Haunted

by Kelley Armstrong

  "My in-box is overflowing. How about a rain check?"

  He gave a slow nod. "I understand."

  I smiled. "Thanks. You're so sweet." I turned to the computer. "How about I get a few of these done, then I'll make us some tea and--"

  A hand flew around my throat, fingers digging in so hard I gasped.

  "Move and I will crush your windpipe," Lucas murmured behind me, his voice low, tone conversational.

  "You have two minutes to tell me what I want to know, starting with: Where is my wife?"

  47

  I GRABBED AT LUCAS'S HAND, AND TRIED TO PRY IT free, but it wouldn't budge.

  "What is wrong with you today, Cortez?" I gasped.

  An edge crept into his voice. "Don't call me that."

  "Don't call--? Lucas? It's me."

  His grip tightened.

  "Lucas?" I twisted, injecting fear into my voice. "Lucas, please. You're scaring me."

  "Don't."

  "Lucas? It's me--"

  "Don't!" He leaned over my back. "You are not Paige, and the more you try to deny that, the more angry I'm going to become. Now, who are you?"

  Damn it! I'd been here less than ten minutes, and I'd already screwed up. I thought of Jaime's hotel room, when Kristof had seen through the Nix's glamour spell without a moment's hesitation. He'd known she wasn't me. So how the hell had I thought I could fool Lucas about Paige?

  I had two options--keep pushing and hope he backed off, or come clean. The success of the first depended on how gullible Lucas was...which made the decision pretty darned easy.

  "Eve. Eve Levine. Savannah's--"

  "I know who Eve Levine is."

  "Right, we met. Ninety-eight, ninety-nine, maybe. God, you were just a kid. You had balls, though, coming to take those grimoires away from me. I admired that. Didn't keep me from kicking your ass, but I admired it."

  His hand stayed locked around my throat.

  "Er, you do remember that, right?" I said.

  "Yes."

  "But you don't think I'm really Eve--"

  "No, I never questioned that. Now, where is Paige?"

  His tone cut through me, as cold and emotionless as it had been when he started. Not that I expected a big hug of welcome, but, well, I suppose I expected something. I thought of all the hours we'd spent together, all the times I watched out for him, even rooted for him. And as we stood there, his hand wrapped around my throat, I became keenly aware of the one-sidedness of this relationship.

  His grip tightened. "Where is Paige? You may be Savannah's mother, Eve, but don't think I won't--"

  "Don't! This is Paige's body. If you hurt me, you'll hurt her. She won't feel it, but when she comes back--and she is coming back. I promise you that, Lucas. This is just temporary."

  "Is it?"

  "Absolutely. I'd never do anything to hurt Paige. I used to babysit her when she was little. Did she tell you that?"

  "She told me that you said that...though she has no recollection of it."

  "Still?" I couldn't hide the disappointment in my voice. "I wonder if her mother blocked the memories after I left the Coven. Not that I can imagine Ruth doing such a thing--but, well, I can't imagine Paige would just forget me on her own. I taught Paige her first spell. An unlock spell, because her mom kept locking up her favorite toys--"

  "Paige told me something else," Lucas cut in. "When she met you in the ghost world, you said a few things that concerned her. She said you were trying to find a way to help Savannah, and you seemed very determined to do so."

  "Hey, I didn't mean any disrespect to you guys. You're doing a great job--" I stopped. "You think that's what I'm doing? That I took over Paige's body to come back? Whoa. No, no, no." I twisted, trying to look at him, but he held my throat, keeping my face turned from his. "I'm back to do something very specific, very short-term, very important. Then I'm gone. I'm not even telling Savannah that I'm here."

  He hesitated, then said, "What exactly is this 'something'?"

  "Can I sit down? Please?"

  Another hesitation, longer this time. Then his fingers relaxed on my neck. As I rubbed my throat, I gave him a brief rundown of the situation, leaving out as many details as possible, since I wasn't sure how much I should or could tell.

  "So you are telling me that Jaime Vegas is planning to kill Paige and me, and blame Savannah?"

  "Right."

  He picked up the cordless phone from the desk. "You have one minute to return Paige to her body, or I will, within an hour, have the best necromancer in the country here to exorcise you...a process that I promise you will find most unpleasant."

