The temptation to give up, crawl into a corner, and never move again was strong. Maybe it was time she accepted the fact there was nothing physically wrong with her. Maybe this was all in her head. Maybe she was crazy. But it wasn’t in her nature to give up. She needed to concentrate on what she could control.
Charlotte pushed up from the floor and went toward the window. She peered out at the shadowed red brick streets of downtown Green Vallis. The benches and sidewalks were empty. That wasn’t unusual for the middle of the night. Streetlights flickered and dimmed as if their power fluctuated before becoming stronger. Seeing Niall’s motorcycle, she gave a small growl of anger. He must have come home while she’d been cleaning.
Charlotte didn’t care how late it was. She’d been leaving endless messages about the slow drip coming from her ceiling. This was unacceptable. She grabbed a flannel shirt and jerked it over her cami top, buttoning it as she marched out of her apartment and down the hall to where Niall stayed when he was in town.
She pounded on his door and then leaned her ear close to listen. The anger bubbling inside of her felt wonderful compared to the fear and uncertainty. She grabbed hold of that feeling, letting it overtake her reasoning.
When he didn’t answer, she pounded harder and called out, “Hey, slumlord, I know you’re in there. I saw your motorcycle outside, and I’m not leaving until you talk to me.”
This time she heard movement and the low sound of voices. She straightened her shoulders and crossed her arms over her chest as she waited for him to open the door.
Instead of Niall, she came face to face with his more sociable brother. Euann had a constant playfulness in his solid brown eyes. His dark brown hair looked as if he’d been running his fingers through it. He gave her a flirtatious wink and said, “Hello, love. I was just thinking about ya.”
She didn’t believe him. Euann always had a pretty smile for her. However, she noticed it became brighter whenever his cousin Rory was around. Any flirting they did with her was more of a competition between the two of them than out of an attraction to her. When she’d met him, she thought there might be something there, but the feelings never developed beyond a passing flirtation that ended in friendly banter.
As expected, she saw Rory standing behind Euann with a grin. The night she’d met the two of them was the first instance where she’d forgotten time. Though to be fair, they had all been on the roof of the mansion drinking whiskey and scotch, and she could have just passed out.
“Oh, ah, hey, Euann,” Charlotte acknowledged, trying to calm her anger so it wasn’t misdirected at the wrong MacGregor. She tried to peek past him into the room but he leaned to block her view. “Is your brother here?”
“I like what you’ve done with your hair.” Euann didn’t step aside. He was completely unfazed by the fact she’d been screaming like a mad woman while pounding the door. He gave a pretend shiver, and said, “Fiery!”
“Uh, thanks.” Charlotte automatically reached to touch the hair still piled into a messy bun on the top of her head. She’d fallen asleep with it tied up. On a whim, she had colored her naturally brown hair a deep red. She tried to push a wayward lock away from her face, but it instantly fell back down. Too aggravated to worry about how she looked, she asked, “Where’s that slumlord brother of yours?”
“Hello, Charlotte.” Niall’s tone was stern, but then, when was it not? The man always sounded like whatever he was doing was the most serious thing on the planet. “What can I do for ya?”
She stepped forward, forcing Euann back as she stood in the doorway of Niall’s apartment. “The point of having a phone to leave messages on is to actually check the messages so your tenants can get ahold of you when shit goes wrong in your crappy building.” She gestured to her wet jeans as evidence.
“This is not a slum. I live here, too,” Niall countered.
Barely, she thought in irritation. The man was never home. Lights were going out in the hallways, the laundry room in the basement had a strange smell, and the security doors didn’t appear too secure, since a stranger was able to get in and knock on her door earlier in the day.
“I’ve been calling for a month,” she said in exasperation. “That makes you a slumlord.”
She glanced around his apartment. Of course, he didn’t have water leaking onto his furniture.
Euann and Niall’s sister, Malina, stood near a couch. The furniture was practically the only decoration in the place beside a small dining table and wooden chairs. Niall didn’t live like he came from a wealthy family. Or maybe he did…somewhere else.
