Alexander Death (The Paranormals, Book 3)

by JL Bryan

  Dr. Reynard was deep red and shaking with rage. “You're not going to get away with anything. And neither is Jenny.” She stood, slammed her laptop closed, and tucked it under her arm. “My job is to find and eliminate threats to public health, and that's what I'm going to do. I don't care who you are or who you know. The President has declared this a national security issue. Now go whine about that to your uncle.”

  She pushed open one of the double doors and stormed out. “He's all yours,” she told the two guards, who had removed their gas masks. The two of them stepped into the dining room, weapons raised toward Seth. For a moment, he wondered if they were actually going to shoot him.

  “Women are crazy, huh?” Seth asked. They didn't respond. “Hey, nice guns. What kind are they?”

  The Homeland Security men just stared at him coldly.

  ***

  Later, Seth and his mom watched from the wreckage of their foyer as the federal police vehicles pulled out of their driveway.

  “Did they hurt you any more?” his mom asked.

  “No.”

  “They kept asking me questions about that Morton girl,” she said. “'Where is she? Where did she go? Where do we find her?' Just the same thing over and over.”

  “Mine went pretty much the same way,” Seth said.

  “I knew that girl was bad news, but I had no idea how terrible she was. What do you think she did, Seth?”

  “I think they have the wrong person.”

  “Your father and I keep telling you to stay away from her. You'd better listen now. God only knows what crazy things she must be doing to have Homeland Security after her like that.”

  “They make mistakes, too,” Seth said. “Jenny's never done anything bad.”

  “You're too trusting of people, Seth.” She looked around at the mess of toppled furniture, and she glowered. Then she took her cell phone from her purse.

  “Who are you calling?” he asked.

  “Silas,” she told him. Silas Deever was the family's personal attorney. “And then your father. And then, maybe Uncle Junius.”

  “The guy said it was a national security letter,” Seth said. He didn't want his father—or his great uncle Senator Mayfield—digging into this and finding out exactly why the feds were after Jenny. “That means you can't tell anybody they were here.”

  “Like hell I can't,” his mom said, and she started making phone calls.

  Seth had a sinking feeling. He wished he could get in touch with Jenny to warn her about how seriously they were searching for her, and how they might kill her the moment they found her. But he still had no idea where she could be. He just hoped she was safe.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  When Seth's dad came home, Seth just played dumb—he had no idea why Homeland Security would be searching for Jenny. He kept up the act on the conference call they had with Silas Deever, who advised them that there was little they could do to get compensation for the extensive damages to their house, but he would look into it.

  Then Seth's mother took Seth to the hospital to get his nose checked out, though Seth assured her he wasn't hurt badly. By the time they reached the emergency room, his nose wasn't even swollen. Seth's healing powers had fixed him up quickly.

  The next morning, Seth decided to call Darcy Metcalf again, since she was the only person who might have any information about Jenny. The girl had claimed to remember nothing, but that was in front of her parents. Maybe she could give Seth some idea of where Jenny had gone.

  He'd lost Darcy's cell number along with his Blackberry, though, so he had to look up the Metcalfs' home number in the local phonebook. He dialed, and Darcy's dad answered.

  “Can I speak to Darcy, please?” Seth asked.

  “Who is this?” her dad barked over the phone.

  “This is...” Seth almost gave his own name, then remembered how much Darcy's dad seemed to hate him. “This is...Hank.”

  “Hank? Who the hell is Hank? Why are you calling my daughter?”

  Seth remembered something Darcy's dad had said at the jail: She's gonna take that job at the Taco Bell in Vernon Hill, she knows what's good for her. “This is Hank from Taco Bell,” Seth said.

  “Oh, the Taco Bell! Finally.” Then Seth heard him scream: “Darcy! Pick up the damned phone! It's the Taco Bell!”

  Darcy picked up another extension. “Hello?”

  “Don't screw this up, Darcy,” her dad said. “You need to get your ass a job.”

  “Daddy!” Darcy said. “He can hear you!”

