“The hell you’re not. I’m scared too, Kiley. And not just about the damn ghosts.”
A frown tugged at her brow and she stared down at their hands. Then, jittery for reasons beyond her understanding, she got up from the table, slipping her hand from beneath his, turned and began pacing across the room.
Jack got up, came to stand behind her, very close behind her. “I want this thing solved as badly as you do,” he whispered. “I want it out of the way, so I can see what’s left when it’s gone.”
“I don’t know what you mean,” she said, turning to face him as she spoke.
“Yeah, you do.” He lifted a hand and gently pushed her hair away from her face, tucking it behind her ear.
Then, slowly, he lowered his head, brushed her lips with his. Once, then again.
Kiley’s heart fluttered and her stomach tied itself in knots. The soft, tender kisses went on, until, trembling, she slid her hands up his chest, over his shoulders, and then linked her arms around his neck. His arms closed around her waist, and he pulled her tight to him and kissed her long and deeply. She let her lips part, tasting him, loving it.
Finally, he lifted his head away, and when she opened her eyes she found his probing them. Kiley licked her lips, tasting him on them. She sought for words, and heard herself muttering, “B-but I don’t even like you.”
He smiled, and it made her want to kiss him all over again. “Yeah, you keep telling yourself that, Kiley. But trust me, it isn’t gonna change a thing. It didn’t for me, anyway.” He leaned in, nibbling at her mouth again. “And you can get rid of that notion that there’s no affection involved here, lady. We kissed this time.”
“Is that why you kissed me? To prove it’s not just physical so you can get me into bed?”
“No. I kissed you because I wanted to. I’d like to keep on kissing you all night. But we’ve got other things to worry about, unfortunately.”
Kiley wanted him. She wanted to make love to him, now, tonight. She pushed her hands through her hair. “This is so much to deal with. And with everything else going on—ghosts and hauntings and dead women in my bathtub—”
He nodded, sliding his arms from around her waist. “I know. I’m sorry, Kiley, I shouldn’t have—no. Hell, I’m not sorry.”
She smiled up at him. “I’m not, either.”
“Good. So now maybe you understand why I’m in such a hurry to get all that other stuff out of the way.”
She nodded. “Yeah. Okay. So…we’ll have the séance.”
“Great. I’ve got everything we need out in the car.”
He turned as if to go out and fetch his props. “No, Jack,” she said, stopping him in his tracks.
He turned to face her. “Don’t tell me you’ve changed your mind?”
She shook her head. “We’re not doing anything,” she told him, “until I’ve finished my pizza.”
J
ACK WAS SETTING UP
the table in the formal dining room, feeling more nervous than he’d ever been in his life, when the doorbell chimed. Kiley was in the kitchen, putting away the leftover pizza, stacking the dishes in the dishwasher. So he went to the door and pulled it open.
Chris stood there, smiling. Behind him were two of the psychics Kiley had nailed in her column over the past year. Maya, a thirtysomething witch, blond, blue-eyed and petite, nodded hello to him as he stepped aside to let them in. She wore jeans, a cozy-looking sweater, and a pentacle around her neck. Right behind her was John Redhawk, a shaman. Aside from the turquoise beads and ponytail, he, too, was dressed casually, jeans and a green polo shirt under a denim jacket.
Jack heard Kiley come in from the kitchen. She started to say something, then stopped in her tracks.
To break the awkward silence, Jack said, “I, uh—thought you two couldn’t make it.”
John sent a tight look at Kiley. “If there are spirits trapped here, they need help to get across.”
Maya nodded. “We can’t punish them for her actions.”
“Great,” Kiley said. “They’re on the goddamn ghosts’ side.”
“Fortunately your interests and theirs are the same,”
John said, moving farther into the room. “As are your goals and ours—to free them, so they can move on.”
Jack turned to Kiley, knowing she was about to roll her eyes or make some sarcastic comment. But he caught her in time.
“No doubt, Ms. Brigham, you think we can’t be of any help anyway,” Maya said.
Kiley pursed her lips. “I did catch you faking.”
“You caught us being inaccurate,” John explained. “There’s a very big difference.”
“You totally ignored all the times we were dead on target with our work,” Maya added, “and focused only on the times when we missed the mark.”
Chris nodded hard, then put his own two cents in. “You failed to take into account all the people they helped. And the fact that no one was ever harmed by what they did.”
Kiley pursed her lips, lowered her head. “I get it, Chris.” Then she lifted her eyes again, took a breath. “You two just admitted you’re not always right. I suppose I need to do the same.”
