In the future, Foy took them into battle without a second thought. Hell, the man would have emptied the kitchen all by himself and been done with it.
Braxton resisted the urge to sweep Heather up in his arms and carry her to their destination. Instead he practically dragged her by the arm to the basement.
She sucked in a loud breath when they approached. “Jim, this is where the demon was.”
“‘Was’ being the key word. And it’s the last place they’ll look for anyone. Why would someone bent on removing demons come back down here now that it’s gone? Trust me on this, won’t you?”
“I will.”
Her words warmed him but he had to add something to their conversation. How could he not? She needed all the pieces of information available to her. “I’m not trustworthy. Foy isn’t wrong in his assessment of me. I screw up all the time. People die. It could be that I’m totally wrong about all this and you should go back to the room and lock yourself in the closet.”
“Jim.” She took his hand and kissed it. “I believe in you. Try believing in yourself. I’ll do my best to get the ghosts. I might not succeed. All we can do is the best we can, and then we have to live with that.”
“How did you get to be so wise?”
She scratched her head. “Daytime television.”
He laughed, a long, hard sound. How could anything be amusing given the circumstances?
“What? You don’t think the soap operas I’m forced to watch during the day could have taught me morals and ethics?”
“I have no doubt.”
He leaned over to kiss her because he had to, because it was as essential as breathing. Foy was right. Braxton would never have put the words to it himself. Why would he ever think about something as pointless to his life as love? But sometime over the past few days—hell, if he was honest since he’d met her on the plane—he’d gone and fallen head over heels in love with the amazingly brave woman he held in his arms.
She tasted like…his.
“Heather, about what Foy said earlier.” He breathed out his words. Somehow he’d get through this.
“Oh.” She waved her hand in the air. “Who listens to him about anything? He doesn’t understand anything about love. It’s all just hogwash anyway, isn’t it?”
He opened and closed his mouth. Of course. Heather didn’t love him. How could she? No one ever did. She could do much, much better than him.
Leaning over, he kissed the top of her head. “Don’t leave here without Foy or me. Unless we’re not back in two hours. Then run from this house and never look back.
Okay?”
She nodded.
He turned and left, forcing himself not to look back.
The words he couldn’t speak were on his tongue. I love you, Heather. Please be careful.
You take my heart with you. Even if it’s a totally worthless gift to give you, it all belongs to you.
Chapter Ten
Had she royally screwed that up? Heather watched Jim walk away and the feeling of unease that had settled in her stomach grew. She rubbed the back of her neck. Could she have been any more embarrassed when Foy had placed Jim on the spot like that? He clearly didn’t love her. Why would he? She’d done nothing but be a drag on him this entire time. A constant burden he couldn’t even count on to help in a dire situation.
She took a deep breath. If she could manage to do this, to help with the ghosts, then maybe he’d really want to have her around. Maybe he could grow to love her.
Heather pushed her feelings away. Walls were bleeding, angels were on missions from Heaven and she was stuck in a house of horrors with a crazy man. She closed her eyes. The ghosts had always come to her. She’d never called them to her before.
Heather tried to remember what it had felt like when Taylor had communicated with her earlier. She’d been drugged up on Pendleton’s hypnosis for sure, but her mind had felt more open, as if she hadn’t been as closed off as she was feeling right now.
She bit her bottom lip. Everyone was always telling her to breathe, so she gave that a try for a little bit. It didn’t work. Instead she tried to remember what it had felt like when she’d been drugged up, or whatever Pendleton had done to her.
Her fork had been the most fascinating object on the planet. She stared at the floor. Was it possible to get that loopy on her own?
“What are you doing?”
She jolted before she stared up at a ghost. “I’m, um, trying to open myself up to communicate.”
This spirit was a woman with long white hair. She wore a bathrobe and held a cigarette in her hand, which sent scentless smoke into the air around her. The specter was older, in her sixties at least. She didn’t have any visible death wounds, although Heather’s eyes were immediately drawn to the cancer stick she held in her left hand. Lung cancer?
Heather didn’t usually see people who’d died of natural causes.
“Well you don’t have to shout so loud. Every ghost in a five-block radius could hear you.”
Shout? She hadn’t uttered a word. “I didn’t say anything.”
“Oh boy. I have a completely untrained ghost-talker here.” The woman smiled and a shiver traveled up Heather’s spine. This wasn’t like talking to Taylor. It didn’t feel benign. “You don’t have to physically speak, live one. We can hear you all the time.
How do you think we find you?”
Well…that was a disconcerting thought. “So listen, I guess the reason I’m bothering all of you is that I’m hoping to stop you from talking to Pendleton.”
“Pendleton? No self-respecting ghost is going to tell him anything. Besides, all he would get from us is the disconcerted ranting you get when you’re not focused. Your problem is whether he can manage to reach the other side. No one can stop them from saying whatever they’re going say.”
It was really disturbing how little she understood about what she could do or how this whole thing worked.
“Damn.”
The ghost raised her head. “But now that I have you, ghost-talker, I’m not letting you go.”
