Grave Danger (23 page)

That was the only explanation for why he suddenly
had become infatuated by a sallow faced ghost who thought she could
rule herself over him. She couldn’t. He would go back to his grave
before he allowed someone else have that sort of power over him
again.

Then why did he fantasize about that pale skin, the
blue eyes of a divine being, and lips that had blushed and warmed
along with her cheeks, making her entire form sparkle and shine
like the sun, causing his own skin to burn and blister at being
near her. It was madness to want to stand so close to her light, to
want to reach out and connect to the soul creature that could bring
him down. Corrigan didn’t realize he had masochistic tendencies.
That was the only passable response he could come up with. It
looked like he was as much a fool as she was. They both deserved
whatever they got from this.

“
What do you think of my lasagna,
Corrigan?”

Corrigan barely registered the quietly asked
question from his second oldest sister, Maude. Unlike her prudish
and homely sounding name, she was a classically beautiful woman in
her late twenties with long auburn locks that she usually kept in a
perfect French braid; but when the few times she left it free, it
cascaded down her svelte back like a living waterfall. Ambrose was
a lucky man to have found such a wife in Maude. It was she and his
other sisters who kept this mismatched group a family.

Looking up he found his sister watching him from the
other end of the table where she sat silently next to her husband.
It took him a moment to realize she was waiting for a response from
him. “It’s good. The best you’ve ever made.”

Maude made a face, looking down at his full plate of
vegetarian lasagna then back up at her brother. Corrigan held his
fork in his left hand. It had yet to touch either his plate or the
food on it. While the rest of her family devoured one of her
favored Sunday specialties, her youngest brother stared off into
space.

Maude loved to cook. Growing up in a time when women
were valued as wives and mothers, she stood out as a woman who
wanted more for herself. She didn’t want a husband because she
needed to be supported, she wanted love and companionship. At one
time she had thought to own her own restaurant or culinary school,
but such a thing was impossible as the food industry was still
predominately a man’s domain. Her own kitchen had to suffice and
now such an idea was impossible. The safety of her family came
before her own desires.

“
How do you know that if you have yet to try
it?” she asked pointedly.

The family ate vegetarian style for these Sunday
meals. When you’ve grown accustomed to eating your meat raw, any
dish involving cooked meats makes you sick. Meat had to be eaten
fresh or it quickly became contaminated by bacteria and other
organic life forms. And even with the progress of refrigeration the
nutritional benefits from the meat greatly decreased within the
first few hours after the kill. It was not so much the physical
flesh and blood of the living that they siphoned off the kill, but
from the energy and life force that mingled with the body of the
living. After a body died, this metaphysical substance began
breaking down and returning to its natural source. As a strict
family rule, the soul was left to go where it must. To take a soul
was worse than taking a life. That was an act of a true
monster.

“
What the hell is the matter with you?” His
second oldest brother, Xavier, asked irritably with a slight
Spanish accent. He had cultivated it over the years to only be
noticeable when he allowed it. The shortest of his brothers, he was
also the most vocal and the first one to start a fight. In Xavier’s
world, if he didn’t try to punch you in the face or argue endlessly
with you, then he didn’t love you. It was a weird kind of love, but
then they were a dysfunctional family to begin with so Xavier fit
in well.

“
Do not swear at the dinner table,” Margaret
Ann scolded her husband. She, like her older sisters was equally
stunning in appearance. A fact of which made them even deadlier to
the living. However, she was not vain in any respect. She had lived
in a commune out west during the height of free-spiritual awareness
and the drugs that had also been freely passed around. A beautiful
blonde hippy, she still kept the hair and ideals, but lost the
drugs. Margaret Ann’s life was a complete contradiction to the
strict Roman Catholic upbringing of her husband. But even in
oddities there were surprising similarities.

Xavier turned his head to roll his eyes so she
couldn’t see. For someone who had no problem rolling around in the
mud naked she found any kind of cursing intolerable. Margaret Ann
was quirky like that and he loved her all the more for it.