  "Er, I think I'd better give you the expanded version."

  He held up the phone. "Two minutes."

  When I finished, his eyes met mine, his expression un-readable.

  "So what happened at the community center, the shooting. That was this Nix."

  I nodded, but I knew I'd failed, that my story was too preposterous and he wasn't--

  "We were worried that it was somehow connected to Savannah," he said quietly. "We tried to convince ourselves we were being paranoid but--" His head shot up.

  "This Nix is in Jaime? Right now?"

  "Yeah, but don't worry. We'll head her off before she gets near--"

  Lucas was already on his feet and flying out the door. I jumped off my chair and tore after him.

  "Hey!" I called as he bounded down the stairs.

  He didn't even slow. He hit the bottom step and wheeled through the dining room doorway, disappearing. I ran into the dining room just as he flew through the kitchen, pausing only to grab his keys.

  "Oh, shit!" I said. "She's already here, isn't she? That's who's with Savannah."

  I caught up with Lucas in the lean-to, as he yanked the cover off his motorcycle.

  "Hold on," I said. When he didn't listen, I snatched the keys from his hand. "Lucas, hold on! She's not after Savannah, and if you go tearing off to wherever they've gone, she'll know we're on to her. Given the choice between killing Savannah and abandoning her revenge altogether, I sure as hell know which one she'll pick."

  He turned to me, mouth opening to say something, then stopping as he saw me, a look of disconcertment passing behind his eyes.

  "Cast the glamour spell," I said.

  "Hmmm?"

  "This is making you uncomfortable--me looking like Paige. You know what I really look like, so cast the glamour spell, so you'll see that instead."

  He nodded, and cast it. When he finished, his eyes darted my way, shoulders tense, as if bracing himself. Then he relaxed.

  "Better?" I said.

  He nodded. "Thank you."

  "You'll have to uncast it when they come back, so you remember who I'm supposed to be. So when did Jaime get here?"

  "This morning. Savannah, of course, was thrilled to see her, and Paige and I--" He shook his head. "We were just as happy, thinking it was exactly what Savannah needed, how thoughtful it was..." Another sharp shake of his head.

  "She didn't seem at all...odd?"

  "Had it been anyone else, I'm sure I would have thought so. But Jaime's moods--and behavior--can be...erratic. She called after she heard about the shooting, and was concerned about Savannah, so for her to get a sudden notion to visit wasn't abnormal, not for Jaime."

  He looked back at the keys in my hand. I clasped my hand around them, hiding them.

  "Trust me," I said. "I want to go after her at least as much as you do, but so long as you don't have the keys, and I can't drive a motorcycle, we're pretty darned safe. So where'd they go? Will they be gone long?"

  "They're just going to the video store, and picking up a few groceries. They should be back any moment." He walked out of the lean-to, and peered down the driveway. "Perhaps I should call on my cell--"

  "Good idea. Tell them you forgot you're out of milk or something."

  He nodded and called. From his voice, I knew he'd phoned Savannah. I don't think I could have made that call without betraying something,
if not screaming for her to get out of the car and run back here as fast as she could. Lucas handled it as calmly as if he'd really been calling to ask her to pick up something else.

  "She's fine," he said when he hung up. "They're finishing up at the store now, meaning we have about ten minutes to devise a plan."

  We came up with a decent basic premise. Well, Lucas came up with most of it, but that was his thing, so I left him to it and refined as necessary. It was still impossible to plot a complete strategy like "when she comes in the house, you send her upstairs, and I'll hide, then..."

  The moment the Nix realized she'd been led into a trap, she'd jump free from Jaime's body. So the mortal blow had to come as a surprise. Or, as we decided, maybe not as such a surprise. There was one time when we could battle the Nix without her realizing what was happening and leap clear: when she was the one who initiated the fight. In other words, we had to wait until she made her move to kill one of us. She'd expect us to fight then.

  "Quickly," he said, as the car sounded in the drive. "Get upstairs, back into Paige's office, and close the door. I'll tell them that a client's Web site crashed, and you're not to be disturbed. I'll bring dinner up--"

  "Whoa, hold on. If I hide out in the office, the Nix will probably need to change her plans."

