“Are you serious?” he asked her. “No, you may not use my bathroom. Get out!”
“Connor, for the love of God,” Jim boomed. “Can’t you see she’s in distress? What happened to your sense of human decency man? If you want to be mad at someone, be mad at me, but don’t take your anger at your mother’s passing out on everyone around you! You can see that Katie doesn’t feel well.”
As her stomach roiled and threatened to vomit out everything she had eaten over the last week all over the table, Connor glared at her. Finally, he threw his hands. “Fine. It’s the second door on the left. You go in there, do your thing or whatever, and then both of you get out of my house.”
Katie didn’t wait for him to say anything else. She jumped up out of the chair and raced down the hall to the open bathroom door while Connor and Jim kept trading verbal jabs with each other.
She closed the door with a soft slam and then hunched down on her knees over the toilet as she started to gag. She dry heaved several times while her insides tried to push themselves out.
Oh, God, she prayed. Please don’t let me barf. Please don’t let me puke all over and have to clean it up in this man’s house!
After what felt like an eternity the whole episode passed. She started breathing easy again, and the sweat stopped running down the back of her neck. It was like she’d been dropped into a vat of cool water. Everything was fine again just like that. All that she was left with was the memory of pain and discomfort.
Closing the lid on the toilet, she stood up, and went to the sink, and splashed her face with water. Oh, hell, she hoped that was the end of that!
The ivory lady had been trying to tell her something, she just didn’t know what it was. Maybe just a simple thanks for returning her to her family. Somehow she doubted it because her life was never that easy, but she could hope.
After all, it wasn’t her problem any longer. The brooch was back with Connor Norstrom, and the whole mess was his to deal with now. For Katie, it was over.
She took a deep breath and leaned a hand against the mirror.
Her fingers were cold against the glass.
She snapped her gaze up, afraid that when she did she would see the face of a redheaded woman there, instead of her own, and go spiraling into the vision all over again.
It was her own hazel eyes looking back at her, and her own face. Her own reflection.
The relief that washed over her felt nearly as good as when nausea had passed. She tapped her hand against the glass, and then rapped on it with her knuckle, and waved to herself. “Hello? Anyone in there?”
She almost laughed. It really was over. Bringing the brooch back to Connor had obviously done the trick. There was no more curse. No more haunting. Whatever had happened to Amber Norstrom, it was over now.
“Help me...”
Katie froze, not even breathing as she strained to listen.
The voice was faint. So faint that at first, Katie thought maybe she had imagined it because she was remembering the terrifying vision of the woman trapped in that dark hallway and pleading for someone’s help.
After a moment she shook her head, chasing the demons away. The haunting was over now. It was done. She could go back to the Inn and start living a normal life again.
“Help me...”
Icy fingers crawled up her spine, stroking her ass up to the nape of her neck.
As fast as she could, she left her reflection behind in the bathroom and went back to the kitchen. Stopping just long enough to poke her head in she told Jim that she had to leave, she was sorry, but she had to leave.
She could feel him and Connor both watching her as she ran outside. There, standing on the street, the first drops of rain began to fall.
Chapter 9
“I’m telling you, I heard her.”
Riley had made a simple dinner for the two of them, and they had decided to eat it in their room. Cold cuts and cheese slices on home-baked rolls, and potato chips on the side.
Not that they’d gotten a lot of eating done. He’d been full of questions about what had happened ever since she came back, wet and dripping from the rain, and obviously upset. When she’d told him that the brooch was with Connor Norstrom, he’d looked really relieved.
Then she’d mentioned the voice in the bathroom, and his good mood had evaporated.
“I’m not doubting that you heard it,” he assured her. “I’m sure you did. Or at least, you think you did. Remember, you were upset. The brooch, and the bleeding, and the visions... Plus, you were also sick to your stomach, from what you’re telling me.”
“Sure. I was, but that doesn’t mean I made it up.”
But even as she was saying it, she wondered if maybe yes, it did. She’d been scared and stressed and...and...completely on edge. That’s exactly what she was. So yes, maybe it was nothing more than her imagination.
Nothing to it. All in her head.
She liked the sound of that.
“Okay,” she told Riley. “I guess I can see it that way. All in my head, you mean?”
“I didn’t mean it that way,” he told her soothingly.
He’d been sitting in the chair over at the corner of the room, while Katie sat on the mattress. Now, he put his plate aside on a dresser and came over to her. He pulled her up onto her feet. She put her plate aside as he did so that she could bury himself in the embrace of his arms. She really liked being this close to him.
“Then how,” she said to him, “did you mean it?”
“I didn’t mean it was all in your head. This stuff affects you more than it does me. I’m just saying that you were under a lot of stress, and it’s like you heard echoes of the real thing. Echoes of the ghost, haunting you. Does that make sense?”
“You mean like that Kevin Bacon movie where he sees ghosts and stuff?” she teased. “I guess it’s kind of like that.”
“Only this is real life,” he pointed out. “This really happens to you. Ghosts find you and use you and me too, even, but you feel it more than I do. In here.”
