Haunted (16 page)

“I know, that's what isn't adding up for me, either,” I said under my breath. “I felt something in here when I walked in the door. It was so intense it nearly knocked me over. It was the same feeling I get any time Cooper has an episode – but worse.”

“Oh,” was all she could manage in response.

“'Oh' is right, as in 'oh shit',” I scoffed. “Peyta, I don't know what this means but it can't be good. There are things you don't know and I can't tell you about, but if we're right about what's haunting Cooper then it's no laughing matter; they're evil, plain and simple. You're in danger.”

“Ruby, ghosts can't hurt you. That's not how it works. They come after you because they need something from you. You have to help them figure out what it is.” She sounded so certain of herself, losing the fear that her voice had held only moments before. That bubble was going to be ugly once it burst.

“I think this is a more complicated situation than what's typical. There are things at play here that you haven't dealt with before. You're just going to have to trust me on this one.”

“But why—”

“Please, just trust me,” I begged, looking as exhausted as I felt. “I need to get help on this. Until then, I don't really think you should be left alone; it isn't safe. I'll make some calls when we're done here tonight.”

She opened her mouth as if to argue, then snapped it back shut before sound escaped. She would never have admitted it, but her eyes gave it all away. She was frightened by what I had told her. My own growing fear was only fueled that fire.

I went into the back room and shut the lights off, grabbing her coat and book bag on my way out. As I walked past I tossed them to her and grabbed the money out of the register. Slapping a neon yellow post-it note with the words “Closed early – Sorry” on the entrance door, I collected my things and gave Peyta a nudge towards the exit.

“We're closing early,” I said. She looked at me and silently asked me why with her expression. “I'm going to get some answers,” I informed her. “And I have a pretty good idea where to start.”

20

Sean's cell phone rang for what seemed like an eternity with no response; I didn't bother to leave a message. Somehow a hostility-laden greeting from me on his voicemail seemed a bad idea since I wasn't exactly sure where I stood with him. I groaned as I hung up and threw my cell onto the kitchen counter.

“Who were you calling?” Peyta asked, munching nervously on a bag of chips she'd taken out of her bag.

“Do you really want to know?” I asked with a raised eyebrow thrown in for emphasis.

“Maybe not. I'll leave that one alone, but let me know if you find anything out.”

“I will,” I assured her. “I need to see if I can hunt down Cooper, and let him know what's going on. I need him to keep an eye on you, though I'm not sure if that'll make things better or worse. I think it's a toss-up.”

“He could make it worse, but I'd feel a lot better with him around – safer.”

“OK. Let me track him down,” I said, picking up my phone. “Order something for dinner, please. The credit card is in my purse.”

I walked down the hall to my bedroom, seeking privacy for my call. Cooper was going to lose his shit when he found out and I didn't want it to worry Peyta more than she was already. Her anxieties seemed to be increasing steadily.

“What do you want for dinner?” she called down the hall at me.

“Surprise me.”

“That didn't go so well last time, remember? You turned green and ran for the bathroom” she said, laughing heartily while she reminded me in great detail about the curried chicken incident. “I'll just get pizza.”

I didn't bother responding and closed my bedroom door behind me. I sent Cooper a quick text before calling: Peyta's in trouble….

As expected, he picked up immediately.

“What's wrong? Is she okay?” he blurted out frantically, before a low rumbling sound came from his end of the call. “Is it Gregory?”

“No, it's not him. We've got bigger issues at the moment. Where are you?”

“Out.” The background noises were muffled, but I could hear the wind gust into the receiver, drowning out his voice occasionally.

I sighed loud and long so he'd be sure to hear my irritation.

“Thank you Captain Obvious. Where exactly are you?”

“I'm on my way home now.”

Fair enough.

“I'll be about twenty minutes,” he told me. “Tell me what's going on.”

I gave him a brief recap of what happened at the shop. He growled again at the mention of Gregory, but stopped when he realized that he was just a bystander in the drama.

“So what does it all mean?” he asked, feigning neutrality.

“I think whatever is haunting you has latched onto Peyta. I'm guessing it realizes that she has gifts,” I informed him. “What I find interesting is that she seems totally unaware of it, and you're consumed by it.”

“Why would my old pack haunt her? That doesn't make sense.”

“I thought about that, but what I'm wondering is if this ghost, or whatever it is, is just using the pack as its way of taunting you. Maybe it's not actually your pack at all.”

He was quiet for a moment before responding. I thought we'd actually been disconnected until he sneezed, signaling that he had been present for my explanation.

“That seems as possible as anything else,” he replied as a car horn blared. “Fuck you, asshole!” he shouted away from the phone. “Sorry about that. So what are we going to do now?”

“I think that she shouldn't be left alone. She's playing it tough, but I can feel her nerves. She's starting to worry about it. She kept trying to reassure me that nothing has ever happened to her in the past, but she doesn’t realize that there are things complicating the situation, so I told her she has to trust us. Somehow I don't think you've attracted your average haunting, and if this is a werewolf thing, she obviously can't know,” I told him. “The whole thing is a big hot mess.”

“Fuck, this is a mess,” he cursed under his breath. “You didn't call Sean about it, did you?”

“I did, but—”

“Ruby, what the hell? You wanna get me killed?” he yelled into the receiver.

“Listen! I didn't get a hold of him and I didn't leave a message,” I explained. “I didn't know who else to turn to. He knows things, Cooper…he's wicked old. I love you, but I can't risk Peyta. She's human, and she's probably no match for what we're dealing with. Look what it's done to you!”

He was silent once again.

“You're right. I couldn't live with myself if something happened to her and we could've avoided it,” he said, sounding resigned to the fact that he may have to forfeit his own life to save hers. “We'll do what needs to be done to keep her safe.”

