Parrish

  I sighed audibly, feeling suddenly drained from the entire ordeal. Drained and embarrassed. I knew Jefferson was difficult to deal with, and I’d put up with a lot more from him than a few misplaced comments, but for some reason, our encounter with Ally had sent me over the edge for no reason at all. I wasn’t really sure how I’d explain myself when I met back up with my friends.

  Lowering the book from my face, I glanced across the bookshelf-filled room to see the awful Parrish in question sitting in an armchair and blatantly staring at me.

  “You have got to be kidding me,” I breathed.

  He stood up and strode across the room toward my once solitary space.

  “What do you want?” I asked, as he took a seat in the chair beside me.

  I was ready for an awkward conversation about how I was lashing out at him because I loved him so much, or about how I was too worried about being normal. Instead I got a bizarre statement . . . which shouldn’t have surprised me.

  “I think there was something weird going on inside of that house,” he said, staring at me even more creepily than normal.

  “What are you on about now?”

  “There was something in that house. Like an energy or something. It doesn’t seem to be affecting the family as far as I can tell, but it was definitely messing with all of us.”

  “And why do you think that?” I asked, finding that I actually wasn’t mad at Jefferson anymore.

  “Brighton said she could feel it the second we walked in. That’s why she was so quiet . . . or quieter than normal around a stranger, I guess,” he began. “I mean, think about it. She was all freaked out; Deacon was quiet, which is unusual for him; I was being kind of weird; and you just suddenly went off on a psychotic rage.”

  “You’re always weird,” I pointed out.

  “True,” he agreed. “But this time I wasn’t doing it on purpose.”

  I thought about this for a moment, not wanting it to make sense, even if it did.

  “I was unnaturally mad at you back there,” I said.

  “Unless you really do think I always ruin everything.”

  “Only most of the time,” I said. “Not always.”

  “Sade, that lady is probably going to let us investigate,” Jefferson said, propping his elbow on the arm of the chair to lean closer to me.

  “But what if she doesn’t?”

  Jefferson thought this over for a moment, looking down at my hand on my own armrest and then looking back up at me.

  “Then I’ll break into her house and investigate for you,” he said with a smile. He was probably joking.

  Hopefully.

  “But I don’t think it’ll come to that,” he added. “So can we stop being crazy now and go back to the hotel room to go over our old tapes?”

  “You make it sound so appealing,” I said sarcastically.

  I suddenly realized why I had recognized the name of the bookstore when I’d passed by it on my rage-walk. I stopped, my eyes widening.

  “What?” Jefferson asked, and I quickly placed my hand over his mouth in a panic.

  Pulling him to his feet, I flattened myself against his chest, using him as a human shield as I peeked around his tall, lanky form at a girl silently shelving books.

  “No, no, no, no,” I whispered.

  “What?” Jefferson asked again, looking over his shoulder at the girl.

  She was taller than me and had long dark brown hair and brown eyes. Her skin was a bit lighter than mine, even though we were both Cuban.

  “Wait, that’s not . . .” Jefferson gave me a jubilant grin.

  “Quiet!” I hissed. “You have to get me out of here without her seeing me.”

  “You’re seriously not going to say hello to your sister when you came all the way from Portland to Boston?”

  “Don’t sound so judgmental—you don’t even like your family. Just help me,” I pleaded.

  “What do I get out of it?” Jefferson asked, enjoying my pain way too much.

  I glanced around my human shield again to see that Michigan had almost unloaded her armful of books and would probably be walking this way at any moment.

  “Whatever you want, Jefferson,” I whispered, “just hide me.”

  It was almost dark outside. If I could just get to the entrance of the bookstore without her seeing me, I could steal away into the night and be home free. Michigan and my parents would never know I had come to Boston without telling them.

  “Perfect,” Jefferson said. “I’m holding you to that.”

  He gave me a quick wink and walked right over to my sister, grabbing her by the arm and turning her away from me.

  “Hello.” He squinted at her name badge even though he already knew her name. “Michigan, is it? That’s an interesting name.”

  Michigan smiled at him warmly. She was always the nice one in the family, even when faced with a creepy British stranger.

  “Yeah,” she said, wrinkling her nose up at him. “That was my mom’s doing. She’s a little crazy.”

  I could hear her and Jefferson laugh, but I wasted no time to stick around for the rest of their conversation. Trying to be stealthy, I tiptoed behind my sister until I passed the first set of bookshelves in the store. At that point I didn’t bother with subtlety. I practically sprinted out of the bookstore, flinging open the doors into the early evening with gusto, and feeling like I had narrowly escaped a horrible fate.

  I waited around the corner for Jefferson, who took his sweet time coming out to meet me.

  “What took you so long?” I asked, when he finally showed up. “What were you guys talking about?”

  “Your sister is completely lovely,” Jefferson said, very matter-of-factly. “I don’t understand what you have against her.”

  He was trying to get a rise out of me.

  It worked.

  “Ugh, she’s awful.” I leaned against the brick wall of the bookstore. “She’s so nice and perfect and everyone loves her.”

