Wraiths of Winter (The Haunting Ruby Series Book 3)

by Joy Elbel

  “I have no idea why I scared you so bad earlier but I came back to say I was sorry.” Lucas tossed his head casually to get the hair out of his eye. Just like Lee always did.

  Again, I stood there like a total loser and said nothing. I simply couldn’t take my eyes off of him. Awkward pause. “Umm, so I guess I’ll go home now,” Lucas said with a look of complete and utter confusion on his face.

  Bong. The grandfather clock began to chime the hour and snapped me back to reality. “Oh!” I exclaimed. “Apology accepted. Can you stay for a few minutes though? I figured maybe we could talk for a while, you know, about school or something.” School or something? Why was I so lame? Quickly, I added, “Since you’re new in town, that is.”

  Lame or not, my response elicited a crooked smile and a warm response. “Sure. I’d like that.” So now begged the big question—where was I going to take him to talk? Even in this house, privacy wasn’t always, well, private. I usually just took my friends to my room but that felt a little awkward and downright intimate for someone I’d just met. No, I couldn’t take him upstairs. The closest option was the dining room but with Shelly in the kitchen armed with a bottle of alcohol, that didn’t seem like a wise choice either. The closest room in the other direction was what my dad jokingly called his Man Cave. Nothing could be less intimate than a pool table and a pair of reclining chairs, right? Man Cave it was.

  With my mental obstacle course successfully navigated, now came the physical one. My dad was still standing slack jawed right in my path. “Um, Dad…you should probably go see what Shelly’s doing. Don’t you think?” Hint, hint—get out of my way, this is hard enough as it is!

  “Who?” Dad asked, still studying Lucas and clearly not comprehending a word I said. “Oh! Shelly! Yes, right. I’m going to go see Shelly. Over there—in the kitchen.” He pronounced his words slowly like Lucas was either stupid or barely spoke a word of English. At least now I knew where I got my smooth moves from.

  I led Lucas to the Man Cave and flicked the light switch. When he saw the pool table, his face lit up instantly. “Damn! This room is sweet!” Lucas picked up my dad’s pool stick and balanced it in the palm of his hand. “Good weight.” He leaned over the table and took an imaginary shot. “Perfect length. Can we play a game?”

  My dad tried to teach me how to play several times before but I had no desire to learn. Until now. “Sure. But you’re totally going to kick my ass—I don’t know how to play.”

  “What?” he said in disbelief. “You have a setup like this in your own house and you’ve never even played?” He started to gather up the balls and place them in a triangular frame. “Lucky for you, I’m a good teacher. By the time I’m done, you’ll be a pro.” He lined up the point of the triangle on a dot on the felt and carefully removed it.

  “You might want to wait until you see how bad I am before issuing that kind of statement.” I finally started to feel comfortable around him and the words just started to flow. “Better men than you have tried and failed.”

  “Better men than me?” Lucas said with a cocky smile. “And just how do you know they’re better? You’ll have to see how good I am before issuing that kind of statement.”

  OMG! Were we flirting? Or more importantly, was I flirting with him? I couldn’t be—I was madly in love with Zach. It was just a friendly game of pool between two new friends, nothing more. “Fair enough,” I answered, “Where do we start?”

  “We start with me teaching you how to break.” He rounded the table and joined me at the far end. “Stand in the middle and hit this cue ball into the others.”

  Leaning over the table, I squinted at my target and hit the white ball as hard as I could. I watched disappointedly as the cluster of balls barely moved on impact. I didn’t know much about the game, but I knew enough to know that wasn’t what was supposed to happen.

  “Not too bad for your first time,” Lucas said as he corralled the balls back into the frame and set them up again. “You just need to be more confident and put more of your body behind your shot. I’ll help you this time.”

  He instructed me to get into position again so I did. Only this time, he did, too—right behind me. He placed his left hand on the edge of the table and his right hand on mine. I flinched instinctively but he caught my hand and put it back into position. My hands were always cold so the warmth radiating from his was welcome, yet strange. With his hand he repositioned the cue until it was to his liking. He pressed against me from behind and spoke softly into my ear.

