Dead People

by Edie Ramer

  Erin shook her head. “I told her bad things already happened to me.”

  Cassie knelt, her face level with Erin’s, her mouth parting, showing Erin her vulnerability. A curious mix of softness and hardness.

  “I promise to get the ghost out of this house as soon as I can.”

  For the first time, Luke saw Erin flash a smile. Like the sun coming out from behind a storm cloud.

  For an instant he couldn’t breathe, his throat blocked by an eight-ball sized obstruction.

  “I’ll start tomorrow.” Cassie’s honeyed voice flowed over him. “Is that okay with you?”

  Erin nodded. “Yes.”

  Cassie straightened, smiled at Erin, then brushed her gaze over him like he was dog shit. With a curt nod at him, she marched out of the room.

  “I’m glad she came,” Erin said.

  The obstruction in Luke’s throat cleared, and he breathed deeply. If Erin liked her, he wouldn’t kick her out on her nicely rounded ass. But he’d keep an eye on her. Two eyes.

  He’d learned the hard way that it was smart to be wary. To look for the knife aiming for his back.

  Betrayal was an everyday part of the life he’d chosen. When you swam with sharks, you watched out for their teeth.

  But if anyone tried to attack Erin, they’d have to swim through him first.

  Chapter Three

  “Turn down this job,” Joe said. “I’m getting a bad feeling.”

  “Since when did you admit to getting feelings?” Rain drummed against the roof of the car and Cassie set the front defogger on high. Cool air rushed up at her face as she navigated the snaking driveway. A crack of thunder made her jerk, and a flash of lightning lit up the driveway in time for her to avoid a pothole.

  “Since seeing the way Luke Rivers looked at you.”

  “He didn’t like me, he made that clear.” Cassie reached the end of the driveway and she felt a sense of lightness at leaving the old house, as if she’d been holding her breath and finally sucked in pure oxygen.

  “Maybe he didn’t like you, but he looked at you.”

  And I looked back, Cassie thought, steering the car onto the highway. One of the perks of being alive. Checking out good looking men and eating chocolate.

  “So? A rat can look at a queen.”

  “You’re smiling. You liked it.”

  “Don’t interrogate me.” Cassie glanced at her sulking passenger.

  “I’m not only a cop, I’m a man too.”

  You were a man, she thought, facing the road again, because she didn’t want her obituary to read “Killed while driving stupidly in the rain.” Nor did she want Joe to read her expression. A bullet to his heart had stolen his life, not his ego.

  Headlights sped toward them on the other side of the highway. Their car was catching up to a semi, the red rear lights flickering through the barrage of rain, the upper reflectors barely visible.

  “Forget Luke Rivers,” she said. “He’s not important.”

  “It’s you that’s important,” Joe said.

  A glow kindled in Cassie’s chest. “In this case, it’s the dead person that’s important.”

  “I wonder what Rivers will say when you tell him the reason she’s sticking around on earth.”

  “He won’t believe me. He doesn’t believe I talk to dead people. I could see it in his face.”

  “He doesn’t want to believe. There’s a difference.”

  “He’s ready to pay on the off chance that he’s wrong. As long as his check cashes, that’s okay with me.” But despite her words, the glow inside her flickered out, leaving a hollow coldness.

  The truck slowed and she eased her foot from the gas pedal to avoid a backsplash of filthy water. The car’s headlights caught a sign on the side of the road, “Welcome to Bliss.” She made a face. More like “Welcome to Misery.”

  “Thata girl,” Joe said. “You’ve got pluck.”

  She passed a McDonald’s and pulled into the Home Away From Home motel. Chickens had pluck, she thought. And look how they ended up.

  Chicken McNuggets.

  “I’ll tell him tomorrow.” Then she’d sit back and watch the feathers fly.

  ***

  Tall bookshelves lined the walls of the library, but Luke focused his attention on the lost looking girl curled in a brown leather reading chair, pretending he was invisible. He pulled a matching chair closer to Erin. She hunched her shoulders, not peering up from her book.

