Passionate Kisses 2 Boxed Set: Love in Bloom

by Magda Alexander

  Still cold, even though leaving the door open should have let in some of the August heat. Must be a basement thing. Jade had grown up in a mobile home, so she didn’t really know. She certainly didn’t remember the basement being this cold, but when a girl had important things to do like building forts out of milk crates, temperature didn’t always register.

  A flickering path led her down the stairs and into the valley of words created by Grandpa Earl’s bookshelves. She knew the contents by heart: works from Twain and Emerson to three-inch-thick picture encyclopedias, and periodicals. Lots and lots of periodicals. The cracked spines of a shelf’s worth of National Geographics felt like corrugated cardboard under her fingertips. These stacks had fascinated her for hours on end, probably because the only reading material in her mom’s trailer had been the phone book and bus schedule. Love of literature must skip a generation.

  Between Grandma Nina’s candles and Grandpa Earl’s horde, the basement’s spook factor dropped considerably. Unfortunately, the temperature dropped too. Upstairs it was summer. Down here it was the dead of winter. What she wouldn’t give for a nice warm coat!

  Hurrying past the washing machine and dryer, she found the breaker box and wasted no time flipping switches. Thunk…thunk…thunk. Overhead, the refrigerator kicked on with a muffled whir. Thunk…thunk…

  Her breath fogged in front of her, and a feeling of being watched made her freeze with her thumb on the next switch. Something prickled on her neck. Movement of air? The brush of a spider web?

  She whirled around to face Grandpa Earl’s stash. There in the wavering light, perfectly framed by the plain wooden shelf end, was the shadow man.

  Shit.

  Her breath came too fast. She wanted to run, but terror fused her feet to the floor.

  She stared at the shadow with his top hat and cape. The cape snapped as if some wind she couldn’t feel struggled to rip it from his throat.

  The shadow stared back.

  Light. Light would make it go away.

  It took every ounce of courage she possessed, but she turned her back on the shadow and continued flicking switches.

  Thunk…thunk. A bare incandescent bulb overhead surged to life while a bank of fluorescent tubes over the washer and dryer woke more slowly.

  She faced the shelves again, sure the light would banish the shadow. But he was still there, his edges made sharper, his presence undeniable.

  “Oh, God.” Fear was like coolant in her veins.

  She didn’t think. She ran.

  Right past the shadow, straight up the stairs and into the kitchen. She gripped the back of a chair so hard her fingernails bit into the wood.

  The warmer air of the main floor eased the chill from her skin, but her bones felt like ice. She was no longer holding the candlestick and had a vague memory of dropping it near the breaker box.

  She hoped the candles had gone out. She was too chicken to venture back down the stairs to check. Instead she crept to the basement door on unsteady legs and listened for the crackle of fire. When she didn’t hear anything, she twisted the light-knob. The basement went dark. No telltale flickering suggested she should find an extinguisher.

  That settled, she slammed the door and took a turn around the kitchen, hitting every light, even the one over the stove.

  “There’s no such thing as ghosts.”

  While her pulse returned to normal, she inventoried the cupboards and made a shopping list. By the time she locked the house and got in her car to shop for groceries, her bones had thawed. By the time she drove through downtown Dover, she’d almost convinced herself Grandma Nina’s house wasn’t haunted.

  Streetlights sprang to life as she passed the redbrick police and fire stations on Cyprus. A little further down, Cyprus and Maple formed the V of Dover’s heart. Between two roads, an enormous triangle of lush, green lawn narrowed to a gazebo-adorned point directly in front of Town Hall.

  The perfectly-manicured grounds reminded her of when she’d gone to the Dover town fair with Jilly and Grandpa Earl. The lawn had been packed with rides and booths, the gazebo swathed in patriotic bunting and banners advertising a local radio station. Nineties rock had been blaring from speakers stacked in the bed of some disc jockey’s pick-up truck. Grandpa had bought them funnel cakes and let them shoot water pistols at metal duck silhouettes.

