Ever After

by Odessa Gillespie Black

  Trees going by my head at such an odd angle made me dizzy.

  I had to get away. Away from him, away from that house, away from everything. “Put me down.”

  He hesitated.

  “Put. Me. Down.”

  A growl rumbled in his chest, but he placed me gently on my feet. He held onto my arms to steady me, but I jerked away.

  I started to trek in the direction he’d been headed, but as my feet connected with the ground, the whole world tilted. Maybe having him put me down hadn’t been such a good idea.

  “I’m your only way back to that house, and it’s about a mile away.” Cole’s voice was beside my ear as the odd, radiating warmth of his hands steadied me.

  I hated and absolutely adored his touch at the same time. It wouldn’t be too hard to get addicted to, and I was so close to hating him that it would have been dangerous for my psyche. I tried to walk but wasn’t very successful.

  Cole’s grip tightened.

  I staggered, knees turning to sponge, but gained my strength back just in time.

  “You can’t walk. You’ll fall.” Cole’s voice caressed my ear.

  “Ah, and you care so much? We wouldn’t want your chances at a future one night stand to be botched by another nasty bump to the head. I’ll walk, thank you very much.” I had almost let him kiss me, and with that Midas touch, or whatever it was, he would have probably been able to do anything else he had wanted if the horse hadn’t thrown me. Thank God for stupid animals.

  I pried myself from him. I had to. I wanted to cry and run to the house. But running into his arms so he could console me was the natural thing to do. Why, I didn’t know.

  He’d made it clear he wasn’t available to me for emotional comfort. Physical satisfaction is where he drew the line.

  Water filled the back of my throat. I would not let myself puke.

  “I didn’t mean to let it get this far,” he called after me.

  I wobbled, using long skinny trees to steady me as I came to them. Blurry canopies of leaves blocked the summer sun. A rainbow of shimmering colors haloed the world as it spun around me. My knees became Jell-O and the summer day turned to a stormy twilight.

  Cole said something to me from a football field away. Strong arms wrapped around me as I stumbled forward into empty space.

  I surrendered.

  Cole carried me.

  * * * *

  Cole laid me down on the bed, adjusted pillows under my head, and attentively moved every strand of hair away from my face that could possibly irritate me. In silence, he exhausted every service he could provide me.

  “Okay, so you got a little carried away. I’m sure it’s not the first time a moment of passion has gone south for a couple. This isn’t your fault. Being thrown off that horse onto the ground into a wild tangle of God only knows what wasn’t exactly unpleasant, and you can’t lie and say it was completely out of lust.” The bump to the head was a good excuse to say everything I wanted to say. “You can pretend to be shallow, but I know better.”

  He stared straight through me as if he didn’t hear me.

  When I didn’t explode with anger, he looked resolute. “I’m getting Thomas.”

  “But we need to talk.”

  Without another word, Cole dismissed himself from my room.

  I waited in silence, listening closely for Thomas to blast Cole.

  Cole brought in peroxide and cotton balls.

  Thomas quietly followed with bandages. No screaming. No threats of castration.

  “I don’t think it will need stitches, but the swelling worries me.”

  “Yeah, it’s definitely swelled,” Thomas said.

  The blood on Cole’s shirt stood out like sprays of red paint. Flashes of moments between us bombarded my senses. Moments I didn’t remember taking place.

  A scary woman attacking us? Possibly today? Him saying her name? He’d mentioned nothing about a scene like that, so either I was daydreaming again, or my head injury was worse than I thought.

  Cole’s gaze darted to the floor.

  Thomas started the lecture. “The funeral hasn’t taken place, and she’s shed blood twice.”

  “I was careless. I won’t let it happen again.”

  “That’s what you said last time.”

  “What are you talking about?” I asked them as they shoved my hair over my face and bandaged the cut. I spit out a mouthful of hair. “I hate it when people talk about me as if I’m not in the room.”

