I couldn’t say to them, “oh please stop, I’m doing delicate warding spells here.” Which, I should add, was very difficult to do. I am not very good with wards and spells, and all of that side of being a Spirit Caller, and I certainly didn’t need a peanut gallery of old ladies complaining about how the bush was crooked. Yes, I know it was crooked. I was in the process of fixing it.
I shot both of the old ladies a very annoyed expression…which just made them titter harder. I sighed. This warding was going to have endless issues if this kept up.
“Mrs. Saunders, I should call my Mom and put her on speakerphone. Then the three of you can all complain about me together,” I shouted out.
“Your mother is a sensible woman,” Mrs. Saunders said back, in as loud of a voice as her strained throat would allow.
I shook my head and went back to the arduous work of digging, planting, spell crafting, and mockery. My back was killing me. Even though I was wearing gloves, I could feel blisters forming on that sensitive, fleshy bit of skin between thumb and index finger. My shirt was soaked from sweat, and the cold breeze sent shivers up my spine.
Manny and Connie eventually rescued me. They were driving by when they saw me digging. A quick U-turn by Connie and they pulled into the driveway. Manny stuck his head out of the passenger window. “Need help?”
“God, yes,” I said.
The teenagers laughed and got out of the car. They waved their greetings at Mrs. Saunders and Millie, and quickly got to the business of helping drop all of the bushes into their respective holes. My back appreciated the extra help.
“What are you two up to today?” I asked.
“We were heading down to see you, actually,” Connie said. “Isabella is in Halifax for a conference or something, so she’s thinking about flying over for the weekend.”
“That sounds like fun.”
“Did you want to come over for supper, if she does?”
“I can’t. Jeremy and I are, apparently, going away on a little trip.”
“Where?” Manny asked. He was positioning one of the bushes.
“No idea,” I said. “Ya know, I didn’t even ask.”
Connie laughed. “You’re the trusting sort, are ya?”
“It’s what happens living around ’ere.”
Manny laughed. “Look at you now! Dropping your h’s!”
I stared at him for a moment and realized I had. “My mother would slap me right now if she were ’ere. Here. Here! Dammit!”
Manny laughed. “You’re one of us now!”
Accents were standing out less to me as time went on here. In fact, I found myself sometimes thinking my parents had accents, as opposed to Jeremy or Mrs. Saunders. Even Amy’s accent was normal to me now, and hers was as thick as molasses and I struggled to understand her when I first met her. Now that I was thinking about it, everyone spoke normal, everyday English. This crazy little area was really my home. These were my friends, or even my family, since I believe you can choose who will become your true family.
Was I starting to get the accent I’d originally struggled to understand? Was this why Mom was constantly asking me to talk slower? Well, that was unexpected.
I went back to planting the bushes, and Manny and Connie helped. Eventually, they took over. I worried about the wards, but I kept up focusing as much as I could. I was so tired anyway that I’m not sure me doing the work would have made a difference.
Amy brought out egg salad sandwiches and cans of pop for us, and tea for the ladies. Sweat was dripping down my back, but the food and the pop helped a lot.
“I love egg sandwiches,” I said. “Especially on white bread.”
“They only ever had ham sandwiches when I was in juvie,” Manny said. “With mustard.”
“What’s wrong with mustard?” Amy asked.
“I hate mustard,” Manny said.
“You just needs to get used to it, m’son.”
“I tried, Amy. I really did.” Manny shook his head. “But I honestly hate mustard now more than ever.”
Friendship. Family. Mustard.
I had a good life.
Chapter 6
Are Mornings Even Legal?
“Rachel! It’s time to get up, honey.”
Zombie-like sounds escaped me.
“Come on!”
I opened one eye. The sun hadn’t even risen. I groaned more. I swore even more when his cell phone’s camera light shone into my eyes.
“Leave me alone or I’ll turn you into a toad.”
“That isn’t even a real thing,” Jeremy said.
I glared up at him. “I’ll find a way.”
