“Hey,” he said, catching me. “What’s the matter?”
“Where the hell have you been?” Another swing. Another miss.
“Getting my ass reamed by the Bureau of Supernatural Affairs Death and Afterlife liason.”
Gaybeard froze, his face creaking toward a smile as he stared in Crixus’s direction.
“Not like that,” Crixus corrected.
The pirates resumed fighting.
“Where the hell were you when we could have just materialized in here and grabbed the pants!”
“What pants?” he asked, ducking another blow. “What the hell are you talking about?”
“His pants,” I shouted, landing a solid kick to the demigod’s shin. “The pants of the ghost pirate who invaded my room just before you disappeared. Again!”
“He was in your room?” Liam appeared at my elbow, breeches draped over his forearm. “What was he doing in your room?”
Breath evaporated from my lungs. Liam on one side. Crixus on the other. Naked malice crackled through the air between them.
Crixus leaned back on the heels of his black motorcycle boots. “Before or after she begged for my cock?”
I didn’t have time to make my own protest. Liam swung, and swung hard, his arm a black blur in my peripheral vision. But Crixus was already gone. Supernatural reflexes saw him clean away by the time Liam’s blow sliced through empty air.
“Cute parlor tricks, Crickets,” Liam said, turning to find the demigod behind him. “Where I come from, we have a word for a man who can’t take a hit.”
“And do you have a name for men who can’t deliver one?”
“Stop this!” I said, wedging myself between them. “Right now.”
“I should have known this shit show had something to do with you.” Liam stabbed a finger into Crixus’s sternum. “She had her shit together before you came along.”
“Hey!” I protested. “I still have my shit together.”
“Now she’s breaking into museum to steal fucking pants, talking to people who aren’t there...” Liam continued.
“Just because you can’t see them doesn’t mean they aren’t here.” Crixus caught Liam’s hand and shoved it away. “But then, that’s not surprising, for a man who can’t see the woman he wants doesn’t want him.”
“If you two think this kind of chauvinistic discourse is going to impress me—”
“She sure as hell wanted me earlier,” Liam taunted. “Seems you didn’t leave too big an impression.”
“He can leave an impression on me,” Gaybeard purred, leaping to avoid the downstroke of Sinpants’s cleaver.
“Awk! Big boy!” the parrot added.
“Stay the fuck away from me, Gaybeard,” Crixus growled.
“What did you call me?” Liam’s hand inched closer to his jacket.
Gaybeard’s artificially reddened lip pooched out in a pout as he scuttled away. “How come she gets all the men? And with a pinchy face like that!”
“My face is not pinchy! And Liam Whatshisface, don’t you even think about it.”
I wasn’t quick enough to stop Liam before his hand returned, attached to the handle of a long black gun with a longer, black silencer on its muzzle.
“What’s the matter, Crickets? You like showing those powers around. How about a demonstration?”
“Liam! No! No shooting people!”
“But he’s not a person.” Liam clicked the gun’s hammer. “At least, not a human.”
“He’s not?”
Until this moment, I had completely forgotten about Dean, who might as well have been dipping into a tub of popcorn for the rapt expression on his face.
“He’s just kidding,” I said. “Aren’t you, Liam?”
“Let’s ask an expert.” Crixus jerked his chin toward the gun. “What do you think, Doctor? Is he compensating?”
Light flared in the dim gallery, and for a moment I was flash-blind. When spots ceased to dance before my eyes, I looked down to find Crixus on the floor spread-eagle, eyes closed, mouth open.
I blinked at Liam. Horrified, disbelieving.
“You shot him!” Dean stammered.
“You shot him,” I repeated, reduced now to the approximate awareness given to livestock and preschoolers.
Crixus sat bolt upright with a gasp, massaging a scorched hole in the center of his black T-shirt. “Son of a bitch! That really fucking hurt!”
The bullet rolled off him with a metallic clink as he got to his feet. He picked it up and winged at back at Liam, who dove out of the way as it ricocheted off the wall and shattered a glass case.
Alarms shrieked through the building. Gaybeard and Sinpants vanished back into the ether, their epic battle forgotten.
“You stupid fucker!” Liam’s gaze fixed on the front windows of the gallery. Lights flicked on in sleepy houses on the other side of the street. “The cops are less than a block away!”
“Let’s go!” I turned to race back down the hall we had entered from, but Liam stopped me, shoving the breeches into my arms.
“You’ll never make it in time.” He turned to Crixus, stringing together words under his breath that would have made the filthiest sailor blush. “Get her out of here.”
*****
Crixus held me as the last orgasmic spasms passed. My room at the bed and breakfast assembled itself around us. Even after a dozen times of traveling with him this way, the disorienting effects never lessened. I’d never bothered to ask about the physics, figuring the science of disappearing in one place and reappearing in another would involve the word magic at some point.
As soon as I was certain my legs could hold my weight, I shoved myself away from Crixus before my urge to tear his pants off with my teeth overrode the first-class lecture I had been working on since his sudden departure earlier this evening.
“Just what the hell was all that about?”
Crixus rolled over onto his back, his arms folded behind his head on the bed where he had landed us. “All what?”
