Flicker (Defying Death Book 1)

by Courtney Houston

  “Since you saw her first, you’ve laid some sort of claim to her?” he asked.

  “I can’t do that, and you know it.” He sounded sad now, his voice low and haggard.

  “What do you think I’ve been trying to do?” he asked. “Listen, Joseph, I understand your concern and protectiveness of her. I’m doing what I can. I can’t be everywhere at once, and no one has been exactly helpful.”

  Joseph? That was the name I’d given to our hanged man.

  Back in the eighteen hundreds when the museum was still a courthouse, there was a man who was hanged from a second-story window. But they used too much rope, and he hit the ground—still alive. So, they took him up to the fourth floor and hanged him again. There wasn’t a whole lot of documentation on him, it’s not like he’d actually had a trial. The only thing we could really find to verify the legend was a picture of the hanging and a date. There had been some disputes regarding his name. Some said William, some Joseph. Perhaps it was a combination of the two. Regardless, legend had it he haunted this place.

  Seline told me that story on my first day. I took an immediate liking to our ghost. When I did stuff on the deserted fourth floor, I would think I could hear him or feel him. There had been other incidents in different areas of the museum where people have reported strange things. It seems he wanders everywhere, not just the fourth floor.

  “That she is,” Telor said with a hint of a smile in his voice. “I seem to have bitten off a little more than I can chew with her.”

  “I know. I’ll handle it. You’ll let me know if you see anything I should know about? Any gossip?”

  “Did they come for you after the first or second time they tried to hang you?” Telor asked. They? Which they was he talking about. “Good, I’m glad. And Joseph? Thank you for your concern.”

  Telor didn’t say anything for a couple of minutes but stood looking out the window with his hands clasped behind his back. Apparently, the conversation was over. Should I go to him now? The brief moment of glorious forgetfulness that Telor’s conversation with Joseph had caused was wearing off.

  My body started to shake again and reality slowly seeped back in. Oh God, he was just talking to a ghost. I’d never questioned my belief that ghosts actually existed, but I also never spoke with one, or even knew someone who had. And this made Telor...what exactly? Maybe this was a bad idea. I wondered if I could get back to the door without him noticing.

  “Calm down, Cariad,” Telor said. “I can feel your fear from here.”

  “How did you know I was here?” I asked, slowly backing away.

  “Joseph told me,” he said, finally turning to look at me. “And like I said, I can feel your fear all the way over here. Are you afraid of me?”

  “Right now?” I asked. “A little.”

  Telor took a hesitant step forward, his palms out as if he was surrendering. It was a feat for me not to run into his open arms. My body physically hurt, and my mind berated me harder with every second we were separated. I couldn’t stay there with him. I needed to think. Not much thinking happened around Telor.

  Turning my back to him, I headed straight to the stairs—bypassing the elevator—and flew to the fourth floor. My body was shaking so hard, I stumbled and fell a couple of times, catching myself on the railing and pulling myself to my feet again. Telor was following at a slow and steady pace. When I reached the landing, I bolted directly to the courtroom and hid beneath the judge’s desk.

  Telor didn’t waste any time pulling me onto his lap. Every muscle in my body relaxed, the sobs started to die off, and I was fixated on the beating of his heart where my head was pressed against his chest.

  “Cariad, no,” he pled. “Don’t cry, please.”

  “How did you know I was scared?”

  “Instinct,” he replied. I didn’t question him, I was just glad he was there. “I have some explaining to do.”

  “I suppose you do,” I said. He moved as if to sit me next to him, but I wrapped my arms around his waist and hugged him to me tightly. “I’m okay here. If it’s okay.”

  “It’s more than okay, Cariad,” he assured me and kissed the top of my head tenderly, wrapping his arms back around me.

  Telor 24

  The reality that I could lose her was tearing my heart out. I was about to tell her the truth about me, and if she were sane, she would take off out those doors and never look back. I wouldn’t blame her for that. But there wasn’t a thing I would change; I’d do it over in a heartbeat.

