“Le barbare could show more interest in the animal’s well-being,” Drake said.
I glanced at him and shook my head. “Really, Drake? Weren’t you just trying to talk me out of adopting the dog only a few minutes ago?”
“That was before I bonded with the noble creature,” Drake replied staunchly. I had yet to see any bonding between the dog and the ghost.
My phone continued to buzz so I glanced down and noticed Ryan texted again:
Apart from the costs involved, he said, who’s going to watch it when you travel? Half the time we’re not even here!
Need I remind you? You have two dogs. I texted back.
Yes, and it’s a lot of work trying to find someone to take care of them when I’m gone. You really need to think this one through more, Pey.
Ryan had an endearing streak of pragmatism that always manifested at the start of new ventures, but this time that pragmatism was annoying. Furthermore, I knew he’d change his mind once he met Daschel.
Just wait until you meet him, I wrote back. When you do, you’ll love him.
By now the dog was already sitting obediently in front of the pantry, as if he knew where I kept the food. Maggie stood in front of him, her hand raised to see how high he could jump (as high as her head! it turned out).
“Ryan and I will pick up some dog food tonight when we’re out,” I said. “But for now, he can have some of the bacon we bought last night.”
“I’ve never heard of feeding a dog bacon,” said Maggie, frowning.
“Well, it’s not like he’s a vegan, right?” I asked and the dog barked his agreement.
Chapter Fifteen
After a light brunch of stir-fried tofu for Maggie, a muffaletta sandwich for me, nothing for Drake, and chicken breast with bacon for Daschel, the four of us drifted upstairs to the storage room. Surveying the scene I saw before me, it was pretty remarkable Maggie could manage to locate a single item of interest amid the sprawl that surrounded us. The fortune-teller’s orb lay on the floor near the door, resting against an armoire. A series of mysterious scratching noises had been echoing from there since I moved in. Ryan said it was probably a rat, so I refused to open it, unwilling to take any chances. Maggie eyed it warily and stayed close to me.
“That thing was making noises the whole time I was up here,” she said and I decided to ignore her admission to being up here. No reason to bring up a tired, old conversation. I was more than sure she learned her lesson and would be more responsible moving forward.
I nodded. “Ryan thinks a rat is living inside it.”
She looked at me with wide eyes. “Yeah, but it’s not a rat.”
“I know.”
Neither of us said anything more as we edged further into the room, taking note of the various boxes and furniture lining either side of the walls. Not surprisingly, Daschel stood at the entry of the room and whined at us.
“Come on, boy,” Maggie said as she slapped her thigh to get him to come to her.
“Nothing can persuade him to come in here,” I said as I watched the dog pacing back and forth as he continued to whine and stare at us with wide, fearful eyes.
“Why?”
“He senses the spiritual energy in here and not all of it is good. In fact, a lot of it probably isn’t.”
Maggie frowned as she looked at the dog who was still obviously uneasy. “But he wasn’t afraid of Drake.”
I nodded. “Drake is good spiritual energy.”
Maggie gulped hard and clutched the notebook she was carrying even tighter. I stood in the center of the room and glanced around, trying to take stock of everything. Then I sighed.
“This is obviously going to take us at least a day to finish,” I said. I was certainly not looking forward to the task as I added, “And you’re welcome to bail any time. “What else am I going to do?”
I looked at her and smiled, wondering if she’d be singing the same tune after spending a few hours up here. Spiritual items have a nasty way of taxing your energy.
“I’m hoping I can learn more about the occult and this seems like a good way to learn,” she replied nervously, darting glances around the room as if she thought something could leap out at her. Perhaps, she was right.
“Then can we agree on one thing?”
She faced me and nodded. “I’ve already agreed to make amends with Drake.”
“That’s not what I’m talking about.”
“What do you mean then?”
“If I agree to let you help me sort through all this crap and teach you about the various items and their history and backgrounds, it can never leave this room. The last thing I’d want is for your mom to find out and start ripping me a new one.”
