Dead People

by Edie Ramer

  He dropped to the floor, uncaring that his knees slammed into the hard wood. Cassie pushed off him. Gasping, she stumbled to get her balance.

  “Oh God,” Tricia said. “You’re bleeding.”

  “Where?” Cassie stepped back to him. Still bent over the floor, he could see her sensible black shoes stop a foot from his knees. “I don’t see any blood? Are you all right?”

  He rose to his feet, taking too long to do it. His heart thumped against his chest wall in strong beats. “You’re the one bleeding.”

  She shook her head.

  Tricia gripped Cassie’s wrist and lifted her arm. “See.”

  Cassie gazed at her hand and her complexion tinged with gray.

  “That must’ve been the vase. I think the bleeding stopped. It hardly hurts.”

  “Tomorrow it will hurt something awful,” Tricia said. “The second day is when it gets really bad.”

  The bitter note in Tricia’s voice drew Luke’s attention. Her mouth was pinched, and the shadowed look in her eyes made him think even she had a few ghosts of her own.

  “That never happened before,” Cassie said. “That’s one pissed off ghost.”

  Tricia shuddered. “That was so scary. I was so afraid.” She gazed at Luke, and her face softened with a worship he didn’t deserve and didn’t want. “It was so brave of you to run in and save Cassie. You’re a hero! I feel so much better that you’re both out here and the door is firmly closed.”

  Cassie made a movement, and Luke guessed what she was going to say. “Tricia, you know how dead people fly through walls in cartoons? I hate to say this, but they do that in real life too.”

  Tricia squeaked, her eyes growing wide.

  “I’m afraid so.” Cassie didn’t sound or look afraid. She gave a slight shrug and brought up her hand to brush her hair back.

  And that’s when he saw her hand was trembling.

  Chapter Nine

  “Isabel can be in the hall any second.” Cassie saw Luke’s gaze on her hand. She dropped it to her side, clenching her fingers to stop the shaking.

  While it was happening, she’d been oddly calm, concentrating on soothing Isabel, getting her to listen to reason, not once thinking that she’d be in any real danger.

  But now…looking at the blood… A wave of nausea and dizziness hit her. She closed her mouth and her eyes, her breathing shallow, willing it to go away.

  “We’d better go.” Luke grasped her upper arm, his grip oddly gentle.

  She wanted to lean into him, let him shore her up, lend her his strength.

  Wrong. So, so wrong. She should draw away from him. She knew better than to count on anyone for anything. She had to stop this, had to pull herself together.

  “I need to see if you need stitches.”

  “No!” Her knees grew weak but the dizziness and nausea eased. She opened her eyes and stiffened her spine. “A vein was nicked. Nothing serious.”

  “I’ll put on some antiseptic lotion.”

  “I can do that,” Tricia said.

  Cassie started. Focused on Luke, she’d forgotten about Tricia. She shifted to include both Tricia and Luke in her field of vision.

  “It’s my house,” Luke said. “I’m responsible for her injury. You go home for the day.”

  Tricia’s gaze flickered to the family room door, then to the front door. “What about Erin? You’ll want me here when she comes home from school.”

  “I’ll take care of her.” He still clasped Cassie’s upper arm. “Don’t worry, I’ll pay you.”

  “I don’t care about the money.” She gazed at him over the top of Cassie’s head. “I’m concerned about Erin. I won’t let that nasty woman scare me away from doing my job.”

  Something thumped on the family room door, glass cracking. Tricia squealed and jumped.

  “You should be careful what you say about her right now.” Cassie heard the tiredness in her voice. In the silence that followed, she heard something else.

  The walls breathing.

  No, impossible. Walls didn’t breathe. Neither did dead people. But it was Isabel. Cassie knew it. Listening. Waiting. Hating.

  “Go home.” Luke jerked his chin dismissively at Tricia. “Right now.”

  Without another glance at her, he drew Cassie down the hall.

  Tricia followed them, every step making a small clump. “Are you sure you won’t need me?”

