by Edie Ramer
Cassie squirmed away from Luke, and he was aware of her wiggling body. He dropped his arms, releasing her. She grabbed the banister and pulled herself up.
Luke scrambled to his feet a step above her. From the bottom of the staircase came total silence. Like a hurricane had come and gone.
“Are you all right?” Cassie’s voice wobbled.
A grunt came up to them.
Clutching the banister, Cassie lurched down the steps and reached the hallway where Kurt sat on the wooden floor, rubbing the top of his head and wincing. Luke started down after her.
What the fuck had happened?
Kneeling, Cassie slid her arm around Kurt’s back. He groaned and latched onto her, letting her pull him up. By the time Luke reached the foyer, Kurt was on his feet, clinging to Cassie, as close as a bee sucking nectar from a flower.
Luke speeded his gait, even though the back of his head throbbed with every step.
“There were two ghosts.” Kurt’s expression was dazed, his hand gripping her shoulder. “Two ghosts knocked me down.”
“I told you to get out of the way,” Cassie snapped.
Her annoyance eased the tension from Luke’s neck and shoulders. He stepped onto the hall floor. “And I told you to leave my house.”
“Can you stand by yourself?” Cassie asked.
Kurt peered down at her, his eyes unfocused and his mouth open, doing a good imitation of the town idiot. “Did you hear me? There were two of them, a man and a woman. Two ghosts! I couldn’t see them but I heard their voices, as clear as I hear yours.”
Cassie winced and shifted the shoulder he clutched, but he didn’t appear to notice. Luke stepped forward.
“She asked if you could stand.” Without waiting for a reply, he pried Kurt’s hand off her shoulder, not being gentle about it. He nodded at Cassie. “Let go of her.”
“He might fall.”
Good. “I’ll hold him.” And if he accidentally lost his grip...
“I’m fine.” Kurt stumbled away from her and shook his head, blinking hard, then rubbed his hand over his eyes. His mouth closed and opened twice.
“Ghosts.” His voice was an awed whisper. “I touched a ghost.”
“I didn’t hear or see anything.” Luke gave Cassie a hard look. This guy is a loony. The fall down the steps—caused by his own clumsy feet—knocked his brain cells loose. That’s the story I’m giving out.
Cassie’s mouth twisted, as if she read his thoughts. “Ditto.”
Kurt whipped his head toward her. “I can’t believe you’re saying that. I know you heard them.”
“She said she didn’t hear anything.” Luke stepped behind her and put his hand on her shoulder. She tensed and he moved closer, his thigh brushing hers, his hipbone pressing against her bottom, her buttock yielding and firm at the same time.
She turned her head and gave him a hard stare, then twitched her shoulder loose and stepped to the side. Turning back to Kurt, she said, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“You’re lying.” Red blotches appeared on his cheeks.
Luke stepped forward. “Didn’t I tell you to leave? I haven’t changed my mind.”
Kurt pulled himself up to his full height, a good four inches taller than Luke. “I could sue you.”
“Yeah? I could call the cops. You’re trespassing.” Luke braced his legs and placed his fists on his hips, elbows out, making himself bigger, like an animal facing an enemy.
Chapter Twenty-four
It was hard for Cassie not to scream in frustration when two men acted like two alpha wolves, both after the same thing.
A house.
Cassie reminded herself humans were animals. But watching them it occurred to her that women had evolved to a higher level than men. “Kurt, of course you can sue. But what will you say? That ghosts pushed you down the stairs?”
Kurt slumped against the wall, rubbing his head, the machismo leaking out of him. “I think I have a concussion.”
“I’ll call a cab,” Luke said. “You can wait outside.”
“I apologize for my rudeness.” Kurt’s forced smile wouldn’t fool a toddler. “It must be the fall, I’m not myself.”
“I’m sure Luke understands.” Cassie gave Luke a gaze she hoped was as commanding as the one he’d given her a moment ago. Odd things were happening, and she wasn’t talking about the ghosts.