  "That's a chance we'll have to take."

  "But the longer it takes her, the longer I'll be here."

  He paused. "I'll call you down for dinner. But say as little as possible. I'll steer conversation in another direction. After dinner, we'll...we'll watch the video they picked out." He nodded. "Yes, that's perfect. You won't need to talk."

  "Hey, just because I can't fool you doesn't mean I can't pull off a damned good Paige impersonation."

  He looked at me.

  "Er, a pretty good one," I said.

  He kept looking at me.

  "I'll keep my mouth shut."

  A car door slammed. Savannah called something. I hesitated, but Lucas uncast the glamour spell, then opened the back door and shoved me inside.

  I spent the first thirty minutes in Paige's office browsing through the stuff on her computer. I wasn't being nosy. I had nothing better to do. Okay, maybe I was being nosy...just a little. After a half hour, though, Lucas popped in to check on me and asked me, very politely, not to mess with Paige's stuff, shutting down her e-mail and other windows, and leaving open only two--solitaire and some file that looked like programming stuff. If Savannah or the Nix came by accidentally, I could switch from the game to the work, and at least look busy. Not that I could actually do anything with the programming code. Lucas had locked it into a read-only file. Geez, you'd think the guy didn't trust me or something.

  That lack of trust kind of stung. Okay, not kind of. It did sting, almost as much as the distrust I'd gotten from Paige when I'd looked after her in the ghost world. Did I blame them for not trusting me? No. I'd earned it, if not by doing anything to them personally, at least through my reputation. And I guess if you count that broken arm I gave Lucas when he tried to take my grimoires, I had done something to them personally. But, still, I would have thought rescuing them from the ghost world would have counted for something. Maybe it did. If not for that, I suspected I'd be sitting in this chair, not with a game of solitaire thoughtfully set up for me, but tied down and awaiting an exorcist.

  So I played solitaire and tried very, very hard not to hear my daughter's voice downstairs, not to think about her down there, finally within reach--physically within reach, that I could go down there and hug her and tell her--But I wasn't thinking about that.

  Forty minutes passed, and the back door banged shut downstairs. I looked out the rear window, but no one stepped outside. I tugged open the window and listened. After a moment, I caught two voices: Lucas and Jaime.

  I strained to hear what they were saying.

  "...really a beautiful bike," Jaime said. "And you restored it yourself. That is so amazing."

  Lucas answered as easily as if he really was talking to Jaime. It didn't take long to realize the Nix had initiated the trip outside. Was she going to kill him in the lean-to? But how did that set up Savannah? And what about me? Maybe we weren't the only ones "going with the flow." Maybe with me--Paige--locked away in the office, the Nix was taking advantage of our separation, and striking at Lucas first. I had to get down there--

  The phone rang.

  I froze, halfway across the room. Okay, Lucas, I'm sure you can hear the phone. This is the perfect excuse to come back inside--

  The phone stopped ringing. Good. Now--

  "Paige!" Savannah screamed.

  Shit! Now what? No, wait, Lucas told her to leave me--Paige--alone, so she'll take a message and--

  Footsteps banged up the steps. I didn't move. Couldn't move.

  The door swung open, and there stood my daughter. My beautiful fifteen-year-old daughter. Standing there. Looking right at me. At me--not glancing at a spot just to the left of her mother's invisible ghost--but actually at me, seeing me--

  "The phone," she said, waggling it in front of my nose.

  "What are you? Deaf? Geez."

  I willed my hand up. She lifted the phone over her head, out of my reach, a mischievous grin darting across her face. Then she handed it to me, mouthed, "Shorty," sailed across the room, and plunked herself down on the other chair.

  I stared at her for a moment, then wrenched my gaze away and lifted the phone to my ear.

  "Paige Winterbourne."

  "Oh, thank God you're home," a woman's voice said. "Liza didn't know what to do and I said, 'Let me call Paige. She'll figure something out.'"

  "Uh-huh. Well, I'm awfully busy right now. Could I call you--"

  "Oh, it'll just take a second. It's about the EMRAW."

  "Em...?"

  "The Elliott Memorial Run and Walk?" The woman laughed. "Guess all your charity events must run together after a while."