  Luke put his hands on his knees, leaning forward, searching his mind for something to say to her. He wondered when he’d feel comfortable with her, or she with him. She was tall for her age—she got that from her mother. But she had his blue eyes instead of Vanessa’s brown eyes. And Erin’s long, slim fingers were his too.

  “I can teach you how to play guitar.”

  “I want to sing like my mom,” she said, still looking down.

  “Your mother has a voice like velvet.”

  Erin lifted her sapphire gaze, her brows slashing down over them. “Mom used to sing with me sometimes.”

  “I’ll get you singing lessons.”

  “Put me back with my mom, and she’ll teach me.”

  Luke’s fingers tightened on his knees. He wanted to sock someone, but had no place to go with the raw emotion burning in his gut.

  “I can’t do that. The judge gave me custody because your mother wasn’t taking care of you.”

  “She was too!” Erin glared at him. “Don’t talk bad about my mother.”

  Luke sucked in a breath that filled his lungs. The therapist had been dead on about Erin still seeing Vanessa as her primary caregiver, even after finding Vanessa nude and comatose on the kitchen floor ten weeks ago, inches from death.

  Just another sunny Southern California morning.

  “How was school today?” he asked, his voice stiff. The most boring question in the world. He, who’d been the cool guy as long as he could remember, was officially a parent.

  She gazed down at the book again, curling her feet under her, her posture closing him out. “Okay.”

  He looked at her while the clock on the library desk ticked away a moment of his life. The ticking turned into a snatch of song. “The happiest moments of my life were when you said you wouldn’t be my wife.”

  His fingertips itched for his guitar strings, the music calling to him. He stood. It wasn’t as if Erin wanted to talk to him. She’d be happy when he left.

  Two steps from the door, he stopped and turned around. Though Erin didn’t look up, he felt her stillness. She knew he was standing there, watching her.

  “When I found out you were my daughter—” A rush of rage shook his body, squeezing his vocal chords, sucking the breath out of his lungs.

  Damn Vanessa and Danny for their lies, for keeping him from Erin, for the theft of ten years together.

  Anger tore at the insides of his chest, cold and ugly. He’d never have those years back, never see her first steps, never hear her first words.

  Erin lifted her gaze, her eyes wide and apprehensive, as if sensing his anger, wondering what he was going to do.

  Fuck. He was scaring her. Fuck, fuck, fuck. “I swore I’d make you happy.” His voice scratched, sounding like he’d chugged a mug filled with shards of glass. “Just tell me what to do.”

  She raised her chin, her stubborn mouth the same one he saw in the mirror every day. “Let me go home to my mom.”

  “Anything but that.”

  “Then let me go to Danny. If he hadn’t been in stupid Africa, he would’ve taken care of me.”

  Fury at his former band mate roared inside him. Luke didn’t give a fuck that Danny had been screwing Vanessa while he was married to her. By that time, he’d realized what a bad choice he’d made. But to claim Luke’s daughter, then walk away when Vanessa reeled out of control...and to never call Luke and say, “Hey, Erin’s not my daughter after all. She’s yours.”

  For that, Luke wanted to see Danny in hell. He wanted Danny to lose
everything he and Vanessa cared about—fame, adulation, money. But mostly, Luke wanted to put his hands around Danny’s thick neck and squeeze and squeeze and—

  A hiss pierced his wall of rage. He blinked, coming back to the present, to the library, to Erin. She was staring at him, sitting too stiff and too still, her skin pulled tight over her cheekbones, fear dilating her pupils.

  He stepped back, and the roar inside his mind lowered to a whisper. “I’m taking care of you from now on,” he said, his voice like sandpaper. “I’ll be there for you. Danny isn’t your father. I am.”

  Her lower lip trembled. “Then I don’t want anything.”

  Without a word, he snapped around and strode out of the library.

  A cold draft chilled him in the hall. The ghost?

  “You were watching us.” His voice came out in a harsh whisper and every word punched the air. “Did you enjoy your eavesdropping? Do you have any words of advice? Bring ‘em on.”

  Silence answered him, and he crossed to the stairway, intent on going to his studio and working on his music, the only thing that fulfilled him. Women and wine were fine, but there was nothing as good as putting together words and music, creating a song from air and a few brain cells. Nothing. Not sex, not fame, not feel-good drugs. And sure the hell not love.

