I was in a haunted mansion at one in the morning and I wasn’t alone. I distantly wondered if pepper spray worked on ghosts.
“Quiet,” a woman’s voice said. There was a strange, formal stiffness to her voice. Almost like an accent but not quite.
“I’ve been quiet long enough,” a man replied in a deep, resonating voice.
“Look at this,” another voice said. There was a pause, then the rattling sound of paint cans being moved. It sounded like they were rummaging through the pile of things from the shelf. “How long have we slept?”
“Too long,” replied the man with the deep voice. “Look.”
Another pause, then a slow, amazed laugh from the woman. From the direction of their voices, I thought they might be reading one of the informational plaques the tour agency had put up explaining the history of the house.
The woman spoke. “Looks like poor old Mercer is long dead.”
“This door wasn’t here before,” one of the men said.
“Do you smell that?” The woman asked.
“Smells like a human.”
I really wished I didn’t still have to pee. When the door opened, it took everything I had not to lose control of my bladder.
Two men and a woman were waiting in the darkened room. They were all dressed like something out of an old movie with layers of well-made, formal clothing. They were pale, lithe, beautiful people. The woman had black hair, eyes a startling shade of blue, and curved, full lips that somehow hinted at both innocence and an edge of something more dangerous.
The man on the left had dirty blond hair slicked back over a smooth forehead, eyes that twinkled with danger, and beautifully sculpted, sharp features.
The other man was broader with a square kind of perfection to him. He fixed dark eyes on me, then took a step closer. “Hello.”
He was the one with the resonating voice. “Hi,” I croaked.
“I’m Lucian Undergrove. This is my brother, Alaric, and my sister, Seraphine.”
“You were trapped behind that wall?” I asked. I could feel myself trying to slam together puzzle pieces that didn’t fit. The biggest, most confusing piece was how three very much alive people had just come out of a wall I knew had existed ever since I’d been working here. “Was there a… tunnel in there?”
The three siblings exchanged a quiet look, then Lucian nodded. “Something along those lines.”
The two in the back were looking at me in a way that made me uncomfortable. The woman, in particular, had an intensity in her eyes that I hadn’t seen since I accidentally showed up to prom in the same dress as one of the cheerleaders.
“I’m just going to take this bucket and go,” I said, lifting up the bucket and showing all of them, as if it explained everything.
Lucian put a hand on my arm. It was cold. It looked even whiter than I’d realized against my skin, too. “I’ll need you to forget you met us.”
A loud swallow clicked in my throat. “You got it. I was never here.”
“No,” he said, eyes taking on a heavy, oddly magnetic quality. “I need you to really forget.” He reached out and brushed a slender finger down my nose, then half-smiled at me, revealing a handsome little vertical dimple on one side. “It’s a shame, though. I think I would have enjoyed getting to know you.”
I tried to say something, but it felt like I had suddenly become full-blown, can’t-even-talk-properly drunk. Some kind of slurred sound came out of my mouth, and then the inside of my head was spinning.
4
Cara
I had a cup of coffee in my hands as I sat at the breakfast table back home. Four tall basketball players surrounded me with varying levels of consternation on their faces.
Zack folded his arms. “So, you’re really not going to tell us who he was?”
“I already told you I don’t remember anything.” It was mostly true, at least. I remembered trying to find a key for a bathroom. And I remembered falling from the shelves. I assumed I must’ve hit my head somehow, but that admittedly didn’t explain why my head didn’t hurt. It also didn’t explain how or why some mysterious trio of strangers had apparently dropped me off last night.
“The girl was thick, dude. Like,” he grinned stupidly. “So thick.” Mooney said.
It had taken me a while to learn to keep track of my four oversized roommates when I moved in last year. But I had it down now. Zack was the walking science experiment who existed primarily on expired food. Also, the shoulder length-curly brown hair was his thing.
Niles was the tallest of the group with the shaved head and an unhealthy obsession with cleanliness. Unfortunately, instead of using his powers to keep our place neat, he just avoided the kitchen entirely and kept his own room clean.
Mooney was the muscular one who had a new girlfriend every week. He had the whole short on the sides long on top style and a toothy smile full of white, orderly teeth. He could charm the pants off women, but only if he did it before they got to really know him.
Last but not least was Parker, who had a scraggly, patchy beard and had never met a conspiracy theory he didn’t love.
Together, they were like my mostly incapable team of personal super heroes.
Zack was nodding his head as he ate something out of a Tupperware with a fork. Judging by the smell, it was long gone. “The vibe was really off, though. Did you see the look in their eyes? Creepy, if you ask me.”
“But you’d still smash the girl, right?” Mooney said, tilting his head and raising his eyebrows.
Zack made a pfft sound and laughed. “I mean, obviously. Just saying it was weird.”
Parker ran his fingers down his face, seeking out a little patch of his beard thick enough to tug at. “I don’t know. From the way you guys described them? I’m thinking something’s up.”
Niles eyed what Zack was eating, then shuffled to the other side of the room, shaking his head. “You always think something is ‘up,’ Parker.”
