“I don’t want to sleep,” I whined like a recalcitrant toddler. Sheesh, that was attractive. I cleared my throat and retrenched. “If I go to sleep now only to wake up in an hour for this ghost hunt, I won’t be able to sleep tonight.”
“Good,” Neil said. And he kissed me.
The cool night air made me shiver and instinctively I moved closer to his heat. He was hungry for me, almost as hungry as I was for him, and it didn’t take either of us long to shed our inhibitions and our clothes and get down to business.
“So that’s rest?” I panted, an untold amount of time later.
“Not from where I was standing.” Neil drew me closer into his side and tugged the sleeping bag up over us. The stars were just starting to come out and some yahoo hollered from the other side of the river.
“I missed this.” The words eased from me, ready to greet the open air and impart all. “Missed you.”
“Could have fooled me.” His tone was light, casual, but I sensed the fathomless well of hurt there. I’d been pushing him away for weeks and even a confident superhero sort like Neil had to feel the sting of constant rejection.
“I wanted to Neil…I just couldn’t.” As clarifications went, it was incredibly half-assed.
“That’s incredibly half-assed,” Neil said. “If you don’t want to tell me, that’s fine.”
I didn’t, but he deserved an explanation. How could I explain something I didn’t fully understand myself? The moon filtered through the trees but there was enough light to see shapes. I held up a hand, the one with the stitches. “What do you see when you look at this?”
“Your hands?” He sounded dubious, like he expected a trap.
“Remember, you promised to be honest.”
He laced his fingers carefully through mine and then brought both hands down to his mouth to press his warm, soft lips to my knuckles. “Do you really want to know?”
Crap, I didn’t like the sound of that. But really, what could he say that I hadn’t already thought myself a hundred times? “Yes.”
“I see my failure.”
“What?” The word came out as a hoarse croak.
He swallowed hard, but didn’t turn away. “You just take it all on, whatever life throws your way. I guess I started to think of you as indestructible.”
I would have snorted if I hadn’t been stunned into petrifaction.
“You’ve always adapted, just put your head down and charged through whatever obstacle was in your path. Not because it was your job, or because someone ordered you to do it, but because you believed it was the right thing to do. And you have to understand, that after the things I’ve seen, it comforted me to know you were so capable, so on top of it all. I never thought anything could touch you.
“A few loose cannons running around a small town don’t seem like much of a threat compared to Al Qaeda. After all, there were police and FBI and all sorts of official people on the case. To me, the stuff going on at home was just…not as big. And you never asked me to help you, and I thought, okay, she knows what she’s doing, I should stand aside and let her do her thing. I’m trained to deal with killers and I did nothing. I left it up to other people, to you. And then you got hurt. Twice, in a matter of months, and now you’re scarred for life.”
Air moved in and out of my lungs, but everything else remained frozen.
“I was so damn scared, Maggie.” A single tear glistened in the moonlight, the overflow of emotion too much for his big body to contain for another second. He shook from head to toe, his hands clenched into tight balls. “What the hell was the point of it all, everything I trained for, everything I’ve been through, if I can’t protect my own wife?”
My mouth had gone dry. I licked my lips but didn’t know what to say. My inner critic didn’t have that problem. Selfish, stupid Maggie, so busy having your own freaking breakdown that you didn’t even notice what was going on with your man.
“I’m sorry,” I said, because I was sorry for so many things. Some were my fault, others weren’t, but that didn’t stop me from regretting the toll it’d taken on both of us.
He rubbed a hand over his face. “So am I.”
Touching him was easy now, easier than finding the right words. I laid my head on his chest and listened to the reassuring beat of his heart.
He lay stiff for a moment, but then relaxed into me with that melting sensation that comes from being completely at ease with another person. We’d fought hard to find that peace with each other, too hard to let it go without an equally vicious struggle.
Earlier, I’d been both surprised and irritated that Neil wanted me to pursue law enforcement. The suggestion had seemed to come out of left field. But knowing what I did now, it hadn’t been a random idea on his part. He wanted me trained, prepared to take down the bad guys if I was going to continue to tussle with them.