  “Now, who’s your worst enemy?”

  “What?” Misty, of course, but what did she have to do with anything?

  “I want you to look at that ball and imagine your worst enemy’s face on it—so what’s her name?”

  “Misty,” I replied with a snarl, picturing her smug little face taunting me from the table. “Okay, Misty then. Think of all the reasons why you hate her and then when you’re ready, I’ll help guide you through the shot.”

  All of the reasons why I hated Misty? If I thought of them all, this game would go down in the Guinness Book of World Records for the longest game of pool ever. I concentrated on the main reasons and then nodded my head. “Okay, I’m ready.”

  Lucas guided my hand back and said, “On the count of three, give her what she deserves. One, two….” “Three,” I finished with determination in my voice. The cue moved forward, striking the ball with precision. In amazement, I watched as the cluster of balls broke formation and scattered around the table, two of them actually finding the pockets and plopping in noisily.

  “YES!” I shouted excitedly. Then without thinking, I turned around and threw my arms around Lucas. “You’re the world’s best teacher!”

  Lucas slid his arms around my waist and laughed. “See, I told you I was the better man!” Instantly, I released my grip in embarrassment and guilt. Was he still talking about pool? Or was he comparing himself to Zach? Or was I the one making the comparison? Either way, I couldn’t take the chance of giving him—or myself—the wrong impression.

  “Yeah, I guess you were right,” I replied selfconsciously. “You are a good teacher.” I moved around to the side of the table to put some distance between us. “So what happens next?”

  “I don’t know,” Lucas answered as he leaned over the table and stared into my eyes. “That’s up to you.” His brown eyes melted over me like warm chocolate. Oh no! He was definitely flirting with me, wasn’t he? Or was I just imagining it? Was I interpreting his actions based on what I thought Lee would be doing in this same situation? As much as he reminded me of Lee, interacting with Lucas was definitely new territory for me. One thing was clear—I was treading on unstable ground.

  What should I say? Should I admit that I thought he was flirting with me and ask him to stop? More importantly, did I actually want him to stop? Yes, yes I did. But what if I was terribly wrong and he wasn’t even flirting with me? Why was I still so clueless when it came to boys? Ugh!! The best thing I could do in this situation was play dumb and pretend that he was still talking about the game. Extending the cue stick across the table to him, I calmly replied, “Here, I guess it’s your turn.”

  Lucas shook his head no. “I’m disappointed in you, Ru. You gave up too easily. It’s still your shot.” My pulse started to pound. “What did you just call me?” Lee was the only person in my entire life who ever called me Ru.

  “I called you Ru. Does that nickname bother you?” Lucas locked eyes with me, staring deep enough that I was afraid that he could read my mind.

  “No, it’s fine…it’s just….” Now that I was in the perfect moment, I didn’t know how to tell Lucas about Lee. Lucas leaned against the pool table beside me and crossed his arms over his chest. “I give up. Is there something weird going on here or am I just going crazy? When you saw me this afternoon, you fainted. Your boyfriend looked like a deer caught in the headlights and your parents didn’t fare much better. Why does everyone in this house react so strangely when they meet
me?”

  I laid the cue stick down on the table and sunk into the nearest recliner. “It’s because you look like someone else, someone who died over a year ago.”

  Something flickered in his eyes that I didn’t recognize. But who could blame him for having such a weird reaction? It’s not every day that multiple people freak out on you because you remind them of a corpse. Whatever I saw in his eyes, as quickly as it appeared, it was gone again. “Who do I look like?”

  Where should I start? How do you tell someone that you think they’re adopted? The answer to that is “You don’t”. I would only tell him who he looked like and see if he could fill in the blanks himself. “You look like someone that I used to date. His name was Seeley Lucas. You look so much alike that, well, I could swear you were twins.”

  Lucas opened his mouth to speak but paused and said nothing instead. Finally, he asked, “Do you have any pictures of him?” “I do,” I responded, leaping up from the chair. “Follow me.” All of the time I spent running on the track really did its job. I ran all the way to the attic door without having to catch my breath. Lucas, on the other hand, was panting by the time he caught up with me.

