Marked by Shadows: MM Paranormal Romance Mystery (A Simply Crafty Paranormal Mystery Book 2)

by Lissa Kasey

  Alex squeezed my hand, his eyes focused on the doorway behind us instead of the throw down at the table. I glanced back, not seeing anything. Not really. Just maybe… a shadow? The edge of movement? Was that a trick of light? Low to the floor like that? I frowned, studying the shadows now.

  Freya appeared in the opposite doorway after a moment, also wrapped up in a robe like Jonah was. “Ladies and gentlemen,” she said, flipping the switch and filling the room with light. I blinked away spots and tears from too much light too quickly. Checking the other doorway again, I found the shadow gone. I let out a breath I hadn’t realized I’d been holding, but Alex’s focus remained on the door.

  “For those who wish to sleep, please head to bed, anyone who wants to do otherwise, please take your noise to the craft room, which is insulated to minimize sound.” She waited a moment as if waiting for everyone to move, but no one did. “Anyone hurt?”

  “No. Just afraid to sleep in our room,” Julie said.

  “Chad has the other king. He’d probably be willing to switch with you,” Freya put Chad on the spot.

  “Oh sure, yeah, no problem,” Chad said, instantly making himself the hero. “Let me move my stuff.” He headed toward the stairs. Julie and Nicole following at a slower pace.

  When Byrony, Melissa, and Joe didn’t move, Freya put her hands on her hips. “Guest rules state courtesy in not disturbing other guests.”

  “We didn’t scream,” Byrony said.

  “Last request, move your game to the craft area, or call it a night.”

  “And if we don’t?” Melissa challenged.

  “Then you’ll be finding yourself a new place to sleep for the next week,” Freya said, unmoved.

  Byrony rose, gathering up the board as she went. “We’ll go out and play in the woods for a bit. I assume we are allowed to come back when we are finished?”

  “As long as you’re quiet enough to respect the rest of the guests, yes,” Freya allowed. “Just because you don’t plan on going on the retreat into the city tomorrow, doesn’t mean everyone else has the same plan.”

  “I’m going tomorrow,” Jonah said.

  “So am I,” MaryAnn stated. “I think Chad and the girls are too. We don’t quilt, but I use a lot of that fabric for handbags that I sell.”

  I was too tired for this mess. Hadn’t realized how tired until the adrenaline began to fade. And frustrated. Alex needed rest. Maybe I should have insisted he stay home. Now we would both be jumping at shadows.

  I tugged Alex toward the back entry where Freya stood, and thankfully he followed at a subdued pace. It actually worried me a little, how silent he’d become. Was he seeing something scary? I hadn’t felt anything. Not skin prickles or even an unease; well nothing more than being woken up to screaming could be attributed to. Had the shadow I caught a glimpse of been the cat? Perhaps even what had touched Julie and scared her?

  Then there was Alex, silent and as pliable as a puppet in my hands. Was he experiencing an episode? Perhaps not even awake at all, but dreaming all this and moving where I led him? I gripped his hand, hating the idea of any of that, and not sure how to fix it.

  Freya touched my arm as we passed. I noticed then that the backdoor was still open, as was the middle cabin door, which was lit up like Christmas, glowing with inner light. Freya was also not dressed for bed, instead hair styled and makeup on. Was she doing a middle of the night photo shoot?

  “You two okay?” She asked softly.

  “I think so?” I replied, not really certain of anything at that moment.

  Byrony’s boyfriend was grumbling something behind us about them paying for the space too, so they could do what they wanted. I would have commented, but it just wasn’t worth it.

  “Head back to bed. I’ll try to make sure the noise stays on par of those of you sleeping,” Freya assured us. Jonah passed, patting me on the back as he made his way back to his cabin. I tugged Alex to follow me. He clung to the back of my shirt, breath warm on the back of my neck as he tilted his head to rest it against mine. He was focused on me. That was okay.

  Alex trailed behind me, slow as molasses. I paused to turn and examine his face in the light of the kitchen and now illuminated back porch. His pupils were huge. Dilated like he’d taken something, though I knew he hadn’t. Alex got horribly sick from most any medication.