  “I’m sure.” Luke tugged Cassie into the bathroom at the end of the hallway, and she felt like a doll, a non-person, as if that was what he thought of her, pulling her here and there.

  She heard Tricia’s footsteps hurry into the kitchen. Luke let go of her arm, and while he turned on the hot water faucet and grabbed a washcloth, she rubbed her arm where he’d held her.

  When she stopped rubbing, she still felt the mark of his fingers on her skin.

  She needed to stop being so damn passive. To act for herself. Let him know she was in control of her own body. She reached for the washcloth. “I can do that.”

  “Shut up. Just shut up.” Though he spoke in the same flat voice he’d used with Tricia, anger emanated from the pores of his skin.

  That’s when she looked at her outstretched hand, at the blood again. This time she noticed it had run down her wrist, onto the purple sleeve of her top, staining it a darker purple.

  Just as before, her knees grew weak. The toilet seat was down, and she plopped onto it. She thought of putting her head between her knees but took deep breaths instead.

  The back door closed, Tricia leaving. Then the faucet turned off, and Luke knelt down and picked up her arm while she slumped, angry at herself for letting a little blood wipe out her fierce independence.

  With short, gentle strokes, he wiped the blood off her hand, so close she heard his breath exhale. He stood and turned to the sink. She looked at the cleaned back of her hand and saw a small cut over a blue vein. A nick. Just as she’d said. The blood already stopped.

  “I told you it wasn’t bad,” she said. “I didn’t even know I had it until you mentioned it.”

  “That was the adrenaline.”

  “You’re an expert?”

  “Bar fights.” He opened the cupboard beneath the sink, then took out a tube of lotion and a box of bandages.

  Leaving the bandages on the edge of the sink, he turned to her, the tube in his hand. “Antiseptic,” he said.

  The bathroom was too small for the two of them. She smelled him, his scent not unpleasant but unsettling, coiling into her gut and even lower.

  Damn him. Damn Isabel. Damn her overactive hormones.

  How could she feel like this? With him? A man who didn’t respect what she did?

  This was the wrong place, wrong time, and it sure the hell was the wrong man.

  “I hate that you rescued me.” She heard her voice, low and harsh, and knew this wasn’t what she should be saying. She should say “Thank you” and leave it like that. That’s what a normal person would do. But normal had blown past her years ago. “It wasn’t necessary. Isabel would’ve calmed down.”

  “How can you be so sure?” He unscrewed the top of the tube. “Your vast knowledge of ghosts?”

  “She was running out of things to throw at me.”

  A corner of his mouth curved up and he slanted an unreadable glance at her. “You’re insane.”

  “I’ve been told that before.” But it still hurt. As if he’d taken a shard of the broken glass from inside the family room and jabbed it into her heart. “No wonder I prefer ghosts to people.”

  “Even Isabel?” He rubbed the ointment over the back of her hand with the tip of his middle finger, taking his time.

  “We’ll get along better next time she sees me,” she said.

  He washed his hands and dried them, and then took a bandage out of the box. Seconds later, he smoothed the bandage over the back of her hand.

  “Isabel won’t get along better with you,” he said, looking intently at her, still holding her hand, “becaus
e you won’t be here. As soon as Erin gets home, I’m leaving.”

  She jerked her hand away. No! Her job wasn’t done.

  He returned to the sink, screwing the top on the tube, his decision final.

  She sucked in a deep breath. Of course, he was leaving. In his shoes, she would take her precious daughter and run too.

  A darkness hovered at the edges of her mind that she knew from experience would go away if she ignored it long enough. She got to her feet and skirted around him until she was in the open doorway. Isabel might swoop in any second, but it didn’t matter anymore.

  “You’re doing the right thing for Erin. I won’t return the advance but I’ll forgive the other half.”

  He put away the ointment and held out his hand. “So this is goodbye.”

  She shook his hand, his palm warm, but when the shake was done, he still held hers, not saying anything, just holding her hand in a loose grip she could easily break.

  Everything slowed. Her breath. Her heartbeat. Time.

  Neither of them moved. If this were a movie, he’d pull her up to him, limb to limb, curve his arm around her back, and kiss her until she mewed like a kitten.

