The Taking (11 page)

“Why do you think someone’s in there? Did you hear a noise? Because, sweetie, it’s a big old house. It’s going to make noises.”

“I know that.” Talking to Chris was calming her down. At least a little. All it took was one glance into her bedroom and a glimpse of the stuffed monkey propped so carefully on her bed to freak her out all over again. “It wasn’t a noise. I had put something away in my nightstand, then I went outside to read the journal. When I came back in half an hour later, it was sitting on my bed.”

“What is it?”

She hesitated, but Chris knew the truth, so she told him. “It’s Moira’s stuffed monkey. I had just put it away, and I was thinking about the fact that I wish I could keep it on the bed ...” Her words trailed off as a chill snaked its way up her spine. “Oh, my God . . .”

“Did you say any of that out loud?”

“No.” She didn’t even want to think what that meant.

A knock on the door downstairs startled her. “I’m up here,” she called over the railing to the police standing on her front step. “Chris, I’ll call you back. The cops are here.”

“Call me right back,” he warned. “And I’m coming over. I’ll be there in twenty.”

“You don’t have to do that.” But she hoped he would insist, because she suddenly didn’t want to be alone. “I’m coming down,” she called to the police.

“I’ll be there. Nelson will be heading to bed in like five minutes anyway.”

“Bed? It’s seven o’clock.”

“He’s old, remember?”

“He’s not old, he’s in his mid-forties.”

“Old.”

Oh, please. But she had no time to debate it with him. “And on that note, I’ll call you back,” she said as she jogged down the stairs and skidded to a halt at her front door. “Hi, thanks so much for coming so quickly. I just moved in here and I thought maybe someone was in the house. I . . . I heard a box fall over in my bedroom.” For some reason, she didn’t want to tell them the truth, though she realized how lame that sounded.

But they were nice enough about it and did a search of her whole house. “Nothing here, miss. No sign of any sort of forced entry and your back door was locked. Was the front door locked when you opened it to us?”

She nodded. “Yes, definitely.”

The older cop shrugged. “Must have been the wind or plain old gravity. Is your husband going to be home soon? Are you okay by yourself?”

“I’m not married,” she said, and reflected on how different that statement felt than it had two years earlier. Then, those words had been a regret. Now, they were a relief. “But I have a friend coming over.”

“Good. Lock her up nice and tight after we leave, and try to relax. It takes a few weeks to get used to the sounds of a new house.”

“Thanks, I will.”

“Have a good night.”

“You, too.” Regan locked the door behind them and frowned. So there was no one in the house. She hadn’t imagined the monkey had moved and she knew beyond a doubt she hadn’t moved it herself.

She called Chris back. “Hey, cops just left, there’s no one here.”

“Thank God. I’m coming around the corner right now.”

A minute later his blond head popped up in front of her door. She opened it and said, “I’m not crazy, I swear.”

“Of course you’re not crazy. You’re like the least crazy of any person I know, and I know a lot of bat-shit crazy people, so that’s saying a lot”

“So ... before you say anything else, just come upstairs and tell me you see the monkey on my bed. Let’s just establish that first.” Regan shoved her cell phone into the front pocket of her jeans and ran back up the stairs.

Chris followed and a second later he was standing in her bedroom next to her. “Yes, there is a monkey on your bed. No doubt about it. So you were reading the journal, then you came back in and the monkey was there?”

“Yes.”

“What was in the journal?”

“I was actually reading about how the girl’s whole family died. It was horrible. One day they were all alive, the next all of them were dead, except for her. My heart was just breaking for that poor girl, left all alone.”

Chris wiggled the button on his blue golf shirt and frowned. “So you first thought you would like to have the monkey on your bed, but you put it away anyway. Then you’re sitting there feeling sympathy for the girl whose family died. Then the monkey is on the bed. Are you thinking what I’m thinking?”

Regan shook her head. “I don’t know what to think.” She knew what Chris was going to say, she just wasn’t so sure she wanted to hear it spoken out loud.

“It’s a ghost. Most likely the author of the journal. That was a gesture of comfort. You offered her comfort, and she gave it in return.”

All the hairs on Regan’s head stood up. “Do you really think so? That her spirit is here?”

“Why not? This was the scene of the greatest tragedy, the most pivotal event of her life. It changed her indelibly.”

“I’ve never been sure if I believe in ghosts or not.”

“Maybe you should start believing,” Chris said, not looking at her, but smacking her in the arm.

“Why?”

“Because the French doors are opening by themselves,” he whispered.

Regan snapped her gaze from the bed to the doors and felt her mouth slide open in shock. The doors were opening, not the back and forth movement from wind, but a methodical swing of both doors simultaneously, like someone had a hand on each of them and was pushing.

“Chris.” She felt around for his arm, not taking her eyes off the doors, but wanting physical contact with him.

“Yeah?”

She squeezed his hand when she found it. “Will you stay here tonight?”

“Am I going to need a garlic necklace?”

They watched the doors finish their slow journey outward then stop when they were fully open. Regan jumped involuntarily when the door stops dropped down onto the wood floor to maintain the open position.

“No,” she whispered, shaking her head. “That’s for vampires. I think we just have a ghost. One who apparently needs fresh air.”

She had wanted to find something within the walls of her old house, and it looked like she had.

“Maybe they know where the hooch is hidden.”

“I’ll let you ask.”

“So what do we do?” He squeezed her hand back, his own voice a low murmur. “I feel like I’m waiting for the other shoe—or in this case, monkey—to drop.”

“I think we go out onto the balcony and act like nothing is wrong.”

“Well, I’m good at that. I act like nothing is wrong on a regular basis. But what if we walk through her or something?”