  “You okay?” I asked him, rubbing his cheeks with my fingers. He almost seemed to melt into my touch and sucked in a deep breath.

  “Was dreaming of something…”

  “Yeah? Do you remember what?”

  “A light? A trail? Something in the forest.”

  Usually that was my dream. “How about we go back to bed?” I prodded him toward the door and down the stairs. He felt a bit like a ragdoll in my arms, easily steered, but sticking close to me.

  “Don’t go into the woods,” he told me.

  “I won’t,” I promised, reminded of our conversation before bed. “Not without you.”

  “They watch us.”

  That brought a chill to my bones as I led him to our door and into the house. This time I left the light on downstairs in the kitchen, enough to give a nightlight sort of feel to the small space instead of the relative darkness afforded by the drapes.

  “Who watches us?” I asked Alex while he struggled to keep his eyes open. After guiding him back up to the bed, I found a washcloth and wiped down our feet, dirtied by the walk through the night, and pulled the comforter over us. Ice was shivering through my veins now, more than the chill in the air, instead worry over something Alex might have seen.

  “Alex?” I whispered, thinking he’d already fallen back asleep while an edge of nervous anxiety began to trickle down my spine.

  “Them,” was all he offered, not opening his eyes.

  I thought briefly about the shadow I’d glimpsed in the house. Admittedly I saw shadows a lot. Usually explained them away without thought. A trick of light. Something in my eye. Someone moving nearby. The cat even, when I was home alone. Only now did I think hard about that.

  “Alex,” I whispered, expecting him to be asleep.

  “Hmm?” He replied, humming into my shoulder where he had buried his face.

  “Did you see the cat again when we were in the dining room?”

  He didn’t answer for a while. Asleep? No, contemplating because he finally said. “Yes and no.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It had changed.” Alex turned his face and opened his eyes to meet mine. “It didn’t look like the same cat anymore. It was distorted. Almost angry looking. I think because of what they were doing in the dining room. It was getting bigger, angrier until the light went on. Not the cat anymore. Something else…”

  “Was the Ouija board agitating it?” It was something I’d never been a fan of. But in general, I didn’t mess with occult things. No opening portals or calling spirits. Even on the ghost hunts my shop hosted a few times a year, we searched for already active spirits. We did not demand their presence or call them into existence.

  I watched other ghost hunters, or paranormal enthusiasts as they called themselves, do something called ‘provoking the spirits.’ This often entailed a Ouija board or some sort of angry verbal attack. I thought of it mainly as an American thing. Though I’d seen a few European ghost groups do the same.

  The idea that attacking the dead, if that was what they were, was a good idea, stunned me. In my culture, the dead were respected, and only called upon to offer protection. They were ancestors, those who had come before, and treated with respect, not terror or even loathing.

  There were legends of the dead coming back more as demons than ghosts. Pulled from their graves to right a wrong, but transformed into something greater than simply the departed spirit of a loved one. In fact, a lot of Japanese and Chinese legends feature spirits transformed into something else by ill intent. We didn’t call those or demand their presence. We didn’t agitate those.

  There was a difference between
the yurei, the departed, and the yokai, demons or higher beings. I’d always thought of the yurei as memories more than physical things. In America they were thought of as repeaters, little more than a cluster of energy going about the same actions over and over. It was a bit like a stain on the fabric of reality rather than a person. No conscious thought, only a simple repetition of emotion or activity. That’s why people smelled perfume of their grandmother, or the pipe smoke of their grandfather. The yokai were more like what had taken Alex. Tricksters. Monsters. Demons. Things that manipulated the living to gain power, energy, or control.

  I had thought the cat might have been a yurei, energy of a cat once loved and worshipped, imprinting itself in the bones of Freya’s home. But the change, that wasn’t the act of a yurei. Had it been the Ouija board that had manipulated the spirit of the yurei? I hoped it hadn’t been changed into a yokai by the group’s interference. It would be sad to learn that Freya’s beloved cat, who had engraved her delicate and loving memory into the house, had suddenly been shifted into something dark and dangerous.

