Ghostsnaps (Knead to Know Book 4) (15 page)

Not that kissing Baker was bad. It just wasn’t as good as I remembered it being.

He pulled away with an expression I couldn’t quite place. “I don’t believe you’re in love with me anymore.” Some of the sadness faded from his eyes. “You’ve moved on. I’m glad.”

I was hardly able to believe it. “Yes,” I all but whispered, tempted to apologize, but I stopped myself. I had every right to be happy. “I can’t stay with you. We both have our own lives to live and apparently not together.”

He grinned at me. “Tell me about him. The one who took my place.”

Suddenly I felt shy. I stood up to put distance between us, still marveling at the fact that I was in love with Phoenix. I hadn’t wanted to see it or to admit to it, but there it was. Even Baker couldn’t take his place. Even with a distance of over ninety years between us, where his manipulations couldn’t possibly reach me, I still wanted him more than anyone else.

I had the urge to call him, to go to him immediately, but it wasn’t possible. Not yet. Not until I could get back home. “No,” I said. “I’d like him to be the first one to know that I love him.”

Baker smiled, some of his sadness back, though not nearly as heavy as it had been before. “Then he’s a lucky man. I guess there’s only one thing left to do: let’s get you home.”

But in the end, I didn’t go back to Josephine’s right away. Baker and I spent the rest of the night practicing mind manipulation. He was an excellent teacher, slow and patient with me as I made mistakes. Though thought and memory manipulation wasn’t a trait he had, he seemed to know plenty about it. After a few hours of practice, I could subtly adjust elements of his short-term memory. He promised if we kept at it, I could wipe the slate clean before I went home, making sure that my time here didn’t affect the future.

Back at Josephine’s, I quietly unlocked the door and slipped inside. I stooped over to remove my shoes. Before I could dash upstairs to my room to change into fresh clothes, Jeanette’s voice came from the doorway of Josephine’s office, stopping me.

“What have you been up to, dear cousin?”

I looked over, cheeks warming. “I couldn’t sleep. I went for a walk.”

Her eyes narrowed as she came a couple steps closer. “You aren’t who you claim to be. I know that. And so does Josephine, but what I can’t figure out is what you have over her that would make her lie to me, her own flesh and blood.”

I shook my head. “I’m not…it isn’t what you think.”

She took a couple menacing steps forward. “If you hurt my sister, I will see that you pay dearly for it. Are we clear?”

I leveled my gaze back at her. “Where did you get the mirror you gave her?”

She blinked. “The mirror?”

“This mirror.” I motioned to the wall.

She frowned. “I don’t see what that has to do with anything.”

“Answer the question,” I said calmly.

Jeanette’s chin lifted slightly. “I can’t remember. I know how that sounds, but I’m not lying. I legitimately can’t recall ever buying the mirror. It was our birthday and it appeared at the table wrapped in the same paper I used on all the other gifts. I assumed I had forgotten buying it and the maid found it and wrapped it with the others. She loved it so much I didn’t see the point of looking into it further.” She glanced away. “It is very difficult to buy Josephine presents.”

I didn’t have any special way to tell if people were lying or telling the truth. I couldn’t hear heartbeats or read their minds. The only thing I had to go on were my feelings about the person and something had felt off about Jeanette from the moment I met her. It didn’t matter that she didn’t like or trust me, I totally deserved that. I was lying to her about who I was, after all. What bothered me most about her was that I had the distinct impression she knew a lot more about what was happening than she let on. She always seemed to be there, lurking around, watching us, and disappearing into shadows.

Only this time I didn’t necessarily think she was lying. Perhaps she wasn’t sharing the whole truth, but surely some of it was honest. She couldn’t fake the guilt that set her eyebrows into a straight worried line or the affection in her voice when she spoke about Josephine.

“You can’t possibly understand the bond that twins share, Miss Edwards. I would do anything for my sister. She is as much a part of me as my own arm.”

I nodded. “You would do anything but tell the truth.”

Jeanette slinked back into the shadows of the dark hallway. “Just know that I am watching you. I will discover who you really are. You can be sure of that.”

I stared into the darkness, still feeling her eyes locked on me long after I was certain she had finally left.

