The Ghoul Next Door (12 page)

Again, Steven took his time answering. At last he said, “You’re probably right. But we still need to know what happened, M.J. A girl is dead and my fiancée’s brother is accused of the crime. How is that possible?”

I sat down in the chair and pinched the bridge of my nose. As much as I wanted to tell Steven that I didn’t know and didn’t want to get further involved, I knew that even if I tried, I couldn’t walk away from this now. Heath, Gilley, and I were involved. Like it or not. So the only recourse I had left was to try to figure out what’d happened. My sneaking suspicion was that either the spook we were trying to identify had taken possession of Luke and caused him to commit this random murder, or there was a dark side to Luke that no one really knew about, and the spook was just an excuse to carry out some sickly weird agenda.

Of course, there was a third possibility, but it seemed highly unlikely. Luke may not have had anything to do with the crime. He could’ve been in the wrong place at the wrong time and somehow gotten blood all over himself. That was the leap I figured his attorney was going to take. But I’d been there when Luke had entered that house, covered in blood. No way had he just been an innocent bystander. “Steven,” I said, with that in mind, “has anyone managed to get Luke’s side of the story?”

“No. He’s in custody and the attorney I’ve retained for him won’t allow anyone to speak to him. He says that all of the conversations Luke may have with visitors can be recorded. Except those between Luke and the attorney. Those are bound by attorney-client privilege. But everyone else isn’t allowed to speak a word to him or to take phone calls from him. The attorney doesn’t want Luke to say anything that could be used against him later.”

“Well, then, we’re stuck, aren’t we?”

“No, we’re not stuck,” Steven insisted. “Gilley said that Luke was possessed last night when he walked out of the house. I think that ghost took over Luke’s body and was responsible for the murdered girl.”

I wasn’t shocked that Gilley had been running his mouth without knowing for certain that was the case, but it irritated me no end that Gil had made a bad situation worse by saying such things to Steven. “We don’t know for sure that Luke was possessed last night, Steven. We only know that he was acting weird, got up, walked downstairs and out of the door. The next time we saw him, he was clearly in distress and covered in blood. Only Luke knows what happened.”

“But what if he doesn’t?”

“What does that mean?”

“I overheard one of the policemen at the scene say that when he put Luke in the car, he told the cop that he couldn’t remember anything about what’d happened.”

I sighed and went back to pinching the bridge of my nose. “Steven, I don’t know how we can help. This is way outside of anything we’ve ever dealt with—”

“That’s not true and you know it, M.J. I’ve seen the things you’ve dealt with firsthand. If anyone is going to get to the bottom of this, it’s you.”

“I’m not a detective, Steven!” I said a bit too loudly. “I wasn’t there! I didn’t see what happened! I only saw Luke get up and leave the house. The next thing we know, a girl is dead and Luke is covered in blood that, quite likely, came from her.”

“M.J.,” Steven said calmly, “please. You have to try to figure out what happened. I know this young man. He’s not capable of doing something like this.”

I tapped the arm of the chair with my fingertips. I felt trapped and cornered and I didn’t like it. “Let me talk to Gilley and Heath,” I said at last. “If they agree to look into this, then we will. But if either of them doesn’t want to do it, then we’re out, Steven.”

“Did I really mean that little to you?”

The comment caught me off guard. “What?”

“You heard me,” he said softly. “A year ago you would’ve dropped everything if I’d needed you. Now it’s like we’re strangers. Like there was never anything special between us, when you know there was. I know you do.”

I nearly took the bait, but with effort I managed to keep my wits about me. “This has nothing to do with how I felt about you in the past, Steven. Nothing. This has everything to do with this being a matter for the police to figure out. If we get involved, we risk everything from obstruction charges to being implicated in the murder. It’s risky, is all I’m saying, and while I might be willing to get involved to help you, I won’t commit either Gilley or Heath to that without their buy-in.”

Steven seemed to think that over. “Fine,” he said at last. “But if the situation were reversed, M.J., I wouldn’t hesitate to help you.”

