The brunette slipped from the bathroom, and even though he probably should have waited a full minute before leaving himself, he walked out seconds later, back toward his seat. No one looked up. He raised an eyebrow. So much for everyone staying diligent and watching their fellow passengers. Once takeoff happened, no one cared what he did.
“Oh, Heather Rosen, I don’t know what gets into you. Do you think that’s really the most appropriate reading material, I mean, considering everything?”
Braxton looked over. Heather, whose name he’d just learned, was reading Stephen King. He couldn’t help his grin.
The girl was voluntarily going away because she saw ghosts. Well, maybe there was something he could do about that. After he got through trying to make amends for something he could never be forgiven for.
He closed his eyes. After that.
Chapter Two
Her days had become a haze of hell. Worse than anything she’d ever been through in the hospital. Terrified former patients who had died and couldn’t yet cross over were preferable to what remained of the clinically insane. People whose families had locked them away from the public eye, deemed them unworthy of ever being seen again. And those who didn’t go on to wherever it was they were supposed to go next? They were the most despondent group of ghosts she’d ever encountered.
The nurse with the stern expression and bad acne held out the Valium or whatever it was Heather was taking that day. They always told her the names of the medication as if it was supposed to mean something to her, as if it was helpful. She didn’t hold a degree in pharmaceuticals. One generic name sounded a lot like another. They all made her dizzy.
None of the pills did anything to make the ghosts go away.
“Do you hear them at night?” This particular ghost was an old woman. She wore a gray sweater that had holes in it and gobs of Kleenex fell out of the pockets whenever she moved. “Can you see them? They come from the Pendleton place. They come every night. And they touch. Can’t you make them stop? Can’t you make them come and stop it?”
Heather didn’t know who they were. The ghosts were always asking her for help and Sixth Sense or Ghost Whisperer aside, the living weren’t particularly good at helping the dead. Especially when the living person in question had been locked up in the same place where the dead people had once resided.
The nurse walked away after she was certain that Heather had swallowed her pill. In the beginning Heather had tried not to take them but that had turned out to be futile. If the staff wanted her to take pills, they got her to take them. Fighting made it all more difficult.
Perhaps another type of woman would have struggled just to know that she always had. To know she’d never given up.
The ghost grabbed her, shaking the chair back and forth. “Listen to me—get us some help. Get them to come.”
Heather shook her head. “I don’t know who they are. But, if you haven’t noticed, I’m stuck in this chair.”
If she stood up the dizziness would only get that much worse. It just made more sense to sit quietly and enjoy the way the sun beat down on her head. San Francisco seemed foggy most of the time—when the sun came out it really did feel like Heaven had arrived.
“Heather,” the nurse called over her shoulder, “who are you talking to?”
“The ghost who won’t leave me alone.” She didn’t lie anymore. What was the point? They’d make a medication adjustment. Maybe one of these days it would make her senses so dulled she wouldn’t be able to hear them at all.
“You need to listen to me,” the ghost shouted again, and Heather yawned. When the drugs kicked in for a while they made her sleepy. Eventually that wore off and then she just lived in a dulled world. No anxiety, no feelings about much of anything until they started to wear off. Then it was time to take them again.
The ritual of the whole thing only made the hell of living with so many ghosts even harder to bear.
“We need you to see.” Oh good. It was another ghost. This one dressed like he was out of the 1950s, even down to the style of his hair. How much hair gel had to be used to achieve that?
“I can’t see. I’m not well. I can’t help you. If someone can, I suggest you go find them. I know you guys can travel. Used to come to my bedroom from all over the place.” She yawned again and her mouth felt as if it had cotton balls in it. One of her least favorite sensations in the world.
“You have to see.” The James Dean wannabe reached out and grabbed her, putting both hands on her arms.
A jolt of electricity flowed through her body. “No.” She jerked backward but not fast enough. Every once in a while a ghost got it into its head to make her see things whether she wanted to or not. In those cases, she got to have a glimpse of something—a vision or something. No one had ever explained to her what exactly happened. Who would she have asked about it?
Whether she liked it or not she would see whatever the ghosts wanted her to see.
Heather shook her head, trying to clear her thoughts. This kind of experience always made things blurry and this time she’d already been pretty out of it when it started.
She was still in the backyard. However, based on the rain clouds above her and the spray of water hitting her on the head, she knew that she was no longer witnessing things happening to her in the present. Ghosts loved to show her the past.
Heather sighed and stood up. In this vision her legs worked just fine. The effects of the Valium didn’t travel with her. She might as well have been stone-cold sober.
Her James Dean-looking friend stood in the doorway of the main house, smoking a cigarette and staring off into the distance. One thing struck her that she hadn’t expected—J.D. wasn’t a patient. He was dressed like one of the orderlies.
She walked right up to him. “So you work here?”
“Bad day, Jenny.”
Heather exhaled loudly. This was going to be one of those situations when she was going to be forced to walk around as someone else. It was easier when they didn’t acknowledge her at all. Apparently in whatever time frame she was in, they were going to be calling her Jenny.
