Dead Living (Spirit Caller Book 5) (8 page)

“Why are you back in bed?”

“Because everything hurts,” I whined. Then, I pictured Dema’s disapproving scowl and heard her frequent criticism that I wasn’t behaving like a Spirit Caller. I stretched out a sore, limp arm and Jeremy tugged me into a sitting position. “Pass me socks.”

Jeremy tossed me a pair and I tossed them back. “I don’t like those.”

“They’re socks.”

“I don’t like them. Give me the purple ones. No, the other purple ones. No, not those. The purple ones. No, those are lilac. Purple.” Eventually, Jeremy figured out which socks I wanted and handed them over. “All right, I’m ready. Now what?”

“Grab that suitcase, young lady,” he said.

I dragged my travel bag down the stairs and out into the car. “I need to stop by Amy’s house before we take off. Is that okay?”

“Sure, but it’s awfully early, isn’t it?”

“I just wanted to check on Mrs. Saunders’s bleeding hearts.”

Jeremy drove, all the while refusing to tell me where we were going. He didn’t even give me a hint. There had better not be tents, or anything remotely resembling a tent. For the record, trailers, campers, and anything hauled and/or on wheels are also tents.

We pulled up to Amy’s house. It was still dark out, so Jeremy parked on the road. The headlights beamed over the yard, but not into the house, where it could have woken everyone. I checked the bleeding heart plants. I couldn’t see wards and spells the way Dema saw them, but I didn’t want to call her forth while Jeremy was sitting in the freaking car watching.

He poked his head out of the car and said, “Rach, come on! We’re going to be late.”

“It’s not even seven o’clock!” I complained, but I reluctantly stood up. Ow. Everything hurt. Ow. What was the point of all this running if I couldn’t dig a few ditches?

Next time? I’m hiring Manny.

I can’t see wards and workings, so I needed to ask Dema’s help. There weren’t any spirits in Amy’s front yard, which was a good thing. There were several quasi-forms hanging around the roadside, though. Were they being curious, or had the ward attracted them? Something tugged at me that I’d messed up the ward, but I was too tired to tell for certain. I didn’t have the time to fix it.

Well, I’d deal with it when I came back. If I was lucky, the
other
would recognize my work and most would show me common courtesy. Um, could spirits and ghosts have common courtesy? Could they have common sense? I’ll need to ask Dema that.

Where was Dema anyway? She hadn’t shown up last night, which was no surprise since Jeremy had spent a good half an hour massaging my stiffening muscles before I passed out. She is under strict orders not to wake me, nor to manifest, spook, haunt, make sounds, or be in any way around when Jeremy and I were together in any sense of the word “together.”

We detoured into St. Anthony for a Tim Hortons. Me a French Vanilla cappuccino. Him, an extra-large quad-quad.

“How can you drink that much sugar in your coffee?”

He took a giant slurp before stuffing the cup in the holder. “You can’t have a double-double in an extra-large. This is double the size of a medium, so quad-quad. That’s just common sense.”

I scoffed. “That’s going to kill you one day.”

“At least I’ll die happy and caffeinated.” He grinned at me. “And very, very sweet.”

I made a disgusted noise.

We did some idle chit-chat about this or that. Mitchel’s store was being renovated. The Andersons’ chip van had a sign that they were closing in a week’s time for the winter.

It wasn’t until we turned off the main highway that I realized where we were going. “Jeremy! Are we going to the lighthouse?”

He grinned. “Sort of. The lighthouse is closed for the season now,
but
I sweet talked my way into getting us the keys to the honeymoon suite cabin on the island for three nights.”

An unnatural sound escaped me. Not a squeal, not a scream. A
squee
. I couldn’t even bother to pretend I was embarrassed because I was too excited.

Goose Cove Lighthouse was a working lighthouse off the shore, out on its own little island. The actual lighthouse itself was moved to one of the automated ones, but the building and surrounding island was turned into a luxury hotel. It’s a ten-minute boat ride just to get out there and it’s basically in the path of whales. There are loads of photos of folks sitting on the front deck of the lighthouse while whale pods happily swim by.

And we’re going there!

“So, good surprise?”

I leaned my head against his shoulder for a moment. “The best.”

He grinned, though didn’t take his eyes off the road. “I had planned to propose there. When I got better.”

