Dead People (6 page)

“Isabel, I know you’re here.” She closed the door to create a sense of intimacy—just the two of them. Sucking in a deep breath, she tried to center herself. But she’d never been good at centering. After a few minutes, her thoughts drifted toward Luke.

She ruthlessly shut them down. He was too disturbing. Like a dark storm, with threats of lightning and thunder.

She’d much rather think about a sunny day. Joe. He was a sunny day, though he had his dark times too. But the sun wasn’t always shining. And sometimes when she and Joe were driving in the car with the windows rolled up, she got a whisk of musk…

Her imagination wasn’t that good. Probably those were the times they passed a dead skunk on the side of the road.

A noise caught her attention, a hissing sound.

“Isabel?” She glanced around. “I know you’re there.”

The noise stopped. No redheaded ghost appearing. Time to put her ghost therapy skills into action.

“Isabel, I hear you had health problems before you passed. Do you want to tell me about it?” Ghosts didn’t lose that part of their soul, the one that wanted to bore everyone about their medical problems. “I’m listening.” Cassie moved to the middle of the room, tilted her head, and waited.

It felt as if the walls of the room were holding their breath.

Not the walls. Isabel. A throbbing silence that happened when another person—dead or alive—was hiding from view

She wasn’t ready to come out and play, but she was curious. It was a start.

Cassie walked to the lannon stone fireplace and studied the photo on the mantel. Erin with a woman. It looked like her mother. Vanessa something.
 

She peered closer. Yes, the woman from the photo in Erin’s bedroom, sans the burgundy-colored streaks in her black hair.

Cassie’s opinion of Luke went up a notch. She was pretty sure he didn’t put his ex-wife’s photo in the family room for himself. It was for Erin, to make her feel connected to her mother. A kind thing to do. A
mensch
action. The action of a man who read
Fathering for Dummies.

The action of a man who bought a house off the Internet to give his new daughter a safe haven.

Cassie supposed even the most cynical rockers did one or two kind deeds in their sorry-ass lives, but if her father had done even half as much...

Clearing her throat that had clogged because of a stupid, stupid emotion, she moved to four framed line drawings of black musicians on the wall. These and the photo were the only personal touches. Everything else looked decorator flawless. Perfection without soul.

The hiss returned. Cassie went still, her gaze frozen on the trumpet player, his eyes closed, a look of bliss on his face, as if the horn satisfied something inside him.

“What do you think it would be like to feel like the way this man looks?” She nodded at the drawing.
 

Instead of a reply to her question, emotion pounded at her. Waves of anger.

The hairs on Cassie’s nape and her forearms rose. For the first time in her ghost whispering career, she felt like the blonde babysitter in a slasher movie.

She rubbed her arms. She needed to shake off this unease. Isabel would sense her apprehension and get a kick out of fanning it.

“What’s the matter, Isabel? I can feel you’re upset. Why don’t you talk to me about it?” She turned in a half circle. Still no action but—

A sailboat painting crashed off the other wall onto the floor.

Cassie jumped, then planted her feet on the beige carpeting and tried to radiate calmness even though her heart beat erratically, a song out of tune. “I see you don’t care for boats. What else don’t you care for?”

The newspaper flew off the table between the two chairs.

“You don’t like being dead, do you?” Of course not. It hadn’t been Isabel’s time to die.

A lamp tumbled off a side table but didn’t break.

Cassie locked her muscles, not jumping this time. Isabel had snapped from annoying to destructive.

One thing had changed to make that change. Cassie. She was in the house. In the family room. Isabel’s favorite place to hang out. She had happened, invading it, seeking her out, intent on making her leave.

“Is it me? You want me to go away?”

An invisible hand tossed a vase off the smoked glass coffee table, glass shattering into shards, water dripping onto the carpet, flowers scattered.

“It takes a lot of ghostly muscle to throw that.” Cassie put amusement into her voice. Maybe slight mockery would start Isabel talking. “A lot of ectoplasm. I don’t want to tell you your business, but it would be easier if you’d just say what you want.”

A screech sent quivers up and down her spine. Human yet inhuman.

And as fake as the Phantom of the Opera’s face, meant to scare her.

“I know you don’t sound like that. Why don’t you—”

A brass candlestick flew off the fireplace toward Cassie. It stopped two feet from her face, hovering in the air. Cassie was lifting her hands to protect her eyes when the door opened and Tricia stuck her head into the room.

“Is something wron— Oh my God!”

The candlestick changed course and flew toward Tricia.

“Shut the door!” Cassie yelled, and dived for the couch, her heart pounding wildly.

Tricia screamed and slammed the door shut, the candlestick banging against it as Cassie ripped the pillows from beneath her and piled them over her like shields.

She’d figured out Isabel’s problem.

For all the good it would do her.

***

The door to Luke’s studio burst open. Tricia tore inside, sliding to a stop a few inches away from where he sat in front of his synthesizer. “The ghost—” She panted, a hand splayed over her breastbone. “It’s throwing things.”

He jumped to his feet. “Where?”

“The family room.”

Dread formed a lead ball in his stomach. “Cassie,” he snapped. “Where is she?”

“She’s there. With the ghost. She—”

He tore past Tricia, running as if a gold medal were at stake.

“Don’t go without arming yourself,” she yelled.

He didn’t answer, not even to ask how he could hurt a ghost. If there was a ghost. Maybe it was a trick Cassie was playing. Something to make him pay more money.

Maybe her readiness to give him back the money had been a pretense, a trick. Maybe she was acting.

He hoped so. He fucking hoped so.

He thundered down the stairs, Tricia’s panicky voice behind him.

“I’ll call 911.”

