Wraiths of Winter (The Haunting Ruby Series Book 3) (32 page)

Why did I always seem to have bad news for him
when he was at his happiest? I was nothing but a buzz kill—
why did he even want to be with me? I had ghosts. I had a
dead boyfriend with a twin. I constantly needed saving. Oh,
and did I mention that I had ghosts? One thing was for sure—
I
wouldn’t date me! Unless drama was what he was attracted
to, of course.

“Dad’s not the only one I have bad news for. I didn’t
get into Pendleton, Zach—but I did get into Trinity College.
Both letters came today.”

Silence.
Dead silence.
Say something, dammit—
anything was better than nothing.

“Congratulations, Ruby. I’m sure Trinity is a really
good school, too,” he responded with obviously fake
enthusiasm.

“Zach, I never said I was going there! I only applied
there when I thought you would be better off without me.
Taking a semester off wouldn’t necessarily be a bad thing for
me, you know.”

“Do you still think that? That I would be better off
without you? And tell me the honest truth.”

The honest truth was yes. Rita made it clear to us in
the very beginning that the chemistry we had was incredibly
powerful. So powerful that it almost killed us both. Would
my ability to communicate with the dead be dampened if I
was with someone else—someone like Lucas? There was a
definite attraction between us but not the kind of energy that
Zach and I created. Zach would be safer without me. Would I
be safer without him, too?

“You would certainly be safer—and don’t try to deny
that either.”

 

“Life isn’t about being safe, Ruby! It’s about being
happy. And the only way I’ll be happy is if I’m with you.”

I didn’t know what to do. Zach was the sweetest guy
I’d ever met—he
was
everything
I always
wanted in
a
boyfriend. But I couldn’t drag him down with me.
Life
without Zach.
What kind of life would that be?
I might have
to find out someday but today wasn’t that day.

“Look, I’ll find a way to explain things to my dad in a
way that he can understand. He doesn’t even know that I
didn’t get into Pendleton yet. Hell, I still have to tell him that I
want to be a writer not a doctor. Trust me—I’ll find a way to
fix what I messed up.”

“Okay, I trust you.”

But something about his voice made me doubt that he
did—at least not completely. If he found out that Lucas was
going to Trinity, Zach would totally lose it. There was no way
he would find out unless I told him, so I chose to keep it to
myself. Step aside, Fate. It’s time for
me
to take the wheel.

25. Ready, Aim, Fire!

Weekends were only two days long—a measly forty
eight hours. Usually, compared to the rest of the week, they
flew by before I even knew it. That was how it worked when
Garnet was haunting the school.
My two days of relative
peace were nothing but a blink of an eye while she was
torturing me the other five. But now that school was my safe
haven, the weekends dragged on forever.

So in no time at all, it was Friday afternoon again and I
was staring down the barrel of a loaded shotgun.
The last
time I was in the Bantam Theater, Allison nearly bashed my
skull in with an iron mask. She’d had ample time to devise a
new plan to kill me—what would it be this week?
Exploding
chandelier? Mental note—stay as far away as possible from
the chandelier.

Since every rehearsal seemed to get cut short in one
way or another, Jonas was anxious to get things started. As
soon as Rachel walked in she was called to the stage and I was
left to fend for myself.
She and Lucas were rehearsing the
final scene—the one where Kira is forced to kill Roarke so she
can be with her new love, Erik. It was the most intriguing part
of the play and I was looking forward to watching it. I’d
helped Rachel with her
lines
every
chance I got and
I
practically knew the entire scene by heart.

But I didn’t get a chance to watch.
Jonas had another
job for me and I couldn’t refuse to do it. It seemed harmless
enough.
Sometimes though, I’d discovered, the most
innocuous moments were the ones that led to real tragedy.
This turned out to be one of those moments.

“Ruby, I brought in the props for this scene—they’re
in a box in the lobby. Can you go get them for me?” Jonas
called down to me from the stage.

“Sure,” I replied. So far, so good. There was nothing
dangerous about a box of props, right?

