto his stomach and making a grab for his nearest hand, trying to force it up behind his back. The two of them shoved and struggled back up to the edge of the fissure, Eric suddenly slipping loose and rolling away. Case quickly rolled in the other direction, knowing better than to stay in the same position in the dark. He was disoriented, but the fissure was a landmark, and he moved to where he thought Megan should be.
His hand touched the helmet, on the ground. Ah, Christ, she still hadn’t moved or made a sound.
His hand moved down to where her shoulder should be…and felt nothing.
She was gone.
Down! the male voice said in his ear, with the faintest of shoves on the back of Case’s neck.
Case obeyed automatically, and something metal struck the rock behind where his head had been, sparks flying. Animal instinct took over, and he threw himself at the only place Eric could be, flesh meeting flesh. Case felt something hit his shoulder and knew that Eric was trying to beat him with the light stand.
In life and death, there were no fair fights. Case brought his knee up in a powerful jerk.
A screech left Eric’s throat, the eerie sound of a woman coming from a man who has just had his balls smashed for the first time.
Case followed that knee with another to Eric’s gut and a punch to the face. Eric fell to the ground and Case dropped on top of him, pinning him down with his knees, grabbing his hands and bringing them up behind him. Case reached around in the darkness until his hand fell on the cord to the light stand. He jerked it toward him and used it to bind Eric’s hands.
As he worked, a faint blue-white light began to illuminate the room. Case looked up.
It was coming from the fissure. Silhouetted against the light was the tall figure of Megan.
“Megan! You’re all right?”
She didn’t answer.
Case finished tying Eric up and stood. “Megan?”
The glow in the crevice grew brighter, its light spreading across the room, gradually increasing until the entire space was bleached with it. Case squinted against it, holding his hand up to shade his eyes.
Megan hadn’t moved. The wires from electrodes trailed from her hair, and he could see now that her eyes were closed. He approached her with caution, and as he did so, her eyes opened, staring straight ahead. His gaze followed hers. Two figures hovered over the gap in the ground. One was male, one female.
Behind him, Eric made a noise. Case glanced back at the trussed man, then did a double take. Eric’s body was blurred by an image laid over it—the image of a young woman, lying as he was with her hands behind her back, her face turned to the side, superimposed over Eric’s own.
Both Eric and the woman opened their eyes and cast Case an evil glare.
He looked back at Megan. There was no double image to her. Relief coursed through him.
She was still herself.
As he watched, Megan raised her arms to her sides. The light in the fissure grew somehow denser, as if drawing on hidden reserves.
“Isabella, take her!” Eric cried.
Isabella moved forward, but Megan’s forefinger flicked, and Isabella stopped as if she’d been hit in the chest. I can’t! Case could barely hear the woman say. Penny, I can’t! She’s too strong!
The male figure did nothing, and as the light grew denser, so did the figures, until Case could clearly see the face of Zachariah, smiling faintly as if with a disbelieving hope.
“She’s going to spoil it all!” Eric said. “Bella, she’ll send you onward. Don’t leave me, Bella!�
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A beam of light shot from the fissure to Megan, and with a tearing, sucking sound, the entire column poured into Megan’s chest.
Case shouted and reached for her, but some force he couldn’t see repelled his hand.
Zachariah was sucked into the beam, his image warping as it was pulled into Megan, and then Isabella’s shape began to bend with the force of the pull. Penny! she cried, reaching out.
With a sudden movement, Eric rolled toward the fissure, and before Case could pull him back, one leg went over the edge and into the column of light. Isabella dove into his leg and disappeared, and Case dragged Eric away from the fissure.
Eric looked up at him. Two feminine faces merged and separated above Eric’s own. “Thank you,” he said, and simpered.
“Down!” Megan shouted.
Case dropped to the ground.
The last of the light disappeared into Megan, and the room went dark. An instant later, a crack of lightning split the darkness, the crash of it slamming through Case’s body. The jagged bolt shot from Megan to the metal stairs hanging down from the ceiling, racing up them and out.
