Ghost Killer
Page 10
“He’s overtired. I’ll put him back in bed,” said Michael LuCette. “Don’t be here when I come back.”
“Consider us gone,” Zach said in a hard voice. Then he softened it and said, “Good night, Caden. Hasta la vista.” He stood. Clare didn’t think her knees worked, like so much else in her body. “We’ll be at the Jimtown Inn.”
The world swooped around her as Zach picked her up. Wow. He carried her outside and to the car—she didn’t know how, but his gait did feel odd—opened the door, and stuck her in. “You just sit here. I’ll handle everything.”
“I . . . can—”
“Sit. Be quiet.”
He hopped in the driver’s seat just enough to turn on the car and heater.
So cold. So scared. The cold would fade; Clare thought the scared would live in her bones forever. Such a coward, she was. She closed her eyes, but saw the white and swirling mess again, and this time in the jagged black lightning flashes—or light-eating streaks—heavily lashed brown eyes stared at her. Creepy.
She heard Zach coming back, rolling two bags. So he must have put on the shoe brace and the ankle and leg brace and wasn’t using his cane. The trunk opened and a few seconds later closed and he came to her again. He took her foot in his hands and slipped a sock and shoe on it, did the same with the other, then threaded her arms through her jacket.
“Thanks,” she said, or meant to. Her mouth formed the word but nothing came out.
He kissed her forehead, put her tote in next to her feet. She saw her purse in there . . . and the knife. He swung her legs around. She had to snap out of this, contribute, be an equal partner, not be dependent. But reality seemed one pace away from the mists moving around her, as if she’d stepped into the ghost no-where and could look out, but not get out. She had to think.
Nothing came to mind.
Zach shut her door and joined her in the front. “I repacked your suitcase, so it won’t look like you did it. Double-checked that I have everything of ours. We’re ready to roll.”
Okay. But she’d only thought that and hadn’t said it.
They drove through the streets that were punctuated with few lights from homes and businesses along the way. Clare’s continual trembling calmed to a shudder now and then. She tried, tried again, and said through cold lips, “I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”
“Shock.” He sounded furious.
“Oh.” A thought shimmered. This felt a lot like when she’d been denying her gift and going mad as scary ghosts haunted her . . . and like freezing to death. Yes, that was the downside of her gift. If she didn’t accept it, she’d die. But she had! A spurt of anger heated her. She had accepted that she had a gift to see apparitions, to help wraiths move from this world—this gray featureless world—and onto whatever was next.
And she’d worked at her new, unwanted, vocation. She had helped ghosts pass on. Yes, the downside of not helping was to go mad. No choice in any of that, but she’d come to value her gift, and she’d certainly done the best that she could. She should not be sitting here, stressed to the max, like a bump on a log. She should be acting.
Zach stopped in the business district just below the canyon and helped her from the car, slid her tote over her shoulder. She couldn’t turn her head to see it. Her vision had narrowed too much. Must still be in shock. Get over it! But though her mind struggled, it couldn’t quite leave the gray.
She managed to leave the truck under her own power, stood, and followed Zach past a lavender door and up an extremely steep flight of stairs wide enough for only one person. Yes, she recognized a turn-of-the-twentieth-century hotel when she was in one. They took the first door on the left, with the name “Holy Moses,” . . . one of the local mines.
Zach opened that door, too. “Sorry,” he said gruffly. “This is the only room available, and the bathroom is down the hall.”
Clare looked down the hall, not more than fifteen feet away. There were only five other doors. Small hotel.
“No problem,” she squeaked.
Zach’s smile lit his eyes and triumph seeped warmly through her. She’d accomplished a two-word sentence, very good.
Clearing her voice, she entered the small room. “How did we get this room so fast?”
“There was a mix-up I didn’t tell you about. Samantha, Rickman’s assistant, booked the most ‘atmospheric’ hotel for us. This one. But even though it was built in 1905, it’s on the site of other buildings that were here earlier. Noted for its ghosts. By the time Rickman corrected her error, and told her to get us reservations at the LuCettes’, it was too late to cancel, so I let it stand.”
“Uh huh. Getting to know you, Zach. Having this room was also backup.”
“And we needed it, didn’t we?”
Nodding was easier now. There was an old painted wooden vanity with a mirror in a curvy frame immediately to her left. She put down the tote. “Another place I couldn’t usually stand because of spooks, huh?”
“That’s right. I’ll get our stuff.”
Clare thought of the nearly vertical stairs. “I don’t need anything tonight.”
Zach’s face hardened as if he thought she tried to spare him the truth. “Nothing else but you,” she said. She tried a weak smile. “We’re already dressed for bed.”
His stance eased. “Right. No one’s here at the hotel to check in with.” He nodded at the vanity. “They left the outer door and this room door unlocked for us.” He shook his head. “Trusting folk, but all the businesses around here are closed. It’s too late.” He looked at the bed set into an alcove just its size and grunted. “Double bed.”
“All the better to be close to you,” Clare said. Yes. Thank heavens, her mind was coming back online. She leaned over and pulled out her purse.
Zach walked over to take it from her and she wouldn’t let him. “I need it.”
