Haunted Seductions

by Sahara Kelly

  Even Louis sobered as he stared at the card he recognized immediately—Death. “Whoa. That isn’t too good, is it?”

  Cory’s eyes softened. “Death is part of life, Louis. It’s in all our pasts. We cannot escape the inevitability of it, or the finality of it as far as this existence is concerned.” She glanced down again. “But here, in your past influences position, it’s very strong. It’s telling you of the cost of your inheritance. That at some time, somebody died, and the result has put you here, now.”

  “Well, yeah. I inherited this place from my grandfather.”

  She shook her head. “It’s more than that. Further back than that. I don’t know. Let’s go on. We can come back to it if necessary.”

  Louis followed her hand as she moved to the next card, although his gaze kept straying back to that skeleton on horseback. A slight chill trickled down his spine. He shrugged it off. Too much beer and sun.

  “Now we get to the recent past.” Cory gestured to the card. “It’s the High Priestess. A good strong card for this particular spot.”

  He shrugged. “Could it be you?”

  Cory was silent for a moment. “Uh, yeah. I guess.” She thought about it. “She represents the subconscious mind. And she’s a balance—see the black and white columns either side of her? She’s in between. Impartial.”

  “Hmm.” Louis watched the pulse as it throbbed at the base of Cory’s throat. Impartial, huh? I don’t think so.

  “She’s the link between the conscious and the subconscious, so yes, I suppose in this particular pattern, it could well be me. And she is supporting you. Beneath you.”

  Cory realized what she’d said, and a slow flush of warmth spread from her breasts to her neck to her cheeks. “Uhh…”

  Louis smiled. He put every ounce of charm he had into it, too. “It’s okay. I won’t take that the wrong way.” The hell I won’t.

  “Thanks.” Hurriedly she moved on. “Now we get to your future influences. This one here—Justice.”

  “Well, that sounds official.” Louis grinned, finishing off his beer.

  “It’s pretty clear.”

  “As mud. Care to explain?” He pushed back from the table and recycled the empty can. “And while you’re at it, tell me if I’m ever gonna stop sweating.” He grabbed another cold can and held it to his forehead.

  Cory laughed. “You’ll get used to it. We all do.” She paused. “That is, if you decide to stay.” Dark brown eyes met his. “Have you decided yet?”

  Louis shook his head. “Not yet. I’m still working here. Gotta see what the end result looks like.”

  “Ah.” Cory tilted her head. “Yeah. It fits. Seven pentacles, the Moon…”

  “Right. So I’m a well-hung planet who likes to fix things.”

  She laughed again. “Sort of.” Then she blushed and looked back down at the cards.

  Louis would have given half his bank account to know what she was thinking right at that moment. Whatever it was that made her blush.

  For once he wished for a few psychic skills of his own. He’d really like to read her mind.

  *~~*~~*

  Thank God he can’t read my mind.

  A sudden flash of his body, cock hard and balls oh-so-tempting, had stunned Cory into a quick eruption of heat. Talk about well-hung.

  She hurriedly yanked her disobedient mind back to the table and the Tarot deck. Without a doubt there was a strong message here, and she only had four more cards to reveal. Then, perhaps, they’d be able to put it all together.

  “Here’s the last set. These four go here.” She dealt the next four cards from the deck faceup, in a line, one above the other, to the right of the existing cards. “Now we’re done.”

  “We are?” He looked at the cards, then at her.

  Poor guy. He was really struggling with this, she knew. And he’d been a helluva lot more patient than a lot of her customers were. She smiled. “Yep. This lot should tie it all together. I hope. Bear with me, Louis. We’ll make sense of it.”

  “I trust you.” He grinned back as he popped another can. Damn, he was good-looking when he smiled like that. So unself-conscious, just enjoying the moment. Cory almost envied him that skill, since she seldom had the chance to purely have fun.

  Once again her naughty thoughts rambled off into areas where both she and Louis were naked and having a great deal of fun.

  She sighed. “Let’s finish this.” Before I self-combust.

