Roses & Rye (Toil & Trouble Book 3)

by Heather R. Blair

  I slide up the bed and over his body. Trailing my fingers over those broad, inked shoulders, down the deep planes of his chest with its dark smattering of hair, memory almost gives me the feel of him.

  Almost.

  I curse and make my way lower, tracing each ridge of his stomach, craving the feel of those delicious muscles tightening under my touch, just one more time.

  That’s when I notice he’s hard.

  Oh my. I swallow, feeling dizzy. Well, it is morning. He is a guy. But I can’t help remembering the last time Jack was hard in my bed. I was so close to giving in. Closer than he probably thought.

  Or maybe not. He’s a cocky bastard, my Jack.

  Except he’s not mine now. He’s alive, and I’m not. Frustration fills me again, furious and hot. Memories pummel my psyche, of all the things Jack and I did together. And all the things we never got to do. I’ve lost so much. Losing this, too, pisses me off.

  Stubbornly, I let my hand trail down and tug at the button of his jeans. Completely stunned when it pops free.

  What the fuck? How did I do that? Did I do that? A tingling feeling teases the back of my neck, almost like a warning. I ignore it.

  And reach for another button. And another.

  Apparently, I’d make one hell of a succubus.

  Jack shifts in his sleep, muttering something under his breath as his hips roll. The last button pops free. I catch a gasp against my teeth. The man’s cock is as gorgeous as the rest of him, thickly curving over those to-die-for abs. I want to touch. Fuck, yes. But not nearly as much as I want to taste. I could lick him like a damn Popsicle right now.

  Death is the antithesis of life, a perfect vacuum devoid of all sensation. The memories try to fill it, but they aren’t life. And nothing screams life more than hot, dirty sex.

  I want sex, goddammit. And orgasms. Like a hundred of them. All in a row.

  I don’t think he’s completely awake—his eyes are still closed—but Jack’s fingers curl around his shaft, stroking slowly. I let out a breath that is half a moan. I already know I can’t satisfy myself (Yes, I’ve tried, don’t judge. Ghosts just want to have fun, too.) But that’s not going to stop me from enjoying the view.

  I can’t help leaning in, trying to catch his scent even though I know it’s hopeless. But then it’s there, wood smoke and pine, faint over the scent of my own sheets. I almost fall off the bed in shock. It was a memory, that’s all. I lean in again just below his throat and inhale. The smell hits me again, but this time there’s more. My lips hover over his skin, right above his collarbone. And I can feel the warmth of his skin, hear the beat of his heart.

  I start to shake. Then Jack’s fingers slide into my hair, making me go absolutely still. The feeling of being touched is too much. It brings tears to my eyes.

  And this time I can feel them.

  I don’t know what the hell is happening, if it’s Jack dreaming about me so hard, me needing to touch him so badly or a combination of both, but I’m terrified to break the spell. And completely captivated.

  Jack is moaning my name now, low and rough. He twists his hand around himself once more from root to tip, but the other is still tangled at my nape, his big, heavy palm cupping the back of my head, gently but insistently guiding me down. This is not possible. I know it’s not, but it feels so real there is no way I’m going to stop to question it.

  Hesitantly, I put one hand on his stomach, gasping when I feel the warm, satiny ridges there, the ones tensing hard enough to bounce a quarter off of. I couldn’t tear my gaze away from him even if I wanted to. He’s like a magnet, drawing me in.

  In every way possible.

  Unable to resist, I dig my nails into his skin and look up warily, but his eyes remain closed, thick lashes sealing away those icy depths. Either Jack always has one hell of an imagination—or he’s as reluctant for this to end as I am.

  His shoulders clench as his hips suddenly buck, working his length through those tightly clenched fingers. I can’t resist any longer. I put my mouth on him.

  Instantly, Jack comes in a hot burst, stifling a shout. The exquisite feelings start to drain away at once. All of them. The smells, the taste of him. Until nothing is left. Just me staring down as Jack’s eyes fly open. For one second I swear those misty green eyes look right into mine. A shiver slides down my spine like a swiftly melting ice cube. Then he blinks and it’s gone.