Above them, the entire house shook as if it had been shot. They were plunged into darkness again.
Case stood in the dark, his own breathing loud in his ears. “Megan?” he asked again.
He heard the breath of a sigh.
He reached out for her in the darkness, his hand finding her arm. He pulled her toward him. She came easily, wrapping her arms around him and resting her cheek gently against his shoulder. They stood that way, silent, for a long time. He stroked her hair.
“Do you know,” she said quietly, “I think I’ve gotten over my fear of the dark.”
He laughed under his breath. “My dear, I think it’s now the dark that has things to fear from you.”
He felt her smile against his neck. His hold on her tightened, and he bent his face to her neck and closed his eyes, thankful with every ounce of his being that she was alive and in his arms.
Twenty-Four
Megan zipped up her suitcase and set it by her bedroom door, then sat down on the bed. Though she’d only been there about a week, it felt like a lifetime’s worth of experience.
Blue sky glowed outside the window, and a pink rose was opening against the glass. The day had dawned clear, with only puddles of rainwater as evidence of the storm that had blown through the night before. Puddles and an unnatural hole a foot in diameter, burned through Case’s house from the cellar straight up through the floors and out the roof. If it had been normal lightning, the entire house might have burned.
But of course, it hadn’t been normal lightning. It had been electricity transformed into spiritual energy, conducted, through her, out of the house and up to God knows where. Zachariah had passed through her and been freed.
It was the EM blaster going off while she wore the helmet right next to the fissure that had done it. Instead of allowing Isabella to possess her, as Eric/Penelope had plainly intended, those three combined forces of fissure, helmet, and blaster had created psychic superpowers in her, if only temporarily.
Perhaps temporarily. She rubbed her thumb and fingertip together, feeling the crackle of spiritual electricity between them.
Things had not gone so well for Eric. Both Penelope and Isabella were in him now, refusing to let go. All three were struggling for control of Eric’s body.
Unable to control Eric in any manner better than tying him up, Case had finally been forced to take him to the emergency room for evaluation, telling the staff that he was a danger to others in his present state of mind.
Once Megan figured out how to use the new strength of her powers, she’d find a way to help Eric rid himself of the Smithson sisters—assuming that they hadn’t tired of him and moved on. How much fun could two squabbling sisters have in one male body, anyway? Plenty. They’d treat his private parts like toys, fighting over them, abusing them, experimenting with them. Megan grimaced at the thought of just how much mischief they could get up to. Sooner or later, she hoped, the novelty would wear off and they’d abandon Eric and go looking for Zachariah, thus finding their own escape from the traps they’d laid for themselves in this life.
Case rapped on her door and pushed it open. “You sure you don’t want to take any of the furniture right now?”
“I’ll come back for it, if you don’t mind.”
“Of course, I don’t mind. You more than won the bet,” he said, coming into the room. “I almost had a heart attack when that lightning shot out of you.”
“You sure it wasn’t a panic attack you felt coming on?” she asked, but without much enthusiasm. They still hadn’t consummated their relationship, although she tried to tell herself that was for lack of time, energy, and appropriate mood. One didn’t go for the gusto immediately after packing a friend off to the ER, after all.
But still, there’d been time this morning. In her mind was the niggling worry that she’d convinced Case a little too well of her abilities, and he didn’t want to sleep with someone who blasted holes in his house with spiritual energy. Sensing ghosts was a harmless parlor trick in comparison.
“I thought you might like to see this,” he said, and handed her a piece of paper.
It was a page from the photocopies of the Seattle Times. “What did you find?”
“Center column, halfway down.”
“It’s Jacob Smithson’s obituary,” Megan said. “From late August.”
“He died of a ‘nervous collapse.’”
“Guilt?” Megan wondered.
“Or tormented to death by his daughters. I feel for the guy. What a pair! He probably drank himself to death.”
