“Pfft, don’t be dramatic, Dana. There are only like two hundred or so from that batch. I mean, sure, they’ll have babies too at some point, and then their babies will have babies and so on, but a million? That will take a bit to get to. I swear, between that comment and the one about everyone getting in this tub with me, I’m starting to wonder about your math skills. Probably for the best you became a lawyer and not a mathematician.”
“I’m calling the superintendent and making him get an exterminator up here stat,” she said sternly. “The last thing I want is the movers packing up spiders to go with us to South Carolina.”
I stuck out my bottom lip. “But, Dana, they don’t take up much space and hardly eat anything—unless we’re talking about their mates after sex. I bet they’d love Grimm Cove. It’s wrong to deny them the chance to go there.”
She grumbled.
Jack snorted. “You’re not going to win her over with this. And she most certainly will have an exterminator brought in. When you left the last time, she came in here and tried to find Eunice to end him. She was armed with one of her Louboutins, so Eunice should have been flattered. The pair of shoes retail for around nine hundred bucks. She was willing to use half of that on him. Honorable death if you ask me.”
I gasped and sat up a bit more in the tub. “Dana, you tried to find and kill Eunice after I left last time?”
“Who told you?” Her brows met. “Was it Poppy? She swore to keep that a secret.”
“Poppy knew?” I asked, dismayed that my friends would band together to murder an innocent creature. “It’s like I don’t even know you two. What did Eunice ever do to you to warrant you hunting for him with a pump?”
“She can’t help it. Hunting is in her blood. Though it’s a nature-versus-nurture thing at play here.” Jack chuckled more and glanced back at me, only to snap his hazel gaze toward the wall once more. “Shit. Sorry.”
“I don’t care if you see me naked,” I said to him, unconcerned with the fact I was what society termed a plus-size woman. To me that meant there was more of me to love. “You should get naked too. It’s very liberating. I made room for Dana in here but she’s being a killjoy. That leaves plenty of room for you. Come on. The water is still warm, and the bubbles are so much fun. Say the word ‘bubbles.’ It will make you smile. It’s my go-to word when I’m feeling down or blue.”
He looked upward. “Seriously, Powers That Be, where was she when I was alive? Woman invites me to bathe with her and thinks we should walk around naked. And have you seen her?”
“Uh, Marcy, I roomed with you through college, so I’m very aware of your penchant for nudity,” said Dana, talking partially over him. “I’m keeping my clothes on. And I’m not having the bubble talk with you again. I know bubbles make you happy. It’s why I keep them on hand for when you visit. They act like a babysitter for you. Helps me know where you are and that you’re not trying to bring random stray people back to my apartment with you.”
“I haven’t done that in months,” I returned. “You should really try these bubbles. Come on, Dana. You need to relax more.”
“I’m not bathing with you. End of discussion,” she said.
“I always suspected this is what sexy women talk about when they’re alone together,” said Jack. “Good to know I was right. Are there any pillow fights happening here at some point?”
“Dana doesn’t like to have pillow fights. I used to try to get her to have them in college,” I said to him. “For the best, you don’t want to arm her if at all possible. Even with a pillow. She’s kind of deadly.”
“Uh, thanks,” said Dana.
“I was talking to Jack. He was hoping we’d have a pillow fight tonight,” I said.
Jack snorted and then grunted. “Never mind. I was having a laugh, and the more I think on it, the less I’m able to stomach the idea of picturing her in that manner.”
I’m not sure what he was talking about. Dana was a stone-cold fox, emphasis on the stone-cold part.
She exhaled loudly. “So your buddy is a perv? Good to know you’re naked in there with him.”
I shrugged. “We’re all adults here. And like I said, I’m not ashamed of my body. And he’s kind of a horrible pervert, if he is one, because he’s being a gentleman and facing the wall. Plus, he’s had a change of heart on you being part of the pillow fight.”
“Uh, Marcy, I’m not sure many men would turn down a chance to see you naked,” she said. “Between your voice and your rack, you’re basically a modern-day Marilyn Monroe—if she was a hippie chick who hugged trees and talked to herself and wanted to hold wakes for dead spiders.”
