The Ghoul Next Door

by Victoria Laurie

  Souter nodded. “Oh, I’d appreciate that, Miss Holliday. We’d definitely like to verify your whereabouts for the evening Bethany was murdered.”

  The detective and I then had a little stare down between us and tired as I was, I forced myself not to blink. Finally, Mack said, “Are you going to charge my client, Detective?”

  Souter drummed her fingers on the table for a little while before answering. “No. You’re free to go, Miss Holliday. But stick close to town and get me that passport, or I’ll have to get a warrant for it.”

  I stood up wearily. “I’ll get it to you later today after I’ve had some sleep.”

  With that, Mack and I left the room. We found Gilley pacing and biting his nails outside in the hallway, and just as he looked up, I spotted Heath coming out of a corridor on the other side of the room. He looked relieved to see me and I felt my heart flutter with affection and relief of my own. I realized how much I was coming to count on him being nearby when things got dicey. Mack, Heath, and I reached Gilley at almost the exact same time. He greeted us by saying, “Where’s my laptop?”

  “Souter will probably keep it until she’s had the tech guys look at it,” Mack told him. “She’ll want them to confirm there was no monkey business with the audio and the video taking place at the time of the murder.”

  Gilley looked ready to start yelling, so I took him firmly by the arm and pulled him toward the door. “Come on, Gil. You’ve got three other computers at home.”

  He squawked all the way out of the police station, but at least we got out of there without further incident. Gil drove us home, grumbling the whole way while Heath and I exchanged weary looks and eye rolls. At last we made it back to my condo and Heath opened the door for me. As I passed him on the way inside, I said, “Are you hungry? I can fix you something to eat if you are.”

  He smiled. “Later. Right now the thing you and I need most is sleep.”

  I tried to smile but I was too tired to put much into it. Heath and I headed straight to the shower for a quick scrub down to get the blood off us, then right to bed, and I was out like a light the minute my head hit the pillow.

  Chapter 6

  I woke up freezing. There was a dampness to the air and a chill so sharp it crawled through my skin, into my bones, and rippled along the marrow. I could only suck in a small breath of air before I felt frozen and suffocating, as if the chill were absorbing oxygen while it moved over and through me. Alarmed and afraid, I attempted to move, but it was as if my limbs were struck with sudden paralysis. Even opening my lids took tremendous effort. At last I managed to lift my lids, and discovered that I was lying in what looked to be an old house, with yellowed paint and a dingy feel. It wasn’t anywhere I recognized or wanted to be.

  I would have shivered, but my limbs were still locked in place and I felt a mounting panic over not being able to breathe. I closed my eyes and fought against the cold as if it was emanating from a force with evil intent, attacking and paralyzing me—and by this time I knew that it was exactly that. With extreme effort I managed to inhale. It wasn’t a deep breath, but it was enough to reclaim my lungs. I took another breath, and another, and another, and soon I could feel the cold ebbing ever so slightly.

  My limbs still wouldn’t cooperate, so I focused on them next. I tried wiggling my toe. Nothing. I tried again, and again, and again, until finally I could feel my toe wiggle ever so slightly, and encouraged by that, I focused on moving my foot, then my other foot, then my hands. At last I felt myself lifting out of the paralysis and I opened my eyes again.

  I gasped when I stared into the face of a man standing over me, who looked so menacing and angry that it chilled me right to the bone again. There was something else about him too . . . something evil and dark that’d definitely left its mark on him.

  “Why have you come?” he asked me, his expression darkening even more and his voice sharp and jagged, like broken glass.

  I tried to wiggle back away from him along the floor, but my arms and legs were still slow to cooperate. He picked up his foot and set it down in the center of my chest, and a jolt of cold that was so sharp and painful it was like being stabbed shot through me.

  Again I couldn’t breathe, and while my mind reeled, he leaned down and said again, “Why have you come?”

  I closed my eyes. This wasn’t real! I knew it wasn’t real. I knew I was having an out-of-body experience, something I had quite often, but everything felt sharply real. I was really cold. I really couldn’t breathe. His foot really felt heavy on my chest. And, most important of all, I really couldn’t seem to wake up out of this nightmare.