  “Geez, Ru! Where are you taking me?” I opened the door to the attic and led him inside. “Sorry, I live in the attic. My photos of Lee are in the bedroom.”

  Well, in the closet to be more exact. I flung open my closet door, dropped to my knees and began to dig. After Zach and I really started to get serious, I buried the box full of Lee’s things as far back in my closet as I could. Rooting through box after box of old school assignments and fashion magazines, I finally found it. Dusting it off with my hand, I got up to return to Lucas who I’d left in the living room. But I didn’t have to look too far to find him. Lucas was sprawled full out on my bed.

  “I interrupted something here today, didn’t I?” He lifted the bouquet of roses from my pillow, sniffed them and then tossed them aside.

  Blood rushed hotly to my face. “No. You didn’t,” I protested weakly. He knew I was lying—I could tell. “Yes, I did. You’re a bad liar, Ru.” He lifted the lid from the fondue pot and dipped a strawberry inside. “Somebody was about to lose their virginity today, weren’t they?” He gave me a sly smile before wrapping his lips around the strawberry.

  “I was not!” I shouted, not caring if the whole town of Charlotte’s Grove could hear me. The audacity of this boy was astounding. Seriously, we just met and none of this was any of his business.

  He licked the remaining drops of chocolate from his fingers. “Don’t lie, Ru. There’s nothing to be embarrassed about. Everyone has to have a first time sometime, don’t they? No guy would go to this much trouble for someone unless he knew he was popping her cherry. I guess that explains why your boyfriend was in such a rush to get me out of here. A dead boyfriend on your doorstep must be the ultimate cockblock seeing as how you never actually went through with it.”

  “Okay, smarty pants. So what makes you so sure that we didn’t?” He had some nerve coming in here, lounging on my bed and assuming that his mere presence was enough to make me decide not to have sex with Zach. I didn’t decide not to sleep with Zach—I forgot to. There was a big difference. Wasn’t there? Yes, yes there was.

  “Well, for starters, this bed’s too neat. There’s no way any hardcore rolling around went on under these sheets. The candles have never been lit and if I’d had you naked, there wouldn’t be a drop of chocolate left.”

  His ego inflamed me. “The only way you would ever have me naked is on a slab in the morgue!” Stomping my way to the living room, I called back, “And get your dirty shoes off of my bed!” I sat down on the futon and pulled out a picture of Lee. It was the same picture that Scarlet flung at me the first time Zach was in my room. I wanted to take a page out of her book and chuck it straight at Lucas’s head.

  He walked out of my bedroom with tousled hair and a look of satisfaction on his face. “So that’s him?” he asked, his voice and expression now serious.

  I handed the photo to him. “That’s him.”

  He studied it carefully, going so far as to take the picture into my bedroom and hold it up next to his face in the mirror. After several minutes, he spoke. “You’re right. We could definitely be twins.” His tone was somber, like he was seriously considering the possibility.

  Finally, I thought of the perfect way to nudge the conversation in that direction. “When’s your birthday?”

  “October 23rd. His?”

  “The same. And you turned eighteen this year, didn’t you?”

  Lucas nodded his head in the affirmative. “What do you know about him? About his family, I mean.” He set it up nicely so I drove it home. “I know that he was adopted and had no information about his biological family.”

  Lucas bolted out of the futon and headed for the door. “I have to go—I’ll see you in school tomorrow.” I wanted to call after him, to ask him what he knew and what his thoughts were on the subject but I decided against it. Regardless of his tough, ballsy façade, I’d just dropped a major bomb on him. I needed to give him some space, some time to deal with the damage in his own way.

  By the time I got to the entrance hall, he was already in his car and halfway to the main road. Dad and a halflooped Shelly stared at me from the dining room doorway.

  “If he didn’t already know he was adopted, he does now,” I informed them. I turned back around and retreated to the attic without another word.

