Dead Living (Spirit Caller Book 5) (14 page)

“I heard about the engagement! I’m so happy for you two.” She eyed Jeremy. “I thought I was going to have to get involved! Now, you guys all sit down and figure out what you want. You look like you’re starving.”

We pushed together two smaller tables and all gathered around. My stomach growled at the scent of baking bread and molasses cookies from deep within the kitchen. I stared at the menu of delicious pies, cakes, cookies, more pies, some pies with extra pies, and brownies. Then, I flipped it over to the even more delicious section of fried heaven. I didn’t know when I’d get to eat again, so I should make healthy choices. Something that was filling, but wouldn’t give me a sugar crash in an hour. I needed to have my senses with me.

“Hey, Myrna!” Jeremy called out. “You got any lassie buns?

“We’re all out,” she said.

Jeremy pouted. He actually pouted. Like a toddler. “Aww. Not even frozen ones?”

“Sorry, Jeremy. The seniors’ home in Deer Lake cleaned us out.”

Isabella made a face. “I’m afraid to ask, but what’s a lassie bun?”

“It’s a soft molasses cookie,” I answered.

Jeremy made a disgusted sound. “It’s not a cookie. A molasses cookie is thin. A lassie bun is thicker.”

“But they taste the same,” I said.

Manny, Connie, and Jeremy all said, in unison, “No, they don’t.”

“I’ve made both for Mrs. Saunders. They are the exact same recipe.”

“No, they aren’t!” Myrna said. “The buns have baking powder in them and more eggs.”

“It’s the same recipe,” I insisted.

“Nope. Sorry, Rach. They aren’t.” Jeremy looked down at his menu. “I’m starving.”

Myrna pulled out her little pad of paper and asked, “Rachel?”

“I’ll have the chicken club sandwich,” I said, very proud that I’d picked the healthiest thing on the menu. “Can I have it on your mom’s bread?”

“Of course,” Myrna said, scratching out the word on her pad. “Jeremy?”

“A mess,” Jeremy said.

I rolled my eyes.

“What’s a mess?” Isabella asked.

“A mess is French fries, gravy, cheese, and stuffing. You can also have ground beef and peas on it if you want, too. That’s an extra dollar,” Myrna said.

“I want that,” Isabella said.

Manny said, “Same. Make mine a double.”

Connie said, “Same, but just a normal for me.”

Javier said, “Same, make mine a double.”

Jeremy chimed in and said, “Actually, make mine a double.”

Mary said, “Double.”

“Ya know, make mine a double, too,” Isabella said.

Myrna looked at Connie, but she said, “Still a single. I can’t eat that much grease.”

My stomach announced it really wanted a mess, too, and I should be ashamed of thinking about my long-term health. Myrna said she didn’t have enough fryers to make that many French fries all at once, so she’d bring them out as they were ready. The crowd was fine with that. I wasn’t; I was stuck eating a healthy sandwich.

While Myrna went off to dump pounds upon pounds of PEI potatoes into delicious hot fat that would smell amazing and glisten with the golden crisp of fried goodness, I asked, “So, honestly, is Connie really your sister?”

“Honestly,” Isabella said.

“And she honestly works in customer service?” I asked, pointing at Connie.

Isabella nodded. “She is the point of contact for ten field agents right now. Like Javier and I.”

“So what do you do, Connie?
Honestly
.”

I know I’d said
honestly
three times in as many sentences, but I wanted to get to the truth of it all. What did all of these people do?
Honestly.

“I book flights, organize safe vacation spots, scour the internet for possible threats. Then I cut off their credit cards if they spend too much or I need them to leave whatever pretty beach they’re on to make them get back to work,” Connie said.

I grinned. “So when you said you were staying until the credit cards stopped working, you were referring to Connie.”

Javier chuckled. “Nah, she wasn’t old enough. One of the other kids was assigned to me then. But, yes, though I like to believe God controls my credit card balance and not my own spending.”

“You are a pain in the ass to manage,” Connie said. “But my assignment was to come here and keep an eye on things. Call in Isabella or Javier if things got really bad. But then…”

Manny smiled at her. “But then we bumped into each other. Easy to do in a small town.”

“And, well, it was obvious to each other what we were.”

“And then it was nice to have someone who understood.”

“And it was nice to meet someone.”

