Charlaine Harris

by Night's Edge

  “How’s it going?” she asked, leading Jack inside, past the men.

  The worker nodded. “Just fine. We’re all finished.” He straightened from his task, dropping the screwdriver into a loop on his belt. Then he pulled a fat envelope from his pocket and handed it to her. “This is your manual and your invoice.”

  “You’re not going to show me how to work this thing?”

  “Oh, it’s real simple. Once you set it up with your personal security code, you just hit the code, press the green button to unlock, the red one to lock. It’s all in the manual. We got the whole place wired, just like you asked. Every outside door and window.”

  She took the thick instruction booklet from the envelope, then eyed the panel on the wall.

  “You have a good night now, ma’am.”

  The man nodded to the others, and they gathered up their various toolboxes and filed out the front door. She watched them go, then sighing, closed the door. “It’ll be morning before I get this thing figured out.”

  “It looks like the same system that’s on my shop,” Jack said. “I can probably walk you through it. If you don’t mind my knowing your security code.”

  “Hell, if I can’t trust my worst enemy, who can I trust?”

  He shrugged, looking around the house, absently rubbing his arms. “So what makes you think there’s anything otherworldly going on here?”

  She walked on through to the kitchen, and he followed. “You want coffee?”

  “Love some.”

  “Sit.”

  He took a seat at the square table. It was topped in white ceramic tiles with green ivy leaves on them. She put a clean filter into the coffeemaker’s basket, then opened a canister and scooped out some coffee. And she talked.

  “I was soaking in the tub last night when it happened,” she said softly. “The shower curtain was closed. To keep the steam in there with me.” She patted her cheeks. “Good for the skin, you know.”

  “Right.”

  She slid the basket into the maker, then carried the carafe to the sink and ran water into it. “So I’m soaking in the tub, and all of the sudden the temperature in the bathroom just plummets. Just like that. I had goose bumps. I could see my breath, Jack.”

  Okay, she could see her breath. He couldn’t chalk it up to her imagination, then, could he? Not if she could see her breath.

  “So I got out of the tub, wondering what the hell was going on. The furnace wasn’t running. It should have been if it had suddenly become that cold outside. But nothing. I…I felt something. I don’t know how to describe it, it’s just…” She gave her head a shake. “So I went to the bedroom for my robe, but it wasn’t cold in there. Just in the bathroom. And when I went back in there, those words were on the mirror.”

  He frowned. “So whoever left you that message did it while you were in the next room.”

  She nodded. “But I never heard anything. Not a footstep, not a breath. Not the door opening—and the hinges squeak, Jack. I should have heard something.”

  He nodded slowly. “I’m not…feeling anything now.”

  “No. No, neither am I.” She rolled her eyes. “It’s probably ridiculous. I mean, it’s almost certainly some human asshole who left me that message. It’s just…well, when I read the reports from other people who’ve lived here over the past thirty years. I figured it wouldn’t hurt to make sure.”

  “Reports? You mean in that book you had?” She nodded. “What’s in them?” he asked.

  “Noises, lights going on and off by themselves, doors opening, furniture being moved. Burners turned on without warning. Music, footsteps. You name it, it’s in there. The most common occurrence is the weeping.”

  “Weeping?” He got a chill at that word.

  She nodded. “I haven’t heard it. It’s usually heard in the basement, and I can’t quite bring myself to go down there, so that may be why. So? What do you think?”

  “Like I said, I’m not sensing anything. Not at the moment, anyway.”

  She licked her lips. “Maybe if you stay awhile. Maybe…if you come up to my bedroom—”

  He looked up so fast he nearly wrenched his neck.

  “And the bathroom. Where it happened.”

  Slowly, he nodded. “Sure. But first, let’s have that coffee, hmm?”

  She seemed to relax just a little, smiling, nodding.