His hand touched her on the chest, over where her heart would be. Katie grabbed it and held it there. It warmed her inside to feel his strong fingers in hers. He had been callused by years of physical labor, and now his fingers and his palm were rough and strong. The feel of him holding her, deep in the night, was the best thing in her life.
“So now it’s over,” she said and brought his hand up to kiss his fingertips. “We can go on to the next thing.”
“Oh? What’s that?”
“The party we’ve been planning here at the Inn. Halloween’s almost here, and we still have to set up the decorations for the party or our friends aren’t going to want to come.”
“That’s true.” He nodded his agreement and took the opportunity to bury his head in her neck and kiss her bare skin. “I suppose I’ll have to get to work. I’ll need to put together a few things, and set up some tables, and so on. I could start right now if you want.”
He kissed her again.
“Umm, no,” she cooed. “Not now. Do this now. More of this.”
“More of what?” he said jokingly. “This?”
His teeth nipped at her ear.
Katie started to melt.
His hand slid down her shoulder, deftly moving under her shirt, fingers playing at the strap of her bra.
Her pulse was starting to race. They were alone, and they had time for just each other. Even though they’d been together for more than a year now, and the honeymoon phase should be over for both of them, Katie doubted there would never come a day when Riley didn’t turn her on.
Just his touch. Dear God, the man knew all the right spots to touch her.
“You want me to help you with my bra?” she asked him in a husky voice. “I can take it off one-handed. My other hand would be free to do...other things.”
To demonstrate what she meant she stroked her palm up the inside of his thigh, up and down, up and down. His reaction was immediate and very, very in
tense.
She would always be into this.
Carefully moving her dinner plate aside, he put her down on the mattress and climbed on top of her, holding her hands down over her head with one hand. His other undid the button of her pants. She was hot, and getting hotter, and damn him to hell because if he didn’t start taking care of her, she was going to scream--
The knock on the bedroom door was startling. Katie bit her lip to keep from screaming for real, looking up at Riley as if to ask if he’d heard that, too. Who in the world would be bothering them here in their room?
Another knock followed the first, and both of them threw their clothes back on in a mad rush. Katie started to put the bra back on but gave up, and settled for pulling her shirt on over her head to cover up.
Damn it. Life just wasn’t fair.
“Hey, guys?” they heard someone saying through the door. “There’s something downstairs you, um, need to see. Guys? Are you in there?”
Riley groaned, annoyed, and just for the fun of it, he put a wet and warm kiss on the side of her neck before bouncing up off the bed and out of her reach. Katie adjusted everything back into place, giving him a look that promised he would pay for that. Later.
When they were decent again, Riley called through the door. “Devin, is that you?”
“Yeah, it’s me. Can you guys come down? There’s really something down there you need to see.”
Devin Hollister was one of the current guests at the Inn. He’d been here for three days. They’d shared a few meals together and talked in passing, but Katie didn’t really know him. Katie rarely got to know any of the guests all that well, even the regulars. The guests came and went so often that there was never a chance to form a real friendship. She kind of liked Devin, though. He’d already gotten her to pass on her personal email so they could stay in touch after he left.
He sounded upset. This wouldn’t be the first time a guest had come to their room with some sort of problem, but there was a quality to Devin’s voice that made Katie doubt he was coming to them about broken glass or a spider under a cup.
Riley must have heard it, too. He was already putting his shoes back on. “We’ll be right there, Devin. Meet us downstairs, okay?”
“Okay, okay,” Devin said. Then he added, “We’re all down there. Me and Melissa and Garret.”
Katie was up now, too, their dinner and any fun activities forgotten about. This really was sounding serious. All three of the guests were down there?
“What do you think is going on?” she asked Riley.
“Nothing good,” he answered without hesitation.
Yes, She felt the same way.
In the main room downstairs they found Devin and his girlfriend, Melissa, and their other guest Garret standing in front of one of the walls. Katie followed their gaze. It didn’t take any time at all to understand what had upset them.
When Katie had taken on the Heritage Inn, she had done the redesign of the interior herself. She didn’t want anything left that reminded her of the previous owner. New furniture, bed sets, even the new color of the walls. She had also scouted and purchased and hung the paintings on the walls. The one on this side of the room was an impressionist rendering of green hills and purplish-blue skies and pink, fluffy clouds. It was five feet long, and it had been too expensive for her budget, but she liked the way it looked hanging there, perfectly squared to the ceiling and floor.
Now that painting was hanging at a cockeyed angle, dangling from one nail. Next to it, scrawled onto the wall in what appeared to be red paint, were two feet tall letters that spelled out one word.
DEAD.
All three of the guests lifted cellphones to snap pictures of the chilling word.
“Best vacation,” Melissa said. “Best vacation ever!”
Chapter 10
“I’ll kill him,” Riley said, and not for the first time. He was halfway through scrubbing the word off the wall. He’d started at the end, and now he was working his way to the left. Rag in both hands, he scoured at it as if he meant to remove the paint if he had to. “I will find him, and I will use his face to clean off the rest of this.”
