by P. C. Cast
She was blonde and beautiful and had a sparkle that even death couldn’t dim.
She called him Kent. No one called him Kent.
Raef closed his eyes, held the light in his mind and Aubrey in his heart and, just as he did at a murder scene, began to feel around with his Gift…seeking…questing…searching.... Only this time he wasn’t trying to Track rage and fear and pain. This time he was questing after a sparkling blonde whose laughter reminded him of champagne.
When he actually found her it jolted him with surprise. Murder victims he’d Tracked before had led him to their killers with dark, smoking trails—or rivers of pain and hatred like oil slicks. Aubrey’s trail was a shimmering thread of joy that flickered bright and then dim. Why? he wondered. What’s going on with her? Then he recognized the dimming—he’d seen it before; it was worry. Raef reached with his Gift to grab on and Track the illusive, glittering thread, but instead of Tracking he felt an already familiar sensation pass over his skin, and her voice, somewhere between annoyed and surprised, sounded in the air around him.
“Kent, what are you doing?”
He opened his eyes. Aubrey had materialized in front of him, between the couch and the old steamer trunk he used as a coffee table. It had gotten dark while he’d been reading, and the living room was dim—the only real light cast by the vanilla candle. The lack of light agreed with Aubrey. She looked almost substantial, and Raef noticed she was wearing only a slip of a dress, one of those silk things that laced up the front and hugged women’s curves so well. And Aubrey had some serious curves to hug.
The joy that had been dimmed by worry sparkled alight as Aubrey cocked her head to the side, studied him and then began to laugh. Her laughter skittered across his skin, raising the hair on his forearms, and calling alive sensations that had been dead within him a lot longer than Aubrey had been.
“What?” he said, scrubbing a hand roughly across a forearm. “Why are you laughing?”
“’Cause I just realized what you’re doing.”
She grinned, but didn’t continue until he prodded, “And what do you think I’m doing?”
“It’s not think, Kent. It’s know. I know you’re checking me out.”
Raef frowned, trying to ignore the crackle of humor that lifted around her and washed against him. “That’s not what I was doing before you showed up, and why does that make you laugh?”
“Because it means your love life is even deader than me.” She giggled.
“That’s not funny,” Raef said. “And before you showed up I was trying to Tr—”
“No!” For a moment she sounded frantic, and the humor that had been bubbling around him faded. Then, she reached up and took hold of one of the diaphanous laces that held the front of her dress together. Aubrey smiled teasingly at him. “No, let’s not go there. If we go there, then I’ll have to leave, and neither of us wants that. How about we go here instead.” With one deft pull, she undid the tie and the lacing fell open, exposing her naked flesh.
“You’re naked!” Raef blurted, and then mentally smacked himself. Were boobs all it really took to make me forget she’s dead?
“No, I’m naked under this.” Aubrey slowly ran her hands down the front of the silk dress, lingering over her breasts until her nipples began to harden. She gasped in pleasure. “Wow—” her voice was a breathy whisper “—I feel amazing.” Still touching herself, Aubrey half walked, half floated closer to him. “You can feel me, Kent. I know you can.”
She was only an arm’s length from him, and she was so fucking sexy there in the candlelight, all skin and lush curves and nipples that were tight and ripe and ready for his tongue. Raef reached for her, and felt a shock and a chill when his hand met with nothing but air.
Her laugher bubbled around them. “Not like that, silly! Feel me in there.” Aubrey took one hand from her body, leaned forward and pressed her hand against his chest, over his heart.
He didn’t feel the pressure from her hand. He didn’t feel anything except her laughter and his raging hard-on. “I don’t feel shit! You’re a ghost. I don’t know what the fuck I’m doing.”
“I’ve made you feel before. I can do it again, and it’s important that you do. It’s the only way we can move forward. The only way we can fix what’s wrong.” She was standing right before him. Her hands went to one of the loosened laces of her dress. She tugged again, this time harder, and the silk slid through, opening the dress completely. With a teasing smile she shrugged her shoulders and it slid from her body to pool in a semisubstantial puddle at her feet.
“Oh, God. You are so damn beautiful,” Raef couldn’t stop himself from saying.
“Then feel me, Kent. Let go of all of that baggage you have because of the past, and allow yourself to feel pleasure again.” Aubrey caressed her breasts. Then slowly, she moved one hand down her body, over the curve of her belly, and slid her fingers under the triangle of blond curls between her legs.
Raef couldn’t take his gaze from her. His body was aching in hot, hard response. Automatically, he rubbed his hand over his jeans and down the long length of his swollen cock.
“Yes! Let me see you. Let me watch you.”
“Then let me feel you!”
“Kent, baby, you can do that yourself. Just let it happen. Let go of the past and be willing to feel pleasure in the present.”
“Yeah, okay. Anything,” he said. “I let go of all that crap.”
“Why? Tell me why,” Aubrey whispered.
“Because I want to feel pleasure. With you!” He almost shouted the words.
