Audrey Claire - Libby Grace 01 - How to be a Ghost (5 page)

My mouth fell open. I looked down at myself still not visible. “You can see me?”

For an instant, his eyes glittered in the dim light like a cat’s, but then they were normal again. “I can
feel
you.”

I almost chirped with glee. “But you can hear me, right?”

“Why would I not?”

By that point, I practically clapped my hands and jumped up and down. “I’ve been alone all day. No one could hear or see me. My son and Monica…” I choked up and blinked hard. Ian stood there looking at me, unemotional himself, and unless I missed my guess, impatient. He seemed more agitated than usual. I glanced over his shoulder and noted the man hadn’t moved. He stood like a statue or a robot waiting for its next command. I studied Ian. “Is he okay?”

Ian waved a hand in the man’s direction. “He is fine.”

“Um…” I thought of something else. “Why couldn’t I get into your house today?”

Ian answered right away. “It is protected against your kind.”

The words stung. “My…
kind
?”

Ghosts he meant. I was sure of it and comforted myself with the fact that it wasn’t me Ian desired to keep out of his home but all ghosts. Never mind. Knowing the fact did nothing for my mood.

I took a step closer to Ian, imploring him. “You seem to know a lot about ‘my kind,’ Ian. Please help me. I need to find out what happened.”

I don’t know what I expected from this dispassionate man, but it wasn’t what I got.

“You are no good to me as you are, Libby. Why should I help you?”

My mind screamed because you’re a decent human being, and you feel sorry for me. So far, Ian had not displayed any sense of guilt or human kindness. He had let me go back to the hardware store alone, and he kept the barrier up on his house even though he knew I must be wandering around lost and confused without my body. A determination to get back to my son and my life made me say, “I will haunt you forever. Even if I can’t get into your house, I will wait outside until you come out and go looking for…”

I glanced past him at the man and blushed. Then I straightened my shoulders.

“I will be right there with you, watching…” I gulped. “…everything.”

Could ghosts faint because I was milliseconds away from it.

At my outburst, Ian flared his nostrils and glared in my general direction. “You are ignorant, Liberty Grace.”

“What does that mean?” I demanded, but he ignored the question.

“You will wait outside my house until I return.”

“If you’re trying to trick me—”

“Outside my house,” he repeated. “I will be there in two hours.”

“Two hours!” I almost shouted.

He spun away and walked back toward the man. I had not choice but to return to his house. As I stood outside waiting for his return, I wondered how relevant time was. Would it feel like two hours as I waited? Before I could make any determinations, my mind drifted to other matters, like what Ian was dong at that moment. Another blush. I knew I had the feeling of embarrassment but wasn’t sure if had I been visible, it would have shown. Either way, it didn’t matter. Ian McClain was decidedly
not
on the market. Just as well anyway with his awful attitude.

While waiting, I decided to drift over to my house. I peered through the window and found Monica and Jake sitting at the kitchen table. The two of them studied the page in front of Jake, and I guessed they worked on his homework together. Monica pointed out a figure and said something. Jake glanced up with a smile that tugged at my heart. Then when he bent over the sheet again, Monica picked up her cell phone. The furrow between her eyebrows appeared, and she seemed to come to a conclusion. I knew without a doubt Monica intended to call Clark and tell him I was missing. By now, I also figured the town’s gossips had informed her about George’s murder. Monica would never believe I had anything to do with it, but she might worry the killer took me, which was what I was scared of too.

“Liberty.”

I started at hearing my name and swung around. Ian stood just feet away. How did he sense me so well? I was still invisible, yet he knew just where I was. Who was this man, and how had he learned so much about ghosts?

“Come on,” he ordered. “I have just a few hours before morning, and I like to use my time wisely.”

I followed him across my lawn to his and onto the pathway to his door. Unlike my landscaping, which in an effort to make it more homely, I had added a birdbath and wild flowers that didn’t need my help to grow, Ian’s lawn was military in its precision. One of the young men in the neighborhood came out to mow it weekly, and Ian left an envelope with the boy’s payment in his mailbox.

