by Mary Behre
“Jules, don’t be ridiculous.” Seth reached for her, but she sidled away from his touch. She shuffled to his dresser, where she’d left her purse, clothes, and keys in a pile, last night. Grabbing her clothes and purse, she hugged them to her body and awkwardly searched for her missing keys.
“They’re in the kitchen,” Seth said. He hadn’t moved from his position in the middle of the floor.
“How did they get there? I saw you put them back on the dresser after you brought over the baklava.”
Seth closed his eyes on an exhale, then opened them again. “I didn’t want you to leave while I was at work today, so I took them with me.”
“Who do you think you are?” Jules shouted, shuffling across the floor to stand toe-to-toe with him.
Seth’s emerald aura expanded and pulsed like a living thing around him. “I think I’m the only person who believes you’re in danger. I think I’m the one person who will do anything to keep you safe. And I know that I’ll lose my damned mind if one more thing happens to you.
“I told you last night, cops who get involved with people on their cases get sloppy. I’m trying not to be sloppy. I’m trying to protect the woman I adore and do my goddamned job at the same time. So please, stay here and do not let anyone in until I get back.”
Seth panted as if he’d just finished a triathlon and his aura shifted between barely outlining his body to washing the bedroom in green light. Not once in his speech had he paused long enough for Jules to reply. Good thing.
She doubted he’d have told her what he felt about her, had she interrupted him. And really, at that moment, that was what she needed to know. It was beautiful, freeing. Not quite as good as love, but a heck of a lot better than being his unwanted responsibility.
“Seth,” Jules said, shuffling closer to him. She wrapped her free arm around his waist, then hissed in pain as his chest came into contact with her injured one. The clothes and purse fell from her grasp and onto Seth’s bare feet.
“Ow!” Seth hopped back, but flung out his hands to her hips, steadying her so she didn’t fall. “What have you got in your purse? Rocks?”
Jules glanced down at her clutch lying amid her scattered clothes on the floor, then back to Seth. For a reason she couldn’t name, she started laughing. Maybe it was the sight of him standing naked, massaging his big toe. Maybe it was that nervous release that people need after a highly charged moment. Or maybe it was the sheer giddiness she felt as she saw his aura throb green then bright red and green again. “You adore me?”
He stopped massaging his foot and chuckled.
“Ah, precious. I know it’s crazy. We’ve only known each other a few days, but yes, I’m wild about you. I’d do anything to keep you safe. Not because it’s my job. But because it’s you.”
I love you.
Oh, she wanted to say it out loud, but the words didn’t come. Instead she kissed him. It was warm and sweet and ended all too soon.
“The prince!” he said, as if solving some puzzle. He glanced heavenward, then back to her. Satisfaction lit his features before his brow furrowed. Gently, he cupped her face in his hands. “Precious, there’s one more thing. Your friend Mason Hart might be tied to my case.”
“What?” She laughed her disbelief. “The burglaries you mentioned? That doesn’t make sense. Mason doesn’t need money. Why would he rob anything? Besides, his biggest worry right now is that his fiancée won’t return his calls.”
Seth stepped back, a stunned expression on his face. “You know his fiancée?”
“Just what he told me about her on Saturday when he came to buy her flowers. Why?” A sense of foreboding slithered through her belly.
“The body in the Dumpster,” Seth said, slowly, “was his fiancée, Aimee-Lynn Masters.”
Jules started trembling. Heck, she wasn’t trembling; she was practically convulsing.
Seth steadied her and urged her to sit back down on the bed, cursing the entire way.
“He never told me her name.” She shook her head, unable to process the information. “Seth, he bought her flowers. Told me he wanted me to have breakfast with the two of them so she would know Friday night had just been a misunderstanding.”
“What had been a misunderstanding?” The bed dipped as Seth sat down beside her. “I thought you told me everything you remembered.”
Heat scorched her cheeks. “I didn’t mention it because it was embarrassing and I didn’t think it had anything to do with your case.” Fear whipped through her and she turned to face him. “Please believe me. I didn’t know Mason’s fiancée was the dead woman.”
