Wraiths of Winter (The Haunting Ruby Series Book 3)

by Joy Elbel

  “So what you’re saying here is that Allison’s not dangerous? Is Rita positive of that?” Zach grilled me like an FBI agent as he threw some popcorn into the microwave.

  Extra butter just like I liked it. Did he forget even one tiny detail about me? Yes, yes he forgot one—when backed into a corner, my instinct was to lie my way out of it. I didn’t want to lie to him. I had to lie to him. It was the only way to know for sure if his commitment to me was forged from love and not from some stupid need to be a hero.

  “I have no reason to question anything Rita told me. She was quite firm in her convictions.” A little too firm if you ask me.

  Zach cracked open a soda and sat down. Immediately, Coco saw her opportunity and crawled into his lap, purring. “In that case, I trust her judgment. She has a good track record. I mean, she was totally right about Scarlet. Why wouldn’t she be right about this, too?”

  It was that fact that frightened me the most. Rita warned me to be careful with Garnet but she never tried to convince me not to go to school. I was facing something serious and I couldn’t even share it with Zach. He sat there oblivious to the truth, scratching behind Coco’s ear and mimicking her purrs. Every ounce of happiness I had in this town had a nightmarish mirror image to counteract it. Graduation couldn’t come fast enough.

  Time to change the subject. “We should be getting our college acceptance letters soon, I would think. Keep your fingers crossed that we both get into Pendleton.” The timer on the microwave beeped and I pulled the popcorn out like a ravenous raccoon. I finally understood why Shaggy and Scooby were always so hungry—ghost hunting was a tough business!

  “Trust me—I’ve had my fingers crossed since I found out you missed early registration. I know you said it doesn’t matter to you but I don’t want to see you waste a semester at some crappy job while I’m in class. Plus, I don’t want to see how mad your dad gets when you tell him your plan. He’ll probably blame me, too.”

  A year ago, my dad’s reaction would have scared the pants right off of me. But now, hell, no matter how bad it was I was sure I’d faced worse. “I’m not worried about him. I’m just so ready to get out of this town—it’s like I’m living in a ghost filled Bermuda Triangle or something.”

  “I’ll just be happy to have you all to myself. I’d be willing to bet that Lucas won’t be going to Pendleton—if he’s even going to college at all.”

  Lucas. Why did Zach have to mention his name? I popped the first movie into the Blu-Ray player and settled down next to him like nothing was wrong. But it was. Everything was. I had a mess on my hands. What was I going to do about it? Every day it felt like I was sinking further into a pit of quicksand. In the end, who would be there to pull me out? Who did I want to pull me out? Today, I just felt destined to sink.

  18. Halloween Revisited

  Since I hadn’t heard from Lucas since his Friday night confession, I sat at our usual lunch table anxiously awaiting his arrival. How was he going to act? How should I act? Should I address what happened or pretend like nothing happened? Geez, why did boys have to be so complicated? If only they came with handbooks.

  Sudden and brilliant idea. Why didn’t I simply write one? Every girl on the face of the earth would sacrifice a week’s worth of lunch money to own it, maybe even more. What Boys Don’t Tell You by Ruby Matthews. It would make the bestseller list for like a gazillion weeks in a row. Once all of their secrets were revealed, relationships would be sooo much easier! No more guessing, no more wasting time on someone who really wasn’t interested. Why didn’t anyone think of it sooner?

  After spending a solid five minutes thinking of the biggest questions my readers would want answered, it finally hit me. There was one major flaw in my plan—I would have to find a boy willing to expose the skeletons hidden in the closet of the collective male species. And we all know that would never happen. It was a good idea while it lasted and it kept me from obsessing for a solid five minutes over what would happen when Lucas sat down. That in itself was an answer I would never get.

  No Lucas in the cafeteria. No Lucas in the hallways. No Lucas period. Was he too embarrassed to show his face? Was he sitting home alone with a broken heart? Arghhh! Was he thinking about me as much as I was thinking about him? Why couldn’t I stop thinking about him? Even tons of homework wasn’t enough to get him out of my mind.