  The man’s foot pressed down harder on my chest and the sharp bite of the cold cut into me again. “Stop!” I mouthed. “Stop!”

  But he didn’t. He continued to stand there and press down on top of me. I grew dizzy from lack of oxygen. I wondered if my physical body had also stopped breathing. And then I had a most frightening thought—could this man kill me here and sever the connection between my soul and my body, effectively killing me in the physical plane too?

  Fueled by panic, I managed to reach up one hand and slap it against his boot. It had no effect other than to encourage this cruel stranger to press down even harder. I opened my eyes, feeling as if my soul were sinking into the cold floor, and my limbs began to go numb again and I realized he held a knife in his hand. A knife that appeared rusty with dried blood. I swiped at his boot again, but my arm fell back to the ground with a loud slap, and the hurt barely registered—I was so filled with adrenaline and fear.

  My vision clouded with pinpricks of light. He was killing me and I didn’t know where my soul would go from here.

  And then, like a small miracle I heard Heath’s voice loud and clear, as if he’d just come into the room. “Get off her!” he commanded. The weight on my chest lifted a fraction and the cold also receded a tiny bit, but I still couldn’t take in much air. The pinpricks of light in my vision winked out, and blackness began to close off my sight.

  “He-He-He-Heeeeeath!” I gasped. It came out barely a whisper.

  Quick footsteps to my left sounded and then the weight on my chest vanished and a loud crash erupted from the corner of the room. My vision cleared, and there was Heath, standing strong over me, his hands curled into fists and the white streak in his hair glowing brightly as he glared hard at something across the room. “Leave this place!” he yelled.

  With effort I turned my head slightly, realizing I could move again at the same time that I saw the cruel stranger trying to right himself after crashing into a few rickety-looking chairs across the room. He got up snarling and kicking the chairs aside, and Heath stepped over me, putting himself between me and my attacker. “I’m warning you,” he growled.

  The stranger’s eyes darkened and he flew at Heath, the hand wielding the knife arcing up. Reflexively, I rolled to my side, curling into a ball and covering my head with my arms. I heard the impact between Heath and the man more than I saw it. There was a loud whump and I braced myself, fully expecting them to crash on top of me, but instead out of the corner of my eye, I saw Heath block the hand with the knife, twisting the man’s wrist sharply before he embraced the attacker, turned him in a half circle, lifted him right off the ground and threw him over and away from me. It was a spectacular move of grace and athleticism that stunned me.

  In the next instant, Heath was bending down low and scooping me up. He held me cradled me in his arms and I could feel his warmth seep into me, repelling the bitter cold that had me racked with shivers. “Close your eyes,” he whispered, “and think of us, in our bed, me holding you just like this. Focus on it, Em. Feel yourself wrapped in my arms in the condo. Smell the sheets. Hear the furnace kick on. Listen for the sound of traffic outside your bedroom window. . . .”

  And just like that, I felt and smelled and heard all of those things. With a gasp I opened my eyes and realized that
I was still cradled in Heath’s arms, but he was sitting up with me in bed, holding on as if for dear life. “What the freak just happened?”

  In the dim light I saw Heath’s lips quirk. “We’re back,” he said, then opened his own eyes.

  I shuddered, feeling spooked and still cold from whatever encounter I’d just had. I wound my arms tighter around Heath and squeezed. “Honey, what the hell was that?”

  Heath put a hand on the back of my head and pressed me close. I could feel his heartbeat against my skin. The steady rhythm helped to reassure me. “I was sound asleep and I heard you scream, but I couldn’t seem to wake up. My arms and legs were paralyzed and I couldn’t get to you.”

  “That’s exactly what happened to me!”

  Heath nodded, the stubble on his chin prickling my scalp a little. “I knew I was having an out-of-body, so I waited for what might happen next. And that’s when my grandfather suddenly appeared next to me and he pulled me out of bed. He said I had to get to you quick. I asked him where you were, and he told me to run through this door, which I swear appeared right in front of us. I did, and that’s when I found you on the floor with that bastard standing on you, ready to stab you.”

