Sinister Stage: A Ghost Story Romance and Mystery (Wicks Hollow Book 5)

by Colleen Gleason

  He closed his mouth when she curled her fingers around his cock, which had been relaxed and basking until the idea of jumping bones had come up.

  “What were you saying?” she said, her voice muffled as she slipped down beneath the sheets.

  “I have no idea,” he said as she closed those luscious lips around him. “And…I don’t…care.”

  It was the blackest part of night when the steaks finally made their way onto the grill. A swath of glittering stars danced above them and out over the dark blue Great Lake. The moon was high and sliced in half, but it cast a fair amount of blue-silver glow. The world was so quiet in the earliest hours of Sunday morning that Vivien could even hear the waves washing up on shore in the distance.

  An owl hooted, and frogs and cicadas croaked and buzz-zapped in competing rhythm as a few bats swooped gracefully below the stars. The smell of summer and lake and the faintest tinge of a distant bonfire lingered in the air, and a gentle breeze made Vivien almost need a sweater.

  “This is the best meal I’ve ever had in my life,” she said, sighing with delight as she tasted the filet for the first time. “Red wine, steak, baked potatoes slathered with sour cream and chives, and fresh Michigan corn on the cob… And that cool little bug zapper that’s keeping us from being eaten alive while we dine al fresco without smelling eau de trash. Manhattan can suck it.”

  She hummed her anthem, “Food, Glorious Food,” as she scooped up a bite of loaded potato.

  “Yeah, I’d better thank Mathilda for sending that zapper to me. I never thought I’d have a use for it—I just don’t sit out here all that much.” Alone was the unsaid but obvious word she suspected Jake meant to say.

  “Jake, I need to tell you something.”

  The tone of her voice was meant to grab his attention and maybe even make him worry a little. She grinned inside but kept her expression blank. She owed him for the whole steak-in-the-oven thing.

  “What is it?” His voice was carefully neutral, but she saw the corner of his mouth tighten just a little.

  “I don’t want you just for your patio overlooking the lake,” she said, spearing another piece of the butter-soft steak. “Or the view from your living room. It’s your dad I’m really after.”

  He chuckled. “I’m beginning to believe that.”

  She grinned at him, loving the way the moonlight limned over his features and made him look like a dark, sensual angel. His hair was loose and fell a ways past his jaw, and he hadn’t bothered to put on a shirt—which she appreciated greatly. He’d filled out and bulked up just a little—just the right amount—in the last eleven years. And he certainly still had the stamina of a twenty-four-year-old.

  “So, Vivvie—” He stopped suddenly, looking awkward. “Sorry—”

  Her heart hurt. “It’s all right, Jake. You can call me that. I was being bitchy. It’s just…it reminded me of better times, and it hurt too much.”

  He nodded, holding her eyes. “Me too.” When he lifted his glass, moonlight shot through the Tempranillo, making it appear more ruby than garnet. “To even better times.”

  “To even better times.” She sipped—the wine was excellent, and perfect with the steak—then steeled herself and said, “Jake…I need you to know how sorry I am about how things ended with us before.”

  “You’ve already apologized, Viv, and—”

  “I know, but when I think about how self-absorbed I was and what you went through, I feel— I just wanted to say it again.”

  He nodded. “Thank you. I appreciate it. It wasn’t a fun time for me. It messed me up a little.”

  “I know. Your dad told me your mom was worried about you.” Her eyes welled up again as she thought about the fact that she’d never meet his mother.

  “I know. I could tell she was…but it was something I had to work through, and I didn’t want to talk about it. Any of it. And, honestly, what happened with Lissa was ugly and uncomfortable, and it still makes me ill to think about it, but when I think about how much worse it can be—especially for women…

  “When I was in my residency, I did a rotation in the ER, of course, and there was a woman who came in who’d been sexually assaulted. My God, Vivien, what she went through was so much worse than what happened to me. I mean, it was awful, but it didn’t, you know, leave me with the deep, lasting scars—physical and emotional—that she’ll have—”

  “But it was still awful, still a violation, Jake, and…and if I hadn’t been such a bitch, maybe I could have been there for you.” And beaten the crap out of Lissa Kirkland.