  With each passing day, I grew more restless as I waited for him to return. So restless, in fact, that by Wednesday afternoon I was on the verge of needing prescription medication to steady my nerves. Zach never asked me what was wrong but I caught him giving me strange looks on several occasions. When I was about to completely lose my sanity, I got a call from Rachel.

  “I have details about what happened on Halloween. I’m on my way to your house now.” Now there was something that could take my mind off of Lucas. At least for a little while. By the time I got to the bottom of the grand staircase, she was already pulling into the drive. They weren’t exactly the answers I was really looking for but at this point, any answers would do.

  Shelly tried to snag Rachel for five minutes to talk to her about her redecorating plans for the weekend but I wouldn’t allow it. I gave Shelly a cold stare that said “back off—she’s mine” and she walked away mumbling. Before anything else could distract us, I grabbed Rachel’s arm and pulled her up the stairs behind me.

  “So what did you find out?” I asked once we were both seated on the futon with sodas and some snacks. “Lots! Sending Boone in was probably the best way of getting the details. I have all the gossip!” Rachel said while munching on a pretzel.

  “Gossip?”

  “Yeah, gossip! Drake and Crimson hooked up that night after the party!” “Shut up! They didn’t!” Granted, I was a little preoccupied on Halloween night but I never saw anything that would suggest that Crimson was even slightly interested in reuniting with Drake. There were definite sparks between them that night but not the good kind. If anything, I would have thought Drake would be the one missing and the trunk of Crimson’s car would have been the first place I would have looked for him.

  “They did!” Rachel all but shouted at me. “Looks like you and my brother weren’t the only ones creating some heat that night!”

  “Did you have to remind me? It’s been a long time since Zach and I steamed up any windows together.”

  Rachel took a drink of her diet soda and stared at me like a reporter. “I know. Care to explain why?” I visualized her cramming a microphone into my face. We were here to talk about Drake and Crimson. How did I end up on the hot seat?

  “Zach wanted to cool things between us until I straightened out my unresolved feelings for Lucas.”

  “Lucas? What unresolved feelings do you have for Lucas?” she asked with concern. O. M. G. I meant to say Lee! How could I have made such a grave slip of the tongue? “I mean Lee.” I said quickly to cover my tracks.

  “Uh huh, Lee,” she replied with doubt in her voice. Great. Now she was going to tell Zach what I said and he was going to flip. Regain control, pretend nothing’s wrong. “So how did it happen? Drake and Crimson, I mean.”

  Rachel wasn’t oblivious to my sly segue but she answered me anyway. “Well, after her brawl with Ivy, Drake carried Crimson out of here kicking and screaming and put her in his car. He drove around town until she calmed down and then he parked at Silver Lake and they talked. They talked about their breakup and Crimson admitted that she still had feelings for him. Ironically, Allison was the reason they broke up in the first place. Crimson thought the only reason Drake even asked her out was because she reminded him of Allison. Talking led to kissing, kissing led to other things and eventually they had sex in the back seat of Drake’s car.”

  Fascinating. The back seat of Drake’s sports car didn’t look big enough for grasshoppers to mate in. Automatically, I tried to picture gigantic Drake going for a touchdown in that tiny space. Eww!! I tried to erase the image from my mind’s eye but the harder I tried, the more it was t
he only thing I could think about. “Drake’s backseat?” I asked. Maybe I heard her wrong.

  “I know!” Rachel said. “Doesn’t seem possible, does it? But I figure if Crimson put her—” “Don’t!” I blurted out. “I’m already picturing Crimson doing her best Cirque de Soleil moves—I don’t need any help in visualizing it! Let’s skip the description. What happened afterwards?”

  “They basically decided that they wanted to give their relationship another shot. Crimson asked Drake to drop her off at her apartment downtown. She told him she had to make another trip back to Los Angeles to wrap up production on NeverMore’s first album but that she would get together with him before she left. The other girls in the band said she never made it home and they’re the ones who called the police.”