“Yeah, sure, whatever. I’ll get that cab.”
“Never mind, I feel better already.” Kurt pushed away from the wall and gave Cassie a wan smile before looking over her head at Luke. “I apologize again. I let my excitement overcome me.”
“Happens to me all the time,” Luke said.
Cassie swallowed a laugh but at the same time felt teary. What was the matter with her? “If you feel faint, pull off to the side and call someone.”
“You have my word.” He smiled crookedly and put his hand over his heart. His gaze flickered to Luke. Whatever he saw made his hand drop. “I’d like to come back another time.”
Cassie felt Luke’s heat radiating inches behind her and heard his deep breaths, but she kept her gaze on Kurt’s face. A small smile curved his lips and he stood relaxed, his shoulders down.
Nice try, but Cassie noticed the tension tightening the skin around his eyes. The fixed gaze on Luke’s face. His diaphragm didn’t move, which meant he was holding his breath.
“My house isn’t open for tours,” Luke said.
Kurt’s shoulders sagged and a shadow flickered across his face before he turned and left the house, not saying another word, as though he finally realized it would be like throwing pebbles at a stone wall.
As soon as the door closed behind him, Cassie faced Luke. At the same time he turned to her, about three inches of air between them. His blue eyes that had smoldered on the stairway when he slammed into her, protecting her from the rush of ghosts and Kurt, now radiated coldness and distance.
A memory came to her, the way he’d twisted during their fall on the stairway to land on the bottom. Protecting her.
That man had left the building.
“Are you all right?” She wanted to lift her hand to his face, brush her fingertips against the stubble on his chin. Instead she pressed her fist against the side of her thigh.
“Why shouldn’t I be all right?”
“I fell on you. Your back—”
“My back’s fine. We have to talk.”
“There’s nothing to talk about.” She stepped backward. “We have to talk” was probably what the peasants said to Marie Antoinette before yelling “Cut off her head!”
His jaw tightened. “I can’t have a relationship with you or any woman until Erin’s ready for it.”
“Didn’t we have this conversation yesterday? We don’t have a relationship.”
“Not yet.”
She wanted the floor to open up—beneath his feet. “I suppose I should give you credit for not mentioning me kissing you last night.” He opened his mouth to speak, but she talked over him. “But unless I imagined it, you’ve been giving me signals since the night we met.” She glared. “You’re still giving me signals. And none of them is the stop sign.”
“You’re right.”
Shock took her speech away. This was the first time a man had ever said those two words to her: You’re right.
“It’s my fault,” he went on. “I can’t trust myself around you. My life is too fucked up, even without the ghost. The best thing to do is stop now before it’s too late to stop anything. I’ll pay you the rest of the money and—”
“What are you going to do about Isabel?” She ignored the yawning pit inside her. Later, she’d pay attention to it. For now she wanted to end this and keep her dignity.
“I’ll take care of her. Play rap music.” His smile was mirthless. “I get the feeling she’d hate that.”
Cassie nodded slowly. But what if Isabel went postal again? What if she hurt Erin?
She shoved those thoughts down to
o. What happened when she was gone was none of her concern.
The party was over.
She turned and strode toward the door. She was out of here. Coming to this house was mistake number one million fifty-nine.
“Wait! Who’s the male ghost?” he called.
She kept walking. He’d fired her, damn him.
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw something move down the steps towards them. She turned her head and silently groaned
Wonderful. Just what she needed.
“You got a question,” Joe said. “You take it straight to me. I’m the one you have to answer to now.”
Chapter Twenty-five
Luke stared at the ghost the way teenagers stared at rock stars, and Cassie knew why. Joe looked too alive to be dead. Like a regular guy in his leather jacket, dressed retro, down to the Elvis haircut.
“What’re you staring at?” Joe hooked his thumbs in his belt. “Haven’t you ever seen a ghost before?”