I made my way to the lobby and found the box sitting
on the ticket counter.
A burnished silver candelabra, three
red taper candles,
and
a water pistol—a fake,
but albeit
convincing, weapon for Roarke’s death scene. There was even
still water in it so I gave it a sideways squirt in the air like I
was a kick ass cop or something. When I was done having my
fun, I tossed it back in the box and proceeded to the stage.

Jackson had just finished pushing a fake fireplace onto
center stage and Jonas instructed me to set up the candelabra
in the center of its mantel.
I snuck up behind the actors
without disturbing them and placed it where he asked me to.
One by one, I wedged the tapers into their holders and stood
back to see if they were standing up straight. Perfect.

I bent over to pick up the box and heard a strange
noise. Poof, poof, poof. Glancing over my shoulder, I saw that
each of the candles was now lit.

Impossible, yet there it was. A small flame flickered
from each wick, tiny wisps of smoke rising to the heavens. No
one else was close enough to have lit them. Allison was the
only answer.

“No, Ruby!” Jonas shouted. “Blow those out
immediately! We can’t have open flames in here—it’s much
too dangerous!
If one of those candles were to tip over, why,
the whole place would become an instant inferno!”

The entire group glared at me over his harsh words.
Obediently, I snuffed out each tiny fire with a puff of my
breath. Jonas thought I lit the candles and no one came to my
defense. Even Rachel and Lucas didn’t seem to understand
what had just happened.
I was the only one who knew the
truth, at least for the moment. Allison was toying with me.

Once the candle incident was
forgotten and
the
rehearsal continued, I approached Jonas with the box now
holding nothing but the pistol. “Where would you like me to
put this?”

Jonas reached into the box and took the gun in the
palm of his hand then offered it to me. “Give this to Lucas—he
needs it for this scene.”

I set the box just off stage and gingerly took the gun
from him. I stifled the temptation to give it just a few more
squirts.
Jonas
was
already pissed off
enough
about the
candles—I didn’t want to press my luck.

Jonas mistook my hesitance for fear. “Don’t worry,
Ruby. It’s just a water pistol. See?” He reached over and gave
the trigger a squeeze sending a spray of water into the air.
“And I’m sorry if I was a bit abrasive earlier. It’s just that this
theater is old—the floorboards would be nothing but kindling
if fire so much as touched them. I don’t want to tempt fate, do
you?”

Hell, no! Fate pushed people down stairs and brought
dead boyfriends back to life. I was afraid to see what it would
do with fire. “That’s okay,” I replied. “I understand.”

Gripping the gun tightly, I handed it to Lucas. As he
reached for it, his fingers lingered over mine slightly longer
than was necessary. Then he took it and tucked it into the
back of his jeans. “Thanks, Ru.”

Was he thanking me for the prop or for letting him
caress my hand without pulling away? I just couldn’t tell
which.
He was so hard to read sometimes. It was like trying
to decipher some semblance of meaning out of words spoken
in a language you’d never heard before.

I took a seat in the front row and watched as Lucas,
Rachel, and Brian enacted the final scene. They were to the
part where Erik and Roarke struggled for possession of the
weapon. Jonas directed them to let it fall to the floor so that
Kira could retrieve it and take aim at Roarke.

BANG!
The sound of the pistol hitting the stage floor
was infinitely louder than it should have been.
It echoed
through the theater with the force of an actual gunshot and
was followed by a loud shout emanating from the back of the
auditorium.
My eyes searched the shadows for its source
until I saw a lone figure in the darkness. Zach!

Stark white and eyes wide, he stood still without even
seeming to breathe. “ZACH!” I screamed and leapt from the
stage. The fear I’d felt when I was only seconds from death
was nothing compared to what was I was feeling now.
My
flight down the aisle took seconds yet felt like a million years.
That gun was fake—I saw it with my own eyes. Yet somehow,
it went off like an authentic firearm. If it could sound real,
could it shoot that way, as well? He’d said before that he
would take a bullet for me…. Zach had to be okay, he just had
to be.