  Jefferson gave me a look but didn’t say anything, which I was thankful for. I didn’t care that my sister wasn’t the person I should have been mad at. I should have been mad at my parents for missing that day in parenting school where they told you not to have a favorite child for no reason at all. But still, it was easier to be mad at Michigan.

  “Thank you for helping me,” I said. I was glad that Jefferson had followed me to the bookstore even after I’d said all sorts of terrible things to him.

  He was loyal to a fault; I would give him that. And if he was going to follow me around like a lost puppy, at least he wasn’t the worst company in the world.

  “We should probably get back to the hotel so we can go over those riveting investigation tapes,” I said after a moment of silence.

  “Probably,” he said.

  “I’ll get you ice cream or something for helping me out. Just don’t tell Brighton I used some of our food money,” I joked.

  “What if I don’t want ice cream?” he replied.

  “Well, it can’t be much more expensive,” I said. I had a scary feeling that I knew exactly where this conversation was going, and an even scarier one that I was hoping it would go there. It was safer to just play dumb. “We have absolutely no money left in our budget for today and we still haven’t eaten dinner.”

  “It’s not expensive,” he said, before leaning down and touching his nose to mine, causing my head to tilt up until our lips met.

  It was a shock, and I probably should have pulled away from him. He was Jefferson, after all. But I didn’t. Instead, against my better judgment, I grabbed the collar of his shirt and pulled him toward me, making him stumble slightly. He caught himself by placing his hand on the brick wall behind me.

  He must have been shocked that I hadn’t pushed him away, because I could feel his breath catch as he kissed me more forcefully, setting off a massive explosion of butterflies in my stomach as heat spread across my cheeks.

/>   Stupid butterflies.

  I was right when I thought there was nothing gentle about Jefferson. His mouth moved expertly over mine and his free hand grasped my waist too tightly, making it difficult to breathe. Not that I cared about breathing right at that moment.

  It was something of a free-fall, kissing the crazy Parrish in a dark alley and not caring for one second that I was breaking the anti-Parrish rule I had implemented from the first day I’d met him. Something about kissing Jefferson felt incredible and dangerous all at the same time, making it hard to tell if my heart was racing because he was somehow the most fantastically amazing kisser in the history of all kissers, or because I knew he was slightly psychotic and I was scared he might just switch moods at any second and do something stupid.

  Either way, I kissed him for much longer than I should have before pulling my head back just slightly to create a small space between us. He still had one hand on my waist and the other on the wall behind me, while both of my hands were knotted in the collar of his shirt, which I’d most definitely wrinkled beyond help.

  My chest was on fire and I closed my eyes as I breathed heavily, wishing I knew why Jefferson made me so crazy when I knew very well it was an awful idea to kiss an insane person. Or maybe I should have been kissing him all along. If this was what it was like to kiss a crazy person, I wasn’t so opposed to it.

  He leaned in ever so slightly so that his lips rested on mine once more.

  “I told you normal was overrated,” he whispered against my lips, his breath tickling me before he kissed only my bottom lip.

  I looked at him now, wanting to say something, but not knowing what it was I should say. I probably needed to say something responsible about how we worked together and this would make things weird. Or maybe mention how Brighton would inevitably know something had happened and we couldn’t have that.

  “You bit me,” I whispered, instead of the logical adult things I should have said.

  “Did I?” he asked in surprise, a slight look of concern on his face as he dragged his thumb over my bottom lip, giving me more chills.

  I let go of his collar and brought my hand up to meet his, pulling it away from my sore lip and placing it back on my waist. I hadn’t realized he’d bitten me in the moment, but now that I pointed it out, it only made sense that he was a kiss-biter.

  Only a crazy person would do something like that.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, not bothering to move away from me, but instead maintaining our close proximity as his large eyes roamed over my face, always coming back to rest on my lips.

  I was about two seconds away from telling him that I wasn’t sorry, but thought better of it. He didn’t need to know that I had enjoyed our kiss as much as I had.

  “Are you mad that I kissed you?” he asked after a moment of awkward silence. Those huge intense eyes of his bored into my soul, and his hand kneaded my side as if he had to stay moving to keep himself from pulling us back together.

  “I’m mad that I kissed you back,” I admitted.

  “Why?”

  “Because you’re kind of a crazy person,” I said.

  I desperately wanted to kiss him once more, even though I would refrain.

  “Isn’t it great?” he answered with a grin.

  I was in deep trouble.

  Chapter 18

  “We may just need to call it,” Deacon said with a sigh of resignation. “We haven’t heard from that Ally woman since yesterday and it’s already getting dark. I highly doubt she’s going to get a hold of us today, and if she does, she’ll probably schedule the investigation for next week or something.”

  Brighton chewed on her lip from her place on the bed, surrounded by monitors. “Yeah, we definitely wouldn’t have enough money to stay in town that long.”

  “There’s still a chance she’ll contact us.” I pulled my headphones off for a moment and fluffed up my pixie cut once more.

  Jefferson sat on the bed beside me, completely oblivious to our conversation as he listened to audio from our Queen Mary investigation with closed eyes.

