Ghostly (Darkly Devoted Book 1) (7 page)

“I’m so sorry something that terrible happened and made you hurt yourself like that.”

“When my mother died, I took a bunch of pills and ended up in the hospital. My dad freaked out and made me feel like shit.”

Cade reached out to take my face in his hands. “Please don’t do that again.” His voice sounded desperate. “I’ve never met anyone with such light inside of them. You shine with it. The world would be a dull place without you in it.”

What he said was sweet, and I felt a swelling in my chest, but I didn’t trust him. I forced myself not to believe him. “I’m kind of a downer, actually.”

“You’ll have to convince me of that, I don’t believe it. I can see the insecurity in your eyes. You try to be tough, but you’re not. You’re compassionate for your friends. And seriously, I would do awful things to your flawless, pale skin. Things that would make you blush.” He bit his lip and looked at me with intensity in his eyes.

I blushed. “Stop it.”

“It’s the truth.”

“Flattery won’t get you anywhere with me.”

“I’m not trying to flatter you; I’m trying to build you up.”

I cocked an eyebrow. “Whatever.”

“Fine, don’t believe me, but you know you like it.”

“Good luck with that. You’re full of yourself, aren’t you?”

“No, Briar, I just know what I want, and what I want is you.”

Slowly, he leaned in toward me, pausing just before he closed the distance between our lips to see if I would stop him. When I didn’t, he pressed them softly to mine and closed his eyes. My own fluttered shut as I trailed my hands up his chest and around his neck. Kissing him was unlike anything I had felt before, and I couldn’t ignore the flutter of butterflies in my stomach.

It was an innocent kiss, and when he pulled back from me, he rested his forehead on mine. “I can’t get enough of that.”

“If you don’t stop stalking me that might be the last kiss you get.”

“I’m not stalking you!” He sat back in shock.

“Really now? Sneaking into my house? Watching me from your house when I moved in?”

“I prefer to call it admiring.”

I raised an eyebrow, not impressed.

“Is that what they call it these days?”

He shrugged. “I don’t want to freak you out, sorry; I won’t show up unannounced again okay? I just get bored and wander around until something catches my attention.”

“And I’ve caught your attention?”

“Like you wouldn’t believe.” He leaned in to kiss me again.

I moved back away from him. “Did you really used to live here?”

“Yes, me and my parents.”

“Where do you live now?”

“Down the road. It’s a crappy place, I’m embarrassed by it, so don’t expect to see it.”

“Why’d you move?”

He paused and looked away.

“Cade?”

“Because this house does awful things to people. Awful, awful things. It brings out the worst in them; it makes them do terrible things. That’s why I came to see you originally. I came to warn you, but then I saw your bright blue eyes.”

“Shut up,” I said and pushed him. “Stop saying that shit.”

“Fine.”

“So, what things does the house make people do?”

“Didn’t your Ryder friend tell you all that? I thought you were all impressed by him and shit.”

“He’s just a friend. Yeah, he’s cute, but someone else has caught my eye.” I couldn’t deny the attraction I had to him, but I was scared to admit it out loud.

“Who’s that?” he asked and wiggled his eyebrows.

“Don’t be so full of yourself.”

He shrugged as if he didn’t care and tried to kiss me again.

“Stop that.”

“Gah, you’re so hard to please!” He laughed. “All I’m saying is don’t think too hard about cutting yourself, or you might not be able to stop yourself from doing it.”

“That’s terrifying.”

“I know.”

“How do you stop it?”

He shrugged. “Well, you could spend the whole day locked in your bedroom with me. That might help…”

My stomach flipped. Excitement buzzed under my skin at his words. There were a lot of things we could do alone, though I wasn’t sure if that was wise. I tried to be nonchalant as I replied, but I couldn’t help the mischievous smile that crept over my face. “Guess so.”

“So, she does smile,” he said sarcastically.

“When it’s worth it.”

“It must be my lucky day then.” He leaned in to try and kiss me again.

I let him to remind myself of what it felt like. Maybe the last time was just a glitch in my senses. His fingers slid across my cheek and into my hair, pulling my face to him. He kissed me softly on the lips, leaving an otherworldly tingle as he pulled back from me. The darkness in his eyes was almost frightening, and I wasn’t sure what it meant.