  “Well, it's true, Hank from Taco Bell,” Darcy's dad said. “You hire her, she'll work hard, pregnant or not. She works hard around the house, worked hard in school, up til she got knocked up by that no-good boy—”

  “Dad, please!” Darcy said. Her dad finally hung up.

  “Darcy, it's Seth Barrett,” Seth said.

  “Oh, jeepers,” Darcy said. “What do you want?”

  “I need to talk to you.” Seth wondered if Homeland Security was listening to his phone calls. “Can you meet me somewhere?”

  “I don't want any part of your witchcraft, Seth Barrett,” Darcy said.

  “My what?”

  “I know you and Jenny are in league with Satan.”

  Seth was confused—Jenny and Darcy had become friends, even had sleepovers together. Now it was like someone had pushed rewind and loaded up an older version of Darcy.

  “I want to talk about what happened in Charleston,” Seth said.

  “Do you know how I even got there?” Darcy asked. “I can't remember a gosh-blamed thing. And my dad's all angry about it. He says I ran off with you, but I don't remember doing that.”

  “We can talk about all that,” Seth said. “So can you meet me?”

  “I guess,” Darcy said. “But it has to be somewhere public. And somewhere my dad won't see us together.” Her voice dropped to a whisper. “For some reason, he thinks I've been having sex with you.”

  “Oh,” Seth said. “Well, just name a place.”

  Thirty minutes later, Seth sat in a plastic booth at the Taco Bell in Vernon Hill. He watched Darcy fill out a Taco Bell employment application.

  “'Work experience,'” Darcy read. “My dad gives me a lot of work at home, and I've done tons of volunteering for church and things. You suppose that counts?”

  “The church stuff might help,” Seth said. “So, what do you remember about this weekend, Darcy?”

  “Nothing!” She looked up from the form. “You're supposed to tell me what happened. That's why I'm here. Well, and the job application.”

  “I was going to Charleston for college orientation,” Seth said. “You told me you were going to the same college and you needed a ride to orientation.”

  “I wish I were going to any college,” Darcy said. “Stupid Taco Bell.”

  “Why did you tell me that?” Seth asked.

  “I don't know! How many times can I say I don't know what happened? It's all a fuzzy haze and nothing makes sense.”

  “Then what's the last thing you remember?”

  Darcy looked at him for a long time, tucking her lower lip under her teeth and gnawing on it. “I don't know if I should tell you.”

  “Who else can you tell?” Seth asked. She looked pretty upset, he thought, so she must have something to share.

  “Well...okay.” Darcy looked around the Taco Bell, then lowered her head and spoke in a whisper. “They said they were angels.”

  “Who?”

  “Both of them.” Darcy looked around again, though the dining area was empty except for a very elderly couple arguing over the small Nachos Supreme they were sharing. “One said he was Tommy Goodling.”

  “Goodling?”

  “I believed him 'cause he had beautiful gray eyes, just like Ashleigh's. And he reminded me of her a little bit.”

  “Who is Tommy Goodling?”

  “Ashleigh's cousin. Well, he said he was Ashleigh's cousin. But later he said that he and the girl were both angels.”


  “Who was the girl?”

  “Some Mexican girl that was with him. And anywho, he told me that Ashleigh Goodling had a special task to do on Earth, but since she was dead, she had to...”

  “She had to do what?”

  “This is going to sound weird.”

  “Everything's weird these days. Believe me.”

  “They said I had to let her use my body for a little while,” Darcy said.

  “And you agreed to that?”

  “They were angels! Or they said they were.”

  “You believed them?”

  “You don't understand, Seth. When he touched me, I felt...” Darcy shivered and crossed her arms.

  “Horny?”

  “No, Dumbo! I was afraid. Not just afraid, but really afraid, like trembling in awe. Just like in the Bible, when God or an angel has a message for somebody. I've never felt so afraid in my life. When he touched me, I knew he was something.” Darcy frowned. “But now I think maybe he wasn't an angel. Maybe he was a demon sent from Satan.”

