Shelby clipped her lips between her teeth.
So there was more?
“I’m sure he didn’t mean it. It had to have happened in a moment of heightened emotion.” Kaitlyn wrung her hands. “There’s only one reason he’d threaten your life.”
“Yeah, there’s no way he’d kill you.” Shelby shook her head.
“He told me he’d put his fingers around my throat and choke the life out of me. In the real world, making death threats isn’t acceptable. I don’t know where you two are from, but saying that doesn’t sit well with me is a huge understatement.”
Silence. But not for long.
“What exactly was going on when this happened?” Shelby took a seat on one of the sofas as if she were conducting an interview, not being a concerned friend.
“Unbelievable. Okay, I’d just gotten back with Dalton and well…” I paused. It wasn’t my fault it happened. The guy wouldn’t leave me alone. “He kissed me. Like he’d never kissed me before. It was amazing.”
Shelby buried her face in her hands.
Kaitlyn rolled her eyes. “Here we go again.”
Wonderful chills covered my arms, but they took a dark, spiky turn as the memory advanced. “I asked him why he wouldn’t let me love him, and he went psycho on me.”
“Well, that explains it,” Shelby said with a smirk.
It explained nothing. Why couldn’t I tell him how I felt? Was he that scared of commitment?
“The idea of someone wasting emotion on him makes him crazy.” Kaitlyn gave her sister yet another famous disapproving glance, then shot her focus back to me. “Wait, like he’d never kissed you before? When before? Like now before? Or what do you mean?”
“Please tell me you don’t think his reactions are normal behaviors.” I ignored her questions. Answering would only get me in worse trouble. “Whose side are you on here?”
“Look, we can’t tell you what’s going on in his mind, but when he decides to tell you, you’ll forgive him. I promise. But if you leave now, you’ll never know,” Kaitlyn said.
“If you’re not going to tell her, then I will. If you leave this place now, Cole’s death—”
Kaitlyn slapped her hand over Shelby’s mouth. “There’s no need in giving her an unneeded guilt trip.”
Shelby slapped her sister’s hand away. “I can’t believe you’re going to let her go. It’ll kill him.”
“We don’t have a choice. Remember. It’s her decision,” Kaitlyn said.
“Wait, what? What do you mean, Cole’s death? What were you going to say?”
“He’ll die if you leave.” Shelby trembled, her expression dead serious.
Kaitlyn’s eyes bulged, and she swung around to her sister.
“Well, someone needs to tell her.” Shelby inspected her fingernails triumphantly.
“What are you talking about? He’ll die emotionally or what?” I had to sit down. The room swayed. I went to the other sofa and took a seat across from Shelby.
Shelby took her attention from her nails and focused on me. “The curse has been activated, so one of you has to die. If you leave, it’s Cole.”
“Besides the fact that I have no idea what you’re talking about, if I stay, wouldn’t that mean that I die? A ghost has tried her hardest to see that that is exactly what will happen.” I backed away from them.
They had to be nuts. They were talking about as crazy as Cole had been.
“No. We have a way to save you both and no one has to die, but you have to stay and help us. Cole can’t know. But you have to play along. You have to trust us and do as we say.” Kaitlyn joined her sister on the opposing sofa.
“What is this curse you keep talking about? She even said the same thing to me. That one of us has to die, and that I have to choose.”
“Please, Allie. Don’t listen to Grace and don’t let him die. Ignore anything she says to you. Come to us when she approaches you.”
I got up. “I’ll stay. But keep him away from me.”
Turning my back on their relieved faces, I left the library. I scaled the stairs. Behind its closed doors, the room was even bigger and lonelier than before. I spent the rest of the day reading to bury myself in someone else’s world and hopefully forget mine.
* * * *
After a sleepless night, I ate breakfast away from everyone else. Steam rose in swirls from my coffee cup, and no matter how tightly I gripped it, the heat from the cup couldn’t touch my heart.