  “You’d been left by so many other people you’d loved. I was just another one doing the same. I didn’t realize it at the time either, why you were so upset, why you just cut me off. I was just focused on me, and my future—which I assumed you’d be part of. I could have handled it better.”

  “We both could have.” She raised her glass so it caught the moonlight too. “To even better times.”

  “To even better times.”

  They ate in silence for a while, basking in each other’s company. Then Vivien remembered Jake had started to speak earlier.

  “What were you going to say, Jake? A few minutes ago?”

  “I… Well, when the Tuesday Ladies and everyone had me trapped at Pop’s, it came up that you’re not going to be in the show. Onstage. They were all pretty confused and, actually, a little worried about you. Sounded like Trib—I guess you know him too?—was really sounding off about it. Are you doing okay with all of this?”

  Vivien’s throat closed up a little and her eyes stung at this unexpected topic. She gave a quick shake of her head and told herself to stop being an idiot. If there was anyone she could talk to about this, it was Jake.

  “I just can’t,” she said after a minute.

  He nodded. “I only wondered if things had gotten better since…since I knew you.”

  “No. I simply don’t have any desire to be onstage ever again. My stage career—short-lived as it was—was tied so tightly to Liv that I get anxious whenever I think about stepping out there in front of people, knowing that she’ll never be able to do it again, that I have to do it alone. I mean, we shared a womb, we shared a crib, beds…acting roles…” She shook her head and collected herself. “We even played each other sometimes, just to mess with people.

  “I know it sounds weak, but I get cold and clammy, I break out in a heavy sweat…it’s bad. I tried once after—after you left New York to audition for a small role in an off-off-off Broadway show, and I had an anxiety attack and couldn’t even walk onto the stage for the audition. I puked in the bathroom instead. So.” She spread her hands and shook her head sadly. “My acting days are over.”

  He tilted his head, looking at her intently, still gilded gently by the moonlight. “Things might change—there’s no reason to force them to, but someday they might. After all, Liv is still with you all the time. Isn’t she? She’d be with you if you ever went onstage again, wouldn’t she? It’s not like you’re leaving her behind or moving on. She’s with you. You’re connected. You always will be.”

  Vivien’s eyes really stung now, and there was no way she could get any words out of her mouth; her throat was closed up tight. She’d never really thought about it that way, had she? Liv is always with me. We’d still be sharing a role, kinda. Looking at him through a watery gaze, she nodded…and just then, she felt a very definite nudge against her left arm.

  Jake was sitting four feet away from her.

  But even more moving than his sensitive, honest words was the realization that he understood her relationship with Liv, that he didn’t think she was crazy or delusional. Always before, she’d wondered a little.

  And maybe it had taken Jake meeting a ghost himself to fully grasp how a loved one never quite leaves behind those who remember them. Especially ones who’d shared a womb, who could read each other’s thoughts…who were soul mates in a way.

  “Thanks,” she managed to say, still blinking rapidly. “That ac
tually makes a lot of sense…and Liv seems to agree.” She gave an awkward laugh and sipped her wine. “So, speaking of ghosts…”

  He scratched the stubble that had just started to show on his jaw. “I can’t imagine how crazy it must have been with the three ladies there at the theater and all hell breaking loose with the ghost.”

  “I was terrified one of them was going to get hurt—or worse. But Jake, I’ve been thinking…”

  “When have you had time to think? I thought I’d kept you pretty busy.” He gave her a leer that lingered on her breasts, which happened to be bra-less.

  “Maybe you’d better work at it a little harder,” she said with a sly smile that grew slyer when she saw him shift a little in his seat. Shorts getting a little tight there, big guy? Emphasis on the big.

  “You’re such a slave driver,” he said. Then he looked around and winced a little. “Great. Now I’m always going to be thinking about Liv lurking about, judging my…uh…technique.”