Relief only came when I finally reached him, startled
but unharmed. I threw myself in his arms and he caught me
with the same sense of urgency. Zach lifted me off the ground
in a passionate embrace, our hearts beating madly in an effort
to escape our chests and become one. In that moment, there
was no one else in the world—just the two of us enthralled to
still be in each other’s arms.

“Zach!” Rachel exclaimed as she ran up to us. “What
happened? Are you okay? What are you doing here?” She
rattled off
her questions
at hyper speed, nonstop and
impossible for him to answer. The rest of the group gathered
around us, anxious to hear his story.

At the front of the group stood Jonas whose face was
almost as white as Zach’s. “Yes, tell us what happened.”

I refused to let go of him completely so I slid my arms
from around his neck and wrapped them around his waist
instead. He didn’t seem to mind my clinginess—he put his
arm around me and held me tight. There was an exchange of
hostile glances between he and Lucas before Zach told his
side of the peculiar incident.

“I stopped by to give you this, Ruby,” he said handing
me my phone. “You left it in my car earlier—I thought you
might want it. So I walked in through the lobby and as soon
as I got to the back row of seats, something whizzed past my
ear. When I looked to see what it was, I found this.” Zach led
us to the back wall of the theater and pointed to a small round
hole in the wallpaper.

It was exactly what I always assumed a bullet hole
would look like but with one exception—there was no bullet.
The wall was scooped out in a perfectly round indentation
that plainly showed that there was nothing wedged inside.
There was nothing on the floor beneath it either. It was like a
phantom bullet had fired itself from a non-functional weapon
and almost killed my boyfriend. Well, maybe phantom wasn’t
the right word for it. Wraith-like, perhaps?

“This just isn’t possible!” Jonas cried as he wiggled his
finger around in the hollow spot. “That gun isn’t real! You
saw me fire it, Ruby, only seconds before this happened!
It
was filled with water not bullets!” Jonas’s face blanched even
whiter. “Unless someone swapped the water pistol for
something more deadly.” All eyes turned to Lucas, the last
one in possession of the weapon before it fired.

He raised his arms in the air as a sign of surrender.
“Hey, don’t look at me! I’ve never even held a real pistol!”

Jonas strode back to the stage and retrieved the gun
from where it lay. With an unsteady grip, he aimed it at the
first row of seats. “Everyone stay right where you are!”

Besides covering our ears, none of us moved as we
watched him slowly squeeze the trigger. A stream of water
shot from the barrel, soaking the velvet upon impact. Jonas
lowered the gun to his side, his face wrought with confusion.

“You can all go home now—I’ll see you tomorrow
night,” he said and disappeared offstage.

Once he was gone, the gossip started. ‘It’s the
Phantom!’ The Phantom’s back! I’ve heard that he’s killed
someone before!’

I’d forgotten to ask Dad about the legend and
apparently Rachel hadn’t asked her parents either so I
snagged Brian’s arm as he walked past. “Hey, who’s this
Phantom everyone keeps talking about?” He was all too
happy to tell me what he knew.

“You’ve never heard of the Phantom? I thought
everyone in Charlotte’s Grove had! There have been rumors
about this place being haunted for decades.
No one knows
who he is but he’s wreaked havoc in this theater—why do you
think it’s been abandoned for so long?”

Because it was a total dump? I guess that wasn’t the
answer he was looking for. The only real piece of information
I’d gotten from him was the fact that the legend originated
more than five years ago—long before Allison even moved to
Charlotte’s Grove. I knew she was the only ghost doing any
haunting here but something must have happened along the
way to spawn the myth. But what were the chances that it
had any connection to Allison’s death? Slim to none. Even if it
did, I didn’t care—at least not right now.
Right now, all I
cared about was Zach.

As
we all
filtered out of the
building, talk of
the
Phantom gave way to talk of hunger.
Someone suggested
meeting at the All American Diner and the general consensus
was
that it was
a great idea.
Lucas
especially
seemed
interested in going.