“Just tell me what happened that you thought was unimportant,” he said, sounding all business. “I need you to tell me as quickly as you can.”
“Okay, um . . .” Jules tried to will her shaking under control and told Seth about Mason mistaking her for his date at the reunion.
“And you’re positive you never saw them together?” Seth asked.
“Absolutely.” She nodded. “I hadn’t seen Mason until I turned around after he kissed my neck.”
“Tell me again what he said to you then.” Seth leaned over and yanked a note pad and pen from his bedside table. The move gave her a clear view of his naked backside. As delectable as the sight was, it didn’t loosen the knots in her belly. “He said, ‘You’re right. Let’s do it. Let’s do it now. Tonight.’”
“Any idea what he was talking about?” Seth asked, then immediately followed up with another question. “Did you ask him about it when he went to your shop?”
“No idea what it meant and I didn’t ask. I just wanted to forget it. It was really embarrassing. He told me he’d kissed me in the dark, thinking I was her,” she explained. Seth frowned at his notebook and she repeated, “Seth, that’s all I can remember. You asked me to trust you. I need you to trust me too.”
“I do.” He snapped his gaze to hers and his expression softened. “I believe you. But now I’m more convinced than ever that you need protection. I can’t take you with me to the station, can I?”
She shuddered and all the blood rushed from her head to her toes.
“No, I see I can’t.” He answered his own question, rubbing her back soothingly with one hand. “You don’t have to go there, precious. It’s okay.”
Seth glanced around his bedroom as if searching for information or inspiration. He shook his head. “If your cell phone ended up with Hart’s fiancée after the crash in the bathroom, then what happened to your keys? Did you ever find them? Did you get the locks changed on your apartment door?”
“No,” she said, and an icy sensation skittered down her back. “When I tried to call the super about the window, I remembered April told me that he was out of town until Wednesday.”
“And it’s only Tuesday. Crap.” Seth scrubbed a hand down his face. “Okay, that settles it, you cannot go home. Stay here. Keep the shades down and the door locked. Don’t open it for anyone. I’ll be back as soon as I can. When I come back, we’ll sit down and go over every detail you can remember. We’ll figure out how to get you out of this mess.”
Every detail included seeing Aimee-Lynn’s ghost. Could she share her secret with him?
Would he believe her if she did?
CHAPTER 17
FIFTEEN MINUTES LATER, Seth had showered and was in his car headed to the station. The sun hung low, peering like a ball of fire between the hotels littering the Oceanfront district. Without a cloud in the sky to dull it, the brilliant yellow orb was nearly blinding. And the afternoon rush-hour traffic crawled.
He used his time behind the wheel to mentally review what Jones had said.
Aimee-Lynn named four characters in her journals. The Princess, the Jack of Fools, the Prince of Hearts, and the Knight of the Realm . . . she’d left them clues. Obviously, she was the Princess. Could she have really been so pedestrian as to have named her own fiancé, Mason Hart, the Prince of Hearts and Jack Kells the Jack of Fools?
Yes, she could have. S
he’d named Seth in her story as well as the English King. Okay, so all this was a leap. A gut instinct when what he needed was proof. He needed to get his hands on those journals.
Up ahead, traffic came to a standstill. “Shit!”
Seth glanced at the clock on his dashboard. Quarter past six. If the cars didn’t start moving soon, he’d never make the meeting on time. He needed to call Jones. His partner could cover for him until he made it in. Maybe Jones would even consent to reading a few more passages from Aimee-Lynn’s journals to him.
Before he could bring up Jones’s number, Seth’s cell rang. The caller ID read Tidewater Police Station. Seth pressed Send. “Detective English.”
“English, where are you?” Captain Peterson snapped.
“I’m on my way to the station, sir.” Seth checked his mirrors, searching for an opening in traffic and finding none. “It’s rush hour. Atlantic’s a parking lot.”
“Why in the hell are you coming to the station?” Peterson sounded even more agitated. “You’re supposed to be at Tidewater General.”
“I’m coming in for the meeting you called,” Seth said, tamping down his own annoyance. “What’s at the hospital?”