“Yeah, maybe,” Parker said. “But did you hear about the Mercer house last night? A tour guide showed up this morning and they found a demolished wall. And they aren’t saying what they found inside, but the girl they interviewed looked completely sketched out. Super suspicious.”
“Wait,” Zack said. Without looking, he tossed his Tupperware toward the sink. It bounced off the countertop and clattered to the tiles out of view.
“Kobe!” Mooney said, laughing.
“No,” Zack said, waving his finger around as he tried to grasp at some mental straw. “The Mercer House? That’s where you work, right, Cara?”
I thought about the ladder. Oh, shit. Did I break a wall?
“I work a lot of places. But yes, that’s one spot the ghost tour hits.”
The guys all exchanged a look, except Mooney, who was cleaning something from under his fingernails.
“Oh, come on,” I said. “What are you trying to say?”
Zack just shrugged. “I don’t know. But I do think you should let one of us tag along with you tonight if you’re doing another ghost tour.”
“I don’t need an oversized babysitter.”
“The fact that you came home with three strangers and can’t remember anything from last night suggests otherwise,” Niles noted.
I finished my coffee, then went to gather my things for the day. “You know,” I said, shouldering my bag. “Try getting four hours of sleep a night. You’ll probably forget a thing or two.”
Niles narrowed his eyes. “Wait. Is that supposed to convince us you don’t need someone keeping an eye on you? Because it’s having the opposite effect on me.”
Zack nodded. “I’ll go with her tonight.”
I stared at him. “Seriously?”
Zack bent down, picked something up from the floor, then popped it in his mouth with a cocky smile. “Seriously. I’m going to keep an eye on you tonight, like it or not, Care Bear.”
I grinned. “Great. I’ll let the alley cats and rats know there will be less food to go around, then.”
Cara
I found myself checking my phone all day through my classes. The demolished wall and the curiosities on the other side had ignited a bit of a local firestorm of interest. I figured it was only a matter of time before the media got a hold of the names of the tour guides who had access to the Mercer house last night. I considered coming clean when they reached out.
I could just tell the truth. It had been an accident. I must’ve hit my head, and I don’t remember anything else.
Except I did know three mysterious strangers had escorted me home afterwards, according to my roommates.
Anya lobbed the crust of her peanut butter and jelly sandwich at my head. “Focus, Cara Skies. Samples will not look at themselves.”
Startled, I looked up and realized I’d been in the middle of moving a sample of blood to a slide, but it had sat on the little clear rectangle of glass too long and coagulated in the open air. I swore to myself, then went to clean up my mess. “Sorry,” I said. “I had a crazy night last night.”
Anya was absorbed in what she was doing at the computer and waved her hand in dismissal—either of my apology or that she could possibly care about how my night had been.
A short while later, there was a loud knock at her door. We both looked up, then Anya made a “don’t just stare at me, go get it” gesture with her hand.
I set down what I was doing and hurried upstairs toward the sound of more insistent knocking. I hadn’t realized how late it was until I saw there wasn’t even a hint of sun coming through the windows upstairs anymore. That meant I needed to leave soon for my tour-guide gig, assuming I wasn’t going to get fired the moment I arrived.
I opened the door.
I was expecting a delivery guy or maybe even a resourceful news anchor who had thought to contact the tour company and ask who had been working yesterday.
Instead, I saw a mountain of a man flanked by two women. The man was huge with nearly black eyes, hair, and pale skin. The man was dressed like some kind of biker king with a thick leather jacket despite the heat and pants that hugged long, powerful legs.
The two women at his side wore disinterested, annoyed looks. One had short cropped hair and high bangs that managed to put an exclamation mark on her perfectly sculpted features. The other woman wasn’t blessed with the same genetics. She had a too-wide mouth, eyes that were a little too feral, and a cruelty to her face that I couldn’t quite put my finger on.
“Um,” I said. “If you guys are selling Girl Scout cookies, we already got some last week. So…” I started to close the door, but the man planted a huge hand in the center of the door and shoved it open.
“Where are they?” he asked. His voice was deep and growly.
“We ate them all?”
“Where are the Undergroves?”
I let out a sigh of relief. “You guys are lost? Is that what this is? I’ve never heard of ‘the Undergroves’ but it’s probably a lot easier to just plug it into your phone.”
The man took a step forward. I was struck by the fact that he didn’t appear to be sweating even in the slightest. If I wore that getup for two minutes I would’ve been dripping. “I’m not playing games with you, Cara Skies. Tell me where they are. Give me the Undergroves, and I’ll consider letting you live.”
I raised an eyebrow. “Okay. Clearly you have the right name, but the wrong person. I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
The man let out a low growling sound. He stared into my eyes—into my soul, actually. He seemed to come to some kind of conclusion that pissed him off, because he broke eye contact and turned toward the women.
“I think he wiped her,” he said.
“I wipe myself, thank you very much,” I added.
The look he gave me over my shoulder was a healthy reminder to keep my mouth shut. I wondered if I could close the door and they’d forget about me but decided staying perfectly still was probably the safest bet. Maybe creepy people in the night were like dinosaurs. If you don’t move, they can’t see you.