“The last person I would ever talk to about any of this is my mom!” Maggie assured me as she shook her head. “Trust me.” I believed her.
“Okay, pinky swear.”
We pinky swore.
“I feel like I haven’t stopped learning since I got here.”
“Well, the first thing to always keep in mind when dealing with anything involved with the paranormal is this: everything demands your respect,” I started, trying not to sound like a pedantic teacher if I was.
“Respect?” Maggie repeated. “What do you mean?”
“I mean, that we don’t understand many mysteries about the other side so don’t act like you do. It’s not a good idea to play with stuff you know nothing about. Bad things can come as a result of it.” I eyed the Ouija Board that Ryan’s sister, Trina, used with me one night to contact the dead and told Maggie what happened. “Case in point.”
“What’s that?” she asked as she followed the direction of my finger. “A Ouija Board?”
“Yep, and one that I stupidly used with Ryan’s sister and ended up summoning a demon who murdered a bunch of people in New Orleans in the early 1900s. He was called the Axeman.”
Maggie nodded. “You mean, the spirit you and Ryan’s sister summoned was actually The Axeman?”
“Yep, the very same one.”
“Oh, my God,” Maggie said as she stared at the Ouija Board with a newfound sense of dread and awe. Then she gulped. “I haven’t met Ryan’s sister… does that mean… she’s no longer with us?”
I laughed as I shook my head. “No, Trina is still very much alive. She just took a job in Tennessee a few months back so we haven’t seen her lately.”
“Phew,” Maggie said as she exhaled. Then she started glancing around herself again and the worry returned to her expression. She looked up at me. “I swear I won’t ever come up here alone again and I definitely won’t touch anything.” She glanced around as she grew more nervous. “The truth is: I’m glad I didn’t do anything… you know, accidentally. It could have turned out bad.”
“You and me both!” I pulled the tarp off a wide mahogany cabinet with brass locks that must have been standing there since the house was originally built. A second or so later, Drake materialized in front of it.
“Any idea what this is, or what’s inside it?” I asked him. “It looks like it’s been here for a while.”
“All of these items came from your Great Aunt Myra, thus you should know more about them than I.” He shook his head, looking faintly (but insincerely) bored with the whole proceeding. He grimaced at it. “Quite an ugly thing it is.”
“Just because my aunt acquired them, doesn’t mean I should know what they are!” I argued back. “Besides, you were here the whole time she was—you’d think you’d remember some of the specifics!”
“I must admit my interests lie elsewhere.”
I shook my head and frowned at him. “You strangely have no appreciation for antiques whatsoever.”
“Perhaps because they are not antiques to me! You forget I was alive during their fabrication.”
“Maybe,” I answered as I noticed Maggie standing in front of the cabinet and admiring it.
“Should we look inside?” she asked.
I nodded and pulled on the lat
ch. The double doors swung open with a wave of dust that was thick in the air. Inside, three shelves contained an assortment of knick-knacks, none of which seemed very interesting. I glanced back at Maggie and motioned to the notebook in her hands.
“I would not recommend opening and inspecting every item you come across, ma minette,” said Drake. “As you may recall, many of these items are enchanted… and not in a good way.”
“We’ll be careful,” Maggie said, passing through him to get to a stack of boxes. He jumped aside, trying to dodge her, but he was too late.
“And you should show them more respect, l’ enfant.”
I helped her pull down a box at the top of the pile that contained decks of tarot cards. She opened the spiral notebook I’d given her for cataloguing purposes and began writing down the name of each deck, opening them to see if any cards were missing. I turned my attention to the next box, which was filled with books—spellbooks, some of them ancient. The hardened edges of their pages were almost flaking away. I set the box aside.
Drake was hovering behind me, watching everything I did. “I would not open those.”
“They would probably turn to dust if I did.” I said as I faced the box and glanced back at Maggie. “Try to catalog these without removing them from the box,” I said, and she nodded.
