Love Your Entity (20 page)

“Why would I lie?” Sierra said. Then something else came to her. “Mother said you were a good kid, Bruce.”

“I never told you that.” Bruce’s eyes welled up. “She used to say that to me. She really was here. I told you so.” His last words were directed at the talking cat.

Sierra was still concerned about that fleeting image of evil. What was that about? Did Daniella’s premonition have something to do with that appearance? Sierra had never experienced anything like it before.

No way was Sierra doing any more séances. This was it. Things were getting too messed up.

“Save me,” a voice whispered.

Sierra looked around, expecting to find Mother even though this woman’s voice sounded very different. She didn’t see anything but she detected a sense of desperation along with the smell of lilies of the valley. Zoe was a soap maker. Perhaps the scent came from one of her soaps? Sierra remembered someone telling her that Zoe had a workroom in the apartment upstairs.

But why smell the floral scent now? Then she saw her. Adele. Barely there. Very weak. With eyes that broke Sierra’s heart. They were Ronan’s eyes. And they were pools of desolation.

Ronan was at Sierra’s side in an instant. “Where is she?”

“We’re working on it.” She directed her words to Adele. “What can you tell me?”

“Nothing.”

Sierra saw the look of terror on Adele’s face before the spirit glanced over her shoulder. Then she was gone.

Ronan was frantic.

Sierra could tell that he’d seen what she had in this particular case.

“What’s going on?” Zoe asked. “Who is Adele?”

“Ronan’s sister,” Sierra said. “She died in the flu pandemic of 1919.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” Zoe said.

“Parting is indeed such sweet sorrow,” Bruce said.

“Parting is shit,” Ronan growled.

“Maybe Daniella’s premonition had something to do with Adele’s death,” Zoe suggested.

“Or Mother’s,” Bruce said. “What do you think, Sierra?”

She thought she was going to go mad if she didn’t leave.

“You. Me. Outside now,” Ronan told Sierra.

She barely had time to grab her coat.

Once in front of their house, he started questioning her. “Why could I see her? Why couldn’t I hear her?”

“I don’t know. You didn’t see Ruby earlier. So it can’t be because of our bond or you’d see other ghosts that I see. That means it must be because of your ties to Adele. She’s your sister. Your family. Your blood.”

“Not my blood any longer.” His voice was gritty with emotion.

“What do you mean?”

“My blood is vampire blood,” he said curtly. “Just tell me what my sister said.”

“I asked what she could tell me. I figured you didn’t want me asking what she knew about a key so I just asked her what she could tell me. Her answer was that she could tell me nothing.”

“I saw the terror on her face.”

“We may have a clue,” Sierra said quickly. “Mother told me that she knew of Hal and that we’d find what we’re looking for in his grave. He’s buried in a cemetery a few miles from here. You could go there.”

“
We
could go there. And we will.”

The earlier empathetic Ronan who said they could end the séance if it got to be too much for her was gone, replaced by a furious vampire willing to do whatever it took to free his sister.

“I’m not into cemeteries,” she said.

“You prefer mausoleums?”

She didn’t appreciate his sarcastic question. “No.”

“You deal with the afterlife all the time. Yet you claim this bothers you?”

“
All the time
is an exaggeration,” she said.

“You do write about it.”

“That doesn’t mean I want to live it.”

She recognized the look on his face. He’d had it when she’d first arrived and he’d bellowed at her to leave. Back then she’d bellowed right back at him. So what was different now?

First, there was the fact that he drank blood and had fangs. And then there was the fact that they shared this damn vampire bond. But it was the other look on his face, the tortured remorse when he’d viewed Adele’s terror, that grabbed hold of Sierra like a fist to her heart.

Adele’s terror haunted Sierra as well. Ruby had shown anger and various other emotions, including fear, but not the abject horror that Adele had displayed. Sierra couldn’t put it out of her mind.

Did it make her feel better to think she was voluntarily going to a place filled with thousands of spirits, many of them unhappy if not downright dangerous? No. Because this wasn’t voluntary. Free will had disappeared the moment a drop of her blood had blended with his.

She wanted to show her anger. She wanted to rant and rave. So she did … a little.

“I hate this,” she shouted.

“So do I,” he shouted back at her before regaining control. “We’ll go to the cemetery as soon as it’s dark.”

*   *   *

“You came back!” Ruby joyously proclaimed the instant Sierra entered the house.

Since Ronan had seen Adele, Sierra needed to confirm her suspicion that that had happened because Adele was his sister. “Do you see Ruby right now?” Sierra asked Ronan.

He shook his head.

“You already know he can’t see me. Why would that change? What did you do next door?” Ruby demanded suspiciously.

“We visited with our neighbors,” Sierra said.

