It was a little odd, in that Harriet didn’t usually push people around. But sometimes she touched a shoulder, a cheek.
I could deal with this. Lots of people believed in ghosts, even pushy ones. As long as those ghosts didn’t follow them home and insist on being believed in on a regular basis, it usually wasn’t a problem.
I knew Harriet didn’t want to live anywhere else but here. So what we had on our hands was a tourist group who was about to have a terrific story to tell about the haunted lighthouse they visited on the coast.
It was good for business, good for the town.
“We’ve had ghost sightings before,” I soothed. “Are you all right?”
She nodded and her hand slowly lowered. “It felt so real. Solid.”
I smiled. “Did anyone get a picture?”
Lots of heads shaking, shoulders dropping. Someone chuckled.
The tension was dissolving, falling away as I treated this like a successful whale watching tour. Which, I supposed it sort of was, only they’d been trolling to see a ghost. Being touched by one was even more rare than catching sight of one of the gray whales that pretty much lived right outside our bay.
Mason took over from there. “We don’t usually get such terrific sightings during the day. Would you mind if we mentioned it in our tours?”
The vamps and the weres relaxed slightly, though I noticed several of the weres kept glancing at the stairs.
Mason deftly guided the group out into the entry room, and asked them to sign in, leave a comment, or to share with their social media. A lot of selfies were being taken.
And still the werewolves kept their gazes on the staircase.
“What?” I asked Granny.
“Something,” she said.
“A ghost. Harriet.”
“Not her.”
I didn’t think Granny could see the dead, but if she thought it was something other than our resident ghost girl, I was going to believe her.
The spiral staircase looked empty to me. I walked over to it, lifted the rope and started up.
“Hey, now.” Ryder started up right behind me.
“I’m a cop, Ryder. I can go in the EMPLOYEES ONLY areas. It’s not against the rules.”
“This isn’t about that,” he groused. “This is about you going after a ghost who just tried to push someone down the stairs.”
I paused, glanced back at him over my shoulder. We’d been climbing so were now on the second flight, and hidden from the room below. “You really have no problem believing in any of this stuff, do you?”
“I’d have to be pretty stupid not to believe in what is right in front of my eyes, Delaney.”
I grinned, and was about to tell him that it’d been in front of his eyes for pretty much all of his life and he hadn’t believed in it, when a wave of icy air rolled over my skin as if the temperature had suddenly plummeted thirty degrees. That was followed by an instant blast of heat that was gone almost before I felt it.
Almost.
Also: ouch.
Also also: not normal.
Ryder’s hand landed on my hip, and he stepped in closer behind me, protective. “You feel that?”
“Yes.”
“Ghost?”
I was about to tell him the combination of Arctic blast and Death Valley summer wasn’t like any ghost encounter that I’d ever had when a scent assaulted my senses.
Spicy, woodsy, I would know that cologne anywhere. It was my dad’s.
He. The girl had said the ghost was a he, and that he had pushed her.
But the only ghost in this lighthouse was Harriet.
“Delaney?” Ryder’s hand tightened on my hip.
“Dad?” I whispered.
The wash of cold and heat hit again. I closed my eyes briefly, straining to hear his voice, to feel his presence.
A fist punched my shoulder, right below the vampire bite. Hard enough I jerked backward, my eyes flying open. Ryder locked up behind me, solid as a concrete piling holding back the ocean, holding both of us steady so we didn’t fall down the stairs.
For just a heartbeat, I saw my father standing in front of me, his eyes familiar as my own, his hands reaching. Goose bumps broke out across my skin and it had nothing to do with the temperature.
The air around him twisted, went foggy. Something dark and burning reached out from behind him. A clawed hand wrapped around his throat and yanked him backward.
Dad’s eyes widened, his mouth opened around words I could not hear.
Then Dad, the claw, the twisted fog disappeared.
“What the hell was that?” Ryder’s voice was a growl in my ear. He’d pulled a gun out from somewhere and held it low to one side of me, aiming at the image, the phantoms that were no longer there. I could feel his heart beating against my back. It was as fast as mine.
The air was no longer hot or cold. But I shivered, glad for the heat rolling off of Ryder.
“A ghost.” I swallowed and tried that again without the hesitance and crack in the middle of it. “My dad.”
“What was with him?”
I reluctantly leaned forward so there was distance between us again. His hand fell from my hip to the stair railing. He did not holster his gun.
“That won’t work on a ghost.”
“Okay.” He checked the safety, then tucked the gun away inside his overshirt. “You didn’t answer me.”
“What was the question?”
“The thing that grabbed your dad’s ghost. What was that?”
“You two okay up there?” Myra called out.
“Fine. Just give us a couple seconds.”
“Are you kissing?” Jean shouted.
“No!” I yelled just as Ryder said, “Maybe.”
Jean laughed. “You better have your stories straight when you get back down here.”
“We’re checking the upper level,” I called out. “Come on.” I finished the climb, Ryder right behind me. I didn’t know if there would be any more spook action up here on the landing below the lantern room, but there would be more room for the two of us to stand and face each other and less chance of us being pushed down the stairs.