I needed to focus on the trash. That’s where the real work was. The attic was untouched for years, festering in the moist New Orleans air. I was more than sure that most of these antiquities were probably nothing more than rotted junk.
There were piles of wooden chairs, moth-eaten clothing, paintings with holes, and every form of knick-knack imaginable. I started collecting everything I could justify throwing away, and Drake followed me around the room.
“If there is any black magic here, it could spread to the other items,” he noted.
“Then we’re already cursed, and there’s nothing we can do,” I answered as I picked up something that resembled a velvet shoe, or maybe it was once an old, stuffed animal. Either way, having been chewed on by rodents, the velvet nap was mostly bare. “Gross,” I muttered.
“Ma minette, you shouldn’t joke about such things.”
I shrugged and started dragging an ancient ottoman towards the front of the room, where I planned on building my trash pile. Drake was standing right behind me and the coldness of his energy began to seep into my skin. I turned around to face him and nearly kissed him. He held his ground and I did the same.
“I miss the days when we traveled back in time together,” he whispered to me.
I swallowed hard, glancing across the room to where Maggie stood. She was looking out the window, down to the street below. Then I looked back at Drake and nodded.
“I miss them too.”
Drake reached down and tried to take my hand but his went right through mine. “This existence is no existence at all,” he said.
I nodded because I understood his meaning. It must have been very difficult for him to stop residing inside my body and get forcibly thrust back into the house. He became a prisoner, unable to travel beyond the boundaries of the walls.
“Mailman is here!” Maggie called out as she faced us again and started walking towards us. Daschel started wagging his tail and pacing back and forth at the entrance to the attic, barking as Maggie came closer to him.
“There’s a good boy!” she called.
I glanced up at Drake and smiled in a sad, defeated way. But, really, unless I agreed to allow him to possess me again, there wasn’t much I could do for him. The reality was that he was stuck here, in this house, until… he wasn’t.
“What are you guys so busy talking about?” Maggie asked.
I shrugged and immediately busied myself by opening the drawers of a secretary. “We were talking about the sword that was recently stolen,” I said, clearly lying but hoping Maggie wouldn’t notice. “I remember someone saying it was used in the Battle of Antietam.”
“Wasn’t that fought during the Civil War?” Maggie asked.
“Indeed, it was,” Drake responded. “The battle unfolded in Maryland in 1862. Some say that it was a stalemate, but it ended with a Confederate retreat, giving Abraham Lincoln the opportunity he needed to release the Emancipation Proclamation, thereby freeing the slaves.”
“So, it helped end the war,” I said.
“Wow, you’re like a ghostly Wikipedia,” Maggie said as she faced Drake. “Ghostipedia.”
“I know not of which you speak,” Drake replied in his pompous way.
“Nevermind. How did you know all that about the Battle of Antietam?” Maggie continued.
I faced her. “He likes to watch documentaries.”
“Oh,” she said and shrugged.
I went back to collecting trash and piling it on top of the ottoman I’d moved to the far end of the room as Maggie headed downstairs to retrieve the mail, Daschel at her heels. After another hour, my trash pile had doubled. Pretty soon, it was too large to walk past, so I sent Maggie down to the kitchen. I asked her to retrieve some trash bags before we started bagging everything and bringing it down the stairs. Once the trash pile was eliminated, we returned to the attic to start cataloguing the items again.
After another two hours, we barely made a dent. We removed a lot of junk but you’d never know it. There was an unfathomable pile of crap that occupied the attic. Behind every item we moved, something else loomed, waiting to be inspected. It seemed like it would never end, and the cobwebs had their own zip code.
###
Four hours later, when everything was cataloged, and all of the trash picked up, I retreated to my room for a long, hot shower and a moment of peace. Maggie did the same.
