SwitchBack: A Paranormal Werewolf Romance (Knightsbridge Canyon Series Book 1) (15 page)

Speaking of Mom – “It’s not polite to eavesdrop on your sister, you know,” she admonished, sticking her ghostly head up out of the washing machine. I yelped and retreated out to the back yard, Mother following me as I lit up a clove and stared at the sky. Who thought that such a cozy little town could harbor such unknown weirdness? Then again, in all those books and movies, it was always in some little town or remote place, usually in Maine or Idaho or Vermont or somewhere. Amityville Horror. Pet Sematary. The Shining. Misery. Twilight Eyes. Casper the Friendly Ghost. Yeah, that one had scared the hell out of me as a kid.

“She learned that from you and Dad, you know,” I snapped at her.

“Learned what?” my mother said as she stepped down onto the twelve-inch sunning slab that cradled one corner of the black-bottomed swimming pool.

“Having your fights out of sight and out of earshot. It’s incredibly frustrating, you know. And now Amber’s just like you two. No PDA in front of the peasants and no arguing in front of the children. Made the rest of us feel like mental defects, going at it all the time.”

“Yes, well your father wanted to show a united front when it came to parenting. And we were much too concerned about what other people thought than what kind of damage we were doing to you kids at the time.”

“I think you passed on that little foible to Amber as well. Sometimes I don’t think she’s even human! Always worried about how it looks on the outside, when who gives a shit about comportment when your family is being threatened. I swear, you wouldn’t even think she was gay except she and Elle sleep in the same bedroom.” Ouch. Did I really go there? “They’re more like…”

“Sisters? Like you two used to be, before you started squabbling all the time? Are you jealous of Elle?”

“No.” Maybe. “And when did that happen, Mom? Huh? When did we start squabbling all the time? When you…”

Mom looked sad. “You say that as if I wanted to die and leave you kids alone. If you just thought about it a minute, you’d realize it’s just the opposite.”

Know what? I did. With all the stress and stuff, maybe this wasn’t a good time to have arguments with my dead mother, but then again, when
is
a good time? But I knew what she meant, I think – that she was here now, as best she could be, because she hadn’t wanted to leave us.

“I get it, Mom. I’m sorry. Hard to argue with cancer.”

“Your father and I did our best, dear,” she said sadly. “We were flawed human beings too, just like everyone. Your sister is also doing the best she knows how, Ashlee. Don’t judge her until you can walk a mile in her shoes. You can’t even fathom the responsibility she feels.”

“Responsibility? What responsibility?”

“She has a son now, and she always felt responsible for you, and when I died, she felt responsible for your father and Adam, and now with Spanky gone…”

“Hey, where is Spanky, anyway?” I asked off the cuff, hoping to surprise her into answering.

“I don’t know, Ashlee. I’d pass it on if I knew, but even though I’m like this, I can only be in one place at a time. I can’t go floating through thousands of houses checking every room.” Mom sighed. “You have no idea how much strength it takes to manifest even to you.”

I ignored her troubles and said, “Oh, and by the way, when were you going to tell me that Amber’s visions were back?” I remembered she’d had a few over the years. They seemed to come in clusters.

“It wasn’t my place.” My mother gave me that sad smile, the one that said it was only going to get worse before it got better, and then she faded out.

The back door opened right then and my twin came out to join me. The morning was fairly quiet and unseasonably warm. Amber handed me my favorite, a glass of cherry limeade with a sprig of mint on the top, and then crossed her arms and stared into my eyes.

“I need to tell you something,” she said, after a few moments’ silence.

I kept my mouth shut, and just nodded. When my better judgment was in control, I’d learned that the less I said, the better I did when it came to our relationship. Seems family always takes aim at each other until a common antagonist comes along. Maybe this was an opportunity.

“You know those visions I used to have as a kid? Like the night we found you on the slopes of the Canyon near Shane’s body?”

“Uh, huh.” I sat down on the edge of the pool and wiggled my toes in the cold water, more from an excuse to do something than a desire for relief.