  Wow. So similar to what happened to Allison. Was Rachel a fool for believing that Drake wasn’t guilty? I mean, what were the odds of something like that happening to an innocent man twice? I had to dig for more information without sounding accusatory.

  “Where exactly did he drop her off? And what evidence did they find in his car?” “He dropped her off in front of her apartment at about two in the morning. What they found was DNA left over from their encounter and the shirt Crimson was wearing that night—with blood on it.” Rachel made that statement nonchalantly like the bloodstained clothing of missing girls wound up in the backseat of everyone’s car on a routine basis.

  Geez! Could she be any more naïve? “So, how does Drake explain that?”

  “Ivy scratched her during the fight and dug her nails in pretty good. He gave her one of his hoodies to wear home.” Possible, I suppose. But with all of the other strikes against him, I still wasn’t buying it. “Is that all the police have against him?” I had a sneaking suspicion that she was holding back on me.

  “Well,” she drawled, “There are the eye witnesses that saw them driving around town while they were still arguing. But that was early in the night—no one claims to have seen them after midnight. And it doesn’t help that no one at the party remembers the blood on her shirt.” Rachel dug into the bag of pretzels and grabbed a handful. “Other than that, the police have nothing.”

  I stared at her in awe as she munched on pretzels oblivious to the fact that what she just said was absurd. Of course Drake was guilty! Boone’s brother or not, he was a raging psychopath! He really did seem sad about Allison’s death—maybe he had undiagnosed multiple personalities. Anything was possible, right? Anything except Drake being innocent, that is. Rachel was way too trusting. I would never believe a story that full of holes.

  “So now all we have to do is find out who killed Allison,” Rachel declared. Yeah, that was going to be easy—I already found him. What scared me most was that with Drake behind bars, Crimson was tied up somewhere and starving to death. What was I thinking? Too much time had already passed. She was probably already dead. Hopefully, her ghost would be more like Clay and less like Allison. Where should I even start looking for her?

  Rachel snapped her fingers in front of my face to bring me back to the conversation. “Hello? Where were you just now? We need to focus!”

  “You’re right,” I said. “How was rehearsal Saturday and Sunday? Any more falling fixtures?” She shook her head no. “Boring actually. I ran my lines with Brian—that’s the guy playing Roarke. Lucas wasn’t exactly at the top of his game.”

  Really? Did what happened Friday night affect him that much? “Oh, why’s that?”

  “I don’t know—he seemed preoccupied by something. He didn’t talk much. I thought maybe you would know why.”

  “Me? How should I know? I wasn’t there, remember?”

  “Right,” she said suspiciously. “So are you coming back this Friday now that you know that Allison’s harmless?” I didn’t have a choice did I? Now I would be risking my own life to find Crimson who was already dead so that I could prove that a guilty man was innocent. FML.

  “Sure, I wouldn’t dare miss it!” Who wouldn’t want an invitation to their own funeral? Sudden weird thought. Did my ability to see ghosts make me more likely to become one myself? And if so, what kind of ghost would I be? I certainly didn’t want to haunt Zach and make him miserable for the rest of his life or anyone else, for that matter. I made up my mind—if I ended up like that, I would simply hang out at Grimes and Loeffler with Clay. Not my first choice of how I would want to spend eternity, mind you, but totally the lesser of all the evils.

  “Hey, can I ask you for a tiny little favor?” Rachel asked as she twirled a strand of hair around her finger. Oh no. What now? Wasn’t I already in enough danger as it was? “What is it?” I asked with as much enthusiasm as I could muster which was very little.

  My lack of fervor went unnoticed. “I was just wondering if you would help me learn my lines,” Rachel said with every ounce of her usual enthusiasm. “I tried doing it alone but I just couldn’t concentrate on it. I need a partner to keep me in line. Lucas was my first choice but he’s busy tonight. He felt bad about not being able to help me but he gave me the brilliant idea to ask you instead.”

  “Sure, I’ll help you.” Finally—something constructive that I could do to take my mind off of Lucas without putting my life in danger in the process. “When do you want to get started?”