“You have the darkest eyes I’ve ever seen. They’re almost black.”

“I guess that goes with my damned soul.”

I pushed him and tried not to laugh at his joke. He was so cute. He looked so innocent, even though I had a sinking feeling that he was hiding something from me.

“I think I might believe in ghosts no. You wanna hear my scary ghost story?”

“What’s that?”

“One of these crazy ghosts threw a knife at me the day of the party. That’s why I had the bandage on.”

The smile that had stretched from ear to ear faded, replaced with one I hadn’t seen before. It was angry, dangerous.

“What?” he demanded. It was almost as if the whole room filled up with something heavy; I felt like I needed to get up and run from the room. It was completely different from what I’d seen from him in the short time I knew him.

“I was helping my dad take down that awful wallpaper when the knife flew across the room and sliced my arm. You won’t believe it, though; the blood went into the wall! It was insane!”

He frowned and stood up from the bed with a growl. “I will fuck them up for this.”

“What? Who?”

“Those damned ghosts! Don’t worry about it. I will take care of it.”

“You really think it was a ghost?”

“It had to be. Knives don’t just fly across the room.”

True.
“Well, Dad doesn’t believe me.”

“Listen to me,” he said as he came to stand directly in front of me. “I know how to deal with these things. I will make sure they leave you alone. No one is going to hurt you as long as I’m around. No one.”

Chapter Nine

“You missed it, Briar,” Ryder exclaimed as he sat in the seat beside me.

“What are you talking about?” I stifled a yawn. Cade and I had stayed up too late watching horror movies and talking about our favorite things. I was exhausted.

Celeste joined us and sat on Ryder’s desk. “It wasn’t awesome. Don’t listen to him. It was insane.”

Ryder smiled and reached into his pocket to pull out his phone. “Apparently, the Ouija board awakened something from beyond the grave.”

“Don’t be
too
dramatic now,” Celeste said and pushed him playfully.

“That’s the only way to tell the story!” He looked over at me. “Okay, so, when you went into the closet, one of the girls at the party started screaming and freaking out. Her eyes turned into this weird creamy white color and—ah—it’s just so crazy. You have to watch it. I can’t do it justice.” He pressed a few buttons on his phone and handed it to me.

With a sigh, I clicked play on the video. I didn’t want to know what had happened while I was in the closet. The second the video started, shaky as Ryder tried to hold it up over people’s heads to see the girl, my stomach sank. The random girl who had been sitting with us the night of the party stood there with blank eyes. Her head tilted left and touched her shoulder, right to touch the other, and then her mouth fell open, releasing the most otherworldly scream I’d ever heard.

Everyone in the room started to panic. They ran away from her as she lifted her hands to the sky and began to laugh manically. Her voice was deeper than it was when she’d spoken to me, and cuts appeared on her arms.

“You don’t belong here!” she cried as her body jerked back and forth. “Get out! Get out!”

No one even tried to help her; they ran for their lives as the poor girl continued to be cut up and possessed by whatever the hell demon had a hold on her. It was the scariest thing I’d ever seen in my life, hands down. It topped everything that I’d lived through, all the horrific things I’d seen firsthand.

I saw Meredith trying desperately to open the closet door on the other side of the room to get Cade and me out of there. When there was only Meredith and Ryder left, the girl fell to the floor unconscious.

“Holy shit,” I breathed and handed the phone back to him, trying to hide the terror from my voice.

“I have
never
seen anything like this, except for in movies,” he said.

“You’ve never even seen a ghost,” Celeste pointed out.

“Yeah, well, I didn’t expect to see this! She was freaking possessed!”

“Who was she?” I asked.

Ryder shrugged. “I dunno.” He looked at Meredith expectantly.

She shook her head. “I have no clue. I invited some friends who invited some friends who invited some friends. She could have been anybody.”

“Which is exactly why the party needed to be kept small, with just us,” I said. “Now some girl out there has been possessed and is going to start spreading even more rumors about my house!”

“It’s bad enough, Briar, no need to get all crazy,” Celeste said and stood up. “Besides, it’s all in good fun. You’ve got balls to stay in that house.”

