Good Will Ghost Hunting: Demon Seed [Good Will Ghost Hunting 1] (Siren Publishing Classic) (13 page)

The tears in her eyes broke his heart. “It’s called a wraith.”

“A what?”

“It’s…it’s hard to explain. It’s latched on to your soul.”

The rational, logical part of her didn’t want to accept the explanation. The part of her that understood something was seriously wrong with her knew he wasn’t lying. Especially when it rolled inside her, and she had to fight a sudden, nearly overwhelming but fortunately brief urge to claw Will’s eyes out. “Why me?”

Still holding her hands, he dropped his gaze. “Because you’re a…” He took a deep breath, but before he could say it, she did.

“Because I’m a virgin?”

He nodded. “Normally it can’t get a grip on an adult like it has on you, it can’t make itself at home. You’re pure, so it was able to embed itself in your soul.”

“How do we get rid of it?”

He wouldn’t meet her gaze. Somehow that made her feel worse. “We need to go talk to someone about that. I’ll let him explain it.”

“What, like a priest or something?”

“No. Not a priest.”

“What if we don’t do anything? Will it get better?”

He shook his head and slowly tipped his face to look at her, his gray eyes moist. “No. We have to get rid of it by the full moon or else we can’t get it out of you. Until we get it out of you, you have to be restrained at night while the moon is up or you’ll hurt someone.”

She started to argue, then stopped. She’d seen the video. Kal fought her rising bile and hoped she didn’t toss her cookies all over Will. The person on the video couldn’t be less like herself.

Will continued. “I don’t want to do it. I’m so sorry. I don’t want to keep you tied up, but next time it could be a kid, or a family, not some street thugs. The next time you could kill them. The wraith has to be removed from you. All it does is hurt people, kill people. It’s not something you can live happily ever after with. It’s pure evil, nothing but primitive, negative energy. If it’s not removed from you, it’s not a matter of if it kills someone, it’s a matter of when and how many. I can’t let that happen to you, or anyone else.”

He wasn’t crazy. That much she sensed. With the thought of not doing anything came another sickening roll from inside her gut, and a silent, eager voice hissed, “
Yesss,
” in her brain.

“Okay,” she whispered. “Let’s go talk to this guy.”

Will called Aidan back into the room. She noticed the amulet around his neck, really looked at it for the first time. Kal remembered him holding it last night, mumbling something… She’d seen his amulet plenty of times before but never paid it any attention. Now that she thought about it, Gery and Purs each had one. Will didn’t used to have one but apparently had acquired one in the past few hours. She’d spotted the leather cord around his neck, under his shirt.

“What are you? All of you?” she asked.

“We’ll let him explain.” Will offered Kal his hand. She took it, and while the situation wasn’t great, she couldn’t deny holding on to him felt safe, felt right.

He looked at Aidan. “I still need your help. I’m not up to full strength yet. I can’t take us both.” They joined hands with Aidan.

“Wait, I need to change clothes,” Kal protested.

“Don’t worry, we’ll be back in a few minutes. Close your eyes,” Will said.

She did. She felt the air shift, her ears popped, and she instinctively knew they weren’t in the hotel room anymore.

“You can open your eyes,” Will told her.

She didn’t want to, afraid of what she’d see.

Will’s comforting arm encircled her waist. “It’s okay,” he whispered. She fought the urge to lean into him and settled for holding on to his arm.

They stood in a large, comfortable apartment. Huge floor-to-ceiling windows opened on a city skyline. The city looked familiar, but she couldn’t place it.

A soft, familiar male voice—British—spoke from behind her. “Hello, Kal.”

She wheeled around, her jaw slack. “Ryan?”

* * * *

Gery and Purs settled in to watch the morning news on TV. They didn’t want to be part of whatever was going on. From the snippets of thoughts Purs caught from Aidan after the two returned from Ryan’s, and from the fact that Will now had his amulet back, Purs had a feeling Will would serve Aidan’s nuts to him on a silver platter for whatever part he’d played in this. It wasn’t something he wanted to watch. Although if Will separated Ryan from his gonads he’d pay good money for ringside seats to that steel-cage brawl.

