Dead People (17 page)

Most of all, they hurt their children.
 

“You can’t save her, she has to save herself.”

“No! I hate you.” She snapped around, her hair flying, and dashed out of the kitchen and up the back stairs. He stared after her, feeling helpless.

Maybe he should have listened to Cassie and let Erin keep the computer.
 

Of all the gigs he’d had, the hardest was being a father.

***

Cassie parked in front of the turreted house a half hour earlier than usual. She’d woken with a bad feeling, as though she’d made a mistake the size of a Grand Canyon. But she was too stubborn to back out and there was another component that she couldn’t deny. Letting Luke see another man admiring her.

It was a stupid, stupid, phenomenally stupid thing to do—a ploy worthy of an insecure teenager. She’d been that insecure teenager, and maybe it still lodged somewhere inside of her. Right next to the small girl grieving the loss of her mother.

At least she was smart enough to set up the tour so it would be over before Erin returned from school. A white VW convertible pulled up behind her rental, and she sucked in a deep breath.

“I don’t like him,” Joe said for the tenth time today. For the tenth time, she ignored him.

When she got out of her car, so did Kurt out of his. Their car doors slammed at the same time. Synchronicity, but a twist in her belly gave her a “this isn’t good” signal.

Kurt stood with his hands flat on his car hood, staring at the house. Wondering what captivated him, she gave the house a look-over, and her skin prickled. She got the feeling that the house was trying to tell her something.

Just what she needed. Houses speaking to her in addition to dead people.

Footsteps on the driveway dragged her gaze to Kurt, heading toward her.

“Did you have Tricia look up the background of the house?” she asked.

He stopped two feet away and blinked fast, then held out his hands, palms up. “You got me.”

No, she didn’t. And didn’t want him either. “Why?”

“Nothing nefarious. The house would be a perfect bed and breakfast, a step up from the motel. I wanted it when it was for sale, but couldn’t afford the price. I’m keeping my hopes up that the ghost frightens your client away, so I can buy it on the cheap.” He gave her a lopsided grin that was sheepish and charming, designed to get under her defenses. “It made good business sense to find out the history of the house.”

“What if I can’t convince Isabel to leave?” His smile wasn’t working. She was impervious to charm. Maybe that’s what drew her to Luke. He didn’t charm and he didn’t bullshit.

“I’m hoping you won’t convince her to leave.” Kurt looked at the house, his eyes glowing. “People will clamor to stay in a place with a real ghost. I’ll charge double. Hell, triple. I didn’t know it was haunted before or I’d have gone into debt to buy it.”

She stared at him. He returned his gaze to her and shrugged. “I’m being bloody honest here. You know everything about me.”

“I seriously doubt that.”

He winked. “All that’s important. The tour still on?”

She looked at the house and frowned. Something flickered in a second-floor window. Isabel? Cassie was aware of Joe heading inside the house, going through the door as if it were invisible.

He was probably looking for a good seat to see the fun when she told Luke about Kurt.

The bad feeling worsened.

Chapter Twenty-three

“What are you doing?” Joe asked.

The red-haired ghost standing in the second story hall squealed and flew up a foot. She blanched, her ectoplasm dimming, her face shimmering. Still floating, she pointed at him. “You’re a...a...a...”

He grinned. Nothing he liked better than to be helpful. “A ghost. Like you.”

“Go away.” She made the sign of a cross.

“Lady, I’m not a vampire.” He made the sign of a cross right back and floated up a foot, the same height as her. “I’m a good Catholic, dead or alive.”

“Why are you here? This is
my
home.”

He shook his head. This new generation of ghosts clung to their possessions. They didn’t get that people mattered, not stuff. “You’ll never get to heaven with that attitude.”

She puffed up, her plump bosoms expanding like filled water balloons. “If you’re the expert on going to heaven, why aren’t you there?”

“You got me.” He grinned.

“No, I don’t. Go away.”

He chuckled—and she disappeared.

“Isabel?” He looked around, feeling her vibrations. “I know you’re sticking around, I know you’re curious. You may as well come out and talk to me. I can let go of the ectoplasm and find you.”

“It’s bad enough I share my home with them.” Her disembodied voice could have come from any direction. “I’m not sharing it with you.”

“How are you planning to stop me?”

She didn’t answer, and he chuckled. For a second, he considered chasing after her and finding her.

“If you don’t leave,” her voice traveled, thin and eerie, from a few feet in front of him, “I’ll have to hurt you.”

“Lady, I’m already dead. What more can you do?”

“Ha! I can do more and I will do more. Get out before I show you.”

Hearing the determination in her voice, he stopped grinning.

She was bluffing. But he drifted toward the door.

“I’m sticking around to make sure you don’t hurt Cassie again. You touch her, and it’s me you’ll have to worry about, not the other way around.”

She followed him. He could feel the emotion radiating from her. Frustration and anger. And something else that took him an instant to identify.

Fear.

***

Luke set his coffee cup on the granite counter top and glared at the tall, lanky man standing at the edge of his kitchen a guitar pick away from Cassie. The day had started off lousy and was sliding downhill. First Erin refused to talk to him before she left for school this morning, his manager phoned him after a hysterical call from Vanessa that Luke told her to ignore, and every song he put together sounded like something he’d done already.

And for the last hour, all he could do was think about Cassie and how he needed to stay away from her. Hard to do when he needed her to get rid of his ghost. And now he’d come down for a cup of coffee and Cassie brought into his house this English phony with a con man smile.

“This isn’t a tourist spot,” Luke said. “My house isn’t open to tours.”

Cassie crossed her arms over her chest. “We won’t bother you.”

Luke glared harder. If Cassie wanted to flirt with tall, blond and chinless, she could do it on her own damn time. “No.”

