Sami and Matt walked over while Mandaline cleared the pine needles from the space, exposing the dirt underneath. She didn’t miss how Ellis hung back, quietly watching but not speaking.
“Go ahead and sit,” she told them. They did, and she used salt to cast a circle around them. “Please don’t leave the circle until I say.”
They nodded without question.
She produced a piece of rose quartz she’d brought from the store with her. She’d saged it and let it sit overnight in a bowl of sea salt. After digging a small hole in the soft dirt with her bare hands, she put the piece of rose quartz in the bottom. “Goddess above, Goddess below. Goddess within, Goddess without. We come to you today with prayer. We release a soul back to your care.”
She pulled out a bottle of rosemary oil and sprinkled some on the piece of quartz. “In this ground lay peace and love. As below, so above.” She sprinkled some crumbled sage leaves. “Air and fire, water and earth. This soul was loved, this soul had worth.”
She fought the emotions rising within her to continue the ceremony. She’d opted to totally wing it, knowing whatever she’d said from the heart would be more true than anything she could plan. From a plastic baggy she sprinkled an aromatic mix she’d prepared that morning of valerian, cloves, cinnamon, bay leaves, angelica, basil, and black pepper. She lined the hole with part of the mixture. “In peace and love may this soul go. As above, so below.”
Mandaline nodded to Sami, indicating she could put his ashes in. With trembling hands, she removed the top from the box. Inside, a twist tie closed the plastic bag holding the cremains. Matt reached over to help her untie the bag as tears rolled down Sami’s face. Together, they lovingly emptied the bag into the hole before sitting back.
Mandaline spread the rest of the herb mix on top of the cremains. “Your soul today we do release. We forgive and remember and wish you peace.” She took a deep breath. “We hold on to our love, but our anger we lose. Forgiveness and healing is the path we choose.” Hot tears rolled down her cheeks and she hoped she could hold it together long enough to finish.
“Today, we all do set you free. As we speak it, so mote it be.” She scooped dirt over the cremains and motioned for Matt to put the paver stone into place. Then she closed her eyes. “Namaste. Aho.”
She opened her eyes when she heard Sami let out a soft sob. Mandaline turned her back on them as Matt held her in his arms while she cried. Mandaline took a deep breath of her own. Picking up a handful of pine needles from inside the circle, she used that to open and sweep away the circle.
Matt whispered to Sami as he held her and together they sat there, slowly rocking as she cried in his arms. Mandaline picked up her things and took them back to her messenger bag. Ellis walked over.
With blue eyes full of concern, he looked down at her and opened his arms. She didn’t hesitate to go to him, her own soft sobs obscuring the sound of Sami crying in the background.
* * * *
Mandaline’s soul felt about fifty pounds lighter as they all left the clearing in silence. The two horses were still waiting at the gate when they emerged from the woods. More than ever, Mandaline was convinced she’d absolutely made the right decision.
When they got back to the house, Mandaline stared at it. In her mind’s eye, she envisioned the peeling, sun-damaged paint as fresh and new, the house looking loved instead of neglected.
She felt love there and knew it centered around Matt and Sami.
Julie hadn’t revealed everything to Mandaline during the investigation, but she’d been able to put the pieces together herself without any assistance.
She also knew what she would—or rather, wouldn’t—find in the house.
No traces of George Simpson’s negative energy remained.
“Did you want to do the walk-through now?” Matt asked.
“That’d be fine.”
Sami only nodded in reply. They led Mandaline and Ellis into the house through the kitchen door.
The large room looked barren.
“We’ve already started getting rid of all the furniture,” Sami said. “The…” She swallowed hard. “The bed upstairs, but so far that’s all we’ve done upstairs. I wanted to clear this all out first.” A doorway led into another room, which had, presumably, been either the living or dining room. It, too, lay empty.
“We had a lot of stuff to get rid of in the basement,” she continued walking toward another door and opening it. “Took us a few days to clear that out.” Her faint smile faded. “Matt’s still healing from…the incident. I don’t want anyone in the house yet until we get it emptied out.”
“How are you doing?” Mandaline asked.
He shrugged. “I’m healing. Ribs are still a little tender.” During the attack, Steve had drugged everyone with doctored iced tea to disable them, then knocked Matt out with a frying pan before dumping him down the basement stairs and locking him in.
“Why don’t we start with the basement,” Mandaline suggested. “Work from the bottom up.”
She led the way downstairs. A bookcase lay open, revealing a hidden room behind it.
“We found cases of old whiskey in there,” Matt said. “And George Simpson’s papers, and his stash of money. He didn’t tell his wife about the room.”
Mandaline walked in, waving Ellis back when he wanted to go in with her.
She turned, eyes closed and mind open.
Nothing.
She looked at Sami. “I don’t sense anything.”
“That’s good, right?”
She smiled. “In this case, extremely.”
They worked their way through the first floor. At the bottom of the stairs, Sami stopped. “How much do you want to know?” she quietly asked. “Matt was locked in the basement for a lot of it.”
Mandaline took her hand. “As much as you want or need to tell me. I can handle it.”