Here, the wall of windows carved a massive and beautiful view of the ocean, the steep metal ladder that shot straight up through the hatch in the ceiling set against the wall behind us. The wood floor and ceiling were painted soft beige, the railing and metal work that protected the windows, a forest green.
If I hadn’t just seen my dad’s ghost, it would be stunning, maybe even romantic, to be standing here alone with Ryder above the rolling blue of the ocean, the softer blue of the sky glazed golden and rosy with the slowly setting sun.
“Talk.” Ryder leaned against the window railing, his arms crossed over his chest.
“I heard Dad, or thought I heard him a few months ago right before the Rhubarb Rally. Once. After he was…after he died.”
“Were you here?”
“No. At home.”
“What did he say?”
“He called my name. Told me to wake up. Right after that, Dan blew up his own rhubarb patch.”
“Did you see him then?”
I shook my head.
“Did you see that darkness and claw then?”
“No. I saw it this time though. Dad and….”
“And? What was it, Delaney?”
“I’ve never seen one, but I think… I mean, Myra probably has a book that would tell us for sure….”
He pushed off the railing and stood in front of me, his hands rubbing down my arms and then stilling there below my shoulders, a solid, grounding warmth. “Just tell me what you think it was.”
I didn’t want to say it. Didn’t want to give the knot of fear in my gut actual words.
Ryder waited, his head bent so he could meet my gaze.
“A demon.”
He pulled his head back and blinked. “All right. We’ve established those are a thing. Seeing one isn’t good?”
“Demons are ne
ver good.”
“I thought they were on our list of allies?”
“You remember Crow?”
“Hard to forget him.”
“Trickster god. At any given moment, he was lying, teasing, scheming, cheating. Just, seriously a pain in the butt twenty-four seven. If there was no trouble, he’d make trouble. For the gods, the creatures, the humans. He lived for chaos.”
“Sure. But you handled him.”
“I handled him because he’s a god and that gives me some say over his behavior in town. Also, he’s…nice. He’s always been a sort of uncle to us. And even though I know he’s a trickster, I trust him, trust who he’s proven to be when things get bad, you know?”
Ryder nodded.
“I’ve never met a demon. None of us have. Dad talked about them. Warned us to never speak to one, to never summon one without the proper back up and protocols in place. Demons make deals with dangerous consequences and the price is almost always worse than the service you get from them. They like to possess people for kicks. We’ve never had a demon in Ordinary since before my dad was a bridge.”
“And you think a demon was with your father’s ghost?”
“Yes.”
“So what’s our move?”
“On what?”
“Your dad’s ghost. Do we need to do something to help him? Put his spirit to rest? Do an exorcism?”
“I don’t know. Ghosts don’t stay in Ordinary unless they want to. The way the town is set up, it can’t be used as a trap for spirits. It’s against Ordinary’s laws.”
He waited, letting me try to wrap my brain around seeing Dad, seeing him distressed. Dad hadn’t said anything, but I was sure it wasn’t his hand that had punched me. That had to have been the demon, or ghost of a demon, or whatever that creature was behind him.
“We can talk to Jacques,” I said. “He might know.”
“Jacques Formton? Let me guess, ghost hunter?”
“Medium.”
“He runs the bowling alley, Delaney.”
“So?”
“Kind of hard to hear ghosts over all that racket.”
“Why do you think he runs the bowling alley? He doesn’t want to hear the ghosts all the time.”
Ryder just shook his head. “This town…it’s like I’ve been living with a blindfold over my eyes.”
“Don’t be hard on yourself. It’s our job to keep it a secret. We’re really good at it. Well, most of the time.”
He closed the distance between us, his boots heavy on the painted wooden floor. His hands slipped up to my arms again, soothing. I’d wrapped my arms over my chest as if I were trying to protect myself.
“Shhh,” he said before I could tell him I was fine. “Come here. Just for a second.”
He tugged me gently toward him and I went. Pressed my face against his shoulder, let him hold me with my arms still wrapped around myself.
His wide, warm palms rubbed a slow circle in the center of my back. Comforting, soothing as he held me tight.
“I’m fine,” I mumbled into his chest.
“You’re shook up.”
“I’m gonna be fine in a minute.”
“I know. I’ll keep track. You have fifty-five seconds left.”
I smiled, then relaxed into him. We didn’t say anything. He didn’t move other than to rub those relaxing, grounding circles across my back. I breathed in deep and blocked everything else out.
Right now there was no murdering vampire, no tortured ghost dad, no bite tying me to a horror I was going to have nightmares about for probably the rest of my life.
Right now there was Ryder, my childhood friend, my secret crush, my current lover. A man strong enough, clever enough, and good enough, he’d found his way into my heart despite all the things that should make doing so impossible.
A man I didn’t want to risk with my crazy life, just like Jean didn’t want to risk Hogan. But Ryder had taken that choice out of my hands. If he hadn’t pushed, if he hadn’t insisted that he was worth the chance, if he hadn’t proved it, I never would have told him any of Ordinary’s secrets.