“All right. Let’s get on with it then.”
She followed James Dean as he did his rounds. Not much had changed. Doctors still gave orders, patients still looked as if they were drugged out of their minds, but the whole place seemed much more glamorous, in that the stoned residents were wearing black gowns and tuxedos.
Heather scratched her head. At least they let her spend her days in flannel pajama pants. How would she manage if she also had to look nice? Maybe it didn’t matter—she was practically catatonic. They could put her in a Big Bird suit and she’d probably not protest too much.
The whole thing just made her tired. She rubbed her eyes.
They finally arrived in the front hall. James—whose real name she had heard somewhere along the line was Larry but she preferred to think of him as James or JD— stopped outside a door with a brass plate reading “Dr. Robert Owens”. She walked forward. They used this room as some sort of storage area, or at least she thought they did. The only time she’d been able to focus on any of it had been the day she’d been signed in.
She reached forward and touched the lettering while James listened at the door. There was no need to stick her head against it when he did. He was hearing whatever happened inside. Therefore she’d be hearing it too, as soon as whatever she’d been brought here to hear had been said.
And just as she thought it, she heard the words coming through the door.
“Dr. Pendleton,” someone said, and she had to assume it was Dr. Owens, since he was speaking to someone called Pendleton. Or maybe not. She didn’t like to assume this stuff. Not that any of it mattered. She wasn’t a detective. If there was a mystery here she had no idea how they expected her to solve it.
The voice spoke again. “We have what you need. Just the right mixture, I think.”
“Excellent, Robert. I knew I could count on you.”
Robe
rt Owens had called the other man Dr. Pendleton, but Dr. Pendleton had referred to him as Robert. There was a discrepancy of power in that room. She put her hand on the door and pounded on it.
“J.D., listen to me, this is all very interesting. I get it. Dr. Pendleton and Dr. Owens are doing something bad. But I have no idea what you want me to do about it. None. I’m just a sick girl. And it’s fully possible that I’ve made up this whole thing in my mind so please, please, please let me go back. I can’t help you. I don’t care about whatever this mixture is that they’re working on.” She took a breath. “That’s not true. I do care. But I can’t help you. Let me go home.”
The ghost who had brought her here ignored her request, as they always did.
“Dr. Pendleton, the patients are all in the backyard. Go and pick out which ones you want at your leisure.”
The scene changed, time speeding up. Now James was alone, across a desk from Dr. Robert Owens, whom she could now see was a balding, slightly overweight man in his mid-fifties. Altogether pretty forgettable. Except that clearly her ghost guide hadn’t forgotten him, wanted her to see him in this moment.
Given that she had no other choice, she watched the exchange. “I know you were at the door.”
“Sir, I—”
Owens interrupted him. “I know everything that happens here. I could have stopped you from hearing. However, I wanted you to know that Dr. Pendleton is going to be taking some of the patients. I wanted you to know because you’re going to be going with him.”
J.D. shook his head. “Sir, I don’t understand. Go with him where?”
Heather watched as Pendleton, or at least she assumed it was he, stepped out from the closet. J.D. must not have heard him, because the other man easily stabbed her host in the neck with a large needle. The orderly struggled before he fell to the floor in a heap of arms and legs.
The doctor looked up at Robert Owens. “Thanks. Every once in a while it’s nice to have a non-crazy one to play with. The group will love him.” “And we love the extra money.” Robert Owens grinned.
Heather was thrown back into her body, sitting in the wheelchair. Her head spun and the Earth rocked back and forth as if it had fallen off its axis. She grabbed at her head.
“Leave me alone.” She was sorry that J.D. had died with Pendleton, terribly sorry it had happened. Not that she had any idea how he’d actually been killed. It didn’t matter. “Leave me alone.” She uttered it over and over again as if she could make it happen, as if she could will the dead to obey her. Why would they when they never had before?
“Please. Don’t touch me. Leave me alone. I can’t do anything for you and I don’t want to see it anymore.”
* * * * *
Braxton stared at the scene in front of him. Oliver wasn’t his favorite musical—or it wouldn’t have been if he’d ever had a favorite musical. But as high school plays went, the one he was watching wasn’t the worst way to spend an evening.
And he thought Jayden Conner should have a friend in the audience, even if he didn’t know he had. It was, after all, Braxton’s fault that the sixteen-year-old kid playing Fagin didn’t have parents anymore to witness his dramatic turn.
Braxton shifted in his seat. Jayden had just finished his big number, something about reviewing the situation. The audience had loved it and Braxton suspected the kid would be considered downright talented. He’d enjoyed it. But what did he know about these things? He watched baseball and cooking shows. Art was beyond his understanding.
His cell phone buzzed in his pocket and he pulled it out. The woman next to him gave him a look, reminding him that he was supposed to have turned it off. He tried to look sorry just to get her to look away.
What did he care about social restrictions? He’d shut off the ringer. That would have to be enough.
The text message he’d received was from Ivan Doucette. One of his fellow bloodoathed brothers. Out of everyone he would have expected to hear from, Ivan came in last. They’d never spoken much. Not that Braxton ever spoke to anyone all that often.