  “We’re sorry for the maladies you’ve experienced since you’ve been here. We’ll do the best we can to see to it that you’re safe for the remainder of your stay—however long that is,” Thomas said.

  My hair curtained too much of the view to see their faces.

  Cole absently brushed some of it from my eyes, but took too long to be a non-caring, one night stand prospect. That glazed over look stole his cranky demeanor, and his movements became jerky. It was the same way he’d acted on the horse during our almost kiss.

  “Cole.” Thomas jerked his arm.

  Cole pulled his hand from my face.

  “I think she needs some rest without the distraction of us in the room.” Thomas’s voice was stern.

  Cole shuddered, took one step back from the bed, and turned pleading eyes on Thomas.

  “How ‘bout asking my opinion? I feel fine. I would tell you if I didn’t. I want to talk to you.” It did no good to appeal to Cole. He was half there. I regarded Thomas. “If you have things to tend to, Cole could stay with me.”

  Cole’s eyes followed Thomas as he headed for the door.

  Thomas motioned for Cole to follow with a wave of his hand.

  Cole flashed a confused look toward me, the bed, the blankets.

  “Cole.” Thomas’s tone demanded heeding.

  “Have someone look in on her. Please.” Cole was planted beside my bed.

  “Why can’t you?” I clenched the blanket in frustration.

  Cole’s eyes found a spot over my shoulder. He’d spaced out again.

  “You need to put an end to this. Now.” Thomas’s voice shook and his hands trembled. “This is not about you anymore, son. You have to keep her safe.”

  Cole looked on me with renewed determination, then went to work gathering the wound dressings. “I have some final preparations to see to. Someone will look in on you shortly. Rest. You’re going to need it.”

  “Please. Come back later,” I said.

  He waited till he was at the door to address me. Our gazes locked.

  Cole took a deep breath.

  Thomas patted his shoulder. “Do it, son. Better now, than too late.”

  Pointedly staring at the antique wardrobe in the corner, Cole nodded.

  Thomas left us.

  “There’s nothing here for you. Forget this place. As soon as the funeral is over tomorrow, sell it all and move on with your life.” Cole’s words came out in monotone.

  My heart slammed to a halt. “I know that’s not really how you feel. Why are you acting like this?”

  “It’s not possible for me to be attracted to you. It can’t happen. And by leading you on, I put you in danger. You have to leave, or I will.” Cole worked his jaw and pulled the door behind him. When it was shut, his absence ripped a gaping hole where my heart had been.

  Pulling a pillow to me, I buried myself under the covers.

  Deep down inside that stone cold heart of his, he was wonderful. And he did like me. More than he wanted to. But maybe he just didn’t want me.

  I had trusted him.

  After what my father put my mother through, I should have been more careful. I’d always promised myself I wouldn’t let my guard down completely.

  Somehow, somewhere along the way—over a period of what seemed like a hundred years but had only been two short days—I’d forgotten Cole was just a man. Different things drove men.

  It wasn’t my fault. He had tried to kiss m
e.

  My reaction to him was probably a result of the house and the magical way it had of making the rest of the world drop away. I had to find a way to make Cole Kinsley a small part of that fantasy and nothing more. Forget him.

  A knock startled me.

  Before I could turn the visitor away, a staff member in one of those ridiculous maid uniforms opened the door enough to slip in, and a second later her exact double slinked in behind her, toting a radio from somewhere between the stone ages and 1982.

  I had definitely hit my head harder than I thought. I squinted, but there was no use.

  Still two.

  “It’s not the head injury causing you to see double. We’re twins. And Ava didn’t hire us to clean this hell hole,” the first one said. She was the blonde girl, Kaitlyn, from the missing-dead-former-employer incident. Tugging at her white lacy collar, she tossed it with a distasteful scowl.

  Her sister plugged the radio in. With it tuned it to a static station, she turned it up so loud I could barely hear myself think.

  The sister turned to me with a finely manicured eyebrow. “That’s the whole idea.”

  Wait. What?