Case sat down beside her as she read. Her gaze skimmed over the bare facts of Jacob’s business life, his upbringing in New York, his standing in the community. The part she cared about was at the end:
Mr. Smithson is survived by his daughters, Isabella and Penelope, to whom friends say he was devoted. “It is a tragedy, the ill luck that has befallen that family,” Mrs. Harold Greenway said. “Mrs. Smithson died of childbed fever shortly after Penelope’s birth, and Jacob’s heart was broken. I do not believe he ever recovered from the loss. Mary was such a pretty young thing, so gay and lively. He used to say she was his sunshine against the rain. The only thing that kept him going after her death was those two little girls. He’d have given his life for them, poor dears.”
“The sadness in the master suite,” Megan said, meeting Case’s eyes and feeling tears start in her own. “That was Jacob Smithson, missing his Mary.” Her throat tightened against the thought of it; a thought she wouldn’t have completely understood before meeting Case and being able to imagine losing him. It was a different kind of loss from losing a parent.
Case took the paper from her and set it aside, then took her hand in his own. “Do you still want to take his bed?”
She shook her head. “It belongs here.”
“You’re leaving me with his sorrows?”
She smiled. “The bed needn’t be sorrowful forever. There are simple ways to be rid of that sort of haunting.”
“Ways like?”
“Recording happy times over it, until the sadness has no choice but to fade away. There’s no point in allowing mourning to continue forever.”
“How am I going to record happy times, alone in this gutted house?” he asked. “Do you remember during the first séance, my mother spoke to you?”
Megan nodded. “She said, ‘You shouldn’t have tried to fix it.’”
“I always pretended to myself that it was the house that made her sad. As a child, I told myself that if I could fix it, she’d be happy.” He squeezed her hand and stared out the window. When he spoke again, it seemed as much to himself as to her, and she wondered if it was hard for him to share things close to his heart.
“She didn’t care about the holes in the walls,” he said, “Or the dripping faucets. None of that would have mattered, if only she’d been sure of my
father’s love. But she wasn’t, and each flaw in the house became a reminder that he didn’t care enough about her—about either of us—to provide a comfortable home.” He glanced at her, a sad smile on his lips. “I knew that, even as a child. So I’ve been wondering why my mother would cross the Great Divide to tell me something I already know. ‘You shouldn’t have tried to fix it.’ That wasn’t news to me.
“Only, in some ways, maybe it was. Look at this house,” he said, gesturing around him. “Why on earth would I take on a job like this and plan to start my future family here, if not to fix it for once and for all? Maybe I really did buy this house as therapy.” He snorted. “Apparently, I signed up for the fifteen-year psychoanalytic approach.”
“Is it working?”
“Hell if I know. And maybe that was part of my mother’s message: not to keep fixing a house in hopes that it will fix my life. Maybe I need to let things go.”
“Are you thinking of selling the house?” Megan asked in surprise.
“I don’t want to put my personal life on hold, waiting for it to be finished. What do you think? Is it too awful a place for a woman to come and live in, before it’s completely finished? If there was a proper kitchen, a living room, a bedroom that was more than bare walls and floor, would it be unbearable?”
“It depends on the woman,” Megan said carefully, her heart beginning to pound as she hoped he would say the words that were in her own heart. “If she knew she was loved and cared for, I don’t think she’d mind one bit about the house.”
Case met her eyes. “Do you think you ever might be willing to live here, if you knew you were loved?”
Megan felt tears sting her eyes. “If I knew I was loved, yes.”
He touched her face, as if touching a fragile piece of glass, his fingers betraying the slightest tremble. “You would be happy?”
“Yes. If I knew I was loved, with all my flaws and…oddness.”
He pulled her into his arms. “Then know that you are,” he whispered against her ear. His hand at the back of her head, he pressed a kiss deep into the crook of her neck, then quickly moved to her mouth, finding her lips and taking them with his own.