Grave Danger (35 page)

“
Clarissa’s not coming,” Richard said to Josh
as they came into the room. He discreetly patted his friend on the
arm. He knew exactly what if felt like to be interested in someone
who barely knew you existed. “Sorry,” he whispered his
condolences.

They left shortly thereafter. Clarissa watched as a
car pulled up to the front of the house driven by a female S.S. She
looked to be in her mid-twenties, but Clarissa couldn’t place her
name; Audrey Something. She watched as they drove away, waving to
them as they left.

A sudden sting hit Clarissa like a sledgehammer. It
almost crippled her, causing her to bend forward at the waist and
hold her stomach. It was like someone was trying to fry her soul
like an egg.

“
I’m watching you, little girl.” The soft
angelic voice sounded harsh and cold around the edges. Without
needing to see the body, she already knew who that voice belonged
to. “A car will pick you up at 10:30 am, be ready for
it.”

The connection was broken leaving Clarissa to gasp
for air. She knew that Isabella was a dangerous young woman, too
bad it was packaged inside the body of a naïve looking teenager.
Yet there was very little naïveté when it came to this ghost
council member.

A voice deep inside Clarissa whispered to her,
calling out from that dark spot deep within, it told her that one
of these days she’d get that stuck-up little bitch back. Clarissa
pushed down the horrible thought, remembering that despite
Isabella’s age as a ghost she still behaved as a prideful child. At
death her human brain had not had the ability to grow as it should,
leaving her with the experience of an adult, but the underdeveloped
mind of an adolescent.

Clarissa went back inside. Tomorrow would come soon
enough, but at least she had tonight with Corrigan to look forward
to.

Chapter 19-

Across the bridge inside the LeMoyne complex there
was a stirring of activity as the family woke from that day’s
slumber. Across from the main house surrounded by a pretty little
garden and wrought iron fence, Margaret Ann dug around in the dirt
in her vegetable garden pulling weeds and checking the plants for
infection.

Wearing a baggy pair of overalls and sporting a pair
of neon pink gardening gloves she looked less like a monster and
more like a woman enjoying herself in her garden. She swiped a
piece of her blonde hair off her forehead, brushing it behind her
ear. As she worked on her knees in the garden, she swayed to the
music coming from a portable radio on the ground beside her.

The twilight sky enveloped the land around her
casting shadows over the houses as it steadily consumed the light
of another day. Every evening she came out to her garden to tend to
it. Xavier preferred to sleep until full dark, but she liked
basking in the soft light of the day’s final cadence before the
night took over. It relaxed her and made her feel almost human.

Margaret Ann heard the heavy footfall a moment
before she looked up to see her baby brother standing beside her
wrought iron gate. The waning light played across his handsome face
making his eyes sparkle. Lately those eyes had warmed, filling with
a light that she hadn’t seen in them before. It pleased her beyond
almost anything to see her brother happy. It was a good look on
him.

“
So what can I attribute the pleasure of your
company this evening?” She smiled up at him as he walked into her
garden. When he got close enough, she pulled him down into the dirt
next to her. “Have you come to learn the art of
farming?”

Margaret Ann patted his cheek affectionately with
her neon pink gloves. “Somehow I have the feeling you’re not here
to help weed my tomato plants.”

Corrigan wiped a smudge off his sister’s cheek. “No,
I don’t have a green thumb like you.”

Margaret Ann gasped in mock outrage. “Are you
suggesting my thumb has become septic?”

Playing along he reached for her gloved hand pulling
it off to inspect her thumb to be sure. “It looks a little
necrotic; maybe you should see a doctor. You can’t let these things
get out of hand or you might wind up dead.” He tried to make it
sound serious, but the smile gave it away.

She made a silly face at him, sticking her tongue
out like she was dying of some horrible disease. “Since when have
you become a comedian, my moody Irish brother?” She punched his arm
with her perfectly undead looking hand. Margaret Ann’s skin was
anything but necrotic and was deceiving to the unwary eye. No one
alive could guess that she wasn’t the same.