Malina gave her a tight smile. The woman had the dark hair, eyes, and attitude of a MacGregor, but when she spoke, her accent sounded more British than Scottish. Tonight, she didn’t look like her normally put-together self. She wore a faded T-shirt advertising the best tacos in the Midwest and baggy sweatpants, neither of which were her size. Charlotte had never seen Malina out of designer clothes.
Charlotte wondered what they were all doing here this late at night. Niall’s family rarely came to the building. Euann and Rory smiled, but there was something off about the way they looked at her. She couldn’t place it, and maybe she imagined it, but she had the distinct impression she’d interrupted something.
“What can I do for ya, Charlotte?” Niall asked when she merely stared at the apartment. “I’m a little busy tonight.”
She frowned. He dared to get irritated with her? She was the one sleeping under water.
Charlotte had tried being nice. She’d tried being firm. She’d tried begging. At this point, she didn’t care who heard her. “Oh, let’s see. You can fix the drainpipe in my ceiling that you promised was taken care of before I drown. You can tell the people in the apartment above me to stop running their dishwasher until it’s fixed, because they keep telling me they’re not but I can hear it, and I get flooded with their dirty dishwater through my bedroom ceiling light fixture. I can’t keep up with the buckets when I’m working the two jobs I have to have to pay for this overpriced place. And you can replace my mattress because it’s ruined. And you can pay for the chiropractor visit I’m going to need after sleeping on a lumpy couch for too much longer.”
There. Let his family hear how bad of a landlord he was.
“I promise it will be taken care of first thing tomorrow,” Niall said calmly, as if he were the reasonable one in the conversation. How could she keep yelling if he didn’t rise to the bait? “Anything else?”
Under her breath, she muttered, “I swear, I don’t know how you are related to my best friend’s husband.” Charlotte turned to go but then thought better of it. “Yeah, there is another thing. Fix the security on the front and back entrances. I don’t need gangster-looking guys at my door asking questions about you. If you’re in deep with a bookie, then that’s your business. I don’t want that nonsense coming at me. I have enough to do.” She gave a small wave at the others standing in the apartment. “It’s great seeing you all again. Have a nice night.”
Charlotte jerked the door closed before any of them could answer her.
“Gangsters? What the—” She heard Euann ask.
Charlotte took a deep breath, feeling only slightly better for having yelled at Niall. Her limbs shook with irritation. How could Niall just sit there all calm like she was the irrational one for wanting a dry bed?
Not for the first time, she thought about moving. Lydia was married now to Erik MacGregor, so his family was constantly popping up at work. MacGregors were in her apartment building. They were taking over several businesses in town. They were buying real estate. MacGregors were everywhere. Soon Green Vallis would probably have to change its name to MacGregorville.
Things would never be the way they were before—just two best friends making lotions and teas in a small Wisconsin town where nothing spectacular ever happened. She used to think the town was boring. Now she’d give anything to have things back the way they were.
Perhaps blaming the MacGregors for her c
urrent medical problems was wrong. How could they really be responsible for migraines and blackouts and lost time? But it was easier to blame them than admit the doctors didn’t know how to fix her. She couldn’t even admit the seriousness of the situation to herself, let alone tell anyone about it. Not even Lydia knew the full truth.
She started walking down the hall but stopped when the man who’d come by her apartment earlier in the day walked around the corner. He wore a suit that belonged in a 1950s Hollywood thug movie. He smiled when he saw her and opened his mouth to speak.
Charlotte held up her hand to stop him. It was taking everything in her not to cry in frustration. The man arched a brow. She turned and opened Niall’s door without knocking. “Speaking of bookies, here’s Mr. 1950s Mobster now.” Then to the man in the hall, she added, “Don’t bother knocking at my door again. He’s in here.”
“Dar,” Malina and Niall said loudly in unison. Charlotte stiffened at the sound, not understanding.
“Charlotte, get away from the door,” Niall commanded.
Before she knew what was happening, he had ahold of her arm and was trying to pull her into his home. She yelped in surprise and swatted at him. Niall tossed her behind him and she landed on his couch. “Stay there.”