“It’s too much for either of us alone,” I murmured. “But that’s why we have each other, to lean on, right?”
He smoothed my hair back from my face and sighed. “Right you are, Uncle Scrooge.”
Another long stretch of silence.
“I can’t believe you thought I was indestructible,” I said. “I’m a neurotic mess.”
He kissed the top of my head. “In case you haven’t noticed, so am I.”
“Dinner’s ready, for anyone who actually eats human food!” Leo bellowed through the bedroom door.
“Bite me, Leo,” Sylvia called from somewhere above us.
“We’re in good company,” I told him. “Let’s go eat.”
Chapter Fifteen
“I think we’ve been stood up,” I said to no one in particular. The four of us, plus Atlas were clustered around the stone bench and had been for hours with not a peep from the other side. The temperature was only slightly above freezing, the night sky crystal clear with brilliant stars unobscured by smog or city lights.
Leo had brought out two thermoses, one filled with hot cocoa and the other with peppermint schnapps, which we mixed together in our individual mugs to form Anti-Freeze #2. Both Sylvia and Neil had declined the delicious offering, Neil because he wanted to keep his head clear and Sylvia because her body was a temple and all that jazz. I shrugged and refilled my mug. More for Maggie.
“It’s supposed to be served with whipped cream on top, maybe a peppermint stick or a maraschino cherry.” Leo groused about the presentation.
“It’s great, Leo. A fabulous séance beverage.” I might have been a smidge heavy-handed with the schnapps.
“This isn’t a séance,” Sylvia complained as she fiddled with her radio.
I muttered into my cup, “Not without the ghost it sure isn’t.”
Neil and Atlas were both restless. They circled the area. Atlas lifted his leg on a nearby bush. Neil eyed Sylvia’s spirit box with distaste as she surfed through the various channels of static. “How do you know it even works?”
“It works,” she ground out. “The clerk tested it in the store.”
“Sylvia, it’s okay if it doesn’t.” Between the lovin’ earlier and the booze, I was extremely mellow, the only one of us not on edge. I wondered briefly if that said something about my survival instinct, but dismissed the notion. “It’s not like this is an exact science.”
“We should check for a signal,” Leo suggested. “Just because the cell phones work here doesn’t mean the radio will.”
“I’ll go grab the boom box.” Neil sprinted up the hill toward the house before anyone could reply.
Leo pulled up a blanket next to me. “So, you two kissed and made up, huh?”
“Yup.” That was all he was getting from me, at least without another few hits from the schnapps thermos.
“I knew you would,” he said with confidence. “It was like that for me and—” He cut himself off abruptly and turned to look out at the moonlight on the water.
“For you and George,” I finished for him and tucked my arm through his. George had been Leo’s significant other whe
n I first met him in Virginia. A navy man and a real teddy bear of a guy who’d worshipped the ground Leo had walked on. He’d died a few months after Neil and I had been married, killed in a training exercise. The navy, being the navy of the late 90’s, hadn’t given Leo any details and he had no rights as a spouse or dependent. The loss had been so great, he’d uprooted his whole life and gone to work for Laura and Ralph. “He was such a great guy, Leo. On par with Neil even, and you know I can’t give higher praise than that.”
Leo wiped his eyes, “Damn it, I didn’t want to go spelunking down memory lane. It’s this house, though. I keep imaging what it would be like to live here, to just sit and watch the river. Doing the kind of thing we’re doing here, fixing up an old gem to make it shine. George and I talked about that. He’d do the construction while I worked on the design. We’d hire experts for plumbing and electrical, but do the majority of it ourselves.”
“Seriously?” That dissipated some of the alcoholic haze that fogged my brain. “Leo, this is much different than Hampton Roads or Boston. There isn’t even a Starbucks.” Not that Leo needed Starbucks since he made the best coffee on the face of the planet.