John nodded slowly. “Some of the people you condemned in your column were frauds, Ms. Brigham. Some of them were doing harm, and were sorely in need of exposure. I was glad to see them go. They just make the rest of us look bad. But it’s a mistake to paint all psychics with the same brush. And it’s just as bad to hold us up to standards that are impossible for anyone short of a god to meet.”
She nodded. “I’m starting to realize that.” Then she frowned. “But if you’re not batting a thousand, then how the hell can an outsider ever tell the difference?”
“They can’t,” Maya said. “But we can. We know
who’s for real and who’s just running a scam to make a buck. Maybe in the future, you could work with us, instead of against us.”
Kiley blinked, clearly stunned. “You…would do that? Work with me? My God, I never thought—”
“Because you never asked,” John said. “But believe me, we’d love to help you put the frauds out of business.”
Kiley shook her head in something that looked like wonder.
“Chris filled us in on the details,” Maya said, changing the subject. “So where are we doing this?”
“I’m setting up in the dining room.” Jack led the way, looking with hypercritical eyes at the stuff he’d set up. Candles around the room in holders, lots of them, all white. Charcoal tablets, already lit and turning slowly white with heat, filled censers in various spots, each with a small dish of herbs beside it.
“Anything else you want to have in here?” he asked.
John lifted a dish of the herbs. “What are you using?”
“Dandelion, sweetgrass and thistle,” Jack said.
“Mmm.” John tugged a pouch from his jacket pocket. “I’ll add a little tobacco. I’ve had good results with it.”
“And vervain,” Maya said, adding a pinch of something from her own knapsack. “To make it go.” She looked around the room. “I’d feel better if we did this within a circle and if we marked the boundary with salt, and placed representations of the elements in the quarters.”
John nodded his agreement.
Chris looked at Kiley. “C’mon, I’ll tell you what we need and you can help me find it.” The two of them went into the kitchen.
Jack sighed, turning to the others. “Thanks for coming. I mean it, I’m in way over my head here.”
“Why?” Maya asked. “It’s not as if you haven’t done this before.”
Jack glanced toward the kitchen. “I always assumed the problem was in the minds of the clients. That’s where I solved it. Hell, I went through the motions, but I wasn’t really doing anything. You know that, you just finished saying you could tell the real psychics from the frauds.”
They looked at each other, then slowly back at him. John said, “We can, Jack. And you’re one of the real ones.”
Jack stood there gaping, even as Kiley and Chris returned. She carried a bowl of water, and he had a box of salt.
“Good,” Maya said. “Set the bowl in the west—that would be over here.” She pointed. “Move one of those censers so it sits opposite it, in the east, and put one of the taper candles in the south.” She took the salt from Chris, and poured a small pile of it in the north position.
“Ready, everyone?” she asked.
Kiley looked at Jack. He found himself moving closer, taking her hand. “We’re ready.”
John was moving around the room, lighting each candle, and adding pinches of the herbal mixture to each censer. Chris shut off the lights. Then they took their seats around the table, as Maya walked in a large circle around them, pouring a boundary line of salt as she moved. When it was all poured, she set the salt box down and walked the perimeter again, moving her hands like a mime as she created a circle of protection and power.
When she took her seat at the table, all was silent.
John looked at Jack. “Take the lead, my friend. This is your project, we’re just here for backup.”
Jack almost refused, but then he realized how that would look to Kiley. Even though he thought things had changed between them, he wasn’t ready to admit to her that he was a fraud. He was terrified—not that she would expose him. Hell, he didn’t even care about that anymore. No, his greatest fear was that she would turn away from him. And he didn’t think he could stand that.
So much more than his business was at stake now. He cared what she thought of him now.
He took a breath, tried to remember all the usual mumbo jumbo, and said, “Join hands.” Beside him, Kiley slid her hand into his. Impulsively, he drew it to his lips, and pressed a kiss there. She squeezed a reply. He closed his eyes and instructed everyone through several deep breaths in an effort to relax them. Finally, he addressed the spirits.
“Those of us here at this table call out to those of you elsewhere in this house. We know you’re here. We know you have something you want to tell us. We’ve created this sacred space and we invite you in. You are welcome here, provided you mean us no harm. You are welcome here, so long as your intentions are for the highest good. Come now, join us.”
A door slammed.
Jack’s head came up, eyes flying open and he saw the others on high alert as well. They met each other’s eyes around the room, in the flickering candle glow. And then, suddenly, a gust of icy wind blew through, and every candle in the room went out.