I clenched my jaw—that was an exaggeration and completely unfair. Steven wasn’t in my position, and I
knew
he’d never commit Courtney to such risks if the situation were reversed. I understood him far better than that. Still, I decided not to call him on it. I wanted off the phone and away from the guilt trip, so I simply said, “We’ll be in touch,” and hung up.

“That sounded like it went well,” Heath said from the doorway of the bathroom.

I started. I hadn’t realized he’d been standing there. “How much did you overhear?”

“Enough. He wants us to investigate this?”

I nodded. “He’s convinced Luke was possessed and that the spook made him do it.”

“Wait a sec. We haven’t had a chance to talk to Luke to see what the hell was going on inside his head, so how does Steven know that’s what happened?”

I sighed. “He had a little help arriving at that conclusion.” When Heath’s brow furrowed, I added, “Gilley told him Luke was possessed when he walked out of the house last night.”

Heath shook his head and scratched the back of his neck. He wore a towel around his waist and droplets of water glistened off his bare chest and shoulders. “Leave it to Gil,” he said.

“Hmm?” I asked, distracted by the sexy sight of him. “Oh, yeah. Gil.”

“You rang?” said a voice from the hallway. Heath and I both jumped just as Gil appeared in my bedroom doorway. “Why, hello, gorgeous,” my BFF said the moment he laid eyes on a half-naked Heath.

Heath blushed, which I thought was incredibly cute, before he recovered himself. “Keep it in your pants, Gillespie. You know I only have eyes for Em.”

Gil sighed sadly. “Yes, I know. Such a shame.”

I laughed in spite of myself. Then I remembered the conversation I’d just been having with Heath. “Gil, why the hell did you tell Steven that Luke was possessed last night?”

Gilley made a face like he didn’t quite understand my question. “Because he was.”

“We don’t know that,” I insisted.

Gil blinked. “Wait. Didn’t you see what I saw? That boy had possession written all over his face. I mean, did his head spin around? No. Did he projectile vomit? No. But did I expect both of those things to happen the minute he sat up and stared at us like he did through the camera? Yes, yes, I did. That boy was
full-on
Linda Blair last night and you know it.”

“No, Gil,” I repeated. “I don’t know it. I only know that Luke got up, looked a bit off, and left the house. What happened between the time he walked out and showed up again covered in blood is a complete mystery.”

“A mystery that Sable wants us to figure out,” Heath said, looking to me to confirm.

I sat back in the chair. “Yes.”

“Has anyone asked Luke what the hell happened?” Gil said.

“No,” I told him. “His lawyer won’t let him say a word to anyone. Whatever went down, we won’t know about it through Luke.”

“Why won’t he let us talk to him if we might be able to help?” Gilley asked.

“Because we could be called to testify about what Luke said to us in relation to last night.”

“Ahhh,” Gil said. “So, Steven wants us to figure out what happened last night without being able to ask Luke?”

“Yes.”

“Why doesn’t he just hire a private detective?” Gil asked next.

“I don’t think a PI is going to understand the whole ‘possession’ angle,” I replied, using air quotes.

“Even if we can prove that Luke was possessed, how does that help him?” Heath said. “I mean, what jury has ever bought the whole the-devil-made-me-do-it argument?”

I shrugged. “I don’t know, honey. But the one thing that’s bugging me is that if this spook can possess someone like Luke and get him to commit such a heinous crime, what’s to stop it from trying that again on somebody else?”

Heath and Gilley were silent for a long moment, and the room felt heavy, like it was loaded with bad options. “We have to find out what this spook is really capable of, don’t we?” Heath said at last.

“I think we do,” I replied.

Gilley walked over to the bed, turned, and fell backward onto it. “How do we always get mixed up in crazy shit like this?”

“Dunno, buddy. Maybe we’re just lucky.”

Gil lifted his head and looked around at the bedcovers, his eyebrows bouncing. “Speaking of getting lucky . . .”

