A Strange There After Read online

  “Let’s call that Plan C, after Meena and your séance.”

  We rounded the corner and approached the house as a Ford Mustang pulled up the curb.

  “Oh, joy. Prince Charming is back.”

  I shot Boone a glare, then watched Jason climb from a car I remembered too well. “Be nice.”

  Jason regarded Boone solemnly. “Find anything? Abby texted me and told me where you went.” His gaze flicked to the left of Boone, looking for me, just on the wrong side.

  “You have some makeup on your face.” Boone pointed to Jason’s cheek where a smear of foundation remained.

  Jason scowled, clenching his jaw. “I didn’t want to waste time by washing up. Besides, I’m living here, so my stuff is upstairs.”

  I had to hand it to Jason. He was being remarkably patient with Boone’s constant antagonizing. As we all trekked toward the front door, I wondered how long it was going to last until one of them snapped.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Determined to find George and finally have a conversation with him about his mama, I wandered down the hall toward the attic stairs. Passing the bathroom, I heard the shower running. Must be Abby. I hadn’t seen her since Boone and I returned. With a grin, I went through the door, stepping into the steamy room. Concentrating on drawing power from the warm air, I waited until I felt solid enough.

  Then I reached out and ripped the curtain open. A high-pitched, girly scream filled the small space. Only, it wasn’t Abby. It was Boone. Naked. As hard as I tried, I couldn’t move. Shock had me frozen to the spot, and my eyes traveled downward. A tattoo snaked up from his hip bone, an intricate design of skulls and tombstones and swords. Lower—no, oh God.

  “Quinn?”

  My gaze snapped up to his, and heat rolled through me. We stared at each other for an eternity, and each second ratcheted up the temperature. It sucked the air right out of me. Yet I found myself captivated by his long, dark lashes and the scar in the middle of his chin. Boone blinked, shattering the moment.

  “You scream like a girl,” I mumbled as I forced my eyes no lower than his perfectly defined chest. Even that had my mouth feeling like it was full of cotton balls.

  “Most people do when a ghost goes all Peeping Tom on them.” He reached for a towel. “Did you want something?”

  I recognized the heavy smirk in his tone and my skin turned hot, prickly. I spun on my heel to flee.

  “Come back any time,” he called after me.

  The attic, that was my destination, a place I could hopefully hide out for a decade or four. Mortified, I trudged up the steps and lifted a hand to my flaming cheeks. I certainly hadn’t expected this kind of reaction. Sure, he was hot...wet, crap. My mind kept wandering places it didn’t belong. I never wanted to show my face around him again.

  Instead of hiding, I found Jackson and George speaking in hushed tones. As much as I’d wanted solitude a few seconds ago, their company would keep my thoughts from going to unwanted locations.

  They regarded me with curious expressions.

  “Your face is remarkably red,” Jackson observed.

  “I, uh, um, saw...never mind. Distract me.” I sighed and dove into a subject he guarded tightly. “How did you die, Jackson?”

  The unexpected question hit him with force, and he stumbled backward a couple steps. George watched us with huge eyes, but he had yet to disappear. My goal was to talk with him, but Jackson’s presence derailed that.

  “Tell me,” I pressed.

  His handsome features grew hard, a muscle ticked in his jaw, but he squared his shoulders and stared me down. “You really want to hear it?”

  “I saved your life, it’s the least you can do,” I teased.

  I didn’t elaborate, didn’t tell him I had my suspicions, especially after Kalfu mentioned Catherine offering up a sacrifice. According to the loa, they killed someone. I figured it was her mother Margaret or Jackson, but I had to find out which.

  He slumped onto the bed, fiddling with the brass buttons on his uniform. “A year after Catherine’s death, after Margaret’s breakdown, I came back to the house. I had finally made it out west, and it took a couple months for word to reach me that Nathaniel was alive. We were as close as brothers. I always assumed that’d be made a reality when I married Catherine. To discover he lived was enough to bring me on another thousand mile journey, to a town I swore I’d never return to.