  “Do you want to take any guesses before I begin?” I asked, stalling. “I’m dying to hear what’s going on inside that pretty head of yours.”

  “Are you an angel?” She trembled in my arms.

  “Close,” I answered.

  “Ghost?” she countered.

  “Closer, it’s a mixture of the two,” I said. “Think of us like us like Hermes, escorting souls from this world to the next.”

  “Us?” she asked, her head still resting against my chest.

  “I’m a Guide. There are many of us,” I said. “When you die, your Guide escorts you to a ‘review’ where you watch your life back and see your mistakes, so you have a chance to not make the same ones in the next life. Once you complete that, you are assigned a job until you cycle back through. You serve in that job for the length of your life. I was twenty-four when I died, so I’ll serve twenty-four years as a Guide. There are six main jobs: Courier, Weaver, Spinner, Aligner, Meddler, or Guide. We work for Destiny, Luck, Life, Chaos, Order, or Death. I work for Death, or Tori, as she prefers to be called.”

  “Are you here to kill me?” Again, no fear, just curiosity. If I thought I loved her before, I knew I did now.

  “On the contrary, Cariad.” I knew I should tell her about the other Guides who were hanging around, but I couldn’t bring myself to put any of this burden on her shoulders just yet. “Do you remember when you fell on the stairs?”

  “Vaguely,” she said. “I remember falling and my head hitting the stone stairs, then it was as if I were detached from my body, like I was floating above it, watching the scene like a bystander. There was blood seeping out so quickly. It’s ironic, that the one time I thought myself to be beautiful was when I was dying.” She laughed once without humor and kept talking. “Then you came, and I was sucked back into my body.

  “You were singing to me, and then you saw me staring at you. I heard everything you were saying, but I couldn’t answer. You looked so panicked when you saw me looking at you. Then you left and it was…I can’t explain it, not right at least. It felt like some intrinsic part of me fought against the confines of my body. Like you awoke it and it wanted to follow you. I blacked out after that, when I couldn’t see you anymore.”

  It was incredibly hard to listen to her retell the story. It made me question my choices that night. Not saving her, I’d do that over again, but leaving her. Perhaps that had been a mistake. Or perhaps the mistake was now, coming here and complicating her life.

  “I was at your bedside every night you were in the hospital. I checked on you after you went home, and I—”

  “Made me forget everything?”

  “Yes,” I said, apologetically. “I thought it would be best for you not to remember me. Coming here was not my original plan. Every time I came to see you, I promised myself it would be the last. Obviously, it never was.”

  “Do you know what it’s like to miss someone you think you’ve never met before?” she asked. “To want them and question your sanity for wanting them? To feel like your own mind was betraying you? To feel like something was trying to beat its way out of you?”

  “No.” What else could I say?

  “It’s hell,” she whispered. “Complete and utter hell.”

  “I’m sorry, Catalina,” I whispered into her hair. “I’m so sorry.”

  “Why were you such an asshole to me?”

  “I knew I needed to stay away from you. But I had to be around you. My mind was against it, but no matter
how hard I tried to stay away, I always found myself drawn to you. I could see that you did also. I hoped that by being unlikable, you would stop.”

  You are poison to her. I couldn’t shake that feeling. I’d never felt as alive as I did with her. I’ve never felt this much in general. Alive or dead. But did this come at a cost to her? The only thing I’d succeeded in doing was drawing a giant target on her back and complicating her life. Tori wasn’t going to lie down and let this go. She might not act immediately—she was too smart to rush headfirst into anything—but she would make a move at some point, and when she did, I was powerless to stop her.

  “Telor—” Catalina paused and then, as if just putting something together in her head, asked, “Telor, if you were sent to get me that night, why am I not dead?”