I bolted out of my chair. “Don’t even think about going there,” I told him, heading out to the living room. Gilley followed me while I suspected Heath was getting dressed. I walked right over to Doc’s cage, where he lived when I wasn’t at the office, and opened the door so he could come out and climb onto the play stand on top. He blew kisses at me and whistled. I thought Doc had it pretty good, free of worry from spooks and demons and such.

Gil took up the barstool in front of my kitchen counter. “Where do we even start with this, M.J.? Our only link to the demon is currently sitting in a jail cell waiting to be arraigned.”

I moved to the kitchen and opened up a cupboard to take down some Rice Chex cereal. I held the box up and shook it a little. Gil shook his head. Pouring the Chex into a bowl, I then rooted around in the fridge for some almond milk. Behind me I heard Doc say, “Cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs!”

After drenching my cereal, I put some into a much smaller bowl and walked it over to my sweet bird, who happily squeaked and got down to breakfast. “I think we should start with the woman who was murdered,” I said, as much to myself as to Gilley.

“What’s that?” Heath asked, coming out of the bedroom.

I looked up. “The woman who died last night,” I told him. “If her spirit has been grounded, then she’s the only other person besides Luke who might be able to tell us what the hell happened last night.”

Gilley shuddered in his seat. “This whole business is so macabre.”

I ignored him and moved back to the counter to take up the seat next to him and dive into my breakfast. “What if she’s not around?” Heath asked after moving over to the cereal box to pick from the package.

I sighed, thinking that through. I felt blind on this one. “The only other idea I have is to go back to the house where Luke was living when he claimed all of this started to happen.”

Heath and Gilley were silent for a moment as they considered that, until Gil said, “I have a question.”

I turned to him. “Which is?”

“What if the spook is still controlling Luke?”

“Then at least they’re both locked up for the moment,” I said.

Gil shook his head. “No, you’re missing my point. What if the spook has control of Luke and won’t let go? He’s in jail. It’s not like we’ll be allowed to pass him some magnetic spikes and lock down whatever’s gotten hold of him.”

“True. But if we can find the portal of this spook and shove a few magnets into it, then maybe we can cut him off from his power source and he’ll eventually weaken.”

Heath’s brow rose. “That’s a really good idea, Em.”

“First I think we should focus all our efforts on trying to figure out who this spook is. If we can learn something about him, maybe it’ll help us understand why it’s been targeting Luke. I mean, these spooks usually go for kindred spirits, don’t they? Do we really think after meeting Luke only once that he’s this great guy who couldn’t hurt a fly?”

“I guess it couldn’t hurt to check him out,” Gil said.

I polished off the last of my cereal and pushed the bowl aside. “I agree. Let’s try and look into Luke’s background a little. See if he’s really as innocent as his sister claims.”

“Shouldn’t we also get some background on the woman who was murdered?” Heath said.

I blinked. Why hadn’t I thought of that first? “Yes, definitely. But, Gil, if you’d hold off telling us anything about her until after Heath and I try to make contact, that’d be good. That way we know what we’re getting is genuine and not influenced by anything we know.”

Gil was taking notes on his iPhone. “Got it,” he said. Then he pushed back from the counter and added, “You two do what you do, and I’ll be digging up dirt.”

With that, he left us. Heath and I headed out the door just a few minutes later, stopping by Mack’s office to drop off both of our passports, as Mack had asked us to let him take them to the police. My thinking was that he wanted to be absolutely certain Heath and I hadn’t been in the U.S. at the time of Bethany’s murder. The stamps in both of our passports from Scotland were undeniable, so I wasn’t at all nervous about turning them over. And if Heath and I handed over our passports and the police kept them for a while, then we couldn’t very well leave the country to face more demons and evil spooks for our cable show. Given what I suspected we were up against here, that was sounding like the one bright spot in a pretty cloudy future.