Corrigan’s smile faltered. It was true. When had he
become a man who made jokes or felt affection for his brothers and
sisters? But that’s what he felt now. He had always cared for them,
felt a great deal of warmth when he spent time with them. But now
it felt more real. Before he’d been trapped behind a glass wall of
his own making, where he was able to keep the world and all those
in it at a distance; it had been easier that way. He’d existed for
so long alone in the world it was out of habit that he thought
little of human interaction. Now, though, the glass had shattered
and he felt he was slowly letting them get closer.

He could only blame Clarissa for bringing him out
from behind the glass barrier into the living world. She was
quickly starting to mean more to him than any other object of value
or frail happy memory of his life. Corrigan hadn’t voiced his heart
to her yet, but already he knew that the bonds of love were quickly
weaving their threads around his heart. He’d become a bleeding
heart. Who would have thought?

It had been a little over a week since Clarissa had
changed his perception of women and ghosts. He knew she went out of
her way to make up for the miserable existence he’d lived through
before he’d come to stay with the LeMoynes. She made him feel like
he had value, that he deserved love.

She’d listened quietly as he told her the tragic
story of his death. How his only brother had fallen in love with a
selfish woman who he foolishly believed was his whole world. But
the woman had eyes only for Corrigan. They’d made port in the tiny
unnamed island several times before and each time his brother had
fought to win this woman’s heart, to no avail.

Driven to desperation Aiden had gone to a vodou
priestess to seek help. To his surprise she had been young and
beautiful and not the old wizened creature he thought she’d be.
When he explained to the woman how he loved a woman who refused him
repeatedly despite all his wooing attempts, but instead seemed more
than interested in his older brother, she told him of only one
solution. Kill your brother.

But there had been an ulterior motive on her part.
The priestess had seen the brothers in port before on a previous
journey to the island. She’d spied Corrigan on the docks. One look
into his ice blue eyes, seen the breeze finger his midnight hair,
and she had wanted him. So she made an exchange, the love of the
young woman for the life of the brother.

Aiden had drugged his brother’s ale while they’d
spent an evening in one of the local taverns. After complaining of
an unusual head pain, Corrigan had stumbled out onto the beach. The
moon had been full, a blood moon; the only light to guide their way
to the waiting surf.

As Corrigan stood still facing the rolling ocean,
trying to get his bearing and not puke his guts out, an alarming
feeling came over him. He never got sick on spirits of any kind. It
was then that his brother’s hand had crept around his throat like
the snake of Lucifer. The blade made short work of Corrigan’s
throat, his life’s blood leaking and falling onto the soft sand
turning it black as death in the moonlight.

Corrigan remembered nothing after that. When he
awoke, he was chained inside an iron cage. That stinking iron box
had been his entire world for the next fifty or so years. Elmira
had both loved and hated him. He was her pet, her play thing. But
she hated that even as she aged with each passing year, her beauty
fading, he remained the same. He had done horrible things in her
service, killed those that she was envious of and toward the end
she barely remembered he was human. For a time he forgot as
well.

During the entire retelling of his past, Clarissa
had remained quiet as she hung on almost breathlessly to his every
word. Tears had brimmed in her beautiful angel eyes when he
described the pain of not hunting for days, the way the beast
inside him roared in agony trying to claw its way to the surface
and making him almost insane. The revulsion he felt at being
someone’s personal sex toy as well as the instrument of death to
his mistresses enemies.

Clarissa understood his need to consume the living
and if there was a measure of unease in her eyes at the thought of
his taking a human life, she hid it behind a sweet smile or a quick
kiss that pushed everything away. Her lips could make the world
disappear.

Clarissa made him feel as if he had a soul again,
that he didn’t always have to be a monster, that sometimes he could
just be a man. He wanted to do something special to show her how
much his existence had changed simply because she hadn’t let him
push her away. She’d stuck; a stubborn opinionated little baggage
that’d penetrated his moody exterior and forced him to see his
place in this world in a different light, one that was illuminated
by the beauty of her immortal soul which she shared so readily.

