“Guys,” Brighton said, trying to rein us all back in. “I’m not sure that Doppelgängers versus mimics is an exact science. Can we please just say something really weird is going on in this house, no matter what you want to call it?”
“Fair enough,” both Parrish boys said in unison.
“That thing was imitating me,” I said, finally realizing just how unsettling that was. I looked around the dark corners of the room to make sure it wasn’t still there. “Jefferson, you are no longer the creepiest thing in this house.”
“His letter still is,” Brighton said with a laugh. She quickly quieted herself though. Probably realizing he may not take kindly to her poking fun at his “romantic” letter.
“You’re really you, right?” I asked the tall lanky boy in front of me, giving his chest a little push.
“You’re really into pushing me around lately,” he said mischievously. “I didn’t expect that to be your thing, but I can do that. Keeps things interesting.”
“What are you guys on about?” Deacon asked, just as I slapped my hand over Jefferson’s mouth.
We had an investigation to be doing. I couldn’t have him flirting in his own messed up way when we were supposed to be talking to ghosts.
“He just thinks I’ve been bossy lately,” I lied.
Jefferson’s huge eyes squinted as he gave the biggest smile ever under my hand and nodded his head enthusiastically. I narrowed my own eyes at him, hoping he’d behave. He kissed my palm and I quickly removed my hand. My heart skipped, but I didn’t want to let him know that so I tried to look as put out as possible.
The room was much too silent to have any useful evidence anymore. Whatever had been there was gone now, so Jefferson and I walked back toward the Jeep. We’d scared off our mimic.
“If we’re dealing with a mimic or Doppelgänger or whatever, is it possible Eva isn’t even here? Maybe it’s just someone imitating her?” I asked.
“It’s possible,” Deacon answered. “But if this ghost is imitating Eva, then it must have seen her before. Like maybe she did live here and now this other spirit is imitating her. It couldn’t just pull the imitation out of thin air.”
“So if Eva lived here before, this should still be our third location. Even if this spirit is trying to confuse us, there’s still a clue here somewhere,” I said.
“Seems like it,” Deacon said as we reached the Jeep, taking a seat on the tailgate. “My turn?”
“Have at it,” I said, handing over my camera and flashlight to Crazy Parrish Number Two.
I wasn’t sure if Brighton had really seen a mimic version of me staring out the window, but if she had, it was a solid bet that we were on the right track. It just seemed odd that there could have been a mimic around without any sign other than its appearance. Up until Brighton had spotted it, I hadn’t heard anything in the silent house.
I thought back to my time in the house only moments ago, searching my memory for any signs of the mimic until it had been spotted. Had the air been cold? Had I smelled or heard anything? It seemed like the house had been totally silent. How had there not been a single trace of that thing until it appeared?
I sat on the tailgate of our Jeep with a furrowed brow, hoping we’d caught the mimic on tape. We couldn’t let that kind of evidence go unrecorded.
Jefferson knocked my knee with his over and over again as I tried to watch Deacon on the monitors. He was adorable, I’d give him that, but he also had no sense of discretion.
“This is Deacon Parrish in the Bray house,” Deacon said, as I leaned over and turned off his audio feed to ask Brighton a question without distracting him.
“Do you think we should be asking questions to Eva, or should we ask the mimic where our next clue is?” I asked the group. “I mean, we can beat around the bush all day long pretending we’re actually talking to Eva, but wouldn’t it be better to just lay our cards out on the table and figure out what we came here for?”
“Being blunt might scare the mimic away, though,” Jefferson said “If we’re taking away its fun, why would it help us? If we play its little game and ask it where our clue is, maybe it’ll lead us there.”
“Or maybe it’ll just lead us in circles because it has nothing better to do,” Brighton said.
“It doesn’t seem to be particularly malicious,” I offered. “It’s never tried to hurt that little girl or the family. It seems like it just wants to hang around and be part of our world.”
“You sound like a Disney song,” Brighton said with a laugh.
“But if it’s not malicious, why did it make you go mental on me yesterday?” Jefferson asked, sounding genuinely concerned about my outburst.
“I think it’s still messing with my behavior,” I told him.
“It’s not,” he answered back, letting his fingers creep over mine, which were luckily out of Brighton’s view. “It’s definitely not.”
I pulled my fingers away from his and placed my hands in my lap, hoping he’d get the hint. Of course, the concern in his voice did make me feel a pang of guilt. It seemed like Jefferson might honestly be worried that I didn’t actually like him and maybe my mood was being altered by something in our investigation. I couldn’t really say much on the matter because I half thought the only reason I’d suddenly start liking the boy who drove me crazy was that very explanation. But I’d never say that out loud. Not when Jefferson was currently giving me puppy dog eyes and melting my heart.
“What is Deacon doing?” Brighton asked in alarm.
His mouth was moving as if he was speaking, but we couldn’t hear anything.
“Deacon?” Brighton asked, but it looked like he couldn’t hear her.
“Oh, sorry,” I said. “The sound.”
I hit the switch to turn our two-way audio back on.
“Deacon?” Brighton said again.