  Or she would do it. She wanted it, after all.

  The tension amplified, pounding between them like fast beating drums.

  Why not? She was leaving. He was leaving. It wasn’t as if she would see him again.

  One kiss. What would it hurt?

  After what she’d gone through, the scare she’d been given, she deserved it.

  And he still held onto her hand. His sapphire gaze never leaving hers.

  Then he blinked and released her hand.

  She headed into the hall. Behind her, she heard his heavy footsteps and she felt him urging her to get the hell out.

  “I should’ve been more careful,” she said, the words babbling out of her mouth even though no one had ever accused her being a babbler and she should leave in a dignified silence. “I knew she might be listening to us talking about her. She’s so deep into denial, she doesn’t want to admit she went before her time.”

  Isabel could be listening right now, but the damage was done already. She’d won, they were leaving. Isabel should be happy.

  “You still believe she was murdered.”

  She stopped at the counter. “Like a kid believes in Santa.”

  “I never believed in Santa. What are you going to do about it?”

  “Nothing.” She grabbed her purse from the counter. “My name isn’t Nancy Drew, and you no longer require my services. If you want to find out who the killer is, you handle it.”

  “I’m not one of the Hardy boys either. And I’m leaving too.”

  She crossed to the stools by the kitchen counter, and he curved his hand over her shoulder.

  “Take the back door. I don’t trust Isabel not to harm you.”

  She glanced over her shoulder at him. “Then you shouldn’t stay here by yourself.”

  “She won’t hurt me.”

  “Because you’re so strong and masculine?”

  “Maybe I am.” He lowered his voice, a crooning sound, and his eyes darkened.

  She stepped away from him. Otherwise she would’ve been tempted to slug him. She grabbed a sweater off the kitchen chair and strode toward the back door.

  He followed her outside. Not like a puppy following her. Like a wolf stalking her.

  The sun’s rays hit the blue waters of the lake, picking up white sparkles that blinded her. She squinted and glanced behind her. Sparkles still dancing in her eyes, she saw him as if he were an image in a Disney movie. Any second Tinker Bell would land on his shoulder and a deer would nuzzle his shoe.

  “I don’t need you to walk me to my car. Goodbye, Luke.”

  Without another word, she walked away. This time he didn’t follow her.

  It was over.

  Chapter Ten

  “Help me, help me. I don’t know why I’m here.”

  Cassie neared the old iron-gated cemetery on the side of the highway, the voices coming through her window, open an inch. Her hands shook and she clenched the steering wheel. She didn’t want to stop, but their pleas pulled at her heart. The confusion, the heartache, the tears. Unbearable, haunting her heart.

  They needed her.

  “Close the goddamn window.”

  Cassie jumped and looked at Joe sitting in the seat next to her, as if he’d been there all along.

  Which he hadn’t.

  “Jesus, they’re loud today.” He gave the cemetery a look of disdain.

  He didn’t deserve it, but Cassie pressed the button to roll up the windows. “Where were you?”

  His head swiveled toward her, his eyebrows raised, his forehead puckered. Then his brows slashed together. “Something happened while I was gone. What?”

  “I was attacked,” she said, making her voice casual as she drove past the cemetery.

  “That bastard. I’ll—”

  “Not Luke.” She chuckled but it came out as small choking sounds, a breath away from turning into sobs, and she stopped. “The ghost. Isabel.”

  “What?” His voice raised. “We never attack people.”

  “Not true. Remember that psycho in Florida, the millionaire’s nephew supposedly mauled to death by a pet tiger?”

  “The one whose sister really killed him.” Joe’s chest puffed up. “I solved that case.”

  “Yes, you did.” Dead for more than half a century, and he still needed his ego stroked. “If I’d been his sister, I would’ve killed him earlier.”

  “I would’ve loaned you my gun. But it wasn’t you he attacked, it was his own relatives. The whole family is loony tunes. And at least you got rid of him. Why did Isabel blow up?”