  Funny how it didn’t occur to me to question Alex on the validity of what he saw. He could have still been dreaming, hallucinating, or a thousand other things. All I had seen was a shadow. It meant little in scientific terms. But I didn’t doubt Alex’s word. He hated admitting he saw things the rest of us didn’t. Being with me, he didn’t hide it as much. He trusted me not to judge him. And I didn’t.

  I bit my lip, staring up at the ceiling as a thousand scenarios rolled through my brain. Every option from full on exorcist horror stories to every ghost hunter in the world descending on Freya’s B&B to catch a glimpse of the terrifying ghost cat turned monster.

  “Hey,” Alex said, which made me jump a little as I’d been so lost in thought. “You okay?”

  No. I needed to work on something. Clear my mind, or even interrupt the thought process. But I hadn’t brought any major uncompleted projects with, only small things to keep my hands busy.

  Alex reached up to turn my face toward his, his eyes dark and half lidded. “Micah?”

  “I…” didn’t know how to articulate what I needed. There was panic, deep within my soul. The idea that we’d gone on holiday and come face-to-face with a nightmare kept rolling to the front of my brain. “I need a distraction,” I whispered.

  Alex shifted around in the blanket, pulling me from being the big spoon in our snuggle to him being wrapped around me, blocking everything but him from my vision. I let out a long sigh as his weight on me began to ease the panic and slow my thoughts a little. He stroked my face and hair, let me feel his heat and strength around me. It was grounding being in his arms. Alex wasn’t some sort of over-muscled hero, but he was solid, and for that I was grateful.

  “Tell me what you’re most excited to see at the convention later this week,” Alex said.

  I blinked, trying to process his request through the tide of busy thoughts. They slowed like a production line caught with a broken cog, stuttered and jerking. “The convention?”

  “Yeah, this textile thing? Reason we’re here? We’re moving forward right? Tell me what you’re most excited to see. I’ve been looking at the class schedule and hope to catch a few myself.”

  “There are a few lines of fabric,” I began having to reroute my thoughts. Some of the lines I thought he might like, with dragons and mythical creatures.

  “Tell me about them. What sorts of patterns do you like best?”

  And that was a loaded question. Because I liked so much, and yet had strong opinions about certain prints. I sucked in a deep breath and began to walk through my thoughts on some of the most popular lines. It didn’t matter that Alex fell asleep in the middle of my explanation because I did too, somewhere in defining the political intensity of Alexander Henry prints to the wildly overhyped Kaffe Fassett florals. We both needed sleep, and who knew categorizing fabrics could be better than counting sheep.

  Chapter 7

  When we arrived at the breakfast table the next morning, both a little bleary-eyed and in desperate need of coffee, I was surprised to find only Freya and Grace wandering back and forth from the kitchen to the dining area. I didn’t do mornings well, but Alex had woken me with sweet kisses and a mutual hand job, before dragging me to the shower and then demanding coffee. Which was why we were in the house right at eight and marching to the coffee pot.

  “Hope it’s like your coffee,” Alex grumbled as he reached for the pot. “I’ll still drink it if it’s some Folgers crap, but yours is what I crave.” It was, as Freya had been the one to introduce it to me. She had regular big brand boring coffee too, but the good stuff was there and ready to go. I waited for Alex to fill his cup, then took the pot to do the same. A bit of doctoring with almond milk and stevia, and I took a sip, enjoying the familiar taste and warmth running through my bones.

  Alex took a drink, sighed almost pornographically, then downed half the cup before refilling it. “Heaven.”

  “I have those waffles you like,” Grace told me. “Dairy free, and the chicken sausages. Always real maple syrup of course.”

  “Hmm,” I said into my cup, not awake enough to form real words, but let her direct me toward the hotplate put aside for my special diet.

  “Thank you, ma’am,” Alex said to her. He followed me, and we loaded up our plates full of almond flour, dairy free waffles, and chicken apple sausages, all covered in syrup. I didn’t normally eat this much in the morning, but we’d be out running around, with only a short lunch break in the middle of the day, and I wanted Alex to eat.