As soon as he’d spoken it hit him—her emotions. He’d felt her laughter before. He’d even felt her joy. But what he was feeling now sliced through him like a sword: joy, laughter, lust, desire, pleasure, all wrapped together. The emotions entwined and implanted within him. Raef ripped open the front of his jeans and took his cock in his hand, stroking himself as he watched her blue eyes widen.
“You are incredible!” Aubrey said. “And you do feel me.”
“I do feel you,” he gasped. “I feel what you do to yourself. I feel what you do to me.”
“Then feel this....” Aubrey’s gaze never left his as her fingers moved more quickly over herself. Raef was staring into her eyes as they both came to orgasm—he was still staring at her when she whispered, “This makes you closer to me, and the closer to me you get, the closer you’ll be to finding him. But you can’t do it through negative emotions. You have to Track him through the opposite—joy and pleasure, happiness and hope. He can’t fight that, and he won’t be able to stop you from—”
This time the soul thief didn’t rip Aubrey in half when he jerked her back to him. This time he made her explode into little pieces, so that her scream was cut off like a snuffed candle, leaving Raef drained, confused and alone in the darkness without her.
CHAPTER SEVEN
“I just jerked off with a ghost. I am seriously fucked up.”
Raef stared at the ceiling, lifted the bottle of single-malt Scotch he’d retrieved from the kitchen and took several long drinks. He meant to go back to reading the soul-retrieval stuff. Instead, he stared at nothing and thought about Aubrey. “She staged the whole thing,” he mused aloud between gulps of Scotch. “She has to be guiding me. She’s probably getting info from her connection with Lauren. And hell, she’s the one trapped. She’s gotta have something figured out about what would get her fr
ee. She obviously knows I can’t Track this guy through negative emotions. He has them blocked. But he’s not gonna pay attention to positive emotions because guys like him—and me—aren’t good at the softer side of emotions. We’re not used to ’em.”
He blew out a long breath. How long had it been since he’d had sex, anyway? “More than a year since my relationship with Raven had crashed and burned. Christ, her name had been Raven. What the fuck had I expected?” He shook his head at his own stupidity, and at online dating in general, and realized the room was spinning a little around him.
Raef snorted and took another drink of Scotch. By now he hardly felt the burn. “Aubrey’s good at positive emotions. Hell, Aubrey’s good at a lot of things.” He stared at the ceiling until his eyes blurred, blinked and finally closed.
Later he would remember that his last thought that night wasn’t about Aubrey’s hair or her boobs or how hard she’d made him or the way she touched herself—his last thoughts had been about her laughter and how the sound and feel of it had been better than all of the sex stuff…and the sex stuff had been really good.
* * *
THE BANGING ON RAEF’S front door woke him. It was loud and jarring, and only slightly less obnoxious than the pounding pain in his head. “Yeah, Jesus, yeah, I’m coming.” He glanced at the clock before wrenching open the door—8:30 a.m.? Damn, he was going to be late for work. Which meant he should have opened the door with a thank-you-for-being-my-alarm-clock instead of a snarl, but life just wasn’t fair. “What the hell do you—” His words broke off when he saw Lauren’s raised brows.
“I’m a morning person. I figured you’d be on your way out the door for work. The cab dropped me off ’cause I thought I’d go with you,” she said unapologetically, though she did raise her hands, which were holding two tall cups of QT coffee. “I come bearing offerings.”
He opened the door, took one of the coffees, stepped back and, with a grunt, gestured for her to come in.
She walked past, giving him a Look. “You’re not ready to go to work.”
“No kidding.” His voice sounded like there was gravel in his throat.
“You look bad. Real bad,” she said.
“Scotch. A lot of it,” he said.
She shuddered. “I did that once. Never again.”
“I’m a slow learner,” he said. “I got some Merritt’s doughnuts in the kitchen. They’re only two days old so they’re not too much like bricks. Make yourself at home while I’m in the shower.” He disappeared into the bathroom, closed the door, and as memories of the night before flooded his mind, Raef thought seriously about using the razor to slit his wrists. “Why can’t I be one of those drunks who don’t remember anything?” Raef asked his rough-looking reflection in the vanity mirror. He shook his head. Slightly. It still hurt like hell. “You had sex with a ghost, and that ghost’s twin sister is in your kitchen.” He sighed and started to lather up his face, muttering, “Might as well be a freshly shaven, clean perv.”
When he got out of the shower and opened the door to the hall, Raef was confronted by two things—the smell of bacon and eggs, and Lauren. She had Shamanic Retrieval open in her hand and was carrying it back to the kitchen. Looking up from its pages she stopped to stare at him.
Color bloomed in her cheeks.
Raef tightened the towel that was around his waist, feeling even more naked than he was—and he was pretty damn naked.
“I made breakfast,” she said, before turning away and hurrying the rest of the way to the kitchen.
“I’m hungover,” he called, hurrying the rest of the way to the bedroom.
“I know. It’s good for you, though. Trust me. I was a biology major in college,” she called in return.