Cassie fanned her hand in front of her mouth and choked.
“What’s the matter?” Joe’s aggression turned to concern and he zapped down the stairs to Cassie’s side.
“I’m having trouble breathing,” Cassie said. “The testosterone’s getting too thick.”
He gave her a slow smile. “Live with it, doll-face. I don’t plan on going anywhere.”
Cassie turned to Luke instead. His expression had changed, as cold as winter. “Luke, meet Joe. Joe, meet Luke, my former client.”
Joe floated closer to Cassie, not quite touching her. Glancing at him, she saw a challenge in his hooded eyes.
Luke skewed his gaze to Cassie. “How the hell does a ghost have testosterone?”
“Joe’s exceptional.”
“It’s not my stuff polluting the air,” Joe said. “I didn’t fire a woman because I couldn’t control myself.”
Luke didn’t reply, but his neck broadened, a cord standing out, and his jaw tensed as hard as his fists.
“Joe.” Cassie reached out, but pulled back before touching him. “It’s okay. I’m glad I’m not working here anymore.”
“You sure?”
Cassie looked Luke straight in the eyes, giving him the message that she meant every word. She wanted off this roller coaster that was eating her alive. These stupid, stupid, stupid feelings she had for him. “Yes. Let’s get out of here.” Get the hell out and far, far away.
Striding toward the front door, she was aware of Luke’s eyes on her back, her skin prickling.
She exited the house, not looking back. Not this time. This time it was bye-bye-baby-goodbye.
Opening her car door, she caught a glimpse of a movement in the upstairs window. Glancing up, she saw Isabel standing between the curtains. Isabel gave her two thumbs up.
The way to Isabel’s heart, she thought. Leaving.
She got in the car, her movements stiff, not saying anything to Joe in the passenger seat. Steering down the driveway, she switched on the radio to shut up her thoughts. Two guitars clashed, and Joe made a sound of repugnance. She stabbed the oldies station, and Aretha Franklin wailed out a demand for respect.
Aretha’s song ended too soon, and they drove down the highway listening to the Rolling Stones’ “Jumping Jack Flash” and Dusty Springfield’s “Son of a Preacher Man” on the local oldie station. Then the Supremes sang about stopping in the name of love. Wrong attribution. Stopping in the name of intelligence was more like it, but she supposed that title wouldn’t have sold many records.
Runaway by Dell Shannon started up as the cemetery loomed up ahead, headstones jutting up from cut grass, surrounded by a metal fence that kept out the encroaching fields on two sides and trees in the back. Voices of the dead reached out to her.
Help me. Hear me. Heal me.
Usually she could close her heart to the pull, but today she felt...vulnerable. Shaken. And today there was something extra in the voices calling her. Something she couldn’t name, taste or feel. Something she couldn’t resist.
Besides, this was one way to avoid her clamoring thoughts from going over everything that happened, again and again, an unending torture.
She braked, steering to the shoulder of the road.
No other cars were parked nearby, but the cemetery gates stood open. Cassie waited for a pickup truck to whiz by before she hopped out of the car.
“You gonna be long?” Joe floated to her side.
She strolled toward the gate. “How long is long?”
“You’ve got a smart mouth on you, woman.”
“Better than a dumb one.”
“Why you want to hang around a cemetery, I don’t know.”
Another pickup speeded toward them, music blasting. A teenager stuck his head out and leered. “Nice booty!”
Cassie glared at the back of the pickup as it raced down the road.
“You shouldn’t be here by yourself,” Joe said.
“What do you suggest? I lock myself in a nunnery?”
“I was going to say you should carry a gun, but the nunnery is a better idea.”
“Idiot.” Cassie strode ahead. If anyone accosted her, she had a size seven black shoe ready to kick their gonads into a place they didn’t belong.
After today’s events, she wished someone would stop and try.