  I breathed out a long sigh. “Thank God for Sam Whitefeather.”

  Heath chuckled. “Yeah, Gramps is pretty fond of you too.”

  We were both quiet for a bit before I said, “What I really want to know is, who the heck was that creepy son of a bitch?”

  Heath squeezed me tight again. “Don’t know. Don’t want to know.”

  And then a terrible thought occurred to me. “Do you think it might have something to do with this case?”

  I felt Heath stiffen and his arms wrapped a little tighter around me. “Naw,” he said, but I could tell he was trying hard not to own that very real possibility. “I think you had an OBE and got pulled down to the lower plane and some random crazy spirit was just trying to freak you out.”

  I nodded and didn’t try to argue the point because I was definitely still a little freaked-out and needed the comfort of Heath’s denial more than I wanted to admit.

  OBEs—out-of-body experiences—aren’t an unusual occurrence for me, but where I’d gone specifically, and who that evil man in the room was, was a mystery. I wasn’t in the mood to think about it overly much—hell, what I really wanted was to forget it, and luckily, the heat coming off Heath and his half-naked body pressed up against me was starting to pull my thoughts in other directions. He was such a sexy beast of a man. Lean and corded with muscles, Heath possessed an inner, incredibly masculine power—it simply turned me on. I didn’t just feel safe in his arms; I felt free to be who I really was, and after a lifetime of feeling the rejections of my father and other people who didn’t fully understand me, it was a wonderful thing to know that someone in the world got me in ways no one else could ever possibly understand. It was an aphrodisiac like no other, and I was starting to feel the full force of it as I sat with him. “You’re beautiful—you know that?” he said softly to me.

  I smiled slyly. Apparently he was feeling a little frisky too. Lifting my chin, I looked into his dark brown eyes and drank in the sight of him. A smile spread to his own lips a half second before they dipped down to mine. He kissed me sweetly at first and I relished the feel of those velvety lips before he moaned and the kiss deepened, sending a flutter through my chest. We spent the next hour naked and entwined, our need for reassurance that we were okay as strong as our passion.

  At last we lay next to each other, holding hands and sated. Well, I was sated; Heath was looking like he could go for round three. I chuckled and gave him a pat on his six-pack. “I’m headed into the shower. At some point we’ve got to get up and deal with Luke and what happened last night.”

  Heath groaned. “Can’t we just pretend it never happened?”

  I sat up and looked at my phone on the nightstand. I’d turned it to silent, but one swipe of the screen showed me that I had missed six calls and Gilley had texted me a dozen times. With a frown I held the phone up so Heath could see. “I’ll bet your phone looks the same.”

  Heath rolled his eyes, then reached for my phone. “Go take your shower and I’ll deal with this.”

  I kissed him and hurried to the bathroom before he changed his mind. Once I was clean and dressed again, I came out to find Heath in the wing chair in the corner of my bedroom leaning forward, staring down at the ground with the phone pressed to his ear. “Oh, come off it!” he snapped. “What else did you want us to do? Luke showed up covered in blood. We thought he was hurt and he wasn’t talking! What the hell would you have done?”

  Immediately I knew Heath was arguing with Steven, and I felt my own temper flare. It sounded as if my ex was blaming my current S.O. for Luke’s arrest. As I moved across the room prepared to talk some sense into Steven, Heath yelled, “Well, I’m no doctor, Sable! And maybe I’m not the guy you should be yelling at! Luke’s the one accused of murder here! Why don’t you ask him what the hell happened last night!” With that, my sweetheart pulled the phone away from his ear and hung up. I stopped when he looked up and he seemed surprised to see me standing there. “Sorry,” he said sheepishly, holding out the phone. “I can’t talk to that asshole.”

  I took the phone. “It’s okay.”

  But Heath was irritated. “How the hell could you date that egomaniac anyway?”

  Uh-oh. This was about to take a bad turn. “I’m not dating him now, honey. I’m dating you, remember?”

  But Heath seemed rattled and upset by whatever Steven had said. “Are you sure you want to be?”