“Conveniently disappearing when the ghost hunters showed up. Popping in right in the middle of us trying to get Sinpants’s treasure. Picking a fight with Liam.”
“I already told you. I didn’t conveniently disappear. I was summoned. There are rules about interfering with spirit world. I broke one.”
“Which one?”
“The one that dictates what immortals can and can’t do when it comes to spirits and humans who can see them.” His blue eyes had gone icy, chilling me when they came to rest upon my face.
The question I had been trying to chase away all evening circled once, then landed with full force in my mind.
“Why can I see ghosts when Liam, Kim, and Dean can’t?” In speaking the words, I had made them real.
“Doctor, I don’t think you’re ready for the answer to that question.” Rarely had I heard Crixus sound serious, so free of caprice.
“Why not?”
“The same reason you’re still afraid of me.”
“Afraid of you?” I walked over to the edge of the bed and perched next to his recumbent form. “I thought I was begging for your cock.”
A hint of mischief teased the demigod’s lips. “Your hit man didn’t like that one bit.”
“It also didn’t happen.”
“But you did admit that you want me.” His hand came to rest on my knee. “Progress.”
“Crixus, just because I want you doesn’t mean that…sleeping with you is a good idea.” I had chickened out at the last moment, afraid of what fucking would sound like spoken aloud to Crixus, who needed no encouragement in that respect. Maybe I would practice saying it at home in the quiet of my bedroom when Crixus was half a world away.
“Who said anything about sleeping?”
“See?” I said, scooting his hand away before the sensation of his skin on mine could rob me of my reasoned argument. “Statements like that just reinforce what I’m saying. You’re so…casual about it. You want it, so it’s yours.”
“Since when is knowing what you want a bad thing?”
“It’s not knowing what you want that’s the problem. It’s controlling those desires and manifesting them in a healthy adult context.”
“You’re talking like a doctor again,” he teased. “Are you afraid you couldn’t keep up?”
“It’s not that simple.”
“It could be.”
An exasperated sigh escaped me as I pushed myself up and started pacing. “Look, you’re totally unreliable. You sleep around…”
“Slept,” he said. “Past tense. The last time I fucked at random was when I heard the hit man doing you in your office. It was that, or kill everything in a five mile radius. I assumed you would prefer the former.”
The fresh addition of guilt was enough to make the roiling amalgamation of emotions in my gut boil over.
“You came into my life, turned it upside down, stripped away everything I thought I knew. I’ve done the best I could to help every time you’ve needed it while still trying to hold together any semblance of a life for myself. What do you want from me?” Shopworn as it might be, it felt like the only question close to communicating my utter loss at what to do next or how to feel.
His long body rose from the bed and made its way over to me. He stopped a hairsbreadth before our skin touched, close enough for me to feel the heat radiating off him. His fingers trailed down my neck and came to rest with his palm flat against my ribs. He kissed my temple and slid his lips over my ear. The whispered words came from everywhere and nowhere. Inside my head and from every molecule vibrating between us.
“I want the beat of your heart and the song of your blood rushing. I want the taste of your sweat and the feel of your tongue. I want your body in my bed and your thoughts in my head. I want you. I want a chance.”
Our mouths melded. Slow, silky, the smolder burning from inside out.
Then we were shedding clothes, stripping each other, seams tearing in our haste.
A timid knock at the door froze us in place.
“Don’t answer that,” Crixus whispered. He was shirtless, already working at the zipper on his pants with one hand and pushing the bra up over my breasts with the other.
A second knock, louder this time. More insistent.
“Do you think we should—”
“No.” It was as much a grunt as it was a word. Crixus spun me around and bent me over the bed. “Someday I’ll have the leisure to take you slowly. But now, I need you like this. I don’t care if the house falls down around us.”
Yoga pants and panties were slipped down my hips as Crixus planted a hand at the small of my back.
No sooner had he positioned himself than a succession of bangs rattled my door on its hinges.
“Fuck!” Crixus barked. “What?”
“Dr. Schmidt! It’s Kim! Are you in there?”
I looked over my shoulder at Crixus. Sweat beaded on his forehead from the effort of restraint. “Yes, Kim. What is it?”
“It’s Dean and your friend. They’ve been arrested. They’re in jail.”
Cold horror washed over me. Dean. Liam. Sinpants. I looked at the breeches hanging over the back of the chair in the reading nook where I had slung them. What was I doing?
“Oh, God,” I gasped. “Hold on.”
Pulling up my pants, I scurried over to the door and unlocked it. Kim appeared in the opening looking sleep-rumpled and tired. “I guess the operation didn’t go so well, huh?”
“Not exactly,” I admitted.
“Did they say where they’re being held?” I asked, slipping on my sneakers.
“Just at the local police department. I talked to the police officer. He said bail is set at five thousand dollars.”
“Five thousand dollars?”
“Apiece,” she added. “Breaking and entering is an expensive hobby, it seems.”
“Crixus,” I began. “I’m so sorry—”
“Go ahead.” He looked over from the fireplace where he’d bent one of the pokers into a pretzel.
“I’ll be right back,” I promised. “We’ll finish talking, okay?”
