Dead People

by Edie Ramer

  “That’s his privilege. But if Luke hassles me about it, I’m out of here. Let him get rid of his own damn ghost.”

  “That’s the attitude,” Joe said.

  Yeah, it was. She just hoped that tomorrow she’d feel this brave and positive and, most of all, pissed off.

  Chapter Twenty-two

  The knock on Luke’s door stopped him in mid strum, jerking him out of his song.

  “I hate to bother you when you’re making music.” Tricia’s voice on the other side of the door held a discordant note.

  Erin. Luke set down his guitar, bounded to the door and yanked it open.

  Her fist coming down for another knock, Tricia stumbled into the studio. He grabbed her arms, stopping her inches before she smashed against him. She looked at him, her wide eyes almost level with his, her lips parted as if for a kiss.

  “What’s wrong?” He released her and stepped back. Once upon a time he would have let her fall against him, he would have put his arms around her, he would have taken what she offered without a second thought.

  He wasn’t that man anymore.

  “Nothing. Well, I don’t think it’s serious.” She handed him the white phone from the kitchen. Her voice lowered. “It’s a woman. She insists on speaking to you. Says it’s important.”

  The smooth plastic shell was warm from her clutch. “Did she give a name?”

  She lurched back and he guessed she heard the menace in his voice. Fuck, he was killing the messenger, just like the average idiot. And he’d always prided himself on being an above-average idiot.

  “Joy. She said her name is Joy.” Words tumbled out of Tricia’s mouth, her speech so fast she could’ve been a New Yorker if not for the flattened vowels. “I told her you were busy with your songs, but she said you could write them anytime.”

  “It’s okay, I’ll take it.” What did his mother want now?

  Tricia’s puckered brow smoothed and she beamed before leaving. He held the door open and waited for her to start down the steps before lifting the phone to his ear.

  “Hello, Joy.” He strode to the window facing the lake and gazed at the blue waters, barely rippling today. Peaceful, calming, a bandage on the storm roiling within him ever since Cassie had left the house.

  “I hope you tell that girl to let me through whenever I call.” Joy’s normally cheery voice held a tart note. In the background, he heard Judy Garland singing “...off to see the Wizard.”

  “You should’ve told her you were my mother.”

  An exclamation of disgust passed through the phone, and Luke grimaced. The word “mother” was synonymous with “old” to the only parent he’d ever known.

  “How’s your new gig?” he asked, letting her off the hook.

  “Everyone agrees it’s going to be a hit.” Her lilt returned. “The big wigs at Lifetime are crazy about the show. The producer loves the way I do Jolene’s face when she morphs into a vampire.”

  He perched on his stool and picked up his guitar, strumming it. “Vampires bite and ghosts howl. You gotta bite back and you gotta stand tall.”

  “Very funny. Not. Luke, I’ve got something important to tell you.”

  He stopped strumming. “Go on.”

  A dead silence made him sit straight. His mother could outtalk a talk show host. Hesitation meant trouble.

  “What the hell is it?”

  “Vanessa called a little after two this morning. She was crying and hysterical, it about broke my heart. She said she missed Erin so much it was killing her. She just wanted to talk to her, to hear her sweet voice.”

  His grip on the phone tightened. “Tell me you didn’t give her my phone number.”

  “Baby, I was half asleep. I didn’t mean to. She sounded so needy. I knew I shouldn’t tell her, but I couldn’t say no. She’s a mother! A bad one, but still a mother. I know how she feels. God knows I’d never win the Greatest Mom Oscar”

  “Compared to Vanessa, you’re the gold standard of mothers.”

  “Really?” Her tone changed, the notes higher. “Truly?”

  “Really, truly.” He couldn’t stay mad at his mother any more than he could kick a kitten. She wasn’t bad, just...childlike. “Don’t worry about giving her my number. I’ll just change it.”

  “I’m sorry, honey. I shouldn’t have done it.”

  Yeah, she shouldn’t have.

  “You’ll give me the new number right away?”