“We don’t know he did it,” Katie said.
“Yes,” he argued, “we do.”
Katie bit her lower lip as she watched him work. Sweat was beginning to bead at his temples, but he was determined to get that off the wall and get it off now. He was furious at the person that, yes, they both knew was responsible for this. She agreed with Riley in principle, but she also thought that wanting to kill Connor Norstrom was kind of a violent reaction to what was essentially a bad prank.
They had talked about it for a while after the guests got bored and went back up to their rooms. It slowly dawned on them that this had to be Connor’s attempt to get back at Katie. She had described to Riley what an angry man Connor was, and frankly, she thought she was understating things. A man who was that angry about everything would strike out at anybody, even someone trying to do something nice for him and his dead mother.
Katie was the one who brought the brooch to him. She had dredged up a part of his past he wanted to be left alone. Jim had told her about how upset Connor had gotten when his mother died. The brooch had brought all of that to the forefront again, and maybe even reminded him of his sister’s death a little, too.
In a small town, secrets and petty feelings both ran deep.
Usually not deep enough to scrawl death threats on someone’s wall, but some people were just the angry type.
Riley had gotten the last “D” erased, and the “A” beside it, and now the “E” was nearly gone as well. They had thought it was written in paint, but turpentine had barely touched it. Whatever substance it was had soaked right into the wall. It was sticky as well, and without the elbow grease Riley was putting into this they never would have been able to...
Katie stared at the wall. She blinked and rubbed her eyes, but she really was seeing it. Second, by second, the outline of the “D” slowly reappeared.
As Riley continued to scrub with all his strength, and grumble about how he wanted to kill that rotten, no good Connor Norstrom, the letter “A” began to reappear, too.
“Riley,” she said, in a soft voice that snagged his attention to her immediately. She pointed to the wall behind him. “Look.”
He turned around, the rag still in his one hand. His eyes got wider as he saw the freshly erased word rewriting itself.
“What the hell!” he snarled. “What do I have to do, cut this section of wall out?”
Then realization struck him between the eyes, and he stumbled backward, taking Katie by the hand and pulling her with him, away from the wall.
“This isn’t right,” he said. “This isn’t...natural.”
Next to the word the hanging impressionist landscape shifted on its nail, tipping further toward one corner.
Behind the edge of the frame, Katie could see something on the wall, peeking out at them.
It couldn’t be.
Could it?
She took a step back toward the wall.
Riley tugged her back to his side. “What are you doing? Stay away from that!”
She couldn’t help herself. She thought that maybe... “It’s all right. This is a message. I can feel it.”
“Yeah, it’s a message. It’s a psychotic threat from a guy who doesn’t even know how to accept a gift.”
“You don’t really believe that, do you?”
He shifted from one foot to the other. “I want to.”
She didn’t say anything else as she reached up to the painting and took ahold of the frame. Carefully, she lifted it from the nail and brought it down.
There was another word there, in the same lettering, that had been hidden from view by the painting.
No. That wasn’t quite right, Katie realized. The painting hadn’t just been hiding the word.
The message had been written behind the painting. Whatever hand had put this message on the wall, thes
e two words, it had done so without moving the painting first.
Nothing human could do that.
This had been written by a ghost.
Katie read the words out loud. Riley mouthed them silently beside her.
Not.
Dead.
Riley’s hand slipped into hers again. They held onto each other and stared at the words.
“You said this was a message,” he told her. “I’m inclined to agree. The question is...”
“A message from who?” Katie finished for him.
They stared at it for a long moment, pondering that very simple question. Who sent them this message, and why?
And how? This would take time, and planning. You had to be ready for something like this, and all the different things that could go wrong. They had guests in the Inn, wandering around aimlessly as they pleased. The chances of nobody being here in the front lobby long enough for someone to have put that on the wall were about as close to zero as they came.
So, then. Nobody alive had done this. This was definitely the work of some spiritual hand.
“Could it be one of the ghosts in the Inn?” Katie wondered out loud. “We know there’s more of them here. We just haven’t been able to get them to come out.”
“They haven’t done anything in months.” Riley shook his head, but he sure didn’t seem convinced. “Why would they do something like this now? And why this?”
“Halloween is coming up. All things spooky come crawling out of the woodwork on Halloween.”
“Maybe,” he said, still unconvinced. “I’m wondering about Connor Norstrom though.”
“He couldn’t have done this. I know we thought he did but this wasn’t done by anyone alive.” She bit her tongue and looked around, double checking that the guests were gone. Then, just above a whisper, she added, “Whoever wrote this was dead.”
She swallowed down a lump as she said it. A spirit of something--no, someone--had been in their home, scrawling that message on the wall.
“I know Connor’s not dead,” Riley admitted. “I get that. What I meant was that this has to be connected to the brooch and the ivory lady and Connor’s family. Somehow, this is all about that.”
Sight Unseen Complete Series Box Set Page 77
