by Palmer, Dee
My clothes, my hair styled in a sloppy bun, a little darker than mine but the effect is uncanny, and my bright green eyes.
“Are you wearing contact lenses?” Because that’s what’s important here.
Not, what the hell is Ghost doing in Logan’s house when he said he’d kill her if he saw her again?
Not, why the fuck is she doppleganging the shit out of me?
Not where the hell is Logan?
I just want to know how come her eyes have changed colour?
“He liked your eyes.” Her tone is sing-song wistful, and the way her lips twist in both a cruel smile and fond memory makes my legs lose all their strength. Sudden hollow pain washes over my body like an ice shower, and I fold both arms around my tummy.
She used the past tense in that chilling statement.
“Where is Logan, Ghost?” I force the calm delivery when I’m feeling anything but.
“He’s waiting.” She steps aside, and I rush in, pushing her back with my shoulder. She stumbles, but I don’t look back. I run flat out though the hall and up the stairs, the chill in my veins thickens my blood, weighing my every step with fear and foreboding.
“Logan!” I call out, my voice pitched with panic. I keep calling his name, rising hysteria making each cry louder and more desperate. I hit the first floor landing at breakneck speed, flying from room to room, hysterics and terror colouring my hazy vision. His bedroom is untouched. Clothes are neatly folded where they always are when they’re not put away into draws and wardrobes. His bathroom has his toiletries all laid out and positioned exactly as he likes. Every room is the same as it always was. At first glance, at least, the house is lived in and in order.
His office is uncommonly quiet since all the screens are switched off and there is no ambient humming from the servers. Everything is shut down and switched off like I thought they would be, but no sign of Logan. I race along the corridor calling his name. My room is empty, and every other room I continue to search is the same. I run back downstairs, check the living room, library, drawing room, den…all the fucking rooms in this enormous townhouse and nothing. I’m breathless and beside myself when I enter the kitchen. Ghost is slowly stirring a spoon in a cup of tea, she glances up, and the same smile is fixed on her face, vacant eyes seem to stare right through me when I speak.
“Where is he, Lilith?”
“You don’t get to call me that.” She sucks the bowl of the teaspoon and then waves it slowly at me like she’s reprimanding a small child.
“I can call you anything I like, you psycho. Where the fuck is Logan? What have you done to him?” I storm over to her, she steps behind the kitchen table effectively using it as a barrier between my clenched fists and her crazy arse.
“I would never do anything to hurt my love. How could you even think that?” She shakes her head, and I can see the thought seems to turn her stomach. That has to be good right?
“So where is he?”
“I don’t know.”
“Bullshit!”
“It’s true. You don’t have to believe me. I don’t care either way.” I step to the side, and she mirrors my move in the opposite direction. I actually think she’s telling me the truth, and I’m also not a hundred percent sure what my plan is, stepping slowly around the table like I am, but I know it doesn’t involve her getting away.
“He won’t see me until he can no longer see you.”
“That can’t be true, or you wouldn’t be here.”
“He tries so hard to love me. He met me yesterday, and I knew he still loved me. I know in my soul we are meant to be together, but you’ve poisoned him against me, after everything I did for you. You need to step away and let us be happy.” Her tone drifts, and the monologue is eerie to say the least.
“You’re fucking insane. Logan doesn’t want you like that. He wants you to get help. I want you to get help.”
“I can see it in his eyes.” She continues to speak, clearly not registering a single word I said. “He loves me, yet you remain in his thoughts, plaguing him, torturing him, and I can’t have that.”
I feel the chill race up and down my spine draining me of colour and hope.
“Lil—Ghost, please just tell me where he is.” I correct myself when her eyes flash with fury at the mention of her real name. She sighs dramatically and seems to switch from her dream state to being very present and very real. I don’t know which is worse.
“Honestly, I don’t know. I broke in early this morning; it was dark. I was hoping to surprise him with my new look, and he wasn’t here.”
