Braxton turned to face Pendleton. “I killed you.”
The ghost laughed. “Now that is amusing. You were right in front of me when I passed away. I was stabbed in the back. You couldn’t have done that.”
“I shoved you into a sharp piece of glass. Plotted the whole thing. I went around the place setting it up to kill you the whole time I was there. When I got my chance, I did it.” He swallowed, staring Pendleton in the eyes, willing him to believe him. “I killed you. You wanted to know and now I’ve told you.”
What would happen now? He was sure he was a dead man standing. Turned out he didn’t have much time to wait. One second he was standing facing Pendleton, the next he found himself flung against the wall, sticking to it as if he’d gone into a Gravitron machine at a carnival. Centrifugal force pushed against him and he couldn’t move from where he’d been pushed.
This he hadn’t seen coming.
“What are you doing?”
Pendleton sighed loudly. “I don’t believe that you killed me. Who you are protecting, I don’t know, since other than your ghost-talker girlfriend I don’t believe you knew anyone in the house. But if you want the punishment, I’ll give it to you until you can’t take anymore. Then I’ll see to it that you tell me the truth.”
A jolt of electricity shot through his body. He cried out, finishing the yell with a loud laugh. Torture? Pendleton could bring it on.
Braxton didn’t know how much time had passed and he’d quickly lost track of how much abuse he’d taken. Pendleton seemed to have a knack for almost killing him and then not completing the task, on purpose. Dead, the man was even more crazed than he’d been alive.
But Braxton hadn’t broken. Not yet. He never would. Foy had things to do, worlds to save if the other man’s story was to be believed, and Jim wouldn’t be responsible for anything getting in the way of that destiny.
Not ever.
“How could you do it to me, mister?”
Braxton raised his head. Who had said that?
“Mister, I’m talking to you.”
He blinked into the darkness until a shape took place. It took him a moment to fathom what he could see. It was Jayden. The boy whom Braxton owed more than he’d ever be able to pay. The kid who had lost his parents because the man who should have been able to protect them had failed horribly.
“You wanted to torture me.” Braxton laughed. “And I guess you finally found your way.”
No way did Jim believe that Jayden was actually there. No way. No how. But he’d certainly had his image conjured for Braxton’s benefit.
“How could you let my parents die?” The fake version of Jayden’s voice shook.
“Well.” Jim might as well go through this. He certainly deserved pain where this kid—real or fake—was concerned. “Your folks came to me. People always find us. We don’t advertise or anything. But they come. Word of mouth. Someone knows someone else. Anyway, they came. They’d witnessed something that concerned them and didn’t believe they could go to the police.”
They probably couldn’t have. The authorities were notoriously bad when it came to handling anything to do with the supernatural.
“Someone had started a demon cult on your street. They were frightened. They came to me and I started an investigation. But I wasn’t fast enough, I didn’t realize that your family had been targeted. As you would know if you were real, your mom had shoved you away at the back of a closet. I got there in time to save you. Not them.”
“You let them die,” the child cried. “You were supposed to protect them and you let them die.”
“I know, Jayden.” Braxton heard his own voice hitch. “And I will let Pendleton torture me for the rest of my existence. Still, it won’t undo my failing your parents. I was the wrong person to help them. I fail everyone. But listen to me, Pendleton, I won’t fail at this. You’ll never break me. No matter how many people from my past you drag out to remind me what a total piece of shit I am. I’ll even help you out. Start with my parents. They were really fucked up. I could never help them either.”
An image of Heather’s face crossed his mind. Not everything in his life had been shit. He’d had her, briefly. They’d shared time on an airplane. And she’d made the worst clusterfuck of a time-travel situation almost romantic simply by being there with him.
He’d loved her and that was more than he’d ever thought to have.
A jolt of electricity racked him again. Eventually Pendleton would kill him. Of that he felt certain. But whether that would come soon or decades in the future, he had no idea. Time had ceased to matter.