“Why?”
She sniffed. “My feet must be filthy. I have damp wipes.”
“Of course you do.”
He stepped in and wrapped her close. “My God, Clare. My God.”
“You saw it, too,” she said.
“I’m not sure what I saw or felt. But there was some thing, and damn, I fought it, too.”
They stood for a few minutes until she shifted foot to foot. “My feet feel grimy.” She pulled away.
Zach plucked the purse from her loose grip and handed her the wipes. Then he poured her a mug of water from one of the bottles he’d pulled from her tote, glad that his hand was steady.
A splash of water hit his shoe. Nope, his hands were shakier than he’d thought. God. He’d almost lost her. Lost Clare. Panic sweat began to dry on his body. Regular sweat, too. And the standard exertion sweat when he fought the—thing, the snowstorm from hell—when he’d strained his physical limits to run with his disability, to carry Clare when his foot didn’t work right.
The panic sweat had come first, because of his fear for Clare. “Are you sure you want to sleep in those pajamas?” Knowing her, she should have another set or a nightgown or something in her bag. She wouldn’t pack just one thing, even for five days. Though he figured she could close the case in five days—four now, counting all day Friday—she didn’t have that faith in herself. And packing was one of the few things she could control in this whole situation.
“Clare?” She sat, pasty white with an overlay of her own drying sweat, scrubbing and scrubbing at her right foot as if she’d started the action and couldn’t think of anything else to do. This was not his Clare—dull, unresponsive.
When he’d offered to get her bags, he’d thought he’d grab some small amount of breathing room, of thinking room, for himself. Now he wasn’t sure if she really understood he was in the same room as she.
Putting the mug of water back on the small coffee tray on the vanity, he stepped up
to the bed and took the wipe from her, sat next to her, and cleaned her left foot, too. They were scraped from running across the gravelly sidewalk to the LuCettes’.
When her soles were as clean as he thought they’d get without a shower, he pulled the covers down and encouraged her to tuck herself in. Then he turned off the lights; took off his shoes, socks, braces; and spooned against her.
God. He’d almost lost her. The thought cycled around and around, churning his whole system. They’d become too close; he couldn’t lose her now without damage to himself, and he wouldn’t want it any other way.
The four-letter “l” word hovered in his mind, but he shied away from forming it even mentally. Too soon. Too quickly.
But he couldn’t lose Clare.
She worried that she was dependent on him. That she wasn’t an equal partner in this relationship. That he didn’t allow her to help him, and that made her lesser, or him more stubborn, or something.
Just last night they’d argued and he’d had to do some heavy thinking about his past and his psychic woo-woo Counting Crows Rhyme predictions thing . . . and his lost brother. Tough relationship stuff. But, by God, he’d take all that gut-twisting emotional relationship business instead of this ghost killing crap any day.
He needed Clare . . . needed her support . . . needed her to help him make sense of the supernatural world, hers and his, that they lived in now . . . and thinking of that, he opened his eyes to see a faint ivory glow from the vanity, emanating from the cloth tube of the knife.
Tonight had scared him shitless. Those awful sounds, rumbling growls as if some beast hunted, the child’s screams. Clare’s actions.
He didn’t think he’d been so scared in his life—at least not since his childhood when his brother Jim had been shot in a drive-by because Jim had thought Zach had angrily gone off from their new home on the military base.
No, Zach didn’t want to think of that. When he’d depended on that sixth sense he and Jim had shared, knowing where the other was, and that had failed. Except that memory loomed in his mind and his heart, echoed in his body as his first big mistake, his first failure.
His parents had promised him that the next time they moved quarters to a new base, he’d have permission to leave it. They’d reneged. Angry, he’d left—but hadn’t gone off base, though he said he would. Jim, older at sixteen, had gone off base.
Zach had thought the psychic link he’d shared with Jim would let his brother know where he was. But it had failed. Then came a long and agonizing wait until they learned Jim had died. Their family had been smashed to smithereens.
Yeah, his first whopping life mistake.
The second one had gotten him shot and crippled earlier in the year.
He would not fail to protect Clare, would not lose her.
When he closed his eyes, etched on his inner vision was that whirling mass of something. He’d felt the evil, the awful hunger to feed.
He didn’t know what Clare had seen, heard, sensed. To him, it had looked like a whipped-up white-out ball of a snowstorm, rotating fast with bits of sharp-edged rock, big like the spike that had gone into the throat of one of the hunters, and small like gravel, and shiny bits of pointy metal, razors . . . or teeth. Maybe teeth, supernatural teeth.
And maybe he was letting his imagination get the better of him. Who’d ever heard of metal shark-like teeth in a ghost, or a snowstorm?
But now he heard the wind pick up outside . . . wailing like a lost soul . . . like many ghosts that had been eaten by one voracious spirit.
Clare shivered in his arms, and he took a soft, small feather pillow and put it over her ear and hugged her closer, until they touched.
He was so scared his dick was limp, a first this near to Clare.
