The Last Kiss Goodbye: A Charlotte Stone Novel

by Karen Robards

  “Because, believe it or not, I don’t sleep with everything in pants,” she snapped before she thought. As a slow smile spread across his face, she felt like biting her tongue. Because, of course, she had slept with Garland. Sort of. As in, ghost sex. Again, it was complicated.

  But whether or not it had been, in the strictest sense, real or not, it had definitely been the hottest sex of her life.

  And she was not going there. Not again. Not even in her thoughts.

  “I do believe it.” He crossed the kitchen to stand across the table from her. His big hands curled around a chair back. His steady gaze made her uncomfortable. She concentrated on the mail. “Thing is, I think I’m starting to know you pretty well. I think you’re a one-man woman, Doc.”

  Her eyes snapped up to meet his. At what she saw for her there, she felt a wave of heat.

  God, don’t let it show.

  “You might be right,” she said with a false cordiality of which she was justifiably proud. “And if ever I find that man, I’ll be sure to let you know.”

  His answering look made her foolish, reckless heart pick up its pace. Afraid of what he might read in her eyes, she let them drop to the square brown packing box that had been the next item of mail to come within reach of her hands. Damned tape—the box was swaddled in it. Clear and shiny, it was stubbornly resistant to all her attempts to breach it. Reaching for the small pair of scissors she kept along with items like pushpins and paper clips in a basket on the sideboard behind her, she cast another glance at him. She was just in time to watch him fade into translucence. Eyes widening, hand tightening convulsively around the scissors, she registered with a tingle of shock that she could absolutely see the rest of the kitchen through him. Even as she stared, he wavered, then started to solidify once more.

  She was still struggling to wrap her mind around what she was seeing when he did it again.

  “Might want to close your mouth, Doc. Damned if you don’t look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

  That at least had the virtue of snapping her out of total immobility. Her lips met and firmed. Her eyes collided with his. “Funny.”

  He seemed to look at her more closely. Of course, it was hard to tell when he was once again as diaphanous as smoke. “So what’s up?”

  “You—you’re flickering.” Her mouth had gone dry. Wetting her lips, she tried to swallow.

  He was returning to being almost—almost—solid-looking. Oh, God.

  “Flickering?” He glanced down at himself. Seeming to notice nothing amiss—okay, he looked solid again, so why would he?—he lifted his eyebrows at her.

  “Fading in and out. Like—like Tinkerbelle at the end of Peter Pan. You know, the Disney movie. When Tink was dying, and the children had to clap to bring her back.” The comparison made Charlie feel cold all over. She was so rattled that she was hardly making sense, she knew. Her eyes stayed glued to him: he’d started fading again as she spoke, and was now as insubstantial as a layer of chiffon, and rippling like one, too, if said chiffon had been caught in a breeze. It wasn’t the first time she’d seen an apparition flicker, but it was definitely the first time that the sight had made her heart lurch and her blood drain toward her toes.

  The other times—she’d been relieved. And she’d been relieved because the flickering was a sign that the ghost she was looking at would soon cease to be a problem to the living. And that would be because that flicker meant the apparition was minutes away from fading into nothingness, and she was comfortable in the knowledge that it was leaving this earthly plane and never coming back.

  But now, with him, she felt her composure shattering into a million lacerating shards as she faced what that flickering probably meant: either he was getting to the stage where she wasn’t going to be able to see him anymore, or he was being drawn permanently into the Hereafter. One way or the other, it didn’t matter. If what she’d seen happen in the past was prologue to the present, he was going.

  It wouldn’t be long before she was free of him. For good.

  Which she had known all along was going to happen.

  He was a ghost, and ghosts couldn’t stay.

  So why did that make her feel so utterly devastated?

  “Must’ve missed that one,” he replied drily.

  Her eyes stayed fixed on him with a kind of horrified desperation. The glowing green numbers of the digital clock over the microwave were perfectly visible through his wide and muscular chest: She could read the time: 11:22.

  “How—how do you feel?”

  “To tell the truth, like I died about a week back.”

