by Laken Cane
I needed meat.
Lucy had somehow known, just like she always seemed to know, and she’d put a platter of food in the fridge. I barely took time to nuke it before standing at the countertop to wolf down three fat porkchops and the accompanying vegetables, rolls, and butter.
“Lucy,” I muttered, as I gave the dog—Ash, Lucy had named him—tiny pieces of my porkchops, “you’ve saved my life.”
I was happy. Not long ago I would have come home to an empty house, carrying a bag of greasy burgers to eat in the silence. Even though Lucy was asleep, I could feel her presence, and Ash was staring up at me, begging for scraps, and my wolf was soon to be freed. How quickly my life had turned around and yes, I was happy.
If the Gray Shadow Pack could accept me, I could move on from the treatment I’d received from them not only twelve years ago, but lately. I’d already dropped the grudge I’d carried against their alpha.
But I wasn’t giving them many more chances, the assholes. Next one who mistreated me was going to quickly regret his decision. No more.
Jared texted me as I was cleaning up after my meal.
You should have stayed.
I pursed my lips, then tapped in, Yeah? Why? And when he didn’t reply, I asked, How’s Lennon?
Still unconscious.
Damn. I’m so sorry.
Goodnight, Ms. Silver.
Goodnight, Alpha.
I felt sort of like a high school girl with a crush on her professor—only my crush was darker, more dangerous, and would never be anything other than what it was—my wolf’s perfectly natural and not entirely secret crush on her alpha.
Jared would understand her hero worship, and he would—
Carry me through the woods naked…
—be careful not to be inappropriate and take advantage of my wolf’s innate emotional connection to an alpha. She was claimed by no one, therefore she was eager to jump on the first alpha who looked her way.
He was my potential alpha, and I was his potential…dependent. Student. I was sure he already had his future mate lined up. She was probably in his bed as I stood staring at the wall, thinking about him.
It wasn’t real, whatever I was feeling. I mean, other than the physical attraction, of course. That was pretty damn real. But other than that, my heart was completely and utterly safe. I knew falling for Jared Walker was a bad idea, therefore, I would not fall. Of course I wouldn’t. I was smarter than that, despite my lustful wolf.
Careful not to protest too much…
“Shut up, Lennon,” I muttered, and went to take a hot shower—or a cold one, depending—and get some sleep. I was a little stiff and sore, but honestly, I lived with pain. I’d grown accustomed to it, had been warped by it, and barely thought about it except when it kicked my ass under a full moon. Not even the magic of the exsoloup would keep me down for long.
When I came out of the bathroom, clean, teeth brushed, hair dried and re-braided, Ash was on my bed, sound asleep.
“So you like me better than Lucy after all, hmmm?” I grinned and climbed into bed with my rescue dog, some part of my brain relaxing instantly as I felt his warm weight atop the covers.
Comforted, I slept.
Chapter Twenty
Someone was screaming, but I thought I was having a nightmare until Ash jumped on my stomach and barked in my face. He jumped off the bed when I shot up, then ran to the doorway and into the hall, then back into the room, telling me to hurry.
“Lucille,” I yelled, my voice croaky and dry, then barreled from my room and into hers. I hit the light switch and then, for a second, I froze.
She sat straight up in her bed, her eyes open but only the whites visible. She didn’t take a breath, and her voice didn’t waver. She screamed.
“Fuck,” I yelled, then leaped at her. Between her screams and Ash’s frantic barks, I thought I might lose my mind. I grabbed her shoulders and shook her. “Lucille! Wake up!”
She did, abruptly. “Oh my,” she said, completely normal. “I had a dream.”
“No shit,” I said. “You scared me half to death.” Ash had climbed up and was attempting to lick some color back into her face, and she hugged him, all smiles. It was beyond freaky. “You were screaming,” I told her. “Loudly.”
She waved a hand. “I should have warned you about that before I moved in. Sometimes what I see—well, I don’t see it really, I am it—makes me…” She shuddered, then forced her smile back. “Makes me scream.”