  Then there was a sound from upstairs—something like shattering glass. Jack shot to his feet and, amazingly enough, Kiley shot into his arms.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  JACK COULD HAVE KICKED himself. What the hell was he doing? His hands were buried in her hair and her nose was crushed in the fabric of his shirt, not an altogether unpleasant experience. Dammit. She went to pull back, but his arms slid lower, hands cradling her shoulders, almost as if he wanted to keep her there, pressed against him, body to body.

  “You can let go now,” she said. Or at least, that was what he thought she said. It sounded more like a series of grunts with her face mashed to his chest the way it was. And frankly, the heat of her breath penetrating the fabric and bathing his chest was a little distracting.

  He let her go and looked down at her, and he hoped he didn’t look as confused as he felt. Because, damn, there had been a moment there…

  He squelched the thought. Figuratively licked his thumb and forefinger and snuffed that little sucker right out. So what if it burned a little and he thought he heard the hiss? “You okay?” he asked, just so he could fill the silence and stop falling into her eyes.

  “I’m fine. I’m right here in front of you, you can see I’m fine.”

  “I meant—”

  “What the hell was that, anyway?” she asked, glancing toward the living room where the stairs were.

  “I don’t know.”

  She drew herself another step away from him. He let his hands fall from her shoulders to his sides. He hesitated only a moment before he realized she was probably waiting for him to do something. Then, before he could act on the realization, she said, “Well, I’m damned if I’m too afraid to go up there and find out.”

  She ought to be, he thought. But then he was ashamed of himself, because she was stomping off through the house toward the staircase, all alone. He followed her, caught up to her. Even put a hand on her again. He didn’t plan to, it just sort of happened. His hands seemed to feel now that the ice had been broken, it was okay to touch her at will. Which, of course, it wasn’t. Still, he put a hand on her shoulder, and she stopped at the bottom of the staircase and glanced over her shoulder at his face, looking mildly irritated.

  “What?” she snapped.

  “I’ll go,” he said. It came out in a deep tone that sounded rather heroic, he thought.

  She rolled her eyes. “I’m going. But you can come with me if you want.”

  He nodded, stepped around her and started up the stairs. As if he were the big brave warrior, and she were the innocent virgin in need of his protection. What bull.

  Still, he went up the stairs, down the hall. Then he stopped, uncertain which way to go.

  “My bedroom is that one,” she whispered, leaning closer and pointing.

  “You think that’s where the noise came from?” he whispered back.

  She nodded, her wide eyes fixed on the bedroom door. She was scared to death and determined not to show it.

  Then again, so was he. He moved toward the door, reached for the knob, put his hand on it and sucked in a breath at the iciness of the brass. Twisting all the same, he pushed the door open, stepped through—and that took some major willpower—and flipped on the light switch.

  The first thing he saw was his breath forming little clouds in the air in front of him. He could see them. There was no mistaking it, the bedroom was that cold.

  “Hell, here we go again,” she whispered.

  He stood very still, vaguely aware that Kiley was gripping his arm now, maybe a little less concerned about hiding her fear. He felt wind hitting him in the face and gla
nced toward the windows, relieved to realize there might be a very simple explanation for the cold—but the windows were shut tight.

  Then where was that icy wind coming from?

  “What the…?”

  Suddenly, there was rattling, shaking. The lamp on the bedstand trembled, and the light fixture in the ceiling began to swing. The room exploded in sound and motion. Dresser drawers flew open one after the other, one of them so hard it wrenched itself out of the dresser and onto the floor, scattering its contents. The closet door flew open at the same time, as did the bathroom door, towels sailing through it as if hurled at them by unseen hands. The curtains were whipping like vipers.

  Then—just as suddenly—the wind died and everything went still. Utterly, perfectly still. The curtains fell limply, the stands and fixtures stopped trembling, the room was silent again.

  Jack breathed. Maybe for the first time since turning on the light. No steam emerged from his lips now. It was over, whatever the hell it had been.

  And Kiley was still clutching his arm, with both hands this time, and her body was pressed tight to his side. Given that she’d sooner cling to a spraying skunk or a rabid badger—or both—he figured she must be pretty shaken.