He could see she was about to argue. She was a woman, and that’s what they did. But instead of saying anything, she speared him a lethal gaze that should have burned a hole through his heart.

The hell with this. He knew how to handle it.

Leaving his coffee behind, he stomped past them and out of the kitchen. Cassie would probably think he was jealous, but let her think what she wanted. It was his fucking haunted house. He didn’t do tours, he didn’t share.

He strode down the hall, deciding to take the main staircase instead of the back steps. Let chinless see him claim the staircase. If need be, he’d mark the house like a wild animal, pissing in all the corners. He was near the top of the second floor when he heard their voices float up from the front hall, Cassie’s clipped tones and Kurt’s, deeper and cajoling.

Then Isabel screeched from the second floor hallway. “I told you! Get out of my house!”

Luke started. Was she shouting at him?

“Get out!” she repeated.

A man’s laughter belted out just a few feet above Luke. He glanced up but no one was there.

Shit. Another ghost?

“Make me,” a smooth tenor said.

Luke reached out, leaning forward. Three steps up, where a man’s legs would be on the second floor hall landing, his hand dipped into a flow of ice. Invisible ice.

He jerked back. “What the fuck—”

Footsteps pounded up the stairs.

Luke backed down a half dozen steps. He wasn’t afraid but he wasn’t a fool. He glanced behind him. Kurt was taking the steps two at a time. Cassie followed him, her mouth grim.

“I’ll make you leave, all right!” Isabel shrieked. “You don’t belong here.”

“Two ghosts. Fucking Christ. Where are they?” Kurt stopped next to Luke, panting. “This is amazing! I hear them but I can’t see—”

“Neither of us belongs anywhere on earth,” the male voice said from further up the staircase. “You want me to leave? Ladies first.”

Kurt’s head tilted back, his face turning red, his breaths huffing out. “This is bloody perfect.” He took another step up.

Cassie stopped four steps behind Luke. “Kurt, I think you’d better get back.”

Luke was damn well sure Kurt should get back. Get back to England. Better yet, Antarctica.

He opened his mouth, but before he could say anything a whooshing sound came from above. Luke once witnessed a wildfire, and the wind and the out-of-control fire had made that same sound.

“Against the wall!” he yelled to Cassie, flattening his back against the wall.
 

Kurt took another step up. Cassie’s gaze swung toward Luke, her forehead creasing, her feet not moving.

“Now!” Luke shouted as a blurred outline of a man and a woman wrestling together hurtled down the stairway.

Then Kurt screamed and toppled backward, plunging down the steps, straight toward Cassie.

She seemed to move in slow motion. Too slow. Luke leapt at her, grabbing her arm, twisting her out of Kurt’s way. Luke’s back slammed against the wall, crushing Cassie against him. Then he lost his balance, dropping to the steps with Cassie on top of him.

Kurt somersaulted past them, inches away. His head thumped on every third step, the sound like knuckles rapping on an empty melon. Something smashed against the wall, and at the same time Luke was aware of Cassie on top of him, chest to chest, pelvis to pelvis. Kurt yelped.
 

Cassie squirmed away from Luke, and he was aware of her wiggling body. He dropped his arms, releasing her. She grabbed the banister and pulled herself up.

Luke scrambled to his feet a step above her. From the bottom of the staircase came total silence. Like a hurricane had come and gone.

“Are you all right?” Cassie’s voice wobbled.

A grunt came up to them.

Clutching the banister, Cassie lurched down the steps and reached the hallway where Kurt sat on the wooden floor, rubbing the top of his head and wincing. Luke started down after her.

What the fuck had happened?

Kneeling, Cassie slid her arm around Kurt’s back. He groaned and latched onto her, letting her pull him up. By the time Luke reached the foyer, Kurt was on his feet, clinging to Cassie, as close as a bee sucking nectar from a flower.

Luke speeded his gait, even though the back of his head throbbed with every step.

“There were two ghosts.” Kurt’s expression was dazed, his hand gripping her shoulder. “Two ghosts knocked me down.”

“I told you to get out of the way,” Cassie snapped.

Her annoyance eased the tension from Luke’s neck and shoulders. He stepped onto the hall floor. “And I told you to leave my house.”

“Can you stand by yourself?” Cassie asked.

Kurt peered down at her, his eyes unfocused and his mouth open, doing a good imitation of the town idiot. “Did you hear me? There were two of them, a man and a woman. Two ghosts! I couldn’t see them but I heard their voices, as clear as I hear yours.”

Cassie winced and shifted the shoulder he clutched, but he didn’t appear to notice. Luke stepped forward.

“She asked if you could stand.” Without waiting for a reply, he pried Kurt’s hand off her shoulder, not being gentle about it. He nodded at Cassie. “Let go of her.”

“He might fall.”

Good
.
“I’ll hold him.” And if he accidentally lost his grip...

“I’m fine.” Kurt stumbled away from her and shook his head, blinking hard, then rubbed his hand over his eyes. His mouth closed and opened twice.

“Ghosts.” His voice was an awed whisper. “I touched a ghost.”

“I didn’t hear or see anything.” Luke gave Cassie a hard look.
This guy is a loony. The fall down the steps—caused by his own clumsy feet—knocked his brain cells loose. That’s the story I’m giving out.

Cassie’s mouth twisted, as if she read his thoughts. “Ditto.”

Kurt whipped his head toward her. “I can’t believe you’re saying that. I know you heard them.”

“She said she didn’t hear anything.” Luke stepped behind her and put his hand on her shoulder. She tensed and he moved closer, his thigh brushing hers, his hipbone pressing against her bottom, her buttock yielding and firm at the same time.

She turned her head and gave him a hard stare, then twitched her shoulder loose and stepped to the side. Turning back to Kurt, she said, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”