  Lina 25

  “Because I saved you. I don’t even know how I did it,” he said. “I took one look at you lying there dying. I saw you fighting and decided that you weren’t dying there.”

  “But, why?” I asked “Why would you choose to save me? There was nothing special about me. You didn’t even know me, for God’s sake.”

  “I beg to differ on that,” Telor said. “When you’re dead, you don’t feel much of anything. It’s like being underwater. You can see, hear, and feel things, just with a haze or fog around you. The moment I laid eyes on you, that changed. My clouds parted, and I felt alive. The—” He stopped and struggled with what he was trying to say. “That feeling of loss and gut-wrenching horror you get when you lose someone you love just filled me. You were fighting so hard to stay alive, and I couldn’t let you die. I couldn’t let you die, because it would have been worse than me dying all over again.”

  The tears that I thought were gone started trailing silently down my cheek. This was all so surreal. Was I more relieved that I was not, in fact, crazy or was I more worried that I was actually crazier than I thought I was? I think it was the first one. There were so many stray ends waving around in my head; it was hard to choose which one to tackle next.

  “And Bridgette?” I asked. Because that was really the most important thing, right? I hated that I cared.

  “Ex-girlfriend,” he answered, and I was taken aback by the amount of jealousy that it caused. “We broke up about two months before I died.”

  “How did you...you know, die?” I asked, it seemed like a relatively personal question, but he didn’t seem miffed at all.

  “I was shot. I’ll tell you the full story later,” he said. “Right now, I’m betting you have better questions.”

  “How are you here?” I ask. “If you’re not alive?”

  “I don’t know, really,” he said. “Since the day I saved you, I’ve felt a pull toward you. Like magnets, if you will. The more I tried to pull away, the harder I fell back. One day, I decided I was going to go to you, and I did.”

  “I don’t understand.” For every answer I got, it came with three more questions. “Do Guides have bodies?”

  “No. We can take on solid human forms for short amounts of time, but nothing like this,” he said, adjusting his body and lying backwards. Using his jacket as a pillow, he took me with him, my head still on his chest. “We’re not made for corporeal bodies this long, though. Switching back and forth has become an issue. It’s getting harder and harder to switch. I’m afraid I’ll get stuck as a Guide and not be able to switch back.”

  “Then just stay here. If you stop being able to switch, what will happen if you are in a human body at the time?” I asked. Despite the wholly surreal feeling of the past twenty-four hours, I knew that I wanted him here with me.

  Yawning, I made to sit up, but he tightened his arm around me and held me to him.

  “You don’t have to ask all your questions now.” His hand was playing with the ends of my hair, twisting them around his fingers like a coin. It sent a shiver through my body, and my breath hitched.

  “I do, though,” I said to his chest so I didn’t have to look at him. “I have to know before you’re gone again.”

  “I’m not going anywhere,” he said. Putting a hand on my cheek, he tilted my face up so he could see me. “Do you hear me? I’m not going anywhere.”

  “I hear you...” I heard him, but I didn’t think that was something he could promise. Something pressed against my cheek. “What happened to your hand?”

  “Temper got the best of me for a second,” he said, shrugging. “Don’t worry about it, love.”

  Our faces were so close together, only another inch and we could touch. If I’d thought my breathing was erratic earlier, my body was now proving me wrong. I wanted to reach out and touch him. To verify, yet again, that he was really here.

  “Say something,” he said, his thumb brushing back and forth over my cheekbone.

  Instead of talking, I closed the small space between us and brushed my mouth over his. His lips were soft and warm, causing my icy body to melt into him. The hand on my cheek moved to the back of my neck, and he returned my kiss. It was soft and gentle but conveyed an urgency. Regardless of what he’d said, he knew he was walking a thin line between here and there. When I leaned closer to him, my body sliding on top of his, he drew back.

  “Catalina,” he said, his voice was as hoarse as I was sure mine would be, “I could kiss you like this all day, but right now, just let me hold you. I need to reassure myself that you’re here.”