  “How about right now?” she said, pulling her script out of her bag. “We can start with Scene One. Jonas expects us to have it memorized by Friday.”

  I helped her with her lines until it was time for bed. By the time we were done, I knew her lines better than she did. Too bad my own life couldn’t be broken down into nice, neat little scenes. If it could, I would be ready to take the stage. As it was, it felt like I was getting my first look at the script on opening night. Lights, camera…panic.

  19. Blackout

  Bad things always seemed to happen when I broke my promises but I decided to risk it anyway. I mean, hey, why start making sane, rational decisions now, right? It was way too late for sane and rational. I promised not to go near the Bantam Theater again until after Rita had more information about wraiths. When Friday evening arrived and I still hadn’t heard anything from her, I had a decision to make. And as always, I made the wrong one. I was confident until the Bantam was right in front of me then, as usual, I started to question my own sanity.

  Lucas was the main reason I decided to go against Rita’s warnings. He wasn’t in school all week and we hadn’t spoken since he told me he loved me. I had to see him—there wasn’t a ghost in this world that could stop me. Scare me, sure. Stop me, never.

  I didn’t know if it was because I was away from it for a week or if what I was experiencing was real, but the theater seemed even more run down than it did the last time I was there. The lights were dimmer, the floorboards squeakier. Allison was stronger. The scent of death was so thick in the air that one breath nearly choked me. It was going to be a rough night.

  As Rachel and I approached the front of the theater, I spotted Lucas in the front row. He was sitting off to the side, about five seats away from the rest of the group with his head down and running his lines quietly to himself, I couldn’t tell what kind of mood he was in. But I was about to find out.

  It wasn’t until Rachel called out “Wait for me!” that I realized I was now a full five steps ahead of her in my haste to see Lucas. Slow down. You can’t look too excited to see him. He may get the wrong impression. But what exactly was the wrong impression? Why did I want to see him so badly? Was it possible to be in love with two boys at the same time? I was about to find that out, too.

  “Hey,” I said as I sank down into the seat beside him. That was casual enough, right? I was dying to find out why he wasn’t in school all week but I didn’t want to sound too desperate for information.

  He looked up from his script and tossed his hair out of his eyes. “Hey,” he replied warmly, “I was afraid you weren’t coming back. I thought maybe you were avoiding me.”

  My heart melted. I spent all week thinking he was avoiding
me! “Never,” I responded emphatically. “Good—I wouldn’t want that. Ever.” He reached out as though to take my hand but stopped suddenly. Not quite quick enough, though. As his hand brushed lightly against mine, a shiver shot up my arm. It wasn’t electrifying in the literal sense like when Zach and I first touched but there was definitely an emotional current involved.

  Before I could ask Lucas where he was all week, Jonas took the stage. “Tonight, I want to start with Act Two, Scene Three. This is the scene where Erik kidnaps Kira and locks her away beneath the theater. I need Lucas and Rachel on stage now and Brian, I want you and Gavin to practice your lines together at the back of the theater. Your scene’s up next.”

  Just as I settled into my seat to watch Lucas and Rachel, Jonas approached me.

  “I’m sorry, I don’t think I caught your name,” he said towering over me. “Ruby Matthews,” I answered, uncomfortably. I was trying not to attract attention, to fly under the radar. After all, my purpose there went far beyond stage hand.

  “Ruby—that’s a lovely name. Well, Ruby, I have a job for you. I have some costumes in my van. I need you to retrieve them for me and hang them in the back. I’ll have Jackson show you where to put them.”

  Jonas dug into his pocket, produced a set of keys and handed them to me. “My van is in the alley out back—just out that door and to the right,” he said pointing to one of the fire exits. It should be the only vehicle parked out there.”

  Simple enough—though I certainly could have done without help from Jackson. That man was super creepy. At the mention of his name, he stepped out of the shadows to gawk at me as I crossed the theater to the exit. He was studying me like a hawk studies a mouse—like prey. I squeezed my hand into a tight fist around Jonas’s keys, ready to use them as a weapon if Jackson decided to swoop in for the kill.