“What?” She barely had time to suck in her breath before she was whisked into a whirlwind. Heather grabbed her head. She knew this sensation too well. This ghost wanted to show her something and she was going to have to go whether she wanted to or not.
She landed with a thump. The spinning sensation had thrown her off her balance and she face-planted on the floor. It took her a second to move. She really didn’t want to be in a hospital watching this woman die. Or at home. Or wherever.
Except she wasn’t in any of those places. She was in what looked like a giant room with brown walls and no windows.
“Hello?” she called. No one answered so she tried again. “Hello?”
The ghost she’d spoken to appeared before her. She was still floating and didn’t look alive. The woman had obviously not brought her to witness the way she’d died. What did she want?
“I think you can be comfortable in here.”
Wait…what? “Where is here?”
“Think of it as your new home.”
“No.” Heather stood. “I’m not going to do that. So why don’t you tell me where I am and what you want, and then we can all move on?”
“It’s a room we created for you. So we can all chat.”
“We?” Even as she asked for clarification, she knew she wasn’t going to like the answer.
“All the ghosts in the area.”
In that second, a pit of dread settled into her stomach. Something had happened. She didn’t understand her abilities. She shouldn’t be messing with them. Not until she had a better understanding of how these things went.
How had they brought her here? Where was here, exactly? Goose bumps appeared painfully on her arms and she tried to rub them away.
A group of ghosts appeared around her. They all started talking at once. The sounds buzzed off the walls and banged into her head as if someone was driving steel rods into her forehead. She cover
ed her ears but nothing helped. Sound must have different rules here than out there in the real world, which meant she was going to have to make it stop immediately, if not sooner.
“Listen.” She still had to help Jim—she’d promised to do that. If she could focus on that, maybe she’d survive this. “I’ll talk to all of you about anything you want. The weather, politics. You can drag me around mentally to each and every one of your death scenes. I won’t complain. But you have to promise me something, and if you don’t then I won’t say a word. You can talk and talk until you turn blue, or bluer, and I won’t answer. I will sit in silence for eternity. You’ll be the only ghosts around who have an actual ghost-talker who won’t utter a single word.”
The room fell silent. Finally the gray-haired woman answered her. “What do you want us to promise?”
“Not one of you will speak to Pendleton. I know he’s trying to summon a ghost. No one answers him. If one ghost in this whole area speaks to him, I’m done talking.”
“You can’t possibly expect us to be able to inform every ghost in the area—”
Heather interrupted them. “I do expect you to be able to do that. And if you don’t think you can, then I suggest you assign one of you, or make a schedule, but you have a ghost near Pendleton at all times to make sure he doesn’t get to speak to any ghosts. That’s my deal. Anyone speaks to Pendleton, I’m not talking.”
The woman raised an eyebrow. “How would you know if someone did? You’re trapped in here.”
“Ghost-talking isn’t my only psychic ability. I have multiple gifts.” She almost choked on the word even as she smoothly lied. If she could do anything else psychically, she wouldn’t have landed in this situation. The ability to teleport herself out of there would be a real plus. “I can always tell when someone is lying to me.”
“Really?”
Heather stared her down. “Do you want to try me?”
“We’ll see to it that no one speaks to Pendleton.”
“Okay.” Heather shivered. She’d just agreed to talk to these ghosts endlessly. They had her trapped in her own mind, in some kind of room she couldn’t get out of. Eventually her body would wither and die. Probably from dehydration.
Except she didn’t really believe that. Unless he was dead, Jim would come back for her. He’d never leave her like this, not endlessly. And even though Jim was angry with Foy, she really believed that Foy would come for her if Jim couldn’t.
Until then, she’d just make do. Heather had been talking to ghosts her whole life. What were a few more minutes?
“So who wants to go first?”
The old woman smiled. “I do.”
Heather gritted her teeth. Of course the sick woman who had trapped her here wanted to talk first.
“I drowned.”
“I’m very sorry to hear that.” She really was. What was the appropriate response when someone said something like that? “It must have been terrifying.”
“At first, and then it was a relief.” The woman sat down beside her. “He’d been beating me for years. To finally find myself rid of him meant I’d get some peace. Of course, I had no idea I’d be stuck here endlessly.”
“It doesn’t have to be endless.” Heather drummed her fingers on the floor. “My…boyfriend…has the ability to send ghosts onward. He could do that for you.”
“Send us where?” Skepticism laced her voice. “What if it’s worse? You keep that boyfriend away from me.” The woman laughed, a hard, cold sound that made Heather’s mouth go dry. “Not that you’ll be seeing the man again. You’re with us now.”
“Right. Of course.” Let the bitch think that. “So your husband drowned you in the tub, is that it?”
“Husband? Oh no. I lost him in the Great War. No, my son drowned me in the tub. He had a very violent streak. Didn’t get that from his father—he was a gentle man. No, I’m afraid my dear darling son got all of his worst instincts from me. I’d killed at least three people by the time I was your age.”
