Spirits of Spring (The Haunting Ruby Series Book 4) (43 page)

What I wasn’t prepared to die with was the thought that
I would never see Sophie again. I would never see our baby at all.
I messed up and left her saddled with a huge responsibility to
bear all alone. I hoped that there was something worse than Hell
for what I did to her. A sweet girl like her never should have
gotten involved with a loser like me. The least I could do was stay
out of her life forever so that she and the baby would never have
to deal with anything like this. I didn’t deserve to live but death
seemed too good for me, too.

“I’m sorry
for
everything I’ve done. I’ll ask You
for
forgiveness but I will never ask for mercy,” I thought to myself as
my will gave out and my mouth fell open. The filthy water rushed
into my lungs and everything went white.

Jeremy.
Jeremy
was
the
one stalking
Ruby.
He
somehow found out about her abilities and was afraid that she
was going to expose him.

I was no longer mesmerized by the visions in my head.
As I turned to warn her, I saw what was about to happen. An
enormous crow circled above our heads and called out a death
song as though it, too, could sense the inevitable.

Someone else saw what I was seeing and echoed my
words perfectly. In a blur of motion, we both scrambled to stop
Fate in its tracks.

“Rainy days depress me,” I said to Foxy as I slipped a
red satin collar over her neck, adjusting it so that the jeweled
flower sat perfectly in the center of her throat.
Being Zach
Mason wasn’t as easy as it used to be. It was getting harder and
harder to hide what was bothering me. No one really knew the
amount of pain I had buried beneath my baby blues.
But I
didn’t have to hide anything when I was alone at the shelter
with the animals. That’s why I started spending so much time
here and not at home. Ruby understood me but she had a lot
going on herself. I couldn’t always burden her with
my
sorrows. She had enough of her own.

“There. Now you remind me even more of Ruby. That
makes me feel a little bit better. Let’s go check on the dogs,
Foxy Lady.”

Foxy
strutted
down
the
hallway
behind me with a
spunky attitude—just the way Ruby would have. I’d only
known one other cat that didn’t freak out upon sight of the
kennels.
Before Rita adopted King Tut, he would take every
opportunity to flaunt his freedom by sitting in front of the
caged pups—purely for his own enjoyment. Foxy, on the other
hand, liked to teach the canines who was boss in a different
way.

Even the loudest barks from the biggest dogs didn’t
seem to frighten her. In fact, the louder they were, the more
determined she seemed to shut them up. I smiled as I watched
her approach the cage of Bubba, our recent pit bull addition.
With his
slobbery
face stuck through the bars barking for
freedom, Foxy strode up to him and let out a sassy little meow
before bopping him on the tip of his nose. Her brazen move
confused him and with a whimper, he settled down to study
her.

I laughed out loud—something I rarely did these days.
“Now that Tut found his forever home, it looks like we have a
new ruler around here—a queen of the castle this time. I think
I’m going to give you a middle name that reflects your new
status.” I thought about it while I watched her perform the
same routine on the next dog she encountered. “Cleopatra.
Foxy Cleopatra. I like it—how about you?”

She didn’t answer me of course, but I took the simple
fact that she didn’t try to bop me on the nose as a sign of her
approval. “Foxy Cleopatra it is, then,” I said, bowing down to
her new royal highness.

Foxy
tagged
along
with
me
throughout
the
day,
“helping” me with all of my chores. By mid-afternoon, I decided
that it was time to take a break. I positioned a chair in front of
the main window and Foxy climbed into my lap. I’d been so
depressed that I hadn’t checked my phone all day. Ruby was
probably worried about me like always. Foxy head butted my
hand for affection while I looked for any new messages. None.
Of course, she was never alone these days.
She always had
human contact. Well, sort of. I wasn’t jealous of the time she
spent with Clay but maybe I
should
be.

Before I sank too far into
that
abyss of depression, I
noticed that I didn’t have any service. That made me feel
infinitely better. There would have at least been one text from
her, I was sure of it. I put down my phone and stared out at the
rain. It had been raining every day for weeks but nothing like
what was outside today. Today reminded me of…. I didn’t
want to think about what it reminded me of.
But once that
thought was in my head, there was no getting it back out.

It reminded
me of the
night of the
hurricane
last
summer—the night I saved Ruby’s life. The first time, that is. It
was the night of our first real kiss, the night I finally had the
courage to tell her that I loved her. And while she didn’t know
it, it was the night I put my past behind me.
Or at least I
thought I had.

There was something about the act of saving her life
that erased all of the guilt I had over what happened with my
grandpa. I felt redeemed in a way, like I’d been given a second
chance to be where I needed to be exactly when I needed to be
there. This time I passed the test. I read the signs and I didn’t
let anything stop me. I let go of all of the bad feelings, pushed
them out of my brain and out of my heart. Or at least I thought
I had.

I wanted nothing more than to leave the past in the
past—why couldn’t my dad want the same thing? It was bad
enough to feel
responsible for
the
death of
someone
you
loved—even worse when you weren’t the only one dishing out
the blame. We needed to talk about it, hash it out once and for
all. But every time he lashed out at me, I returned to how I felt
that snowy night when I heard that Grandpa was gone.
I
couldn’t deal with it the right way. Instead of trying to discuss
it intelligently, I handled it with either anger or avoidance. As
excited as I was to move to Ohio with Ruby, I saw that joy for
exactly what it was. Long term avoidance. I closed my eyes and
started to cry.