  Chapter Four

  Erin waited until Luke was in the hall, and then looked at the phone on the library table for a long moment, her palm itching to lift it and call her mom. But he would see it on the phone bill, and if he complained to the police, her mom would go to jail and it would be her fault.

  She got up instead and folded down a page of the book, a good one about kids abducted by aliens and given super powers. She’d finish reading it upstairs, where no one would interrupt her. Where he wouldn’t come and talk to her.

  She didn’t know why he bothered. He didn’t do it well, not like Danny who bounded in with a smile and a present, even after he and her mom broke up. Her dad was the anti-Danny.

  In the hall, she listened for her dad but didn’t hear him. Dad. It still felt weird calling him that. When she was about three, she asked her mom if Danny was her dad, and Vanessa said no, that her real father never wanted her.

  A tightness pinched Erin’s chest like two giant fingers. She ran up the stairs to her room. In her puke yellow room with the stupid white furniture, she hurried to her stupid white desk with painted on gold stars. Yuck. A little girl’s room.

  At least the laptop was a big girl’s.

  The pinching stopped, her breathing easier. She dropped the book on the desktop, then sat and opened her laptop, going straight to her email. Fifty-one messages waited for her.

  The “From” name on every one was the same.

  Vantastic.

  She scrolled down. Vantastic, Vantastic, Vantastic, Vantastic, Vantastic...

  Tears nuked the back of Erin’s eyes. Her dad wasn’t so smart, never checking her email. If her throat didn’t hurt from looking at all the emails, she’d laugh.

  She clicked open the first message. Call me, baby. I need you. Love, Mom.

  A tear straggled down Erin’s cheek, though she tried to blink it back. She heard her mom’s voice in her head, what she’d said the day after Erin’s tenth birthday, after she remembered she’d missed it.

  You know I love you, baby. Good thing you’re so strong. Cuz I’m weak and need you to take care of me. Without you, I don’t know what I’d do.

  Erin hit reply.

  Mom, I want to come back to you, but he won’t let me. Can you come and see me?

  She backspaced, deleting the last line. Her mom couldn’t get on a plane without drugs, or she’d have a panic attack. And if she took drugs, she’d get arrested again, and this time she’d go to jail. Anyway, because her mom was on probation, Erin was pretty sure her mom couldn’t leave California without being arrested, although she didn’t know this for sure.

  I hate it here. The other kids all look at me like I’m a freak. They dress funny and talk funny. I want to come home. With you.

  I love you.

  Erin

  She sent the message and clicked on her mom’s next email. This one was more wordy, as if the first was practice.

  Baby Erin. Your dad took you away cuz he’s mean and wants to hurt me. If you love him, I won’t want to live.

  Without you, I’m lost. I miss you like crazy. I cried myself to sleep last night, missing you.

  My love for you is as big as an elephant.

  Mom

  Erin hit reply.

  If you go back to rehab and stay this time until they say you’re all cured, maybe you can get custody of me. Will you do it, Mom?

  I love you.

  Erin

  She scrunched her forehead so hard it hurt. Should she say this?

  She clicked send.

  Then, one by one, she went through the remaining forty-nine emails. If she missed replying to one, her mother would cry until she threw up whatever was inside of her, even if it was just wine. And it would all be Erin’s fault.

  Again.

  Chapter Five

  Luke stood in the doorway, a strap slung around his neck, cradling a shiny blue guitar against his chest like it was a baby. From his expression Cassie guessed he’d rather let in a rampaging bull than have her size sevens cross his threshold. A bad trade for Joe, who’d sung “Off to work we go” on the drive over, never once on key.

  Cassie breathed in the crisp air and gripped her black sweater over her long-sleeved purple top. “Obviously you’re not a morning person.”

  “Neither is the ghost.” He opened the door wider. “She sleeps in.”

  “Dead people don’t sleep.” She stepped past him.

  “How do you know?”

  The door shut behind her and she turned to see his skeptical expression. “I’ve been observing them for years.”

