These guys were so familiar, and I hadn’t been in their presence for ten years. Well, maybe the question was, had I ever really left them? Physically, I’d left, but there was part of me that would always be there with them, back in those days, when I’d discovered just how dark I could go.
“Hey.” Thorn tugged on the edge of my hair. “You okay?”
I smiled. At some point, I’d gotten really good at pretending everything was fine. “Yes. Colton, can you turn up ahead? That’s where we’re going to head to get to the restaurant.”
Oliver turned in his seat. “I think we should go to the grocery store tomorrow. You weren’t thinking you’d be shopping for five people when you went, and we eat a lot.”
I liked the idea of them using up all the groceries I bought. “Well, I guess that depends on how long everyone is staying? Oliver said he’s sticking around for a while.”
Aaron gripped my knee. “I’d like to stay, too. Spend a lot of time together. If that’s okay.”
“Yes.” I grinned at him. My lips still tingled from his kisses. “I’d like that.”
“Me, too.” Colton met my gaze in the rearview mirror.
I smiled back at him. “Can you? I mean, do you have classes to teach?”
“I have a paper to write. A paper that might take me years to get through. So the timing is good for me.”
Thorn took my hand. “I’m in, too. Assuming you don’t mind having all of us in your space.”
“My little house might feel really snug to all of you.”
Oliver shook his head. “Snug is good, Lacey. I think all of us are feeling nothing but relief at the idea of being in your space for a long while.”
We reached the Italian restaurant and parked as close to the building as we could.
“I’d like to be outside as little as possible,” Colton said. “It’s going to take me a while to adjust to the cold.”
“It doesn’t help that you left the desert before you stopped in Montana,” Oliver said. “Your body is probably in shock.”
I laughed and pushed open the door. As I got out, my gaze went across the street. Anchorage Regional Sleep Program and Clinic. The new sign stood where the old hotel one had been. I stared at the old house. It was a Victorian style, turreted with stained glass and high peaks. Standing in the cold, I studied the windows, noting that the ones on the top level were still illuminated. Some centers ran twenty-four hours a day, and this one was no different. From the research I’d done, patients met with doctors during the day, and underwent their sleep study at night. Sleep technicians worked the night shifts, and then doctors reviewed whatever the techs found.
“That’s not what I expected,” Oliver said, coming to stand next to me. He stomped his feet and shoved his hands into his pockets. “My toes are freezing.”
“Told ya,” I answered. I studied the building from the roof to the doors, noting the way shadows crossed in front of the curtained windows. “If there are other sleep clinics in Anchorage, I would go there first. That place is creepy.”
“Psy-chic,” Aaron sang from across the parking lot. “Can we please go inside before my feet blacken and fall off?”
Turning away, I found Aaron, Colton, and Thorn standing at the door.
“Let’s go!” Colton said. His voice trembled, probably from the cold.
I hurried toward them, and we went inside. Immediately, we were surrounded by the scent of baking bread and garlic. Heaven.
“Nice night,” the hostess greeted us. “Table for five?”
“Yes,” Colton said.
She sat us toward the back of the restaurant, facing the huge brick oven. Here, we could watch the chefs cook. I could even feel the heat from the flames.
A waiter took our order, and I had to smother a laugh when all the guys ordered coffees. Not to be left out, and because I wouldn’t sleep anyway, I ordered a cappuccino.
“The sleep clinic,” Thorn began when our drinks arrived. “Oliver told me a little bit about your job, and your boss, but I’m confused. What are you supposed to do?”
“Oliver told you I work for a private investigator, right?” I wanted to see how much background I needed to give him.
“Yes.”
“So sometimes, I get a feeling about people or places. Aaron—I swear to God, if you say I’m psychic, I’m going to fling this bread at you. And I love bread.”
Aaron shut his mouth with a snap, but his dark eyes danced. He mimed locking his lips and throwing away the key.