“You could never hurt this face.” He made a pathetic puppy face. “Now, come on. We have a bit of a drive ahead of us, and if you play your cards right, I might even stop at Tim Hortons for you.”
Every part of my body ached from the gardening the day before. No, that’s not right. Gardening doesn’t convey how hard I worked. Landscaping sounds significantly more impressive.
Every part of my body ached from the landscaping the day before. Yeah, that does sound better.
My back knots had knots. I struggled to bend my knees and my thighs screamed that I was making a bad life choice when I swung them over the side of the bed. Everything hurt. Everything ached.
Eventually and under extreme duress, I dragged myself to the bathroom, muttering unkind words under my breath the entire way. And promptly discovered that I’d started my period. Because there’s one thing a girl can always count on; her body setting up protest signs when she’s about to go on a damn romantic holiday.
At least that explained some of the thigh and lower back pain.
After taking care of all that, I took a very long, hot shower until the worst of the stiffness worked its way out. Wrapped in a towel, I dragged myself back into the bedroom. I wiggled into clean underwear and snatched my bra off the floor. Ow. Ow. Everything hurt. Ow. I struggled into the bra. Ow. I hate my life. Ow.
Jeremy jogged up the stairs. He rolled his eyes and asked, “Why aren’t you dressed yet?”
“I need ibuprofen.” I tugged a shirt on, followed by jeans. I winced as my insides cramped. “Maybe we should put this off.”
He sidled up behind me and pressed his fingertips into the sore muscles in my middle back. “Once we get to where we’re going, which is still a surprise, I’ll give a very nice massage. And then you can spend the rest of the day in bed reading those trashy novels you like so much.”
“My Misty Monroe novels aren’t trashy,” I said sharply. “You read space opera. And there’s far more sex in your fantasy books than in Misty Monroe. Plus, she’s a girl and she’s awesome. And you can just shut your filthy mouth.”
“All right, all right. Misty Monroe isn’t trashy,” Jeremy said somberly. “And there’s more sex in her books than in my Lexter the Warrior series.”
“Jeremy, I’ve read those books. Dude gets laid every other chapter. Misty’s too busy rescuing morons from demons to be doing much of that.”
Jeremy chuckled. “Whatever. Bring your books. You’re going to love it where we’re going.”
I pouted and explained how everything was ruined and I was going back to bed to sulk.
Jeremy kissed my cheek. “Aww, don’t be like that. We’ll still have fun. I’ll pack a couple board games. We’ll have fun regardless.”
“Are you sure?”
Jeremy rolled his eyes. “It’s not the plague. I’ll survive. I’ll go pack the food into the car. Oh, where are your hiking boots? I’ll take them with me.”
“Why do I need hiking boots? Oh, God. Don’t tell me we’re going camping. Dad used to make me do it all the time. I hate tents. You know I hate tents, right?”
Jeremy grabbed his jeans from the corner chair and tugged them over lean, but muscular legs. “I promise there will be no tents.”
“You promise?”
“No tents.”
“Then…where are we going?”
Jer
emy tugged a clean shirt on over his head. “Somewhere without tents.”
With that, he padded downstairs to pack. I dug around in the bathroom cabinets for drugs, drugs, all the drugs. Spirit Caller, in desperate need of ibuprofen and a latte.
Drugs now consumed, I collapsed back on my bed. The sky outside was still dark, but I could see the faint streaks of dawn now over the light of my nightstand lamp. Jeremy jogged up the stairs a few minutes later and announced he had the perishable foods packed.
“Why are you back in bed?”
“Because everything hurts,” I whined. Then, I pictured Dema’s disapproving scowl and heard her frequent criticism that I wasn’t behaving like a Spirit Caller. I stretched out a sore, limp arm and Jeremy tugged me into a sitting position. “Pass me socks.”
Jeremy tossed me a pair and I tossed them back. “I don’t like those.”
“They’re socks.”
“I don’t like them. Give me the purple ones. No, the other purple ones. No, not those. The purple ones. No, those are lilac. Purple.” Eventually, Jeremy figured out which socks I wanted and handed them over. “All right, I’m ready. Now what?”
