Phantoms of Fall (The Haunting Ruby Series Book 2) (25 page)

I should have just kept my mouth shut and continued
to walk. But I didn’t. He infuriated me so much that I turned
to face him and shouted back, “You wish.”

Loud laughter followed me out of the gates and all the
way to my car.

Rita was unlocking the door as I stepped onto the
sidewalk in front of Something Wick-ed. Good. That meant
that I would have at least a few minutes alone with her before
customers interrupted us. The atmosphere inside the store
was tranquil as usual. I was starting to think it was the only
ghost-free, drama-free place in the entire town of Charlotte’s
Grove.

“Hello, Ruby!” Rita greeted me enthusiastically when I
entered.

 

“Hey,” I muttered half-heartedly, “Can I talk to you for
a minute?”

Rita gave me a sympathetic smile. “One of these days
you’re going to come in here because you want to shop—not
because you’re troubled.”

“I wouldn’t hold my breath for that if I were you.” I
stopped at a table filled with Halloween themed candles and
picked up one shaped like a ghost. “I attract these things like
a magnet, you know,” I said shaking the lump of white wax in
the air.

“I know exactly how you feel—trust me,” she said
laughing as she led me back to her all too familiar office.
“Come on back. If anyone comes in, we’ll hear the bell.”

I tried hard to make a long story short but it was
nearly impossible. Rita listened quietly until I was finished
and then she calmly uttered one word.

“Phantom.”

 

“What?” And how could she be calm at a time like
this?

“You have yourself a phantom. They can be nasty and
really hard to get rid of.” She offered me bottled water and
when I declined, she took a drink herself. “They’re rare but I
did have one myself once.”

I always
thought ghosts were pretty much all the
same.
Who knew there was a whole hierarchy of entities out
there waiting to destroy me? Since she didn’t readily explain
herself, I asked the obvious question.

“Okay…what exactly is a phantom?”

“Phantoms are ghosts that have the power to change
you.” She pointed to the recently blond lock of hair. “The
power to make you feel the way they felt before they died.”

My body, my mind were no longer my own and it was
a frightening thought.
What kinds of things could she do to
me? If I couldn’t give her what she wanted, would there be
anything left of me when she was done? Your thoughts and
choices
were
supposed
to be
sacred—I felt emotionally
violated.

“I know how horrible that must sound but give me a
chance to explain.”

Just then the doorbell rang leaving me in a suspended
state of thought while Rita tended to her customer.
How
could I trust any decisions I’d made since Garnet wormed her
way into my brain? Zach. Would I have still broken up with
him if it weren’t for her influence? The list of what ifs was
endless.

Five minutes later, Rita returned. “Sorry about that.
Fall is one of my biggest seasons and we probably won’t have
much chance to talk once the people start rolling in.
Now
where was I…?”

I reminded her that she was just about to tell me the
gory details of my possession.

Rita threw her head back in a hearty laugh. “Oh,
honey, you’re not possessed. You won’t start contorting
against the laws of physics or shoot pea soup out of your
mouth. She simply has the power to make you feel things the
way she felt them.”

I explained my recent illness and sudden weight loss.
“Do you think it was because she was sick? Could she have
killed
herself because
she
wanted
to
end
her physical
suffering?”

“Well, that’s possible I guess. But the fact that she did
it in the school makes me think that it wasn’t something
premeditated.
Something happened at that dance to make
her do it.” The bell rang twice in rapid succession ending our
conversation prematurely.

“Stop in any time, Ruby,” Rita said as she helped a
customer retrieve a pumpkin candle from the top shelf. “I’m
always glad to talk with you.”

As I was about to open the door to leave, I glanced at
the window where the help wanted sign still hung in the same
spot where she placed it a month ago.
I snatched it in my
hand and marched up to Rita.

“I want to apply for the job.” Now that Zach and I
were through, I was going to have a lot of free time on my
hands.
Plus, something told me that I might need more help
from Rita with this ghost than I did with the last.

“No need—you’re hired! Stop by tomorrow and we’ll
make it official.” Rita gave me a smile and a wink and I
walked out of the shop feeling slightly better than when I
walked in.

Since things were starting to look up, I should have
known that they would soon come crashing down at my feet
again.
The weather was supposed to turn colder by the
weekend so I went for a walk to absorb the warmth of the sun
while I still could.
I wandered into the woods and down the
path to the mausoleum. The foliage was breathtaking. Or at
least it would have been if there was any joy left inside me at
all.
But as it were, each falling leaf seemed to be waving
goodbye to summer and goodbye to better memories.
If I
only I could share this with Zach…. I had to stop thinking
about him—dwelling on the past would do me no good.
It
was over and I had to deal with it.

Normally, I would have stayed in the woods for hours
daydreaming about him. When that option was taken away,
there was
nothing
for me to do there.
I reached the
mausoleum, paused to grieve for my lost love in the place
where he saved my life not long ago, then followed the path
back to Rosewood.

As I crossed the tree line into the backyard, my heart
nearly stopped. There were two red Neons parked in front of
the mansion.
Zach was here. Did he come to fix things with
me and if he did, what would I say to him? As much as I loved
him, I had to stay strong.
He got hurt because of me.
I
couldn’t lose him the same way I lost Lee and the closer I was
to him, the more likely that was to happen. No, I could not
even consider getting back together with him.

If I snuck in through the back, he would never see me.
I made a beeline for the door only to get caught at the very
second my hand hit the knob.

“Ruby, wait!”

If I was smart, I wouldn’t have stopped. I would have
opened that door and pretended like he didn’t exist. But love
is very rarely smart so instead, I froze in place waiting for him
to make the next move.