“What was your dream? What did you see?”
“I normally push the dreams from my mind,” she said, kissing Ash’s head. “Unless they won’t leave me alone or aren’t quite so frightening, like with you.”
“Lucy. What did you see?”
She frowned. “I just explained to you that I ignore them, Kait. They’re too hard on me. I developed a pretty good system where when I wake up, I lock them away and don’t think of them again.”
“That’s impossible,” I said flatly. “They’ll explode out of that box someday and kill you. Besides, what you have is a gift. Don’t you want to help the people reaching out to you?”
“No,” she said. “I don’t. I can’t help anyone. I can only see them suffering. Gift?” For a second she was not the sweet, lighthearted Lucy I knew. Something ancient and dark peered through her eyes. “What I have is not a gift. It’s a punishment.”
“Honey,” I said, leaning over to give her a hug. “What happened to you?”
She said nothing, but I could see her need to talk, to vent, to have someone as weird as she was listen to her agony. I could relate. “Come on,” I said, when she remained silently thoughtful. “I’ll make us some coffee and we’ll talk about it.”
She climbed from the bed and I couldn’t help but snort at her nightclothes. She wore a frilly white gown decorated with huge butterflies. Their gossamer wings, made from some sort of netting and lace, had been sewn on. It was definitely hideous, and definitely Lucy.
“There’s a cake on the countertop,” she said. “I brought it home from the bakery. We’ll have cake and coffee.” She stopped in the doorway. “There’s a girl, Kait. Someone has her in a box, and she’s screaming, because he comes in and…” She swallowed convulsively. “I don’t know where she is. Why do I have these fucking dreams when they don’t tell me how to save them? I can’t save them.” She whispered that last bit, then shoved her knuckles against her lips until I was afraid she would hurt herself. “I can’t save anyone.”
I pulled her hand gently from her face and kept it securely in my grip until we reached the kitchen. By then, she was back to her bubbly self. I could see her shoving away the bad stuff. Forcing it into the box and locking it up—much like the girl in her dream.
Poor kid.
Neither of us spoke again until we were sitting at the table with cake and hot coffee—black for her, lots of cream and sugar for me—and through the little window above the sink, I could see dawn sneaking in.
“What happened to you?” she asked me, perhaps needing me to start with my own traumas before she revealed hers. “I mean, I saw some things, but they made no sense to me. I saw you in the wilds, running, and a pack of wolves were chasing you. You were screaming inside. And don’t you know, I never did get those screams out of my head. Every time I’m near you, if I am still and silent, I can hear your pain.”
I was amazed by her. Amazed and a little disturbed. I shivered, then took a quick gulp of too hot coffee. She needed me to tell her something. “When I was fourteen years old,” I said finally, “I saw my father die. There were a lot of angry, raging…people after him, and he was killed in front of my mother and me.”
Her eyes were wide. “Why, Kait? Why did they kill him?”
“Because he’d been secretly turning people against our…leader. He was marked as a traitor and killed.” My voice was emotionless, almost cold.
She shuddered. “I’m so sorry, Kaitlyn.” Then she nodded, stared into her coffee cup, and told me abo
ut her past. “Something traumatic happened to me when I was fourteen, as well.” She threw me a quick smile. “Another thing we have in common.”
I reached across the little table and took her cold hand. “It’s okay, Lucy. You can trust me.”
“I know. I know that without a doubt. I saw that inside you, as well. You’re a good person. A good damn person.”
I squeezed her hand and waited.
“My father died as well,” she started. “He was my mother’s entire world. She was pregnant when he died—nothing sinister, he was simply in a car accident and was pronounced dead before they reached the hospital. My mother went into labor the same night he was killed. The shock, I suppose. The huge emotional trauma. It nearly killed her. She wanted to die, but she had me at home—I was seven—and this new baby being born on the same night my father died.”