Not that Ian’s home and lawn was not nice. Ian kept everything in pristine order and good repair. He just didn’t go out of his way for more. I supposed that was the way of bachelors, and figured his interests lay in other areas.

Ian paused on the walk and began mumbling something. I drifted closer to try to pick up words, but they were nothing I neither recognized nor could describe. Odder was the reaction I felt in my being while he spoke. Nausea stirred in my stomach. My head spun. An odd vacuum pulled at me from behind, and while I had an urge to turn to see if a black hole had opened, fear kept me facing forward. Then out of the blue, the sensations were gone as if they had never existed.

“Come inside,” Ian said, and I had a flash memory of him asking me to tell him to come inside my house.

“Did you have to invite me for me to be able to cross the barrier?” I asked, following him into a dark foyer.

His eyebrows rose. “No.”

“Oh.”

I glanced around, but I couldn’t see much. Ian neglected to turn on the lights, but he moved through the house with ease, avoiding a table in the hall, which held a few neatly stacked envelopes. He scooped them up on his way past and circumvented a couple of white leather couches in the living room and a table between them. At first I did the same and then snapped out of it. Habit, I guess.

Ian opened a door on the far side of the living room, and I realized he had, or the previous owner had, built on another room. He strode a few steps in and then seemed to recall something. He stepped toward the door before I could enter and flipped on the lights. A space a few feet smaller than the living room came into view. I gasped in awe at the walls filled with bookshelves from floor to ceiling. A mahogany desk dominated a center spot, and to its left a globe sat in a hardwood stand with a walnut finish.

I moved farther into the room and spun slowly, enjoying the atmosphere of what was no doubt Ian’s sanctuary when he wanted to shut himself away from everyone. This must be the place he had been when he said my screaming disturbed his reading. Then I frowned, scanning the walls. There were no windows here, and the room was situated on the opposite side of the house from mine.

I walked to the nearest bookshelf and scanned the titles, a broad spectrum that ranged from
Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy
to
Star People
to
History of the World
written by Sir Walter Raleigh.

“I think I might go crazy if I didn’t have the sun shining in,” I commented, “but this room is simply lovely. Jake would get a kick out of exploring the books, even if he doesn’t understand everything written within.”

Ian strode over to his desk and sat down behind it. I watched as he scanned the contents of one of the drawers, and he brought out what looked like a pamphlet, yellowed with age. He read a page or two, and when I didn’t know what else to say, I blurted what occupied my mind.

“I didn’t know you were gay.”

If I wanted a reaction from this solitary man, I got one. He surged to his feet so fast, his chair overturned. He sneered at me. Those eyes I thought had glowed in the dark burned me with their intensity. Oh, Ian McClain could most certainly see me. I was sure of it. But how?

“I am not
gay
,” he bit out between clenched teeth.

“I’m sorry,” I muttered. “I didn’t mean to insult you. It’s not a big deal if you were—”

He reiterated his claim, cutting me off.

“Well what were you doing with that man in the park?” I asked. I knew it was none of my business, but I was curious, especially after he worked so hard to make it clear his interests did not swing in that direction.

Ian bent to right his chair then completely ignored my question. So like him. The first rise of emotion and then it fizzles to nothing. “You need to learn to concentrate,” he said.

I blinked, surprised at this sudden shift. “What do you mean?”

He continued as if I hadn’t spoken. “The state you are in now consumes the least amount of energy. With concentration, you can be as solid as a live person, but only a short amount of time.”

I gaped at him and then grinned. At least I think I grinned. “You’re kidding! That’s wonderful. How do I become solid now?”

“Slow down,” he grumped, and I wondered if there were ever a time when he was happy or laughed. The thought that it never occurred saddened me for an instant, but then the prospect of being seen and feeling—hugging Jake—that could not suppress the joy rising in my being.

I floated toward Ian and paused in front of his desk, eager for his next words. Just as before, he looked directly at me, not in the vicinity. “Ian, you can see me,” I said. “You lied before about not being able to. That means you ignored me when you came out of your house the first time. Why would you do that? Am I such a bother?”

