There was something in her blood. Something evil and dark. Her stomach lurched at the thought, threatening to come up through her throat. If she’d brought something back with her from New Orleans, something evil, then what was she going to do?
She gagged again. Something was definitely trying to come up.
Riley was there without warning, holding her makeshift bandage to her hand, holding her arm gently. “What’s going on? What happened to you down there?”
“Let go of me,” she told him. “I don’t want you to touch me.”
“Katie, don’t be ridiculous. You’re bleeding. And it’s black! What happened to you in New Orleans?”
“That’s none of your business,” she snapped. Dear God, her stomach was going to vomit itself all over him and the sink and everywhere. “Let go!”
“Katie, you need help. That was a deep cut. You might need stitches but I don’t understand why is the blood...look at this. Look at it dripping into the sink like this.”
“Let go of me.”
“Katie we have to do something. I think there’s some Ace wraps in the bathroom upstairs.”
“Let go.”
“Just hold it right here and I’ll run up and get them.”
“Let go.”
“Hold this against the cut, Katie. Oh, dear God it’s still bleeding.”
“Let GO!”
She screamed, and couldn’t stop screaming, and everything that was in her started coming out on the exhale of that breath. She couldn’t stop it.
Nothing could stop it.
Riley let go of her and practically ran away as what she spewed took on form and substance and pooled on the floor. It grew and grew as it continued to rip itself out of Katie’s body. It was a wavering, gelatinous tower of filth and Katie was helpless to stop it.
All she could do was stand there and watch as it took on a life of its own.
Like she had given birth to this staggering, wavering six foot tall pile.
When it was over, Katie felt like she’d been hollowed out. She dropped to her hands and knees, shaking, dizzy, nauseous from her toes up to the roots of her hair. Black dots swam in front of her eyes. The room spun in and out of focus.
In front of her, the disgusting mound of what she had just puked up squiggled and jounced, shaking itself like a living thing. Legs shaped themselves. Arms pushed their way free. A head with a face and a mouth pulled out of the slime.
Katie stared in disbelief at this thing that had spewed out of her. This ghoul had been riding in her. No doubt it had been there since New Orleans. What was it?
What was it?
The eyes popped open in the face with a wet sort of slurping sound. Black ick poured away from the whites of those eyes. Black ick poured away from the face everywhere.
Now, Katie recognized the thing in front of her.
Its lips parted, more black and gray and reddish gore falling away as it spoke to Katie.
“You thought you had gotten away from your queen,” the ghost of Marie Laveau said to her. “You can not escape me, Katie Pearson. I am with you forever.”
“No,” Katie said, but her voice was so weak that she wasn’t sure if she said it out loud or if she just mouthed that single word.
Laveau stepped out of the mound of gelatinous muck. It slid away from her naked flesh. It pooled into liquid on the floor and then seeped into the spaces between the tiles. Soon nothing was left but the loa of a dead woman.
Katie was powerless to do anything but watch as Laveau came closer.
And closer.
“Yes,” she said in a voice like a whirlwind, “you are mine.”
Chapter 42
Katie couldn’t move.
The ghost of Marie Laveau knelt down in front of Katie. It no longer looked like her at all. Now it was an old dark-skinned woman with malice in her eyes and a permanent smirk at the corner of her lip. There were still traces of whatever otherworldly substance Katie had vomited hanging from Laveau’s hair and skin and fingertips.
Laveau reached out, and cupped Katie’s chin in her one hand.
“My dear,” Laveau said to her. “You will be mine forevermore. I will climb up inside of you and make your flesh be my skin. You will never be free. Accept it. All the things you want for yourself? Forget them. Forget it all.”
There was that voice. The same one that had been in Katie’s head all this time, telling her to forget everything. To let it all go.
Give up.
Forget it all. She wavered on her hands, her arms weak as spaghetti noodles. She’d lost too much blood, she realized. The cut on her hand had bled too much.
And the loa of Marie Laveau had taken part of her soul with it when it erupted out of her.
She was drained. She was spent. She couldn’t fight back or stop Laveau or run away or do anything.
Her knees shook.
Her elbows buckled.
Laveau grinned like the fiend she was. “You be mine, Katie Pearson. Carried me here inside the dark places of your heart, you did. Now you’re gonna take me into your head. Gonna rest in that brain of yours, and make you mine. Ride you like a horse, I will. Manter le cheval.”
Ride the horse, she said in that broken French Haitian language of voodoo magic. Katie saw a red and orange static discharge of power flash across those dead, ghoulish eyes. Her power was growing. It was too much for Katie. This was all too much.
She laid her head down on the floor, bowing in front of the demon voodoo queen who was going to kill her. There was nothing she could do to stop it. Nothing.
Laveau’s hands trailed down the back of her head, to her shoulders.
Her fingernails dug into Katie’s flesh. The pain was layered over her exhaustion. She felt more blood seeping out of her. She didn’t have the energy to look and see if it was black.
Laveau’s hands sank deeper into her.
She was pushing her way into Katie’s body.