  He frowned, but saw no way out. Although she dressed and acted like a teenager, Joy was two years away from sixty, her parents dead for a decade, no sisters or brothers. She’d even kicked out the boy toy who’d been freeloading on her—and in extension, on Luke—for the last two years. If something good happened, her multitude of friends would rally around before she could say “Party time!” If it went the other direction, they’d scurry away like rats fleeing a flood.

  The only rat left would be...him.

  “But don’t give my number to Vanessa again,” he said. “I don’t want her upsetting Erin.”

  “Won’t you reconsider, honey? I read in Variety last week that she finished rehab.”

  “A lot of junkies finish rehab. One hour later, they’re higher than the Eiffel Tower.”

  “Phooey on you. You need a heart more than the Tin Man ever did.”

  “I’m in the Heartland now. Maybe I’ll find a spare lying around.” He strummed his guitar. “Anyone got a spare heart? My baby left me and mine fell apart.”

  He groaned inwardly. Bad, that was bad.

  “Can’t you be serious?” she asked.

  “If you wanted to talk about hearts, you should’ve had a daughter.” Or been around more often when he was growing up, instead of fawning over her latest boyfriend.

  “Oh, phooey. You’ve always been closed up tighter than a prison cell. Even when you were a kid I never knew what you were thinking. Hey, I gotta go. Call me with the number, okay? And, honey, thanks for not being mad. I love you.”

  “Yeah. Me too.” He clicked off. His mother’s middle name should’ve been Melodrama. Emotions had one place for him—in his songs.

  He started strumming again, his body attuned to the rhythm. Dum dum dum, dum dum dum, dum, dum, DUM. “My heart’s lost,” he sang, “I don’t want it found. The mushy thing was taking me down.”

  A laugh reverberated through the room. He glanced around, but didn’t see anyone. “Isabel?” he asked.

  She didn’t answer, but he knew it was the ghost. Another woman.

  They were haunting him.

  He strummed again. “Ghost, ghost, go away. Don’t come back ‘till my dying day.”

  Then he put the guitar down to call the phone provider. Any minute, Erin should be home soon. Then he’d have to deal with her. He mouth turned down.

  She was going to hate him even more than she already did.

  ***

  Standing in the kitchen, Erin looked at Luke as if he was a monster intent on ruining her life. “I hate you.”

  He’d figured he’d be the bad parent out of this. “I’m doing it for your own good.” He grimaced. He must’ve learned that line from a bad sitcom. It wasn’t anything his mother ever said to him.

  Tears welled up in her blue eyes, reminding Luke of the lake in his back yard. “You can’t take away my computer. If I don’t answer my mom, she’ll think something happened to me.”

  “Your mother is out of control. I was going to let you keep your computer, but after she called Grandma Joy, I can’t trust her.”

  From her tearful glare, she wasn’t buying the song he was singing. He knew it was useless, but he had to keep talking, he had to keep trying.

  She was his kid, and maybe something he said would get through her stubborn head.

  “She’s bringing you down, telling you you’re responsible for her mistakes. Believe me, when it comes to messing up her life, your mother doesn’t need any help. She does fine all by herself.”

  “She’ll hurt herself!”

 
; Women like Vanessa didn’t hurt themselves, Luke thought, they hurt their friends. They hurt their husbands. They hurt their lovers.

  Most of all, they hurt their children.

  “You can’t save her, she has to save herself.”

  “No! I hate you.” She snapped around, her hair flying, and dashed out of the kitchen and up the back stairs. He stared after her, feeling helpless.

  Maybe he should have listened to Cassie and let Erin keep the computer.

  Of all the gigs he’d had, the hardest was being a father.

  ***

  Cassie parked in front of the turreted house a half hour earlier than usual. She’d woken with a bad feeling, as though she’d made a mistake the size of a Grand Canyon. But she was too stubborn to back out and there was another component that she couldn’t deny. Letting Luke see another man admiring her.

  It was a stupid, stupid, phenomenally stupid thing to do—a ploy worthy of an insecure teenager. She’d been that insecure teenager, and maybe it still lodged somewhere inside of her. Right next to the small girl grieving the loss of her mother.