Jack felt himself sinking, as if his chair had dissolved beneath him. He fought it, tried to cling more tightly to the hands on either side of him, but it was no use. They fell away and he plummeted downward, right through
the floorboards, hitting the basement floor so hard it knocked the wind out of him.
He swore and got up, brushing himself off, rubbing his tailbone gingerly. Looking up, he expected to see the hole above him, but the ceiling was perfect. Flawless.
And then he heard someone speaking softly, and he turned to look.
There in the corner was a man of perhaps thirty. His slicked-back hair and dated glasses made him look like something out of a ’70s sitcom. Knife-sharp crease on his plaid pants, thick belt with an oversized buckle and a tie so wide it was almost funny.
Jack said, “Hey. Who the hell are you and what are you doing down here?”
But the man didn’t hear him. He went right on with what he was doing. And what he was doing, Jack realized, was smoothing new concrete over a portion of the floor. He knelt there, moving a trowel over the smooth, slick gray mush.
Jack strode across to him. “What the hell are you doing?” he demanded. And when the man didn’t answer, he reached for him, to spin him around and make him talk. But his hand moved right through the guy.
“Jack?”
The voice was Kiley’s. It was coming from above.
“Jack, are you all right? Come on, Jack, wake up!”
He felt her hands on his face, her breath on his skin. And then he was rising again, rising as if on an elevator at top speed, leaving his stomach somewhere below. He jerked his head up, opened his eyes. Kiley was standing over him. The lights were on. Maya, John and Chris surrounded him. “Jesus, what happened?”
“You passed out,” Kiley said.
“He went into a trance,” Maya corrected.
“He left his body, journeyed into the realm of the spirits,” John put in.
“Well? Which is it, Jack? What happened to you?”
He sat up straighter in the chair, rubbed his forehead. “How long was I out?”
“Fifteen minutes or so,” Kiley said.
“It felt like about fifteen seconds.”
She stroked his face. “Are you okay? I knew this was a bad idea. I just knew it.”
Jack licked his lips. “No. No, it was a good idea. I…I saw something.”
She frowned, staring at him. “What?”
“I think it was Mr. Miller. He was spreading concrete in the cellar.”
K
ILEY STOOD OVER THE SOFA,
where she’d made Jack lie down. John, Maya and Chris had left, at Jack’s insistence. He swore he knew what he needed to know now, thanked them for their help and told them to go.
“I’m not sure what happened back there, Jack.”
He closed his eyes and pressed a hand to his forehead. “Neither am I.” He held her gaze. “Only thing I am sure of, is that I need to see that basement.”
An icy shiver rippled through her entire being. “I don’t know if that’s such a good idea.”
“I think it’s the only way to end this thing, Kiley.”
She pursed her lips. “It’s not safe down there.”
“You stay up here. I just need to take a look.”
Firming her jaw, she shook her head. “No. Not alone. If you’re going down there, I’m going with you.”
He studied her face for a moment. “You sure?”
She nodded.
Sighing, Jack reached out to cup her cheek. It was a touch that seemed tender, protective in some strange way. “You’re braver than you look, you know that?”
“Is that supposed to pass for a compliment?”
“Just a fact.” He got to his feet.
“Oh,” she said. “You meant, right now?”
“No. No, not right yet. There’s something else, first.”
“Is there?”
He smiled softly, reached for her and pulled her to him. “This.” He cupped her face and tipped it, so that he could kiss her the way it suited him. He took his time, probed and licked, tasted and explored. Kiley felt herself melting for him.
“Jack,” she whispered.
“I know. This is no time for—but God, Kiley, I can’t stop thinking about how it felt when we—”
“I know. I know.”
He slid his hands down to her waist, then up again, raising her little T-shirt with them. She lifted her arms overhead, so he could take it off her. No bra. He hadn’t brought her one when he brought her clothes, and she had no doubt that was deliberate. His hands covered her breasts, then he bent her backward and used his mouth instead, tasting, suckling. She let her head fall backward and stopped fighting the moans of pleasure. He was wrestling her jeans free now, shoving them off her hips and driving a hand down the front of her panties, cupping her there. He held her, arched backward over one arm, mouth attacking a breast, hand attacking her center. It was almost too good.