  “My guess is she overheard me telling Luke someone killed her, and the shock made her crazy. She threw a few things around. It was more of a tantrum than anything else.”

  He made a derisive noise. “Newbies.”

  “She’s been a ghost for three years,” Cassie said.

  “That makes her a three-year-old ghost. She’s like a toddler. You need to go back and talk softly to her, treat her like a child, tell her what you can do for her.”

  They reached the welcome sign for the town of Bliss, between a junkyard and a MacDonald’s.

  She eased her foot off the gas pedal, the car slowing. “I won’t be telling her anything. My services are no longer needed. Luke is very sensibly packing up and leaving.”

  In her periphery, Joe punched one fist into his palm. After three years with him, she no longer shuddered when she didn’t hear the smack of flesh against flesh. “I knew he was a coward.”

  “He’s thinking of his daughter.”

  “Ha! He’s running away with his tail between his legs.”

  She saw the motel with the HOME AWAY FROM HOME sign on her left, and she hit the brakes, hoping the pickup truck riding their rear wouldn’t hit her. “You didn’t tell me where you disappeared to.” She pulled into the parking lot, the pickup missing her by inches.

  “I was haunting old friends,” he said.

  An odd note in his voice made her glance at him sharply. A small smile played on his lips. Facing forward, she turned into the motel driveway and seconds later she pulled up in front of room eleven, her favorite number. She glanced at Joe again, then sucked in her breath in a hiss.

  His teeth glowed green, the rest of him fading, ala the Cheshire Cat.

  “Don’t do that!” She wrenched the key from the ignition, grabbed her purse and reached for the door handle.

  The glow blinked out and he turned solid again. As solid as a dead person could be.

  Three minutes later, she was throwing clothes into the open suitcase. She wanted out of this place. Bliss had turned out to be anything but blissful. There was a hunger inside her for something that hadn’t been there when she came, something she couldn’t name.

  “So where are we going?” Joe lounged on the bed without making a dent in the mattress
or the pillow.

  She sat on the edge of the bed, holding a T-shirt that said DEAD IS A STATE OF MIND, LIVING IS A STATE OF GRATITUDE. Every time she wore it, Joe told her she should white out the G and the R from Gratitude, and it would suit her.

  “Not back to Illinois.” Her father would call her on Thursday morning, the way he always did. He’d ask about her job, and she wouldn’t lie. Why should she? She wasn’t doing anything wrong.

  Then he’d expect her to visit him and her stepmother and stepbrother, and listen to them condescend to her. Usually she could handle them. But not now. Now she felt odd. Breakable. Like a vase left too near the edge of the table.

  “Can you go to Ireland, Joe? I’ve always want to go there.”

  “How does New Jersey sound?” He smiled slightly and his gaze slid downward. “I knew a girl in—” The smile wiped off his face and in one snap of time, he stood in front of her, bending over her bandaged hand. “She hurt you. That’s why you’re so blue.”

  She whipped her hand behind her back. “It’s a scratch from a shard of flying glass. And I’m not blue.”

  He raised his head, looking her in her eyes. “A dark blue. Like the sky in summer, just before the storm hits. What is it? You were falling for him, weren’t you?”

  “That’s ridiculous. I’ve only known him for one day.”

  “Yeah? You think I’ve forgotten how it felt to look at another person and want them? That’s how you felt, didn’t you? You liked him.”

  “Like isn’t the word I’d use.” She let the T-shirt drape over her thighs, and she smoothed her hand over the black lettering. “He didn’t look at me like I was a freak.”

  “Ah ha.” Joe reared up, floating over her like a man in a zero-gravity spacesuit. “I told you he was giving you the once-over. And you’re not a freak. Don’t let those bastards make you feel ashamed.”

  “I won’t. I’ll stay as far away from them as I can.” She put all her determination into a nod. “New Jersey sounds better by the second.” She had good memories of New Jersey. She’d met Joe in Jersey three years ago, in front of a mansion she was de-ghosting. When her gig was over and she drove back to Chicago, he came along for the ride. They’d been together since, though once in a while he disappeared to look up old friends, the few who still barely alive.