“Forget the meeting, you’ve got bigger issues. Want a free pass to interview Mason Hart?” Peterson didn’t wait for a response. “If so, you’d better get your ass over to Tidewater General. He just arrived there. Covered in blood.”
• • •
AFTER SETH LEFT, Jules dressed in yesterday’s clothes. She checked and double-checked the locks on the front door and the windows to his place, then curled up in his bed.
For an hour she worried about what he might say when she told him about seeing ghosts. Too jittery to sleep, she decided to take a shower.
Although tempted to grab fresh clothes from her place, she didn’t want to break her word to Seth. He’d asked her to wait here for him and wait she would.
Still, she hadn’t promised him she wouldn’t clean up. Sliding to the edge of the bed, she stood up, ready to use his bathroom.
Two steps later, the bedroom went dark without warning. She spun to the window and could barely make out the curtains hanging there. The temperature in the room plummeted twenty degrees, making her shiver.
“Aimee-Lynn, are you here?” Her words came out as puffs of white smoke.
Silence.
“Aimee-Lynn, if you’re here, you need to talk to me.”
Still nothing.
Grinding her now chattering teeth, she said, “Dang it, Aimee-Lynn! I don’t know what you want from me.”
“I want you to help me fix it before someone else dies!”
The angry words ripped through her mind like dull razor blades through scarred flesh. Aimee-Lynn’s cries grew louder and more incoherent until Jules thought her head might actually be cleaved off from the shrill sound.
Jules dropped to her knees, covering her ears with her hands, and tried to think. She needed to get the ghost calm. Focusing her energy, Jules used a combination of a mental push and her own voice to reach the angry specter.
“Aimee-Lynn, I can’t understand you. I can’t even see you. But I swear, I will help if you just slow down and talk to me.” Jules wasn’t sure the ghost could even hear her, but then Aimee-Lynn stopped wailing.
A thunderous gray aura pulsed around the smoky image of Aimee-Lynn standing in a corner near the bathroom door. Taking it for a good sign, Jules continued. “I know you’re angry and scared. I know you want me to do something for you—”
“Yes, you must finish it,” Aimee-Lynn said in clipped tones, but she’d seemed to have regained her control a degree. Her form took on a more definable shape but still had that hazy, smoky color.
“Yes, I’ll finish it, but Aimee, I don’t know what it is.”
“What?”
The temperature in the room warmed by ten degrees and the lights glowed back to life.
Aimee-Lynn shimmered into being wearing a black corset, miniskirt, fishnet stockings, and heels. Instead of blonde hair she wore a shoulder-length black wig
Jules gasped. “You’re the woman from the bathroom? Seth told me he thought you were but . . .”
“So you hadn’t recognized me?” Aimee-Lynn winged the question into Jules’s mind.
“No. I guess I should have,” Jules admitted. “But you looked a little different each time I saw you.”
The chill in the air evaporated instantly and Aimee-Lynn’s outfit changed into a pink polo shirt and khaki shorts with white canvas tennis shoes. The black wig melted away and her blonde hair fell across her shoulders.
“Why do you keep changing your clothes?” Jules blurted before she could think better of it.
Aimee-Lynn blinked as if shocked by the question, then glanced down at, or maybe through, her body, then met Jules’s gaze again.
“I have to concentrate to wear anything other than what I died in. I refuse to go through eternity looking like a cheap hooker. You know the expression ‘I wouldn’t be caught dead in that’? Well, now you know where it comes from.” Aimee-Lynn’s aura pulsed alternating colors of pale pink and true red.
Who knew a ghost could have a sense of humor?
“Are you ready to listen to me now?” Aimee-Lynn paused then added, “For Seth’s sake.”
“Seth?” A tremor that had nothing to do with the chill in the air ran down her spine. Jules asked, “What does he have to do with this?”
“Everything.”
“Yes, I’m ready to listen.” Jules returned to the bed and burrowed beneath the blankets. Dressed or not, she was freezing because the ghost had caused the temperature to plummet. “I’m all ears. Tell me your story.”