She took a deep breath and pointed to the bottom of the stairs. “Julie was sitting right about here when the tea started hitting her. He’d dumped nearly a whole bottle of Valium into the pitcher, from what police were able to figure.” She stared at the place for a moment. “We didn’t know he’d disabled the cars. She’d tried to leave when she first felt the drugs hitting her, but her car wouldn’t start. She came in and dug her AAA card out of her purse. George…I mean Steve pretended to call them until he realized how out of it we were.”
She looked up the stairs. “I passed out on the couch after I saw him hit Matt. I thought he’d killed him. At some point, George…” She looked down before meeting Mandaline’s gaze. “I dealt with both of them that afternoon. Steve couldn’t keep fighting against George. George was too strong. Before…before George went into the lake, Steve came out a couple of times. I know it’s crazy, but that’s what happened. I couldn’t tell the police about that part of it. But to my dying day, I will always know in my heart it was George Simpson who committed those acts, not Steve.”
She slowly started up the stairs and walked to the right to a bedroom door. “This,” she quietly said, “was the master bedroom. I didn’t realize until that afternoon, before everything happened, while we were going through the house again with Julie, that the iron bedframe was likely the same one from the Simpsons. I saw a vision of a woman tied to the frame and being raped. I know from the pictures I saw that it was Evelyn Simpson.” She leaned into Matt’s embrace when he draped his arm around her shoulders. Her voice dropped to a whisper. “He tied Julie up the same way Evelyn Simpson had been tied up.”
The bed was noticeably missing from the room. Alone, Mandaline walked in. She made a beeline for the nightstand on the right side of the bed, closest to the bathroom. Nothing.
She walked over to the left nightstand and knelt down again. There, underneath it and all the way behind it, in the shadows by the baseboard, Mandaline found Julie’s crystal pouch, the black leather cord broken from where George Simpson had yanked it from around her neck.
She sat back on her knees and held i
t up. “This was hers,” she softly said.
Sami’s hand flew to her mouth. “I’m so sorry! I never saw it.” Behind Sami, Matt, and Ellis, who’d all walked into the room, she saw a woman standing in the doorway. Dressed in clothes from early in the last century, she wore a smile. In front of her stood three smiling children, two girls and a boy.
Mandaline could see through them to the end of the upstairs hallway.
She chose not to mention them to Sami right at that moment.
“It’s okay,” Mandaline assured her. She stood and walked over to Sami. Mandaline put the pouch in Sami’s hand and closed her fingers around it. “She would want you to have it,” she said.
“No, I couldn’t.”
“Consider it a housewarming present.” She looked around and took a deep breath. “The bad history is all that remains of the evil that once lived here. A small part of Julie’s spirit will always be here, just like Evelyn and the children. And the others.”
“Not George?” Sami asked.
“No, not George. He’s gone. Only good energies remain.”
They continued up to the attic. Mandaline walked over to the window seat in the cupola. Evelyn Simpson sat on the window seat and stared out at the yard. She looked up as Mandaline approached.
Mandaline couldn’t hear her speak, but it looked like she said, “Thank you.” Before she faded from Mandaline’s view, she noticed Evelyn held a journal and a pencil.
“You know,” Mandaline said, knowing she was the only one who could see the ghosts, “maybe leave a journal and pencil here for Evelyn. And a couple of toys for the children.” She turned to look at Matt and Sami. Both of them wore knowing smiles. Behind them, Ellis remained silent but looked confused.
“We will,” Matt said. “So, all clear?”
She hugged them. “All clear. Let me know when you get all the demolition completed, and I’ll come in and do a house cleansing for you. Another one before you move in, once construction’s complete.”
“It…that won’t hurt…them, will it?” Sami nervously asked.
Mandaline knew she meant Evelyn and the children. “No. We’ll ask that only positive energies remain of their own free will, or move on if they choose, but we’ll welcome them if they wish to stay.”
They both looked relieved.
Ten minutes later, with their good-byes said, Matt was letting them out of the gate.
As the house disappeared behind them, Ellis finally broke his silence.
“Can I ask you something?”
“Sure.”
He seemed to chew on it for a while. “In the attic.”
“Yes?”
He turned to face her. “I didn’t want to say anything and freak out Matt and Sami. But am I the only one who saw the woman sitting in the window? She was only there for a minute, and then she was gone. Or am I losing my mind?”
Mandaline let out a long, deep, belly laugh. “You should have said something. I would have introduced you to Evelyn Simpson.”
Chapter Twenty-Five
Saturday morning, Ellis ran over to the house to check on the contractor’s progress. He returned at lunchtime with good news. “Looks like they’ve got all the mold cleaned up. We have to wait until next week though to get the results of the testing to make sure.”
“You’re still going to stay here, though,” Mandaline said. “Right?”
The men exchanged a glance before joining her in the kitchen. Ellis looked down at her. “We stay wherever you want us to stay.”
“I mean…” She swallowed back her relief, which had threatened to swamp her. “It doesn’t make sense to leave here when the house still needs so much work.”
He smiled and cupped her cheek with his hands. “I think we have to sit down with the plans and go over everything with you and get your input.”
“Yeah,” Brad agreed, nibbling on her neck. “Like the kitchen, the master bedroom, everything. We want you to tell us what you want.”