“Jack, please…”
He laid her on the sofa, tugged the jeans off the rest of the way, stripped away her panties. Then he yanked off his own jeans, frenzied now in his rush. She was on fire, gripping him, pulling him to her even before he had his jeans off. And then he was there, sliding inside her, filling her just as he had before. But this time he didn’t stop. He drove into her, and when she clutched his buttocks and dug her nails into his firm flesh he did it again, harder and deeper with every thrust. She twisted
her legs around him, tilted her hips to take him, cried out his name with every breath he forced from her lungs. His hands held her butt, pulling her hard to him so he could plunge even deeper. His mouth took her nipple, and he used his teeth now, in gentle bites and nibbles that made her cry out in sweet anguish. He moved faster, harder, driving her to the edge of what she could bear, and finally, beyond that edge, into sweet oblivion. The orgasm broke like a tidal wave, and she shrieked his name as her entire body shuddered in spasms of release. And then he was there, too, groaning deep in his throat as he drove more deeply than ever, and held her to him as he poured into her. She felt the rhythmic pulse in him, the milking contractions in herself, and she clung to it, rode it out, until slowly the waves receded and her muscles relaxed.
He slid onto his side, pulling her close, wrapping her in his arms. “That was incredible.”
“It was supernatural,” she agreed. “Why did we waste so much time hating each other?”
He leaned up, kissed her earlobe and held her for another ten minutes while their heart rates returned to normal. And then, finally, she sighed and got to her feet. “Shall we get this over with?” she asked.
“It’s as good a time as any.” He got up, found their clothes, helped her to dress, sliding her panties over her feet and pulling them slowly up for her. Every touch was a caress. He repeated the process with the T-shirt. She took the jeans from him, because if he kept this up he was going to make her decide to do something else besides explore the basement.
Hell, what was this now? Were they casual sex partners, or something more?
She looked past him at the darkened windows, heard the wind picking up outside. Branches moved, scraping gnarled limbs over the sides of the house, like demons trying to claw their way in. She shivered, all the fears he’d made her forget returning in force.
Jack slid an arm around her shoulders. “Don’t worry, Kiley. I’m not going to let anything happen to you. Especially not now.”
The way his voice thickened on those words made her look up at him quickly. “Don’t wax mushy on me, Jack. That would be scarier than the basement.”
“Come on.”
She walked with him, wished he couldn’t feel her shaking, but not so much that she would give up the reassuring arm around her. In fact, she walked as close beside him as she could. At the basement door, she drew a breath.
Jack reached out, closed his hand on the knob and opened the door. She stared into a rectangle of utter blackness. Then she reached past him, into the inky dark, which felt like a physical thing, cold and dense. She found the light switch, flicked it.
Light flooded the stairway. She swallowed her fear. “We’re coming down here to keep our promise, ghost. We’re checking out the things you’ve been trying to tell us, but I’ll tell you right now, at the first sign you’re fucking with us, we’re out of here. Understood?”
There was no sound, no sign of any reply.
She looked at Jack. He nodded. “Let’s go, then.” Still holding her near his side, he started down the stairway. It was a solid stairway, modern, obviously not the original set. They walked down, thirteen stairs, to the bottom, a smooth concrete floor.
“So?” she asked. “Where was it you saw in this…vision?”
He looked at the ceiling, evenly spaced studs, with cross-pieces in between them. Steel pipe ran along the edges of some boards, laying a hot-and-cold running trail from the basement to the bathrooms and the kitchen. Then he lowered his gaze, scanning the basement. “Over here, I think.”
She walked with him across the basement. He moved slowly, and Kiley wondered if he was feeling the same things she was. It seemed to grow colder with every step they took. And there was something else in the air. Something electric and alive.
He stopped, and seemed to be staring at the floor.
“Is this it?”
He nodded. “Yeah. I think so.”
“What do you think we should do about it, Jack?”
He sighed, looking around the room. She followed his gaze. There were some old tools hanging from hooks in the wall. Hoe, rake, shovel. They were old, battered, dusty. They’d been here when she bought the place, and she hadn’t bothered to get rid of them. She hadn’t even touched them. Hell, she’d only been in the basement once, with the real estate agent. For some reason she hadn’t been able to come back down here since she’d moved in.
He seemed about to answer her, when a loud clattering sound made Kiley jump six inches and clutch her chest. Her heart racing, she scanned the basement to find the source of the sound. The old shovel lay on the concrete floor. It had fallen off its hook. She swallowed her fear, took a calming breath and looked up at Jack.
He said, “I think we need to dig up the floor.”
“Yeah. I kind of picked up on that.”
He nodded. “We’ll need something stronger than a shovel to break through concrete.” Taking her hand, he turned and started back toward the stairway.