Her head touched Katie’s, and began to merge with her. Their minds touched, and Katie wanted to scream. There was no energy for it. There was no breath.
With an explosive bright flash of something more concrete than light, Laveau’s form went spinning away from her.
Katie forced herself to look up. She forced herself to ignore the pain and the bleeding and the impossible tangle that her thoughts had gotten twisted into. She looked up.
And she saw Riley standing there with a frying pan in one hand from the rack over the stove. He was holding it in a double-handed grip like a weapon. He’d beaten Laveau’s ghost off her with a frying pan.
Whatever had happened to make the loa physical to the touch also allowed Riley to beat her off.
He turned to look down at Katie. “Cover your eyes.”
Katie didn’t want to. She didn’t want to miss what came next.
From his back pocket, Riley took out a can of lighter fluid. They kept it around the kitchen for those times when they barbecued. Without aiming, Riley sprayed it in an uneven line that ended in the hunched form of Marie Laveau.
The loa of the dead voodoo queen screamed at a pitch that made Katie’s ears pop. Her face contorted in a way that wasn’t humanly possible and that flash of red energy went across her eyes again.
The ghoul swelled, growing larger, her wrinkled skin smoothing out and stretching like it was going to pop. Her breasts stuck out from her swollen chest. Her nails thickened into claws. Her teeth grew out like jagged spikes.
Katie had dared to let hope build inside of her when she saw that Laveau could be beaten back with something as simple and commonplace as a frying pan, but now that hope sunk again. They couldn’t stop something like this.
Riley dropped the frying pan to the floor. It clattered and spun on its rim and fell flat. For a moment, she thought that he was giving up as well.
Then he pulled something else out of his pocket.
A lighter.
Katie dropped her head into her arms, and flattened herself out on the floor, but
not before she saw Riley flick the little wheel and spark a flame into existence. He locked the flame on, and dropped the lighter. Katie’s brain processed everything in slow motion as Riley jumped back to cover her with his body and the lighter fell...
Fell...
Fell.
The flame caught hold and raced a path along the line of the lighter fluid until it jumped from the floor to Laveau.
The explosion that followed rocked the Inn around them and threw fire everywhere. It caught along the walls, and the ceiling, and across the countertops. Everything was burning.
In the middle of it, Marie Laveau’s spirit danced and swirled as it tried to escape the fiery death that had been called down upon it one more time.
This time, there was no escape for her.
No escape for us either, Katie thought to herself. She and Riley were going to die here just as surely as Marie Laveau. The whole place would burn to the ground and they would be rid of the evil voodoo queen, but it would mean giving up their own lives, too.
She found that she was oddly at peace with that.
In the next moment Riley’s hands were beating along her back and arms, putting out the sparks of flame that threatened to grow and consume her the same way they were consuming Laveau. He had to swipe flames off his own sleeve, and then he was pulling her up to her feet and putting his shoulder under her arm and they were hobbling together to the doorway of the kitchen.
Salvation was in this direction, away from the flame.
Death was what roared behind them.
The screams of the loa died away to nothing as Katie gave in to the inky black swirl of unconsciousness that overwhelmed her.
Whatever happened next was fine with her. If she woke up dead, then that was okay with her.
Chapter 43
She did wake up.
But she wasn’t dead.
It took her a moment to acclimate to her surroundings. She wasn’t at the Inn. She wasn’t in New Orleans, either, but for a moment that had been the foremost thought in her mind. That this had all been an illusion, like when Carlson had woken her up in bed all nice and warm and safe--and naked--but she had really been just two steps away from that basement with Madame Laveau.
She wasn’t there, and she drew a heavy sigh of thanks for that simple fact.
It burned to breathe. It hurt everywhere in her body when she moved even a few inches. The bed under her was thin and probably the furthest thing from comfortable that she had ever felt. The head of it was raised up. The sheets were crisp and scratchy.
She reached out with a hand and felt a metal safety bar at the edge of the bed. Then she heard the beeping of monitoring equipment and felt the tug of stickers on her chest and arms. When she looked down she saw the flowered hospital gown that she was wearing. She saw the lead wires from her body to the monitor.
This was a hospital.
Katie blinked again, and focused on the room around her. It was hard to do because the aches and pains of her body kept trying to pull her attention away from everything else. It felt like there was sandpaper in her throat. Like she’d swallowed live embers and a ton of smoke besides.
But when she got her eyes clear again, she saw Riley sitting there in a chair opposite the end of the bed. He was asleep, and he looked just as bad as she felt.
One of his hands was bandaged with a white cloth wrap. There was a bruise on the side of his face. With his head titled back, his mouth hung open with a little drool at the corner as he snored.
She smiled in spite of herself. He was always a good looking man. He had always been a good man, for that matter, until he decided to have sex with another woman. Katie might be able to forgive him for that one day. She would never be able to forget it, though.
There had been men in her life who betrayed her trust before. She had never once gone back to a man who had done that to her. Never.
Would she do that with Riley?