  “Would you stop joking?” Her tone was fierce. “I’m serious.”

  He shrugged. “Thing is, I had a hell of a fight getting back here this time. Way harder than I’ve ever had before. Them Spookville walls—they didn’t want to let me out. If I hadn’t been so all-fired worried about you, I don’t think I could have made it through. Ever since I did, I’ve been feeling the damned place pulling at me, like it’s doing its best to reel me back in. Right now, it’s pulling pretty strong.” His eyes narrowed at her. “You got a particular reason for asking?”

  “Oh, God.” Her chest felt tight. Drawing a breath required real work. “I think—it might be time. I think—you might be getting ready to leave.”

  His brows snapped together. “What? Hell, no. I’m not going anywhere.”

  “I don’t think you have a choice.”

  “So do something. Ju-ju me.” His relatively unalarmed tone told her that he did not perceive the immediacy of the danger.

  Charlie shook her head, speechless because he was now pulsing like a lightbulb getting ready to burn out and was clearly unaware of it. Something that felt like a giant fist closed around her heart. She gripped the scissors so hard the metal hurt her fingers.

  She already knew how this story had to end. But she wasn’t ready. There was so much still unresolved between them, so much to say …

  “Please don’t take him yet.” The words were scarcely louder than a breath. Emerging of their own volition, they weren’t addressed to him: she was speaking to the universe, to the vast, unknowable forces of Eternity, to God himself. Then, realizing what she had said—and what it revealed—she shifted her grip on the scissors and looked down and started cutting through the tape on the box. Savagely.

  Anything to keep from watching him disappear.

  Because there was nothing she could do to stop it. Because this was the way it had to be.

  “Whoa, hold on there. What was that?” Even in this moment of what felt to Charlie like extremis, there was humor in his voice. “Sounded to me like that was you admitting you’re not ready to see the last of me.”

  “Oh, go—soak your head.” Her fingers stilled as she looked back at him. She’d been about to tell him to go to hell, before it had hit her like a baseball bat between the eyes that that was in all likelihood exactly where he was going.

  “Quit fighting it.” He was all but transparent now, as see-through as delicately colored cellophane, coming in and out of focus faster than she could blink. Grief and dread combined to turn her blood to ice. “Would it kill you to give up and admit that you’re crazy about me?”

  His eyes teased her. Her heart felt like it would crack in half.

  Okay, so she’d known this moment was coming. Known it from the beginning, from her first horrified realization that this scariest of ghosts had attached himself to her: the affliction was temporary.

  At first, she’d reminded herself of that as a source of comfort.

  Then she had simply tried not to think about it.

  But now, she discovered, she couldn’t bear the knowledge that he was actually about to be gone from her world.

  That she would never see him again.

  That he would be caught up in the horrible purple fog of the place he called Spookville, forever.

  Or at least until he was dragged off to someplace even worse.

  Abandoning the box, she put the
scissors down on the table. Her movements were careful. Precise. Otherwise, she feared her hands would shake. Then, because her eyes were glued to him, she accidentally knocked the box over. All kinds of white packing peanuts came tumbling out, spilling across the table, onto the floor, everywhere.

  She scarcely noticed. She didn’t care.

  He was barely there at all now, with no more substance than a heat shimmer. Her fists clenched so hard that her nails dug into her palms. It was all she could do to breathe. Her heart wept.

  In consequence, her tone was angry. “You think this is a joke? Look at yourself now.”

  He looked down at himself. It was instantly plain that he saw what was happening. Charlie could feel the sudden tension emanating from him, a new and electric sense of urgency in the air.

  His jaw was tight as he looked back at her. “You might want to get cracking with that ju-ju, Doc.”

  “There’s nothing I can do.” At his behest and against her better judgment, she’d already used every scrap of spirit lore she’d ever learned that might keep him grounded to earth. There wasn’t anything left, or at least, nothing that she knew. If running to him and throwing her arms around him would have done any good, she would been racing around the table to his side, but she already knew that it would be easier to try to hold on to mist. This is how it has to be. She knew that, accepted it. And still her next words were nothing she had ever imagined she would say to him: “Concentrate. Try to hang on.”