“Feelings like you did about the football team, or about something bad happening?” Thorn said.
“Both maybe? It’s just an impression. Like when I knew the football team had to be delayed. I didn’t know why. I didn’t see flames or cars crashing or anything. I just got a feeling in the pit of my stomach that told me something was wrong. Now, I listen to that feeling.”
“Give me an example,” Thorn said, and then added. “Please.”
“Okay…” I thought back to my time with Rick. “A family approached Rick. They’d just moved into this new house, and their daughter’s personality changed. She was a happy, bubbly girl, and suddenly, she was lethargic. Pale. They took her to the doctor, but by the time they got there, she usually perked up.”
“Curse?” Aaron asked. “Possession?”
“No,” I replied. “I went into the house, and I could feel this heaviness. It was in the air. We went through all the logical routes—mold, lead paint—the real estate agent swore up and down there was nothing wrong with the house. So I went back, and when I did, I got an answer.” I shivered despite the heat from the kitchen. It had been the first time since Erdirg that I’d seen a ghost. A young woman who’d died in that house from the very thing that was slowly poisoning the little girl. “Well, I saw someone. Then Rick delegated the next steps to people who could figure out what was going on.”
“That sounds complicated,” Aaron said, leaning his chin on his hand. “And probably what kept you off our radar for so long.”
I winked at him. “Yep.”
“That was the idea,” Oliver supplied. “She stayed away from anyone who does what we do.”
“I firmly believed the best way I could thank all of you for what you did and to make sure that you were never hurt again was to stay away from you. To make sure I never stumbled back into your lives.”
To my left, Oliver nudged me. “She and I have gone rounds on this. Long and the short of it is this—Lacey thinks she has darkness inside of her. So much darkness in fact, that she was able to bring Erdirg down. Hence, protecting us from her.”
Thorn’s face fell. “Lacey, I’ve known you since we were little. There is nothing dark inside of you.”
That was sweet. It took me a second to answer. “You weren’t there in the desert. I promise you, I am.”
Oliver motioned toward the menu. “Not going to get fixed tonight. I have promised to observe her while I’m here and to tell her when I see the darkness.”
Aaron snapped a breadstick in half. “Useful. But you might need… oh, I don’t know… three additional opinions to my brother’s.”
I laughed. “Fair enough. You can all watch me for signs of evil.”
“I told you once, Lacey.” Aaron’s tone was serious, and it caught my full attention. “There really isn’t evil and good when it comes to the things out there. What exists in nature has been there way before us. And what they do, they do to survive. All living creatures adapt to survive to the situations they find themselves in.”
The waiter picked that moment to come by to take our orders. I always got the same thing when I came here, and that was thin crust pizza. I loved how it crunched when I ate it.
Oliver side-eyed me. “Pizza again, huh?”
I shrugged. “I like pizza. There are worse things. It’s bread. Cheese. Tomatoes.”
He laughed. “I am going to cook for you. Get some real protein into your healing brain. I’ll take the chicken special, thanks.”
“I’m going to do a search on the location of the clinic starting tomorrow morning.” Thorn yawned and then grinned. “Sorry, guess I am tired, despite the coffee. I’ll find out about the owners. The doctors. The whole staff. Whatever I can learn, I will.”
“Right.” Colton nodded. “And I’ll get the complete work up on the history of the place.”
Aaron took a bite of his bread. “I’ll talk to local occult people. See if anyone talks about the area as being haunted.”
I’d never had so much help with one of my hunch jobs before. “Thanks, guys.”
“You’re welcome,” Oliver replied. “You’ll note, I haven’t offered to do anything yet because I will help—if and when—you tell me it’s actually a paranormal problem. You can tell Rick, who I’d love to meet, that he doesn’t have to worry about farming this one out if it calls for it. I’ll take care of the problem for him.”
How on Earth was I going to explain any of this to Rick? Hey, Rick, yeah. I’m living with four guys. He would think I’d lost my mind.