After leaving both passports with Mack’s secretary, Heath and I drove over to the scene of the crime, so to speak. We parked just down the street from Courtney’s place and saw the yellow tape looped across the span of the steps leading up to the front door. There was additional tape across the door in the form of a large
X
, and a big yellow sticker was stuck between the door and the frame to seal it. Heath and I approached cautiously, both of us looking up and down the street—not for spooks, but for cops. We’d had a brief discussion in the car about the danger of showing up at the crime scene while under the suspicion of the police. The last thing we needed was to be seen poking our noses in places Detective Souter didn’t think they belonged, and I was absolutely convinced that if she knew we were here, she’d suspect that we were up to something like hiding evidence.

There was no sign of the police or CSI, but I stiffened when I heard a siren in the distance. Heath moved close to me to take up my hand and walked right beside me as we crossed the street. Once on the sidewalk we both gazed up silently at Courtney’s front door. I pressed my lips together when I noticed a rusty stain on the door handle, and an additional faint rust-colored handprint on the door itself. There were also the familiar smudges of dark gray powder all along the door’s edge.

I knew I’d need to open up my sixth sense to get a feel for the murdered girl, but I was hesitant in that way one is about diving into a cold pool. Heath seemed to have no such reservations. He lifted his chin a little and looked down the street, his eyes unfocused and that familiar expression I knew too well. “You’ve got something?”

He nodded and began to move past me, taking up my hand again to bring me along. As I walked beside him, I opened up my own senses and felt the energy around us expand.

It’s a little bit of a neat trick I discovered about working with Heath that when he and I are together, if we’re both using our sixth senses, our ability to pick up information and the presence of spirits expands exponentially. It’s a bit like putting a big antenna on a radio—the range is broader and the information coming in much clearer. It’s a sum-of-the-parts-being-greater-than-the-whole type of thing, and it’s one of the reasons I really love working with Heath.

“She’s this way,” he said softly as we walked.

I tried to detect the energy he was talking about, and I had only the slightest sense of her, but I knew that by keeping my intuition open I was helping him make his connection to the spirit of the dead girl stronger.

“Is it the woman who was murdered?” I asked him.

“Amy,” he said. “I think her name was Amy.”

At that moment Heath stopped abruptly, and because he was leading me, I did too. I looked at him closely and saw his brow furrow. “Weird,” he said.

“What’s weird?”

Heath was turning his head this way and that, as if he was listening to more than one person in a conversation. “This girl feels young,” he said. “Didn’t Mack tell you that she was in her late twenties?”

“He did.”

Heath shook his head. “She feels about ten years younger. But it’s gotta be the same girl because her throat was cut.” I watched as Heath’s hand lifted to his own throat and he seemed to grimace a little.

At that moment my own radar kicked into full swing and I felt a tug from just down the street. The smell of blood wafted under my nose, and I nearly gagged. I put my free hand over my nose—the scent was so powerful and nauseating—and sure enough as I looked farther down the street, I saw a door with the familiar yellow
X
across the door.

I couldn’t feel the girl—she seemed to be communicating only with Heath—but I could sense the violence that’d occurred in the spot we were standing in. It was awful. The assault had been intense, and unrelenting. I felt myself cringing and stepping closer to Heath. Looking up at him, I saw that he’d closed his eyes and he was standing so stiffly I didn’t think he was even aware of the fact that I’d moved closer to him. He’d also gone a little pale, and I had a feeling he was getting details that were far too grim to witness.

I squeezed his hand, which had gone cold in my palm. “Babe,” I whispered, but he didn’t acknowledge me. “Heath,” I tried again, a little louder. I felt a shudder go through him and he opened his eyes, staring at me with such a haunted expression that I reached up to cup his face. “You okay?” I asked.

“No,” he said, his eyes misting slightly. “Em, let’s get out of here, okay?”

I nodded and took him by the hand again, leading him back across the street and to my car. Heath paused to fish out the car keys from his pocket, but his hand was shaking so bad that he dropped the keys. I ducked to pick them up first and said, “How about I drive?”

He nodded and moved stiffly around to the passenger side. Once we were inside, I started the engine and cranked up the heat. Heath was pale and shaking and I couldn’t imagine what he’d gotten from the ether to affect him so much. I didn’t press him for details; instead I drove straight to Mama Dell’s. The minute we were through the door, Mama appeared, as if she knew someone was troubled and needed a good dose of Southern charm.