  I pulled back the comforter and settled into bed but my mind couldn’t have been more unsettled. What a day. One more attempt at losing my virginity ended badly. Did Misty have a voodoo doll of me somewhere with its legs tightly sewn together? No—she probably couldn’t sew. A teeny, tiny chastity belt, maybe? Yeah, that was more her style.

  How could I let Lucas see my room this way? If he blabbed a single word of what he saw, I would kill him— literally toss his body off of the new Destiny Bridge with my bare hands. What happened—or didn’t happen—in my bedroom was strictly between Zach and me. If Misty caught wind of this, she would stage another attempt to steal him away from me again. The only way I could relax enough to fall asleep was to picture her face on that cue ball while I repeatedly shot her epic skankiness across the table.

  My dream that night was disturbing. No, not in the usual death and paranormal attacks kind of way—those I could have forgotten about by the time breakfast was over. This dream was unsettling for another reason. I dreamed that Lucas got his wish. And he was right—there wasn’t a single drop of chocolate left.

  4. Oops…I Shouldn’t Have Said That

  I knew what I forgot to do the second I slid into Zach’s car and saw his face. He looked even sadder than he did when I last saw him.

  “Zach, I’m so sorry I forgot to call you back last night! I meant to but it was such a long traumatic day that I went to bed right after Lucas left.” I clicked my seat belt into place and it was a good thing I did, too.

  Suddenly, Zach’s foot turned to lead as we sailed toward the main road. “So Lucas was at your house last night?”

  Great. Open mouth, insert foot. That wasn’t exactly how I planned to break the news to him. “Yeah, he stopped by to apologize for scaring me yesterday.”

  The Neon started to fishtail as Zach stomped on the brake when we got to the end of the drive. He countersteered quickly before we skidded into one of the oak trees. I could tell he was still angry but he started to drive more carefully once we were on the main road.

  “He apologized before he left yesterday. He really didn’t need to do it again, did he?” His words were colder than the snow that was slowly creeping into my new gray leather boots. My feet would be freezing all day, but at least they would look good while doing it.

  “Even if he didn’t have to, it’s a good thing he did. The topic came up in conversation so I told him about Lee.” “Conversation? So how long was he at your house?” Zach gripped the steering wheel noticeably knuckles growing increasingly white. />
  tighter, his

  “A half hour maybe—an hour tops. We started playing a game of pool and I kinda didn’t pay attention to the time.” Zach reached over and turned down the volume on the CD player. “You played pool with him? Since when do you play pool?” Funny thing, his voice got louder when the music got softer.

  His anger was already hanging like frosty icicles in the air and there was still more to tell him. “Lucas was teaching me how to play—that’s when he asked why everyone reacted so strangely when they saw him.”

  Zach pulled into the school parking lot and turned off the engine. He looked me in the eyes for the first time since picking me up at the house. “Okay, you need to tell me exactly what happened. Don’t leave anything out and don’t make me dig for details. I don’t like this guy, I don’t trust him and I wish you would have called me when he showed up. You shouldn’t be alone with him.”

  “I wasn’t exactly alone with him—Dad and Shelly were downstairs the whole time.” “Downstairs? The pool table isn’t on the second floor so what was he doing upstairs?” Zach’s eyes seemed to lighten as he got angrier. By the time this conversation was over, there wasn’t going to be a trace of blue left in them.

  “After I told him who he looked like, he asked to see a picture of Lee so we went up to my room.” “Ruby!” Zach shouted as he flung his fist down hard on the steering wheel. “You can’t just let some stranger waltz around in your house! What if he’d tried to hurt you?”

  Okay, so he had a right to be a little upset but he was really making this a bigger deal than it actually was. “We weren’t alone in the house for cryin’ out loud!”

  Zach bit his lip and lowered his voice. “Fine. I’ll give you that much. Okay, so what, you grabbed the picture and then what?”

  So here came the hard part. I knew how mad he would be if I told him about Lucas being in my bedroom, on my bed. But if I didn’t tell him and he heard it from Lucas instead, then he probably would rip his head off. And never speak to me again. So I did something I wasn’t used to doing. I bit the bullet and told him the truth.