Ever After (28 page)

It was easy to see how Cole had fallen for such a love story. Here I was, enthralled with it beyond reason.

Who needed to seek treatment now?

I was fine until I pressed the door open. Sadness filled me when the amber flames flickered over the old furnishings. It had been a safe haven for a girl who’d had hopes and dreams. They died with her.

Through the yellowed dusty glass of one of the picture frames, Annabeth didn’t smile, as it was inappropriate in those times, but her zeal for life showed through slightly upturned lips.

I’d have been happy, too, if I’d had Colby to look forward to everyday. I sighed as I used my thumb to clear years of dust from the picture.

Why couldn’t I have been you? To have him love me for a minute would have been worth dying for.

Frozen in time, Annabeth’s eyes sparkled.

I replaced the picture and picked up another. With cold resentment just as alive in her eyes then as it was today, Grace glared.

The lantern flickered and went out. I set it on the mantle.

Lightning flashes lit the room enough for me to find the trinket box with matches on the end of the mantle.

Wait.

How had I known there would be matches inside?

This box was white pearl covered on all sides. I couldn’t see in it.

My hands shook.

A good guess? Had to have been. I relit the lantern and shook it. Low on oil. Crap.

I put the trinket box back in its place, but before I could slide it back over the dust free rectangle, a smaller box came into view.

For fear of it crumbling in my hands, I gently slid the lid off. Nestled in black velvet holders, a blue diamond ring and a matching wedding band still sparkled. I almost dropped it when a flash of the very same ring on my finger came with the next crash of thunder.

Colby’s agony had to have been horrific. One of these rings had been on his beloved, his betrothed, when she fell to her death.

I went to the threshold of the closet and put the lantern on the floor beside my knees. The light from the lantern should have illuminated the ghastly scene, but nothing about the young man propped against the dress scared me anymore. Dried leathery skin had shrunken over his face.

I closed my eyes and delved back into the dream. Colby. Warm, alive, even heated during moments of passion. He had loved fully and unconditionally and would have died for that love.

Was there ever a nobler man?

A fierce loneliness tightened my chest. Tears flowed freely down my face, and I put the ring box in front of him. An offering.

I wouldn’t rest until he did. I’d stop the effects the curse had on Cole Kinsley, and I’d see Grace gone if it killed me.

The emptiness in my chest grew in size. I had never needed anything in my life, but I needed more than retribution for the wrongs done at this house. Just because I had never experienced such a deep connection with a human being didn’t mean it didn’t exist, and that it couldn’t be beautiful. At first, the bond I’d felt with the house had been about Cole, but now it ran much deeper. Even though it wasn’t mine, the love I’d discovered here was timeless. And try as she might, not even a demented ghost could hold it back.

Suddenly through my tears, and in danger of both sisters haunting me, I talked to the man I’d fallen in love with. A man who would forever belong to someone else.

Knives stabbed my chest as the first words left me. “I’m torn, Colby. Part of me wants the curse to be real so I can find you, even if all I ever got to do was watch you love someone else, but we all know fairy tales aren’t real, don’t we? I’ll lay your soul to rest. I can’t go on thinking it might be in torment somewhere. Please, show me what I should do.”

The sorrow in the room deepened. I was in danger of plummeting into it. I had to do something.

Maybe Colby heard me. Maybe if Grace was still here, it wasn’t too farfetched to believe that Colby’s presence was, too.

I stood and took the lantern with new resolve, leaving what was left of the only true love I had ever known in this room. I’d seal it shut tight.

The light fell on a bagged garment in the corner of the closet. Under the covering, a dress exactly matching the one behind Colby hung suspended in time. The one I’d worn in the dream. With all the dried blood and bone on the front of the other, I’d overlooked the design.

I dropped the covering and gingerly pulled the dress by Colby.

I couldn’t walk away without touching him once. I’d never touched a dead body before, but I as I stepped toward Colby, the fear left me.

His jawbone was warm. Not temperature warm. A different kind of warm. Just before I pulled away, a flash of a memory played in the backdrop of my mind. A young guy turning to me at the bottom of the stairs. The stairs in this house.

I understood.

I’d had the dreams so I could learn how to free the whole house from the curse.