“
I saw that,” she said, catching him in the
act of rolling his eyes. “But yes,” turning her attention to her
brother, “What is the matter? Maude went to a lot of trouble to
make this dinner and it used to be your favorite. Is there perhaps
something bothering you that you would like to share with us?” she
ventured, plastering a sympathetic smile over her still youthful
looking mouth. She was the youngest of the sisters, but the oldest
in life living years.

Eight sets of eyes turned to stare intently at
Corrigan, each of them sporting expressions ranging from concern to
suspicion. Corrigan had the uneasy sensation of feeling like he was
being viewed under a high powered magnetic microscope by his
family. As if even then could they penetrate his layers of
obscurity; he would reveal nothing of himself to them.

“
Nothing,” Corrigan responded tersely. He
stared back at them, refusing to look away. Sometimes he felt
guilty by choosing to separate himself from them, always keeping
them at arm’s length. But when things got tough they had each other
to lean on. The sisters, despite the generation gaps between most
of them, always bonded together like any true sisters. Like women
of any time, they shopped, they ate together and they gossiped; the
usual every woman kind of stuff. The brothers had banded together
long before the women were even born to this world, finding each
other across this vast country. Corrigan had been the last to join
this rag tag family and even though he was about fifty years older
than his oldest sister, they all, the women included, treated him
like a baby brother. It was irritating, but incredibly sweet.
However, he would never out right admit to ever thinking
that.

The LeMoyne family turned to each other then,
searching between them to figure out the reason for Corrigan’s
morose mood. In general he wasn’t extremely social with his family,
but even still, he never turned down a Maude cuisine creation;
complimenting her on her culinary talents regularly. A compliment
from Corrigan was like a compliment from the divine beings above;
rare and thrilling.

Then several eyes found their way to Chas who had
returned to eating with a fork piled high with food just inches
from his open mouth. Noticing that he was now under the scrutiny of
his family, Chas hesitated, his fork hovering in the air. The
silence at the dining table was only penetrated by the soft music
from the stereo system hidden discretely within an armoire
cabinet.

The family always looked to Chas for answers about
Corrigan. He was closest to him, as close to Corrigan as anyone
could get. And Chas was the one Corrigan took with him into the
city. He had been accustomed to being alone so long that even that
had taken a bit of coursing on Chas’s side. In the end, though,
they had become a team. Yet much to everyone’s disappointment their
youngest brother remained alone. Chas wondered if he preferred it
that way. It seemed a lonely existence, one he was glad he didn’t
have to experience any more.

Chas looked to his wife, Helen, sitting next to him.
She like the others was watching him, waiting. Without thought he
shoved the fork in his mouth, hoping to buy himself some time. He
had no idea what bug was up Corrigan’s butt tonight. For all he
could guess it might be indigestion. He always warned his brother
to stretch out before each meal. But did he ever listen? No. The
man deserved a belly ache.

“
What are you looking at me for?” Chas’s focus
turned to his brother down at the far end of the table. Corrigan
had returned to staring off into space, wearing that empty vacant
expression that he had worn when he first came to stay with the
LeMoyne’s. Now it was back and he had a slight suspicion what or
who had brought that look to his brother’s eyes. It couldn’t have
been coincidental. Ever since the ghost encounter the other night,
his brother had turned inside himself, reverting back to the empty
creature he had once been. If she had done something to hurt his
brother, Chas wouldn’t think twice about exterminating her in cold
retaliation.

“
We’re looking at you because we want to know
what’s wrong with Corrigan.” Deborah answered for the rest of the
family. At twenty-five, she had been the crème de la crème of the
New York society. Her tall statuesque figure had made quite a cut
at the parties and social gatherings of her day. She was the oldest
of her sisters, but looked closer to Helen’s age than Margaret
Ann’s; Maude falling between the two.