They stared at each other dreamily.

“I think I’m going to be sick,” Isabella said.

I snorted. “So, you and Javier…”

“Oh, look, your healthy sandwich is ready,” Javier said.

Myrna placed the tall sandwich in front of me, expertly cut into quarters. She told us to grab the drinks we wanted out of the fridge just behind us. Manny got up and passed around everyone’s drinks. I got a diet Orange Crush. I ate one triangle of sandwich, which was very good, before announcing I had to use the bathroom.

I took care of the usual business, plus made use of Myrna’s feminine hygiene supply, rejoicing in being dry and clean once more. Ancestors, I was on the run from evil people…and I was on my period. Misty Monroe never put up with this shit. When this was all over, I was going to ask my doctor if I could start skipping the sugar pill week and just go right for non-stop hormones and period-free living. I’m sure that’s what Misty did. If she were a real person, I mean.

Do girls in books ever get their periods? Now that I think about it, they always get their first one, and then magically never spoken about again. I need to figure out how they do it.

I returned to find some of the Mess had been delivered. Oh sweet mercy. It was the most delicious and evil thing ever created, and that includes cinnamon sugar cake doughnuts, Kraft Dinner made with just butter, and bear paws (the dessert, not the body part).

I must have been drooling because Jeremy pushed his plate between us and kept eating. I took one fry from my side of the plate and moaned with pleasure. Myrna pointedly placed a takeout container next to me that would expertly fit my sandwich. I gave her a sheepish smile and I chowed down on Jeremy’s food.

Isabella and Javier both managed to pack away their giant plates of food. How was that even possible? Isabella was fit, sure, but she wasn’t Javier’s size. How was she even able to breathe after that?

At least Manny was a teenage boy. He was always hungry.

“So, Javier,” Connie asked sweetly, “Why did you tell Rachel that Isabella was your girlfriend?”

“Not now,” Javier grumbled.

“It’s not for my lack of trying,” Isabella said in a syrupy voice.

Javier rolled his eyes. “Can we please deal with the group of bad guys chasing us all over this pretty, backwater province?”

“My home isn’t a backwater,” I said defensively.

“It is when I can’t access my cell phone,” Javier said through a strained voice.

“Javier is right,” Isabella said. “Let us discuss the matter at hand. Anything to distract the conversation away from Javier’s commitment issues.”

“We’ve been over this before. I don’t have issues.” He drawled the word out so that it sounded more like
ish-shoes
. “I simple don’t want…”

“To have any ties in case your job takes you away for long periods of time or eventually your life. Yes, yes,” Isabella said. “I’ve heard all this before. I’ve even said it a few times myself. And yet, I’m still here.”

I grinned. Javier had come into our lives all smooth and charming. He stepped seamlessly into the role of protector and matchmaker, neither missing a beat. He never grabbed me by the ear and told me to tell Jeremy how I felt. He just was there, bringing security and comfort.

So, it was super strange seeing him so uncomfortable around anyone, least of all a gorgeous woman who, very clearly, cared about him and who also knew he cared about her.

Well, I couldn’t judge. Tease, yes. Judge? No.

I grinned. “All right, let’s get off Javier’s back.”

“Thank you, Rachel.”

“It’s not like you have any room to tell Javier to speed things up,” Jeremy said.

“What about you? You took forever to get up your courage, too.”

“I had a girlfriend!”

“Not the entire time!”

“Mom and Dad, please stop fighting,” Manny said.

We all looked at each other before bursting into laughter. “So who exactly are the Whisperers?”

Javier paused from slurping down his drink. “They’re like a shadow organization.”

I rolled my eyes. “This isn’t a James Bond movie.”

“Sorry. They’ve been fighting us for hundreds of years in different forms.”

“Are you really two hundred years old?” I asked. I glanced at Jeremy. “He’s not going to let it go until you explain that little quip.”

Isabella smiled, but it wasn’t a happy one. It was more of nostalgia. “We both got our swords when Jane Austen was still learning to read.”

“Wow,” I whispered. “Really?”

“It’s a side effect of the sword,” Javier said, with no trace of a smile on his face. “The spiritual energy affects our lifespans. It’s why we never really settle down in one place.”

“Wow,” Jeremy said. “So the swords are like…”

“Don’t say it…”

“They’re…”

“Don’t say it,” I pleaded.