We heard the tail-end of his sentence, which sounded something like, “Do you mean that?”
At the sound of Brighton’s voice in his ear, Deacon got very still, his eyes getting wide as he looked around the room in confusion.
“Are you okay?” she asked him.
“Sorry, I was just . . . Where are you guys? In the Jeep?”
“Yeah, we’re still outside, but Sadie turned off our audio so we could strategize,” Brighton said.
“Oh,” he responded, sounding deflated. “I was just asking some questions . . . trying to find our clue, but I haven’t gotten anything yet.”
His voice sounded off as he spoke, and the three of us exchanged questioning looks in the Jeep.
“Do you need a break?” Brighton asked.
“Yeah, I think this house is messing with me,” Deacon said, making a quick exit out the front door and practically throwing the equipment at his cousin. “You have a go. See if it’ll be kinder to you.”
“What happened in there?” Brighton asked, looking concerned.
She reached out a hand to touch his shoulder but froze, seemed to think better of it, and tucked her hair behind her ear as if that had been her intention the whole time. Deacon hardly noticed in his perturbed state.
“Nothing happened,” he snapped. “I didn’t even want to come to this stupid house in the first place. I was fine with staying in Portland and being jobless but you guys had to drag me out of my comfort zone to this dead-end of an investigation. We’re probably going to run out of money in Boston and have to sell our organs to get back home or something, all because you guys got greedy and thought we could make money off this hobby.”
We all fell silent, staring at Deacon in confusion. His accent had gotten so thick as he ranted that I could hardly understand him by the end of his tirade.
Without hesitation, Jefferson picked up the equipment Deacon had tossed at him, slapped his panting cousin on the back, and offered him a thin-lipped smile.
“Don’t be so moody, mate. It’s not an attractive color on you,” Jefferson told him. “Besides, if
you steal my thing, I won’t have anything left.”
“Shut up,” Deacon replied with a roll of his eyes.
The house was definitely messing with his emotions. I felt bad for him but it was also a little funny to see Deacon so upset when he was normally the one cracking jokes during investigations.
“Don’t wait up,” Jefferson added to me with a wink before he left.
Could he be any more obvious? I was amazed that Brighton and Deacon hadn’t called us out ages ago, but it probably had something to do with the fact that they were always either distracted by a case or each other.
“He’s been weird lately,” Brighton said seriously, trying to move the topic away from Crazy Parrish Number Two and his sudden outburst. “Even for him.”
“I can hear you,” Jefferson said, before disappearing into the darkness of the house.
“I know,” she responded, not sounding like she cared.
The Parrish boys were the only people in the world Brighton would stand up to, even if she would never tell Deacon how she felt about him. Although apparently she’d also stand up to me, since she had been voicing her opinions on the Jefferson subject quite frequently lately. I couldn’t complain though, since I was just glad she’d grown a backbone.
“Are you feeling any better?” Brighton asked Deacon with a raise of her eyebrows.
At least he’d stopped panting now.
“Sorry . . . I don’t know why I got so crazy for a second there.”
“It’s the house,” I answered. “I think it’s making us all a little crazy.”
“Jefferson Parrish, investigating the Bray house in Boston, Massachusetts, on September ninth at midnight,” Jefferson cut in over the speaker.
I watched the black and white screen in the darkness of the Jeep, taking note of how deliberately Jefferson moved through the dark, quiet house. He was definitely in his element in the world of paranormal investigation. He seemed completely at ease, letting his large eyes roam over the walls and darkened corners of the rooms, and I couldn’t help but smile.
After a moment his eyes came to rest on a spot somewhere in front of him. He didn’t move for a while or say anything; he froze and watched, looking very purposeful.
“Sadie?” he asked.
Brighton and Deacon both looked over at me and I hoped Jefferson wouldn’t say something embarrassing or inappropriate because he knew I was too far away to hit him.
“Yeah?” I responded.
“Perfect,” he said, walking forward with determination.
He walked up the staircase and into the room where Brighton had seen my Doppelgänger, or mimic, or whatever it was, before getting down on his hands and knees. He placed the camera and flashlight on the floor and began knocking on the hardwood panels.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
He didn’t respond, of course, but lifted one of the floorboards and pulled an old wooden box from the concealed space, making all three of us stare at the screen in shock.
“How did you know that was there?” I asked him.
He smirked up at one of our stationary cameras, knowing we could see him on the monitor.
“You showed me.”
Chapter 20
Jefferson’s long form was sprawled out on the bed in the hotel room while I sat on the ground, my back leaning up against the bedframe. We were so close that I could lean my head back and hit his cheek, although I hardly let that distract me at the moment. We had far more important things to talk about.
“What did you tell Ally, Sade?” Brighton asked, twisting her hair nervously around her fingers.
“I told her the truth. I said we definitely found evidence of paranormal activity in the house, but that we don’t think it’s Eva. I let her know that while the presence did seem pretty happy to play tricks on us and mess with our emotions, it might just be protective of the house and the residents.”
“Especially since it’s not bugging the family,” Brighton said, as if we were talking to Ally right at that moment. “Only outsiders.”