  Vivien laughed heartily at that. “I promise not to tell you what she says.” When he looked nauseated, she laughed again. “Joking!”

  She forked up her last bite of steak. “Anyway, I was thinking about the ghost thing. The ladies said they heard the Nutcracker music—which I honestly don’t remember if I heard anything or not, I was so freaked out—and Iva said the ghost wanted her to go down to the orchestra pit. Which is where we found that trunk with the Nutcracker stuff in it.

  “And,” she said, stabbing a piece of potato, “it wasn’t until after we opened the trunk and found the Nutcracker stuff that things started to get really crazy. Up until then, it was just a chilly breeze and that weird shadow. I just wonder if somehow, when we opened the trunk, we fully released the ghost’s strength.”

  “Like Pandora’s box. And what weird shadow?”

  “Oh, I guess I didn’t tell you about that. It wasn’t anything— Well, yes, I guess it was,” she said, gathering her thoughts. “Twice this weird shadow came out of nowhere and sort of glided over the floor at the theater. And then it was gone—although both times it was accompanied by a cool brush of air. The second time I saw it was down in the pit, right before you got there.”

  “And it was definitely not caused by anything around you?”

  “No. It was the same shadow, and there was nothing else both times—I was alone in the theater. And here’s the thing—one of the things—I just realized when I was thinking,” she said with another sly smile, “I got up in the middle of the night at home that same night we found the Nutcracker stuff, and when I came out to the kitchen, I saw that same shadow—not gonna lie, I freaked out for a minute—but then I realized that time, it was the Nutcracker headpiece that was giving off the shadow. It was the shape of its hat—a tall military hat with a slanted top.”

  “So what you’re saying is, the ghost has something to do with the Nutcracker.”

  “Which happened to have been the last show that was ever done at the theater. And they shut it down suddenly and for no reason, and no one ever really found out why. And—oh, I just realized this—when the ghost threw everything around in the workshop, the cast photo-poster from The Nutcracker was right there in the middle of the floor. I didn’t think anything of it until now.”

  “But the ghost—according to Iva and Bruce Banner—was female. The Nutcracker is definitely male.”

  “Oh, yes, I know. But somehow it’s connected. I just don’t know how.”

  He nodded. “All right. That’s really interesting, and it makes sense—as much as a ghost makes sense.” He laughed a little uncomfortably, and Vivien found it adorable that he was still awkward talking about ghosts…especially since he’d acknowledged Liv.

  She didn’t say anything because he’d mentioned he had an early shift tomorrow—in only a few hours, she realized—but she fully intended to visit the theater in the morning to check out the orchestra pit and the trunk once more.

  Vivien walked to the theater down the hill from Jake’s (she preferred going down rather than up the hill) the next morning.

  It was after nine o’clock, and she’d felt more than a little guilty about sleeping in when Jake had to get up for his shift at five a.m.—and on a Sunday.

  But the look of pleasure in his eyes when she walked into the kitchen erased any lingering remorse.

  “I heard you singing in the shower,” he said, handing her a cup of ambrosia—a.k.a. coffee—as he looked up from his computer.

  “Unfortunately, it was a solo, not a duet,” she replied, bending over to give him a sultry kiss with lots of tongue.

  Which he returned, turning up the heat and adding a boob cup while he was at it. “And what were you singing this morning?” he asked, arching a brow.

  She smirked and bumped her hip against his. “It was a song from Oklahoma! Didn’t you hear me?”

  “No, I’ve been working for the last four hours while you were snoring away.”

  “I don’t snore,” she said.

  “Mmmph,” he said with studied innocence. A pair of dark-framed glasses—a new development—sat next to his laptop on the counter, and she immediately wanted to see him wearing them. Cute guys in glasses were one of her favorite things.

  But before she could ask, Jake cast her a curious glance. “So what were you singing?”

  She grinned down at him. “‘I Cain’t Say No,’” she said, then twirled away before he could grab her and prove the point.