I came downstairs to find Drake standing in front of Daschel in the kitchen. His thumbs were stuck in his ears as he waved his fingers around. There was a funny expression on his face and Daschel kept barking and wagging his tail. I laughed, and Maggie did the same.
Drake circle the island as the dog followed him, eager to snap at his ectoplasmic form. He stopped in front of me with a giant grin. “C'est extraordinaire, ma minette! Animals tend to avoid me, but this one? He is quite infatuated with moi.”
“So he is,” I said, taking a seat beside Maggie. The front door opened and Ryan walked inside. Rather than running up to Ryan and barking or jumping on him, Daschel waited in the kitchen. I stood up to greet my lumbering boyfriend.
Ryan was carrying both wet and dry dog food (bless his heart), which Maggie immediately took from him. She disappeared into the pantry, and Ryan gave me a peck on the cheek. “Could we have a moment to talk?” he whispered.
“Sure,” I answered before calling out to Maggie that we’d be right back. She gave me a thumbs-up from inside the pantry, with only her arm and hand appearing from behind the door.
I took Ryan’s hand and led him into my room. He sat on the edge of the bed. His posture, and the way he leaned forward with his head propped in his hands, digging his elbows into his knees, told me everything I needed to know.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
“A stray dog, Peyton?” he asked in a strained whisper.
“I… I don’t see any problem. He’s not exactly a flea-ridden stray. He’s well-trained and mild mannered.”
“He’s a random creature that you know nothing about. I mean, how did you even find him?”
I stood up and fished Daschel’s note out of my pocket before handing it to Ryan. He read it and placed it on my nightstand like he couldn’t stand to touch it any longer. “You bought this crap?”
I was surprised at his words and his angry tone. It seemed like Ryan and I were suffering from more disagreements than we ever had before. I wasn’t sure why.
“It sounds reasonable, doesn’t it?” I asked with a shrug. “People get into bad financial situations all the time. I just figured I could help by giving the dog a home.”
“Peyton, I’m having a hard time understanding how you could possibly take this at face value.�
��
“What do you mean?”
“Look at all the weird shit that’s been going on lately! Ghost children, witches, the list goes on! How do you know it’s even a dog?”
“He looks like a dog to me,” I said, unable to hide my irritation.
He replied in a tired voice, “Not everything is as it seems in your world. You, of all people, should know that.”
“What do you mean ‘your world’?” I asked, irritated by the bitter tone in his voice. “It’s yours too, isn’t it?”
“Sometimes it doesn’t feel like it.”
I sat down beside him and did my best to be more pleasant as I wrapped my hand around his thigh. “Let’s not talk about this tonight, okay? Let’s just have a good time and enjoy our date.” I said, referring to our planned excursion to The Old Absinthe House.
“A date?” His sardonic laugh set my stomach churning. “It’s not a date, it’s a paranormal investigation.”
“A paranormal night out,” I corrected with an awkward grin.
“Can’t things just be normal for once?” He shot up off the bed and started pacing around the smallish area, making my nerves stand at attention. “Aren’t you tired of all of this?”
“Of course.”
“And yet you can’t seem to stop.” I had never seen him so upset, and I didn’t like it.
“I know things have been a little crazy lately…”
“More than crazy,” Ryan interrupted, still pacing. “Things have been manic and chaotic and they haven’t slowed down.”
“I agree,” I started. “But this is who I am, Ryan. The paranormal runs through my body like the blood that pumps through my veins. And, no matter what I do, it’s not like I can just turn that side of me off. I hear things, see things and feel things. That’s what being a sensitive is all about.”
He stopped pacing to face me and his expression was hard, exhausted. “You used to be scared of all that shit. When did that change?”
“I’m still scared.”
“Then... what... are... you... doing?” he asked, enunciating every syllable. “You’re putting yourself in danger constantly. You might be sensitive to all this paranormal stuff but that doesn’t mean you’re protected against it.”
If You've Got It, Haunt It: A ghost romance (The Peyton Clark Series Book 4) Page 14