“They’re like,” he grinned at me, “vampire swords.”

“Jeremy,” I complained.

He snickered and shoveled more fries into his mouth with his plastic fork.

“So how many of these Whisperers are there?” I asked.

“There’s hundreds of these groups, maybe even thousands,” Isabella answered.

“I wish I hadn’t asked,” I said.

“Most won’t care about here,” Javier said quickly. “They are more interested in terrorism, either helping it or stopping it. However, these guys are obsessed with ending magic.”

“Do they all twist peoples’ thoughts?” I asked, shivering at the memory of their voices in my head.

Javier answered. “No. Some are aware of the supernatural around them, so they can give directions and information. Others are just normal people, good with tech or weapons. Some are callers or casters, and they can summon, banish, all that. Some are like Mary, though most of them stayed with us and didn’t leave.”

“It’s for the best,” Mary said, nodding her head. She had finished about half of her fries. She was still picking at it, but was definitely slowing down.

“All the while using spells and spirits themselves,” Connie said.

“Okay, they’re hypocritical assholes,” I said, “but who are they?”

Javier shrugged. “Us. Only assholey.”

“You’re telling me in the grand history of your super-secret shadowy world of whatever, you’ve never found out who they are?”

“It’s a lot more complicated than that,” Isabella said. “They exist and we fight and all of the normal things you’d expect warring groups to do. We also have territory carved out, treaties, and all of that. We exist as nations.”

“And like many nations, we all have extremists. For them, their extremists believe in any and all measures to stamp out the supernatural,” Javier said, eliciting a nod from Isabella. “Their entire goal is to eliminate all those with supernatural abilities and knowledge.”

Isabella snorted. “Then, and only then, they say they will lay down their weapons. Yeah, sure. Then they’ll just find something else that pisses them off and will go after them.”

“Then how do we stop them?” I asked.

“You…don’t. You run until backup arrives,” Javier said.

“That’s it?” Jeremy said. “There’s no counterstrike, no infiltration of their ranks…”

Javier laughed. “No, we just stay ahead of their anger as much as we can.”

“That’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard,” I said. “You’re telling me these assholes get to go around screwing up everyone’s lives up and you’re not going to do anything?”

“Rachel, it isn’t that simple,” Javier said. “There are rules and we have to follow them.”

“Do your rules say you have to let kids die?” I shot back.

“Sometimes, yes,” Isabella said coolly. “I wish it wasn’t like that, but it is.”

“Then why are you here?” Jeremy said hotly. “Why not leave Rachel to deal with them on her own?”

“If you think for a moment that I’m going to let children die around me while you three do nothing, well, you have another thing coming to you. Either you’re here to help or you’re not.”

“We’re here to protect you,” Isabella said, confusion evident in her voice.

“She knows it’s dangerous,” Mary said quietly. “She doesn’t care.”

I smiled at Mary. “I do care. That’s why I can’t stand aside and watch.”

Mary’s smile was full of pride. I would never see her as my mother, but I knew she saw me as her daughter still. I could live with that.

“Why haven’t they just killed me?” I blurted out.

Jeremy paled and he tucked into what was left of his side of the fries.

“It’s not that simple,” Javier said. “First, if you die, you leave a corpse. If that corpse says, ‘riddled with gun fire,’ it’s a clue that you were murdered. The last thing any of us need is the police stomping all over things. That just gets people hurt.”

Isabella nodded and picked up when Javier paused to steal food from Mary’s plate. “We don’t want to attract the attention of people who don’t believe the supernatural exists. We could ruin the lives of the people we’re trying to protect.”

“But what about the Whisperers?” I asked. “Why would they care about any of this?”

“They don’t, except in how it affects them. They don’t have the resources we have, so they need to be even more careful.” Javier shrugged. “They aren’t officially sanctioned by anyone, so…”

Connie picked it up. “Rachel, think about it. A suicide or an accidental poisoning draws attention away from the truth.”

“Jeremy, you guys need anything else?” Myrna called out from the kitchen.

“We’re good, thanks,” Jeremy replied. To the rest of us, he said, “We should be going. I’d rather not draw attention to this place.”

Dema appeared in the window and pounded on it. I looked over my shoulder to see her wide-eyed expression. She began to mouth something, but that’s when I heard gun fire and the sound of breaking glass.