  “Maybe,” Seth said. “So you're saying they wanted to put Ashleigh's soul in your body? Like The Exorcist? A possession?”

  “But it couldn't really have been Ashleigh's soul,” Darcy said. “She was rude and used a lot of swear words at my parents. And stole my dad's credit card. That doesn't sound like the Ashleigh I know. It was probably some demon. Some girl-demon, I think.”

  Girl-demon, Seth thought. Sounds like Ashleigh to me. “So all this time, you've had Ashleigh controlling you?”

  “Somebody claiming to be Ashleigh,” Darcy said. “But really an evil spirit, maybe.”

  Seth thought about how Darcy had become friendly with Jenny and gotten close to her. It was Ashleigh, pretending to be poor, awkward, friendless Darcy so Jenny wouldn't be too suspicious of her. Thoughts whirled in his mind—Ashleigh and her opposite Tommy must have set some kind of trap for Jenny. The zombie-maker, the guy who was possibly the reincarnation of Seth's great-grandfather, had been involved, too, but he couldn't be sure how.

  “And then what happened?” Seth asked.

  “I said okay, I would help out Ashleigh and the angels,” Darcy said. “Then the Mexican girl angel took my hand.”

  “And then?”

  “Next thing I remember, I was at the hotel in Charleston, getting picked up by the cops. Everything in between is just like little bits and pieces of dreams that don't make any sense.” She looked down at the job application again. “Shootsy. Who can I put as a reference? All the main people at church are gone.”

  “Did they tell you where they came from?” Seth asked. “Tommy and the other girl? Or where they were going?”

  Darcy shook her head. “Heaven, I guess. Or Hell, if they were really demons and not angels.”

  “Did they say what Ashleigh was going to accomplish while she had your body?”

  “No, just that it was very important.”

  “What else can you tell me about them?”

  “That's all I know, Seth.” She looked up at him. “So I asked you to take me to Charleston with you?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you said yes?”

  “I did.”

  “Um...we stayed in a hotel together?” she asked.

  He nodded.

  “So did we, you know...?” she blushed.

  “Oh, no, we had separate rooms. It was a suite.”

  “Oh.” Darcy looked down. “'Cause it's okay if we did, you know. I mean, I wouldn't feel too bad about it.”

  “We didn't, I promise.”

  “Yeah. Why would you want to...do that...with a big fat ugly girl, anyway?” Darcy shoved to her feet. She was sweaty from the humidity and the weight of her advanced pregnancy. “I have to go turn this in. Thanks for telling me what a total jacktard I've been.”

  “Darcy, you're not ugly,” Seth said.

  “Just leave me alone, Seth,” Darcy told him. “I'm tired of everybody treating me like crap.” Then she lumbered to the front counter and smiled as she turned in her application to work at Taco Bell.

  Seth looked down at the chili cheese burrito on his tray, still untouched in its paper wrapper. He was still confused, but Darcy had given him a lot to chew on. Somehow, Ashleigh's opposite had brought Ashleigh back and put her in Darcy's body. The unnamed Mexican girl seemed to be part of that. Darcy had mentioned taking that girl's hand, so the girl's power seemed to depend on touch, too, just like Seth and Jenny, and like Ashleigh and Tommy.

  He didn't know how everything fit together, but he was starting to make some guesses. Ashleigh had taken over Darcy's body and somehow lured Jenny down to Charleston. Ashleigh's opposite, Tommy, might have used his power to induce fear in order to start the riot, creating a smokescreen against the government agencies that were also looking for Jenny. It would also be easier to kidnap someone in the middle of a riot, when craziness and violence were happening everywhere.

  Then, maybe, the zombie-maker had moved in to capture Jenny. Maybe people who were already dead were immune to Jenny pox, in which case the zombies would have done the actual seizing of Jenny.

  He didn't like the picture that was emerging at all. He'd been thinking Jenny was just avoiding him because he'd hooked up with that girl in Charleston. Now it looked like Ashleigh and her opposite had teamed up with two others of their kind in order to capture Jenny. He wondered where they all were now, and what they were doing to Jenny, and how he could possibly hope to track them down.