“Well, good afternoon, y’all!” she said, sweeping toward us all smiles and open arms. She aimed those open arms toward Heath first and I was so grateful. “Darlin’, you feel cold!” she said to him, squeezing him tighter. I stood back and let Mama’s warmth funnel its way into Heath, and before my eyes some color returned to his cheeks and I sighed with relief.

Mama let go of him after a bit and graced me with a hug too, but I could tell her mind was still on Heath. “Come in, y’all, and take a seat. I’ll bring you some coffee and some fresh buttermilk biscuits to warm your bones.”

“Mama, can we trouble you for some hot cocoa instead of coffee?” I asked. I was worried that Heath might be suffering a mild form of shock, and as he’d pretty much skipped breakfast, save for a few handfuls of cereal, I thought the sugar might be what he needed.

“Of course!” she said, already turning to fetch us the order.

I guided Heath to a cozy corner where we weren’t likely to be overheard and sat down across from him without saying a word. He sat there numbly, his eyes troubled and his hands still shaking slightly. I waited until Mama had delivered our cocoa and biscuits. I had to encourage Heath to take up the cup and sip his drink, but after a few swallows he seemed better still. “What did you see?” I asked him after he’d set his cup back down.

He closed his eyes and shook his head. “Her name was Amy. She was sweet, you know? I had the sense that she was pretty naive and innocent, just out for a walk in the warm night when out of nowhere she was grabbed from behind and stabbed. I could feel her shock and her pain. It’d been quick, but not quick enough. Her throat was slashed too, but it wasn’t deep enough to kill her quickly. It took a few minutes. . . .”

Heath’s voice trailed off as he put his fingers up to his neck again and swallowed hard. I winced and reached out to squeeze his free hand.

“Did she know who grabbed her?” I asked when it looked like he could talk again.

Heath shook his head. “No. She just kept saying ‘Why?’ to me. She knew she was dying. She knew she was being murdered, but she didn’t understand why. It felt so random.”

“Did you get her to cross over?” I asked, knowing that if Amy was still grounded, as I suspected she was, Heath would’ve worked telepathically to talk her into crossing to the other side.

He leaned forward in his seat and rubbed his hands together as if they’d gone cold again. “I didn’t have a chance to talk to her beyond what’d happened during her murder, Em. Something else came into the ether.”

My brow furrowed. I hadn’t sensed anything else. “Something else?”

He nodded but stared at the ground while he tried to explain. “I was trying to help Amy, waiting for her to settle down a little, when something sort of entered my energy.”

“I didn’t feel anything,” I said to him, thoroughly puzzled. I’d felt the violence surrounding us, and a hint of the girl Heath was connecting with, but nothing more.

“I know,” Heath said, finally looking up at me. “It’s hard to explain, but I felt this energy try to connect directly to me and only me. For a few seconds it seemed to enter my thoughts and try to take them over. And it let me see what it was about, and it was bad. Like evil bad.”

“What did it show you?”

Heath shut his eyes again. “Blood. Whatever it was, it lusted for blood. The smell, the taste, the texture of it. Like . . . a blood addict, and I know that sounds crazy, but that’s what it felt like.”

I remembered the overwhelming scent of blood that’d wafted under my nose while I stood next to Heath on the sidewalk. “I felt a tinge of that,” I admitted.

“You felt it?” he asked me.

“Sort of. While I thought you were communicating with Amy, I smelled this overpowering scent of blood just under my nose. It was so potent I nearly gagged.”

Heath nodded like he understood perfectly. “The thing of it is, Em, that I didn’t get the sense that all that blood filling my thoughts came only from Amy. It felt like there were others.”

“Others?” I asked.

Heath nodded.

I shook my head. “That could be bad.”

“Yep.”

“What else did you get from this energy?” I asked.

“It’s hard to describe,” Heath said. “I don’t even know if it was human, Em.”

“You said that it tried to take over your thoughts. What’d you mean by that?”