Charlotte instantly stood and began to protest. Malina ran toward the door as if to slam it, but the stranger pushed his way inside. Malina stumbled back. Whatever this was, Charlotte did not want to be involved. Niall tried to stop her from leaving by reaching for her arm.
“Don’t touch me.” This was the last straw. Charlotte was moving out of the building, perhaps the town. She couldn’t take it. She literally felt herself going crazy.
“Charlotte, don’t.” Malina’s tone was soft, but still commanding. Charlotte swung her arm out of Malina’s reach when the woman tried to grab hold of her.
“What’s wrong, doll face? Don’t you want to introduce me to your friends?” The man in the doorway purposefully knocked into Charlotte as she tried to move past him. It was a light bump, but enough to cause her to stumble. She fell against the doorframe and he automatically reached out to keep her from falling. His touch was light, but it sent a tingling sensation over her shoulder to her neck and head.
Not again, Charlotte thought as she felt herself growing weaker.
“Let go of her!” Euann’s voice sounded distant. There were a series of strange thumps, and it took her a moment to realize she could hear her heart beating. The noise sounded far away. She blinked as her vision blurred. People kept talking, but she couldn’t make out all the words.
“Dar, let her go,” Malina insisted. “She’s human. She has nothing to do with us. She’s fragile.”
“Human?” Charlotte repeated. Had she heard that right? She looked at the man holding her arm. Dar? Maybe he would help her. “I don’t feel well.”
“Just a bit of bad luck,” Dar told her. “It would appear I have extra tonight.”
And then again, maybe not. Energy flowed out of her into Dar.
“Reverse it.” Niall held out his arm. “Ya don’t want her. Ya want us. Take me instead.”
“Is she gone? I’m sorry I’m such a ladies’ magnet. They can’t seem to stay away from me.” Raibeart MacGregor came from the bathroom wearing a bathrobe. He was the uncle of the other MacGregors in the room, and, well, there was no other way to put it: the man was about fifty cards short of a fifty-two-card deck. He’d proposed to about every single woman in town. If any had said yes, the man clearly did not remember. Still, that didn’t explain why his bare legs poked out from under the bottom of a robe, and why no one else appeared to be reacting to his sudden presence or outfit.
Charlotte’s head tingled. Was she hallucinating a man in a bathrobe? She tried to pull her arm free, but her body didn’t listen.
Raibeart frowned at no one in particular. “Oh, it’s only crazy Charlotte. And who’s this fella with her?”
Only crazy Charlotte?
Great, crazy Raibeart thought she was the loony one.
“Don’t call her that,” Euann said from where he sat on the floor against a wall. Why was Euann on the floor? “She’s not crazy.”
Charlotte opened her mouth to thank him. Out of all the MacGregor’s, Euann and Rory had always been the nicest to her.
“Lad, when you’ve had your brains swirled, and your memories plucked as much as that lassie has, ya can’t help but be crazy,” Raibeart countered. “Now get your arse up and meet Charlotte’s new beau. That’s no way to greet company.”
Charlotte felt something warm along her mouth. The taste of blood flavored her lips.
Dar turned her to face him. “What are you? You’re not one of them, that much is clear.”
Charlotte tried to make him understand, “Please, help me. I have blackouts and seizures. I need to get to the hospital.”
“Seizures?” Niall demanded. “Since when?”
“She is a full human, isn’t she?” Dar sounded surprised. His eyes strayed to where her nose bled.
Maybe none of this was real. It had to be another hallucination. She felt the energy that had been pulled out of her arm slowly returning and her mind began to clear.
“So, you’re still messing with people’s lives,” Dar said in disgust. “What the hell did you do to this one? I barely touched her, which means she was unbalanced to begin with.” His grip lightened and he slid his hand around her back as he began walking her away from the apartment. She heard him whisper, “Don’t be frightened. Luck will be on your side.” Before adding louder, “You must care about her if you’re so worried about what I’ll do to her. Does she have something of value in her memories that you want? Been digging around in there, have you?”