“You say that like I didn’t know. That’s the whole point, Maggie. I’ve never lived anywhere but the city or a sprawling community. The country is peaceful. I feel peaceful here.” He shrugged. “It’s not like it’ll happen now anyway.”
Neil reappeared with the boom box and set it down right alongside Sylvia. Side by side they fiddled, with an equal lack of success. I refilled Leo’s mug with Anti-Freeze #2, considered for a moment, then shrugged and poured myself another one.
Leo drank. “Do you think that there’s just one perfect person out there for everyone?”
“No.” My answer was immediate and definite. “I think some people match up better than others, but if you really want someone and they want you back just as badly, together you’ll find a way to make it work because failure is not an option.”
He considered that. “That gives me hope.”
Leo hadn’t had the best dating track record and I understood why he’d asked the question. George’s death hadn’t only deprived him of his lover, but also of the dreams they’d shared of a future and growing old together.
Neil was having a little more success with his radio. He’d picked up one of those random college stations that played pretty much anything. Sylvia dragged her spirit box closer and tried to sync up the signal.
I hugged Leo’s arm tightly. “You’ll find someone to grow old with. I’m positive. If my brother can make it work with Penny, then you’re a shoe-in for a happily ever after.”
Leo smacked his forehead. “Oh shoot, I forgot to tell you. Marty called while you and Neil were, um, occupied.”
I groaned theatrically. “His timing is impeccable.” Leo would have interrupted us regardless if it had been an emergency. “Did he need me to call him back?”
“Yeah. He said Penny threw him out of Sylvia’s house so he’s crashing at your place with Kenny and Josh.”
“Son of a motherless goat,” I crabbed. The place would be full of soda cans, pizza boxes and dirty socks in six hours, all three of them zoned out in front of the X-box and smelling like unwashed armpits.
Neil’s head jerked up. “What?”
“It’s nothing, just my dumbass brother being a fricking dumbass.” Although I wondered if Marty was truly at fault. Something was definitely up with Penny and I wasn’t entirely convinced postpartum hormones were solely to blame.
The college station played Bad Medicine. I asked Neil to turn it up. Sylvia literally gave up the ghost along with the spirit box and made herself an Anti-Freeze #2. I guess her body wasn’t a temple after midnight. Neil made some noise about doing a perimeter check and slipped off into the night. Atlas sprawled across my feet and I was grateful for the extra warmth, even if it came from a big heavy slobbery head.
The DJ stuck with Bon Jovi and segued into Livin’ on a Prayer. I couldn’t help it, I had to sing along and Leo wasn’t far behind me. The spirits—alcohol, not ghostly spirits—lifted Sylvia’s mood and she joined in.
Ah, 80’s music, is there anything it can’t do?
By the time Jessie’s Girl hit the first refrain, the drunken séance had morphed into a drunken karaoke dance party.
“Why can’t I find a woman like that?” the three of us—all tone deaf and not a one actually looking for a woman, like that or otherwise—bellowed into the night.
“Die,” the spirit box said.
****
Neil must have followed the sound of the screams because he found us, me, Sylvia, Leo and Atlas, crammed into the back seat of Sylvia’s Prius, the nearest shelter. We shrieked again when he opened the driver’s side door, but then quieted when his very human face appeared.
“You heard that, right? Right?” Leo asked again even though Sylvia and I had repeatedly assured him that yes, we had indeed heard the creepy voice tell us to die.
“I swear I’d shut it off,” Sylvia insisted. “That shouldn’t have been possible.”
“What the hell happened?” Neil asked. “I was out by the barn and I heard the three of you screeching. Did you see the bean nighe?”
Honestly, I hadn’t even thought about the bean nighe, I’d been so wrapped up in communicating with our murder victim. I quickly filled him in on what went down as my heart rate finally started to slow to something approaching normal.
“It said die? You’re sure?” Neil didn’t sound skeptical, but neither did I think he believed us.
“If it was a drunken hallucination, all three of us had the same one,” I pointed out.
“And anyway, I’m not really drunk. There wasn’t much schnapps left,” Sylvia hiccupped.