“You can also be visible enough just to hold up your clothes,” he said in a monotone.

I folded my arms over her chest and then swooped closer to him, straight through the desk. I don’t know what happened. Perhaps I lost this concentration he went on and on about. Maybe being so close to him, a man more handsome than Mason or even Clark, had unsettled me. All I know is I found myself outside of the room I now thought of as Ian’s library with the door firmly shut.

I hovered near the floor, weak and worn as if I’d been through a battle. Ian had said something about energy. At that moment, I felt like someone had drained me, and I was running on E. My head spun, and I couldn’t get my bearings. The room dipped and swayed then righted itself, but even when it did, everything felt off somehow.

I raised a hand toward the door but then hesitated as bits of memory of what just happened slid into my mind. Ian’s lips moving, speaking those odd words and then a powerful force pushing me from the room. Now, I knew he was most decidedly
not
human, but what was he, and did he mean harm to me or my family and friends? Had he been the one to kill George?

Now that I thought of it, I recalled I hadn’t told Ian about what I found at the hardware store, and he hadn’t bothered asking. Did that mean he already knew, or did he not care one way or another?

After some time, the door opened, and Ian stood in the entryway. I wanted to question him, but I couldn’t force my mouth open. He crouched, resting arms on his thighs and linking his fingers together in front of him. His express bland, he spoke in a calm voice.

“Listen closely to me.”

I swallowed, staring at him, wanting to escape his house but unable to move.

“I am a vampire.”

Vampires don’t exist, I asserted in silence.

“I assure you I am real, and I am telling the truth.”

Was he reading my mind or just guessing the likely response?

“What is common among all of us at least one hundred years old is that we learn certain…” His eyes appeared darker than their usual green and held much more danger. “…spells to combat our enemies.”

I quaked. Ian considered me an enemy? How could I in this wispy state hurt him? A good wind might blow me away. Right now it felt like less than that would end my existence.

Somehow I found my voice. “I don’t know how I can be your enemy.”

“You feed on humans. Therefore, you are my enemy.”

His words sounded like a philosophy, one I disliked with every fiber of my being.

“I do not feed on humans!”

He shook his head. “You are ignorant.”

“You said that before. At least teach me, Ian. If you tell me what I need to know, I can be out of your hair and find my body myself. I have always tried to be independent. My mama taught me that.”

He appeared unimpressed with what my mama taught me and stood up to turn his back. If I were such an enemy, he wouldn’t turn his back on me. I might decide to jump him. I almost laughed thinking that way and knew that it was hysteria that made me see the humor in this situation. I didn’t fully believe his story about being a vampire. Who would? Sure, ghosts existed. I knew that from my own experience. Well, as long as I wasn’t dreaming this whole thing and lying somewhere in a hospital.

That was a thought, a hospital. Maybe I had had an accident. I broached the subject with Ian. He sat behind his desk, and since he didn’t shut the door in my face, I assumed it was okay to enter the library.

“Have you tried to use the phone?” he asked.

I glared at him. “I lost my cell phone, and in this state, well, it’s not exactly easy to pick one up and press the buttons. That’s why I need your help to become solid like you said. Will you help me?”

He sorted through several books on his desk. When I started to speak, he interrupted. “I do not involve myself with the activities of humans.”

He had said that before, mentioning humans as if he were not one. “But you helped me before,” I reasoned, “and you took the spell off your house so I could come in. That must mean you don’t consider me an enemy.”

His gaze met mine. “I told you, you being outside your body is an inconvenience.”

“Stop!” I screeched, and the light above me popped, sparks showering over us.

Ian stood, his gaze narrowing. “Do not do that again.”

“What are you talking about? It’s not my fault you need to check your wiring.”

His mouth worked, and I darted a few steps backward in case he intended to use the spell on me again. Instead, he sat.

“I am not used to…
beings
…upsetting my order.”

“I’m sorry,” I said, meaning it.