I’d loved him. I’d admit it. It was the first time I’d ever felt that for someone.
He could have made things simple and let me down easy, but he had to be a creep. A psycho creep at that.
Having nothing better to do, I napped more.
In a room directly under mine, Shelby and Kaitlyn’s argument with Cole woke me. It was the parlor they’d kept Ava in. I listened from the banister, keeping my mind as empty as possible. I wouldn’t have to try hard, though, because the arguing had elevated to Cole pitching a fit.
Probably forgot his medication.
“So, now you know the whole story, and no matter what I do, I can’t get it right. If I’m in the room with her, besides attracting Grace, she’s in danger because no one ever knows what the hell will come out of my mouth or what the hell I might do to her. If I’m in the woods, well, you know what happens then. I’m losing it. I almost told her. I came this close. I can’t do this. I’ll be in the nut house before it’s all over.”
“Calm down, Cole. We have a plan in place. Trust us. You need to tell her the truth. Tell her what is going on. Tell her how you feel and who she really is to you.”
“You honestly think that amazing woman up there is going to ever look at me the same again after I threatened her life so viciously? She’d be a damned fool to consider me to shovel shit out of the stables much less anything else.”
“She loves you Cole. She’d never—”
“I said I don’t want to hear those words, you stupid—” Cole’s booming voice clipped.
Shelby stormed from the room and stomped toward the back doors of the house.
With my back at the wall farthest away from the banister, I hoped she wouldn’t look back and discover me.
“Cole, this isn’t you. I mean, I don’t know. Something’s not right. Have you eaten today?” Kaitlyn paused. “Cole, I asked you if you’ve eaten.”
“When have I had a chance? I spend all my waking hours watching over her. It takes all my energy to stay out of sight.”
“You can’t go without eating. You know how dangerous that is.”
He’d eaten breakfast this morning when we all had. Or at least I thought he had.
I’d taken mine in the dining room, but I’d seen him in the kitchen.
I don’t know why I bothered, but maybe I could help take some of the frustration off the girls if I talked to him.
Cole stumbled to the antique sofa facing the fireplace on the opposing wall. He gripped the wooden backing and held on.
Kaitlyn’s eyes widened when she saw me.
Cole leaned forward and crumpled to the floor, his chin catching the wood as he fell. Before I could get to him and help break his fall, he hit the carpet with a thud.
“Go to the kitchen. Get a jar of peanut butter, any thawed raw meat, and anything else you can think of that might be packed with protein.” Kaitlyn scurried to Cole’s side.
“Raw?”
“Just go,” she said.
I took a quick inventory of his face as I ran from the room.
His newly pale skin had turned to white putty. He was famished.
I slid into the kitchen and rifled through the fridge. I pulled raw hamburger from the back. Ugh.
Cole was out cold. How would he eat this?
With my arms loaded down, I ran back to the parlor. “This is all I could find.”
Kaitlyn had turned Cole on his side, his cheek on his arm.
His chestnut ha
ir contrasted against the white carpet. His face matched it, save the blue under his eyes. His body shuddered and shook.
“I can’t lose him. Please, make him better.” I don’t know who I asked for the favor, but I trembled, hating the cold, helpless feeling in my chest.
“Out. Please.” Kaitlyn grabbed the first pack of hamburger meat and tore it open.
If Cole had a vitamin deficiency he’d neglected in order to take care of me, which had probably in turn caused his outbursts, then I had been horrible to him. I almost protested. Raw meat or not, I would help her feed it to him.
“You’re not going to want to see this.” With her bloody hand, she waved me out of the room.
“But—”
“He’d kill me if he knew you’d seen him like this. Just find Shelby. She’s upset, but when she finds out Cole’s sick, she’ll understand.” Kaitlyn opened more food. “Go, now.”
I listened on the other side of the door.
“Cole. Cole. Wake up. Cole. I know you aren’t going to like this, but you have to eat it in this form,” she said.