They heard a buzzing noise. Kal’s cell phone vibrated on the dresser. The screen glowed.

Gery shook his head. “Aw, crap. This can’t be good, someone calling her this early in the morning.” He pulled himself from his chair, retrieved the phone, and glanced at the screen. “It’s her parents.”

Purson reached for it. “I’ll take it.” He answered using a faked British accent, sounding professional. “Hello?”

There was hesitation from the other end. A man spoke, sounding defensive, protective. “Who is this?”

“This is Purson Gibraltar, one of the production assistants. Ms. Martin asked me to tend to her phone. Is this Reverend Martin?”

Another pause. “Yes. Is she okay?”

“She’s busy in a shoot right now. Can I give her a message when they go on break? Shall I have her call you?”

“How long will they be?”

“I’m not sure. We’ve had some equipment delays and our schedule got pulled out of whack. I’m sure she’ll take a break in the next couple of hours. If it’s an emergency I can send one of the crew in to get her.”

“No, no emergency. Just tell her I called, please.”

“Yes, sir.” Purson hung up and put the phone on the table.

“He didn’t buy it, did he?” Gery asked.

Purs shook his head, his mouth set in a grim line. “He’s going to be trouble for Will. I can feel it. He had a total wall up against me.”

“Crap.”

* * * *

Reverend Martin hung up and stared at the phone.

“What’s the matter, dear?” his wife asked, watching him.

He glared at the phone, then at her. “I don’t like this at all.”

“What?”

“A production assistant answered her phone. A man. She’s on a shoot. Something’s fishy.”

Laura Martin had a limited amount of reserves when it came to standing up to her husband. She carefully weighed how much of them she should exhaust. “Dear, it’s her job. She told us she has an unusual schedule.”

“This early in the morning? I don’t like it. I want to go down there and bring her home.”

Laura dropped the newspaper in her lap. “Kenneth Martin, listen to yourself. She is a grown woman. She must live her life.”

“She should be married by now, starting a family. Not flitting around at all hours of the day and night with a bunch of strange men.”

“I’m sure they’re not strange to her, dear.”

The Reverend glared at his wife. “It’s nice you can make light of this situation. It’s not proper. I would think you’d want her to be conducting herself appropriately.” He rubbed his forehead as if staving off a headache.

“You’re acting like she’s not. I have faith in her to do the right thing. She will never marry that boy, no matter how much you and Billy want her to. Jeff’s a nice boy, but I’m not sure he even likes girls, to be quite honest.”

It was a calculated risk. Sure enough, her husband’s face immediately turned bright red. “How dare you insinuate Jeff is a…a
homosexual
!” He spat the word.

“Well, you must admit, he’s never dated.”

“If Kalyani would do her Christian duty and go out with him, certainly he would see her as being perfect for—”

“That’s more than enough, Kenneth.” Laura summoned her strength and stood. “If she doesn’t want to date him, then she doesn’t want to date him. What Jeff Conrad does with his life is his concern,
not
yours,
not
his father’s. I’m sorry, but this is one time I will stand against you and defy you. When Kalyani meets someone she loves, she will marry him. Until then, I will not stand by and allow you to bully her into a relationship she has repeatedly told you she does not want.” She stormed up to their bedroom and slammed the door behind her.

Stunned into a silent rage, the Reverend stewed. Spying their computer in the corner, he turned it on and got on the Internet. Kalyani
would
come home, and she
would
marry Jeff Conrad, no matter what his wife thought about it. He’d never had a…
homosexual
—just the thought made him shudder—in his congregation, and he wasn’t about to start now. Not when he’d known the boy his entire life. Especially not when his father was his best friend. None of
his
flock’s eternal souls would be lost to such a sin, whether they liked it or not.

He rubbed his head, yet another headache threatening. They occurred more frequently lately, sometimes severe enough to drive him to bed. Unfortunately, he didn’t have time to succumb to it now. He needed to make arrangements.

Whether she liked it or not, Laura would do her wifely duty and support him in this.

Will felt stunned. Aidan looked sick to his stomach. “You know Ryan?” Will finally asked Kal.

“Duh. He hired me. I told Aidan that.” She took a moment to look around, and she seemed torn between outrage, fear, and confusion. “What are we doing here? How did we get here? Where are we?”