Still, whereas Jonah and Christian were friendly, sarcastic and funny, Ivan was always a cold fish. He did the job but he never seemed to care very much about the people involved.
Or maybe he did. Braxton had never been great at understanding other people’s emotions.
On my way to you, Ivan’s message read.
Braxton read it twice. Did you mean to send this to me?
A few seconds later, his phone vibrated again. Yes.
He swore and rolled his eyes at the woman next to him when she objected. Ivan was coming to see him? This had Master Foy written all over it. Moving them all around like chess pieces whenever he felt something big was going to happen. That meant that shit had been stirred up and was on its way in his direction. Ivan’s arrival couldn’t signify anything good. He highly doubted Foy had pulled Ivan out of Alaska so the two of them could bond over beers.
Braxton stood and walked out of the theater. He heard grumbling behind him and deliberately kept his head down to avoid eye contact. Coming to see the kid perform had seemed like the right thing to do. Now, however, he was making a small scene when he should be sitting down watching.
He exited the auditorium and walked down the hall, taking little notice of the posters lining the walls. Looked like a nice place to go to school. There were lots of activities, including something called the Cardinal Key Club. He had no idea what that was. School was mostly a blur to him, and then Foy had taken over his education.
There had been no key clubs or school plays. Just physical and mental training that had set him up to destroy evil wherever he found it.
Except when he fucked up.
Braxton pushed the door that would let him outside too hard and it slammed against the wall. He caught it before it could push back at the same speed and stepped out into the evening.
If Ivan was coming, a shit storm was on his heels, headed straight for San Francisco. Braxton was still in the middle of fixing the one he had already had.
I’m leaving the school, he texted Ivan.
What school? Ivan’s response came seconds later. Why are you at some school?
Lightning lit up the sky followed a few seconds later by thunder. He pulled his coat tighter around him. Braxton had always hated weather systems. Maybe it was because he’d been left outside during a blizzard when he’d been six or perhaps it was the time he’d holed up in the basement of an abandoned building in Chicago when he’d run away from Foy. It had snowed all night and he’d frozen in a corner while he’d foolishly debated whether or not he should go back.
If he could speak to his sixteen-year-old self, he’d order him to leave immediately. Foy would find him the next morning and without a word take him back to the mansion. Braxton would never try to run again but the silence with which Foy had greeted him with that morning continued to stretch between them. Or maybe it was just Braxton. Maybe he just had nothing to say to anyone anymore.
I assumed when you said you were on your way here you meant to where I was. Forget it. On my way home. See you there.
Braxton got in his car and turned on the ignition. He took a deep breath. Fate could be a nasty mistress. How was he supposed to figure out how to make up for what could not be forgiven when she kept giving him other things to do? Travel to Foy in Chicago, help Jonah face his demons, watch Christian get married in Austin. Sleep with the gorgeous Heather on that plane. Not that he was complaining about that last one.
She had been unforgettable. He hadn’t slept well since, thinking of her. How was he supposed to move on when he wanted more?
He drummed his fingers on the steering wheel. “That’s why they call it a one-night stand, dumbass.” Or, in his case, a one-plane stand. “They only happen one time.”
He pulled out of the parking lot and then out into traffic. Ivan was waiting and Braxton had to face whatever it was head-on, because running away to basements had never worked out very well for him in the past. The
se days he fought evil, he didn’t run from it.
* * * * *
Ivan had moved all his stuff into Braxton’s guest room. Braxton watched him do it while he took another sip of his beer. He’d offered to help Ivan bring in his stuff but the other man had declined.
So now he waited and tried to pretend that the whole situation of having a guest in his sacred space didn’t make him want to break the beer bottle in two.
After a minute, he couldn’t take it anymore. “Are you going to tell me?”
Ivan walked over to him and sat on the couch. The other man had blond hair that was so light it was practically white and blue eyes the color of the sky when it had no clouds in it. Or at least that was how a woman had once described Ivan to Braxton. They’d all been at a bar. She’d sighed and stuttered. Braxton had walked away. Fast.
Women made no sense to him. All he knew was that a girl would have to be nuts to willingly attach herself to any of them. So Christian and Jonah’s wives were clearly out of their minds.
Sex with a stranger on a plane, yes. Commitment, no. Hell. Why was he thinking about it now?
Ivan stretched and Braxton could see the skull tattoo he’d gotten on his left biceps the day he’d turned eighteen. He wondered if Ivan ever regretted the ink.
“I guess you had sex on an airplane.”
Braxton spat out his beer. “What? Is Foy gossiping now? He has some sex vision of me and then he shares it with all of you?”
Ivan shook his head and then rubbed at his eyes. Driving from Alaska couldn’t have been the easiest trek. At that moment, Braxton couldn’t have cared less.
“Believe me, I could have done without this shit.” Ivan sat back on the couch and stretched out his legs. “All Foy said to me was that you had met and boinked a girl on a plane, who was now about to be in serious trouble. I needed to get myself—by car, mind you—to California as soon as I could. And here I am.”