He looked around the dark room. No longer in the house where they’d been, he really had no idea where Pendleton had sent him. Everything seemed out of order. As if nothing was real.
Maybe not even him anymore. He held on to the image of Heather. She was real. She had to be.
Chapter Twelve
Heather skidded on the floor with a thud. Her knees burned but she didn’t care as she jumped to her feet. Jim had just done something very, very…bad. She wasn’t entirely sure what, because her head wouldn’t clear, but he’d secured her release and left himself trapped there. She knew he hadn’t sacrificed Foy. Otherwise the other man would not have lived to become the Foy Jim had known growing up.
Which only left distinctly awful possibilities.
A hand grabbed her and she screamed. With her fist raised ready to fight, she swung around.
“Whoa.” Ivan darted backward, his hands up in surrender. “I’m not going to hurt you, Heather.”
“Ivan.” She could barely speak, her throat felt so dry. “You’re still here?”
“I’ve been looking for the two of you for half an hour.”
She blinked, trying to take in what he’d just said. “Half an hour? We’ve been gone for days at least.”
Jim’s friend shook his head. “Half an hour. I promise you.”
“No.” She shook her head. “Where’s Jim?”
“Braxton? He didn’t come back with you?”
“No.” She grabbed Ivan’s arms. “You have to help me. He stayed to be noble, I think. To take the blame. The ghost is going to kill him. Please, we have to do something.”
“Hold on.” Foy’s voice filled the room as he stormed in. “What do you mean he stayed behind?”
“Foy. Oh thank God. I thought maybe he got you too. But you got away.”
Foy, who looked exactly the same except that he was dressed much more casually than he had been moments earlier, pulled her to his side, squeezing her shoulder in an older brother kind of a way. “That was a very long time ago.”
“What?” Ivan tilted his head to the side. “I’m not following any of this.”
Foy took a deep breath. “I’m going to have to explain things to you, Ivan, and I will. But right now I need to understand what she’s saying to me. Bear with me a moment. The time you’re remembering, when I killed Pendleton, that was decades ago. I stabbed him and you two vanished. Poof. I’ve been waiting all these years to talk to you about it.”
“Foy.” Her voice shook. The clearer her head got, the more the horror of the situation dawned on her. “Braxton didn’t go poof with me. He arranged to get me back here and he stayed back there.”
Braxton’s mentor opened and closed his mouth several times. She tried to swallow but her throat clogged. If Foy was tongue-tied, they were in a great deal of trouble.
“Heather. That’s not possible. No one was left in that house when I burned it to the ground.”
“No.” She shook her head. Foy couldn’t have killed Jim. That was too impossible. “No. No. No. Jim!” She shouted his name. “Jim, can you hear me? Are you a ghost? Are you here? Talk to me. I’ll stay here with you. I’ll never leave this house. You can be a ghost and I’ll talk to you. Forever.”
“Stop.” Ivan’s ice-cold command shorted out her hysteria. She had to be reasonable. Ivan continued. “Somebody tell me what’s going on.”
If Foy wasn
’t going to talk, she would. Standing in silence wasn’t helping Jim. “Your mentor isn’t exactly who you think he is. He’s something kind of different. He’s lived a very long time. And when Jim and I were sent back in time we saw him. He killed the owner of this place. And then…it’s all a blur but I think somehow Jim took the responsibility and sent me on.”
Foy shook his head. “I would have seen him in the house.”
“Unless you killed him and you didn’t know it.” She tried not to cry.
“No.” Foy shook his head. “He’s Shadow Promised to me. I’d have felt his spirit try to leave as Christian’s once did and I would have stopped it. Like I did then. Ivan here would have lost some energy in the process, all the oathed would. But I’d know if he was dead.”
His words should have reassured her but they didn’t. “Foy, all those years ago, he wasn’t promised to you. You didn’t even know you’d eventually be doing this until he told you. Isn’t that right? You were just a fallen angel looking to help mental patients who stumbled upon some strange people in a haunted house.”
