“You just missed him,” she said.
Michael shot her a puzzled look. “Missed who?”
“Whitcomb.”
Although it was obvious that only the three of them currently occupied the kitchen, Colin still looked around wildly, as if he expected the ghost to be hiding in the pantry, or maybe underneath the little table for two by the window. “He was here?”
“Yes.”
Since they’d already experienced one of these ghostly visitations in the recent past, Michael didn’t appear quite as surprised. “You should have tried to keep him here.”
“I did try,” she returned. “He said there was no point, that I was the only who could talk to him.”
That response evoked a frown. “He told you that?”
“Yes. But he wouldn’t tell me why.” Frustrated, she shook her head. “And then you two came in, and that was the end of it.”
Michael said, “Well, it wasn’t like we planned to interrupt you — ”
“I know,” she cut in. “That was just him being…him, I guess. He makes it sound as if he doesn’t have much control over his situation.”
Michael didn’t look terribly convinced by her remarks. “I find that hard to believe, considering the way he keeps appearing whenever and wherever he wants to.”
About all she could do was offer a helpless shrug. Correctly guessing her mood, Michael turned toward Colin.
“We’d better eat this before it gets cold.”
And although Colin’s eyes were full of questions, it seemed he realized he wouldn’t get the answers he wanted, because he only said, “Sure.”
The three of them went into the dining room, where Michael and Colin set down the plates of food they were carrying. Soon enough, they’d all dished up heaping portions of salad and steak and potatoes and veggies. Even though she ate with a good enough appetite, Audrey couldn’t help thinking about her latest ghostly encounter. Whatever Whitcomb had wanted to talk to her about, Colin and Michael’s interruption had cut him off before he could truly broach the subject.
She wondered if she would ever find out what he’d wanted.
Chapter 7
At least Colin seemed as though he was in a much better mood when he left the house than when he’d arrived. After filling up on ribeye and various sides — and spending another half hour or so watching Project Demon Hunters footage while the Zinfandel buzz wore off — their producer departed, looking cheerful as he contemplated putting together both a “highlights” reel, so to speak, as well as choice bits of unedited footage for their clandestine YouTube launch.
“I’ll let you know when it’s all ready,” he promised Michael as he went out the front door.
“Looking forward to it,” Michael said, glad that it seemed as though they’d successfully distracted Colin from his breakup with Daniela.
If you can even call it that, he reflected as he went into the kitchen to help Audrey with the dishes. Colin and Daniela were only together for a few weeks. Then again, Michael supposed you could say the same thing about him and Audrey. Their situation was different, though…a lot different.
“Colin seems…better,” she said as she stretched Saran wrap across the glass bowl that held the leftover potatoes and roasted vegetables.
“I think so,” Michael replied. “Or at least, he’s distracted with this project, which is good. He’s one of those people who always needs something to be working on. He doesn’t seem to have much concept of the notion of downtime.”
A smile quirked Audrey’s lips. “That sounds familiar.”
Michael wished he could disagree with her, but he knew she was right. Then again, it didn’t really feel like work when you were doing something you were passionate about. “From the way Colin was talking, it sounds like he might get some of the footage out there as early as tomorrow. I suppose we need to brace ourselves for that.”
Audrey had just finished putting away the plastic wrap and looked up at him now, expression concerned. “Do you think it’s going to be that big a deal?”
“I don’t know,” he said honestly. “I know Colin, so he’ll do a good job of covering his tracks. I don’t think we need to worry about the network tracking him down as the source of the leak. In terms of legal ramifications, I think we’ll probably be all right. But….”
“‘But’?” she repeated.
Michael came over to her, put his arms around her waist. At once she snuggled up to him, laying her head against his chest. A few long strands of silky brown hair brushed against the backs of his hands, and a sudden flicker of heat moved through him. God, he’d never had a woman affect him like this, someone who made him alive with need from just the barest touch.
He swallowed, forcing his thoughts back to the problem at hand. “But people are going to jump on these tapes. They’re going to be dissected, argued over. We have some of the purest footage of demonic activity that’s ever been released into the wild, so to speak. I’ve done a pretty good job of insulating myself, and so I’m not too worried about any crazies tracking us down here. You, on the other hand….” The words trailed off, and he very gently bent and kissed the top of her head.
Audrey pulled away slightly, just enough so she could look up into his face. “What are you trying to tell me, Michael?”
“That you’re not nearly as insulated. Maybe not your home address so much, but you’ve got your office address right there on the website for your practice. That was how I knew where to approach you.”
Her brows drew together, and he saw a flicker of concern in her warm brown eyes. Then she gave a not-very-convincing chuckle and said, “Well, I guess it’s a good thing that I’m only going in to my office once a week right now.”
“Even that might be too much.”
Her frown deepened. “What are you trying to say, Michael? That I should give up my practice?”
He didn’t respond right away, because that was exactly what he’d been thinking. Yes, she wasn’t due to see any clients until Saturday, almost a whole week from now, and yet he didn’t know whether those six days would be enough of a buffer or not. These days, an internet sensation could die down in a short twenty-four-hour cycle…or it could continue, gaining a life of its own as more and more people shared videos or discussed theories in various online forums. It was almost impossible to know what would go viral and what wouldn’t.