  Seth was sure of one thing: if Ashleigh Goodling was back in the world, then Jenny was in a lot of danger.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Ashleigh studied herself in the mirror as she applied lip gloss. She could see the reflection of Tommy behind her, sprawled on Esmeralda's bed in his underwear, smoking a cigarette and flicking the ashes in the sill of the open window.

  “You look slutty,” he said.

  “Too slutty?” Ashleigh asked. She checked herself out—low-cut blouse, short skirt, a band of brown skin visible between them. High heels.

  “Depends what you're planning to do,” Tommy said.

  “I plan to volunteer and then get hired.”

  “Guess it depends whether it's a dude or a chick making the decision.”

  “It's a dude,” Ashleigh said. “I do my research.”

  “Why can't I come with you? We don't have to show up together, they don't have to know we're together. I can help you out.”

  Ashleigh applied mascara. “Tommy, I think you're still pretty rough around the edges for this work. You're going to need some training.”

  “I'm not a dog.”

  “Polishing, then.”

  “I'm not a piece of furniture, either.” Tommy shoved off the bed and came up behind her, grabbing her around the waist. She could feel him getting hard, poking his way up under her skirt. “I'm a man.”

  “Stop it. You're sleeping with Esmeralda, not with me.” Ashleigh smiled at him anyway. She enjoyed the time they spent in bed together, when she pretended to let Esmeralda's personality out to play. Tommy never seemed to mind that “Esmeralda” was more interested in sex than in conversation.

  “I can only see her when I look at you,” he said. “Let her out for a minute before you go.” He kissed her neck. “Esmeralda, are you in there?”

  Ashleigh pulled away from him. “If you're such a man, why don't you get a job?”

  “I don't do jobs.” Tommy flopped back on the bed. “Don't like people ordering me around. I get enough of that from you.”

  “Then get a hobby,” Ashleigh said. “Do something with yourself. We've been here a week and all you've done is smoke and drink and fuck.”

  “That's the life,” Tommy said. He pulled a thick wad of cash from his pocket, from a couple of muggings he'd committed on the way across the country, plus a gas station he'd robbed in New Mexico. “If this is because you need money—”

  “It isn't,” Ashleigh said, though she took several bills from him anyway. “If I'm going to
do what I plan to do, and you're going to be Esmeralda's boyfriend, you have to do something respectable. It doesn't have to be great. Just legal.”

  “I'd rather talk to Esmeralda about this.”

  “Plus, you're an escaped convict,” Ashleigh said. “You need to keep a low profile. You can't just be robbing people every time you need cash.”

  “That's what I do,” Tommy said. “How do you expect me to get a job? I can't use my Social Security number, the cops'll find me.”

  “We're in a city full of illegal immigrants with jobs,” Ashleigh said. “Figure it out. It's not like you're busy all day.” She turned to face him. “How do I look?”

  “You better not sleep with anyone else,” Tommy said. “That's Esmeralda's body. Get laid when you've got your own.”

  “I'll take that as a You look great, Ashleigh, and good luck today!” Ashleigh said. She kissed him on the cheek. “I have to go. We can let Esmeralda out to play when I get home. Okay?”

  “Hurry the fuck back, then.”

  Ashleigh walked out through the tiny living room/kitchen and into the parking lot. A short but very muscular Latino man leaning against a low-riding black Acura stood up when she emerged from the apartment, and he folded his arms and scowled at her.

  Ashleigh tried to ignore him and hurry to the bus stop, but he stepped onto the sidewalk and blocked her way.

  “What are you doing?” he asked. “Just going to pretend you don't see me?”

  “Sorry?” Ashleigh looked closer and realized that this must be Pedro, Esmeralda's boyfriend. Ashleigh recognized him from the pictures in the living room and in Esmeralda's mother's bedroom, though oddly Esmeralda didn't have any pictures of him displayed in her own room. “Oh, hi, Pedro.”