  All gone. I’m invisible and amorphous once more.

  I stumble back off the bed as Jack bolts upright, his throat working as he looks wildly around the room. His chest is sheened with sweat, muscles still jumping visibly in his arms, the protective runes inked along them shimmering in the gathering shadows. What the hell just happened?

  “Seph?” he croaks, his voice thick from his orgasm and filled with a soul-deep sadness that tears at my every cell. I flee, unable to stay in that room another second. I crash headlong into my dresser. Being a ghost, I don’t actually crash, but before I know it, I’m free-falling right through the wall and tumbling through the early morning air to land softly on Mrs. Rudd’s sidewalk. It doesn’t hurt, of course. Nothing hurts a ghost, not physically. But my heart doesn’t care about logistics, it feels crushed all over again. Just like the instant I died.

  “Where the hell have you been?”

  It takes me a minute to place the furious voice. I haven’t quite transitioned from the whole giving-my-ex-lover-a-psychic-blowjob deal, so it takes my mind a bit to realize our batshit-crazy neighbor is talking to me.

  My eyes trail from the carpet slippers to the stout, stocking-covered legs and up.

  Yup. She’s staring right at me, her hands on her ample, robe-covered hips.

  “Shut that mouth, Persephone Nancy Gosse, or you’re gonna be catching more than cocks with it. Get off your ass and come inside. There’s no time to lose.”

  11

  “Wait. You can see me?”

  She stomps a slippered foot. “Of course I can, dearie. I’m crazy, not blind.” She reaches out a hand and dumbly I try to grasp it, but of course it goes right through her flesh. She blows out a breath, fluttering the one lank strand of yellow-ochre hair that has made its way free of her curlers.

  “Up, dammit. I always forget I can’t touch you young ones.”

  I get to my feet, still feeling blindsided. “Mrs. Rudd, what’s going on?”

  “’What’s going on?’ she says. What’s going on? I ask you.” She seems to roll her eyes at someone I can’t see, before turning back to me. “I really wish you would’ve come to me earlier. We’re cutting it terribly short now.”

  “Cutting what short?

  She gives me a surprisingly stern look. “Don’t you think it’s about time you stopped skulking around and got to work?”

  What? I’m still trying to process the fact that someone can actually see me, not to mention whatever the hell just happened with Jack. “Mrs. Rudd, I am a ghost. What am I supposed to work on?”

  Her chortle is as richly amused as her words. “Coming back to life, of course. And we have to do it by Beltane or you’re a ghost forever, girlie.”

  “Beltane? You mean my birthday?”

  “Well, it was one before it was the other, you know. Self-centered goose. Now come in and have some tea. We have plans to make.”

  She opens the door as if I’m alive, and I float over the threshold, still trying to catch up. One thing makes its way up through the flotsam and jetsam that is my mind at the moment.

  “What plans? And how did you know what I was doing with Jack?”

  She laughs. “There’s not much the dead get up to that I don’t hear. It’s kind of a side effect of being psychic.”

  “That must be—“

  “Entertaining. Oh it is, dearie. It is.” She shuts the door and leads me farther into the dim interior.

  “I was going to say awkward, but whatever.” I stare around the room. I’ve never been inside Mrs. Rudd’s house even though we’ve lived next door to her ever
since I can remember. It’s not exactly decorated the way you picture an old woman’s home. There are posters of KISS and Styx (the band, not my sister’s boyfriend) on the deep emerald-green walls. A couple signed photos of various Green Bay Packers players are also displayed proudly, including a grinning Brett Favre that has, “Janice, thanks for everything, B” scrawled across the bottom. The ‘everything’ is underlined.

  Good god.

  All in all it looks like the house of an aging groupie, not a woman who can apparently see the dead. There are no crystal balls, no beaded curtains or tarot cards. Just a lot of rock-n-roll memorabilia, including…

  “Is that a plaster cast of Gene Simmons’s tongue?”

  “It was worth immortalizing, dearie,” she chortles. “Believe you me.”

  Ugh.