“Grab that suitcase, young lady,” he said.
I dragged my travel bag down the stairs and out into the car. “I need to stop by Amy’s house before we take off. Is that okay?”
“Sure, but it’s awfully early, isn’t it?”
“I just wanted to check on Mrs. Saunders’s bleeding hearts.”
Jeremy drove, all the while refusing to tell me where we were going. He didn’t even give me a hint. There had better not be tents, or anything remotely resembling a tent. For the record, trailers, campers, and anything hauled and/or on wheels are also tents.
We pulled up to Amy’s house. It was still dark out, so Jeremy parked on the road. The headlights beamed over the yard, but not into the house, where it could have woken everyone. I checked the bleeding heart plants. I couldn’t see wards and spells the way Dema saw them, but I didn’t want to call her forth while Jeremy was sitting in the freaking car watching.
He poked his head out of the car and said, “Rach, come on! We’re going to be late.”
“It’s not even seven o’clock!” I complained, but I reluctantly stood up. Ow. Everything hurt. Ow. What was the point of all this running if I couldn’t dig a few ditches?
Next time? I’m hiring Manny.
I can’t see wards and workings, so I needed to ask Dema’s help. There weren’t any spirits in Amy’s front yard, which was a good thing. There were several quasi-forms hanging around the roadside, though. Were they being curious, or had the ward attracted them? Something tugged at me that I’d messed up the ward, but I was too tired to tell for certain. I didn’t have the time to fix it.
Well, I’d deal with it when I came back. If I was lucky, the other would recognize my work and most would show me common courtesy. Um, could spirits and ghosts have common courtesy? Could they have common sense? I’ll need to ask Dema that.
Where was Dema anyway? She hadn’t shown up last night, which was no surprise since Jeremy had spent a good half an hour massaging my stiffening muscles before I passed out. She is under strict orders not to wake me, nor to manifest, spook, haunt, make sounds, or be in any way around when Jeremy and I were together in any sense of the word “together.”
We detoured into St. Anthony for a Tim Hortons. Me a French Vanilla cappuccino. Him, an extra-large quad-quad.
“How can you drink that much sugar in your coffee?”
He took a giant slurp before stuffing the cup in the holder. “You can’t have a double-double in an extra-large. This is double the size of a medium, so quad-quad. That’s just common sense.”
I scoffed. “That’s going to kill you one day.”
“At least I’ll die happy and caffeinated.” He grinned at me. “And very, very sweet.”
I made a disgusted noise.
We did some idle chit-chat about this or that. Mitchel’s store was being renovated. The Andersons’ chip van had a sign that they were closing in a week’s time for the winter.
It wasn’t until we turned off the main highway that I realized where we were going. “Jeremy! Are we going to the lighthouse?”
He grinned. “Sort of. The lighthouse is closed for the season now, but I sweet talked my way into getting us the keys to the honeymoon suite cabin on the island for three nights.”
An unnatural sound escaped me. Not a squeal, not a scream. A squee. I couldn’t even bother to pretend I was embarrassed because I was too excited.
Goose Cove Lighthouse was a working lighthouse off the shore, out on its own little island. The actual lighthouse itself was moved to one of the automated ones, but the building and surrounding island was turned into a luxury hotel. It’s a ten-minute boat ride just to get out there and it’s basically in the path of whales. There are loads of photos of folks sitting on the front deck of the lighthouse while whale pods happily swim by.
And we’re going there!
“So, good surprise?”
I leaned my head against his shoulder for a moment. “The best.”
He grinned, though didn’t take his eyes off the road. “I had planned to propose there. When I got better.”
“You’ve been better for a while now,” I said, sitting back up. I did squeeze his hand that rested on the gear shift.
“The nightmares are mostly gone,” he said softly.
“That’s good,” I said quietly.
“I’m glad I did the therapy,” he said, lowering his voice. He often did that whenever he talked about seeing a therapist. Like he had to convince himself that it was the right thing to do.
“Good,” I said. I meant it. “It was important for you to talk to someone.”