****

“What is our objective for today?” Josephine asked, sitting down at the dining room table where I already had a steaming cup of coffee in front of me.

“We need to find out what we’re up against in the mirror. It’s not easy to hide a body, especially for as long as you stayed missing. Surely someone would have found you by the time we met.”

“Unless there was no body to be found,” she said, the smile falling from her face.

“I thought about this all night. We’ve been approaching things wrong. We’ve been looking for who would want to kill you, rather than how the demon was brought into your life.”

Josephine’s voice was low as she leaned in. “The dream? That’s when I started doing the spell.”

I nodded. “Has Jeanette mentioned having peculiar dreams or anything like that?”

“Not recently.”

Not recently, but she had them. “When? Before or after yours?”

Josephine took a bite of dry toast, looking up toward the ceiling. “I’m not sure I remember. I want to say it was before me, but I might be wrong.”

“Do you know what they were about?”

Drawing in a deep breath, she shook her head. “It was about a man. How does all of this connect?”

“Jeanette was awake when I got home this morning.”

“You were out all night?” The mischievous smile was back. “You and Baker? Tell me everything.”

I shook my head. “Nothing happened. We talked and,” I smiled thinking about Phoenix for a brief moment, “I think I know what I want now.”

“I told you everything you wanted to know about my life. You can do better than a vague answer.”

I gave her a brief rundown about Phoenix and Boone and everything. “But back to the point, Jeanette was awake and, well, she’s suspicious of me, but I’m also positive she’s hiding something. She did mention though that she couldn’t remember where she got the mirror. She said that the present just appeared.”

“That is quite strange.” Josephine picked off pieces of crust from her toast, letting them fall onto the plate. “The mirror could have been given to me by anyone then?”

I shook my head. “Not anyone, the person who wants you dead or the demon freed. Someone who knows about your experiments. Had you used it as just a mirror, none of this would have come to pass.”

“There are only two people who knew about my experiments and could have given me the mirror. My sister and Floyd.” Her shoulders fell. She looked miserable as she abandoned her toast completely.

“I don’t think it’s Floyd,” I said gently.

“My sister wouldn’t hurt me,” she insisted.

I nodded. “I agree with that too, but I think she knows something and she won’t talk to me. She doesn’t trust me. Maybe it’s like you. Maybe she’s not aware of what she’s doing. I was possessed once. You lose all control of yourself.”

“You think we’re possessed?”

I shook my head. “Possession wouldn’t come and go. Something else is doing this.”

“And Jeanette can help us figure it out?”

“It’s worth a try,” I said.

“She won’t understand,” Josephine said softly. “She doesn’t believe in things like this.”

“I never meant for you to get involved,” Jeanette’s voice came from the doorway. “I thought he only came to me.”

“Who?” Josephine asked.

“Granville,” Jeanette said. “He said he needed you to open the passage. He needed you to free him. That was all. Then we could be together.”

“What is he?” I asked.

Jeanette glanced at me, eyes narrowing. “This is all your fault. If you had stayed in your time, none of this would have happened. Granville would be free and we could all have carried on just as before.”

Josephine’s mouth fell open. “If Maggie had stayed and ignored me, I would be dead. That’s how this ends, Jeanette.”

“According to her,” she spat out. “Why do you trust her more than me? Granville says she is a liar. She isn’t even human. Has she told you that?”

“Sorry to break it to you, but neither is he.”

“Granville wouldn’t lie to me. He loves me and I love him.”

Josephine pressed her hands to the table. “Jeanette, you need to sit down. We have a lot to discuss.”

Josephine and I explained everything we knew, how the passage was opened, how it made us feel, and how and when Josephine would die. Jeanette listened, growing paler and paler as we spoke. “Maggie came from her time to help me. We didn’t understand how the passage worked and she got stuck. She’s been trying to help me figure out who is going to kill me.”

“And you think it’s Granville?” she asked weakly.

“We need to know what he is and what he wants,” I said.

“He just wants to be free.” Tears spilled from her eyes. “But I would never…” She grabbed Josephine’s hand. “I didn’t know. You believe me, don’t you? I didn’t know.”

Josephine hugged her sister, tight, both of them crying now. “I know,” she said. “It’s okay.”

“How long has Granville been trapped?”

“Years,” Jeanette said.