  I tried desperately not to be obvious, but any chance I got, I’d glance over at him or bump him with my elbow as I reached for my pen. It was pathetic, and I wasn’t magically in love with him or anything, but there was something very magnetic about him all of a sudden and I couldn’t seem to stay away. It was becoming a big problem.

  Jefferson didn’t seem to change much after we’d kissed the night before. Amazingly, he didn’t drop a million hints to Brighton and Deacon like I thought he would. Instead he kept the whole thing very secret and just treated me as oddly as he always did. I couldn’t tell if that annoyed me or not. On the one hand, I wanted him to keep quiet about everything because I was not ready to have that conversation with Brighton. On the other hand, I was a little offended that he didn’t seem as changed by our kiss as I was.

  Of course, no matter what I felt, I was incredibly annoyed with him for kissing me in the first place and bringing about all of this confusion.

  “That Littlefield House was honestly and completely silent,” Brighton said out of nowhere. “I mean, even for a normal house. I’m almost suspicious of how quiet it was there.”

  “That’d be a pretty terrible MO for a ghost,” Deacon said, smiling at her. “Silence,” he added dramatically, his eyes wide.

  Brighton’s blue eyes crinkled in the corners as she smiled at Crazy Parrish Number Two before looking back down at her screen.

  I sighed deeply, half out of boredom and half out of anxiety that we’d never hear from Ally again. Brighton was watching her screens, Deacon was typing something on the laptop as he logged all of our clips, and Jefferson was still silent beside me with his eyes closed. I checked to make sure no one was looking before letting my eyes wander over to him.

  His brown hair was styled in a curly mess on top of his head today, and he wore the normal slacks, collared shirt, vest, tie, and Chucks. Suddenly I found the whole Tim Burton thing very hot.

  There was something seriously wrong with me. Maybe Ally’s house was still having some ill effects on my mental state. That was the only logical explanation.

  As I continued to stare at Jefferson, his mouth slowly curled up into a smile and he opened one eye to glance down at me.

  Crap.

  I looked away quickly, trying to pretend like I hadn’t been staring at him creepily. That was his thing. He was supposed to be the creepy one, not me.

  Luckily, my phone buzzed only seconds later, saving me from having to hide the massive blush I was sure was covering my cheeks.

  “Hello?”

  “Hi, is this Sadie?” a woman’s voice asked—a woman’s voice that sounded mercifully like Ally’s.

  “This is,” I answered.

  Jefferson removed his headphones and pressed his cheek against mine, trying to hear what was being said.

  I would have expected goose bumps but instead I got a heat that started in my chest and quickly moved to my head in a distracting way. I hoped Jefferson couldn’t feel my cheeks getting hotter.

  “Hey, it’s Ally . . . from yesterday?”

  “I definitely remember who you are,” I said.

  Jefferson placed his hand on the small of my back, pressing his cheek more firmly against mine in his excitement.

  I suddenly couldn’t breathe . . . or think.

  “This is going to sound a little crazy, but would you guys be willing to come over tonight to do your research?” she asked.

  Or at least, I was pretty sure that’s what she had said. I swear I was listening, but I was also incredibly distracted by the little brown curl from Jefferson’s hair that was hanging in my eye and the pressure of his hand on my back. I tried breathing in and out a few times to make sure I was capable of breathing like a normal human being still.

  Maybe I was getting sick. There was no way Crazy Parrish Number One was seriously having this effect on me.

  ?
??Sadie!” Jefferson whispered.

  Brighton gave me an odd look over my lack of normalcy.

  “I’m sorry, what?” I asked into the phone.

  “Can you guys come over tonight? I know it’s short notice, but I saw myself again, not just out of the corner of my eye but standing right in front of me.”

  “She saw the mimic again,” Jefferson whispered to Deacon, sadly removing his cheek from mine to relay this message.

  “It was only for a split second, but it was enough to make me think maybe we shouldn’t delay this anymore,” Ally went on.

  “I completely agree,” I said.

  “My mom lives right across the street so my daughter and I can just go over there while you do your thing,” she said.

  Of course she was leaving out the unspoken fact that she could also see us out the window so we’d better not steal anything.

  I couldn’t say I blamed her. I’d be wary of four strangers coming into my house to look for ghosts too. It didn’t really seem like a credible way to build a professional relationship with someone.

  “That’s perfect,” I said. “And since you’ll be so close, we’ll be able to come over to see you if we have any questions.”

  Really, we wouldn’t need to ask her anything, but I wanted to reassure her we were all on the same side and we weren’t insane people that she was letting into her house.

  “Oh good!” she said. “So what time would be best to start this?”

  “Usually later is a little better.” I grabbed Jefferson’s arm and looked at his watch. It was already seven at night. “Maybe ten?”

  “That works for me,” she said. “And thank you for doing this. I really don’t think this thing wants to hurt us, but it would be nice to have some answers.”

  “Definitely,” I agreed. “We’ll see you tonight at ten.”

  “See you then.”

  It seemed like all of us held our breath until I hung up the phone, and then it was suddenly chaos.

  “We need to get all of this equipment in the car,” Deacon practically shouted, even though we were all in the same room and we had a few hours until we needed to leave.