“I don’t know for sure,” he said frankly. “And we might not know right away. It’s just something you may need to consider.”
“Well, it would have been nice if you’d mentioned this earlier,” she snapped. Those big brown eyes, so full of affection a few minutes earlier, now blazed with indignation. “Because maybe I would have told Colin to put the kibosh on the whole thing.”
“He wouldn’t have listened to you,” Michael said as gently as he could. It was only the truth. Once Colin had the bit between his teeth, so to speak, it was almost impossible to dissuade him from a course of action.
Audrey’s mouth pursed. Now she pulled away from him entirely so she could stand off a foot or so, arms crossed. “Would he have listened to you?”
“Probably not,” he admitted. “Colin can be a very stubborn person. And, if you want to get down in the weeds about who owns the rights to what, those videos are Colin’s, not mine.”
She retorted, “I thought they belonged to the network.”
Touché. “Well, as things stand now, I guess so. But your contract certainly didn’t give you the option to tell him what to do with the episodes he shot, and mine really didn’t, either. I had an executive producing credit because it looked good to the network when we were pitching the show, but I knew all along that it was Colin’s baby, not mine.”
Because none of these arguments seemed to convince her, Michael went over to Audrey and took her hand, gently drew her toward him. Although she resisted a little at first, after a moment she relented and let him wrap his arms around her once more.
“It may not be so bad,” he said. “An
d really, you might have faced some of the same consequences even if the show had been allowed to go on the air normally. Sometimes it’s hard to know for sure how people are going to react. But my gut instinct tells me that we’ll probably get more blowback from treating the footage as illicit black-market tapes than if the show had aired as planned as part of the network’s Halloween promotions. Then it might have been regarded more as a silly piece of entertainment, staged merely to scare people.”
She was quiet for a moment. When she spoke, her tone was thoughtful, all her irritation from a moment earlier gone. “I guess I should have realized I was taking a risk. With everything else that’s been going on — ghosts and demons and black things boiling out of closets — I sort of forgot we were taping a reality show and that I should have braced myself for the kind of notoriety that might bring.”
He ran a hand over her hair, marveling at the silk of it against his skin, the way the kitchen lights shimmered along its length, awakening glints of gold and rust and copper amid the darker strands. “I might be worrying for nothing. But I needed to tell you what might be coming, too. Just in case.”
“I’m glad you did.” Once again, she was silent, but she kept her arms wrapped around his waist, holding him close. At last, she gave a grim chuckle. “The sad thing is, I’m really not as invested in my practice as I should be. I know I should be thinking of my clients’ needs, not my own job satisfaction — but whenever I go in to work, I always feel as though I’m just going through the motions.”
Privately, Michael had thought more than once that Audrey was wasting her true talents, but he would never have offered that information unless specifically asked for his opinion. He’d guessed that having her own practice had been her fallback; research into psychic phenomena had declined since its heyday in the late 1960s and early 1970s, and the funding simply wasn’t there for the kind of work she wanted to do.
“Well, you don’t have to make any life-changing decisions right now,” he said gently. “Let’s just see how the next few days go. Do you have any backup therapists you can send your clients to if the need arises?”
To his relief, she nodded. “Yes, I compiled a list back when you first approached me about doing the show. I decided not to pursue that route, since I have so few clients that I could fit them all in over the weekend if necessary, but I still have the names.”
“Good,” he said. “Then keep that option open, just in case.” He bent and kissed her — softly, just to show that he was here for her — but she surprised him with the intensity of her response. She pressed her body against his, let their tongues touch. Desire flared through him again. “I was going to suggest watching some TV to relax,” he murmured. “But — ”
“But I have a much better idea,” she said. “Let’s go upstairs.”
He didn’t need any encouragement. After letting go of one another, they both hurried up to his bedroom, where they wasted no time discarding their clothes and fell into bed, mouths hungrily seeking one another, bodies pressed together, suddenly, urgently becoming one. No extended, luxurious foreplay, but only a brief, almost frantic coupling.
Afterward, Audrey held on to him for a long moment, then relaxed against the pillows, allowing him to slip out of her. She exhaled a breath, then another.
“Thank you,” she said, her eyes still half shut. “I needed that.”
“Obviously,” he replied. Not that he minded; his body still thrummed with the aftermath of the orgasm. Every time with her was the best, because she was a miracle.
“It’s just….” The words faded away into silence as she opened her eyes and rolled over onto her side so she could look directly at him. “I keep surprising myself with how much I want you. Trust me, I was never like this with anyone else.”
“Believe me, I don’t mind.”
She chuckled then. “Good. I’m glad you don’t mind. I just didn’t want you to think I was only using you for sex.”
He reached over, cupped her cheek in his hand, marveled at the velvet softness of her skin. “I would never think that.”