And he hadn’t told her of the crows he’d seen on their short journey from the LuCettes’ place to here in the middle of the night. The one crow—sorrow—he had plenty of sorrow and worry for Clare and Caden and all of Creede right now. Check one prediction off the list.
Two sets of four crows.
Four for death.
He shivered at that one.
Clare murmured and wiggled closer and he wrapped his arms around her and felt her, warm and alive. She’d be back to her vibrant self tomorrow. He hoped.
He wouldn’t allow death to take her. He’d find some way to protect her, no matter the cost.
ELEVEN
ZACH WOKE EARLIER than Clare, but still kept her in his arms. The morning was too quiet, even for the deserted business district of a small town soon after dawn. No birdsong. Clare’s house had trees and birds greeting the sun in the morning. So did his apartment at Mrs. Flinton’s.
No birds here, and there should have been. The inn was barely two stories with trees along the south side of the building and one in the front, close to their west-facing room.
They hadn’t paid any attention to the thermostat when they’d come in, and the room felt too cool. And if it was too cool for him, it would be chilly for Clare, who’d be sensitive to cold for the rest of her life.
He rolled from the bed and Clare grumbled, her expression scrunching. Her arm flailed as if searching for him, then tucked in under the quilt. He liked that she wanted him near, but it made his heart squeeze at how close they’d become. Even in the low morning light, an ominous feeling lingered.
Padding over to the thermostat, he turned it up, then eyed the 1905 room dimensions. Small, with small furnishings. The room held only the double bed, the vanity, a table and a chair, and an antique wood and porcelain wash basin next to a screen in the corner. The television was mounted on the wall over the table. He dragged on a pair of jeans and, moving quietly, he opened the outside door to the balcony just enough to step into the more than bracing air. Since it was only a few degrees above freezing, he couldn’t stand out here long. The steep hills shadowed the empty street, and Zach sensed the shade was more than thick clouds blocking the rising sun. The crazy ghost had smudged the town. He blinked and thought he saw ominous layers, as if last night had just been another coating.
Nope, no birds. And, thankfully, no crows.
Goose bumps rose and his nose twitched at an odd smell . . . maybe a hint of sulfur. He didn’t think it came from him, but hell, he needed coffee and a shower for sure. Sliding back into the room, he welcomed the heat. With a last glance at Clare, he put on some clean sweatpants, took the bathroom key and his kit, and headed for the shower.
Zach knew small towns. He’d worked as a deputy sheriff in lightly populated counties for more than half a decade, moving west from the eastern seaboard cities where he’d started his career as a cop.
There’d be a place where the locals would gossip during breakfast of the events of the night. Both this place, the Jimtown Inn, and the LuCettes’ motel offered breakfast along with night stays, and the restaurant here was open to the public for all meals until next month.
The chef here had a better rep. If Zach were local, he’d come here . . . unless rumor and gossip were rampant about what had gone on in the early morning at the LuCettes’. Then folks would go there to get the scoop.
Interesting that the LuCettes hadn’t called the sheriff while he and Clare were there. But Zach’s gut clenched at the thought that Caden’s parents really hadn’t experienced much other than their boy’s screaming from a nightmare and Clare and him coming to their door looking wasted.
Could the LuCettes’ senses be that dull?
Even in his prior career, even before the shooting, he’d been aware that inexplicable stuff happened. Weird stuff.
Now it looked like he was becoming an expert on weird stuff.
Maybe none of the people staying with the LuCettes had noticed anything unusual either. When he’d driven away, he’d counted twelve cars. Be interesting to see how many were there this evening.
When he returned, Clare was up, had made the bed, folded his clothes from yesterday, and placed them atop his suitcase. She wore the fluffy hotel robe, still looked more fragile than he wanted. “Good morning,” she said.
Just words. She didn’t think the morning was any better than he did. “Good mornin’.”
She brushed a kiss over his lips, snagged the bathroom key from his fingers, and left.
A few minutes later, he heard several voices in the hallway through the thin plank door. A couple of them held Texan accents—and Clare responded to morning courtesies with the other guests.
He opened the room door for her so she wouldn’t have to stand in the tiny hall and use the key. She walked in, her face flushed above the thick white hotel robe. He nodded to the two large people as they passed his and Clare’s room and headed singly down the stairs.
A little nosey, Zach stood by the open crack of the room door. The Texan tourists spoke of the good breakfast they anticipated and the classic car they’d brought up for the Cruisin’ the Canyon show. As their voices rose from the nearly vertical staircase, they commented on how they might want to drive Bachelor Loop and see the old mines . . . and where the hunters died.
The rumor mill was fast in this particular small town if visitors had already heard about the deaths. They must have picked up the gossip at dinner the night before, though Zach didn’t recall seeing them at Pico’s Patio, which he’d figured was where town people ate out.
He closed the door and turned toward Clare. “You look better.”
“Thanks a lot.” She grimaced. Then she sent him that flirty glance of hers, grabbed the clothes she’d laid out atop her bag on the luggage rack, and disappeared behind the screen in the corner. She tossed the robe over the top of the screen and rustling came to his ears. His blood heated just from imagining her nude. He cleared his throat. “I think your bedroom at your house could do with a screen. Do you have one?”