“Well, they never really stopped. In fact, they’ve been getting clearer and more frequent, lately.”

“Uh, huh,” I murmured again.

“I think Jeanetta Macdonald wants you dead, Ashlee. Or at least, she wants some kind of revenge. I saw it last night in a dream. Remember her creepy boyfriend, Sean?”

Snort. “You mean her weirdo plaything.” I laughed again.

“Yes, well, that. I dreamed that Sean is going to try to kidnap you. I don’t know when or how, but it’s going to happen and we’ve got to try to prevent that.”

“What did you see?” I asked, an uneasy trepidation creeping over me. Werewolves and shape-shifters, sure, those I could handle. But seers and oracles? I was way out of my depth.

“It was just flashes. But I think you should stay away from the caves up in the Canyon. I think she’s going to try to get you up there. And if she does, it’s not going to be good.”

“We should tell Elle.”

Amber shook her head. “She doesn’t believe me, not really. I mean, she believes I had the dreams, but she’s a cop first and a lawyer second and neither of those professions are big on the visions or clairvoyance or whatever it is.”

“So you want to do something behind her back?”

“Not really. Just…without telling her.”

“Same thing, Am,” I snapped.

“Fine, whatever!” She threw up her hands and started to walk away.

“Amber, Amber…I’m sorry.” I got up and put my hands on her arms from behind, turning her around. For a moment it was like looking in a mirror. “I think I’m just so used to saying no when you say yes…I’ll try to work on that, okay?”

I could see her eyes tear up for a moment. “Okay.” She hugged me for real for the first time in a long time, and I hugged her back, and for a little while I wondered why I was ever mad at her.

“So what are we going to do?” I finally asked as we broke our slightly awkward embrace.

Amber grinned, showing a bit of that cruel streak I knew so well. “I think we need to even the odds.”

I wept as my gorgeous tresses hit the floor. No, really. I mean it. You think Bambi cried when his mother died? That was nothing! It had taken me three years to grow my hair out and get the color right. And to add insult to injury, it was my sister who did the cutting. Oh, didn’t I tell you? Amber had been a beautician before she got her job with the city manager’s office. Unlike other hair stylists, she could never cut her own hair. She could do other people. But whenever she took the scissors to her own hair, it turned out looking like a hack job performed by a weed-eater.

With my hair? I had to admit, she had always been good at it. So, when she got through with my new bob, once again we looked exactly alike.

It was cute. But it wasn’t me. I sighed.

“Don’t worry Ashlee,” Will said. “It’s just hair. It will grow back.”

“I wish you’d stop acting like it’s the end of the world,” Amber said. “Better a few strands of hair than getting your head chopped off by a psycho killer.”

“Well, gee. When you put it that way.”

The key was to make sure that most people, Jeanetta Macdonald and Sean Gottlieb particularly, weren’t able to easily tell who was who when it came to Amber and me. We would make sure to never be alone and trade off, swapping cars and outfits and significant others.

I laughed ironically as I looked forward to dolling up in Amber’s designer outfits. For once Amber couldn’t complain that she was worried I would ruin her clothes. All I had to do was give her some of her own medicine. “Better a few scrapes on the Dior and the Blahniks than getting my head chopped off,” I would say.

That was something to look forward to.

The hole in the family where Spanky used to be remained constantly in our minds – less in mine and Will’s I have to admit, as he wasn’t our dog. Amber seemed to take my word for it that the heart hadn’t been his, and she hadn’t had any bloody visions of his death – or any visions for that matter – so she managed to get by.

Elle was hit the hardest. Cops, or former cops anyway, don’t like to be stymied and helpless. They want to do something, solve something, bring the bad guy to justice.

Suffice to say, it was an uneasy two weeks.

My bullet wound was nearly healed, although Will found some sadistic pleasure in tickling the sensitive skin around the area in the few times when we were able to forget about the threat to my life. I snapped at him, he growled good-naturedly at me, and I kept wondering when I would screw things up again.