  “Ain’t working.” He was fading so fast now, she was afraid he’d be gone in the next instant. “Better start clapping, Doc.”

  She sucked in air. “Garland—”

  He was gone. Just like that. Her stomach dropped to her toes. Her knees went weak.

  “Shit.” She could still hear him. “I don’t make it back, don’t worry about me. Charlie …”

  The rest of what he said was indistinct.

  “Michael!” Forget keeping her distance, keeping her cool. Despite what she knew was the absolutely futility of it, she rushed around the table to where he had been standing anyway, reaching for him, plowing her hands through the now-empty air. Nothing. Not even the slightest hint of an electric tingle—the telltale sign of contact with an invisible spirit—to mark where he had been. Defeated, she gripped a chair back hard. God, what had she expected? The universe always reclaimed its own. She knew that, knew it had to happen, knew this was no more than the natural order of things, but still she felt like her heart was being ripped out of her chest. She wanted to cry. She wanted to scream.

  “There has to be a white light,” she called urgently through the pain, because helping him navigate Eternity was the only thing she could do for him now. “Michael, do you hear? You have to look for the light.”

  She thought he said something typical like, “Fuck that,” and then, “Charlie,” with something else after, but she couldn’t be sure: his voice was too faint.

  “Michael!”

  This time there was nothing. No response. No voice. No sign of him. She took a deep, shuddering breath. Her throat closed up. The pain she was experiencing was acute. This is what grief feels like. Then she realized, No, this is what heartbreak feels like.

  Her eyes stung: it was from welling tears. Second time in the last eleven days that she, who never cried, had found herself doing just that. Both times had been over him.

  Cursing herself for her idiocy, she dashed her knuckles across her eyes.

  Bam! Bam! Bam!

  A frantic pounding on the kitchen door tore Charlie’s eyes away from the spot where he had last been, made her jump and gasp and shoot a startled glance toward the sound.

  Pale and big-eyed and terrified-looking in the darkness, a woman’s face peered in at her through the diamond-paned window in the top of the door.

  “Help me,” the woman screamed, pounding the door again. “Please, you have to let me in!”

  CHAPTER TWO

  In an instant Charlie saw that the woman was young, with long, dark hair, pale skin—and a scarlet river of blood running down the side of her face.

  “Hurry!” the stranger cried, rattling the doorknob now even as she continued to pound on the door. “Please let me in! Please!”

  Her eyes locked with Charlie’s. They begged. Charlie knew that look—it was mortal fear. She recognized it instantly because she had experienced it more than once herself. She knew what it felt like, processed it viscerally, and her pulse leaped and her gut clenched in response. Thrusting her own pain aside, reacting automatically to this new emergency, to this fellow creature in such obvious distress, she dashed her knuckles across her burning eyes one more time and flew to open the door.

  “Goddamn it, Charlie, no!” It wasn’t a roar, although she could tell that was what it was meant to be. It had more the quality of an echo, faint in volume but furious in tone: Michael. Glancing frantically around for him at the same time as she yanked the door wide, she saw nothing of him.

  “Michael?” His name was wrenched from her. A warm wind, thick with humidity, ruffled her hair. The scent of the mountain in late August—mossy and damp, laced with honeysuckle—filled her nostrils.

  There was no answer from him. No sign.

  The woman spilled headlong through the door—“Thank you, oh, thank you!”—instantly reclaiming Charlie’s attention. Bursting past her into the house, moving so fast that her wet, muddy shoes slipped and skidded on the hardwood, she was breathing in great, gasping sobs. Outside, fat drops of rain were just starting to fall. The steady plop as they splattered on the stoop and the concrete pavers leading up to it made Charlie think of fast-approaching footsteps, and the tiny hairs on the back of her neck stood on end.