“Accurate description,” added Jack.
Dana continued, “I mean, remember the delivery guy from college? If you’ll recall, Poppy and I had to have a long talk with you about opening the dorm door without a robe on after what you did to him. That poor, unsuspecting sap stood there with his mouth open, catching flies, and dropped our pizza—which was kind of okay because Poppy ordered pineapple on it. Gross.”
“That was some tip.” Jack lost it, laughing so hard he coughed and bumped the door, causing a knocking sound.
Dana glanced at the area the noise had come from. She then snorted. “Remember the time you dressed like an enchanted fairy for that Halloween party my office had a while back?”
A smile touched my lips as I thought back to the costume. “I do. I really loved the mesh wings and the bra made from green leaves that Nonna helped me make. Shame about the bra.”
Dana laughed. “You were so worried about the wings that you held on to them when that gust of wind happened, rather than the leaves of your barely there bra.”
Jack gasped. “Tell me you didn’t end up naked in front of everyone.”
I shrugged. “I loved the wings. The leaves were replaceable. The wings not so much.”
“You do realize you were the talk of every Halloween party thereafter, right?” asked Dana. “You just stood there, holding your wings as your boob leaves blew down the street. I didn’t know you were naked beneath it.”
Jack’s laughter totally covered whatever Dana said next. He bumped into the back of the door again and instead of going through, he caused more knocking sounds.
I thought back to the night in question. “Dracula came along for the win. His cape covered me perfectly and smelled very good. He was very nice on the eyes too.”
“Dracula!” exclaimed Dana, excitement in her voice. “I can’t believe I forgot about him. He was super sexy. I wonder who he came with that night, because he didn’t work with me.”
“Are you sure?” I adjusted in the tub more, getting comfy. “He talked like he knew you.”
“Babes, you don’t forget a guy like that,” said Dana. “Tall, dark, foreign accent. I wonder where he was from.”
“Romania,” I stated evenly, lifting a leg to stretch it.
Jack’s laughter faded and he bumped the wall this time, causing yet another thump. “W-what?”
“You know, the place where Dracula is from,” I stressed. “Stoker wrote all about it.”
“Uh, I’m more than familiar with the book, Marcy. With the surname of Van Helsing, escaping the novel wasn’t an option. The pipes in this place make the weirdest noises,” said Dana, explaining away the supernatural as she always did. She didn’t know that it was all real, but I did. Something deep within me said she’d have her eyes opened to it before long.
She continued to grumble about the pipes, so Jack repeated the action.
“Sometimes I knock on things just to see if she’ll follow the sound,” said Jack. “Mostly she just looks annoyed. Reminds me of someone else I know. Once, she gave the table I was knocking on the finger. Sweet bestie you got there, Marcy. She’s overflowing with charm and kindness. She comes by it honestly.”
I smiled at Dana, feeling a little bad for her since her world was limited to only what she could see and hear—what was tangible and in front of her. It had to get lonely being
her, never seeing all that was truly there.
That was no way to go through life.
“About this Jack,” said Dana. “You said you were talking to him before, not me. Who is he—or rather, what is he? I suppose I should have asked that first. Let me guess, a fruit fly? Wait, a rat. Please God tell me he’s not a rat.”
I nearly laughed at Jack’s grunt of outrage.
“He’s not a rat,” I said.
“Swear it.” Dana looked toward the bathroom sink and the mirror above it. The reflection gave her a view behind the door. Relief moved over her face when she didn’t spot a rat. “Okay, since he’s not a rat, what is he?”
“A spirit,” I said.
Disbelief coated her face and she laughed. “Right. Okay. My place is totally haunted. Who knew? I hope he’s hot.”
“He is,” I replied.
“Does my ghost have a nice ass?” questioned Dana.
Jack made a dramatic show of glancing at his backside. “It is rather nice if I do say so myself.”
“It’s more than passable,” I said to her.