Wait, had I heard that was just a myth they made up for a movie? I couldn’t remember but did my best statue impression to be safe.
“We could use her as bait,” the woman with the cruel eyes suggested.
Nope. Not liking the sound of that. Maybe I could run. But something about the force I’d sensed when he pushed the door back open made me wonder if a simple locked door would do anything more than piss this guy off.
“If he planned to keep her as a pet, he wouldn’t have wiped her,” the man said, as if he was explaining something very simple to somebody stupid.
Why is this guy so obsessed with wiping? Maybe it was some kind of disgusting kink of his.
“Can we have her?” the pretty one asked. She had a tinkling, high-pitched voice with a lilting edge of a southern accent.
The man eyed me. “No. Jezabel will keep an eye on her for the time being. There’s still a chance the Undergroves might decide to come back for her.”
The pretty one rolled her eyes. “Can’t Leah watch her? I’m hungry.”
I took a slow, shuffling step backwards. Maybe if I move slowly enough, they won’t realize I’m moving. I tried to be molasses. I was the line at the DMV. I was—
“Where do you think you’re going, human?” The cruel woman asked. Leah—I thought it was.
The man faced me. “Come.” he said, curling a finger in my direction.
I was about to make a smart assed comment about how it was just like a man to think the female orgasm was voice activated when I realized I was walking toward him. No. I definitely hadn’t decided to do that.
He fixed me with those black, empty eyes and stared. “You don’t remember us. You never met us.”
I frowned. I was in the middle of trying to piece together how that might possibly make sense when the trio turned and left.
I hesitated, then closed the door. Did he seriously think I was going to forget that? And why had the woman called me “human?” Was that some hip thing the kids these days were doing? Maybe they thought it was a fancier way to say “man.” “What’s up, hu-man!”
I tried to shrug it off as three weirdos. Except those three weirdos knew where I’d been last night. They also were asking about some mysterious group of people who appeared to be tied to the demolished wall at the Mercer House.
I couldn’t help wondering if there was a connection to the three equally strange people my roommates described dropping me off. From their descriptions, it was three different weird people.
What the hell was going on?
6
Cara
Zack was about as good at stealthily tailing me as a t-rex would’ve been in a backstroke competition. He towered over the group of tourists I was leading around the spooky sights of Savannah. He also had his eyes narrowed and kept jerking his head in random directions, as if expecting to see people peeking out from around building corners and parked cars.
Either this Leah woman decided she had better things to do than tail me, or she was much, much more discreet than Zack, because I hadn’t seen even a glimpse of her.
I was surprised to find the media frenzy around the Mercer House had apparently already fizzled out since morning. There was some police caution tape around the building, which had restricted my tour to an outdoor slow-walk where I explained some of the mysteries of the house and its past. But as far as I could tell, nobody was inside.
When the last of my tourists finally headed off, it was just me and Zack
“Well,” I said, spreading my hands. “It looks like you scared off any bad guys. Good job.”
He was really playing up the powerful male guardian thing, because his only response was to narrow his eyes and look around suspiciously. “For now.”
I grinned. “Alright, Batman. Are you ready to walk me home?”
Me and Zack had made it about halfway home when he sniffed at the air like a dog catching a whiff of bacon.
“What is it?
” I asked. “Do you smell some expired eggs? Maybe a mushy banana?”
“No,” he said. He scrunched up his face, nose still twitching. “But fuck it smells good. You don’t smell that?”
I shook my head.
“Hold on.” Zack looked around, then seemed to zero in on something in the direction of a creepy, dark alleyway. He walked toward it.
“Uh,” I said. “Aren’t you supposed to be guiding me home safely? I don’t think leaving me to go explore a dark alley is a great idea.”
“No,” he said. “I just want to see what that smell is. I’ll be like ten seconds.”
I folded my arms, waiting as I watched him creep-walk toward the alley and move into the deeper shadows between the buildings. All I could make out was his tall, broad-shouldered silhouette as he ducked and looked behind a dumpster.
I had done a pretty good job of feeling like Miss Tough Guy until that moment. But the weirdness of the last two days came rushing up on me in a gut-clenching burst of paranoia.
I looked over my shoulder, then checked the other direction, sure I was about to see a beautifully terrifying, pale-skinned woman coming toward me.
All I saw was the empty streets except for a couple walking together in the far distance. The guy was laughing about something and the girl was rolling her eyes so hard I could read it in her body language.
When I looked back toward Zack, all I saw was the alleyway. No tall shadow sniffing out what was probably a bag of garbage. “Zack?”
Oh, come on.
“Zack!” I yelled, a little more insistently this time.
I spun to look behind me, which only managed to create a new “behind,” which I had to spin and look at. I thought my heart was going to explode if it beat much faster. “Zack! Get your ass out here right now! I am not going in there after you.” I was practically whispering, and not sure how I expected him to hear me.
I was also crouching and holding my hands up like I knew how to throw a punch to save my life—Let the record show, I certainly did not.
Kiss Kiss Fang Fang: A Sucky Vampire Romantic Comedy Page 2