This kept getting worse and worse. “I see.” And she really was starting to. The woman had been psychotic in her living years and was now keeping up the trend as a ghost. She’d be the first person Heather had Braxton send off. Maybe it was a worse place. In fact, she now hoped Jim pushed her into a fiery piece of Hell. “Come. I’m going to show you how I died. It’s really quite gruesome.” Heather took a deep breath. She would survive this. Somehow.
* * * * *
“Are you ready?” Braxton nodded toward Foy. “To go in?”
“I’m not used to doing this sort of thing with others. What happens when we get in there and you get into trouble? What will you expect of me?”
Braxton waited a beat. Was he serious? “I keep waiting for you to show any glimpse of being the man I knew in my time. You must have had some incredible awakening in the years that followed, because you are a complete stranger to me.”
“I’ve lived a very long time, Jim. I haven’t changed much. It’s kind of hard for me to believe that I’m so radically different then.”
“I guess you’ll have to see.”
Braxton wasn’t going to wait any more. He rushed the kitchen door, practically breaking it down. The kitchen fell silent. There were ten employees around the room. Jim took a deep breath.
Talking to people had never been his forte. He was more of a smash, break, ask questions later kind of a person. But these people were hardworking employees who were likely not involved in what their boss was up to. Or maybe not. Sometimes the staff knew exactly what they were up to.
Still, if Braxton could avoid killing anyone, he’d prefer it.
“Listen up. Anyone wants to fight, I’m happy to accommodate you.” He eyed everyone around the room. “But I’d really rather not do that. I’d rather you all walked over to that closet and let me lock you in it.” The food pantry would be a perfect place to lock them all in. “Or he,” Braxton didn’t look up when he heard Foy walk in the room, “can kill some of you if you’d prefer.”
The cook and two of the busboys ran for the closet immediately. Silence spread through the room as some of the staff fled for the closet and others stayed where they were.
“Listen, do you want to die for him? Is that it? Is Pendleton worth losing your life? Because let me tell you something—the people worth doing that for are few and far between. Trust me. And even the ones we think are life-and-death friends turn out to be huge disappointments. I’ve got to tell you…Pendleton, he doesn’t fit the bill.”
He was gambling and he knew it. But poker was his livelihood and he knew how to get people to do what he wanted to do with their cards, or in this case their lives.
One of the maids moved forward. She placed her index finger in front of her mouth in the universal sign for quiet. She then raised her other hand and pointed to the linen closet on the other side of the room.
He followed where she pointed and nodded. Something was in that linen closet. Two of the other maids stared at her with huge eyes before running to the pantry to join the others.
“Jack, would you lock them in?”
“Um. Sure.” Foy crossed the room and fiddled with the handle for a second before he secured it. “You just did that without harming any of them.”
“Well, you taught me that it was a mistake to kill people if there was any other option.” Braxton pointed at the door the maid had indicated to show Foy where he meant to go.
“I really thought we were about to have a battle. And you charged in here like a man with a death wish. What’s the matter with you?”
Braxton didn’t intend to justify himself to Foy anymore. The other man had had lost that right.
“I didn’t teach you that, did I? To disregard everything in favor of the job?”
Well, actually he had. Or at least he’d instilled that behavior by example. After his wife had left him, Foy hadn’t cared one bit about anything. He’d charged in where no one else would go without looking backward.
Braxton
pressed his ear up against the door. There was a scratching sound somewhere in the distance but nothing he could identify.
Still, it didn’t have the silence a linen closet would. Something was definitely inside. He touched the door handle and tried to turn it. Of course it was locked.
He looked back at Foy and could have grinned. The Jack Foy of the past might not be a man he knew or understood, but he recognized the look in his eyes. Total and complete focus. Foy was going to get through that door one way or another. Braxton felt exactly the same way.
“Back up. I’m going to break down the door.”
Foy shook his head. “Let me do it.”
Braxton could have argued, but Foy had seemed his mentor again. Braxton was going to let him do it. Foy surged forward and with one kick brought down the door.
“At least your superhuman strength makes some damn sense now.”
“Really? Was I making you feel inadequate?” He grinned. “I kind of like that idea.
Torturing you guys with my strength and brilliance.”
Braxton rolled his eyes. “You’re such an egomaniac in this timeframe.”
“And I’m a saint in the future. Fantastic. I’ll be sure to keep that in mind. Maybe I’m closer to redemption and getting off this planet.”
Jim shook his head. “I don’t want to hear anything about the eternal. Am I clear? I can’t possibly deal with it.”
Foy hustled into the linen closet and paused. “There’s a staircase going down. A hidden part of the house down here.”
“Which would explain why we couldn’t find anyone. They’re down there.”
His mentor grinned, looking younger than Braxton had ever seen him. “I’ll race you to the bottom.”
“You’re not serious.”
Foy took off running and Braxton cursed. Jack must have a death wish. Only Braxton knew for a fact that the other man would live through this day. He’d go on to do incredibly important things, even if he was something of an imposter.
Jim took off after him. It was dark inside the stairwell. He felt the wall to see if there was a light switch. When he didn’t feel one, he cursed himself for not bringing a lighter or a flashlight. That had been irresponsible and he knew better.