“By surprise, you mean trick him into thinking it was me he was waking up to.”
“Something like that.” Her brows rise with sly understanding that churns my stomach. “I know once he really touches me, I can lose this facade.” She tugs at her long hair, and distaste wrinkles her nose when her hands wave up the length of her body and my reflected image. “It will take a little time, but that’s fine. I’m okay with easing him in gently. He’s a like a sick junkie and I’m his methadone. I won’t force cold turkey on him.”
“You must think he’s pretty shallow if he was only interested in me because of the way I looked.” I instantly regret my outburst as venom and vitriol saturates her response.
“I have no fucking idea why he was interested in you. You’re damaged and dirty. You can’t give him what he wants. He wants children, Tia. If you loved him at all, you’d walk away and let us be happy.” I reel from the painful truth, my own pain that has little to do with Logan. I know it’s not how he sees this situation, not by a long fucking way.
“You’re his fucking sister, Lilith! You can’t give him children either.” She flies across the room, leaping and sliding over the kitchen table with a speed I never knew a human was capable of. She’s possessed and crazed. She knocks me to the ground. We are evenly matched in height and build, yet she’s surprisingly strong, sturdy, and easily starts to wrestle me into a position where she is straddling me, my arms pinned at my side, under her knees. The weight and pivot of her body crunches the bones in my wrists against the hard flagstone floor. I buck my hips wildly and wiggle like I’m having a seizure trying to dislodge her. It’s ineffective and even seems to amuse her. She lets out a light musical laugh, and fury boils my blood. I see red right before I see the small cotton cloth she’s plucked from her back pocket. I twist my head this way and that. The smell alone sends a wave of panic crashing, and terror floods my veins, and my whole body freezes. A stupid reaction, given that it enables her to press the chloroform-soaked cloth over my nose and mouth with embarrassing ease. I can’t move, and I hold off taking the inevitable breath as long as I can. Dark spots filter across my vision, and my chest burns with the need to breathe. It’s hopeless. Scared stiff, I succumb, sucking in the toxic air that lets the darkness and fear take me under.
“What the fuck are you doing here?” Atticus stands, blocking the entire entrance to the lodge. He steps out of the front door, making it pretty fucking clear I’m not welcome inside, as if his aggressive tone hasn’t done that already.
“I could ask you the same question,” I counter since he’s supposed to have left the country, and last time I checked, he was somewhere south of the Mexican border. “Where’s Tia?”
“You’re funny.” His derisive tone pricks at my fraying nerves. It’s been a long fucking morning, leaving home before dawn to avoid detection and give myself enough time to lay multiple trails in case Lilith did manage to spot me leaving. It was a necessary precaution, and I’m not even being remotely paranoid.
“Did it sound like a joke? Where the hell is Tia?” I snap. His eyes narrow and he crosses his arms. His T-shirt bunches at the tension where his arm muscles meet his chest.
“Since she hasn’t been answering her phone and snuck out first thing, I assumed she was with you, dick-wad.” He flashes a tight smile with the insult.
“She came to see me? Fuck Atticus, why the hell would you let—” I grit out, ang
er fuelling the aggressive tone. He cuts in.
“Trust me, if she had told me, I would’ve stopped her. Tia was smart enough to avoid telling me her specific plans for today.”
“So she’s not here?”
“Wow, and she said you were smart despite all evidence to the contrary.”
“Now who’s being funny? Fuck!” I hold my position on the threshold of Tia’s home, face to face with the man who, even though he didn’t kill me when he had the chance, very likely wants me dead. He is also the one person I didn’t want Tia to run to. I get a sick drop in my stomach thinking that these last three weeks, while I’ve technically abandoned her, he has very probably been healing the broken pieces of Tia’s heart. Anger mixed with a healthy dose of antagonism bounces between us. I run my hand through my hair with frustration, because none of that matters. My worries can wait; Tia is missing and I need to find her, right now.
