Eternal (26 page)

A grin stretched across Laura’s face. “Oh, I didn’t think of that. Of course you’d want to be alone with him with your folks gone.”

At the risk of sounding like a lunatic, I ached to tell her about my plans. “I’m going to light candles and make everything romantic and then I’m going to tell him.”

She hung on every word. “Tell him what?”

I took a deep breath. “That I want to be with him.”

Laura’s forehead furrowed. “Be with him? You’re not going to hurt—”

“No!” I shot back, horrified she’d thought I’d do something stupid. “I mean I want to…
commit
…myself to him.”

She stared, confused.

“Marry him,” I explained.

Her lips rounded. “Marry him?” Her forehead wrinkled. “How?”

I wet my dry lips with the tip of my tongue. “I was awake all night last night thinking about it. I’ve come up with my own vows and if he’s willing, we can have our own little ceremony.”

Laura gaped. The bus bounced through a pothole in the road. “You’re going to marry a…ghost?”

It sounded impossible when she said it like that. Improbably. But in spite of everything, resolve flooded me. My gaze caught the tower of the haunted church as we passed. Something bleak passed through me but I forced the dark thought away. “Yes. I love him. I know he loves me.”

Something about that church wouldn’t let go of me. I twisted to look back at it. The building, that tower and those graves, seemed eerily familiar but I couldn’t quite place it.

“Wren, how are you going to…to marry…a ghost?” she mouthed the last words so that no one else would hear.

My eyes found hers again. Without warning, tears welled in my eyes. I blinked furiously to keep them from falling. “This is crazy. Laura, I’ve lost my mind, haven’t I?”

She laughed. “Yes. But if I were you, I’d do the same thing.”

“Really?” I asked, laughing too. I’d needed someone to agree with me.

She nodded. “Really.”

Her confirmation of my wild scheme confirmed my sense that I’d made the right decision. I knew I was young. Too young to marry. Anyway, legal marriage, even to a ghost, was out of the question. Still, I could share my life with him in the same way two married people shared their lives. There was nothing conventional about my relationship with Jeremiah but I knew in my heart I’d never love another man the way I loved him.

No matter what hardships lay ahead, I wanted to be his wife in every way possible.

“What are you going to wear?” Laura asked.

“My Mom found an old wedding dress in one of the trunks in the attic.”

Laura sighed. “That’s so romantic.” And then her eyes widened dramatically. “Does he know it, yet?”

Nervous energy twittered inside me. “Not exactly.”

She clutched my arm. “Wren! What will you do if he…says…no?”

“He won’t,” I said. “I feel it. I’ve sensed that something is about to change between us.”

“How do you know it’s a good change?”

Again, panic threatened to consume me and I fought it off. It was just my nerves. That was all. “It has to be. He loves me. He told me he would marry me…if he…was alive.”

After last night, I knew what the answer would be. I knew he was as ready as I was. The limitations of his being a spirit and my being mortal no longer presented a hindrance—at least not to me. He and I had both come to terms with what we could be to each other. He’d made the decision to remain here with me despite the fact that he knew his family waited for him in that place.

In doing that, he’d committed himself to me. The least I could do was let him know I felt the same way.

Despite my apprehension, I knew in my heart he would say yes.

“I wish I could be there,” Laura said as the bus rolled up to the front of the school.

As we stood up to get off, anticipation consumed me. I couldn’t wait for school to be over.

Tonight, I would become Mrs. Jeremiah Ransom.

* * * * *

I practically floated into first period thinking of what I would say and how I would surprise Jeremiah with the antique dress. Several candelabras had been left in the house and I would decorate the attic with them. There’d be no time to get a bouquet together but that’d be just as well.

“Do you really think you can keep him?”

Stunned, my gaze shot to Briar’s. She stood by my desk, arms akimbo, looking ready to do battle.

Her black liner-laden eyes narrowed menacingly. “Do you?”

I gulped. “What are you talking about?”

She took a threatening step toward me and shoved my desk. The desk’s metal feet grated on the tile floor as I slid several inches. My notebook tumbled, opening to where I’d hidden Jeremiah’s printed photo in a plastic protector. Briar caught it and thrust it in my face.