“
What’s on your mind, Corrigan?” Margaret
Ann’s question brought Corrigan back from his thoughts. She had a
smug expression on her face like she knew what he’d been thinking
about.

“
How do you tell someone how you feel about
them without making it come off as overly rehearsed or sickeningly
sappy?” He’d thought about this a great deal, wondering if it
wasn’t just the words but the setting and the moment that made the
whole symbolic moment of confession more poignant. Corrigan wasn’t
sure if a physical object of his feelings would go over with
someone who was less corporal than other women. However, she wasn’t
as intangible as he had used to believe. In fact, sometimes, she
almost looked as fleshy as he. “Do I buy her something, something
shiny perhaps? So what do you like, as another female, what objects
appeal to you?”

Margaret Ann had to laugh at Corrigan’s most sincere
expression when he asked her advice on the subject of gift giving.
He’d never thought about buying another person a gift nor had he
ever accepted one in return. This was the first time she’d heard
her brother ask for advice on anything, especially not in the
etiquette of winning the affection of a woman.

It was still a challenge having her at the house
every evening before they went out. The first time she’d shone up
Margaret Ann had been in this exact spot in her garden. The ghost
woman had walked up to her just as she had pulled a little
caterpillar from one of the green leafy branches.

Clarissa had knelt down beside her, no fear at all
at being so close to one of her kind. She’d smiled at Margaret Ann
as she took the little creature from her, letting it crawl about on
her hand.

“
Are you responsible for designing all the
gardens in the complex?” Clarissa put the caterpillar back on the
earth. “I see you don’t use pesticides to keep away pests from your
plants.”

Margaret Ann had remained silent, taken back by the
boldness of this odd woman. If she was smart she would have steered
clear of Margaret Ann. Just because she thought she was in love
with her brother didn’t mean that they were friends or that she
shouldn’t fear Margaret Ann.

“
Yes,” she’d answered, turning away to focus
back on her plants. If she ignored her, the ghost would go away.
That’s what she’d been told. If you ignored the ghosts they would
leave you alone.

“
Is Corrigan here?” Clarissa asked after
several seconds of silence. Margaret Ann assumed she wasn’t very
bright to not get the subtle hint that she was ignoring
her.

“
I don’t know. I’m not here to keep track of
him for you,” she answered tersely, thinking that her rudeness
would send the ghost on its way faster. It didn’t.

“
I brought something for you,” Margaret Ann
looked up in time to see Clarissa digging through her old
back-pack, reaching through to the bottom until she pulled
something out wrapped in a piece of fabric.

At once Margaret Ann backed up in the dirt, afraid
of what Clarissa was holding in her hand. Chas had told her the
truth a few days ago, telling her that this ghost woman had once
been a bokor in life. Her powers were still with her in her deathly
animated state and she could be dangerous to them all.

Clarissa’s smile faltered a little. It was as if she
could see that Margaret Ann didn’t trust her or maybe was a little
afraid. But she pressed forward, moving the fabric aside to reveal
a glass tubular object with a tightly weaved fabric cord
attached.

“
I sort of overheard the argument with your
family and Corrigan told me about the piece your brother, Chas,
accidently broke because he was angry at my being in your home. He
didn’t mean it, I’m sure, but I was helping a friend of mine go
through her attic and I found this.” She held out the glass object
so Margaret Ann could have a better look. “Maddy said I could have
it and I thought you would like it. It can’t replace the one that
was broken, but I hope you’ll like this one all the
same.”

Margaret Ann hesitantly took the offering from the
ghost woman, her fingers accidently brushing against hers in the
exchange. She almost dropped it, but Clarissa caught it up in time.
Staring down at the ancient Chinese opium pipe that dated back to
the early part of the nineteenth century, she felt a small part of
her resolve to hate this woman crack. Later she’d wonder how anyone
could find a reason to hate this woman.