“You want to come in?” Atticus offers after a few fruitless minutes of this midday alpha male standoff. I give a curt nod and step past as he makes enough room for me to enter. He points to the left of the tiny hallway and follows me into the compact country kitchen. I walk to the sink and peer out over the neat back garden with a small lawn, some paving stones which jigsaw to an old wooden gate at the far end of the garden. The back fence is broken in parts, and the thick brambles from the thickets beyond have begun to encroach, reclaiming some of the garden back into the wilderness of the woodland surrounding the property. I place my hands on the edge of the cool porcelain sink and drop my head, and drawing in a deep steadying breath, I try and collect my thoughts.
“What time did she leave?”
“I went for a run before sunrise and she was gone when I returned.”
“That’s over six hours ago! Why the fuck haven’t you tried to find her?”
“Because, arsehole, I assumed she was with you.” He indignantly enunciates each word but his eyes flash with the same concern that must be rolling off of me in waves.
“Give me your phone.” He hesitates before reaching into the droop of his sweat-pants pocket and cautiously hands over his smartphone.
“She’s not answering it.”
I swipe the screen and raise an eyebrow for his passcode. I could access it without his assistance, but I don’t need to be showing off my particular skills, I need to find Tia. He steps close and presses his thumb over the scan pad and unlocks the phone. I take it back and start to work.
“I can still track her location, as long as it’s switched on.” My finger makes light work of downloading the right app and pinpointing her location, made all the easier because of the unofficial upgrade on her phone I installed before I kicked her out. I hold the screen up for Atticus to check the map and pulsing red dot. “She’s at my house. Why the hell is she still there?”
“Because she’s waiting for you. Jeeze you’re—”
“If you call me stupid one more time, I swear I’ll mess that pretty boy face up so bad your mother won’t recognise you.”
“Don’t think that would be an issue,” he retorts, sarcasm thickly coating his tone, his expression resolutely indifferent. I don’t have the time or inclination to process the insinuation My mind is already racing ahead.
“What do you think the likelihood is that Tia would wait around all day just on the off chance I would return? I mean as far as she knows, I could be anywhere. Wouldn’t you think she would just come back here and try another day?”
“Yes, I guess. So what? You think she’s in trouble?”
“My sister is watching my house, so no, I don’t think…I know. Tia’s in serious trouble.”
“Then what are we doing here?” He snatches a set of keys from the kitchen table and is halfway to the front door before I can respond.
“We?”
“See, there you go, being all stupid again, or did you drive an invisible car to get here?” He grabs a light denim jacket from the back of one of the kitchen chairs. It’s weather-worn soft with time and much more suited to someone like me than a silver spooned CEO. I’m hot on his heels when he reaches the front door. He pulls it wide and leaves it open. Striding down the path toward his car, he calls over his shoulder, very much like I’m an afterthought. “Did you want a lift?”
To his credit, Atticus makes light work of the London traffic, weaving through back roads and shortcuts the SatNav fails to provide.
I’m also grateful he isn’t one for small talk.
All I can think of is getting to Tia before—God my stomach turns and I stop myself from going there.
After two weeks of searching every which way I know how, I had to concede Ghost’s nickname was entirely apt. I couldn’t find her, and in a strange twist of gratitude, I was actually pleased she called me yesterday wanting to meet. I wish I’d ended it then; not that I had anything like an opportunity to get her alone. She’s smart enough that our first meeting was to be in a highly public place, with no fear of making a scene, capture, or the police. Not that she’d committed a crime, so the latter wasn’t really an option. Even sitting opposite her in the small Bistro cafe table on the cobbled forecourt in Covent Garden was too close, too much, and I realised very quickly that, although I may no longer want her dead, I don’t ever want to see her again.
I know my sister. I know she’ll never stop until she has her prize, and after the meeting, a chilling conclusion cloaked me when I realised she’d already won.
I sent Tia away.