“Ladies,” the teacher’s voice boomed in warning as he strode into the classroom.

Briar dropped the notebook on my desk. “He’s a liar,” she seethed and then stormed past me to her desk.

Trembling, I struggled to recompose myself. Everyone’s eyes loitered on me and I chanced a glance at Frank. “What the—” he began.

I shrugged as if I had no idea what Briar had been talking about.

“Look at her,” Briar whispered loudly to her friends. “Trying to act like she doesn’t know she’s trapped a man’s soul on the earth plane.”

I wanted to sink into the floor. A dark truth lurked behind Briar’s accusation. I squeezed my eyes shut. Was I being selfish in wanting him to wait for me? Giving him up was my only other option. And I couldn’t do that because I couldn’t imagine life without him.

During class, I offered my hand to Jeremiah to see if he’d write through me but he wasn’t there. Besides, Briar’s sudden attack had upset me far too much to tap into my psychic senses.

She’d called Jeremiah a liar. What reason would he have to lie to her?

And worse, had he made contact with her again?

Dismally, I thought back to the day she’d tripped me in the hall. She’d left me alone since that time Jeremiah had angrily caused a storm of scurrying papers in the hall. Had he promised her something in return for leaving me?

Briar’s sudden disappearance yesterday and Jeremiah’s absence right now couldn’t be a simple coincidence. He’d told me he needed to talk to me.

The words he’d uttered against my lips last night haunted me.

If anything ever happens to me, know that I did not leave you because I wanted to.

Certainly, Briar didn’t have anything as diabolical as forcing him into the Light in mind.

I made myself calm down. The medium’s website stated that a spirit couldn’t be forced.

Briar couldn’t make him go.

Could she?

Uncertainty popped and flared through me like fireworks. I twisted in my seat to look back at her.

She glared, her face set and grim.

“Miss Darby,” Mr. Daniels scolded. “Please face the front.”

Inhaling sharply, I turned around. I resolved to put a stop to Briar’s bullying. There was nothing she could do to Jeremiah. Nothing.

And nothing she could do would spoil my plans for tonight.

* * * * *

Knowing she’d follow me, I rushed out of class and practically ran for my locker. This time, I was ready for her.

Trembling, I worked my combination as quickly as I could, switched my books. As soon as she rounded the corner, I shut my locker and disappeared down the hall which led to the seldom used auditorium, to the stage where I’d had my senior pictures taken.

No one would be in there. Besides I didn’t want any witnesses.

My mouth grew desert dry. I shook all over as I pushed open the door to the stage.

Despite the rush and whirl of students in the halls, the auditorium remained quiet, desolate, like a cemetery in the middle of a bustling city.

A chill swept over me.

This was stupid. Confronting her might prove to be a mistake. If her cronies followed, it’d be three against one. Anger fueled me. This hostility between us had to end. I refused to be bullied any longer. There was nothing she could do to separate me from Jeremiah.

I shivered against the dark chill in the air, breathing in the stale smell of the dusty stage curtains. Wind whipped through the ceiling somewhere, rattling the catwalk high above the stage.

The door tore open and Briar burst in, flanked by her friends. “Who are you running from, ghost chick?”

Straightening, I steeled myself. “I’m not running from anybody.”

“Oh, yeah?” Briar closed the distance between us.

I clutched my books closer. “You can’t do anything to him.”

Her energy flustered me. Something dark and twisted and evil lurked inside her. But what?

Or who?

Her wicked laugh echoed through the empty auditorium. “Your little friend promised he would let me send him to the Light after Christmas break if I’d only lay off you.”

I shook uncontrollably. Jeremiah wouldn’t do that. “Liar.” But I knew a sick, sick truth lurked in her dark declaration.

“He plays the part of the southern gentleman to the max but the truth is, Wren, he’s a liar, just like every other earthbound spirit. A demon. He’ll do anything, say anything to stay.”

I trembled violently. “That’s not true.” I shook my head. I should never have led her here. This wasn’t going as I’d planned at all.

“Has he told you he wants to stay with you?” she asked. “Has he gone so far as to tell you he loves you?”