Yeah, who would like it in that form? It’d have to be fully cooked for me to touch it.
I shuddered and turned to find Shelby. She was probably about as pissed as I had been at Cole over the whole death threat thing.
This guy was losing it. At least he hadn’t threatened her life yet. Twice.
Chapter 13
Shelby clutched the railing of the patio banister, nostrils flared, her knuckles bone white. She stared at something in the distance.
“He didn’t mean it.” My voice was solemn. I couldn’t believe I could stand up for him after the treatment I’d received the last few days.
“I’ve been called worse than what he was about to say. That’s not what I’m mad about.” Shelby’s voice quivered. “He’s not telling you the whole story. And I can’t either. I think we can earn your trust, but it’s almost impossible to get him to trust. We need you both on board, but we can’t get him to do what we know will make your lives what they are supposed to be. I have to go help feed his stubborn ass before he starves to death. We’ll talk later.”
“Okay.”
Shelby left me standing in the shaded veranda to stare at the rose maze beyond the large fountain sprays.
I couldn’t let them tend to Cole alone. It was my duty to be beside him. As owner of this house, if for no other reason. If his outbursts had been due to some sort of multi-faceted chemical imbalance, then—Oh, God. I was my mother. I had justified the very unjust treatment I’d received from a man I cared about. But I was sure Cole was nothing like my father. I just didn’t know how or why.
* * * *
Cole was no longer unconscious on the floor, but on the sofa with his forehead in his palms.
I rapped lightly on the door before opening it.
The girls sighed and shook their heads no at me.
“Are things better now?”
Cole visibly stiffened when I spoke but didn’t look up.
Kaitlyn nodded.
“Nothing some iron pills won’t cure.” Shelby gathered empty meat wrappers and peanut butter tubs.
Had the hamburger meat not been enough? There had to have been at least five pounds of it.
Neither of the girls met my gaze.
Looking even more gaunt and deathly, Cole shuddered, boring a hole in the carpet with a glare. “I haven’t been completely honest with you, nor can I now. But it would be stupid of you to fall in love with me. This illness will only get worse, and eventually, it will kill me. I have no plans of returning any of your affections. Like I said, forget me.”
“I’ll be in my room.” With the sensation of a ten-inch knife sticking out of my chest, I left them. I couldn’t process his words. I couldn’t hear anymore. I couldn’t care anymore.
He should have told me in the beginning and saved me from this pain.
* * * *
The next morning, the thought of breakfast made me sick. Everything made me sick, come to think of it. I was unusually weak.
I wanted nothing to do with any of the people at the house. I just wanted my duty done, my mother saved from a life of hard labor, and to never have to think about Cole again.
I didn’t want him dead, but there was nothing I could do about that. He wouldn’t let me spend his last days with him, so I could do nothing but fume about it.
I sent Shelby and Kaitlyn away to do some research or something ghost related.
The only relaxing place was the pool. Nancy saw me wobble past the kitchen so she assisted me down to the sparkling water.
“Now don’t you over do it, honey.” Nancy squeezed my arm after helping me sit in the extra-long lounge chair.
“I won’t.” Tears stung my eyes as she adjusted the umbrella over me.
Cole hadn’t bothered to speak to me since the day before, and I had no idea how he was.
I’d finished the fiction novel I’d started in the same day, so a school book would have to do. I missed studying and reading. The only real beauty and romance existed in books whether they were educational or fictional. No matter how many times you read them they never changed. Unlike humans.
“If you need me…” Nancy handed my book over after giving me an unsure, motherly glance.
“I know. Ring the bell.” I smiled, squeezing her hand.
Nancy had brought one of Ava’s little bells with a wooden handle out with us.
Only a spoiled brat would use it. I refused to ring it unless my life depended on it, but she needn’t know that. I was only a little under the weather, not in the throes of death.
Death.
Don’t think about it, I thought.