“Or you could move out,” Meredith added.

“I can’t just move out, not right now.”

“If you wanna live, you might wanna do that.”

“Mer!” Ryder scolded before turning his attention to me. “Listen, if you ever need anything you let me know. I don’t want some ghost bringing you down like everyone else who has lived there. If you see anything, I mean
anything
out of the ordinary you call me. We will figure out what to do.”

Too late, I already had. The one encounter I couldn’t explain had left me bleeding, but I couldn’t very well tell him that. I felt guilty enough as it was to invite people over after that, and that poor girl in the video…what was going to keep that from happening to me or my family? I felt sick just thinking about it.

That afternoon, Ryder drove me home; we sat in silence. I didn’t want to talk anymore about ghosts, and he didn’t seem to want to bring it up. The video had completely freaked me out. I dreaded to even step foot into the house again, but my family was in there. They needed to know how dangerous it was.

I muttered a thank you and grabbed my bag as I got out of his truck. After racing up to the house, I fiddled with my keys and stepped inside. I found my brother and father sitting at the dinner table eating.

“Sorry to start without you; Dillon was starving when I picked him up,” my dad said.

“It’s alright.” I shrugged and took a seat across from him. Pizza sat in the middle of the table, so I helped myself.

“You’ll have to get your own drink. I wasn’t sure when you’d be home, so I didn’t get you one.”

Whatever.
“I’m always home at the same time every day.” I pushed away from the table to get something to drink.

When I walked into the kitchen, I opened the nearest cabinet to retrieve a glass and sat it on the counter. I growled in irritation, mocking my dad under my breath as I grabbed a two liter of soda out of the refrigerator. I turned around to walk back to my glass and froze. It was gone.

“What the hell?”

My eyes darted around the room, finally settling on the glass, which had somehow moved to the island in the center of the kitchen. The room grew cold as I walked over toward it and reached out with my shaky hand. Before I could touch it, it flew away from me and slammed into the cabinet before hitting the floor and shattering. I screamed and threw my hands up to cover my face from the glass, just as I heard my father call out my name and his footsteps echo down the hallway.

I couldn’t seem to take my eyes away from the broken pieces on the floor as my heart thudded in my chest. My body broke out in cold chills. Something was in the room with me. My breath took the form of steam, and I slowly began to back out of the kitchen.

A hard figure slammed into my back, and I screamed. I tried to run, but a hand landed on my shoulder and kept me in place.

“Briar!” my dad’s voice came from behind me.

I was thankful it was him, so I whirled around and threw my arms around him. “There is something in this house!”

He placed his hands on my arms and pushed me forward to look down at me. His shook his head. “Is this really what we’re doing again? You’re going to blame this on a ghost just like you did with the knife?”

“How can you not believe me? I’ve never lied to you about stuff like this before. What the hell, Dad?” I brushed him off me and stepped back to cross my arms in anger.

“I know you don’t like this place, and you would rather be out on your own. I appreciate you moving in to help with Dillon, but if it’s too much you can get a job and get your own place.”

“You mean to tell me you haven’t seen anything strange?”

He shook his head. “No, and neither has your brother.”

“You wanna bet?”

“Briar—”

“Come on; let’s go see what he has to say about it.” I stomped out of the kitchen as he yelled behind me to come clean up my mess.

My damned mess indeed. Stupid ghosts.

He followed behind me until we were back in the dining room, and I walked over to where Dillon sat. His big blue eyes beamed up at me.

“Hey, Sissy! You eat now?”

“In a minute, sweetie. Why don’t you tell Daddy about your friends in the house?”

Dad leaned over beside me and encouraged him to go on.

“Well,” Dillon started and looked around as if he was looking for someone before looking back at me. “I not supposed to tell you names.”

“That’s ok. What can you tell us?”

“They are fun and they live here and they were here first but that’s okay ‘cause some of them are nice and play with me.”

Dad raised a speculative eyebrow. “Is that right?”

Dillon nodded.

Dad looked at me. “Did you put him up to this?”

I was appalled. “I can’t believe you would think that!”

“He hasn’t said anything to me about it until you mentioned it.”