From the corner of her eye, Kiley saw something flying toward them. She swung a hand to the back of Jack’s head, pushing him forward and down, ducking along with him, and the thing whizzed over their heads so fast and so close that she felt the breeze it caused, heard the sound of it passing. It slammed into the wall on the other side of them and stayed there.
“Holy Christ,” Jack muttered, straightening and staring.
She stared, too. The rounded end of the shovel was embedded in the wall, its handle sticking straight out, still quivering from the impact.
“That could have taken off your head,” Kiley whispered.
“Yeah.” He was staring behind him, eyes wide and watchful.
“Goddamn it!” Kiley turned and shouted. “What are you, stupid or something? We can’t dig the effing floor up with a shovel. It’s concrete, you blithering idiot. We’re going to need a jackhammer or something. So unless you’ve got one of those to hurl at us, knock it the hell off!”
Jack stared at her, then looked around the basement.
“You think it got the message?”
“Hell, you scared me. Should’ve worked on the ghost.”
She searched his eyes, suddenly, acutely aware of how ridiculously much he had come to mean to her. “It better have,” she said. She ran a hand through his hair, kissed his chin.
Then, turning, they took another step toward the stairs. Nothing happened, so they started up them. They made it almost all the way to the top, before the creaking,
splitting, cracking sounds alerted them to trouble. Jack grabbed her waist and shoved her ahead of him and through the open doorway. Then he vanished behind her. Kiley shrieked, and spun around in time to see the entire staircase collapsing and taking Jack with it. “Jack!” She shouted his name, reaching for him. But the door slammed in her face.
J
ACK HIT THE FLOOR HARD
, then curled into a protective ball as debris rained down on him. He was pummeled, his head, back, shoulders, his hands and arms where he clutched them around his face like a makeshift helmet, pounded by falling debris. He thought he heard Kiley screaming his name, but he couldn’t be sure with the roar around him. And then, suddenly, there was just silence.
Swallowing hard, Jack tried to move. It hurt when he straightened. Boards fell off his body, clattering to the floor around him. He got upright, brushed some of the dust from his shoulders and tried to take stock. His shoulder throbbed. Lower back wasn’t feeling too pleasant, either. Above him, he could hear Kiley, pounding on the door, shouting and swearing.
He cupped his hands and hollered in her direction. It took two or three tries before she heard him and stopped her own shouting to listen. “Jack?” she called.
“Yeah. I’m okay.”
“Thank God.” He lowered his head, smiling a little at the level of relief that came through in that one simple declaration. “Jack, I can’t get the door open.” But he was looking at the floor now, frowning at the way the debris had come to rest on the other side of the basement. Broken boards formed a rectangle, framing the area where he’d seen the man laying concrete. He walked
over there, bending low, moving the boards away. Frowning, he looked more closely.
“Jack?”
“Just a sec!” he called.
He bent closer, noticing now the way the dust had gathered into a tiny crevice, which, like the broken boards, formed a rectangle in the floor. He brushed at the dust, running his fingers along the fissure, realizing this piece of concrete was separate from the rest, not a part of the floor, but something else.
He looked across the room then, at the forgotten tools in the corner. Spotted a crowbar. “Okay, I get it,” he said softly. “We don’t need a jackhammer.”
He heard a soft creaking sound and turned to see the cellar door swinging slowly open. On the other side, Kiley stood with a baseball bat in her hands, and it was raised up as if she’d been about to pound the door with it. She blinked down at him.
He said, “Is there another way in and out of here?”
She nodded. “A hatchway door that leads outside.”
He nodded.
“You going to come out that way, Jack?”
He thinned his lips. “I’m afraid if I try, that exit will get annihilated, too. No, I think we need to dig this thing up now.”
“But—”
“The cement’s sectioned here. I think I can pry it up.”
She stared at him, then at the area around him. “What, you couldn’t just say so? You had to risk killing him?”
The lights flickered off, then on again. Jack said, “Maybe you should stop yelling at them, Kiley?”
“Fuck them. I’m coming back down. See you in a minute.”
She vanished from the doorway. Jack went to the corner to grab the crowbar, then tugged the shovel from where it was embedded in the wall and carried both back to the spot with him.
A few minutes later, Kiley arrived at his side. She had found another crowbar and knelt on the basement floor beside him. “Are you really okay?”
“Yeah. I’ll be a little sore, but nothing serious.” He was jamming the flat end of the bar into the crack, moving it back and forth. The crack grew wider with every movement.
She did what he was doing, working in the other direction, and they made their way around the entire rectangle. She said, “You have a little blood on your face.”