“Right.” Leo’s tone was dry.
Atlas passed gas and the rest of us gagged but no one got out of the car.
“Okay, I’m going to go check it out,” Neil said.
“No!” the three chickens in the back yelled. Atlas added his two cents with a woof.
I cleared my throat and balled my trembling fists. “You can’t go alone. I’ll go with you.”
Sylvia and Leo protested, but I’d made up my mind. I shoved the back end of the giant dog off my lap and sucked in a steadying breath. It smelled like peppermint and dog farts, but it did the job of bolstering me enough to extract myself from the car.
“You don’t believe us, do you?” I asked Neil as we walked. Pale moonlight fell on our path, illuminating it with a silvery glow.
“It’s not that I don’t believe you,” Neil murmured when we crossed the darkened bridge. “It’s just that I haven’t seen or heard what you have.”
I clutched his arm tightly. If there was a bigger skeptic in the world than the ever-practical laundry hag, it was her husband the former SEAL. Neil knew about evil first hand, had spent years of his life fighting it. I remembered what he’d said earlier. About not believing that I’d really been in danger in my past misadventures. Sure, he’d protested, but he’d also helped me investigate. That took infinite trust, even more so after we’d both lived through the consequences.
“Tell me what you remember about the woman in the road,” I asked him.
“Only a split second image. I was too busy reacting, and then we skidded and rolled and I lost track of everything.” He blew out a breath as we crossed the hill. Even in the dark, I knew he took in his surroundings, assessed the woods and rocks and streams for a threat.
I suppressed the urge to tell him to close his eyes and bring her to mind. When he was on alert he wouldn’t relax enough to close his eyes.
We approached the bench. The darkness seemed thicker there, more impregnable, though the moon still glittered on the distant river. The boom box had been knocked over in our mad dash to get the hell out of there and lay silent in the dirt. The spirit box still crackled with white noise energy though. A chill shook me as I recalled that eerie voice from the spirit box as it told us to die. My courage d
ispelled like the fog and I stopped, unwilling to go any closer. My hold on Neil became a tug.
“Don’t,” I pleaded, knowing I couldn’t hold him if he decided to free himself.
He paused and squeezed my arm. “You can stay here. I’ll just shut it off and come right back, all right?”
It wasn’t, but I was in no position to stop him. Breaking down into tears wouldn’t help. And the spirit box sat and crackled.
Neil extracted himself from my death grip and took the final steps to the bench. In one quick move he flicked the spirit box off and stuck it in his coat pocket. I sagged in relief.
He crouched down and picked up the boom box. “This thing’s busted to hell. Someone must have stepped on it.”
“What are you doing?” I asked as he shucked his coat.
“I want to collect all the pieces.” He didn’t even shiver, though I did for his sake.
I stooped down and helped him gather the various bits and bobs which had once been the boom box’s innards. We collected them in a pile on the fabric of the coat.
We rose in unison. Neil searched again with the sweeping beam of his Maglite. “I think we got all of them, but I can’t be sure in the dark. I’ll scout the area at first light and see—”
“Sshh,” I shushed him. “Do you hear that?”
The noise wasn’t from either the dismantled radio or the spirit box in the coat, but from back in the direction we’d come, down by the brook. Occasional splashes interrupted the chillingly human sounds. The Halloween CD of the night before had nothing on this creepy cacophony.
“It sounds like someone’s crying,” Neil murmured. “Not sobbing, more of a wailing.”
My lungs seized up but on the last puff of air I expelled the name, “The bean nighe.”
“What do you want to do?” Neil lobbed the decision firmly into my court.
Confronted by the ghost we’d been sent to deal with, I wanted nothing more than to run screaming in the opposite direction. “According to the stories, just the fact that she’s here means someone is going to die.”
Neil didn’t say anything as he waited for me to make up my mind.
The Misadventures of the Laundry Hag: All Washed Up: (Book 3 in the Misadventures of the Laundry Hag series) Page 13