  She started singing along with the radio as she emerged from downtown onto the arterial street leading to Wilmington’s strip malls. Her phone buzzed in the cup holder, but she was too busy navigating the grocery store parking lot to answer. After she parked, a glance at the display showed the call had been from Brad.

  Pink’s lyrics died on her lips. Her cheek pulsed with the memory of Brad’s fist. Her face warmed with shame no man ever had a right to make a woman feel.

  Without listening to the message, she deleted it. After a quick makeup check, she trudged into the store, grabbed up enough food and toilet paper to get her through the week, and headed home.

  Home.

  The word fit Grandma Nina’s house better than any place she’d ever lived, and yet the fit wasn’t perfect.

  Probably because there’s a freaking ghost in the basement.

  No. There had to be a reasonable explanation for what she’d seen tonight. And in the guest bedroom all those years ago.

  “Old houses cast interesting shadows.”

  Even if what she’d seen was more than the shadow of a curtain or a lamp, it was still just a shadow. Therefore, it couldn’t hit. That made Mr. Shadow less of a threat than Brad.

  She unlocked the front door and hauled the groceries back to the kitchen, turning on every light in her path. A surreptitious glance at the basement door confirmed it was still tightly closed. Good.

  Officially moving on, she put the groceries away and made dinner using the “Express Heat” burner on Grandma Nina’s retro stove. In three minutes, the tomato soup was hot as the sun. She poured half of it into a bowl and tossed in a handful of goldfish crackers.

  Avoiding the basement door like the plague, she took the long route to the living room, through the front hall and around the foot of the stairs rather than through the dining room. Curling up in a worn recliner with her soup, she palmed the remote. The TV came on to a local channel with crappy reception, and she remembered Grandma Nina didn’t have cable. “Why do I need to pay them folks big bucks when I can get all my favorite shows on Netflix?”

  She set her soup on the coffee table to go find her phone. Watching movies on the four-inch screen would have to do until she upgraded the house to wireless internet. When she plopped back down in the recliner and reached for her soup, her hand stopped mid-reach. The goldfish were arranged in the shape of an arrow.

  Instinctively, she looked where it was pointing, to the open doorway joining the living and dining rooms.

  Most of the antique, eight-seater dining room table was in view. There in the center, winking in the spill of light from the kitchen, was the silver candlestick she’d dropped in the basement. All three red candles were still jammed in place, but only the center candle was unscathed. The rightmost leaned at an angle, and the top half of the left had broken off. The configuration looked vaguely like a bloody hand giving the peace sign.

  For a long, heart-hammering moment, she stared at the candlestick, waiting for her brain to make sense of how it had gotten there.

  House burglar? Not likely. Nothing was missing. And if it had been an intruder looking to hock valuables, the silver candlestick would already be at the nearest pawnshop.

  Prank? Hardly. She didn’t know anyone around here, let alone anyone who liked or hated her enough to prank her.

  Betty or Joe McIntyre? Probably not. She’d gotten the keys from Betty this morning, so how would they have gotten in?

  The only possible explanation was the one she did not want to consider. The shadow man had retrieved the candlestick from the basement. And played with her goldfish to make her notice.

  “Shit.”
She lived in a haunted house. She wasn’t just visiting for the weekend. She lived here now. With a ghost. That could move things. Maybe hurt things…or people. “Shit.”

  Grandma Nina’s was the closest thing she’d ever known to a real home, and this shadow-ghost guy was messing with her, trying to scare her into leaving. She’d run from one man already. She didn’t have it in her to run from another. Besides, she had nowhere else to go.

  Damn it. She was no weakling. It was time for scary things to run from her.

  She shot out of her chair. “Hey, asshole,” she yelled toward the dining room and the out-of-sight basement door. “Get the hell out of my grandmother’s house.”

  She strode to the dining room and picked up the candlestick. Wheeling on the closed basement door, she shouted. “You don’t scare me. I’m not leaving. Got it? If you got bags, pack ‘em, mister, ‘cause if I see you again, I’m tossing you out on your shadow ass.”