  “Mrs. Rudd. Why am I here?”

  “Well, when a person dies…”

  “No, not here in the existential sense. Here as in your house, here. What did you mean about Beltane and being late?”

  “Oh that. Well, your mother and I had a plan, you see. For just such an emergency.”

  “My mother knew I was going to die?”

  “In a manner of speaking,” she says evasively, opening the door to a closet overflowing with boxes and bags. A poster from The Rocky Horror Picture Show is on the back, Tim Curry in all his fishnet glory. “She’s always believed in being prepared, your mother. Now where is that package? Speaking of which, your man has quite a nice—“

  “Mrs. Rudd. Please don’t go there. Please.”

  She mutters something about parochial witches and comes out of the closet with a small box in hand. “Here it is.”

  “You know about us being witches?” And ghosts. Which is more than I ever did. I had no idea the afterlife was real until I became a part of it. “Are you some kind of FTC?”

  She laughs and thrusts a small velvet pouch into my hands, which of course falls to the ground immediately. She sighs and picks it back up, shaking it at me like a wagging finger. “I’m not one of you, no. I was your mother’s best friend. A very long time ago. I was kind of a naughty little thing, you see, and it got me into trouble. Accused of being a witch. Comes of being able to see things you shouldn’t. Imagine my surprise when I found out Oriane really was a witch.”

  She scratches under her hat at a cockeyed curler, looking pensive.

  “I was little bit furious to be honest. Called her the devil’s spawn and worse. Until she took me to 1969. Then I got over everything in rather a hurry. Lovely year. Lovely men.” She sighs. “You haven’t lived until you’ve given Mick Jagger the full reverse cowgirl on—“

  “Alrighty then, Mrs. Rudd, if we could just focus, please?” For the love of god and my all too vivid imagination.

  “Well, that’s what you have to do, of course. Focus.”

  I give her a blank look.

  “Stop fighting the memories, child. Focus on them. How do you think you pulled off your little BJ act tonight? The more you practice, the better you’ll get. On both accounts.”

  I sit for a second, pondering this. Then I glare at her. “There is nothing wrong with my technique.”

  She shrugs. “If you say so.”

  I catch myself just as I’m about to say something that will take this conversation further. I don’t want to take this any further. Its gone way too far as it is, even for me. Back to the ghost thing. “But I take it focusing is not going to be enough to bring me back to life?”

  “Of course not. But it’s enough to make you corporeal when we need you to be. And you’re going to need to be for this to work. You have to be able to cast.”

  I blink at her. “Dead witches can’t cast.”

  She shakes her head. “Is that so?” Then she nods. “Well, actually it is. You can’t cast your own magic, but you can activate spellwork. At least a particular one. One that your mother created just for you.”

  “Is this it?” I stare down at the bundle in her hands.

  “That’s part of it,” she says evasively, grabbing a box of sidewalk chalk from a shelf that also contains some dusty jars of jam, an old boom box and a vinyl cover of Deep Purple’s Made in Japan. “Open it up. I think she left you a note.”

  She sets the bag down at my feet.

  “Um. I can’t.” I’m excited though—something from my mother. At last. A warm tingle is filling my chest, which is probably my imagination, but I don’t care. I miss her. Despite everything, I really, really miss my mom. I reach for the bag again.

  My fingers swipe right through the bunched top. Nothing. Not even the hint of softness.

  “I told you to focus, remember? You want to read the note, you’re gonna have to get it yourself.”

  “This is a test, isn’t it?”

  “It’s practice.”

  “I’d rather practice some more on Jack,” I mutter under my breath. “Or have him practice on me.”

  She chortles. “Wouldn’t we all?” Then, just as I’m about to slap her, “But you can’t let him see you yet. Absolutely not.”

  “Why? Is that part of the spell?” I say while she busies herself rolling up one of the carpets to expose the old hardwood floors beneath. For a chubby old bat, she’s pretty spry. She also doesn’t look nearly as dowdy as she did fifteen minutes ago.

  “No. It just wouldn’t do. Your man would get distracted. You would get distracted. We need focus, remember?”