“I suppose it’s stupid to see a doctor about parts of the injury, but not others. And I live with a social worker.” He grinned. “You’d never let me live it down if I refused to talk to someone.”
“I wouldn’t have,” I said with a smile.
We fell into comfortable silence as we drove down the deserted road. Every so often, I saw spirits going about their business. I found it easier to ignore the random other around me now that I’d accepted that there would always be spirits around me. It didn’t hurt as much, either. I could handle telling the child molesters to piss off, and I could deal with Mrs. McAvoy and her little gaggle of suitors.
“You’re quiet.”
“Oh, I’m just thinking.”
“About…”
I didn’t want to talk about spirits, but there was something else that had been on my mind lately. “I was thinking about buying Mrs. Saunders’s house.”
“You already have a house.”
“No, not to live in. I was thinking I’d renovate it and rent it out as a short-term rental. Furnished, ya know, for tourists, or for anyone who needed a place to live for a couple of months from around the area.”
“Huh. You hate cleaning.”
“If I can’t handle the cleaning, I’ll pay one of Amy’s kids minimum wage to help me.”
“Never mind her kids. Amy’d probably love to do it. That woman can clean like a bandit.” Jeremy glanced over at me. “How much is the house going for?”
“Sixty,” I said with scorn.
“That’s higher than I was expecting.”
“Seriously? I thought it was crazy low.”
“Rach, come on. It’s in the middle of nowhere and the house is old. And it needs a lot of work. I think sixty is high. I wouldn’t pay more than fifty for it. But, never mind all that. Why do you want it?”
“I just said…”
“I know, but why.”
“I’m bored. I’m painting, but that’s difficult to do all of the time. I’m not getting out of the house as much as I should. It would be nice to have something else to keep me busy and bring in a little more money.”
“Honey, you don’t need to work. I make enough for the two of us.” He shrugged. “And you still have
a lot of money in the bank, don’t you?”
I waved him off. “That’s only because I sold the condo Mom and Dad mostly paid for and they wouldn’t let me give them back the money.”
“Right...” Jeremy said, as if I was stupid. It annoyed me. “So you have plenty of money if there is a big emergency. Like, when I got hurt.”
I flashed him an angry glare. “If you ever get hurt again, I’m going to kick your ass.”
Jeremy grinned his lopsided smile. “I will try very hard not to get hurt again. In the end, it’s your money. I can’t tell you what to do with it.”
“But, would you be mad?”
“Nah. I’d rather you spend it on trying something to make you happy, as opposed to us just wasting it, to be honest. If nothing else, we’ll have a guest house for LARP weekends.”
“I’m not buying a house for you and your friends to play in,” I said very sternly, so he knew I was all serious and stuff.
“You know you want to,” Jeremy said.
“No! Jeremy, no. I said no. Stop looking at me like that.”
“Fine,” Jeremy said loftily. “So….did you pack the red bra I like?”
“I packed a jumbo box of tampons and enough ibuprofen to knock out a horse.”
“But did you pack the bra?”
I glared at him.
“Don’t make me turn this car around.”
We drove the entire way to the wharf laughing and falling in love all over again without a care in the world. We had no idea what was following us.
Chapter 7
Garrett. Jeremy Garrett.
After parking and unloading the car, we took a boat to the island. Jeremy had rented the boat from a cop friend’s buddy’s buddy’s next-door neighbour’s cousin’s brother’s kid. Have I mentioned lately how much I don’t like boats?
Jeremy was up at the wheel acting like he was at the helm of the Starship Enterprise in an epic battle against the Jem'Hadar. Now, the Atlantic Ocean isn’t a happy ocean like the Pacific. I went whale watching in Tofino, British Columbia once and, I gotta tell you, that was like driving on a flat surface. This was crap. Total and unabashed crap.
Waves were everywhere. Water spraying. The boat was all over the freaking place. The emergency dinghy we were pulling behind us, as a safety measure, was miraculously still there and still in once piece, though I have no idea how. Several times, waves crashed against us, the spray hitting me square in the face.
Dead Living (Spirit Caller Book 5) Page 6