“You’ve been better for a while now,” I said, sitting back up. I did squeeze his hand that rested on the gear shift.

“The nightmares are mostly gone,” he said softly.

“That’s good,” I said quietly.

“I’m glad I did the therapy,” he said, lowering his voice. He often did that whenever he talked about seeing a therapist. Like he had to convince himself that it was the right thing to do.

“Good,” I said. I meant it. “It was important for you to talk to someone.”

“I suppose it’s stupid to see a doctor about parts of the injury, but not others. And I live with a social worker.” He grinned. “You’d never let me live it down if I refused to talk to someone.”

“I wouldn’t have,” I said with a smile.

We fell into comfortable silence as we drove down the deserted road. Every so often, I saw spirits going about their business. I found it easier to ignore the random
other
around me now that I’d accepted that there would always be spirits around me. It didn’t hurt as much, either. I could handle telling the child molesters to piss off, and I could deal with Mrs. McAvoy and her little gaggle of suitors.

“You’re quiet.”

“Oh, I’m just thinking.”

“About…”

I didn’t want to talk about spirits, but there was something else that had been on my mind lately. “I was thinking about buying Mrs. Saunders’s house.”

“You already have a house.”

“No, not to live in. I was thinking I’d renovate it and rent it out as a short-term rental. Furnished, ya know, for tourists, or for anyone who needed a place to live for a couple of months from around the area.”

“Huh. You hate cleaning.”

“If I can’t handle the cleaning, I’ll pay one of Amy’s kids minimum wage to help me.”

“Never mind her kids. Amy’d probably love to do it. That woman can clean like a bandit.” Jeremy glanced over at me. “How much is the house going for?”

“Sixty,” I said with scorn.

“That’s higher than I was expecting.”

“Seriously? I thought it was crazy low.”

“Rach, come on. It’s in the middle of nowhere and the house is old. And it needs a lot of work. I think sixty is high. I wouldn’t pay more than fifty for it. But, never mind all that. Why do you want it?”

“I just said…”

“I know, but
why
.”

“I’m bored. I’m painting, but that’s difficult to do all of the time. I’m not getting out of the house as much as I should. It would be nice to have something else to keep me busy and bring in a little more money.”

“Honey, you don’t need to work. I make enough for the two of us.” He shrugged. “And you still have a lot of money in the bank, don’t you?”

I waved him off. “That’s only because I sold the condo Mom and Dad mostly paid for and they wouldn’t let me give them back the money.”

“Right...” Jeremy said, as if I was stupid. It annoyed me. “So you have plenty of money if there is a big emergency. Like, when I got hurt.”

I flashed him an angry glare. “If you ever get hurt again, I’m going to kick your ass.”

Jeremy grinned his lopsided smile. “I will try very hard not to get hurt again. In the end, it’s your money. I can’t tell you what to do with it.”

“But, would you be mad?”

“Nah. I’d rather you spend it on trying something to make you happy, as opposed to us just wasting it, to be honest. If nothing else, we’ll have a guest house for LARP weekends.”

“I’m not buying a house for you and your friends to play in,” I said very sternly, so he knew I was all serious and stuff.

“You know you want to,” Jeremy said.

“No! Jeremy, no. I said no. Stop looking at me like that.”

“Fine,” Jeremy said loftily. “So….did you pack the red bra I like?”

“I packed a jumbo box of tampons and enough ibuprofen to knock out a horse.”

“But did you pack the bra?”

I glared at him.

“Don’t make me turn this car around.”

We drove the entire way to the wharf laughing and falling in love all over again without a care in the world. We had no idea what was following us.

Chapter 7

Garrett. Jeremy Garrett.

After parking and unloading the car, we took a boat to the island. Jeremy had rented the boat from a cop friend’s buddy’s buddy’s next-door neighbour’s cousin’s brother’s kid. Have I mentioned lately how much I don’t like boats?

Jeremy was up at the wheel acting like he was at the helm of the Starship
Enterprise
in an epic battle against the Jem'Hadar. Now, the Atlantic Ocean isn’t a happy ocean like the Pacific. I went whale watching in Tofino, British Columbia once and, I gotta tell you, that was like driving on a flat surface. This was crap. Total and unabashed
crap.