  “Did you just—?” My jaw went slack.

  “Hear your thoughts?” one of them asked.

  As if the smallest voltage of electricity had been connected to my brain, my head tingled.

  “We’re the Moss Sisters, and with any luck, we’re going to save your life,” they answered in unison.

  Chapter 7

  The gorgeous sisters filled all the space in the room as I gawked at them.

  “Good. She hasn’t screamed yet,” the one I’d just met said.

  “Should I?”

  “No need. Like we said, we’re your best bet at getting out of this house alive.” The sister sounded too calm. Who made statements like that and sounded cheery?

  “Shelby. She’s cheery about everything,” Kaitlyn said.

  They went to work flitting all over the place as they talked. They closed the windows, shut the curtains, and lined the opening between the bedroom door and the floor with towels. Was the house on fire? They’d sealed every opening, every crack.

  “I thought he was never going to leave.” Kaitlyn craned her ear toward the door.

  “You’ve met my sister, Kaitlyn Elyse, but Cole’s been too suspicious for me to show my face anywhere near you. I swear that man has eyes like a hawk and the instincts to match. I’m Shelby Renee Moss. A few months before Ava died, she hired us to do some research on the famous Rolling Hills Manor ghost. I don’t know who was crazier, her or the ghost.” Shelby reached under my bed and pulled out a bag. From it, she jerked some wires, a thing that looked like a remote, and a decoration gift box she set up on the fireplace mantle on the wall opposite my bed. “Ava Rollins said we were to put nothing above you and your safety except to find a way to stop that ghost.”

  I stared at the box with a bow on top that Shelby had placed on my mantle.

  “Pretty cool, huh? It looks like a trinket, but inside is a camera, with motion detectors and night vision.” She dug around in a bag.

  “Cole can never know about this or he will shut us down. He has to think we’re hired help. Can you keep a secret?” Kaitlyn asked me, heading to the closet. She fished around on the top shelf for a bag of her own goodies. She retrieved some type of electronic device from a little black case and aimed it at the center of the room.

  These girls were either crazy or serious.

  I wasn’t sure which scared me more.

  “This is an EMF detector.” Shelby held up the piece of equipment. “It detects electromagnetic fields. Electromagnetic fields are found in certain types of energies and electrical lines. When ghosts are present—or entities, if you’re more comfortable with the term—the detector can pick up on their left-over energy. If there is a reading above a one, then there is either an electric line somewhere close or an other-worldly entity. In this case, there are no power lines within a fifty foot range, and Kaitlyn has that look on her face again.”

  Kaitlyn stood in the corner of the room where her face went from smiling at me to flat and emotionless. In seconds, she opened her eyes and went to a bag. “She’s not here right now, but she has been. I can feel the residual evil.”

  “Her senses are more reliable than any machine.” Shelby gestured to the thing beeping in her right hand.

  “Ghosts?” I finally found my voice. “Have you seen one?”

  “Yes, and so have you. You just have it blocked or someone blocked it for you.” Shelby shrugged but looked a little too smug.

  “Could you quit that? She is on a need to know basis.” Kaitlyn poked Shelby.

  “What do you mean?” I asked, beginning to trust, though my psychological background told me doing so was crazy.

  They were too weird to be scam artists, and so far they were the only people who would talk openly, and what appeared to be honestly, with me.

  “You’re being haunted, or hainted as you North Carolinians would say.” Shelby giggled.

  “We are the only people on this whole estate other than Cole who know exactly what’s going on around here, so if you want to know why Cole swears he isn’t attracted to you but can’t stay away, stick with us and do everything we say. Capisce?” Kaitlyn turned to a corner of the room with another weird piece of equipment.

  “We need to know exactly where you and Cole are in your relationship. He’s kept you so close the President couldn’t have gained access to you. No story is too long for us. Think it. It’s much clearer that way. Besides, we don’t want anyone else hearing it. From what I can already read from you, seems you two have gotten pretty cozy.” Shelby waited expectantly.