Heath lifted the cup of cocoa and held it between his hands. “For a few seconds after I became aware of this thing, it crept into my mind and I couldn’t think straight. I mean, Em, I couldn’t even remember my name for a tick or two.”

“How long did it last?” I tried to hide the alarm I felt because I’d never seen any hint of an assault on Heath’s energy the whole time I’d been standing next to him.

“A few seconds,” he said. “I heard you call my name, but I didn’t make the connection until you touched my face and I could focus on you. And even after that, I had a hard time thinking straight. I know you drove me here, but I don’t remember much beyond you leading me back across the street.”

I stared at Heath for several seconds. I wondered worriedly if perhaps there was something to Luke’s story after all. There was a spook I couldn’t sense that had tried to take over Heath, and I’d been oblivious other than smelling blood. “Did it say anything while it was trying to take you over, honey?” I desperately wanted to figure this thing out.

“No. But . . .” Heath’s voice trailed off and he seemed to be struggling with what he wanted to say next. “There was a moment, Em, just a second really, when I felt like killing somebody. Like . . . I was thirsty for it.”

I shuddered and sat back in my chair. “Whoa.”

Heath nodded. “We’ve been under assault from spooks before where they’ve taken us over, but this was different. This was so fast and without any warning. One minute I’m trying to help Amy and the next my mind’s being taken over by something made of pure evil.”

Heath and I stared at each other for the next several seconds without saying a word. We didn’t need to. At last I said, “I hate this case.”

“Me too. Wanna quit?”

“Yes. But I know we won’t.”

Heath broke into a lopsided grin. “Sucks being a woman of your word, doesn’t it?”

I nodded. “Some days it sucks more than others.”

Heath got up and pulled out his wallet. After leaving a twenty underneath his coffee cup, he reached for my hand. “Come on, beautiful. Let’s go find Gil and tell him we made contact with the murdered girl. Maybe we can find a different place to connect to her energy, away from that thing, whatever it was.”

•   •   •

We found Gil hunched over his old laptop in my condo. Doc was sitting on his shoulder, preening himself and fluffing his feathers. Doc has a serious crush on Gilley, and every time Gil is nearby, my sweet birdie makes a point of getting himself to look as pretty as possible. The scene was doubly sweet because I noticed that Doc would periodically tilt his head to the side and make kissing noises in Gil’s ear. Gil would respond absently by making the same kissing noises back. It was a lovefest.

“Hey,” Gil said when he finally looked up at us. “How’d it go?”

“It went,” I told him, heading straight to the couch. Heath sat down next to me and I let him take the lead. “We made contact with the victim.”

Gil paused his typing to lower the lid of the laptop. “Was it rough?” he asked, probably taking note of Heath’s reserved countenance.

“It was, actually. Her name was Amy, and I got the initial
M
attached to her last name. She felt young too. In my mind she was in her late teens, but maybe she was just immature. I got a sense of light hair color too—blond, I think—and the night she died, she’d been wearing a new white dress. She made a point of telling me that; I think because she was preoccupied with it when she was attacked. Another detail she gave me was that she’s related to an Ellen or a Helen. Might be a sister or a mother figure. She asked me to find them for her because she was having a hard time getting to them. On the night she was murdered, she was stabbed multiple times and her throat was cut, but it took her a little while to die. Whoever killed her came from behind and she never saw his face. Hard to tell if it was Luke or not because I don’t think she knows.”

As Heath spoke, my attention went between him and Gilley, but it quickly settled on Gil, because he was wearing the most confused look on his face. After Heath had finished talking, Gil said, “Buddy, I have no idea who you made contact with, but whoever this Amy person is, she wasn’t last night’s victim.”

I sat forward. “Wait . . . what?”

Gil opened his laptop and peered down at the screen. “The woman murdered last night was named Brook Astor. She was twenty-nine. A pretty brunette who didn’t die slow. She was stabbed a dozen times, three times directly into the heart before her throat was cut. The coroner says Brook was dead before she even hit the ground. Oh, and one more little tidbit. Brook was eight weeks pregnant when she was murdered.”