  She was shaking like a leaf, but countless cat-fights with Boston’s bitchiest had honed her voice into a perfect weapon. Not an ounce of fear came through.

  She glared at the basement door. When no response met her threat, she said, “That’s what I thought,” and marched past the basement door to put the candles away.

  Chapter Four

  The thread anchoring Joshua to Draonius went taut as his demon captor reeled him down to the abyss. Like always, the whipping winds of the physical plane had taken their toll. The red-tinged, sensation-devoid abyss was a haven after the onslaught he’d endured.

  Joshua was the only of Draonius’s essences that could suffer the melee above and manage any sort of coherent activity. It made him valuable to the demon, which kept him safe, if a captive soul forever denied heaven’s succor could be called safe. But it also meant he had to earn his keep and serve as scout whenever Draonius bade him.

  Unfortunately, in order to appease the demon, he would have to expose the young woman now living in Mercy’s old house. He didn’t want to betray her, but he was Draonius’s captive and servant. He felt oddly compelled to perform the demon’s will even though he retained the conscience he’d had in life. It made him feel painted into a corner. Never had the colloquial expression been more apt: he was damned if he did and damned if he didn’t.

  No matter what he did, he was simply and forever damned. After more than a century, he’d stopped bemoaning the fact. At least he had not been reduced to a witless wretch, like Mercy.

  The vile chill of Draonius’s presence closed over him. Show me everything, the demon commanded, his thoughts one with Joshua’s.

  Perhaps he could find some way to protect the woman, but he kept that hope under lock and key as Draonius availed himself of all he had observed, rooting through Joshua’s memories with icy fingers of power.

  The demon saw the woman as Joshua had found her, in the cellar with golden light flickering over her open, frightened face.

  Lovely. Truly lovely. Her hair glistens like polished tiger’s eye. And those breasts.

  He made a disgusting sound of animal appreciation before forcing Joshua to remember his exploration of the upper floor. There were her traveling trunks, emptied and stacked neatly in the master bedroom closet beside her colorful collection of clothes. Her delicates occupied the drawers.

  How delightful! Draonius crooned. She plans to stay for a spell.

  He must find a way to warn the living woman from the house. She had no idea what grave peril she was in.

  *****

  Jade dumped her haunted soup down the garbage disposal. By the time she flipped the switch to silence the grinding, she’d stopped shaking. She pulled her phone from the pocket of her hoodie and debated whether to call Grandma Nina.

  Hi Grandma, just checking in before bedtime. Say, did you know your house was haunted? ‘Cause I just had a run-in with that shadow man you told me didn’t exist way back when.

  Grandma Nina had her quirks, but superstition wasn’t one of them. She went to church on all the big holidays and made everyone hold hands for grace at Thanksgiving dinner. She’d made it clear she didn’t believe in ghosts.

  If she called, Grandma Nina would probably think she was crazy. But she didn’t like the idea of being alone in the house with that thing and no one else knowing. While she debated calling her sister instead, her phone rang in her hand, making her squeak with surprise.

  The display said it was Brad.

  Jeez, couldn’t he take a hint?

  She thought about sending him to voicemail, where she would delete the message without listening to it, just like the last one, but she hated to waste the adrenaline pumping courage through her veins.

  She answered with a curt, “What do you want?”

  “Hey, babe! Where you at? I’ve been trying to get you all day.” His warm tone tugged at her heart. Stupid heart.

  Don’t buy what he’s selling. He’s pretending nothing’s wrong.

  For a second, she was tempted to follow his lead. After all, he was someone she could talk to about Mr. Shadow. But her one-sided altercation with the ghost had left her feeling oddly ineffective. She was itching for someone to push who would push back, and Brad was the perfect candidate.

  She ignored his question. Instead of answering, she said, “You owe me an apology.”

  He was quiet for a handful of seconds. When he spoke again his tone had lost its warmth. “C’mon, I lost my temper with you one time. You know that’s not me. In six months I’ve never done anything like that.”

  Good, he was going to play. She put a hand on her hip, adopting her best Boston-bitch pose. “Yeah, you never did anything like that-until you did it. Are you going to apologize for hitting me or not?”