  At least she was smart enough to set up the tour so it would be over before Erin returned from school. A white VW convertible pulled up behind her rental, and she sucked in a deep breath.

  “I don’t like him,” Joe said for the tenth time today. For the tenth time, she ignored him.

  When she got out of her car, so did Kurt out of his. Their car doors slammed at the same time. Synchronicity, but a twist in her belly gave her a “this isn’t good” signal.

  Kurt stood with his hands flat on his car hood, staring at the house. Wondering what captivated him, she gave the house a look-over, and her skin prickled. She got the feeling that the house was trying to tell her something.

  Just what she needed. Houses speaking to her in addition to dead people.

  Footsteps on the driveway dragged her gaze to Kurt, heading toward her.

  “Did you have Tricia look up the background of the house?” she asked.

  He stopped two feet away and blinked fast, then held out his hands, palms up. “You got me.”

  No, she didn’t. And didn’t want him either. “Why?”

  “Nothing nefarious. The house would be a perfect bed and breakfast, a step up from the motel. I wanted it when it was for sale, but couldn’t afford the price. I’m keeping my hopes up that the ghost frightens your client away, so I can buy it on the cheap.” He gave her a lopsided grin that was sheepish and charming, designed to get under her defenses. “It made good business sense to find out the history of the house.”

  “What if I can’t convince Isabel to leave?” His smile wasn’t working. She was impervious to charm. Maybe that’s what drew her to Luke. He didn’t charm and he didn’t bullshit.

  “I’m hoping you won’t convince her to leave.” Kurt looked at the house, his eyes glowing. “People will clamor to stay in a place with a real ghost. I’ll charge double. Hell, triple. I didn’t know it was haunted before or I’d have gone into debt to buy it.”

  She stared at him. He returned his gaze to her and shrugged. “I’m being bloody honest here. You know everything about me.”

  “I seriously doubt that.”

  He winked. “All that’s important. The tour still on?”

  She looked at the house and frowned. Something flickered in a second-floor window. Isabel? Cassie was aware of Joe heading inside the house, going through the door as if it were invisible.

  He was probably looking for a good seat to see the fun when she told Luke about Kurt.

  The bad feeling worsened.

  Chapter Twenty-three

  “What are you doing?” Joe asked.

  The red-haired ghost standing in the second story hall squealed and flew up a foot. She blanched, her ectoplasm dimming, her face shimmering. Still floating, she pointed at him. “You’re a...a...a...”

  He grinned. Nothing he liked better than to be helpful. “A ghost. Like you.”

  “Go away.” She made the sign of a cross.

  “Lady, I’m not a vampire.” He made the sign of a cross right back and floated up a foot, the same height as her. “I’m a good Catholic, dead or alive.”

  “Why are you here? This is my home.”

  He shook his head. This new generation of ghosts clung to their possessions. They didn’t get that people mattered, not stuff. “You’ll never get to heaven with that attitude.”

  She puffed up, her plump bosoms expanding like filled water balloons. “If you’re the expert on going to heaven, why aren’t you there?”

  “You got me.” He grinned.

  “No, I don’t. Go away.”

  He chuckled—and she disappeared.

  “Isabel?” He looked around, feeling her vibrations. “I know you’re sticking around, I know you’re curious. You may as well come out and talk to me. I can let go of the ectoplasm and find you.”

  “It’s bad enough I share my home with them.” Her disembodied voice could have come from any direction. “I’m not sharing it with you.”

  “How are you planning to stop me?”

  She didn’t answer, and he chuckled. For a second, he considered chasing after her and finding her.

  “If you don’t leave,” her voice traveled, thin and eerie, from a few feet in front of him, “I’ll have to hurt you.”

  “Lady, I’m already dead. What more can you do?”

  “Ha! I can do more and I will do more. Get out before I show you.”

  Hearing the determination in her voice, he stopped grinning.

  She was bluffing. But he drifted toward the door.

  “I’m sticking around to make sure you don’t hurt Cassie again. You touch her, and it’s me you’ll have to worry about, not the other way around.”