  We sat down at the table, opposite the doorway where the ghost cat had been last night. I watched Alex’s expression, but if there was something here, he gave no acknowledgment to it. None of the shadows looked out of place, even as I studied the spot for a minute or so.

  We ate in our comfortable morning silence for a few minutes as the rest of the group began to trickle in. Chad first, with a plate loaded full of pancakes and bacon. Then Julie and Nicole, MaryAnn, and finally Jonah. No sign of Byrony and Melissa. But since they weren’t going on the trip into the city, I assumed they were sleeping in.

  Freya joined us, sitting beside me with her own stack of waffles and sausages. Since I’d had almost an entire cup of coffee, my brain was starting to come back online so I looked at her and asked, “Were you filming in the middle cabin last night?”

  She took a sip of what looked like very milky coffee and nodded. “Tutorial. It’s easier to film at night when everyone is in bed, and I have full control over the lighting.”

  “Sounds like a good way to lose out on sleep,” Alex said.

  “I plan to nap this afternoon while you’re all in town. I release three videos a week, but the other two will be from the convention. The one last night was a basic tips video. Editing takes more time than filming, and I have to do that later too.”

  “You’re not coming on the tour with us?” It shouldn’t have surprised me. She lived close enough to Houston to visit any of the shops whenever she wanted.

  “I’ve done videos from them all already. Plus I have a few projects to work on, so it’s easier if I leave you guys to explore,” Freya replied. “I’ll be with you all at the convention later this week, but thought I’d give you guys some space to explore town.”

  I didn’t really need to explore town and would miss her presence as I debated projects and fabric with myself. While Alex had enthusiasm toward my projects, he didn’t understand a lot of what I said. Freya had years of crafting experience and I valued all of it immensely. Though I was likely to find much more at the convention, with all the new fabric lines, than I would at any of the in town quilt shops.

  “Did Melissa and Byrony come back? I didn’t hear them come in,” Nicole asked.

  “Sorry about the scream thing,” Julie said, her face pink with embarrassment. “I think it was mood more than anything. Us jumping at shadows and suggestions.”

  “That’s normally how ghost hunting works,”
I said. “People put things in your head, then you forget what is normal and begin to question everything. Sounds, the trick of light in your eyes, and then you start playing with your own emotions. Fear grows and you get chills, or an off feeling. All psychological.” Having experienced the real thing, I now knew the difference. I spent a lot of time since my return analyzing everything I saw, heard, and felt. Sometimes to my detriment. Being rational was hard when you were afraid, and I hadn’t quite mastered it yet.

  “You don’t believe in ghosts?” Chad wanted to know. “But it’s your job.”

  It wasn’t. Not really. And I didn’t want to have this conversation over breakfast. It was far too early to discuss philosophy, but it was Alex who responded. “It’s not really a matter of belief or not. Are there otherworldly and unexplained things out there? Yes. But do most people find that on a ghost hunt? No. It’s suggestion and the human brain playing tricks on you. I think that’s why we catch stuff in pictures and in audio we can’t hear rather than in real life situations. It’s so far removed from us, these echoes of the past, or whatever, that we need the devices to pull it out of the silence. Micah’s shop is a craft shop, based in art rather than the supernatural. And we do tours, but it’s a lot of history. That history includes some ghost stories, which often leads to suggestions that then make people claim they see ghosts.”

  “You’ve caught pictures. I saw them in your group,” MaryAnn said.

  “A lot of people have pictures outside the norm. Does that mean they are ghosts?” Alex shrugged, though I knew he was more convinced of it than I was. “But that’s not why we are here, is it?”

  “No,” Jonah said. “I don’t need to know if some spook is getting kicks by staring at me in the shower. But I do need some costume ideas for the upcoming year. Did you all see those sneak peeks of Yaya Han’s new line?”

  “I did,” I said. “The mermaid scales she had last year shifting to dragon scales with an almost alligator look. I can’t wait to see it in person. She also has some faux leather designs that look easy to work with.”