I thought about going all the way with him, I really did. I know, some of you girls are just screaming at me right now, “Get it done already,” but that’s an irrevocable step I just didn’t want to take right then. Not that my body didn’t agree with you. Besides, Mother had warned me that lycanthropy could make hormonal birth control fail, and other methods were too iffy. A girl’s gotta think about these things, you know, and I wasn’t ready for a baby or a litter of puppies or whatever might come forth.

As long as I held a furry secret, I didn’t know how I was going to make it work.

But as I said, we did the best we could, and Will didn’t seem like he was going anywhere. What did I do to deserve him? He kept telling me that love wasn’t about deserving things. That all of us deserve love, but none of us can earn it, which made no sense to me at the time, but I know it’s true now.

My editor had finally called with a new contract for
Spa Review
magazine and a promise never to let the “boys” try to do a guest column again when their patently sexist version of my work was met with extreme disapproval by my female fans. Guys just have no idea what a woman wants in a spa, but us girls know that it’s not about how hot the steam bath is or how long the lap pool is. It’s about the service and the pampering.

Never send a man to do a woman’s job, I smirked internally. Serves them right. And it gave me leverage to take a much-needed vacation until the holidays were over, though I made a mental note to keep some kind of general column in reserve for situations like this. Well, not exactly like this, but you know what I mean – anything unexpected. I tried to draft something but my heart just wasn’t in it.

A dark shadow hovered over Knightsbridge and the Canyon that Halloween. We all spent it out at the movies, sick of staying home. Our parents had made this a Scott family tradition, as Mother hadn’t approved of all the death and darkness underlying the campy celebrations, and Dad just didn’t like all the kids ringing the doorbell. Talk about your total irony, huh? If I can get Mom to stay still for long enough, I think I’ll bring that up to her sometime and see what she has to say.

I wish I hadn’t.

The
Gazette
offered up a one-two punch with an article about Jeanetta McDonald’s Animal Rights Commission and their ties to the local animal shelter. Below the byline was a picture of a miniature Schnauzer and although I tried to keep it from my sister, the sixth sense she had didn’t let me get that far before she questioned me about what I was hiding behind my back.

Reluctantly, I showed her. “It’s not Spanky,” I said. “It just looks like him. Will and I already went over to look.”

“They’re rubbing it in our faces, Ash! What the hell are we going to do?” She looked at me with puffy accusing eyes.

“Something I should have done long ago,” I told her, and grabbed the keys to the pickup I’d borrowed. Will hadn’t shown up from work yet, so I didn’t have to fend him off. I wasn’t going to drag him up for a supernatural rendezvous; at least, not yet.

I headed up the Canyon as night fell and a sliver of the new moon showed above. Fortunately I didn’t have to worry about being dragged into a change. Lovers’ Leap looked just like I left it ten years ago.

Shane Macdonald was still waiting.

“Hello Ash.” His ghostly form took solidity as he leaned against the rock, crossing his arms.

“Hey Shane. Been waiting long?” I asked, and then grimaced. What was I thinking? I still wasn’t used to this “I see dead people” thing and though I saw ghosts from time to time, I never investigated, never talked to them.

Until now.

Shane laughed sadly. “Seven years too long. Or is it eight? I’m kinda losing track.”

“It’s been ten. You’re my second, you know,” I told him.

“Second what?”

“Second real ghost I’ve talked to. But the other one is Mom, so I guess you’re my first non-family haunting.”

“How did you know I would be here?” he asked.

“I…I just knew. I’ve always known you were waiting, not at peace,” I said. “If it’s any consolation, I’m really sorry I chickened out of coming up here before. Oh, and that I killed you.”

“Oh that…no biggie,” he said. “So, Ash. Now that you’re here, we really need to talk.”

“I know why I need to talk to you, Shane. To, pardon the pun, lay some ghosts to rest. Why do you need to talk to me?”

“Same reason, except the ghost is me.”