  “I came here, to the house, not knowing Nate had taken his father and retreated to the cotton plantation across the river.” He stared at a spot over my shoulder, lost in the past. “The house was boarded up, neglected, but I went to the front door anyway. I knocked. No one answered. After a couple seconds, I heard voices coming from inside. Then the door opened on its own. This was a place as familiar to me as my own childhood home, so I believed I had a duty to go inside and check if all was well.”

  Chills worked their way up my spine as I listened.

  “I stood in the foyer, listening. Then I heard a laugh from upstairs, and my blood ran cold. I knew that laugh. It was hers. Catherine. I ran up to the second floor and stopped. I...” he was struggling now. “I turned and saw her standing there. Beautiful as ever, smiling at me. She didn’t speak, and I told myself I was witnessing a cruel trick. As the moment stretched out between us, her expression changed. It turned cruel. And this shadow loomed up behind her. She walked toward me, and the darkness grew. I wanted to run, but I couldn’t leave her, not again. It sounds so pathetic.”

  He paused, and I sensed him gathering strength to finish. I moved over and sat by him, grasping his hand, earning a look of gratitude.

  “When she was nearly upon me, she sort of...joined with the shadow. The shock over seeing her prevented me from reacting, even when the thing lashed out at me. A frigid cold hit me square in the chest, and I stumbled backward, right down the stairs. The last thing I remember was Catherine’s laughter in my head.”

  I shook from the force of the truth as it settled around me. “She killed you.”

  His wounded gaze landed on me, and the grim expression he wore made him look gaunt. “It took me a long time to come to terms with it. My body wasn’t found for a while, not until a neighbor noticed the front door standing open. When I woke up as a ghost, I was here because this is where I died. And this,” he plucked at the scratchy material of his uniform, “is what they buried me in.”

  “And you’ve had to live with your murderer for over a century.”

  The cruelty of it pissed me off, but he had finally answered why his death remained a secret. What a terrible thing to admit, dying at the hands of your lover. Torn between empathy for Jackson and all-consuming rage toward Catherine, I chose the former. I’d deal with the little witch later. I remembered talking to Boone about moving on and asked, “Don’t you want to be some place better? Why can’t you leave?”

  The grief in his tortured expression said it all.

  Oh, yeah, duh. “You still love her.”

  “It’s sick, I admit. No one ever claimed love to be rational. But I’m afraid for her, too. She’s caught in a web she doesn’t understand. I hate to stand by as she’s being used by that spider. And just because we’re in the same location for eternity doesn’t mean we interact. Whenever I try to approach her, she pushes me away, unless she’s distracted. There are too few instances she actually acknowledges me.” His voice grew impassioned. “I believe there is hope for her. I won’t accept that the last hundred and fifty years have been for nothing.”

  “You think you can save her.”

  It wasn’t a question, and I already spied the answer in his blue stare. “I don’t know any other way to exist or whatever it is I’m doing in this afterlife.”

  My heart broke for him. It was both worse and better than I expected. I laid my head on Jackson’s shoulder and listened as he drew in a shuddering breath. My attention strayed to George, watching us with longing.

  “Get over here.” I grinned at him.

  Cautiously,
he inched his way closer and climbed into my lap, patting Jackson’s hand, offering comfort the only way kids knew how. I put my arm around his bony shoulders and felt contented.

  “We’re an odd family,” I said. “But I’m proud to have both of you in it.”

  Jackson’s chuckle vibrated through me. “Likewise. After such a long time, I’ll take what I can get.”

  George looked up at me with sad brown eyes. “Ya wants ta know more about my mama, don’cha?”

  Apparently our happy moment had passed. “I hear you talking to her. What does she say?”

  He shrugged, another childish movement. “She want me t’help her do dem bad tings. She say she love me, she sorry. Mama cries a lot. I don’ want her to hurt ya.”

  “Thanks, Isaiah,” I said, making the effort to at least call him by his real name out loud.

  “Call me George.”

  “Why?” Jackson asked.

  “Quinn always call me dat. I like it. Feels like me.”