  “Okay. Oh…can I get you anything?”

  Yeah. Fucked. “No thanks. I’m fine.”

  Louis sat back down at the table and looked at the last batch of cards. “Bottom up, huh?”

  How she stopped her eyes from crossing, Cory never knew, but she did. She simply nodded and touched the lowest card. “This is you where you are right now. Within the current set of circumstances.”

  “Hell, that looks pretty bad.”

  She grinned. “It’s not. It’s the Tower. It symbolizes the jolt we get from understanding. You’re beginning to understand this place, Louis. It’s a good thing.”

  He looked unconvinced.

  “Well, look, here in the next position is the World. This is kind of like what effect you’ll have on those around you. It’s representative of life. The cycles of life, the consistency of existence.”

  “Um…wanna translate that for me?”

  The interpretation crashed into the back of Cory’s neck like a physical blow. He was going to get her pregnant. She could possibly bear his child.

  Shitfuck nooooo. I so don’t think so.

  She cleared her throat. “It’s…er…it means that you’ll be setting everything in order. Putting things that were wrong—right.”

  “I see.”

  No you don’t. Because that ain’t it. I wish it was, but it ain’t.

  She buried those thoughts in the basement of her brain and bravely soldiered on. “Almost done.” She tapped the second to last card. “The Empress. Your hidden desires—” Cory held up her hand. “Before you even say it, no, this doesn’t mean you’re looking for a woman. It means that you’re looking to find a way to heal the past. To solve whatever mystery lies here.”

  “I haven’t admitted there is one, yet.” Louis looked defensive. “Sure, there’s been some odd stuff going on, but I’m still not positive—”

  “Yes you are.” Cory was staring him straight in the eyes. “You know, deep down inside, what’s going on, you just don’t want to admit it to yourself yet. But—” She lowered her head once more, “you will.”

  “Really?”

  There was a silence for a moment. Cory swallowed, trying to rid her throat of the lump in it that had risen from her gut as she stared at the final card.

  The Lovers.

  How the hell was she going to interpret that for Louis, when all her instincts were screaming at her what it meant?

  That she and Louis would be lovers again. Often. That passion would rise between them and work with the unseen world to correct a past injustice. That it needed both of them to work together, bringing their strengths to complement each other.

  That they were both here, in this place at this time, to put the final words to a story which had clearly begun with a death a long time ago. And that the more they loved, the stronger the chances were that they’d accomplish this task.

  She sighed.

  Louis cleared his throat. “I recognize that card, too.” He was staring at the linked and naked bodies.

  “Figures.” Cory almost groaned the word. She lifted her empty soda can and sighed. “Can I have a beer please?”

  Louis almost jumped at the mundane question, but got her one from the fridge. She copied his earlier action and held it to her forehead, enjoying the cooling sensation. Finally, after she’d got her body under control and could deal with the moisture dampening her panties, she risked a look up at him.

  “So. Here’s what we’ve got.”

  He sat quietly, listening to her. He was a good listener,
she realized. Funny, too. He was really one awful nice guy in a world where nice guys weren’t exactly thick on the ground. Distracted again, she returned to the cards and forced herself to concentrate.

  “You’re here, with your particular skills and emotions, for a purpose. To right a wrong, correct an injustice—whatever it is—that happened in the past. It’s connected with a death.” She paused, gathering her impressions, her images, the psychic tingles that had flown up her arms from the Tarot cards.

  “It’s connected to this house, too. Very strongly. And, I guess, it’s connected to me, as well, since I seem to be part of the picture.” She rubbed her shoulder. “Jeez, I’m tired.”

  Louis pushed away from the table and came to stand behind her. Without asking, he pushed her hair aside and began to massage her neck, finding the exact spot that was aching. She closed her eyes and for a few moments just let her mind float, relaxing into the rhythmic motion of his hands.

  Shit, he had good hands.

  “So I’m figuring here that we’re talking about Claudine.” His knuckles pressed either side of her vertebrae, easing the tension and setting up new ones. In places that weren’t anywhere near her neck. “You’re related to her, aren’t you?”