“Can I interrupt?” Ivan walked forward. “I’m not following most of this and I guess that’s fine. Master Foy is going to have to explain this angel thing but I’ll admit it’s perhaps not the time.”
He sounded so calm. She wished she could scoop some of it up and find a way to feel relief too. Heather couldn’t help but wonder if nothing would ever be okay again. How could it be? She’d found her man—and she had no doubt he belonged to her even if she had to somehow convince him of it—and lost him to, of all things, a psychotic ghost.
“Ivan…” Foy’s voice faded away. Why couldn’t he be the great, powerful entity she needed him to be? Why didn’t he have answers?
“If you need to see what happened to Braxton, I’m the guy to do it.”
She didn’t know what he meant but Jack blinked rapidly as the words struck him. “By the heavens, you are.”
“You sound surprised.” Ivan raised an eyebrow. “Haven’t you always told us we’re where we’re supposed to be? Didn’t you send me here because you had a vision I should come help Braxton?”
“I did.” Foy ran a hand through his hair. “You’ll have to forgive me. I’m always tied up in knots when it comes to Braxton. Let’s just say that both he and Heather met me in a time when I wasn’t the man I am now.”
“What are you doing in San Francisco?” Ivan shook his head. “Did you get on a plane right after you called me?”
“Not immediately after. Listen, we digress. Use your vision. See him.”
Heather waited. She would be enormously grateful if Ivan could somehow see Braxton. But seeing him and helping him were two different things. And what if what he witnessed turned out to be Jim dying?
Her hands tingled and she looked over at Ivan. His already pale-blue eyes had turned even lighter. It was as if she could feel his power. Why was that? She never had any physical reactions to Braxton.
As if he could read her mind, Foy spoke. “Ivan is über-talented. The things he can do, he shouldn’t be able to do. Not unless he was also a, you know, fallen angel. That’s why you can feel him. Other talents can pick up on his. You’re more open now that you’re back.”
Ivan shook his head. “I’m not, and we are going to be getting back to that shortly. But in the meantime, would you two please shut the fuck up? I’m working here.”
He sounded so much like Jim right then that it was everything she could do not to cry. Foy placed a hand on her shoulder. “I have to believe this is going to be okay. Braxton…he changed things for me. Everything that has happened since the Pendleton case happened because of him.”
“The Pendleton case? Is that how you’ve come to think of it? For me it’s ongoing. It’s the Pendleton situation.” And until Jim was back in her arms, none of it mattered.
“I’ve got him.” Ivan shook his head. “It’s bizarre, as if he’s out of time. Trapped somewhere with the ghost. Not in the house but not not in the house. I can’t explain it.”
She scratched her nose. “The ghosts held me in a room, somewhere I couldn’t escape. My consciousness was there but not my body. My physical person remained in the Pendleton house.”
“Well.” Foy shrugged. “This is a more powerful ghost. He can move actual bodies. The workings of ghosts are usually uninteresting to me. Heather, you’re a ghost-talker and that can’t be a coincidence. Ivan, can you see the ghost?”
Ivan fisted his hands. He looked like a man who wanted to pound on someone. Too bad there wasn’t anyone available to take that out on. Heather wouldn’t mind doing some of that herself.
“He’s not in good shape. I don’t know exactly where or when I’m seeing him so I can’t tell you where to go to get him.”
“Shit.” Heather almost never cursed but this time it seemed appropriate.
“Hold on.” Foy held up his hand to stop the conversation. She could feel that he was different from in the other time. Calmer, more centered. Maybe Jim had managed to change him, whatever that meant.
“You can talk to ghosts.” Foy looked at her and she wanted to take a step back from the intensity in his eyes. This was a man who got others to step out in front of demons because he told them to. “Have you figured out how to control them yet?”
She swallowed. “A few times. It never dawned on me to try it with Pendleton.”
“By yourself, it wouldn’t have worked. Any ghost that can do what he does is not your average spook. He isn’t going to be handled by a new-to-her-powers ghost-talker. But maybe we can pool talent here.” He pointed at Ivan. “Take his hand.”