“You didn’t tell her we got rid of it, did you?” Jefferson asked, his mouth so close that I could feel his breath on my neck.
I ignored my chills.
“I told her that it might be gone now that we found the box of letters, but it might still be hanging around. Either way, I don’t think it’s something to be scared of.”
“Well done, boss.” Jefferson smirked so that only I could see him as I turned my head toward him.
I looked down at his lips that were, unfortunately, only inches from mine, and his smirk grew. We were way too close.
“Now that we’re no longer around civilians, tell us how Sadie showed you where the box was,” Deacon said, causing me to come back to reality and turn my head away from Jefferson’s magnetic pull.
“I’m curious about that too,” I added with a nervous laugh.
I was turning into Jefferson. I had been thinking of kissing him in front of Brighton and Deacon like a tactless weirdo.
Jefferson smiled to himself but didn’t answer us right away.
“I may or may not have seen our ghost,” he said with a self-satisfied look.
“And it looked like Sadie?” Deacon guessed.
“Sort of . . . except that she was smiling at me, which was what gave the ghost away. I knew it couldn’t be Sadie at that point.”
“Apparently it wasn’t a very good mimic,” I said, giving Jefferson a taste of his own medicine. “If it had been, it would have told you to stop writing creepy ‘love’ letters.”
“Poetic,” Jefferson retorted, looking put out. “And see if I ever write you one if you keep this attitude up.”
“Think of all of that nightmare-inducing prose you’ll be missing out on, Sade,” Brighton said.
“Somehow I’ll live.”
“Can we please get back to the interesting stuff?” Deacon asked. “You really, honestly saw a full-bodied apparition in the house? I mean, she wasn’t see-through or shadowy or anything?”
“It looked like Sadie standing there,” Jefferson said. “There were no clanking chains or glowing lights or anything. But like I said, I knew you guys were in the van, so once Sadie confirmed that over the radio, I just followed the mimic when she turned and walked up the stairs.”
“How were you not scared?” I asked, somewhere between respect and incredulity.
“Why would I be scared?” Jefferson asked it so genuinely that I couldn’t begin to explain to him how normal people would react in that situation. “I wanted to find our clue and this apparition was obviously leading me there.” He shrugged his shoulders as if this should be the simplest thing in the world.
“You weren’t even impressed by the fact that you saw a ghost?” I pressed. “You live for this stuff.”
I just couldn’t believe that he was being so nonchalant about actually seeing a ghost. The rest of us would have killed for that opportunity, and here he was acting like it wasn’t a big deal. Only days before he’d been ecstatic over half of a muffled sentence on our audio recordings.
“I’ve seen them before,” he said cryptically. “So the fake Sadie pointed to the floorboards, I looked down at the spot she pointed to, and when I looked back up, she was gone.”
“And you just understood that you were supposed to pull the flooring up?” Brighton asked, not buying it.
“What else could she want me to do?”
“Sit down?” Deacon suggested.
“Go back downstairs,” I added.
“Apparently the ghost and I were on the same wavelength,” Jefferson said.
“Surprise, surprise,” I put in.
He knocked my shoulder with his forehead for my comment and I turned to smile at him, too close once more.
“What I want to know is how you could have waited until we got back to the hotel to tell us all of this,” Brighton said.
“I wanted to make sure you guys wer
e actually paying attention. I’m more surprised you let me get here without forcing me to tell you what happened.”
“We tried to get it out of you the entire way home,” Deacon said.
“I’m very good at keeping secrets,” Jefferson said in a quiet voice, so close to me that I could feel his lips brush against my ear.
Now he was just toying with me. He was awful.
“Can we read the letters?” I asked, trying to discourage any more contact.
Ally had been kind enough to let us borrow the letters for the next two days until we could figure out what we needed from them. We promised her we’d bring them right back after we’d finished with them, and I could only hope we’d be able to grasp their meaning at all.
“There are a lot in here,” Brighton said, sounding overwhelmed as she rifled through them. “But they’re all dated, so maybe we should split them up by chunks of time? That way we can each research a few months and piece our findings together.”
“That sounds easier than all of us reading every single letter,” I said. “Plus, we still have to go over the investigation tapes to see if we caught the mimic on film.”
“Every letter in this box is from Eva to Thatcher, who apparently lived in New York by this point, so our storyline shouldn’t be too hard to figure out if it’s all from one point of view.”
“Why are there a bunch of letters from Eva in Eva’s house?” Deacon asked.
“Maybe they never got sent?” Brighton suggested.
“That’s a lot of letters to forget to send.”
“Maybe someone else was supposed to be sending them for her, and they didn’t,” I said.
“That sounds like a good reason to have us investigate,” Brighton answered with a yawn. It was nearly three in the morning and we were all exhausted. “Maybe that’s part of what we’re supposed to uncover.”
“I say tomorrow we start with the letters and review the tapes after,” I suggested.
“Tomorrow?” Jefferson answered with a pout in his voice.
I turned my head to glance back at his form on the bed.
“Jefferson Parrish, go to bed,” I ordered, my voice lined with mock authority.