  She followed him. He could feel the emotion radiating from her. Frustration and anger. And something else that took him an instant to identify.

  Fear.

  ***

  Luke set his coffee cup on the granite counter top and glared at the tall, lanky man standing at the edge of his kitchen a guitar pick away from Cassie. The day had started off lousy and was sliding downhill. First Erin refused to talk to him before she left for school this morning, his manager phoned him after a hysterical call from Vanessa that Luke told her to ignore, and every song he put together sounded like something he’d done already.

  And for the last hour, all he could do was think about Cassie and how he needed to stay away from her. Hard to do when he needed her to get rid of his ghost. And now he’d come down for a cup of coffee and Cassie brought into his house this English phony with a con man smile.

  “This isn’t a tourist spot,” Luke said. “My house isn’t open to tours.”

  Cassie crossed her arms over her chest. “We won’t bother you.”

  Luke glared harder. If Cassie wanted to flirt with tall, blond and chinless, she could do it on her own damn time. “No.”

  He could see she was about to argue. She was a woman, and that’s what they did. But instead of saying anything, she speared him a lethal gaze that should have burned a hole through his heart.

  The hell with this. He knew how to handle it.

  Leaving his coffee behind, he stomped past them and out of the kitchen. Cassie would probably think he was jealous, but let her think what she wanted. It was his fucking haunted house. He didn’t do tours, he didn’t share.

  He strode down the hall, deciding to take the main staircase instead of the back steps. Let chinless see him claim the staircase. If need be, he’d mark the house like a wild animal, pissing in all the corners. He was near the top of the second floor when he heard their voices float up from the front hall, Cassie’s clipped tones and Kurt’s, deeper and cajoling.

  Then Isabel screeched from the second floor hallway. “I told you! Get out of my house!”

  Luke started. Was she shouting at him?

  “Get out!” she repeated.

  A man’s laughter belted out just a few feet abo
ve Luke. He glanced up but no one was there.

  Shit. Another ghost?

  “Make me,” a smooth tenor said.

  Luke reached out, leaning forward. Three steps up, where a man’s legs would be on the second floor hall landing, his hand dipped into a flow of ice. Invisible ice.

  He jerked back. “What the fuck—”

  Footsteps pounded up the stairs.

  Luke backed down a half dozen steps. He wasn’t afraid but he wasn’t a fool. He glanced behind him. Kurt was taking the steps two at a time. Cassie followed him, her mouth grim.

  “I’ll make you leave, all right!” Isabel shrieked. “You don’t belong here.”

  “Two ghosts. Fucking Christ. Where are they?” Kurt stopped next to Luke, panting. “This is amazing! I hear them but I can’t see—”

  “Neither of us belongs anywhere on earth,” the male voice said from further up the staircase. “You want me to leave? Ladies first.”

  Kurt’s head tilted back, his face turning red, his breaths huffing out. “This is bloody perfect.” He took another step up.

  Cassie stopped four steps behind Luke. “Kurt, I think you’d better get back.”

  Luke was damn well sure Kurt should get back. Get back to England. Better yet, Antarctica.

  He opened his mouth, but before he could say anything a whooshing sound came from above. Luke once witnessed a wildfire, and the wind and the out-of-control fire had made that same sound.

  “Against the wall!” he yelled to Cassie, flattening his back against the wall.

  Kurt took another step up. Cassie’s gaze swung toward Luke, her forehead creasing, her feet not moving.

  “Now!” Luke shouted as a blurred outline of a man and a woman wrestling together hurtled down the stairway.

  Then Kurt screamed and toppled backward, plunging down the steps, straight toward Cassie.

  She seemed to move in slow motion. Too slow. Luke leapt at her, grabbing her arm, twisting her out of Kurt’s way. Luke’s back slammed against the wall, crushing Cassie against him. Then he lost his balance, dropping to the steps with Cassie on top of him.

  Kurt somersaulted past them, inches away. His head thumped on every third step, the sound like knuckles rapping on an empty melon. Something smashed against the wall, and at the same time Luke was aware of Cassie on top of him, chest to chest, pelvis to pelvis. Kurt yelped.