“I want to see it,” she demanded, clearly a disbeliever still.
Jack snorted.
I hid my laugh, my focus returning to Dana. “It will be a little hard for you to see his backside, Dana, since he’s dead and you don’t see spirits like I do.”
She offered a cocky grin. “How convenient. Nice-Ass can’t show himself to me.”
Jack chuckled. “I’m getting objectified. I like it. Tell her to keep going. My abs are out of this world. Talk about those. Oh, and I’m keeping the nickname.”
“Right then,” she said, clearly a nonbeliever. She opened the door a little more, staring harder at me. “What the hell is on your face? It kind of looks like something you’d see in a baby’s diaper.”
I touched my cheek and came away with orange goo on my finger. I licked it clean. “It’s a sweet potato mask. I made extra if you want to do one too. It’s in your refrigerator under the mound of Chinese food cartons you have in there. You order takeout a lot.”
“I don’t have time to cook,” she said, staring wide-eyed at my face. “Your sweet potato sludge is dripping into the tub.”
Jack leaned back and glanced around the door, his face close to Dana’s. He then turned his head in my direction but had his eyes closed tightly. “I don’t care what you say, she’s a peach, and I’ve stood against some interesting foes in my time. It’s because she’s a Van Helsing and the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. They’re kind of known for their award-winning personalities. They tend to kill first, question later—or never. Trust me, I’ve known my fair share of them.”
I stifled a laugh and tried to focus on Dana, wondering how many Van Helsings Jack knew. I’d thought Dana was the only one.
She followed my gaze and put her head through Jack’s. “Do I want to know what you’re looking at?”
“Probably not,” I returned as Jack leapt back as if the devil himself had just made contact with him.
“Gah! I mind-melded with her.” As he stumbled, he passed through the wall right where my robe hung on a hook. He was back quickly, glancing in my direction before paling and spinning around. This time he purposely shoved his head through the wall. “I’m behaving myself. I swear.”
“Just get in the tub with me,” I said, as Dana cocked her head to the side, still unaware Jack was really and truly there. “The bubbles cover everything I have—mostly.”
“Hon, by chance did someone spike your sweet potato mask?” she asked. “Did it maybe go weird and now you’re suffering the ill effects?”
I tipped my head back. “Nope. Just trying to persuade Jack to take a bath with me. I really do not get how you people can turn down bubbles.”
Dana shut the door, leaving me alone with Jack once more.
He snorted. “Marcy, you’re a very odd woman.”
I lifted more bubbles and blew them. This time I was positive they formed a blackbird. It morphed into a cross, of all things. “Thanks, but I really don’t understand what I’m doing that’s so odd.”
“You keep asking me to bathe with you, for starters,” he said with a shake of his head. “No offense, but the thought of having sex with you seems very, very wrong.”
It was my turn to laugh. “Being naked in a tub together does not automatically mean sex. It’s possible to be comfortable in your own skin and around others in their own skin and not have it be sexual.”
“I know people swear it’s possible,” he said, reaching down to adjust himself in a rather obvious manner. “But I’m not sure I agree.”
I shrugged. “Your loss. This is very relaxing, and you could totally stand to take a load off. Plus, bubbles.”
He huffed in a playful manner. “So you’ve mentioned once or ten times.”
“I won’t apologize for that. I love bubbles,” I returned as a bat-shaped clump of bubbles floated higher in the bathroom. It dissipated, and another grouping of bubbles lifted from the tub. They formed another bird.
Jack’s back was to me now, so he didn’t see the wings of the bird begin to flap, breaking into two birds and then suddenly three, before dissipating into thin air.
Childlike wonder filled me at the sight, and I reached up, my fingers slicing through the air where the bubble birds had been. It was impossible to keep from smiling. I did it so wide that it was nearly painful.
“Marcy?” asked Jack.
“Yes,” I answered.
“The dreams…I think they’re tied to your upcoming move to Grimm Cove,” said Jack.
I shook my head. “The move feels right. The dreams feel wrong—at least with the turn they’ve taken as of late.”