  “I don’t like you, Jack,” she said. “You know that, right?”

  “Right. No more than I like you, Brigham.”

  “And I’m not afraid of this thing. I’m not afraid of anything. You know that, too, right?”

  He shrugged. “I’ve never seen you scared. I can give you that.” Till now, he thought, but he didn’t say that part aloud, mostly because it would piss her off and he was dying to see where the hell she was going with this.

  “Good, just so we’re clear on it. I wouldn’t want you to take it the wrong way when I ask you to spend the night with me.”

  He swallowed hard, about to tell her she couldn’t pay him enough to spend the night in this fucked-up house. But before he could speak, she went on.

  “You’re used to this, after all,” she said. “You talk to the spirit world all the time, right? So you’ve seen this kind of shit before.”

  He probed those big eyes of hers, wondering for one brief moment if she could have possibly engineered this entire event, special effects and all, just to finally trip him up. And all of a sudden, he realized he had to be very, very careful.

  “Right,” he said. “Not that you ever really get used to it, but yeah, I’ve seen it before.”

  The relief on her face was so intense that he thought she was close to tears.

  “I don’t know why the hell that should make me feel any better, especially when I still don’t believe you’re for real.”

  “But it does?” he asked.

  She pursed her lips. “Will you stay? Spend the night?”

  He would rather stick hot needles into his own eyes, he thought. But aloud, he said, “Sure.”

  She sighed, lowering her head, eyes, shoulders, all at once. “Good.”

  “Hey, I’ll expect suitable compensation for this. Don’t think I’m doing it as a favor or anything.”

  “No, not on your life.” She met his eyes again, hers hiding just a hint of a smile this time. “So do you think you can…get rid of it?”

  He didn’t even know what the hell it was. He was clueless. He’d never been within a hundred miles of a real ghost, so far as he knew. Didn’t even believe in them—or hadn’t, up until five minutes ago. Now he wasn’t sure what to believe. “If this thing can be…banished, then I’m the guy who can do it.” He was lying through his teeth.

  Her shaky smile widened a little. “I’ll tell you one thing, I’m not sleeping in here.”

  “Don’t blame you there.”

  “Do you want to?”

  “Huh?” He thought his eyeballs might have come close to popping out of his head.

  She shrugged. “To get a better feel for—for whatever it is we’re dealing with.”

  He pursed his lips. “Oh. No, there’s…no need.”

  “Then you already know what it is?”

  He nodded, deciding to say anything that came to mind, so long as it kept him from having to sleep in this room. He still had goose bumps, even though the chill had fled. “It—uh—seems like a pretty straightforward case of poltergeist activity. It’s not that unusual. Not a big deal.”

  “Maybe not to you.”

  He shrugged. The genuine-looking gratitude gleaming up at him from her eyes gave him the cojones to move farther into the bedroom, where he bent to pick up a drawer, along with several of the items that had been flung from it. His nonchalance fled, though, when he realized he was holding a pair of thong panties in his hand. Something tightened in his nether regions, and he stuffed them back into the drawer and hoped she hadn’t noticed.

  “So is there a guest room or something?” he asked as he replaced the drawer in the dresser and closed all the others.

  “Not furnished. We can sleep downstairs. There’s a sofa bed.”

  He shot her a questioning look. She ignored it, swallowing something he took to be her pride when she said, “Will you wait here while I grab a nightgown?”

  He nodded. “You, um…wanna shower?”

  “Not in there.”

  He felt sorry when he saw the shudder that worked through her. “Hell, Brigham, why don’t you just come back to my place with me, spend the night there? This is insane.”

  She met his eyes and shook her head just once, left then right. “I’m not letting this thing chase me out of my house.” Then she took her gaze off him and looked around the room. “You hear that, spook? This is my goddamn house now. I’ve sunk every penny I have into it, and I couldn’t leave if I wanted to. So you and I are just gonna have to come to terms! Got it?”