They shuffled forward, still holding hands.

“Oh God, don’t say that.”

But even as she was speaking, Regan felt a gust of air sweep over her, so cold and empty that it felt like the breath was being sucked right out of her lungs. She stopped, unable to move, the sensation frightening and unlike anything she’d ever felt, her hair whipping across her face like she was outside in a sharp wind. Then the air seemed to snap, and the rush of cold was gone as quickly as it had appeared.

She looked at Chris, unable to speak. His eyes were round, his breathing heavy. “Did you feel that?” he asked.

Regan nodded, still speechless.

“Screw the balcony. Let’s go get dinner and a drink.”

“Good idea,” she said, swallowing hard.

They edged forward, flicked up the doorstops, and pulled the French doors closed, then practically fell over each other getting down the stairs.

“I bought a haunted house,” she told Chris as they burst out onto the street. She was stunned, and not sure how she felt about the whole thing.

“Yes, you did. And for nine bajillion dollars. Guess you can’t even get haunted houses for cheap anymore.”

Felix stood outside the coffee shop for a second, watching Regan through the window. She had her bag cuddled in her lap and she was reading a magazine—a pretty woman, and yet unremarkable in many ways. Just another attractive twenty-something mortal woman.

What was her connection to Alcroft? Why the hell had he married her? And what perverse chain of events had Felix set in motion when he had asked her to take off the ring that bound her body and soul to Alcroft?

It was hard for him to believe that her husband would readily give in to a divorce. If he had wanted her, he wouldn’t have appreciated her being the one to walk away. If Alcroft was fighting the divorce, Felix was wading into dangerous, shark-infested waters.

But he had told himself that it was in his own self-interest to see what was in Camille’s journal. If he could protect Regan at the same time, all the better.

He walked in, strode around the front of her table, and sat down across from her.

Regan looked up with a tentative smile, her hair up in a ponytail. “Hi, how are you?”

She was wearing dark jeans and a white shirt. It was a casual outfit, yet somehow she still managed to look pulled together. Beyond pulled together, and veering in to uptight. Muted. It wasn’t that she was emotionally reserved, because he didn’t get that impression, but it was as if the clothes she chose were intended for someone else, for a corporate woman.

He didn’t know what Regan did for a living, if anything, but he didn’t for one minute think it was a corporate job.

“Hi. How was moving day?”

She made a face then laughed. “It’s over. Thank God.”

It had been a long time since he had thanked God for anything. “We always wish for the end of things, don’t we?” he said, just thinking out loud, but the smile fell off her face.

“Maybe,” she said.

There was a long pause, and he knew he’d made her uncomfortable. Well, he was uncomfortable, too. He was taking a huge risk meeting her in public. Meeting her anywhere.

“I’m sorry,” she said, breaking the silence first as she fiddled with the coffee cup in front of her. “I’m tired from the move, and well, I didn’t get much sleep last night. Do you want to go up and order a coffee?”

As if coffee could improve his lack of social skills. He’d had them at one time. He’d been the favorite pet of bored New Orleans society ladies, and he had charmed and talked his way into their hearts and their purses. Not anymore. Never again.

“I’m fine. Were you up late unpacking?” There had been something ... a flicker in her eyes when she had mentioned her sleepless night, and he was curious what it meant.

“Oh, it was stupid.” She waved her hand in the air dismissively. “I thought someone was in the house and I freaked out. I called the cops and I called my friend to come over. He ended up staying the night and since I don’t have my guest bedroom made up, he ended up sharing my bed, and he snores. He’s gay.”

Then she gave a laugh. “Not that you need to know that. But the point was I didn’t get eight hours of sleep.”

He didn’t need to know it, but it confirmed that she wasn’t letting another man into her bed already, so soon after the end of her marriage. It didn’t suit her to leap into another relationship, and he was arrogant enough to believe that if she wanted a hookup, she would have come to him. That was the power that had been granted him, after all, and he saw it on her face—she was attracted to him, as they all were.

Felix was attracted to her too, the first woman who had piqued his interest in a long, long time. But he would never touch. Not with her still legally bound to Alcroft, not while her ex still wanted her.

“Someone broke into the house? Was anything stolen?”

“No, nothing was stolen. I don’t think anyone was in the house after all. Well, not a thief.” She bit her lip. “I have a weird and random question for you, but I figure given what you do, what you practice, you’re open-minded, right? I mean, you believe in the unexplainable, don’t you?”

Felix found that amusing. “I believe in a lot of things. I believe there are things out there that not only can we not explain, we could never even imagine them in our rational day-to-day lives.” Like the existence of demons, and the possibility of immortality. He had no idea what she was dancing around telling him, but nothing would surprise him. “I won’t judge, Regan.”

She glanced around them. “I don’t know if I should say it here.”

The coffee shop had a dozen patrons in it, some with laptops, some reading the paper, some chatting with each other, all different types, from the heavily tattooed and dyed woman in her early twenties to the graying businessman.

“No one here cares.”

With a nod, she said, “You’re right. Of course no one cares what I’m saying. And it sounds crazy, but I think, maybe, if ghosts exist, I have one in my house.”

Somehow that wasn’t what he had expected her to say. He had thought it would have something to do with her ex-husband, not a restless spirit. Feeling a flicker of intrigue that it could somehow be Camille, he said, “Really? What happened?”

Her expression was uneasy and she lowered her voice. “Something, an object, moved in my bedroom while I was outside on the balcony. I had this thing put away in the nightstand and when I came in, it was sitting on my bed. A stuffed animal that belonged to ... my sister. It . . . it was like whoever they are they were trying to comfort me.”