“I’m not making it up! You really haven’t seen anything?”

“No, Briar, I haven’t. And I would appreciate it if you would stop with the ghost talk. I thought your mother and I had taught you better than that. Ghosts don’t exist.”

I was fuming. Not only was he practically calling me a liar, he didn’t believe me, and he thought I was making Dillon lie for me!

I stood up and glared at him. “You’ll see something some day and you will regret this.”

He said my name as I spun on my heels to go to my room. I didn’t have to deal with his shit; I had enough going on with trying to figure out how to keep us safe from the ghosts.

I slammed my door behind me and threw myself on the bed. Maybe I was being dramatic, but it felt good. I felt alone and angry, both things I hated to feel. Happiness is what I longed for, and I worried that I would never find it again. My mind floated to the small, steel razorblade that I kept in a jewelry box in my bedside table.

“No, Briar, pull yourself together,” I chastised and shook my head to clear those thoughts.

There was so much pain inside me, swirling around like a tornado just ready to throw me to the sky. I felt as if my breath was taken away from me. I curled my legs up to my chest and buried my eyes in the palms of my hands, pressing them until there were spots behind my eyes. It was uncomfortable, but it felt good at the same time.

That sort of pain hadn’t hit me in several months, and I wasn’t sure how to deal with it. I know what my therapist would want me to do, breathe or listen to music or write in that damned journal, but I didn’t think any of that would help. The only thing that made sense in the moment was a different pain to make the current one go away. Something else for me to focus on.

Slowly I sat up on the bed and moved my gaze to the bedside table. It would only take a second. It wouldn’t have to be much, really. Just enough to make the blood pool on my skin and for me to revel in a different pain—a pain that was more tolerable than the ache in my chest. With several deep breaths I tried to calm myself and think about something else. It made everything worse. Getting my razor became the only thing I could think about. 

A chill ran down my spine, and I heard the floorboards creek.
Shit, here comes another ghost to freak me out and piss me off.

I was relieved when Cade’s voice flowed softly across the room. My name on his lips was enough to snap me out of my gaze, and the fear that crept over me disappeared. At the same time, I felt as if he had caught me in the actual act of cutting. The blush rose to my face, but I tried to play it off.

“Thank God it’s you; I thought it was another freakin’ ghost.” I sat up as he came to sit on the edge of the bed.

“Are they bothering you that bad?”

“Every time I turn around it seems.”

That terrifying scowl returned on his face. “I guess my efforts didn’t pay off. I will have to try again.”

“What are you doing?” I asked. “If there’s a way to get them to leave me alone I want to know.”

He ran his hand through his hair. “I don’t know. I’ll have to think about it. What are you doing anyway? You look deep in thought.”

“
Nothing.
How long have you been hiding in my closet?”

“Don’t change the subject. You look caught,” he said with a laugh. His smile was wonderful.

“I was just….thinking…”

“About what?” He moved closer to me.

“About how miserable I am.”

“Why?”

I sighed. Did I really want to go into all that with him? I hadn’t known him long, but there was something about the way he looked at me that told me I could trust him. I felt comfortable around him, and I’d easily opened up to him before.

“My dad thinks I’m lying about the ghosts.”

He laughed. “I know, you told me. It’s not that big a deal.”

“Yeah it is! My family is all I have; they’re all I’ve ever had. For him to think that hurts really bad.”

“It’s this house.”

That caught my attention. “What do you mean?”

“It likes to twist people’s minds into doing what it wants. Your family could be in danger.”

I sat up straighter and grabbed him by his t-shirt. “What the hell am I supposed to do about it? This house isn’t alive, Cade.”

“No, but it’s powerful. That’s why my family left. It was trying to take me over and make me do awful things. I wouldn’t doubt it’s trying to mess with your head too. What’s in that drawer that’s so important?”

Before I could answer, he jumped up from the bed and opened it up. I was right behind him, frantic to get to the jewelry box before he did, but I was too late. He picked it up and popped it open. He closed his eyes as he slammed it shut, threw it back into the drawer, and slammed it shut.

When he opened his eyes, they seemed to have darkened even more. I wasn’t sure if that was even possible. “You promised me.”