Trueman, Deborah’s mate and husband took her hand,
trying to silence her. She and the other sisters had a tendency to
baby their youngest brother. He understood what it took for
Corrigan to remain with the family and not disappear back into the
world he existed in for so long. A world the brothers could only
speculate at, as Corrigan would reveal nothing of his past.

She eyed him curiously. He was one of the quieter
brothers, a true diplomat. He wasn’t as hotheaded as the other men
in the family. Almost as tall as Corrigan, with sandy blonde hair,
he was more interested in his books and research than in sports and
recreation like the other men. Deborah would catch her husband most
days in their library at home, flanked by stacks of books and
discarded scraps of paper. Where ever he went he seemed to leave a
trail of things behind him: pens and notebooks, jars of odd things.
It was a full time job to keep their house from looking like a mad
scientist laboratory.

The family sat in uncomfortable silence for several
more minutes before Ambrose took up the turn to speak. Sitting at
the head of the table, farthest and at the opposite end from where
Corrigan sat, he was more than a simple figure head for the family.
He was the reason they had moved back to St. Augustine. And it was
by his rules that they all abided.

“
We are your family. There are no secrets you
need keep from us.” Ambrose spoke with a hint of his cultivated
French accent; one that would and had made young girls hearts swoon
in his day. In his mid-twenties, he was a dashing looking man whose
face appeared more boyish than his brothers. But in spite of his
pretty boy looks, he was not a man without substance. Ambrose could
hold his own against any of the brothers, physically or
mentally.

“
Then I guess it wouldn’t come as a surprise
to any here to know that you invited Cyrus Cercopoly to your office
the other week. Or that he stayed there for over an hour.” Corrigan
stared down his oldest brother at the other end of the table. He
hadn’t meant to speak. In fact he had every intention of sitting at
the table, brooding in his own head until he could excuse himself
and return to his room in the attic. But he was in a strange mood –
her fault entirely – and the words just slipped out
unheeded.

Forks could be heard as they clanked down onto the
Elmwood table, some striking china like a shriek of surprise. That
was answer enough to Corrigan. It had only been luck that Corrigan
knew of this secret meeting between his elder brother and the
Eidolon councilman. Living in the main house, unlike his other
brothers and sisters, had put him in a position close to their
oldest brother and leader. And because of his extreme anti-social
behavior his family left him alone, sometimes even forgetting he
was there at times.

Corrigan had felt the flow of natural energy change
in the house just before the ghost man had arrived. Corrigan had
been in the hall on the second floor, where at the far end his
brother’s office was located. The man popped himself into the house
outside the office door. He hadn’t even turned around to notice or
acknowledge Corrigan’s presence. He simply knocked on the office
door and was quickly admitted inside from a voice within,
Ambrose’s.

He hadn’t thought much of it at the time. Corrigan
had no reason to be suspicious of his brother. As the spokesperson
for the family, Ambrose had to have contact with the ruling
diplomats from the other side. But there was something about the
meeting between these two that had not seemed completely kosher.
For Cyrus to know where Ambrose’s office was located and be able to
pop in so easily, it could only mean he had been to their house
before.

There wasn’t a logical explanation to why Corrigan
mistrusted the Eidolon diplomats; it was just a gut instinct. He
had only met them once before several years ago at a private
meeting on their side of the city. And from that meeting alone
Corrigan had found reason to hate the ghosts. Now, based on his
brothers and sisters reaction to the news, he knew that no one was
to have ever learned about Ambrose and Cyrus’ meeting of the
minds.

“
That’s what I thought,” Corrigan said with a
sneer. “Looks like I’m not the only with secrets to
hide.”

“
What is he talking about, Ambrose?” Maude
questioned her husband. She reached out to take his hand where it
rested in a tight fist on the lacquered table top. “I don’t
remember you telling me one of the council members had come to our
home. I thought you asked them to keep our business dealings with
the others away from the island. How did he get in my house without
my knowing about it?”