My selfishness was what took my grandpa away from
me. My inability to handle the situation was alienating me from
the rest of my family now, too.
Things were never going to be
the same. I barely spoke to my dad, Mom was at a loss as to
how to deal with it, and I did my best to keep Rachel from
getting caught in the middle of the fray. If only I hadn’t had that
accident, this wouldn’t have resurfaced. But that accident was
a double
edged sword.
Without
it, I never would have
discovered the truth about Lucas. And I never would have been
at the theater to save her from his lascivious plan. How could
something that was so good in one way be so bad in another?
Life wasn’t
supposed
to be this hard, was it?

While I sat there crying, Foxy climbed up my shirt and
began to lick at my eyes as though she were trying to heal them.
There was something magical about that moment, something
that gave me new strength.
I made the decision to drive home
and try to work things out with my dad. It was well past time
for me to go so I placed Foxy into her bed and went to leave.
Immediately, she rose up to follow me.

“No, Foxy Cleopatra,” I reprimanded her sternly. “As
much as I’d love to take you home with me, now definitely isn’t
the right time. You have to stay here like always. I’ll be back
tomorrow after school.”

She gave me a sad look like she thought she would
never see me again but obeyed my command.
It was too bad
that animals couldn’t understand that we as humans had lives
outside of their own. I hated to leave her there but Dad would
kill me if I brought home another animal. “Maybe someday
Foxy, but not today.”

I walked out into the pouring rain with the memory of
those tiny green eyes peering sadly into my soul.
But I also
walked away
with the
hope that I was
about to make
everything else better—including my relationship with Ruby.
Once I had myself back on track, I would be better able to help
her with
her
problems again. I couldn’t begin to imagine how
terrifying it would be to be able to see ghosts the way she did—
to never know
when some
gruesome image was
going
to
suddenly appear before you. My problems were solvable. Hers
weren’t. She needed my help more than I needed hers.

When I pulled up to the house, I was disappointed,
excited, and confused all at the same time. I was hoping that
Mom and Dad were both home. They weren’t. No sign of
Rachel’s car, either. What caused my confusion was the sight of
Ruby’s new car in the drive. What was she doing here and
where was everyone else?
There was a single light shining
through the living room window but I couldn’t see any
movement
inside.
I started to get a bad feeling
at that
moment—a feeling that grew exponentially over the next thirty
minutes. Until, well, until it disappeared and was replaced by
something even worse.

“Ruby?” I said as I walked into the house soaking wet
and doing my best not to drip all over the kitchen floor as I
fumbled for the light switch. “Are you here?”

“No, Zach, it’s just me,” called Rachel from the living
room. “Ruby borrowed my car earlier today but wouldn’t tell
me why she needed it. I expected to hear from her a while ago
but I lost service at some point today.”

Rachel entered the kitchen and sat down at the table. “I
just got home from Rosewood and saw on the news that the
creek in town overflowed and the bridge washed out. Some of
the side streets are flooded. Mom was able to call out through
the landline at the diner. She and Dad are stuck there until the
rescue crews can get the water pumped out. I was just about to
give you a call at the shelter to see how it was out that way.”

“Wet, very, very wet. But the roads weren’t too bad.
Glad I wasn’t driving the Neon, though. Is Ruby still at
Something Wick-ed? Have you tried calling her there?”

Not having memorized the number, I pulled out the
phone
book
and
searched
for
the
candle
shop
in
the
alphabetized listings. When that book came in the mail, I made
fun of my mom for keeping it. “That’s what Google is for!” I said
with a laugh. Not so funny when you didn’t have cell service
and no home access to the internet. Moms really
did
know best.

I dialed the number from our home phone which I
hadn’t used in years and once thought of as being as useless as
the phone book. I let the phone ring six times hoping Ruby was
busy and unable to get to it right away. After the ninth ring, I
had to stop hoping and start worrying in earnest.

“Come on, Rachel,” I said grabbing her by the wrist and
pulling her with me the same way I’d watched her do to Ruby a
thousand times. “We’re going to go look for her.”

“But, Zach!” Rachel said in protest, “If we drive into
town, we may get stuck there, too! I think we should just wait
here until it stops raining.”

We launched into an argument over what to do and
whether or not it was
ever going
to stop raining
when
suddenly,
a
terrible
crash
sounded
in
the
living
room.
Together, we scrambled to see what caused the noise. I tried to
convince myself that Sadie or Sequoia had knocked over one of
the lamps even though the sound was way too loud to be just a
lamp.

When we got to the doorway, I shook my
head in
disbelief.
There perched on the window frame was a giant
crow—
the
giant crow that I’d seen several times before when
Ruby was in danger.
Something was terribly wrong.
Crows
didn’t just break out windows for no reason—not even this
one. But there it sat, wings stretched the entire width of the
window with tiny fragments of glass sprinkled among its jet
black plumage. Ruby was in danger.

Rachel glared at the bird, mumbled “What the?” then
turned to me urgently. “You’re right. We have to go look for
her
now
. I have the worst sense of déjà vu.”

And so did I. In record time, my sister and I were in my
SUV and on our way. I wasn’t in a hurry on my way home so I
drove slowly to avoid all of the pot holes. Now, there wasn’t
time to be careful.
We bounced up and down as I barreled
through the muddy water and headed for the main road. When
I got to the end of our drive, I instinctively turned left because
that was the way to town. Town was the most likely place to
find Ruby. The crow had other ideas.

I was only halfway onto the road when a loud thump
sounded above my head followed by urgent pecking. The crow
was on top of the vehicle and he wasn’t pleased. What did he
want
from me? I was going to look for Ruby—wasn’t that what
his intentions were? I hit the brakes and put down the window
despite Rachel’s insane pleadings.