  “Oh, real mature-making a big deal out of nothing. You know it wasn’t you I was mad at. It was Ricky. That asshole. I lost my temper and took it out on you. It won’t happen again. It was a one-time thing. I swear.”

  From behind her flimsy bedroom door at the trailer, she’d heard her mother’s boyfriends spout that same promise over and over. She’d always thought she’d be immune to it, but from Brad’s lips, it sounded perilously credible.

  This was the man who let her paint his toenails even though his friends gave him shit for it, the man who gave her a rose on the first of every month, just because, the man who brought her Chinese food every Friday night after work and engaged in silly chopstick battles with her that always ended in stellar lovemaking sessions.

  It was hard to believe her affectionate, attentive boyfriend had knocked her to the floor and left her with a shiner any Boston Bruin would be jealous of. It was hard to believe he would ever do it again. How easy it would be to accept his promise. But more men than she could count on both hands had promised her mother they’d never do it again, and guess what? They were all as shitty at keeping promises as holding steady jobs.

  She wasn’t going to fall into the same trap her mother had. Hitting a woman was unacceptable. Plain and simple.

  “Is that what we’re calling battering these days? ‘Losing my temper?’” She washed the soup pot to keep her hands from trembling, this time with anger, not fear. “I suppose we’re calling big purple bruises ‘little tiffs’ and swollen eyes ‘misunderstandings’ too, huh?”

  “Jesus.” He sighed, and she could imagine him pushing his hands through his stylishly-tousled hair. “It’s not going to happen again. Just let it go. I called the Palace. Casey said you quit. Is that true? Did you hit the road because I got over-excited one time?”

  This is where her mother would have apologized. Not her.

  “Let it go? Are you serious? You punched me, dickwad. My eye’s all swollen and black and blue, and it fucking hurts. You owe me an apology or we don’t have anything else to say to each other.” She swiped the dishcloth over the pot and slammed it on the counter then stomped to the living room.

  “If I apologize, will you come over? I miss you, hon.” This in his bedroom voice. He obviously hadn’t guessed she was two state lines a
way.

  The more Brad talked, the more he reminded her of every one of her mom’s boyfriends. Was there a handbook somewhere telling asshole men how to manipulate women?

  “Is it really that hard to apologize?” she asked, genuinely curious.

  He didn’t answer.

  “You’re not the man I thought you were if you can hit your girlfriend and not even be sorry.”

  “Are you? Still my girlfriend?”

  She still had feelings for Brad. But he’d done more than just bruise her face. A corner of her soul had been bruised too. Not even a sorry would take that ache away.

  “No,” she said. The potential for good times with him wasn’t worth the potential for more violence. “No. We’re done, Brad.”

  “Then why should I bother apologizing?” He hung up.

  Her face grew hot. It was anger, she told herself, not pain. “I ought to call the cops on his ass,” she said to the empty room. But then she would have to waste precious minutes on him. She was through with Brad. She’d been through with him the second she’d packed her bags back in Boston.

  She hadn’t gotten her apology, but she’d stood up to him, and that had been the point. And she’d stood up to Mr. Shadow. Pride lifted her chin and her spirits. Deciding to consider the night a success, she marched upstairs to get ready for bed.

  Before closing the door on the upstairs hall, she hollered down the stairs, “Don’t you get any ideas, mister. You can either stay in the basement or get out of this house. If I catch you up here, there’ll be hell to pay. You got it?”

  No response.

  “Pussy,” she muttered as she shut the door. That went for Brad, too.

  Cower, and a man’ll walk all over you. Stand up to him, and he’ll turn tail and run.

  She’d thought of herself as a runner. Turned out, she was pretty brave compared to the men in her life, both living and dead.

  *****

  Anticipating a feast was always a pleasurable agony.

  Draonius remembered this, the tingling confidence that he was about to be sated. He’d known the feeling daily when he’d been free. Before the prince had chained him to this house, he would spend his days hunting prey and his nights feasting to gluttonous capacity on the decadent passions of humanity.