She took a drink of her coffee and a bite of her cake, but I could tell she didn’t really taste either. “The baby was what kept her alive, though, and do you know why?”
“Because she thought your father’s spirit went into the child when he was born.”
She stared at me, surprised. “Yes. Yes, that’s right. She never saw Elliot as…as Elliot. But my God, Kait, he was her life. He was her everything.”
And I could see the little girl she’d been. Neglected by a mother overwhelmed with sadness, grieving for her father, confused, and then a new baby who her mom thought was her dead husband…
“Good God, Luce. I’m sorry.”
But she wasn’t finished. “So when I’d just turned fourteen and my little brother was seven, I had a couple of friends over. Friends I wanted to impress, of course. My mother had to go to work—some sort of emergency. She was a surgical tech, and she was on call. She normally had my grandmother come sit with us when she had to go to work, but I was fourteen, and she told me she trusted me to take care of Elliot.”
She stopped for a minute and stared blankly into space, and quite suddenly, I absolutely did not want to hear the rest of her sad story. Did not. But I drank my coffee and I listened, because Lucy needed to talk.
“So my little brother kept coming into my bedroom and doing stupid stuff, you know how boys are. He was embarrassing me in front of my friends, and I was afraid they’d leave.” Her smile was bitter, now. “I yelled at him, told him to go to his room and play and leave us alone. He went.”
She was crying now, licking the tears off her lips and smiling this horrible smile that was not really a smile at all, and I knew that every second of every day she was filled with this awfulness that had lived inside her since she was fourteen years old.
“I’ll just hurry to the end,” she said finally. “The end for my brother. He found my father’s gun. He shot himself. He died on the old carpet of my mother’s bedroom floor, and she never forgave me. I never forgave myself.”
She took a drink of coffee. “Eight years ago,” she whispered. “And it seems like yesterday.”
“Luce,” I said. “That wasn’t on you, honey. Your mother left a loaded gun where a child could get to it. That wasn’t your fault.” But I knew my words would matter not at all. It was okay. I was there, I was her friend, and I was never going to judge her.
And I knew something else.
Lucy needed me just as much as I needed her.
Chapter Twenty-One
I texted Jared so I could check on Lennon before I left for my appointment with Patricia Simon. I’d moved that appointment up because I was in a hurry to go look for my blade. When he didn’t reply, I called the little clinic. There were people there minding the doctor’s office, but the doctor and his nurse were not present and the girl who answered refused to tell me anything.
Next, I called Detective Moreno, because he wouldn’t text unless he was sending an address or a particularly gory photo, and I wanted to make sure there was no noise from the demon. Maybe he’d actually faded. I could hope.
And I needed to ask the detective something else. “I might have some information on an abducted girl, Detective. What do you have in missing girls in the last month from Jakeston? Anything stand out to you?”
His voice was sharp. “What information?”
“Dammit, Rick. Can you just answer my question?”
“Kait, we get anywhere from eight to fifteen missing persons reports a day for the county. Over half of those are Jakeston alone.”
I blew out a hard breath. “That’s fucking horrible.”
“Pretty average for a city this size.”
“This girl. She’s probably a teenager, middle or late teens. She has red hair. And she has a noticeable gap between her two front teeth. That’s all I got.”
“Who gave you this information, Kaitlyn?”
I sighed. “I have this friend. Lucy has dreams where she sees…things. Mostly people in trouble. People who need help. She dreamed of a redheaded girl trapped in a box, screaming. Someone comes in to hurt her.”
“I’ll need to talk to your friend. You know how good Nadia is. She can draw out details and do a sketch if Lucy will describe this screaming girl.”
I nodded, though he couldn’t see me. “I’ll bring her to the station tomorrow after she gets off work.”
“I’ll see what I can find with your description.”
“Thanks.” I hesitated. “How’s Beth doing? We were planning to have lunch soon.”
“She’d like that.” He ended the call.