“I can’t remember where I was,” Charlotte whispered. She saw flashes of a dark basement and then a bonfire. She saw shadows dancing. They crept up the hallway walls, belonging to figures that were not there. The images teased her like a nightmare.
“Dar, you didn’t come here for Charlotte,” Malina said. “You came for me. I’m the one you’re mad at.”
“You’re right about that, doll,” he said. “This was not how I’d planned the evening to go. It would seem the ghosts tried to take more good luck than I wanted to give them and left me a little drier than I realized.”
“I see ghosts, too,” Charlotte whispered as he kept talking, her eyes staying on the shadowed figures around them. No one paid attention to her. Dar and the MacGregors yelled at each other, the sound growing chaotic. She felt the energy reversing as it pulled out of her. The hallway melted from around her until she was standing on someone’s lawn. Voices chanted in the distance. She felt the heat of a fire on her skin. She wasn’t well. These shadows weren’t real.
“Let her go, demon,” Malina demanded. “Can’t you see that poor girl has had enough bad luck all on her own? She’s got nothing left to feed you with. Give the girl some of my luck and let her go. There is no challenge in killing a human. Let Rory and Euann take care of her. Take me in her place. I give you my word, I will walk with you out of this building.”
“Malina, no,” Niall ordered. “Take me instead of Charlotte or my sister. I’m the one who dealt the final blow. It was my idea to attack ya.”
“I don’t understand what any of you are talking about. Will someone take me to the hospital?” Charlotte mumbled. She was growing weaker by the moment. They continued to ignore her.
“Not so final a blow, was it?” Dar laughed, yet he didn’t sound happy. “But it did hurt like hell trying to crawl back into my charred skin.”
They were talking gibberish to each other—demons crawling out of hell, damned luck, and plucking people’s memories? It was like she had walked in on the tail end of a joke, a bad one. And the punchline just seemed to drag on and on. The drone of it dizzying as it was mortifying.
Dar kept a hold on her arm, jerking her around each time he moved. And then a surge of energy filled Charlotte, clearing her foggy mind and pulling her ba
ck from the edge of passing out. Her gaze met Malina’s as her eyes rolled and then dulled. A faint glow lit the hand on her arm as if Dar somehow gifted her Malina’s life force.
Charlotte inhaled sharply so she could ingest the sudden flow of energy. The shadows on the wall disappeared. Before she could speak, Dar flung her toward Niall’s chest.
Niall held her tight as if scared she’d run away. The shock of his nearness took her by surprise and for a moment, she couldn’t move as she looked up at him.
“Dammit, Malina!” Niall stared after his sister. Dar pulled Malina down the hallway. “Ya don’t have to do this.”
“Stop him,” Rory demanded.
“Euann, take Charlotte. Don’t let her leave.” Niall thrust her from his chest into someone else. Euann hugged her possessively close as he began dragging her back into Niall’s apartment. Behind them, the rustling of clothes and men grunting; the sound of a struggle in the hall faded until a slamming door killed it completely.
“Let go of me,” Charlotte demanded. She felt stronger than she had in a long time. Her thoughts raced with newfound clarity. “What the hell is going on? Who is that guy?”
“Well, um…” Euann gave her a guilty look. “Ya are dreaming?”
Charlotte arched a brow. The scary thing was, she halfway believed him. Her mind was not to be trusted. She scratched her hand to make sure she was awake. She was. She felt the press of her nails.
“Would ya like something to drink, love?” Raibeart winked at her, and he was wearing a robe. That part had been real. Maybe she hadn’t hallucinated any of it.
Charlotte glanced around the apartment. Raibeart and Euann avoided her gaze. “You all have exactly three seconds to tell me what is going on, or I’ll…I’ll…I’ll do something so drastic you’ll wish you were never born.”
“That was an old friend of Malina’s, messing around,” Rory said. “No reason to be concerned.”
“Like a game?” Charlotte asked.
Spirits and Spells (Warlocks MacGregor Book 5) Page 3