Waves were everywhere. Water spraying. The boat was all over the freaking place. The emergency dinghy we were pulling behind us, as a safety measure, was miraculously still there and still in once piece, though I have no idea how. Several times, waves crashed against us, the spray hitting me square in the face.

“Isn’t this awesome?” Jeremy shouted from the wheelhouse.

“You’re never going to see me naked ever again,” I muttered darkly.

“This is so cool!”

I gripped the railing tighter and tried closing my eyes. That made the motion sickness worse. When I opened my eyes back up, I was rewarded with a spray of salt water hitting me in the face. James Bond was up there at the wheel bouncing and moving with the boat, shouting and cheering as he bounced the boat off the whitecap waves.

“I hate you more than all words can say.”

“This is so fucking awesome!”

My cappuccino sloshed one last time. Then I vomited all over myself.

“Hey Rach, did you…oh God!”

The engine slowed and then came to a dull rumble. He grabbed the railing and slid down, as opposed to using the steps. The boat continued to toss in the waves of doom.

“Are you all right?”

I answered by breaking into sobs.

“Why did you throw up on yourself?”

What the hell kind of question was that?

He sighed. “Look, the lighthouse is just over there on that island. Do you see it?”

I looked at where he was pointing and nodded. The large, rocky island had a bright white and red lighthouse on its highest point. Smaller buildings were scattered about the island’s plateau, also all painted white and red. The lichen and moss had turned various shades of orange and red. White caps crashed against the side of our temporary rocky home.

“I wish I’d packed my watercolours,” I said disappointedly.

Jeremy smiled as he tied the boat to the small, wooden wharf. He pointed to an orange trash bag while he worked.

I picked it up and grinned at the familiar, heavy weight. “My painting box?”

His smile broadened. “I thought you’d might like to get a little work done. I packed my good camera, too.”

I made a girly sound of joy. I peeled out of my disgusting jacket and helped Jeremy unload our supplies. As we worked, he explained that the main hotel was all locked up for the winter, so we weren’t allowed in there. They were coming to board up all of the cabins the following week, which was why we were allowed to sneak in after the seasonal closing. We had to cook for ourselves, since the chef was off somewhere warmer for the winter months, which was fine by Jeremy since the cabin came with a small kitchenette and it had a BBQ outside on its tiny, wooden patio.

Jeremy climbed up on the wharf, moving with a smoothness I hadn’t seen in a long time. I passed the food cooler up to him; damn, that thing was heavy. Then, he helped me climb out of the boat.

“Now to drag all of this up!” I said, just as I noticed the quad with a cart attached. “Oh, cool. I haven’t driven one of those in ages.”

Jeremy shot me an amused look as he picked up my small suitcase full of clothes and the large suitcase full of his board games. “You’ve driven quads?”

I gave him a very unimpressed glare. “I grew up in the Territories. Of course I can drive a quad, and I can probably drive a snowmobile better than you.”

“I wouldn’t go that far,” he said, adjusting the bags in the little cart.

I dragged the cooled to the cart and, together, we lifted it in. “Oh, I would.”

Jeremy snorted. “Fine, you can drive. Morris said we have to stay on the paths, though. Some of the mosses and alpine flowers are endangered, apparently.”

I nodded and helped pack the remainder of our stuff into the cart. It’s amazing how much we’d packed for only three nights. However, Jeremy wanted to BBQ and cook gourmet meals on a hot plate. And he wanted to play board games. And there was my painting box. And there was clothes. And hiking boats.
And
my giant winter coat, in case it snowed.

Look, I don’t trust the weather in this place.

Jeremy handed me the keys, which he’d obviously been given by the owners. I expertly drove the quad up to our little cabin home, since I am an outstanding driver and those horrible things men say about women drivers are caused by male hysteria and not based in any fact whatsoever because, lo, we arrived in safety 200 meters later.

Jeremy unlocked the cabin door. I whistled when I walked inside. The wooden cabin had a gorgeous living room, complete with fireplace and wood. There was a kitchenette and a nice sized table that we could play at least some of our games on. Others we’d have to take to the floor.

I dropped the bags and walked down the little corridor to the bedroom. It was a huge king bed, high off the ground, topped with a homemade blanket of multi-coloured geometric shapes. I opened the door to the bathroom and gasped. A massive corner soaker tub awaited me, as well as a sizable stand up shower with a glass door.