  “Yeah.” Cory didn’t even bother to ask how he knew. The touch of his fingers was too soothing, too pleasant, to disrupt. “Way back in the family tree. Claudine was one of the first Lavalieres to live here in Louisiana.”

  “And she died? Some kind of mystery, right?”

  “So it’s said.” She leaned into his massage. “Shit, that’s good.”

  “What do you know about her? I’ve only read a little bit about it.”

  “She ran Love Alley. Damn fine whorehouse, too, so they say. Anyway, she made the mistake of loving the wrong man, and refusing a rich man. After that, she was never heard from again.”

  “Hmm.” Louis continued his firm touches, working down toward her shoulders now, stroking the bare skin of her upper arms and then returning to her neck once more.

  Fuck. He’s turning me on.

  Big-time.

  Cory opened her mouth to say something. She wasn’t quite sure what it was going to be…possibly, “I don’t think you should do that anymore”, or maybe, “Don’t stop doing that or I’ll kill you”, or—most likely—“Strip and fuck me. Now”.

  But before any words at all came out, there was a loud thumping sound from upstairs. Louis’s hands left her body and they both froze, listening.

  It was Louis who broke the silence. “Oh crap. What now?”

  Chapter Thirteen

  Two faces stared at each other, eyes wide.

  Cory’s were dark and nervous, and Louis figured his were pretty much the same except for their color. They both swallowed simultaneously, then Cory spoke. “You want to go find out what that was?”

  “I have a choice? If I do, the answer is—not particularly.”

  She gave him a quick grin. “Me neither, but you know we’re going to.”

  “You first.”

  “Uh uh. It’s your house.”

  “Thanks a lot.” He peered out of the kitchen doorway to see a perfectly normal-looking hall. Even the lights were working.

  Grateful for small mercies, he glanced up the stairs. “It came from up there, right?”

  “Yep.” She was close behind him and at any other time he would have spent a few moments wondering how to get her closer. But right now he was simply thankful for her presence.

  The thump came again and they both jumped this time, the sound was loud and unmistakable. Something had fallen over.

  “You know,” began Louis, “I’m getting just a little bit tired of all this stuff. It never seems to frickin’ stop…”

  Cory nudged him toward the staircase. “It will. We just have to figure out what the house wants, is all.”

  “I asked it. It wouldn’t tell me.” He snorted, realizing how completely stupid that sounded. But in response to that insistent hand between his shoulder blades he walked to the stairs and put his foot on the first step. “Uh…I suppose you want me to go up here, right?” He tipped his head toward the second floor.

  “Yep.”

  “You got a gun or a sword or a baseball bat handy?”

  Cory sighed. “C’mon, Mr. Big Brave Man. Do your thing. I’ll be right behind you.”

  And she was. As they mounted the stairs, Louis felt a hand grasp his back pocket. He paused and looked over his shoulder at her. “Scared?”

  She glared at him. “Of course not.”

  He said nothing, just continued to hold her gaze.

  “Oh, all right. Yeah. Just a wee bit.”

  “Me too.” He reached down and unclasped her fingers from their death grip on his jeans, folding them within his palm instead. “Better?”

  She nodded.

  “Okay then. Let’s go be brave ghostbusters.” He mounted the stairs carefully, looking around him, trying to find the source of the noise. “It’s probably only a shutter fell down or something.”

  “Sure.” She squeezed his fingers tighter. “I’ll bet that’s what it is.”

  Their tentative perimeter check yielded nothing that looked like it could have thumped, bumped or dropped and the rooms were pretty much clear.

  Pausing on the second floor, Louis raised an eyebrow. “Don’t see anything, do you?”

  Cory lifted her chin and stared at nothing in particular. He was starting to recognize that look as the one meaning she was off someplace else. Someplace he couldn’t follow. Quietly, he waited.

  “Up there.” She indicated the small stairway leading to the attics.

  Louis sighed. “Figures.” He headed that way. “I haven’t cleaned up here. It’s pretty filthy.”