Maybe that’s what it took for one of us Reeds to really share our lives with the person we loved. That person had to be strong enough not to back down, smart enough to figure out all on their own that there was more to us, to our lives, to this town than it appeared.
So basically, we Reeds set nearly impossible goals for our partners.
So not fair.
Maybe Jean could change that. Maybe she would throw caution to the wind and tell Hogan because he deserved to be told, and she deserved to love him without secrets between them.
Maybe Myra, who hadn’t dated since her last boyfriend left the country years ago, would finally stop trying to be the most responsible person on the planet and the mother of all of us. Maybe she’d let down those thick walls around her heart and fall for someone.
I worried about her. She’d been too serious and had thrown herself into work since Dad’s death, going from dedicated to work-herself-to-death. I knew a lot of that was her way to grieve. We were all grieving, still, in our way.
But Myra seemed to be closing down, turning inward. She’d always been the quiet one but she was becoming even more quiet.
I should probably talk to her about it. Or give her a week vacation away from this place.
Which I knew she would never accept while we had a kidnapping, killer, and some kind of ghost problem on our hands.
“Five, four, three, two, one.” Ryder squeezed me, his hand pressing flat against my back, his other hand, which had been still on my hip, rubbed up and down a little. “Time’s up, beautiful.”
Aw…that was sweet.
“You think I’m beautiful?” I couldn’t help fishing for another compliment. This was still new between us and I liked hearing how he saw me.
I leaned back and unwound my arms, wrapping them around him.
He smiled down at me, the light from the setting sun casting his features in deep golds. “I have always thought you were beautiful.”
“You told me I was dorky-looking in sixth grade.”
“Yeah, I was stupid in sixth grade. Didn’t want my friends to know how much I liked you.”
“You liked me?”
“It was those ponytails you wore.” His hand brushed my hair back from my face, tucking it behind my ear before he cupped my face. “They were always sort of crooked, and you were like, ‘whatever, who cares? I like it like this.’”
“I obsessed over my ponytails. I could never get them straight.”
“I was obsessed over wanting to straighten them for you.”
“Latent OCD?”
“No. I just wanted to touch you, and it would have been a great excuse if I’d been brave enough to do it.”
“Instead you went with the dorky comment? Lame, Bailey.”
He brushed his hand over my hair again and smiled. “Yeah, well. I’m certainly not perfect.”
I was about to open my mouth and tell him he was. He was perfect to me. That his flaws, his mistakes made him so. But before I could form the words, he bent, pressed his mouth to mine and kissed me, his fingers tangled in my hair so he could hold the angle of our mouths fitted together in the way he wanted.
I might have made soft sighing sounds as I kissed him back.
This thing that we’d had forever was still new to us. We’d spent so much of our time dancing around the idea of dating, then he’d left for years, and I’d moved on to other things that mattered to me. Training to become a police officer. Training to take care of Ordinary in particular.
When the kiss went from gentle to heated, we lingered, explored. There was a lot we needed to say to each other. A lot we had left to discover.
“You two done ‘checking the upper level’ yet?” Jean shouted. “Or should we just order you a breakfast delivery?”
I felt more than heard Ryder’s chuckle against my chest, in my mouth.
Sisters.
“We
have to go,” I said as we pulled back to catch our breaths. “I have to talk to seers and witches…”
“…and the owner of the bowling alley…”
“…yeah, him too, but I’m going to see the seer first. And you have to shake the Department of Paranormal Protection and see what information falls out.”
“I know.” He kissed my forehead, then temple, cheek, and moved to my mouth, kissing just the corner. I should resist. But I wasn’t really very good at doing what I should.
After another long kiss that had me panting, I took a step back. “We need to go. We need to find Ben.”
His eyes were dilated, his hair a mess from me running my fingers through it. The last thing I wanted to do was to turn away from him and go back to work. A part of me was hoping he’d tell me we had time, that the others could start the search for Ben without us. A part of me wanted him to walk me back against one of the walls and pin me there so I could rub my hands all over him until I found skin.
“Yeah.” He swallowed, his fingers tightening for a moment on my hips before he let them slide away. He took a step back too. He stood there breathing, just looking at me, as if he were committing the image of me to memory before he brushed his fingers back through his hair, taming it.
“So. Will I see you tonight?”
I pulled my hair back behind my ears and made sure my clothing was straightened. “If we have any luck at all, we’ll find Ben before morning.”
“We’ll have luck,” he said. “Or we’ll make luck.”
“I’m going to hold you to that, Mr. Bailey.”
“Good.”
He gestured toward the stairs and I started down, leaving the sunset, the ocean, and a perfect memory behind.
Chapter 5
“Yancy doesn’t even like donuts,” Jean complained as I drove us to Hogan’s bakery.
“Have you met the man? He loves donuts.”
“Don’t do this.”
“What?” I asked innocently.
“Get involved in my love life.”
“Oh, it’s about ten years too late for that, little miss make-my-older-sister-and-Ryder-fall-in-love.” I turned into the Puffin Muffin parking lot.
“This isn’t what we should be doing,” she tried. I unhooked my seatbelt. “We don’t have time to stop. We need to talk to the seer.”