“No!” He raced down the stairway three steps at a time. What was Tricia planning on telling the cops? That a ghost was throwing things?

He reached the first floor and flat out ran. He busted into the family room just as one of his Marsdon prints flew off the wall toward a mound of cushions and pillows on the couch.

Cassie.
She was beneath the cushions. She was okay.

A print lashed toward him. He leapt out of the way and it smashed against the wall behind him, wood splintering.

“Luke!” Tricia screamed from the hallway. “Get out of there!”

Cassie peeked through two pillows at him. Something out of place on the cream-colored pillow caught his eye. A bright red blob.

Blood.

Cassie’s blood.

“Stop!” he shouted, adrenaline rushing through his veins.

“You stop!” a woman’s voice shouted back. Shrill and edged. Not Cassie, not Tricia.

“Isabel!” Cassie’s head emerged turtle-like from the pillows, her hair half covering one eye. No blood. Then she lifted her hand to push away the hair, and red streaked across her forehead.

The acid taste of fear burned his stomach.

Cassie scrambled out of the belly of the couch, holding a cushion in front of her chest. Instead of racing to him, she looked at the wall where the pictures had been. “You heard us talking in the library, didn’t you? You’re upset about what I said.”

Isabel screamed, and waves of anger reverberated off the denuded walls of the room. Running again, Luke lowered his head. He reached Cassie and his shoulder plowed into her stomach. Her breath whooshed out and he slung over his right shoulder, like a sack of sand. Then he ran again, back to the doorway.

“I hate you!” Isabel screamed. “I hate you.”

With every running step, Cassie’s head bobbed against his back, her breasts cushioning against his shoulder blades. Any second Isabel could throw something at her.

He’d made Cassie a fucking target.

There was a roaring in his head. His heart beat faster than a spinning CD, and he lengthened his stride.

Something thudded and Cassie grunted. Then he was out the door.

It felt as though he were running in slow motion. He peeled out of the family room and pulled the door shut behind him.
 

He dropped to the floor, uncaring that his knees slammed into the hard wood. Cassie pushed off him. Gasping, she stumbled to get her balance.

“Oh God,” Tricia said. “You’re bleeding.”

“Where?” Cassie stepped back to him. Still bent over the floor, he could see her sensible black shoes stop a foot from his knees. “I don’t see any blood? Are you all right?”

He rose to his feet, taking too long to do it. His heart thumped against his chest wall in strong beats. “You’re the one bleeding.”

She shook her head.

Tricia gripped Cassie’s wrist and lifted her arm. “See.”

Cassie gazed at her hand and her complexion tinged with gray.

“That must’ve been the vase. I think the bleeding stopped. It hardly hurts.”

“Tomorrow it will hurt something awful,” Tricia said. “The second day is when it gets really bad.”

The bitter note in Tricia’s voice drew Luke’s attention. Her mouth was pinched, and the shadowed look in her eyes made him think even she had a few ghosts of her own.

“That never happened before,” Cassie said. “That’s one pissed off ghost.”

Tricia shuddered. “That was so scary. I was so afraid.” She gazed at Luke, and her face softened with a worship he didn’t deserve and didn’t want. “It was so brave of you to run in and save Cassie. You’re a hero! I feel so much better that you’re both out here and the door is firmly closed.”

Cassie made a movement, and Luke guessed what she was going to say. “Tricia, you know how dead people fly through walls in cartoons? I hate to say this, but they do that in real life too.”

Tricia squeaked, her eyes growing wide.

“I’m afraid so.” Cassie didn’t sound or look afraid. She gave a slight shrug and brought up her hand to brush her hair back.

And that’s when he saw her hand was trembling.

Chapter Nine

“Isabel can be in the hall any second.” Cassie saw Luke’s gaze on her hand. She dropped it to her side, clenching her fingers to stop the shaking.

While it was happening, she’d been oddly calm, concentrating on soothing Isabel, getting her to listen to reason, not once thinking that she’d be in any real danger.

But now…looking at the blood… A wave of nausea and dizziness hit her. She closed her mouth and her eyes, her breathing shallow, willing it to go away.

“We’d better go.” Luke grasped her upper arm, his grip oddly gentle.

She wanted to lean into him, let him shore her up, lend her his strength.

Wrong. So, so wrong. She should draw away from him. She knew better than to count on anyone for anything. She had to stop this, had to pull herself together.

“I need to see if you need stitches.”

“No!” Her knees grew weak but the dizziness and nausea eased. She opened her eyes and stiffened her spine. “A vein was nicked. Nothing serious.”

“I’ll put on some antiseptic lotion.”

“I can do that,” Tricia said.

Cassie started. Focused on Luke, she’d forgotten about Tricia. She shifted to include both Tricia and Luke in her field of vision.

“It’s my house,” Luke said. “I’m responsible for her injury. You go home for the day.”

Tricia’s gaze flickered to the family room door, then to the front door. “What about Erin? You’ll want me here when she comes home from school.”

“I’ll take care of her.” He still clasped Cassie’s upper arm. “Don’t worry, I’ll pay you.”

“I don’t care about the money.” She gazed at him over the top of Cassie’s head. “I’m concerned about Erin. I won’t let that nasty woman scare me away from doing my job.”

Something thumped on the family room door, glass cracking. Tricia squealed and jumped.

“You should be careful what you say about her right now.” Cassie heard the tiredness in her voice. In the silence that followed, she heard something else.

The walls breathing.
 

No, impossible. Walls didn’t breathe. Neither did dead people. But it was Isabel. Cassie knew it. Listening. Waiting. Hating.

“Go home.” Luke jerked his chin dismissively at Tricia. “Right now.”