A sad smile softened his brutal features. “We never started.”
*****
“I can see them too.”
Kim’s admission in the rental car’s quiet interior caused me to step on the brake with enough force to send our heads swiveling back and forth like bobble head dolls. I pulled up to the stoplight, though no cross traffic was waiting. At 2:00 a.m., Hilton Head’s historic district was a ghost town.
“Not the same ones you can see,” she added. “But some of them. I’ve never told Dean. I think it would upset him.”
“Ghosts?” I needed to say it. Needed it hear confirmation back from Kim that this was indeed what we were talking about.
She nodded. “I could even see some of the ones who were talking to you before you ran out earlier. I don’t blame you.”
“Nothing like that has ever happened to me before.” I eased off the brake and the rental car crawled forward in the quiet night.
“Really?” Kim seemed genuinely surprised.
“How about you?”
“Happens to me all the time.”
The automated voice on my smartphone’s GPS suggested I make a U-turn. I almost expected a follow-up statement recommending I evaluate my life choices. “How long have you been able to see them?”
She folded her legs beneath her and adjusted her seat belt. “Always.”
“Do you ever hear them?” I asked. “The angry ones.”
Her laugh was just on the cynical side of bitter. “All the damn time. In fact, they’re usually the most persistent.”
“Why?” I fought off a shudder remembering those disembodied, whispery voices.
“You’re a therapist, right?”
My sigh was heavy with the recent failure of not being able to talk Gaybeard and Sinpants out of their differences. “I try to be.”
“Imagine a client with an overdose of fear, anger, and bitterness, and absolutely no power to change their state or their surroundings. What would an individual like that do, do you think?”
“Lash out,” I said. “Any way they could.”
“And suppose ninety-nine percent of the people around them wouldn’t acknowledge their existence. What would happen when they came across someone who did?”
“They would cling to that person and try to elicit as strong a response as possible.”
“Do you see what I mean when I say they feed off of feelings? Whatever you’re prone to, it makes the most sense for them to try and nudge you further toward that reaction. If you’re afraid, they’ll try to scare you. If you’re excited, they’ll do their best to amplify it.”
“I guess that makes sense,” I said.
“I think we’re like anchors,” she continued. “They spend most their time as shifting, bodiless energy. When they find a living, breathing person to connect with, it’s like recovering a little bit of what they had.”
“But why would I only start seeing them now?” At the GPS’s instruction, I took a left and rolled past the Salty Duck, dark now, save for fluorescent lights advertising various alcoholic libations.
“It could be something you’ve repressed.”
The use of this particular psychological term felt like sandpaper on the back of my neck.
“Have there been any big changes in your life lately?” Kim prodded. “Any emotional upsets?”
My snort revealed more than I would have liked.
“I’ll take that as a yes,” Kim said.
“Why can you see some of them and not others?”
“We all operate on different frequencies. Two psychics can enter the same space and have completely different impressions. Much of it depends on your level and type of sensitivity.”
“Is that how you knew I’m not named after my mother?” I asked, remembering the odd observation from our earlier conversation.
“You think about her a l
ot.” Kim brought her thumb to her mouth and nibbled on her cuticle. I guessed revelations of this kind hadn’t always been well received.
“I do.”
“Is she psychic too?”
The question almost made be jump a curb. “I’m not psychic.”
“Sorry. I didn’t mean to throw you off with the term. I know it’s not very acceptable in the traditional psychology world.”
I pulled the car into the small lot adjacent to the police station and cut the engine. Kim reached for the door, but I stopped her.
“What if…what if I don’t want to see them?” I asked, knowing we were both fully aware of my changing the subject.
“I’m afraid most people with these…sensitivities aren’t able to stop it entirely. I know I never have been. But sometimes you can sort of ground yourself. Make it a little easier to maintain some boundaries.”
“How?”
“Don’t laugh.” She ducked her head and looked around the car is if someone might overhear her.
“Of course not,” I promised.
“I take my shoes off,” she said. “I take my shoes off and stand directly on the earth and close my eyes. Then I’ll tell them how I feel and what I’m willing to do.”
“And they listen?”
“Most of them. Sometimes you get a couple who are stubborn, or especially difficult. But it works for most of the ones I’ve come across.”
“I guess it wouldn’t hurt to try next time,” I shrugged. I collapsed forward over the steering wheel, suddenly exhausted. “I really don’t want there to be a next time.”
“Maybe there won’t.” The optimism in her voice shot a little ray of light through my muddy insides. “Maybe Sinpants will be able to keep them away from you.”
“You really think so?”
“It’s possible. Which is why we better go ahead and get Dean and your friend out of here so you can get your ghost his pants.”
“Be really glad you can’t see this one,” I said, opening the driver’s side door.
She gave me a knowing little smile. “Points to the left, doesn’t it?”
“How did you know that?”
“I could sense it. You don’t always get to pick what comes.”
“Isn’t that the truth,” I sighed.
Unassailable: The Case Files of Dr. Matilda Schmidt, Paranormal Psychologist #5 (The Case Files of Matilda Schmidt, Paranormal Psychologist) Page 7