  Jackson ruffled his hair, and we shared a moment over the top of George’s head. It felt like utter defeat to admit it, but if worse came to worse, this wasn’t the most terrible way to spend eternity. At least I’d have a family.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  After spending an hour with Jackson and George, I headed downstairs to see if anyone was around. Well, anyone but Boone. Please let Boone be asleep or out or fully clothed, I prayed. At the top of the landing, I stopped. I’d never look at these stairs the same, knowing Jackson died at the bottom of them. His eternal presence here gave me a morose feeling.

  Raised voices caught my attention, and I followed them into Catherine’s bedroom. I found her in the middle of a heated argument with Jason. Her face twisted in frustration, but he looked torn between strangling and kissing her. Passion radiated between them which caused me to flush with jealousy. I peered around the corner of the doorway to eavesdrop.

  “There has to be something fundamentally wrong with you,” he was saying. “You lied to me for weeks!”

  “Not all of it was a lie,” Catherine blurted.

  This caught me and Jason by surprise. His body went rigid.

  “What are you talking about?”

  She shook her head frantically. “Nothing. It doesn’t matter.”

  “Dammit! I wish someone would just talk to me.” He strode forward, trapping her between him and the wall, their bodies almost touching. “You think nothing you do has consequences, but you’re wrong.”

  Confusion skittered across her features. “Why are you so intent on getting an answer?”

  “It was real to me,” he roared. As if the shout had taken all his energy, he stumbled backwards and collapsed on the bed, his face a mask of shock, like he hadn’t expected those words to come out of his mouth.

  To my surprise, Catherine knelt on the floor, her hand on his knee. The softness in her expression stole my breath. I didn’t want to see it, to hear what they shared. I was watching a car crash, knowing the outcome would be bad, but unable to turn away. They had obviously spent a lot more time together than I ever imagined. A voice in the back of my mind screamed for me to run.

  But I didn’t.

  “That night was special for me, too.”

  Wait, what?

  She continued. “You have no reason to believe it, but no matter how terrible I am, I get lonely too. Finally feeling wanted again, feeling intimacy, it meant everything. I never faked anything when we were together.”

  “I thought you were Quinn! Do you know what that means? I thought she trusted me enough to give me that gift. I felt so close to you, to her, in that moment. It’s not as black and white as you’re making it, Catherine. I mean, oh God, does it make me a rapist?”

  It hit me then, a nuclear bomb to the heart. They slept together! My knees threatened to buckle under the weight of the revelation. I couldn’t make my mouth form words, but I did sense the anger building. Hot sobs clawed at my throat, scratching to be let out.

  “Did it seem like I wasn’t willing?” Catherine asked him.

  “No, it was amazing.” He dropped his head in his hands. “But it was wrong. I betrayed her.”

  Everything bubbling up inside me exploded. “I can’t believe you did that!”

  I wasn’t entirely sure who I was yelling at. Him for liking it or her for allowing things to progress that far. My entire body vibrated with rage, with hurt. Jason had it exactly right—he betrayed me, in the worst way possible.

  “Quinn,” Catherine gasped, clearly shaken by my arrival.

  Jason leapt to his feet, his eyes searching the room. His inability to see me only ticked me off more. I watched the realization of what happened crawl across his face.

  “No, oh no, Quinn. Give me a chance to explain.”

  The bursts of emotion flashing through me gave me strength, evident by the fact he heard me when I said, “How could you?”

  “Because I thought it was you,” he cried in anguish.

  “Do you think that matters?”

  His face crumpled. “No.”

  “Quinn, you need to calm down,” Catherine warned me.

  I ignored her, focusing my agony on Jason. “I would have never slept with you this early on. The fact you didn’t even consider that shows me how little you know about me. Or respect me!”

  Jason’s eyes widened. “We’re talking...to each other.”

  “Because I’m pissed.” My mind filled with images of them wrapped in each other’s arms. Of him whispering into her ear as he pulled her clothes off. The hurt was too great, and without any thought at all, my arm shot out, pointing at him. Darkness erupted from the tips of my fingers. It was as if my anger took on physical form. It collided with Jason, slamming him into the wall and slinking its way up to his neck. I didn’t flinch as I heard him gasp and choke.