Will tried to recover from his shock at the revelation of Ryan’s previous involvement. Not that it should have surprised him in the least. In retrospect, the entire situation stank of his touch. “He’s not exactly who you think he is,” Will explained. “He’s had many names throughout the years. I didn’t realize he was behind the network or we wouldn’t be standing here right now.” He glared at Aidan, who reddened and turned away. With his powers returning, Will could now easily tune into Aidan’s thoughts.

He’d deal with his cousin later.

“What do you mean he’s not who I think he is?” Kal demanded, obviously opting to hold on to her outrage to help maintain her composure. “He’s my boss, one of the network VPs. He personally hired me for the show.”

Will took a deep breath to control his rising anger. “Ryan is in charge of The Firm. All of us work for him, for The Firm. I had…retired, but the recent events have forced me back.”

Kal stared at Will as she tried to comprehend what he said. Will’s gaze firmly held her. Part of her wanted to melt into him.

Will continued. “You’re going to think we’re crazy, and I won’t blame you. We’re a lot older than you can believe. The names we have now, they’re just the latest.”

Kal maintained her skepticism despite what she’d seen already. It was either that or throw her arms over her head and run around screaming like rabid chicken. “Ryan Ausar? I’ll play along. What kind of name is that?”

“I’ve had many names,” he said. “Ausar is an Egyptian name I’ve held on to for quite a while. Ryan was given to me by my father when we moved operations to what became the United Kingdom. It’s Gaelic. It means ‘little king.’”

Will studied his employer. “Little king, my ass.”

“C’mon, Will. Don’t bust my balls your first day back.” Ryan turned his gaze to Kal. His handsome, playful smile indicated he didn’t mind Will’s attitude as long as Will was back to be busting his balls in the first place.

Will, however, appeared far from amused. “Why not? You had no right to bring me back into The Firm like this. To let this happen to her. You’re fucking with people’s lives.”

He rolled his eyes, then glared at Will. “Not this
again
. I had every right. You’re needed, and I have responsibilities.
You
have responsibilities.”

“All I wanted was to be left in peace. You even took the right to die from me, Ryan. You wouldn’t release me, wouldn’t let anyone help me, you wouldn’t help me yourself. All these years, you have no idea what I went through—”

Ryan jabbed a finger at Will. His eyes flashed in anger as his voice dropped to an angry growl. “You damn well know that’s not true. Don’t you
dare
lecture me of all people about love and loss, Hellenboek.” He turned away from them, taking a deep breath to regain control, his voice returning to a semblance of normalcy. “And I
hate
that name of yours, by the way,” he said as he turned to face them again. Kal sensed the non sequitur was deliberate on Ryan’s part, to divert the conversation to a less emotionally charged tangent.

The closest thing Kal had ever seen resembling a smile twitched the corner of Will’s mouth. His voice softened. “Abby picked it just to mess with you.”

“I know.” It almost looked like Ryan’s face relaxed. Or was it a shadow of sadness now creasing his handsome features? “She told me.”

“I’ll never understand why she liked you.”

“She didn’t judge people, Will.” He jammed his hands into his pockets as he looked at the floor for a moment. “She was truly an exceptional woman,” he softly said.

Will’s countenance also darkened, but in obvious grief. Kal felt something significant had passed between the men and she didn’t know enough of their backstory to grasp it. Not to mention she was still in too much shock to contemplate it, although she no longer felt an overwhelming urge to break into hysterical giggles.

Or screams.

The men stood at impasse for a moment before Aidan cleared his throat. “Guys? Can we please focus?”

Will’s expression turned angry as he jabbed a finger at Aidan. “I’ll deal with
you
later. You knew he was behind the network all this time and didn’t tell me?”

Ryan waved him off. “Aidan didn’t know anything about what I had set up. He wasn’t involved in any of this. He thought I simply wanted a way to keep tabs on you. He had no idea what I had planned.”

Kal tried to follow the conversation and felt dizzy. Other questions were now annoyingly forcing their way to the front of her mind once more. Like where were they, and had she blacked out again? She still tried to remember how they’d reached the apartment. It was like they…