  Jack half expected the house to reply, even found himself looking around at the empty space, as she had been doing. But the house said nothing.

  Sighing, she strode past him to the dresser, yanking open a drawer and plucking a nightie from a stack of silky fabrics without even looking down. “You have got to get rid of it for me, Jack. You do this for me, and I swear, I’ll lay off you forever.”

  He shook his head, his gaze stuck on the nightie she held. It was emerald-green, like her eyes. Satiny and smooth. Indecently short, with spaghetti straps and lace in the deep V of the neckline. He was actually curious to see how she was going to look in that thing.

  If he were being honest with her, he supposed he might admit that he would actually miss it if she stopped bugging him all the time, trying to get the best of him. But he wasn’t being honest with her. Far from it.

  And he was about to begin living the lie of a lifetime.

  She hurried out of the bedroom into the hall. He followed, pulling the bedroom door closed behind him, wishing he could lock it, wondering if locks could keep ghosts incarcerated and guessing probably not. He followed her down the hall to the stairs. On the way she opened a closet and tugged out a stack of sheets and blankets. Back downstairs, in the living room, she yanked the cushions off her sofa, and Jack assisted her in pulling it out. Then he stood there watching in some kind of surreal trance while she made up the bed. For two.

  “Turn your back.”

  “What?”

  “I want to get undressed and I’m afraid to leave the room by myself. Pathetic and stupid, I know, but there it is. So turn around.”

  He turned around. “And what am I supposed to sleep in?”

  “Your shorts?” she asked.

  He could hear her peeling off her clothes, the fabric brushing over her skin. It was interesting, trying to guess what she was taking off, what remained. He chided himself for having impure thoughts about his worst enemy, but then decided he was sleeping with her, so it was only natural.

  She finally said, “Okay,” and he turned again.

  Then he saw her in the green nightie, the way it hung from her shoulders, flowing like a satin river over her skin, except for where it tripped over her breasts. He could see them cle
arly through the fabric, nipples and all. He found himself licking his lips and told himself to knock it the hell off.

  “What?” she asked.

  He jerked his gaze upward, to her eyes again. “You do realize you’ve left nearly every light in the house on?”

  “And you think I want to sleep in the dark after that little exhibition upstairs?”

  He shrugged. “You don’t even want to brush your teeth?”

  “Planning to kiss me before morning, Jack?”

  “Not if you begged me, sweetie.”

  “Then why are you worried about it?”

  “Because you might roll over and breathe on me.”

  She rolled her eyes. “My breath is fine. And I showered this morning. But if you need to, you can use the shower in the downstairs bathroom.”

  “I think I will.”

  “Good.” She came to him, taking his hand as if he were a child being led to the school bus for the first time. “This way.” She led him through the living room, down a hallway and in through the third door on the left. “Here we go.”

  “Great. Thanks.”

  He stood there for a minute, waiting. She leaned back against the countertop, also waiting.

  “Uh, were you planning to stay for this?” he asked at length.

  She licked her lips. “Figured I could brush my teeth while you were washing up.”

  She didn’t wait for an answer, just turned to face the sink, opened the medicine cabinet and located a toothbrush that was still in its wrapper. “I always keep extras around. There’s one for you, too.” She took out a second toothbrush and laid it on the counter. Then she glanced over her shoulder with a frown. “Well, go on, take your shower. I’m not going to look at you.”

  “You’re looking at me now.”

  “That’s because you weren’t moving.” She turned to face the sink again, cranked on the water.

  Sighing in resignation, Jack turned on the taps, adjusted the temperature and began stripping off his clothes.

  CHAPTER SIX

  SHE KEPT HER EYES LOWERED, everything in her focused on brushing her teeth, as he peeled off his clothes. The mirror was dead ahead. She could catch a glimpse of him if she wanted to, but she didn’t want to. Hell, she couldn’t think of anything she wanted less. Besides, by the time the thought had time to pass through her mind, he was under the spray. She heard him yank the curtain shut, heard the way the flow of water changed when he stepped underneath it.