Aimee-Lynn sat down on the end of the bed. A visual dichotomy, Aimee-Lynn both sat on and floated above the bed in her transparent state.
Then something weird happened.
Jules’s purse floated up from where Seth had left it on the nightstand and landed in her lap with a thud.
“How did you do that?” Jules blinked at the bag then grabbed it with both hands. “I’ve never encountered a new spirit who figured out how to manipulate the corporeal world as fast as you did.”
Aimee-Lynn’s aura brightened to a paler pink and no longer throbbed. She shrugged. “I don’t know. Most of the time, things just move around me without me really trying. Making things move or making light bulbs explode is easy. Talking to the living is a lot harder.”
“You’re doing a pretty good job, right now.” Jules smiled at her. “Just try to stay calm, okay? I don’t want stuff breaking in Seth’s place.”
The spirit nodded.
“So what do you need me for?”
Aimee-Lynn glared and her aura throbbed to a deep shade of red. “Because I can only do it when I’m with you. No one sees me. No one else hears. No one else even senses me. Except you!”
The last two words were delivered venomously. Jules squeezed her eyes shut and sucked in a breath, bracing for the assault on her eardrums again, but nothing came. Peeking one eye open, she found Aimee-Lynn’s aura had shifted back to a light pink.
A silvery tear glittered on her cheek. “I hate it here. I don’t want to be dead. Always watching everyone but not able to talk to them. My mother keeps calling my name. The first time I heard her, I answered but she didn’t hear me. She keeps telling me she’ll find my killer and bring him to justice. But she can’t. I know who killed me and I know he’ll get away with it if I don’t set things right.”
“Aimee-Lynn, I need to ask you if . . .” Jules hesitated, hating herself for doubting her old friend. “Did Mason kill you?”
“Mason?” Aimee-Lynn floated a few feet higher in the air as if literally blown away by the idea. “My Prince loved me. Everything he did, he did for me.”
“Aimee-Lynn, that’s not really an answer,” Jules said, but Aimee-Lynn didn’t pay her any attention. Instead, the spirit said, “The Knight of the Realm killed me. That deceiving bastard.”
Knig
ht of the Realm? Her Prince?
Oh, dear heavens. This ghost is nuts.
Blanking her mind before the specter heard her thoughts, Jules quickly said, “Aimee-Lynn, if I’m going to help you, I need actual names. Was the killer someone you knew?”
“Yes,” Aimee-Lynn said sadly. “I knew him.”
“What’s his real name?” Jules had a glimmer of hope. For the first time since Aimee-Lynn barged into her life, she thought she might be able to use her crift to actually help the spirit. “If you tell me his real name, I can give a tip to the police.”
“That won’t work.” The spirit’s aura darkened to a muddy yellow, then she shook her head. Her hair fanned out above her shoulders as if some unseen wind blew it. “I can’t remember his real name. I swear it’s like someone poked holes in my brain with an ice pick.”
That was an image forever seared into her mind. Thanks so much!
“Some things I remember clearly. Others? Well, I know that you can’t just walk into a police station and talk to the first person you see. I just don’t remember why.”
Jules frowned. She hadn’t offered to do that. There was no way she’d willingly traipse into another police station . . . ever again.
There had to be a way to help Aimee-Lynn remember. But how? Jules nibbled on the right side of her lower lip and caught herself tugging on her earlobe.
Hmmm . . . Seth was right about the earlobe-tugging thing.
“It’s the reason I had an appointment,” Aimee-Lynn said. “I was supposed to meet the English King . . . I mean, Detective English at the station, but I, uh, didn’t make it.”
“You were supposed to meet Seth before you died?”
Aimee-Lynn nodded.
An idea jumped from Jules’s lips before it had completely registered in her brain. “How about you tell me what you wanted to tell Seth and I can pass the message on to him?”
Stupid. Stupid. Stupid.
She didn’t want Seth to know what an überfreak she was. But she had the sinking feeling the ghost would never leave if Jules didn’t do something to hurry her along. And maybe she could find a way to tell Seth without actually telling him? No, if she had to tell him, she’d do it. Better he learn right away what she could do.