  “Quinn! What are you doing?”

  Catherine’s cries brought a smile to my lips. How many times had I asked her the same thing as she tormented me or someone I cared about?

  “What’s wrong? Can’t handle a taste of your own medicine?”

  “It’s got nothing to do with that, and you know it. You’re just jealous! And you have every right to be.”

  I ignored her, returning my attention to Jason as he struggled to free himself from the shadow pinning him to the wall. The longer I held him, the calmer I felt. His face turned purple, his lips blue.

  “Quinn!”

  The voice calling my name caused a crack to form in my concentration.

  “Get out, Boone,” I said, forgetting my earlier mortification with him.

  “This isn’t you. Let him go.”

  My resolve wavered, and I sensed my control slipping. Then, as if a veil had been ripped from my eyes, I really saw what I was doing. Retreating from the horror of the realization, I shrunk into the corner of the room. Jason fell to the ground, wheezing, and Catherine went to help him.

  “Don’t touch him,” I ground out.

  Boone glanced between the two of us then rushed to Jason’s side to move him onto the bed. Noticing the red welts around his neck, I flinched and stared at my feet. Emotion coursed through me, unable to be controlled, and I shook with the effort.

  “What happened?” Boone demanded.

  “Please don’t,” I whimpered the same time a familiar voice appeared in my head.

  Nicely done, love.

  He snapped his head around to look at me, his brows furrowed. Abandoning Jason, he crept toward me. “Are you okay?”

  “Get him downstairs.”

  Boone hesitated then nodded. With one arm under Jason’s arm, he half carried and dragged him across the threshold. I latched on to the darkness again and directed it to slam the door behind them, locking it. Immediately, Boone began banging to be let back in, but I drowned out his pleas.

  Use it. Here is your chance to punish the one who’s taken everything from you.

  “What are you doing?” Catherine’s voice wobbled.

  I gl
anced at her, noting how she tried to stand nonchalantly with a hand on her hip, but I spotted the trace of fear in her eyes. I blocked Kalfu’s taunts, not wanting to miss an opportunity to finally gain some insight.

  “We need to have a little talk,” I told her.

  “How are you doing this? You let him in, didn’t you?”

  “No, I figured out how to use my anger on my own.”

  “That’s not how it works. Now Kalfu has a claim on you.”

  I leaned against the dresser. “Let me worry about my soul. Let’s talk about how you gave Jason my virginity.”

  She nibbled her lip, struggling to maintain her bravado. “Not like you wouldn’t have had sex with him eventually. You’re making it into a bigger deal than it is.”

  “It is a big deal,” I cried. “I’ll never get the experience back. I know it may sound stupid, but I wanted it to be special. Can your manipulative brain comprehend that?”

  “It’ll still be your first time...if you ever manage to kick me out and experience it yourself.”

  “Are you really this heartless?”

  She moved to the vanity and picked up a brush. Perching on the end of her bed, she used it on her hair. Sighing heavily, she said, “You want a genuine heart to heart, don’t you? You think you deserve it?”

  “Of course, I do. You stole everything from me!”

  “So dramatic.” She shook her head, leaning back on the bed. “The last three weeks have been some of the best of my life,” she said in a rush. “There. Are you happy I said it?”

  Settling in for what I hoped was a long chat, I slid down the wall, tucking my knees to my chest, making sure I maintained a hold on the door and the commotion on the other side.

  “I’m not happy, no. I am glad you told me, though.” Genuinely curious, I asked, “Why has it been so enjoyable? Was it,” I swallowed, “was it because of Jason?”

  She regarded me with suspicion. “To be brutally honest, a bit. You know how charming he is. Add in the fact I’ve been alone for so long, it felt nice to be wanted. To have someone hear me and act like I meant the world to them and treat me so good. Most of it, though, had to do with being alive again. I was so sick of living through someone else.”