“I’ll wait in the car.” Joe’s voice was long suffering, the kind men used when their girlfriends wanted to pick out a bra at Victoria’s Secret.
“Why don’t you come with me?” she asked, glancing behind her.
The blue cast of Joe’s complexion turned green. “The last time we stopped off at a cemetery a half dozen dead people talked to you.”
“What? Are you prejudiced against dead people? In case you forgot, you’re one of them.”
A car with a bad muffler thundered by. She strode through the open gates. Glancing sideways, she saw too long grass and an overgrown shrub. No Joe. She turned and there he was, hovering outside of the gates.
“Unbelievable. A ghost afraid of ghosts.”
“It’s not fear. I just don’t like them. They whine and they bitch. ‘Why am I here? What happened to me? I didn’t deserve this.’ It’s disgusting. I want to tell them to suck it up and act like a man.”
“Or a woman.”
“Does everything have to be equal opportunity with you?”
“It’s okay with me if men are more pathetic.”
He barked out a laugh and floated backward toward the car. “I’ll wait for you.”
She wheeled around. As she stepped further into the cemetery, three dead people rushed her. One was the color of mayonnaise left out in the sun, the other had half a face. The third, a middle-aged woman, looked as if she’d been badly beaten.
“Not now, please.” Cassie held out her hands, warding them off. These people had stories she didn’t want to hear. Stories too bad and too sad. “I’ve had a rough day.”
The woman sniffed. Her celery green dress reached below her calves, her graying hair was twirled in an elaborate bun. “I’ve had a rough century.”
“You were right, Joe,” Cassie murmured, even though he was too far away to hear. She swept a glance over the motley three in front of her. “If you don’t like it, why don’t you leave?”
“Leave?” A fourth woman floated behind the first, barefoot, wearing a white ankle-length nightgown with a frill around the neck. “Can we do that? How?”
Cassie looked down at her black shoes on the spiky grass, away from their expectant gazes. She didn’t know the process. How could she? She’d never made the journey herself. Her mother had been gone a month when Cassie helped her first dead person leave earth.
The funny thing was that she still didn’t know what it was. It was different with every dead person. All she knew was that if she kept talking, sooner or later they’d leave.
Maybe it was her sparkling personality. She bored them into heaven.
“Should we do a rain dance?” the first woman asked, her voice mocking.
The second woman tapped her bare heels together and repeated the mantra three times. Cassie opened her mouth to apologize...and the woman vanished.
Cassie’s jaw dropped. Well, shit. Then joy filled her.
This was why she’d been given the gift. The woman’s sense of exhilaration scattered through the air to her, even as she disappeared into the rays of sun.
“Sylvia?” the man with half a head asked. “Are you playing a joke on us?”
“You know Sylvia has the sense of humor of a gnat.” The first woman clicked the heels of her black shoes together and demanded to be taken to heaven, then repeated it two times.
Nothing happened. She remained standing there.
She glared at Cassie. “Why didn’t I go?”
The glow inside Cassie dimmed. She couldn’t help them all and she’d learned not to blame herself. Usually the dead person had to want to go for it to happen. But sometimes she suspected—
Another dead man appeared. “Maybe St. Peter doesn’t have you on his list.”
The others snickered.
The woman glared them into silence and started the routine again. The other men followed suit, their heels clicking like computer keys.
Cassie crossed to the back of the cemetery, dodging headstones. That routine should keep them busy—and maybe get a couple of them out of this world and into the next.
The wind gusted into her face, and she veered toward the corner where thick-branched bushes blocked the wind. Once there, she read the inscription on a granite headstone, MARGARET, BELOVED WIFE, and her lips twisted.
Once they passed, most dead people became beloved to their survivors. Even the ones who’d been murdered by the spouses who buried them.
If she died before her father, he’d ignore her instructions to be cremated. Instead, he’d gush about her over an elaborate headstone while her stepmother and half-brother would try to convince him to follow her instructions to the letter. Cremation was cheaper.