  "Uh, right."

  "Bottles or cups?"

  "Huh?"

  "The water. We need to have water for the participants. If we bought jugs and poured it into cups, we'd save a lot of money. But it might make us look cheap."

  "Cheap..."

  "Right. So should we go with individual bottles instead?"

  For a second, I could only sit there, a "what the hell?" expression on my face.

  "Paige?"

  "Oh, hell, buy Evian. It's only charitable donations you're spending, right?"

  Silence buzzed down the line. I rolled my eyes.

  "Cups, obviously," I said. "It's a charity event. If they expect bottled water, they can damned well go jog at the country club instead."

  More silence, then a shaky, "Right. I, uh, thought that's what you'd choose, but--"

  "Then why call?"

  I hung up. Unbelievable. Donating time to charity is all very fine and noble, but how the hell could Paige find the patience for crap like that? She's running around trying to save the world from the forces of evil, and has to deal with idiots who think "what kind of water should we serve?" is a life-or-death dilemma. You ask me, that crossed the line from goodness to martyrdom.

  "Lucas was right. You are in a strange mood," Savannah said, still twisting the chair back and forth. "Lucas said I can't bug you 'cause you're busy. But I didn't interrupt you. The phone did. As long as you're interrupted, though, there's no harm in talking to you, right?"

  I thought of Lucas, downstairs, alone with the Nix. "Uh, can we--"

  "It's about Trevor," she said. "He's acting--I don't get him, you know. I think he wants to be with me--but then he acts all--" She groaned and stopped spinning the chair. "He's being weird again."

  "And you--you want my advice?"

  "Duh, no. I just want to know what you think. I mean, sure, if you want to give me advice, I can't stop you. You always do anyway. But it's not like I have to take it."

  I stood there, speechless. My daughter wanted my advice about a boy. How many times had I imagined this conversation, imagined what
I'd say, what words of wisdom I could impart--or, considering my romantic track record, what warnings I could give.

  Jaime's laugh floated through the open window.

  "Shit!" I said.

  Savannah looked at me, one brow going up.

  "Uh, Lucas," I said. "I needed to tell him--Is he downstairs?"

  "Nah, outside. Jaime wanted to see his bike. Like she hasn't seen it before."

  "I need to--Hold that thought. About the boy. I'll be right back."

  I bolted from the room, then heard Savannah following and checked my pace, settling for a quick march down the steps and to the back door. I threw it open. Jaime turned, and for a split second something very un-Jaime-like passed behind her eyes, a mental snarl of pique.

  "Ah, Paige," Lucas said. "Perfect timing. We need to discuss dinner."

  "Already?" Jaime said, forcing a laugh. "I thought maybe Lucas could take me for a ride--"

  "Aren't we having roast chicken?" Savannah said, slipping out behind me.

  "We were," Lucas said. "But Paige has been so busy with that site crash that she hasn't had time to start it, so we'll need an alternate plan."

  "Well, you guys figure that out, then," Savannah said.

  "Jaime and I need to talk."

  Jaime looked at her, frowning.

  "You know," Savannah said. "About that thing."

  "What thing is that?" I asked.

  "Curry," Lucas said.

  I frowned. "They need to talk about curry?"

  "No, for dinner. We'll pick up Indian. You like Indian food, don't you, Jaime?"

  She smiled. "Love it."

  "Why don't Paige and I go pick that up now, and we'll have an early dinner."

  Savannah plucked at Jaime's sleeve and nodded toward the house. As they went inside, I watched, still standing there as the door closed. So much for a mother-daughter boy chat. Maybe later.

  I turned to Lucas. "Jaime doesn't like Indian food, does she? The real Jaime, I mean."

  "Hates it."

  "Ah, so you didn't quite believe me. You could have said so, you know, and we'd have thought up an easier way to test her...one that doesn't require us leaving them alone while we go pick up dinner."

  He shook his head. "We're not going to pick up dinner. The Indian query was simply a convenient opportunity to verify that the Nix is indeed still inhabiting Jaime's body. I was quite sure of it when she lured me out here, but 'quite sure' is hardly sufficient, considering what we're planning to do."

  He handed me Paige's helmet, and took his own off the shelf.