  “Oh, you kept up?” Kaitlyn jabbed.

  “I’m not completely useless.” Shelby’s face pinched up.

  “Since when?” Kaitlyn didn’t wait for retaliation before she turned to me. “If you give us a thought to start from, the process is much quicker. We can dig through and find what we need.”

  They both stared, waiting.

  I wasn’t entirely sure I wanted them anywhere near my head. If in fact they could actually do what they said they could. Kaitlyn looked serious enough, but Shelby could have been a psycho. Maybe Kaitlyn got all the brains in the womb. This was scary.

  “I heard that,” Shelby said, one brow darting up.

  Oh, crap.

  “We can start the search without you, but that would take so much longer. I don’t think you have days for us to wade around in your head.” Kaitlyn nodded at my bloodstained shirt.

  “This ghost is getting ready to get very active, and we don’t know exactly what she’s capable of. We’ve heard stories, but if you want to survive this, you’d better fess up.” With a wire in her hand, Shelby dipped her head under the bed. Hopefully not to wire a bomb. She sounded like she was talking into a feather pillow. “Where is that plug-in? And is it the blue wire or the red wire I’m supposed to wire first? In the movies, you’re supposed to cut one of them to disarm it, so I figure you’d have to wire it up exactly the opposite way it would be disarmed. Everybody, hold still.”

  She came back out with cobwebs in her hair and a mischievous grin on her face.

  “Real cute. A telepathic smart ass.”

  “There’s a real shortage of those around here,” she said, patting my leg. “I was just picking. I’m not a bit dangerous. I promise. We want to help.”

  She swiped the cobwebs off her and continued with the brain/computer comparison.

  “It can take days, weeks even, to search someone’s memory stores if they don’t give us a trigger such as a date, a specific event.”

  He acts like he hates me but almost kissed me this evening. My memory tells me we both fell off a horse, but something deeper tells me that’s not all that happened. I remember a woman, or a thing. A woman/thing coming at me, I thought and the girls both closed their eyes. For a few seconds they were
somewhere else.

  When they opened their eyes, they exchanged glances.

  “Ava’s plan has worked like a charm,” Kaitlyn said.

  “But so has Grace’s,” Shelby countered in dead seriousness.

  “So, how much do we tell her?”

  “The question is what don’t we tell her.”

  They both turned to me.

  “How ’bout tell me everything? You could start with why the name Grace sounds so familiar.” I couldn’t breathe. All the air had been sucked out of the room. That name caused my stomach to turn to lead and drop to my feet at its mention.

  “We can’t. It’s too soon.” Kaitlyn crossed her arms.

  “How about this? We’ll tell you what you need to know as you need to know it, but you have to trust us and try your best not to push Cole. Can you promise us that?” Shelby leaned on my bedpost.

  “I don’t think you have to worry much about that. I think we just broke up before we ever started dating. He told me I had to leave or he was.” I clutched my blankets and pulled them closer. The throbbing in my head intensified.

  “He’s not going anywhere. Trust us. He can’t. He just doesn’t know it yet.” Kaitlyn fiddled with a piece of equipment. “Just vow to cooperate, and we’ll be your new best friends.”

  “Okay.” I leaned back on the pillows.

  I wasn’t sure what they meant by half of what they’d said and wasn’t sure what I’d promised, but they were the best chance I had in learning why Cole Kinsley wanted me gone.

  * * * *

  The next morning, I was in the middle of about forty people in line to pay their final respects to Ava Rollins.

  Cole was six people ahead of me. He didn’t speak a word to anyone, and he never looked back at me. Not that I should have mattered to him. He’d only known me for two days. The woman in the casket had been in his life for years.

  It may have been inappropriate, but I couldn’t help notice how nice he cleaned up. His normally unruly hair was still unruly, and he looked even taller and more muscular in a black suit, a red tie, and a gray shirt.

  When he approached the casket, his jaw clenched and then began to work.