  Once again there was a soft thud, quieter this time. Two hands twitched and grasped each other tightly.

  “We’re on the right track.” Cory’s voice was quiet but encouraging.

  “That’s nice.” Louis tried to keep his tone from being too sarcastic. This was so close to a scene out of some horror movie that he’d started to sweat and it had nothing to do with the humidity.

  They reached the top of the narrow stairs and stopped on the landing, surveying the small passageway from which doors led to tiny rooms and storage cupboards. A slight sound came from one of them.

  “I’ll bet it’s a mouse or a squirrel or something.” Louis moved to the door with a bravado that was all for show. It had nothing to do with how he actually felt, which could be described succinctly in two words. Scared shitless.

  “Yeah, I’ll bet you’re right.” Cory’s body was now pressed tightly up against his back, adding to his tension.

  Only this wasn’t nerves, it was all a different kind of tension that started in his cock and progressed everyplace else quite rapidly. He tried to ignore the breasts brushing against his T-shirt and not breathe in too much of her womanly fragrance. He’d get dizzy for sure and do something stupid like strip her naked and lick her from head to foot.

  Jerking his mind back from some rather X-rated images, Louis pushed the door to a storage closet open, wincing at the loud and dramatic squeak.

  “You could’ve oiled the frickin’ hinges.”

  “Quit complaining. At least the stairs held.” He peeked inside. “Ahhh.” Pushing the door wide he led Cory in. “Here’s our culprit.”

  A large chest had overturned and as it did so its lid had fallen off, spewing the contents over the floor. Some things had rolled to the far side of the little room, obviously making considerable noise as they did so.

  “Wow. What the hell is all this stuff?” Cory stared at the pile of debris.

  Louis shook his head. “Stuff. That’s exactly what it is. Stuff. More leftover things from God-knows-when. I’ve dug through some of these storage boxes already. Not much in ‘em worth keeping.”

  He bent to examine some odds and ends as Cory moved to the chest itself. “Oooh.”

  He turned and snickered as she pu
lled out a long feather boa in an unlikely shade of pink and tossed it around her shoulders.

  “Isn’t this too cool?”

  He thought for a minute. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen a chicken that color.”

  “Philistine. Guys just don’t get feathers.” She fluffed the bits and pieces—and sneezed. “Okay. Dust and feathers. Not a good combination.” The boa was returned to the chest. “Hmm.” This time she’d found a bouquet of faded silk flowers.

  Louis grinned as Cory rummaged with all the enthusiasm of a bargain hunter at a “reduced for clearance” sale. He knew the feeling—the ever-present possibility that there would be treasure tucked away in chests like this.

  Sadly, there never was.

  But Cory happily dug through the accumulated things that had once meant something to somebody. And Louis enjoyed watching her as she gently removed and replaced items that hadn’t been touched for too many years to count.

  “I think this was a woman’s storage chest.” She pulled out a faded and torn garment that was probably a corset of some sort. Creamy silk had spotted to brown in places, but the embroidered roses around the bottom edge were still red.

  Louis raised an eyebrow. “Hmm. Bet you’d look good in that.” His libido licked its lips.

  “Riiiiight.”

  The corset went back in the box and Louis sighed.

  Something caught his eye—a flicker of light on glittery thread. He reached over to a shadowy corner and picked it up.

  “Hey. What’s this?” He held it to the light so that Cory could see it.

  She froze.

  *~~*~~*

  “Louis, put it down. Carefully.”

  Cory was pleased to see he obeyed her, gently lowering the item back to the floor. “So what the hell is it? Looks like a bag of marbles to me.”

  She shook her head. “It’s a gris-gris.”

  “A gree-gree? What the fuck’s a gree-gree?”

  She stared at it as she moved to his side. “It’s spelled G-R-I-S-G-R-I-S. It’s a Voodoo artifact.”

  Louis tilted his head. “See, this is why I like having you around. You know shit like this.”

  She ignored him. “What I need to find out is if it’s benevolent or not.”