I settled Ash in with treat and a toy, made sure his water dispenser was full, and then sent Lucy a text to let her know I was taking off and she could look in on him if she got a chance. The bakery was just down the block, so checking in on the dog wouldn’t take her ten minutes. I was tempted to take him with me, but after I left Mrs. Simon’s house, I was going to the woods to look for my blade, and I wasn’t going to expose Ash to the wolves. Not yet.
After I pulled into Patricia Simon’s driveway half an hour later, I took a few minutes to fasten on a belt, then loaded it up with salt, holy water, a lighter, a stick of chalk, and a flashlight, just in case I was stuck in a dark attic or basement. I gently lifted a spirit snare from its compartment—I was getting low on those and would have to make or order some more soon—and then I chose one of the tiny protection jars I put together for clients, patted the blade in the sheath at my side—my old blade, since I hadn’t yet retrieved the demon blade—and then walked to Mrs. Simon’s front door. She was already standing there, her face drawn and her eyes bloodshot, stressed, exhausted, and depressed.
“Mrs. Simon,” I said, reaching out to squeeze her thin upper arm, “I’m going to fix this for you. You can stop worrying now.”
She burst into tears. “I’m sorry,” she cried, then wiped her eyes, straightened her shoulders, and welcomed me into her home.
Her house was in the small, quiet village of Allenburg. When I got there, it was even quieter as most people were already at work and the children were in school. The house was a tall well-kept blue two-story, neat and uncluttered, but the second I walked in, I could feel the spirit haunting the place. It was cold, and the air wavered. The place was filled with…despair.
“Who lives here with you?” I asked her. “And are they home?”
“My husband, my daughter, and my grandson live here. My grandson is the only one home. We had a cat, but she ran off the night we moved in and I haven’t been able to find her. I can’t blame her. We should’ve run off, too.”
“Tell me what has been happening, Mrs. Simon.”
“Patricia, please.” She already seemed more relaxed, and her eyes had lost the dull sheen of hopelessness. She believed I was going to help her. “David—my husband—doesn’t believe in ghosts. He was so angry when I told him what was going on, and he got angrier when I said I was calling you. He forbade it, actually.” She lifted her chin. “But I have my own money hidden back, and he’s not going to tell me what to do with it. I know it’s an evil spirit, and I know you can get rid of it.”
She fol
lowed me closely, and I didn’t ask her to go wait in the kitchen or take a ride to leave me in peace so I could find and get rid of the spirit. I always let the homeowners watch, if they wanted, because every single time, they could “see” or feel the moment the spirit left their house. And that was good for their peace of mind. It was also good for my business.
“Usually,” I said, as I explored, “these spirits aren’t “evil.” At least they don’t start out that way. The longer they’re stuck here, the more warped they become. They want you to know they’re here. More than anything else, they want to leave this world, but for some reason, they can’t. I help them find a way out.”
Halfway up the steep stairway to the second floor I felt a chill, looked up, and saw a young boy coming down the stairs.
Behind me, Patricia whispered, “My grandson. His name is Brian.”
I nodded. “Patricia, I want you to go outside and wait for me to finish up in here, okay?” I kept my voice calm, blank, and quiet.
“I’m sorry,” she said, her voice full of tears. “He made me call you.”
“I understand. Go outside.”
“Don’t hurt Brian, please, don’t hurt that baby.”
“Patricia, get the fuck out of here, or you’re going to get hurt.”
And finally, she fled the house, crying and muttering, already halfway to insanity. I wasn’t sure where her husband and daughter were, but I was betting they were either dead in the basement or at the very least locked up down there.
There was no lost spirit in her house. There was only the demon whose blade I’d stolen, and though he’d possessed a ten-year-old boy, he was stronger than ever. He was doing the opposite of fading.
“What do you want?” I asked him.
The boy looked like death. His face was so bloodless it was nearly blue, and large, swollen, black pockets sat under his eyes like bruises. I hoped he’d be okay once I got the demon out of him.