Her smile slipped away. No, she would not do that. Whatever had been between them before was over now. The man had followed her all the way across the country and changed his entire life to be with her, but he had thrown that away himself. That was his fault, not hers. They had saved each other’s life more times than she could count, but that didn’t change what he had done to her.
It was sad, really, to think that part of her life was over. Her time with Riley Harris was done.
The haunting of the voodoo queen was over, too. She could feel that in between all the hurt inside. The loa was gone. She was just herself again. It might take her some time, but she would be able to go back to her old life in Twilight Ridge, running her Inn and flipping houses for a living.
Maybe she would skip buying them sight unseen for a while, though. She needed to be more careful about what she stepped into in the future.
With a snort, Riley woke up, sitting up straight in his chair and blinking at everything around him. When he saw she was awake, he flashed her a bright smile.
The smile slipped away when he saw that she didn’t smile back.
“The doctor says you’ll be okay,” he told her. “They weren’t sure if you’d wake up today or tomorrow. Um. Because of the medicine they had to give you for the procedure.”
“Procedure?” Everything she wanted to say to him went out the window when she heard that. “What procedure?”
“Blood transfusion, for one. Apparently there was some sort of virus in your blood and there was medicine they had to give you for that. They had to run a scope down your throat, too. You got a double lungful of smoke, is how the doctor put it.”
Katie took a breath, and the burning in her throat caught her attention again. Smoke. She remembered the fire, and Marie Laveau dancing in the flames as she got burned up. That must be where the smoke came from.
She coughed, and pushed herself up in bed, waiting until she had her breath again. “Well. I suppose I should thank you for saving my life.”
“Yes. You should.”
“Don’t even start, Riley. You have too much to make up for. Even killing that damned ghoul isn’t enough to make up for that.”
“But it’s a start, isn’t it?” he said hopefully.
“No, it isn’t. You need to have your things packed up and have yourself out of the Inn by tomorrow. I’ll figure out what your financial stake is in the place and pay you what you deserve, but we’re done.”
He stared at her for the longest time. “Just like that? Can’t we talk about it?”
“No. You lost your right to talk about us as anything other than you and me. You lost that right when you cheated on me. I’m the sole owner of the Inn now. You aren’t part of it. Not anymore. Get your things and go. Just...go.”
He was still staring at her when she got done talking. Like he had something to say and couldn’t make himself come out with it. Well, whatever it was, she didn’t want to hear it.
“Did you hear me?” she demanded, wheezing out the words because her lungs still hurt. “Get your things out of my Inn, and leave me alone!”
“Katie...I thought you knew.”
“Knew what, Riley? Knew that you weren’t the man I thought you were? Knew that you’re a lousy cheat and a horrible person?” She had to pause to take a breath. “Yes, Riley. I know that.”
“No, not...Katie, I hope that someday you’ll forgive me for all of that, I really do--”
“Don’t hold your breath.”
“That’s not what I’m talking about right now.”
“Then what are we talking about?”
He stood up, wincing and holding his side, obviously still in pain. “Katie, listen to me.”
“No! I won’t listen to you any more. We’re done. We’re done!”
“Katie, please.”
“No!”
“The Inn is gone!”
That brought silence into the room. Katie couldn’t understand what he was saying. The Inn was gone? How could the Inn be gone?
He saw all the questions in her eyes
that she couldn’t make herself put into words. “Can I explain now?”
“I don’t know.” Suddenly, she didn’t want to hear anything he had to say. Even less so than before.
“I know this is rough.” His hand rested on her ankle, over the blanket, but she didn’t push him away. There was something serious going on here and she didn’t know what it was.
She really wanted to know.
“Riley?” she asked. “You’re scaring me.”
His smile returned. “You just fought off a voodoo ghost, and you’re scared of what I’m about to say?”
Now she did move her leg away from him. “You’re scaring me,” she said again.
His hand slowly moved back to his side. “Right. Well, I guess it’s good that you’re laying down. What do you remember about what happened?”
Fire. She remembered fire and the dying screams of Madame Laveau.
After that, it was all a blank.
She shook her head.
“The fire spread from the kitchen. It turned that damned ghost to ash and it just kept going. Nothing could stop it. The fire department got there and tried but the fire just kept raging. The only thing they could do was save the buildings closest to ours.”
Katie felt her eyes getting wider. The fire...the Inn...
“It’s gone, Katie,” he told her. “The whole thing is burned down to the ground, right down into the basement. It’s all gone.”
Katie closed her eyes. That was possibly the worst news she’d had in her entire life.
Time passed around her while the world spun under her hospital bed. This couldn’t be happening. It just couldn’t be happening. Marie Laveau couldn’t take her, so she took away her home. The ghoul had her revenge after all.
She curled her hands into fists until the nails were digging into her palms.
When she opened her eyes, Riley was still there.
“Get out,” she told him. “Get out and never come back. I don’t care where you go, Riley. I just don’t want to ever see you again.”
She thought he was going to argue with him. Instead, he just nodded his head, and walked to the door.
Sight Unseen Complete Series Box Set Page 97