  I smiled despite myself. It was funny that he needed the reassurance that I was here, when he was the angel.

  “Where did you go tonight when you left?”

  “Ah. I was hoping that question wouldn’t come up quite yet,” he said. For the first time since he got here, he seemed a little uncomfortable. “I tried to contact Destiny.”

  “Destiny is a person?” I asked.

  “He is. Our situation has Denny written all over it,” he answered and let out a breath of air. “But I couldn’t find him. I did get a text a little while back, when he got wind that I was asking around. It just said ‘you’ll find me when it’s time.’”

  “Destiny has a cell phone and he texts?” I couldn’t help it, I laughed a little.

  “Doesn’t everyone?” he responded, giving a small laugh of his own.

  It was getting late, and I was tired. I could hardly keep my eyes open as it was. The thought of going home and having to face Gavin and Jilsey was not pleasant. About as pleasant as leaving Telor. The mere thought of walking away from him sent a frenzy of panicky thoughts through me.

  “When will it ‘be time’?” I asked, snuggling closer to him.

  “Soon, hopefully,” he said. “I’m working on a plan.”

  We didn’t speak after that. He continued to hold me to him, one hand weaving his fingers through mine and the other rubbing soothing circles on my back. After some time, I lost my battle with sleep and dozed off, listening to the beating of his heart.

  I woke early in the morning to the feeling of someone watching me. Cracking my eyes, I saw we were still on the floor in the museum, only instead of being upstairs and well hidden, we were now in my office covered up by a fleece blanket. Telor still seemed to be sleeping, and I craned my head to see if anyone had noticed us.

  They had. Seline was at her desk, watching us with a smirk on her face.

  “As your boss, I should scold you for fraternizing with a volunteer,” she said. “As your friend, I will applaud your taste.” She does a quick little clap. “Jilsey called all up-in-arms this morning because you never came home last night. I let her know you were here. I left out the fact that you were all tangled up with Mr. Tall, Dark, Handsome, and English.”

  “I’m Welsh,” Telor’s voice rumbled from under me, his voice still thick with sleep. Sitting up, he took me with him. “What time is it?”

  “About seven forty-five,” Seline said, amused.

  “I’m gonna go grab you some coffee,” Telor said, helping me to my feet, though he didn’t release me right away. The look he gave me made me wish Seline wasn’t here, and this door
was locked. Apparently he could read my mind, because he just smiled and kissed me quickly. My mouth followed him as he pulled back. “I’ll be right back. Do you want anything, Seline?”

  His casual demeanor at being caught by Seline was amazing. She seemed to be getting more amused by the second. My cheek-to-blush ratio was quickly turning to blush’s favor.

  “Is your father as attractive as you are?” she asked.

  “Yep,” he answered. “You’ll have to fight my mom for him, though. I’ll warn you, she’s scrappy and can knock grown men on their asses.”

  Seline laughed as he left. Her smirk stayed firmly in place.

  “So, this is new,” she said. “I was under the impression that you and Gavin were a thing?”

  “Not so much,” I answered. “And nothing is really going on with Telor and me. Well, I’m not actually sure what’s going on with us.” I truly wasn’t. There was a yearning for him set deep in my bones. His very essence called to me. But, still, it didn’t mean there was anything going on.

  “Looks like a little more than nothing to me,” she said. “Do you want to go home and take a shower and change?”

  “Uh, um, no.” I was still not feeling like going home. Chances were one or both of them were there at the moment, and I wasn’t in a fighting mood. “I have stuff upstairs.”

  Telor 26

  Last night was the best night of my life so far. Life and afterlife. She said my name in her sleep. I’d lain awake most of the night just watching her sleep, thinking that the minute I closed my eyes the universe would remember I was not supposed to be here and take me away. Sleeping wasn’t on my agenda last night anyway, not with all the Guides around. Apparently, though, I did fall asleep at some point.