I smiled at the phone. Peyta really brought out the Cooper I knew and loved.

“OK. I'll see you in a bit,” I said, hesitating before finishing my thought. “And Cooper?”

“Yeah, Rubes?”

“I really do love you. You're an epic pain in my ass, but we're going to get you back to being normal again. I promise.”

“I hope so, Ruby. I really hope so.”

* * *

Cooper arrived at the apartment shortly after I hung up the phone. He immediately made his way over to Peyta and hugged her so tightly that I swore she started to turn a slightly reddish shade. She never complained a bit. We then planned out how we would keep an eye on her through the rest of the week. There wasn't much we could do while she was at school, but we would take her to and from. I would keep her with me at the shop until we closed except on nights that I had class, then Cooper would cover for me.

He told me later that night in confidence that he was having fewer issues with night terrors, which I tried to play up as a good thing – it was for him. He wasn't taking as much “medication” as he had been which made me more at ease about how dependable he would be for Peyta. As positive as that information was, I could only see the negative implications below the surface. If Cooper had less attention on him, did Peyta have more on her? I shuddered internally at the thought but kept it from my face.

We slept with our bedroom doors wide open and repositioned the couch so it could be seen from the hallway. I suggested moving Peyta into my room, but she said she felt silly doing that and declined. I knew if things took a turn for the worse she'd reconsider, so I let it be.

I rested back against the pillows on the bed with my eyes wide open; sleep wasn't going to come easily regardless of how tired I was. I didn't like intangibles and though I'd faced fear in my life and overcome it, I didn't know how to face an enemy I couldn't see, couldn't grab, couldn't kill. Frustration coursed through my veins; I would keep Peyta safe even if it killed me. Whispering into the darkened silence of my room, I threw down the gauntlet.

“Bring it on, motherfuckers. Bring. It. On.”

21

The next morning I slept in later than normal, running me a good hour behind schedule for the day considering I had a business to run. Peyta was already at school and Cooper was off doing whatever it was he did. I hoped he’d had the good sense to follow her and make sure nothing happened on the way. I may have been paranoid about the whole situation, but it was one I felt I could exercise some control over, so by God I would.

It was late enough that I didn't have time to shower, so I scrubbed up the basics, grabbed some food and sped out the door. I stepped out into the street and realized it was a miserable day, gloomy, raining and cold. The wind stung my face and the frown it wore, and I knew that it was going to be a long, slow day ahead of me which was, in fact, probably a good thing. My mind was so preoccupied with the CF's surrounding me that basic verbal skills were becoming a challenge and price calculation would guarantee circuit overload.

I unlocked the store and prepared it for the slowness the rain was sure to bring. Once finished, I found myself leaning on the counter, my head in my hands, allowing them to massage circular patterns on my temples. It was a feeble attempt to release the tension that was steadily accumulating. Keeping everyone's situation straight was an ever-increasing stress – who knew what about whom, who should know things and who should most certainly not. With my lack of quality sleep and overall fatigue, I figured I was likely to drop the ball somewhere, spilling the collective beans as it were.

I grabbed a notepad and began scribbling down facts under headed columns, one for each of my CF's, starting with Peyta. I jotted down what I knew thus far: that she saw ghosts and always could, that for some reason her ability had intensified, and that she seemed to be attracting whatever monkey Cooper had on his back.

On a separate page I wrote down the questions I had yet to figure out. Who exactly did Peyta see in Cooper’s room that night? Why was Sean asking such bizarre and random questions about her? Why were her abilities intensifying, and did Sean know what was going on and have reason to be withholding it? Maybe he is just being an all-knowing dick.

I wrote Gregory's name on the page and looked at it for a long time before writing anything further. Did he have something to do with Peyta's heightened abilities? Did his presence coincide with them? Why hadn't we met him? Was he really the trouble I thought he might be, or was he an innocent bystander unknowingly placed amongst weres, mediums, and whatever the PC were? Perhaps the last few months had only increased my lack of trust in others instead of dampening it. I left him as a great big question mark taking up the rest of the page. We would have to wait until Peyta's party, then we could see what was going on there. I laughed out loud at the thought of the poor unsuspecting kid walking into a room of non-humans, in all our otherworldly splendor, and literally shitting his pants. If my suspicions about Gregory's intentions were way off, I was really going to have to work hard to make it up to him one day – if he stuck around.

I moved on to Cooper’s page next. His was a bit easier as there were fewer unknowns, but more concerns of how to deal. Scarlet put together that he was being haunted, and Peyta's seeing people-who-weren't-really-people in his room seemed confirmation of that. I knew he was doing drugs to try to cope with/avoid his night terrors revolving around his former pack. He seemed to think that his unstable behavior was attracting the attention of the PC, and was concerned that Sean had come back for that reason, using me as a front to get nearer to the situation. Though I wanted to discount his theory entirely, I couldn't.

Based on his prior actions, it was apparent that Sean cared about me in some dysfunctional way, but I didn't believe that would override his duty to his brothers. He'd stuck his neck out for me once and almost lost his head; I didn't think he was volunteering for the chopping block to save Cooper. I also didn't think he'd be above using me if necessary. That realization disturbed me, though I didn't know which was more off-putting: the fact that I thought him capable of it, or that it didn't seem to bother me like it probably should have. With the heat of the recent brother's death erroneously aimed at me, I felt more secure about Cooper's fate, but the uncertainty as to what would happen once my own story was checked out plagued my mind during the stillness of the night.

I hadn't shared with Sean that Cooper was reliant upon drugs to keep himself held together at the seams, albeit loosely, and I knew I wasn't going to. Cooper had said that he was starting to have fewer nighttime issues, and my hope was that he would normalize himself enough to be taken off of Sean's radar. It was a long shot, but a plan nonetheless.