Don’t look at him. Don’t look his direction. Maybe if I
repeated the words enough times in my head I would actually
listen to them. When he got close enough that I could smell
his cologne though, it was all over for me. I turned to face him
and instantly wished I hadn’t.

There he stood in a neck brace and with his left arm in
a cast.
His hair was flat instead of the trademark perfect
spikes making him
look younger than usual.
Young and
vulnerable. Young, vulnerable and broken. I compared the
Zach I saw before me to the Norse god I first saw in the diner
less than five months ago.
It was hard to believe they were
the same person and even harder to swallow the fact that I
was responsible for that change.

“I came to ask you one last time—who pushed me
down the stairs?”

There was something in his eyes that I couldn’t quite
decipher. I’d never seen that look before so I had nothing to
compare it to.
Even though I had no intentions of getting
back together with him, I was definitely disappointed that he
wasn’t there to try to change my mind. Did that make me a
bad person? It might, but it was the truth.

Truth.
That was something I seemed to have a real
hard time with. But I kept secrets to keep him safe—that
had
to count for something. I could feel my eyes starting to water
so I bit my lip in an effort to delay it.

“I didn’t see anybody—I thought you just fell.”

“You’re lying and I know it.” He shifted his arm
around in the sling and winced from the pain. “When you’re
ready to tell me the truth, you know where to find me. Until
then….”

He didn’t have to finish his sentence because I finished
it for him. “I have nothing to say to you.”

Of course that was a whopper of a lie.
If I told him
everything I
wanted
to say to him, we would both grow old
and
die
right
there on the back porch together before
I
finished. If only Garnet would have pushed
me
down those
stairs instead of him. He was innocent and she never should
have dragged him into this.

Zach opened his mouth slightly as though he were
going to say something but changed his mind and walked
away instead. I watched him as he got into his car and left.
Once he was out of sight, the spell was broken and I twisted
the knob to let myself in. My entire body shook as I walked up
the stairs to my room. Seeing him devastated me.
But I did
learn one thing from our encounter. If Garnet killed herself, it
was because she was rejected by a boy. I knew I was right
because death was the only thing that could remove the pain I
felt from losing Zach.

22. Funny Thing Is, I Never Chew Gum

I needed something to dull the pain inside so I sat
down
at my
computer
and
started to
write.
My
hands
trembled at the
keyboard for the first ten minutes
but I
ignored it and kept going. Writing didn’t take away all my
pain—it was more like a bandage that kept the wound from
oozing all over the place. I had no concept of time when I was
writing so when Shelly came upstairs and announced that I
had a visitor, I assumed it was too early in the day to be
anyone but Zach. I was wrong.

Noon turned into four o’clock in the blink of an eye.
When I got to the bottom of the steps, I saw my visitor—
Rachel.
This was going to be every bit as awkward as my
encounter with
Zach.
She
was
incredibly
close with
her
brother—they
were
twins after all.
The last time he and I
broke up, she didn’t talk to me for a week. This time it was
two days. Was that a good sign or a bad one? I didn’t know
but I was about to find out.

Rachel stood in the entrance hall with an armload of
books that looked like they weighed more than she did.
I
wasn’t sure how well she would receive it, but I offered to
take them from her anyway.

“Thanks—they’re super heavy.” The minute her arms
were free, her left hand went straight to her hair and she
began to nervously twirl a piece between her fingers.

Awkward silence.
I felt like I should say something
but I had no idea what. “I’m sorry I broke your brother’s
heart…and his arm,” came to mind but I opted for silence
instead. But silence was an endangered species when Rachel
was around so she started a conversation anyway.

“So I brought you your homework and stuff. I’m doing
the same for my brother, too.
My car looks like a mobile
library or something….” The hair in her hand was twirling
around like a mini tornado.

“Umm, thanks. How’s school? Is everyone still
buzzing about my “acting debut”?” Don’t get me wrong, I was
still mortified by that video. But if I didn’t joke about it, I
would march right up to Misty and hit her so hard that her
implants would burst.

“Once Mr. Lascher got involved, the gossip died down
a lot.
He made an announcement that anyone caught with
that video would be suspended so there was a simultaneous
delete session during homeroom. No one’s said anything
about it to me—I actually didn’t even get to see it.” The hair
twister calmed from an F5 to a respectable F3.

Managing a weak laugh, I replied, “You’re probably the
only one who didn’t. I hear even the janitor saw it—cataracts
and all.”

Rachel laughed and
let
her hair
fall through her
fingers. “I’m sorry Misty did that to you and even sorrier that
she got away with it. Someday, she’ll get what’s coming to
her—and I hope you’re there to see it when she does.”

“What do you mean,
see
it? I’ll be the one serving it to
her on a silver platter!” I wasn’t trying to be funny—I really
meant it. There would come a day when I had something on
Misty and I would use it any way I could.

“I hope you do—she went too far this time and she
deserves to pay for it.
I knew she would be mad that you
were dating Zach, but….”

The conversation grew ice cold when she mentioned
his name. She probably wanted to talk about our break up.
Too bad—because
I
didn’t.

The hair tornado whipped into a frenzy once again. I
used to think she only did that when she was thinking but
obviously nervousness was also a trigger—kind of like when
Zach got nervous and his leg bounced up and down. No. Stop.
Thinking. About. Zach!

“So I asked Shelly to keep this a secret for a while, but
I think you could use some good news right about now.
So
when I told her about how the school has an eternal ban on
Halloween dances, she had a great idea. There’s going to be a
costume party this year after all.”

I knew what she was going to say before she even said
it.
The clues all pointed to the dance being held here at
Rosewood. How could they possibly think that I would like
that idea? Without Zach, fun was lost on me. And now Public
Enemy Number One Misty would have access to our house!
What kind of damage could she do to me with
that
? Toilet
cam? I shudder to think.