  “Fine, fine, Yoda. Keep your panties on.”

  It scares me, letting the memories in. Even though I just did it with Jack. It was much easier to distract myself from that awful falling-apart feeling with him there. Without him, there’s no net. I’m afraid the memories will eat me whole.

  It’s a good thing ghosts don’t need to sleep. Two hours later, I finally hit upon the right memory. Mom wasn’t very traditional, but every once in a while she’d go hog wild about one holiday or the other. This one time it was Christmas. I think I was about seven. I came downstairs—this little witch who’d never seen a Christmas tree up close except at the mall. Next to it (because they wouldn’t fit underneath with the train right out of The Polar Express going round and round, whistling merrily) was a pile of presents nearly as tall as I was. It took me over an hour to open them all. Hell, maybe two. Jett got me a sword. My first one and my last. I can feel the paper beneath my fingertips as I open it, the string loosening…

  The cord loosens and the bag at my feet opens. “I did it!”

  Mrs. Rudd looks up. Her arms are covered in chalk dust up to the elbows. She’s been drawing happily all over her floor the entire time I’ve been struggling. Both couches are pushed against the wall. The gorgeous hardwood floor is covered in pastel mandalas. What the h—

  “Never mind me, read the note.”

  Despite myself, I’m excited, so excited I can’t quite manage to hold the tiny piece of parchment that covers two rolls of spellwork, one bright pink, the other a vivid yellow, both tied with cobalt string.

  What are my mom’s first words to me in over three years? Are they sweet, sad or sappy? I love you more than life, sweetheart, so here’s how to get yours back. Perhaps wise and noble? Death is not the end, merely the next step to a well-organized…

  Wait, I think that last is J.K. Rowling. Anyway, no.

  None of the above. It’s just typical Mom. Demanding and a bit vague.

  Seph,

  If you’re reading this, do everything Janice says. Only don’t eat the brownies. No matter how good they smell. And could you check on the peonies? I don’t think anyone’s deadheaded the poor things in years.

  Mom

  That’s it?

  “I’m gonna slap her.” I don’t realize I’ve said the words aloud until Mrs. Rudd, a.k.a. Janice, lets out a chuckle.

  “Oriane has that effect on people.”

  “Even dead ones, apparently.” Mom being even more scatterbrained than usual. She should know the stupid peonies don’t bloom until June. I toss the note aside. Well, I gi
ve it a pansy-ass brush with the edge of a finger and it flutters down to the floor. I still can’t really ‘feel’ it, not like normal. Certainly not as clearly as I felt things with Jack. But moving anything feels pretty damn empowering, until Mom’s note. So I reach for the Technicolor rolls of spellwork, only to have Mrs. Rudd snatch them away.

  “Hey! That’s not very nice, Janice. What kind of name is that for a woman from medieval France anyway?”

  “Normandy, dearie. And it isn’t my Christian name, not that there’s much Christian about me anymore.” She snorts again. “My given name was Heloysis.”

  “Oh, that’s rather—“

  “Hideous? I know,” she says cheerfully. “That’s why I changed it when she brought me forward. Janice seemed very hip at the time. Though I suppose it dates me now.” She gives me a pensive look. Didn’t she have more wrinkles before? And does her hair seem lighter around those curlers?

  Be nice to the woman who’s trying to bring you back to life, Persephone. “Nah, it’s cool. Kind of a retro vibe.”

  “Don’t try and butter me up, dearie. I know you’ve never liked me.”

  Can ghosts blush? “It’s not that I didn’t like you. It’s that you terrified the shit out of me.”

  “Oh?” She straightens, her lips curving almost proudly. “Really? Ha. I guess Oriane’s plan worked too well. Play the batty neighbor well enough and the kid buys it, too.”

  “Why did she want you to playact in the first place? And why did she never tell me who you were?”

  “She never told anyone. She’s trying to keep me safe. I’m just a proper human, you know. Well, except for the ‘seeing dead people’ gig. It’s a rare talent and she told me it was better no one in your world knew about it. Or that we were acquainted from way back when.”