  “He’s got a gun! He’s coming! He’s going to kill me!” Choking out the warning over her shoulder, the woman stopped and bent double, then dropped to a crouch as if her knees had suddenly given out. Coughing and gagging, she huddled near the table while Charlie stood stupidly gaping at her while even more stupidly holding the door wide.

  “Who?” Hand tightening convulsively on the doorknob, Charlie cast a frightened look outside, searching the darkness for a sign of anyone who might be giving chase. Although she could see nothing out of place, the soft summer’s night with its starry sky had changed dramatically in the brief time since she had stood outside on her front porch saying good-night to Tony. A gathering storm had blown in, transforming it into something dark and menacing. The light from the kitchen spilled over the small back stoop, turning the quickening raindrops to a mercurial silver, but beyond that Charlie could see nothing.

  “Shut the door! Lock it! Oh, my God, he’s right behind me!”

  Charlie’s heart jumped. Her pulse leaped into overdrive. Already slamming the door as the girl’s nerve-jangling screech reached its apex, Charlie shot a jittery glance at the shivering figure crouched on her floor.

  The woman—a girl, really, no more than twenty, was Charlie’s guess—was soaking wet, far wetter than the newly falling rain would account for. She was also muddy, with a swampy scent that spoke of stagnant rather than fresh water. Slender and pretty, she wore shorts that had once been white, a red T-shirt with some kind of logo on it, and sandals. Visibly shaking, breathing like she had run for miles, she streamed water and blood. Charlie registered all that in the blink of an eye. Then, with a last apprehensive glance out the window into the night—she saw nothing that shouldn’t have been there, but the sense that someone was there was strong—she shot the deadbolt closed.

  “Who’s right behind you?” Skin crawling as the probable inadequacy of the door as a source of protection from a determined intruder occurred to her, Charlie rushed forward to crouch down herself and wrap a steadying arm around the girl’s heaving back. The slender body felt wet, cold, frail. A puddle of muddy water swirled with blood was forming around her feet. At Charlie’s touch, the girl threw up her head and looked at her. Cold drops of water flung from the long strands of her hair spattered Charlie’s cheek. Even
as she automatically swiped the droplets away, Charlie registered that the blood came from an ugly, inch-long gash in the girl’s forehead. “You’re hurt.”

  “It doesn’t matter. Don’t you understand? He’s going to kill me.” The shrill, unsteady cry sent a cold chill running down Charlie’s spine. Every nerve ending she possessed quivered in sympathetic reaction to the sheer terror that was impossible to mistake. Fear was suddenly as tangible in the air as the smell of swampy water. Beneath her sheltering arm, Charlie could feel the girl’s tremors. Her eyes—they were golden brown—were huge and dark with fright. “He was—I can’t believe I got away! He made us—he made me—” Her hysterical voice deteriorated into a series of shuddering gasps. Wild-eyed, she looked around the kitchen. “We’ve got to call the police. Quick, quick, quick! Before he gets here! He’ll kill me! He’s got a gun!”

  “Damn it to hell, woman, do you have a fucking death wish? You think whoever’s after her won’t kill you, too?” That was Michael again, closer, louder, still sounding like his voice should have been a furious roar although it wasn’t: it had a muffled sound as though it was reaching her through some sort of interference. Charlie’s heart lurched. Then she could see him: a shimmer a few feet away.

  She tensed, instantly riveted on that shimmer. Michael—even though every cell in her body yearned toward him, she retained just enough presence of mind not to call out to him aloud.

  “Where’s your phone?” the girl cried.

  “On the wall.” Charlie gestured toward it as Michael started to solidify, and then for a second there she forgot about everything but him. About the girl, and any possible looming threat, and her own burgeoning sense of danger.

  “In the kitchen?” The girl followed Charlie’s gesture with her eyes, then pulled away from her, scrambling forward, pitching upright, wet shoes noisily slapping the floor as she stumbled past the foggy shape that was Michael toward the far end of the kitchen, where the slim, beige landline phone hung near the microwave. Charlie registered her progress distractedly. She couldn’t help it: in that heartbeat of time, her focus was almost exclusively on Michael.