In my room, with the dress safe in the back of my closet, I fought tears of anger, sadness, and loneliness.

When this was all over, I’d probably never see the boy without a face again. The closest thing I’d had to an honest, real love affair in my life.

I slept.

A rustling in the bed woke me. Someone was beside me under my sheets and comforter.

Relief flooded me when I made out the shape of Cole’s shoulders.

I scooted closer and in a half-wakened state. I reached around Cole, expecting to feel warm muscles through his clothing. He was warm, but too thin.

“Cole?”

Wait. Too thin. Way too thin. I pressed through the clothing.

A sickly bluish glow illuminated his whole body.

My heart hammered nails into my chest.

The back of Cole’s head had no hair.

And little or no skin.

I scrambled back but was held by an unseen force.

The bones beside me clinked and rolled to face me. Blue light shined through the gaping hole in Colby’s forehead. Another nightmare.

I closed my eyes.

When I reopened them, the skeleton was closer. Propped on one elbow, his eye sockets large and hollow, he stared at me. I screamed.

The unseen force pinned me on my back. Tears rolled down my face.

I was forced to watch as my left hand was pulled toward the skeleton.

As if he were being controlled by a puppeteer, his bony fingers clamped around my wrist, forcing my fingers to straighten.

I sobbed in horror as the skeleton slid the engagement ring on my ring finger.

From all around me, in a mocking tone, Grace’s voice resounded. “Do you, Annabeth, take Colby as your lawfully wedded skeleton? You do? Well good. Now, Colby. Do you take Annabeth to be your lawfully wedded slut?”

Colby’s jaws clattered together as his head bobbled up and down.

“Of course you do. You may now bone your bride. Ah! This will never get old.”

Hot tears streaked my face and pooled in my ears. Try as I might, I couldn’t wake from this nightmare.

Grace’s almost solid form hovered over us. Her hair slipped over my face like worms, and her rotten gown waved like a suspended oil spill in the air above our heads. With Grace’s nose only inches from mine, her breath ripped at my stomach. Rotting. Putrid. “You wanted him, now you have him. What’s wrong sister? Aren’t you pleased?”

Colby’s corpse rattled clumsily until it was on top of me. As his head bowed to do only God-knew-what, a tooth fell out of his jaw and bounced off my cheek.

I sobbed, jerking my face away, but the teeth that were still intact grazed my cheek.

“Too bad this is all you’ll ever have of him. My leftovers. I touched him in all the places you’ll never be able to. His rugged breath fell over every inch of my body until you came along.” Grace bobbed in the air a few feet above me. “You and your perfect curls, perfect little bosom, and perfect little everything. Why, look. Even in death, he can’t keep his hands off you.”

I wrenched away from the horrid sight.

She released an ear-splitting cackle.

The skeleton used its thumb and forefinger to clamp a piece of my nightshirt. He tugged upward and bared my stomach. The bones in his neck ground together as he looked back up into my eyes.

“Now let’s see. Where is it?” Grace verbalized as if the skeleton were speaking to me. “I know it’s around here somewhere.”

The skeleton’s cold, bony fingers caressed my stomach.

“Higher, you think?” Grace asked the skeleton.

Hot tears of humiliation silently wet the sheets beside my bed as the psychotic, hateful bitch manipulated Colby’s body.

“You think we should take off her clothes?” Grace asked him as if she was shocked that he would make such a suggestion, and then she immediately laughed. “You just want to see her nude body lying under yours, don’t you? Figures. Like all men. I was never good enough. She was always first choice. With Mama. Then Daddy. Everyone I ever loved, all enthralled with her.”

My door slammed open. Shelby and Kaitlyn popped in my room.

Kaitlyn’s hand flew up, and a cascade of different stones clinked as they bounced off the footboard of my bed. “I cast you out, Grace Rollins! You have no power here!”

Colby’s skeleton lay lifeless, powder and bones, beside me on the bed.

Grace turned, flew upright, and stared at the girls.

Shivers of rage invaded me. Red flashed across my vision. Shooting up from the bed, I lunged and swung aimlessly at her. “I’m going to make you wish you were never born.”

Shelby and Kaitlyn pounced on me.