“Sometimes, you need to take a wrong turn on the right path to get to your intended destination,” he said softly.
“Are you saying I shouldn’t move with Poppy and Dana to Grimm Cove?” I asked.
He expelled a long breath, sounding as tired as I felt when he spoke. “Marcy, you’re a very intelligent woman who sees far more than others do,” he said. “I think you know Grimm Cove is more than just another town.”
I bit my inner cheek. “Will Poppy and Dana be safe there?”
“I don’t know. There are dark forces at work, Marcy. But I think you already know that.”
I sat up more in the tub. “Are you going to be safe if you visit me in Grimm Cove?”
“Why haven’t you asked about yourself?” he questioned, deflecting.
“Because I don’t really matter.”
He tensed, growling softly. “Never let me hear you say that again. You matter. And not just because I think you’re destined for a powerful male.”
I gasped. “I’m what?”
He stiffened. “Bloody hell, I wasn’t supposed to—”
In the next second, he was going to one knee, clutching his chest, snarling as he did. He looked to be struggling against something or someone I couldn’t see.
The same foreboding feeling that came over me in my dreams filled the room.
Gasping and worried for Jack, I stood quickly, unconcerned with my state of undress, and hurried from the tub in his direction.
I was almost to him when a familiar-looking dark mass came out of the wall and wrapped itself around him fully. When I realized that it bore a striking resemblance to the very same dark entity that had begun invading my dreams, panic welled in me.
Jack cried out in pain—and I did the only thing I could think to do. I put my arms around him and tackled him.
We fell to the floor with me holding him tight, totally naked and wet still from my bath.
The dark entity let out a screeching sound that hurt my ears and then vanished into thin air.
Jack wasn’t moving, and I gasped. “Jack? Ohmygod, are you dead? Erm, deader than your normal level of dead? What in the hell was that about?”
He stiffened. “M-Marcy, you’re naked and wet…and hugging me.”
Relieved that he was okay, I smile
d as I kept holding him. “I love hugs and you looked like you could use one.”
“Thanks. Uh, do I have sweet potato all over me now?”
I smiled. “Yes. And bubbles.”
Part Two
Now
“The only thing you can ever do is take a person as they are—not as you want them to be. Until you learn to do that, you’ll be met with nothing but disappointment.” —Marcy Dotter
“I call this Tuesday.” —Abraham “Bram” Van Helsing
Chapter Five
Marcy
Grimm Cove, South Carolina, present day…
“I shouldn’t be much longer,” said Dana from the other end of the phone call. “You sure you still want to do this tonight?”
I stood in front of the vintage Roper double-oven stove, carefully monitoring the various pots I had on several of its eight burners. When I’d first seen the stove, I’d had issues containing my excitement. Everything about the green room’s kitchen was old but in working condition. That included the wall phone that I was speaking with Dana on. Modern technology and I didn’t exactly see eye to eye.
Something about me tended to short it out, leaving me with very expensive paperweights. I’d given up on having a cell phone. I couldn’t even wear a regular watch, let alone a smart one. The phone in the green room was one of the few I could talk on that didn’t fizzle out on me.
Dana wasn’t a fan of it because she couldn’t text it. There was something so very impersonal about receiving a cold text that I couldn’t understand how it had ever caught on as the go-to way of communicating. My hope was something else would take its place, letting people interact with each other rather than computers.
Wrapping my arms around a laptop didn’t fill me with warm, fuzzy feelings like hugging another person did. And I lived for hugs. Apparently, the wall phone knew as much and wanted to be sure I didn’t feel left out, since it was currently squeezing me much like a boa constrictor.
Its cord stretched the entire length of the exceptionally large room, which was nice most of the time. Since I’d been talking with Dana while working on a variety of different tasks, I’d covered my fair share of the green room more than once. That was reflected in how many times the cord was wrapped around me, effectively pinning me to the stove.
Spellcasting with a Chance of Spirits: A Paranormal Women's Fiction Romance Novel (Grimm Cove Book 3) Page 5