“All right.” She held Ivan’s fingers in her own. Her hand shook slightly, but if he noticed, he didn’t remark.
“Ivan,” Foy directed. “Heather is going to open herself up. You are going to direct Pendleton, holding her hand, to bring Braxton to us. It may take several pushes to get this done.”
“Master.” Ivan nodded. “I’ll give it a try.”
Heather gritted her teeth. She was going to as well. If only she could open herself up on demand. Now that it was critical, she couldn’t fail.
* * * * *
Braxton swayed inside his own mind. He’d gotten good at pretending to be somewhere else. Right then, he was on a beach, relaxing in a white lounge chair with a fruity, girly drink. The sounds of the ocean conflicted with the whip on his back.
“Someday you will tell me.” Pendleton was still hanging on to that idea. Braxton had never caved, he never would. Truth was, he could hardly remember himself anymore. What had happened? Everything was really unclear.
“Pendleton, you will return Jim to us.” Heather’s voice flew through the room and Braxton opened his eyes. This was a new one for the ghost. He hadn’t tormented him with Heather before. Tricky. Hearing her dulcet tones really did constitute a new kind of hell.
“If you think hearing her voice is going to do anything other than strengthen my resolve, you haven’t been paying attention all these years.” His own voice sounded rough. When was the last time he’d spoken?
Pendleton cursed and threw himself up against the wall next to Braxton. “I’m not doing this.”
“Bullshit.” Everything was a game. He’d learned that long ago. “I’m not buying it. Go sell your crap elsewhere.”
Pendleton shuddered. “How are they doing this? She shouldn’t be this powerful.” The ghost actually looked pale, which shouldn’t be possible.
“Pendleton,” Heather’s voice filled the room again. “You will do as I say or you will know pain for all of your days. Give us back Jim Braxton.”
His body shuddered. What was happening? One second he was staring at the ghost, the next he fell through the sky for a second before slamming into the ground, hard. He groaned. Where had Pendleton sent him this time?
“Jim.” He heard Heather’s intake of breath and lifted his head, amazed his neck still worked, to regard her.
“Don’t let go of Ivan yet. We need
to get rid of Pendleton so he doesn’t come back.”
Foy’s voice caught his attention and he stared at the fallen angel. He must really be back, because his master was wearing his standard black pants and black fitted T-shirt, not the suit he’d been dressed in during the past. Was it possible? Had he really been freed?
“I’ve been trying to get rid of him for a very long time. It’s not doable.”
Foy walked over to him, placing his hand on his shoulder. “Not by yourself. But the Shadow Promised were never meant to do these things alone. Ivan, take his other hand.”
Ivan and Heather moved to him. Everything felt as if it was in slow motion. Had he fallen asleep? Was this all going to turn out to be some kind of dream?
Heather’s eyes glistened as she looked down at him. “This is all going to be over soon.”
“It will, buddy.” Ivan took his hand. “Had no idea any of this shit was going on.”
“You’re lucky.”
“We’ll talk later,” Foy interrupted. “Heather, call the ghost here.”
“When did you become a conductor?” Braxton choked on his words. He could have really used a glass of water. But his delusions weren’t going to bring him any and he preferred to keep the illusion of this being real going a while longer.
“Come here, Pendleton.” Heather’s voice sounded strong, deeper than he remembered it, and powerful. He shivered and the sensation nearly made him pass out. Hell, he was in a lot of trouble if he was this weak.
The ghost appeared, yelling at the top of his voice. Braxton would have laughed if he could have managed the effort. It was about time that someone abused Pendleton. He’d gotten to abuse countless people, both in life and in death.
“Braxton.” Foy’s voice interrupted the dazed haze that threatened to invade his mind. “Send him off. You can do it, with Ivan’s help.”
“You’ll never get rid of me. I am eternal. I am the most powerful being that ever—”
Jim had had enough. He interrupted the rant. “Be gone.”