“Not yet, Allie. You have to stop.” Shelby braced my arms against my sides. “We have to wait till closer to the end of the lunar cycle.”

“I’m taking her down. She doesn’t know misery.” I shook and shuddered.

The smile fell from Grace’s face. A momentary flash of fear replaced it. She disappeared.

I jumped from the bed. Right. Left. Behind me. She was gone.

“What are you doing? You’re going to get yourself killed.” Kaitlyn grabbed my arms and held me.

I shuddered. The spot Grace had last hovered was filled with dark, silvery floating dust. “I’m tired of her. My life will no longer revolve around Grace. If this stone doesn’t work, I’ll find a way.”

“No. Remember.” Shelby’s gaze bore into mine as she took my hands and squeezed painfully.

Cole would hear.

No wonder the poor farmhand had taken his own life. If tonight had been any indication of what he’d gone through on top of losing the person he loved the most in the whole world, I couldn’t say I blamed him.

Without hands, Shelby took the sheets from each corner of my bed. She pulled them up over the remains of Colby Kinsley.

“Allie.” Kaitlyn shook my shoulders.

I was in danger of finding Grace’s body and tearing it to shreds.

“Allie.” Another shake.

“I’m fine.”

“Can you control yourself for two more days?”

Reluctantly, I nodded. “It’s time he was laid to rest.”

“There’s nothing you can do to lay him to rest. These bones are a hollow shell, Allie. The part of him that matters is somewhere else,” Shelby said.

“I didn’t necessarily mean putting him in the ground. He needs closure, and Cole needs to be free of being tortured.”

“The only way Cole and Colby will be free is for you to say you love them both.” Shelby looked to her sister.

Kaitlyn looked me squarely in the eyes. “And you know Cole will never allow that.”

As if I hadn’t been confused before.

The white bundle on my bed held some ultimate truth. The hair on my arms rose, and my chest tightened. I’d inherited him too.

Shelby and Kaitlyn hugged me.

Kaitlyn put her cheek to mine. “We’ll put his bones in the ground. I didn’t mean we wouldn’t. We’ll hire someone to come out tomorrow and bury him where he was supposed to be buried originally.”

I swayed. Shelby steadied me without using her hands.

I flashed her a look of surprise.

She smiled. “We’ll do a more ceremonial burial later. Cole will kill us if you get another mark on you, so could you please rest now.”

“Speaking of Cole, by now he’d normally be in the house ranting and raving about how irresponsible I am. Where is he when you need him?” I turned away from the bed.

“Calm down. He’s probably in the woods somewhere hunting,” Kaitlyn said as if the answer was inconsequential.

“You know he can get diseases from that.” I shook my head, my stomach turning.

“It’s no different than ordering your steak rare.” Shelby shrugged. “And to be fair, he’s being drained of every ounce of energy he has, so he’s doing the only thing he can.”

Holy crap. “Is that where all the dead carcasses under the house came from?”

“Yup,” Shelby said, making the
P
pop.

“Why on earth would he put the carcasses under the house?” I felt nauseated again.

“Compost pile? Maybe he planned to do some gardening.” Shelby giggled as we walked behind her.

Kaitlyn groaned.

Shelby floated Colby to the family burial grounds.

“So, does he really have low iron?” I asked.

They winced.

“Sort of. Grace has made it so the only thing that keeps him alive is eating large quantities of red meat. We figure iron deficiency is part of the problem when he gets weak the way he did the other day, and to an outsider, there’s no other way to explain it.” Kaitlyn shrugged. Coming from Shelby, I might have called her crazy. Kaitlyn wasn’t smiling.

“Wow. So he’s not just acting out some weird fantasy.” My insides quivered.

“You’re his only fantasy, my dear Allie,” Shelby said with a raised brow.

They may have thought they could read his mind, but Cole had made it clear there would always be someone else.

* * * *

The next day, all day, visions I couldn’t explain plagued me in every room. They put me in the past during a time with no electricity, surrounded by a bunch of people I should have known but couldn’t place.

Out beside the pool, I had the best luck at staying away from the alarming scenes.

Cole made few appearances. When he did show his face, he only nodded, barely making eye contact. And then he bolted in the opposite direction.