“How did you meet him?” Josephine asked.

“In a dream. He came to me. At first we talked, spending hours together until I couldn’t wait to fall asleep again.”

“And when did you know it was the mirror?”

She looked down. “The dreams didn’t start until I bought a new mirror for my bedroom. Not the one I gave you. It was an older mirror, but it matched my bedroom set. The first night I brought it home, he was in my dream. I wanted to help him. I wanted to… He said he wanted to be with me too. He isn’t like the others. He didn’t care about our money or position. He only loved me.”

A flood of sympathy for Jeanette filled me. The heart made us do many stupid things.

“I offered to help him. He didn’t ask me to. It was my idea.” She shook her head, squeezing her hands into fists. “How could I have been so stupid?” she whispered.

“You didn’t know,” Josephine said. “How could you?”

“We’ve all made mistakes. We’ve all made bad decisions. You can’t go back, but you can do what you can to set them right,” I told her and Jeanette looked up, black streaks of mascara running down her cheeks. “Finish the story.”

“I told him everything about myself and about Josephine. He was very interested in her work with ley lines. He said that they could help him finally escape. That a witch had banished him to the mirror when he broke her heart. All I had to do was give Josephine my mirror and he’d take care of the rest. I told him she wouldn’t want it. That she wouldn’t like it. The next thing I knew, there was a new mirror. I swear I never saw it until she opened the present, but the money for it was gone from my account. I’d purchased it, but didn’t have any memory of doing so.”

So it didn’t have to be the same mirror. I scanned the walls in the dining room, no mirrors only paintings. “Did you continue to see him in your dreams?”

She shook her head. “Once Josephine got the new mirror I didn’t see him at all. In fact, I never saw him again until you showed up. Then he appeared and told me not to trust you. He told me you weren’t here to help him. You were going to try to kill him and anyone else who got in your way. Josephine wouldn’t listen when I tried to talk to her about you, so last night, I confronted you and immediately you started asking about the mirror. It all fell into place exactly like he said, but I didn’t know the whole story.”

Baker would have known better about what to make of this than I did. Was a witch even strong enough to banish a demon to a mirror? I had fought more than my share of demons, and I had seen plenty of others do the same. They didn’t go down easily and witches were humans. The witch could have maybe trapped it by using some sort of trick. And if it was a spell, then it had to know how to break it if it thought it could get out. “Why would the demon take Josephine’s body into the mirror? What would it gain by that?”

The twins looked at me blankly. I really did need Baker or a library or something. “Okay, if you dream of him again, play along. Don’t let on that you know anything other than what he has told you. Tell him I have met a man and decided to stay in this time and that Josephine is giving up her research. Meanwhile, we need to research every type of demon we can to prepare for whatever he has planned.”

“There are different types of demons?” Jeanette asked.

I nodded. “Some are slightly more social than others, and at times interests could even align for one to help you.” At least I had to believe that. Jinn had been considered to be pretty much like demons for centuries, but it wasn’t entirely true. They still weren’t card-carrying good guys, but they definitely made up their own minds these days. “But in the end, they’re all still demons and they still answer to hell’s agenda.”

Josephine sprang to her feet. “I have books on demonology. I don’t know how accurate they are, but I have them.” We followed her into her study, cleared out every single mirror, then put on a record just in case Granville could hear us some other way.

“Let’s not worry about that. We can see what we can find, then run it by Baker tonight when he comes by. Now, what do we know about Granville? What are his distinguishing characteristics?” I paced in front of the window. “He’s living between worlds, he’s visiting and possibly controlling you two from your dreams, but his reach doesn’t last—”

“He is magic. You said he can feed off of you without you knowing it. He isn’t how you would picture a demon. He looks just like anyone else,” Jeanette said.

We scoured Josephine’s books for hours, each of us periodically getting up to move around, but nothing we read seemed to fit what we were dealing with.

“What about this?” Josephine asked finally, her eyes darting back and forth as she read the book in her hands. “I have a dream demon here. They break down barriers between the real world and the dream world and while you’re asleep they can possess a person or plant ideas in your subconscious. But it doesn’t look like the creature can leave the dream world. So freeing him wouldn’t be possible. Also it doesn’t say anything about mirrors.”