  I bit my lip and felt the sting of that even though I knew Heath didn’t mean it. Immediately he tried to take it back. “Hey,” he said, holding up his hands in surrender. “Sorry. That was a shitty thing to say. I didn’t mean it. I guess what you said to Gilley yesterday about missing Steven is still bugging me.”

  I swallowed hard, and felt my eyes glisten. “How long are you gonna make me pay for that?”

  Heath sighed and stared at the floor, shaking his head. When he looked up at me again, I made a point of moving my gaze to the bed, where we’d just had such a lovely time. Heath’s face flushed and he stood up to step forward and wrap me in his arms. “I’m sorry, Em,” he said. “Sable can just get under my skin, you know?”

  “I do know,” I said, already forgiving him. “But I’m with you because I want to be with you, honey. Every day that feeling gets stronger and I get more committed, so please don’t read into a stupid comment I made yesterday, okay?”

  Heath kissed my temple and cradled my head against his chest. “Deal,” he said. Then he stepped back. “My turn for the shower. Maybe you can talk to Sable and calm him the hell down. I didn’t get a chance to talk to Gilley yet.”

  “Go,” I told him, pointing toward the bathroom. “I’ll deal with Steven and Gil.”

  Once I’d heard the shower turn on, I called Steven. “What?” I said bluntly when he answered.

  “What do you mean, what?” he replied. I could hear the barely veiled anger in his voice.

  “I’m assuming that, by what I overheard you say to my boyfriend, you’re blaming us for Luke’s arrest?” I made sure to emphasize the words “my boyfriend” just to let Steven know where my allegiance stood.

  “I’m not blaming you for the arrest,” Steven growled. “I’m blaming you for not calling me and my fiancée first.”

  Apparently two could play at that game. “Steven,” I said levelly. “Luke showed up at the house covered in blood. We thought he’d been stabbed, or shot, or hit by a car. We had no idea what’d happened to him, and our first thought was to help him. So, yes, we dialed nine-one-one before we called you. And I’m not sorry for that. I know you want me to be, but I’m not. I reacted like anybody else would’ve in that situation.”

  Steven was quiet for a few beats before he said, “If you ha
dn’t lost Luke in the first place, none of this would’ve happened.”

  I took a deep breath and counted to ten. I wanted to yell my reply, but I knew that I couldn’t, so I took a few beats of my own to collect myself. Then I said in a low and even tone, “For the record, Dr. Sable, we did not lose Luke. He got up and walked out of the house before we could even make it out of the diner. And at no time during our discussions with you or him did we agree to be responsible for his actions. Pinning what happened last night on us is bullshit. And you know it.”

  Again, Steven took his time answering. At last he said, “You’re probably right. But we still need to know what happened, M.J. A girl is dead and my fiancée’s brother is accused of the crime. How is that possible?”

  I sat down in the chair and pinched the bridge of my nose. As much as I wanted to tell Steven that I didn’t know and didn’t want to get further involved, I knew that even if I tried, I couldn’t walk away from this now. Heath, Gilley, and I were involved. Like it or not. So the only recourse I had left was to try to figure out what’d happened. My sneaking suspicion was that either the spook we were trying to identify had taken possession of Luke and caused him to commit this random murder, or there was a dark side to Luke that no one really knew about, and the spook was just an excuse to carry out some sickly weird agenda.

  Of course, there was a third possibility, but it seemed highly unlikely. Luke may not have had anything to do with the crime. He could’ve been in the wrong place at the wrong time and somehow gotten blood all over himself. That was the leap I figured his attorney was going to take. But I’d been there when Luke had entered that house, covered in blood. No way had he just been an innocent bystander. “Steven,” I said, with that in mind, “has anyone managed to get Luke’s side of the story?”

  “No. He’s in custody and the attorney I’ve retained for him won’t allow anyone to speak to him. He says that all of the conversations Luke may have with visitors can be recorded. Except those between Luke and the attorney. Those are bound by attorney-client privilege. But everyone else isn’t allowed to speak a word to him or to take phone calls from him. The attorney doesn’t want Luke to say anything that could be used against him later.”