  “You’re so old.” His smile mocked her, as if he saw through her impersonal demeanor to the real person underneath, the one who bit back sarcastic comments so often she was amazed her tongue didn’t have permanent teeth marks.

  “I’m thirty-four.”

  “I’m thirty-nine.” He frowned as soon as he said it, and she felt her own forehead crease. Their exchange of ages was dangerously close to something she never did, something he didn’t seem an expert at either.

  Flirting.

  Footsteps tapped behind her, and she turned, grateful for the interruption, even by a bouncy blonde at least seven inches taller than her.

  “I’m Tricia,” the young woman said, her voice a cheerful chirp. “The housekeeper. We met last night. Luke thought I might give you the tour of the house.”

  An image flashed into Cassie’s mind, a dewy-skinned blonde with a blinding white smile behind the motel registration desk. “You work at the motel?”

  “I work at a lot of things.” Wistfulness shadowed Tricia’s blue-green eyes but her smile never dimmed. “I finished classes at the two-year university extension and I’m saving money for my bachelor’s degree. I’m hoping to go to Madison next year.”

  “I’m sure you’ll make it. You have plenty of time.”

  “I’m twenty-two!”

  Cassie’s gaze shifted to Luke, and they shared an almost smile.

  “It’s so exciting that you talk to ghosts,” Tricia said, reclaiming Cassie’s attention. “I haven’t seen the ghost, but it sounds like Mrs. Shay. Before she died, my mom was her housekeeper. She worked here full-time, I’m just part-time.”

  Tricia didn’t look like Cassie’s idea of a housekeeper—no full-length black dress, no set of keys dangling from her waist, no bun on the back of her head.

  “Luke mentioned that you knew the former owner.” Cassie made a mental note to update her reading material. “What was she like?”

  Tricia’s up-tilted nose wrinkled. “Not nice.”

  “It appears death doesn’t change character.” Luke slashed his fingertips over his guitar strings, discordant notes smashi
ng the air.

  “I’m sure yours will be lovely,” Cassie said.

  He snorted a laugh. “Not a bad song title.” He plucked the strings this time, the chords twanging. “‘Your Soul is Lovely, but Your Feet Still Stink.’”

  “Is that what you do? Write songs?”

  “Oh my God!” Tricia stared at her as if she’d grown fur and sprouted fangs. “You don’t know who he is? Luke Rivers is one of the most famous songwriters ever.”

  “Really? Is Sir Paul looking over his shoulder?”

  Luke snorted another laugh.

  “Luke’s one of the Dirty Secrets’ founders.” Tricia’s gaze idolized Luke. “They haven’t had a hit since he left. All the best bands want his songs.”

  Cassie glanced at him below her lashes. She’d met famous people before—a senator, an opera singer, a movie star. So what if they were all dead? “Should I bow or genuflect?”

  “Just so you don’t sing for me.”

  “If I do, it could save you money. My first note might scare the ghost right into heaven.” When he flashed a grin, a glow warmed her in all the wrong places.

  She nodded to Tricia. “I’m ready for that tour.”

  “Can I get you anything before we go?” Tricia turned to Luke, her face level with his. Despite the disparity of their ages, they looked like two sides of the same moon. He was rough-edged, she was peach-smooth. He was dark, she was golden. He radiated masculinity, she exuded femininity. But their eyes...hers worshipped. His were unreadable.

  Cassie wanted to tell Tricia she could get hurt, wanting something so badly. But she held back the unasked for advice. She healed souls, not hearts.

  “I’m good,” he said, and Cassie stopped herself from rolling her eyes. One look at Luke Rivers yesterday, and she’d known he was anything but good.

  “I’ll need to talk to you after the tour,” she said. He gazed at her through hooded eyes, and she shifted her feet.

  Ridiculous to feel a sudden onset of nerves. What was he going to do? Eat her?

  An image popped into her mind. Her sitting on a chair with her legs open. Him kneeling between her legs... No, no, no!

  She must be ovulating. Her body taking one whiff of his pheromones and lighting up like a stripper strung with Christmas lights, saying, Prime sperm nearby. Give me some of that good stuff.