I stared. My cheeks flamed. I felt as if she’d reached inside me and ripped out my innermost secrets.

And my heart.

“They’re incapable of love. They’re incapable of anything except deception.”

My nails dug into my books. I feared I’d lose control any moment and fly into her in a rage.

A slow smile twisted on Briar’s black cherry lips. “Why do you think there are so many stories about that old lady who lived there before you? He lied to her, too.”

“He did not.” I tried in vain to shut out the images of him with another girl…another woman.

Briar glanced at her friends and then back at me. A malevolent gleam flashed in her eyes. “He told her the same things and look at her. She spent her whole life alone and waiting for him, waiting to be with him.”

My throat constricted.

Briar continued. “He promised her he’d wait for her and then she died all alone. She died, thinking they’d finally be together and what did he do? He stayed right here and waited for his next desperate victim. Didn’t he, ghost chick?”

I bit my lip to keep from lashing out at her.

“Imagine his surprise when
you
moved in,” Briar added snidely. Her gaze raked me from head to toe. “No more old lady.”

“It’s not like that,” I said, finally finding my voice. “You don’t know him.”

And then, somehow, I managed to grasp hold of the one hole in her story. Courage heartened me. “If what you’re saying is true, then why did he come to you and tell you he wasn’t going to let you cross him over?”

Briar’s eyes narrowed into vicious slits.

Triumph surged. “You can’t
make
him go.”

She pursed her lips and then smiled. “Oh, he’ll be begging me to send him. You just wait and see.”

With that, she whirled and in a flash of hot pink and black leather she and her friends disappeared the way they’d come in.

Unsteady, I sank to the stage and sat until my racing pulse returned to normal. What had she meant that he’d be begging her?

Jeremiah wouldn’t beg her for anything. She was bluffing.

I took deep breaths, willing my pulse to return to normal. I’d meant to show her I wouldn’t be bullied. I’d failed.

One of her statements shook me to the core. Jeremiah had made a deal with her that he’d stay with me until after Christmas break. That’s why he’d made me those promises last night.

My lips parted as sudden insight washed over me.

He’d decided he wanted to stay with me. I’d known, of course. But now, I realized more than ever that he’d decided to give up heaven…for me.

For now.

* * * * *

By the time I got to lunch, word had gotten around about my tiff with Briar. Waylon and Laura both vowed they’d confront her but I talked them out of it. Briar had already blabbed to the whole school that I had a boyfriend who was a ghost, and Waylon and Laura had spent the morning doing damage control.

I thanked my lucky stars no one believed her. Because I didn’t know if I possessed the coldness to deny my relationship with Jeremiah.

Laura’s gaze flitted back and forth between Briar’s table and me. “You wouldn’t believe what else she’s saying about you.”

I refused to look over there. I wanted to appear unconcerned. I intended to ignore her but I really ached to pound the table with my fists. How dare she try to separate me from Jeremiah!

“Nobody listens to her,” Waylon said, his tone calming. “Laura and I’ll take up for you.”

I managed a little smile of gratitude.

“That’s right.” Laura flashed the Goths another hateful look.

Waylon leaned in so no one else would hear. “She says she’s going to send him to the Light.”

“Can she do that?” Laura asked.

“No,” I told them. “I did some research over the holidays. You can’t make a ghost cross over unless they want to.”

Laura’s shoulders sagged with relief. “Good.”

“Why is she picking on you?” Waylon asked.

“I don’t know,” I said honestly. “From the stuff I’ve read, there are lots of people who like to think of themselves as ghost hunters who think it’s wrong to let an earthbound spirit remain here.”

“I think I know why,” Laura interjected before she took a bite out of a yellow apple.

All eyes riveted to Laura.

“Why?” I suddenly wondered why I hadn’t used my intuition to figure this out before. I could have kicked myself. I’d been too absorbed with my relationship with Jeremiah to uncover the motivation of the one person who could possibly come between us.

Laura swallowed. “I went to middle school with Briar. She used to be a straight A student. She was pretty and quiet and had her own group of friends. They weren’t the popular kids but they weren’t the geeks either.”