  His eyes were laughing as he looked at her from where he was stranded at his computer screen. “I sang a duet by myself yesterday morning in the shower,” he confessed as his phone beeped with an alert.

  She stopped and looked at him. “Really?”

  “Yes,” he said, looking at the display on his phone. “Oh, good, that’s not for me. What were we saying?”

  “You said you were singing in the shower yesterday.”

  He smiled and lifted his mug of coffee to sip, watching her over it with dark, smoky eyes. “Oh, right. A duet, but, alas, I was singing it as a solo. Nevertheless, I struggled through.”

  “What was it?” she asked. He had a nice enough voice, true—a decent baritone—but he wasn’t quite as regularly vocal as she was. And certainly not as powerful when it came to belting.

  “‘Agony,’ from Into the Woods. What else?”

  She burst into laughter as he grinned and checked his phone as another alert came in.

  “Well done, grasshopper,” she said.

  “Hey, I’ve got to take care of this—can you feed Carmella?” he said, distracted again.

  “Feed who…what?” She looked around. She didn’t see an aquarium or even a goldfish bowl, and she knew he didn’t have a cat or a dog.

  “Carmella—over there on the counter. The Mason jar,” he said as he turned his attention to the computer with a whole bunch of complicated-looking programs on it. “One and a half cups water, one and a half cups of flour, stir it all together, pour it in. Oh, but pour off the icky gray stuff first.”

  Huh?

  She looked around and, sure enough, saw a Mason jar on the counter. Was that Carmella…or was that what she was supposed to feed Carmella—whoever or whatever Carmella was—with?

  “Uh, Jake, some help here. Who’s Carmella?”

  “In the Mason jar. My sourdough mother.” He flapped his hand in her general direction. He must have seen the bewildered look on her face. “It’s the mother of my sourdough starter—fermenting there in the Mason jar on the counter. Feed her, but pour the yucky gray liquid off the top first.”

  That seemed straightforward enough, and she picked up the Mason jar. Yep, there was some cloudy grayish liquid floating at the top. Humming the obvious song from Little Shop of Horrors, she took off the top of the jar and carefully poured the ick down the sink.

  What remained was something that looked like waffle batter—sort of—and the only reason she knew exactly what waffle batter looked like was because she’d had to pour her own at a Hampton Inn once when s
he stayed overnight and ate their free breakfast in the morning and had to make her own waffles in the idiot-proof waffle maker thing.

  “Where’s the flour?” she stage-whispered to him while he was tapping away on his laptop, and he gestured vaguely again toward what turned out to be a pantry.

  She managed to find the flour and follow the rest of his directions, and therefore successfully fed Carmella.

  Then she popped over and gave him a quick kiss on the cheek—he was still distracted by looking at some complicated images on the screen, his glasses forgotten—and slipped outside.

  Perfect—she didn’t have to tell him she was going to the theater and worry the poor guy.

  It was going to be a hot day—perfect for the tourism industry in Wicks Hollow, but a little less exciting for someone who had labor-intensive work in a building that had non-functioning air conditioning. Still, Vivien had work to do if she was going to open the show on time, and she couldn’t allow herself to be waylaid or distracted by ghosts or vandals.

  She arrived at the theater and, with some trepidation, let herself in.

  “All right, everyone just keep calm,” she called out, feeling a little foolish but determined nonetheless. “I’m here, I know you want me to figure out what’s going on, and I’m going to go down into the pit in a few minutes and try to do so, all right? So just…don’t get all worked up.”

  To her relief, nothing happened except that she felt the air all around her move, sort of shudder, as if the building was taking in a deep breath and then exhaling it.

  The scaffolding was still on the stage, but it was at the very edge where it had obviously somehow stopped before going over to the floor after the ghost shoved it at her and Iva yesterday. The only illumination was the lights she was turning on—some in the house, many more in the backstage area. The dented Nutcracker headpiece sat, ugly as usual, where Jake had put it yesterday, casting an eerie shadow. But at least she knew what caused it this time.