I could lose the one woman I love because of Lilith, and I this morning, I decided I wasn’t going to let her steal another day away from us. Even if it meant I had to hire a personal bodyguard and screen every item of food that passes her lips. I want her in my life, she is my life, and I want to live again.
Atticus screeches to a halt, bouncing the front tyres up the kerb, and we both leap from the car. I get to the front door half a step before him. The key is already in my hand, and I open the door and instantly start yelling for Tia.
“Check downstairs.” I call back over my shoulder to Atticus as I bound up the stairs. I barely get to her bedroom when Atticus calls out.
“She’s not here.” His voice is echoes up the stairwell, hollow and certain.
“You haven’t searched…oh…” I round the top of the landing and look down at his hand waving her phone like a white flag. “Fuck!”
“Yeah, and her bag is on the floor, her shit is emptied all over the place. This is your sister right?” His accusatory tone couldn’t make me feel any worse. Fuck!
“Shut up and let me think.”
“If she’s hurt her…” The direction of his anger flips a U-turn. “I should’ve kept her cuffed to the bed. None of this would’ve happened.”
“Don’t flatter yourself. My sister would’ve found a way.” I walk down to where he is standing, flipping the useless phone in his fingers.
“So what now? How are we going to find a ghost?” He slaps the phone and his hand against the centre of my chest with enough force the aggressive intention is more than crystal clear. I straighten my back and take the phone.
“She’ll find me.”
“I’m not prepared to wait that long.” He squares his shoulders and faces me. We are almost nose-to-nose, matched in height to within a millimetre, but I have more bulk, broader shoulders and more muscle. If he doesn’t back down, he’s about to find out how much more.
“You think I am?” My jaw ticks, fingers curl, and its like looking in a mirror of rocketing rage and hostility.
“Look, Logan, this isn’t a pissing contest because, trust me, I’d win. I have years in the bag and you kicked her to the kerb at the first sign of trouble.”
“And those years you mention, what did they matter exactly when she was watching her life pass by from a jail cell? Where were you when she lost her virginity that she saved for you?”
“You son of a bitch.” He draws his fist back, and I side step and bend back out of the reach of his swing. I hop back on my toes
and steady myself for the next, because I know it’s coming. I’m glad it’s fucking coming. I grin and hold my position, fists raised and ready.
“No, I think that title is rightly yours.”
“You can have that one since it’s true, and you can have this one because it’s going to feel really fucking good to finally beat the shit out of you.” He lunges, barrelling me across the hall. My back crashes against the door, and he gets a few sharp jabs to my ribs before I can use my shoulder to push him off of me. I draw back and land a perfect uppercut on his jaw, effectively wiping the smug grin from his face.
“And when is that going to start exactly, because this feels more like sparring with my nana.” He dodges my next hit, and we both spend the next few minutes struggling to land a decent punch. We’re pretty evenly matched, if I’m honest. I’m able to use my bulk to throw him off balance when we wrestle, but he’s more agile and able to right himself before I can take full advantage. His fist cracks the side of my head, and I rattle. I feel the spilt in the skin above my brow at the same time my own knuckles garner a satisfying crunching sound against his cheek. He buckles but rights himself, wiping the blood from the corner of his mouth on the back of his hand, and launches forward. We lash out at each other furiously, powerful fists flying, and blow for blow it’s an irritatingly even match.
“I can do this all night, but we need to find Tia, so how about a rain check.” Atticus wipes the blood from his lips and spits the rest pooling in his mouth onto my floor. The grey flagstones resemble the ring of a Madison Square Garden ‘big’ fight, with spatters of blood and smear marks from our collective bleeding wounds. We’ve skidded and wrestled around the entrance hall for a good thirty minutes. We both draw in steady breaths, beads of sweat on our foreheads the only indication either of us are exerting ourselves. Stamina is clearly not an issue, stubbornness is, but he’s right.
“Fine, but we’re not done.” I relax, drop my arms and stretch my neck out until it pops with the release of tension.