Was it time for him to say the words? They’d been rattling around inside his head for days now, but with all the sound and fury accompanying Project Demon Hunters and its fiery flame-out, he could never find the right time.
Now she had moved over so she could lay her head on his chest. One arm slipped across him, resting on his stomach. It felt so perfect to have her there, but what would happen if he confessed his feelings? Would she pull away, startled, then protest that it was far too early to be having this conversation?
He didn’t want to find out. Better to stay silent for the time being. Besides, she was now at least partially psychic; maybe she could simply tell what he was thinking.
When she spoke again, it was with a change of subject so abrupt, Michael was glad he’d decided not to say anything.
“I wish I knew what Whitcomb wanted, what he was trying to tell me.”
“Unfortunately, ghosts aren’t always what you might call direct.”
Those words made her let out an exasperated huff of breath, although Michael could tell her frustration wasn’t directed at him. “No, they aren’t, are they? Always talking in circles, dropping oblique little hints. He did come right out and say that he couldn’t tell me the name of the demon that had taken his form.”
“You asked him to do that?” Michael inquired, now a little alarmed. While that name was necessary to defeat the demon — or devil — in question, acquiring his name to use as a weapon had its own risks, risks that Audrey shouldn’t have taken on her own.
“Yes, but of course he wouldn’t give me a straight answer.” She sighed again, pillowing her head against his chest. Some of the tension seemed to leave her body, which Michael thought was a good sign. “I wish I knew why he keeps visiting me. He won’t answer that question, either, although he did say I reminded him of his wife. Which was weird enough on its own.”
“He said that?” Michael asked, startled. While they were both very attractive women — he’d seen a few photos of Alice Whitcomb, enough to tell that her reputation for being a beauty was not exaggerated — Alice had dark blonde hair and blue eyes, almost the exact opposite of Audrey’s coloring. There wasn’t anything very similar about their features, either, because Audrey’s beauty was more clear-cut and strong, while Alice had had the rounded, dimpled prettiness popular in the era when she and Jeffrey Whitcomb had married.
“Yes. Not our looks, just something about our personalities.”
“Well, that might explain why he feels drawn to you. Ghosts like the familiar. That’s why they almost always don’t move beyond the house or other location they’ve decided to haunt.” Michael was glad of this explanation, because it made the whole situation seem almost normal.
Audrey’s dubious expression told him she wasn’t entirely convinced by this argument. “But Whitcomb moves around. I’ve seen him in your house, on the astral plane…once in the upstairs window at my place, although I’ll admit that might have been my imagination messing with me. Still, it’s pretty obvious that he doesn’t appear to be confined to the Whitcomb mansion.”
Since she’d only pointed out the obvious truth of this particular situation, Michael really didn’t have a rebuttal to offer her. And he couldn’t truly explain any of it, at least not in a manner that he would find remotely satisfactory.
“Maybe he was looking for a different kind of ‘familiar,’ so to speak, and found it in you when you came into his house to shoot the first episode,” Michael commented. “Since he won’t talk to me, it’s hard for me to say one way or another.”
“Good thing you’re used to unexplained mysteries,” Audrey said. However, she didn’t sound snarky, only contemplative…and maybe a little sleepy.
“We can ponder it more in the morning.” He bent and kissed her. “You sound like you’re about to nod off.”
“I am,” she admitted. “Good sex always does that to me.”
“
Then sleep, and we’ll try to solve the mysteries of the universe tomorrow.”
“’Kay.”
She shifted so her head was on the pillow rather than on his chest, but she still remained snuggled up against him, his hip tucked into the curve of her waist. It felt good to lie here like this, to have her fall asleep next to him and know she would be there when he woke up in the morning.
He would allow himself to be content with that.
Her phone was ringing where she’d left it on the dresser the day before. Audrey opened her eyes and saw that, according to the clock on the mantel, it was not quite seven forty-five in the morning. Michael lay next to her, stirring as well now that he’d heard her damn phone.
“Sorry,” she said, then sat up and swung her legs over the side of the bed. Who the hell could be calling at this ungodly hour of the morning? Most businesses wouldn’t even be open yet.
The number on the home screen of her phone wasn’t one she recognized. A 626 area code, though, which meant it was local, not some overzealous telemarketer. Or maybe that didn’t mean anything; the phone scammers had gotten a lot more sophisticated in recent years, were now better than ever at masking who they were and what they were up to.
She almost let it roll over to voicemail. Then she decided she’d better answer the call, just because even the spoofers and the scammers didn’t generally start their barrage of spoofed numbers before eight o’clock in the morning. It could be something important.
Trying not to sigh, she grabbed the phone and swiped her fingers over the screen to accept the call. “Hello?”
“Is this Audrey Barrett?” The voice was male, brisk.
“Ye-es,” she faltered, wondering whether it had been a good idea to confirm her identity.
“Do you live at 23 Meda Avenue?”
She countered without answering, made wary by years of having to dodge telemarketers. “Can you tell me what this is about?”
The man’s voice softened a little. “I’m sorry — I’m Captain Benitez with the Glendora Fire Department.”
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