The waiter came back with water, and I chuckled to myself, thinking about what my boss would do when he met all four of my suitors. I wasn’t sure if I should worry for Rick, or for the guys.
Dinner passed with easy conversation. All of us were hungry, and we ate our meals and even ordered dessert. I had hoped they wanted dessert. This place had the best tiramisu. I sometimes dreamed about it.
A couple hours later, we spilled out of the restaurant, happy and full. Aaron linked his arm with mine as we walked toward the car. Our breath made white puffs in the air, and the snow crunched beneath our feet.
“It’s hard to believe you’ve lived with this for ten years,” he said.
Colton unlocked the car, and we all got inside. He’d started it before we left the restaurant, and now it was toasty warm.
“The cold?” I clarified. “This isn’t even that bad. Wait until January.”
He put the car in drive as we finished putting on our seatbelts and carefully pulled out of the parking lot. I happened to glance at the sleep clinic, and gasped. “Colt! Stop!”
He jammed on the brakes, and the car skidded over the snow, coming to a stop sideways in the road.
One of the windows on the top floor of the clinic was open. White curtains billowed in the wind, and a small form clad in plaid pajama bottoms hung from their fingertips from the windowsill.
The guys jumped out of the car, sprinting toward the building. It was eerie. The only sound was the wind and our feet pounding over the road. The person hanging didn’t make a sound. They didn’t call for help or cry.
They just hung there.
The closer we got, the smaller the person looked. Oliver put on a burst of speed, stopping right beneath the window. Aaron and Thorn ran to the door, pounding on it and ringing the bell.
Colton caught up to Oliver first, and I huffed up a second later. “It’s a kid.”
“Hey!” Colton yelled. “Hey! Where the hell is the sleep clinician?”
The room seemed to be dark. If it hadn’t been for the light of the restaurant parking lot, and the way our headlights had swung across the face of the house, I never would have seen this.
Despite our yelling, no one came to the window. And from the noise Thorn and Aaron were making, no one was answering the door either. “I’m going to look for a ladder!” Thorn yelled.
I pulled my phone from my pocket, ready to dial 911.
“He’s going to fall,” Oliver said quietly, and a second later, he did.
Colt moved fast. I dropped my phone, instinctively reaching for the child as he fell, but Oliver and Colt were ready. It was like they’d caught a dozen cheerleaders at the bottom of a pyramid, or participated in a thousand trust falls. They linked their arms and caught the child before he hit the ground.
He stared at them for a long second, eyes open, before he vanished into thin air as though he’d never been there at all.
I cried out, darting backward into Thorn, who was right behind me.
“What… what happened?”
Colton turned to Oliver. “Did I just see what I think I saw? Did that just happen?”
“Astral projection,” Oliver answered. “Has to be that. Someone is really psychically talented. That is the most vivid projection I’ve ever seen. I mean… you could feel it, right? It was solid, and then it was gone.”
I cleared my throat. “He. Not it. The child was a he.”
“Right.” Oliver nodded. “He.”
Aaron took my hand, leading me to the car. “Come on. Nothing more to do. But I’d say definitively you have something going on with that sleep clinic. We’re now officially all on the case.”
“What would have happened if we hadn’t been there? And the kid had astral projected and hit the ground?”
In the snow, Colton met my gaze. “People die in their sleep all the time, Lacey.”
I shivered. And it had nothing to do with the cold. I was getting in that place, and we were figuring this out. I picked up my phone and texted Rick, filling him in on the details. This time, it wasn’t being farmed out. Whatever it was, we would stop it. I wasn’t seventeen anymore. This was my home turf. And children were absolutely not going to be falling out of windows in their sleep on my watch.
I knew next to nothing about astral projection, but learning anything about it would have to wait until the next day. There was still the matter of getting evidence of the woman who was faking her injuries. Well, maybe faking them. Innocent before proven guilty and all that jazz.