I lay back. The shadow of the umbrella shaded me from the already blazing June sun. The chlorine mixed with the warm waft of roses would have normally been heavenly, but today nothing relaxed me. If Cole died, I wanted to melt into the hot breeze and be carried off into the trees with the wind. I didn’t want to exist if he didn’t.
My first day here, I hadn’t just fallen into his arms. I’d fallen madly and irrationally in love with him.
The peaceful quiet filled with sinister whispers.
I opened my eyes, sure another human was close, but there was no one.
Beyond the stone wall of the pool, the roses in the maze rustled in the wind.
I shivered despite the heat.
The feathery, menacing whispers blew through the leaves of the maze. “Don’t get too comfortable. The moon is almost gone. Choose which one of you dies first.”
As if on cue, Shelby and Kaitlyn burst out the back door of the house and headed in a beeline for me.
Torture was imminent. I picked up the book and slapped it open. Footfalls on the concrete stopped right beside my lounge chair.
“So, you trying to sneak out?” Shelby asked in a friendly tone.
“I needed fresh air.” I kept my eyes on the pages.
The girls sat on either side of me. An ambush?
“I’m ready to tell you everything,” Shelby blurted.
“Not everything, but enough.” Kaitlyn shot Shelby a glare.
“I wasn’t born for the stage the way you are. She needs to know.” Shelby put her hand up in her sister’s face.
So they’d decided to actually speak and include me.
There was a silence between them for a second. Never mind.
“Okay, I’m not going to tell her everything, but I’ll be damned if I’m going to let him go through this alone.” Shelby crossed her arms and stared off into the trees.
Kaitlyn turned to me. “Something big is getting ready to go down, and it’s going to happen soon. Grace is saving up her energy for something. You’ve noticed she hasn’t been bothering with you much, right?”
I nodded. Nothing had happened at all come to think of it. A few more days, and I could be done.
“Well, she has something planned, and we know w
hat it is. So does Cole. He’s afraid if you find out, you’ll go against everything we tell you and fight against her. As powerful as he is, he’s no match for her, so he’s pretty sure you’d die in the first few seconds.” Shelby’s eyes were dead serious.
“Powerful. What do you mean, powerful?” I shoved the book off my lap. “I thought he was dying?”
“In case you haven’t figured it out, he’s a little different from us. And he doesn’t have to die. He thinks there’s a choice to be made. That it’s either you or him. He didn’t bring you here, please remember that. It was Ava. There are still things you don’t know, things we can’t tell you yet, but so far we are on schedule. Cole will die of supernatural causes if you don’t do exactly as we say. Are you in?”
“So he’s not dying of cancer or leukemia or something?” I sat straighter on the lounge chair. This changed things. Slightly.
“The ghost is draining him. She thinks he’s in love with you, and you won’t give her what she wants, so she’s killing him. That’s all we can give you for now,” Kaitlyn said.
Cole was willing to die for me. All the fight in me wasn’t gone yet.
“I promise I’ll do what I can as long as he doesn’t try to hook up with me again. In case you haven’t noticed, I’m no good at saying no where he’s concerned. What can I do to save him?”
“Well, for one, you can’t go off all half-cocked and try to take her on by yourself. Promise us you won’t do that. No one is going to die. Please, forget that part for now, if you can, and focus. We have a short window of time to fill you in on what’s going on. Things I think you’re going to need to know when the time comes. What do you know about rocks and stones?” Shelby said.
Instant headache.
Her question had nothing to do with Cole.
“Seriously? Is that college lingo for drugs? I don’t know where you can find any if that’s what you’re asking.”
“Drugs?” Shelby jolted with shock. “Do we look like crack heads?”
“Don’t answer that. We mean jewels.” Kaitlyn shook her head impatiently at her sister.
“Rubies, diamonds, emeralds, alchemy,” Shelby said.
“Oh.” As crazy as it was not to use fake ones, sapphires were randomly placed all round each stone pillar.
Ever After Page 18