Raef pulled on jeans and an old air-force sweatshirt. As he walked into the kitchen he told his phone, “Call work.” Feeling oddly like an obedient child, he sat at the breakfast-nook table, where Lauren had already placed a full plate of eggs, bacon and toast—along with a cup of fresh coffee and a shot of what smelled and looked suspiciously like single-malt Scotch. He raised a brow at her as he spoke. “Preston, reschedule my appointments for today. I’m still on the case I took yesterday and I’ll be working in the field. Thank you.” Raef hit the end-call button, forked up some eggs and bacon, and said to Lauren, “What does being a biology major in college have to do with hangovers?”
She sat across from him with her own plate of breakfast. “Simple. Hangovers are biological. Food helps. So does hair of the dog. Actually, I’m not sure if the hair-of-the-dog part is biological or psychological, but it works.”
“Yeah, this isn’t my first rodeo. I’m just surprised there was any Scotch left in that bottle.” He gulped the shot and grimaced, reaching for the coffee.
“Well, there was barely a whole shot left. I’m assuming the bottle was mostly full when you started?”
“Yep,” he said through bites of eggs and bacon that were really tasting damn good.
“Rough night?”
He swallowed and avoided her eyes. “Yeah.”
“Okay, well, sorry about your rough night, and like I said yesterday, I’m not usually this bitchy, but hungover or not we have work to do. Aubrey should be able to manifest again by now, so as soon as we’re done eating I’ll focus my thoughts and she should—”
“Oh, go ahead and eat. I don’t mind watching. I’m finding out that I kinda like it.”
Aubrey’s giggle washed around them as she materialized and Raef almost choked on a mouthful of eggs.
“Good morning, sis. Morning, Kent.”
“Hey, Aub, you look good. All bright and happy,” Lauren said.
“I had a verrrry interesting night.”
The smile she sent Raef was brilliant and sparkling, and seemed to catch him in a spotlight. He felt it. He actually felt her happiness. It was like an endless Saturday, or having box seats at the World Series, or knowing you’re going to have lots of sex. Lots of really good sex.
“Oh. My. God. You two did it. I don’t know how it’s possible, but you two did it last night,” Lauren said, glaring from Raef to her sister.
“How the hell could you know that? You’re a Norm! You’re not psychic.” Raef threw up his hands in exasperation.
Aubrey giggled some more, causing Raef’s skin to prickle. “She knows because Lauren and I have always been connected. I think you’d call it our own interpersonal psychic link, which means you really do have to stop lumping us with the Norms.”
“Which also means you two did do it last night.”
“What we did was create pleasure, and pleasure is definitely a positive emotion. Right, Kent?” She grinned at Kent.
“Doesn’t feel like it right now,” he mumbled.
“Cheer up. It’s not like she got you pregnant,” Lauren said. Then raised her brow and, sounding so much like her mother that Raef even recognized it, announced, “You didn’t masturbate, did you, Aubrey Lynn Wilcox? You know what I told you about that.” And then Lauren Wilcox dissolved into giggles that included a very unladylike snort.
Aubrey laughed with her sister, full-throated, filling the breakfast nook with joy that washed through Raef. He couldn’t help it. He couldn’t stop it. Raef threw back his head and laughed along with the ghost and her twin sister. Happy, he thought. I’m happy around her—around them. And I haven’t been happy in a very long time.
“That’s right, Kent. Feel it. Feel it with
me. Pleasure and humor, joy and happiness. Feel them and keep them close to you, like shields. Because when you stop looking at the forest and find the tree, you’ll only get one piece of the puzzle. He has the rest of the pieces hidden where only you can find them when you follow me. You won’t be able to use your Gift there, but you can use—”
“No, Aubrey! Don’t!” Raef shouted, and came to his feet so fast the chair toppled over behind him. But he was too late. Aubrey’s semitransparent body had already been ripped away.
“Oh, no!” Lauren gagged. Holding her hand over her mouth she staggered to the kitchen sink and puked up eggs and bacon and coffee.
“Here.” Raef handed her a paper towel. “Just breathe.”
She took the paper towel with a hand that trembled and wiped her mouth. Raef went to the fridge and grabbed a can of Sprite, popped the top and held it out for her. “This’ll help. Rinse your mouth and then sip it.”
Lauren didn’t take the can. She just stood at the sink, wiping her mouth over and over again, staring blankly out the kitchen window to Raef’s backyard.
“Lauren?”
She didn’t even blink. He jerked the paper towel from her hands, threw it into the sink and then took her shoulders into his hands, turning her to face him.
“All right. That’s enough. Come back now.”
She stared straight ahead at his collarbone. He hadn’t realized until then how short she was—petite, really. And those sharp blue-gray eyes of hers were still vacant and glazed. Raef gave her shoulders a shake. Not too rough, but hard enough it should bring her attention back to her body. He deepened his voice and took all the emotion out of it. “I said that’s enough. Get back here, Lauren!”
Like throwing a switch, the light came into her eyes. Lauren blinked and looked up at him. “Raef? What—” Her whole body started to tremble and, feeling totally in over his head, he did the only thing he could think to do—he pulled her into a hug.