Colton pulled up to my house, and the others piled out. I handed Aaron my key. “I’ll get you a spare key. I have a few extras.”
Aaron nodded. “Okay. See you guys in a bit. Careful out there.”
I looked at Colton. “I can do this alone if you’re tired.”
“Not a bit. Wide-awake right now. I’ll probably crash later, but I’m in. Direct me, and we’ll go.”
The Last Outpost Bar was on the northeastern-most tip of the city and a bit of a distance from where I lived. Still, I’d been there before. Not to dance. That wasn’t really my thing, but to take photos of people who were trying to get away with stuff. Cheating. Dealing drugs.
It was a nice place, and it always surprised me that it had such a nefarious crowd. Maybe certain locations just did that. Funny how all roads of my brain were leading my thoughts back to the sleep clinic.
I looked at Colt’s strong profile. “Have you seen someone astral project before?”
“Yes. But not like that. I watched a shaman do it once where he was sitting next to me, and then he was across the room. But I could feel that kid in my arms like I’d caught him from a window, and then… wind.”
I chewed on my lip. “It freaked me out. I’m a pretty brave person, but that was strange.”
He tilted his head. “I’d be worried if it didn’t freak you out.”
“Really?” I turned in my seat. “Because you all seemed really calm.”
“Yeah… well, we’re maybe showing off a little bit, because we want you to think we’re strong and tough?”
I laughed, throwing my head back. “What?”
“I’d never have admitted that ten years ago, by the way. Now? All right, the four of us? We’ve got a heavy dose of machismo going on. After a decade of trying to find you, we want you to be glad you were found.”
I chewed my lip, watching his profile as he drove through the streets of my adopted city. “I’m very glad to be found,” I admitted. “It feels like a hole has been filled. I didn’t realize until you were here how much I was missing you.”
Colton took my hand, brought it to his lips, and kissed it. I turned my hand to put my finger in his chin dimple. “You feel different without the beard.”
“I can grow it again.”
“You might want to,” I said. “So your lips don’t freeze off.”
He smiled. I moved my hand, but he caught it and linked our fingers. “I bet I can think of a bet
ter way to keep my lips warm.”
So could I. Giddiness made me squirm on my seat. I couldn’t remember the last time I felt this happy. The kid who’d arrived here all alone had dreams of this, but she’d never thought it would happen. I had been prepared to live my whole life without them. Sitting next to Colton now, that seemed like such a waste of a life.
“What are you thinking about?” he asked. “You got quiet.”
I went for the truth. “I’m really happy.”
He squeezed my hand. “I like who you are,” he said. “I loved who you were at seventeen, but you now? It blows me away.”
There was a lot of armor for me to shed over the past ten years. I would never be Suzy Sunshine, but I didn’t hate everyone anymore. Rick had shown me that people could be good, even when they’d had something terrible happen to them.
“I’m not as prickly,” I admitted.
He laughed. “You’re you, but without the hurt. Or, if the hurt is there, it doesn’t cast its shadow over you. I’m grateful to Rick, whoever he is.”
“My boss is the family I never had.” I often wondered what kind of person I would have been if I hadn’t been born into the Madisons. But just as often, I squelched those thoughts. They didn’t do any good and just led to bitterness.
“Is this it?” Colton slowed, peering out the windshield toward the bar. “I thought you said it was sketchy.”
From the outside, it seemed like a perfectly reputable place—one level with shingled siding. It was well lit, and someone had draped twinkle lights around the decorative trees at the front door. But I knew better. Appearances were deceiving.
Colton pulled into a parking space and shut off the car. “Just make sure you lock it,” I said. “You don’t have anything valuable in here, do you?”
“No…” He dragged the word out. “It’s a rental.”
“Then I hope you sprung for the extra insurance.” I winked at him and hopped out of the car.
His grin was fast. “I did. And I prepaid the gas.”
I patted his arm. “Look at you being all responsible.”
Voices in the Darkness Page 7