She had a hard time thinking with their bodies so close. “I…I…”
Brad lifted her up, sitting her on the counter. “Did I ever tell you I love that you wear skirts so often?” He pushed it up over her thighs while Ellis spread her legs and knelt between them.
“Absolutely,” he agreed. He pulled her panties aside and flicked his tongue over her clit.
Her whine was muffled by Brad’s mouth on hers. Then he slipped an arm around her shoulders while his other hand went up her blouse and freed her left breast from her bra. “Don’t worry,” Brad whispered. “We’re not letting you get away from us.” His mouth closed on hers, muffling her cries again as he pinched her nipple.
Between her legs, Ellis now had a finger inside her and was vigorously fucking her with it in addition to sucking on her clit. She grabbed the edge of the counter and held on, praying Sachi didn’t choose that moment to come upstairs.
Ellis quickly blasted her through two orgasms, which left her trembling and breathless. Then he got up and left the kitchen, quickly returning a moment later.
“I can’t resist, baby,” he said as he dropped his jeans. He handed a condom to Brad and rolled one onto his own shaft. Then he grabbed her behind the knees and pulled her to the edge of the counter. At the perfect height, he sank his cock all the way inside her cunt.
He grinned. “Hang on, baby.” He kissed her and wrapped his arms around her as he fucked her, hard and fast, slamming into her and pulling another orgasm out of her before she realized it. It didn’t take him long to come, and before she could even process what was happening Brad changed places with him and was soon also fucking her hard and fast.
She closed her eyes and kissed him, feeling like her spirit was in free fall. With each thrust his body slapped against her clit, until one last orgasm made her cry out into his mouth.
“Yes!” He pressed his face against her shoulder, quietly grunting as he finished inside her and fell still, panting.
She started laughing.
Ellis, who’d stayed to help keep her from falling off the counter, smiled. “What?”
“I wonder if that was quiet enough for Sachi,” she whispered.
Brad grinned. “Oh, you think you’re funny? Well, guess what, lady. You get to go back downstairs after lunch just like that, freshly fucked.”
Her eyes widened. “You can’t be—”
“We are,” Ellis chimed in, an evil grin on his face. “Wet panties and all. You don’t have any readings this afternoon. Just be glad we don’t have a butt plug or something to put inside you and keep you hot and squirming all afternoon.”
“But…” She looked from one man to the other and knew they meant it.
Brad pushed her shirt up again, this time freeing her other breast. Both men leaned in, nibbling on her nipples and making her squirm on the counter. When she tried to push them away, they simply each caught a hand and held her pinned there.
It wasn’t until a few minutes later when they released her. By then, they’d already got her worked up again, her clit throbbing and wanting more attention, her panties soaked through with her own juices.
“We’re going to make you feel a fraction of what you do to us,” Ellis told her. “We go around all day thinking about you and wanting to be with you. So today, it’s your turn.”
Brad tucked her breasts back into her bra and pulled her blouse down. “And we’re going to be downstairs with you in the store making sure you stay nice and horny.”
Oh, Goddess!
* * * *
The men were good to their word. Whether it was Brad crossing behind her and rubbing against her ass behind the counter, or Ellis closing the door in her office and sliding his hands inside her panties, they kept ratcheting up her libido until she could barely see straight come closing time.
Fortunately, Sachi had left at five to get in a few skeet rounds before going home, so she wasn’t there to add fuel to the fire with her snarky, dead-on comments about the glazed look of lust in her eyes.
Once they were alone in the store, she tried to get them upstairs but they had other ideas. Brad sat on the steps and unfastened his jeans, opening them. “Come here, baby.”
She was licking her lips as she dove onto his cock. Behind her, Ellis pushed her skirt up over her hips and yanked her panties off her.
“That’s it,” Brad said. She’d worn her hair in a long braid today, and he wrapped it around his fist and gently took over, fucking her mouth, in control.
She thought her insides would melt.
She heard Ellis unzip his jeans, followed by the sound of him unwrapping a condom. “Round one,” he hoarsely said. “Because if I don’t fuck you know, I’m going to explode.”
His cock slid home, hard and fast and hot and deep, making her groan around Brad’s cock.
He laughed. “Oh, yes. Not only do we want you thinking about me bending you over your desk, or Ellis kissing you in the reading room, we want you thinking about getting your brains fucked out on these steps every time you go up and down them.”
She moaned again, this time a combination of lust at that thought, plus the feeling of Ellis reaching around her and finding her clit with his fingers.
“Come for us, baby,” Ellis urged. “We plan on spending this weekend fucking you in every possible way and every possible place in this building, until you can’t look at anything without smiling.”
She braced her hands against Brad’s thighs and held on, her first orgasm quickly blasting through her.
Brad’s grip on her hair tightened. “That’s it, baby. That’s one. By the time Monday morning rolls around, you’re going to be one blissfully well fucked little witch.”
She started rocking back and forth between them in sheer abandon as the pleasure rolled through her. Yes, she wanted that, and more. She wanted them to fuck her over the counter, on every sofa in the store, spit roast her over every table, let her suck their cocks in every chair.