“You’re wasting time. If you don’t get rid of Hal soon, I’ll be doomed,” Ruby said with a dramatic hand to her forehead.

“Yeah, right,” Sierra said.

Ruby stood a little straighter. “No shit. Really. It has to happen by Valentine’s Day.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I was murdered on Valentine’s Day. I told you that.”

“You never mentioned that you had that as a deadline,” Sierra said.

“I thought I did.”

“No, I know for a fact that you did not.”

“Because I thought you could get rid of Hal quickly,” Ruby said. “You’re a ghost hunter—”

“I’m an author writing about a ghost hunter,” Sierra corrected her.

“You see ghosts.”

“Trust me, I wish I didn’t.”

“Too late. You can still do this, right?” Ruby floated after Sierra, following her into her bedroom. “You need to step on it though. No more dillydallying.”

Sierra sat down and wrote out a flow chart like she did for her writing. The problem with that was that she wasn’t a plot writer. She was a “pantster.” She wrote by the seat of her pants, hence the name. It was as if she was walking in a thick mist. She saw just enough of the story ahead of her to keep going but not clearly enough to anticipate everything that might happen. It’s what kept it fresh for her.

So she wrote what she already knew about Ruby and Hal. Just the facts as they’d been told to her. Ruby was murdered by Hal because she wanted to stop being a prostitute. Hal stayed in the house because of his treasure, whatever the hell that was. Ruby was stuck in the house because she wanted vengeance against Hal. She wanted the dark spirits to take him away. So did Sierra.

“What was your life like before you got into this line of work?” Sierra asked Ruby.

“Poor. Very poor.”

“So you became a prostitute for the money?”

“What other reason could there be?” Ruby said.

“Did you grow up in Chicago?”

“Yes.”

“What about your parents?”

“They died of the flu when I was twelve.”

“In 1919?” Sierra asked.

Ruby nodded.

“When did you come to this house?”

“I used to walk by it on my way from the tenement to church. Hal didn’t own it then, I don’t think.”

Could she somehow have passed by when Adele died? Sierra wondered. The odds were completely against that, probably one in a billion. Was there a connection between Ruby and Sierra’s family? “When did your parents die? What day and month?”

Ruby gave her the info. Sierra checked the city’s death records. Adele had died the day before. While she was at it, Sierra checked the property records for the house to see who owned it after Adele’s death. The house was purchased by Gregori Dimitrov and then was sold to Hal in 1923.

Dimitrov was a new name in this puzzle. Did he have something to do with the key Ronan was seeking?

Sierra’s great-uncle’s father purchased the house in 1930 at bargain-basement prices because of the Depression. Did the key have something to do with her own family?

“You’re a redhead. I thought you’d get mad more often,” Ruby said out of the blue.

“My hair is auburn.” Sierra felt like pulling her hair out in frustration.

“Which means red. What’s the big deal?”

“I’m sick of people using me for their own purposes.” Sierra got up and started pacing around her bedroom.

“What people?”

“You’re right. I didn’t mean people. I meant ghosts and vampires using me,” Sierra clarified.

Ruby shrugged. “Only the strong survive.”

“You survive to drive other people mad.”

“That’s not what I meant by thinking you’d get mad more often. I meant angry.”

“I am angry. Can’t you tell?”

Ruby squinted at her. “Not quite.”

Sunset was fast approaching, which meant that the time to leave for the cemetery was coming. Sierra switched on the overhead light and wished her emotions weren’t so conflicted about this entire mess. She hated the fact that Ronan could order her around. She hated the fact that one kiss from him turned her into a sex maniac. Yet she respected his loyalty to his sister.

She had to stop letting her emotions get the best of her. She needed to view this entire thing as research for future books. Not that she’d tell anyone about Vamptown or reveal its presence in her writing.

“You wouldn’t be able to,” Ronan said as he stood in the doorway.

“Wouldn’t be able to what?” Sierra said.

“Tell anyone about Vamptown.”

Damn. He was reading her mind again. “Why not? Because of the vampire bond between us?”

“Because I compelled you while you slept.”

“No you didn’t. I still know about Vamptown. And I’m an entity empath. I can’t be compelled. You said so yourself earlier today,” Sierra reminded him.

“Normally that would be true.”

“As if there is anything normal about any of this,” Sierra muttered.

“Agreed.”

Nerves nearly closed her throat, making it hard for her to swallow or speak. “What did you do?”

“Prevented you from speaking or writing about Vamptown. The only exceptions are the nonhuman residents of Vamptown. You are still able to talk to them about it.”

“Is this why I have had a headache all day? Because you messed with my mind?” Her nerves were now laced with a huge dose of anger. “What exactly did you do?”

“Don’t panic. I didn’t touch you.”

Okay, she could tell that much was true.

“Not that I didn’t want to,” he added.

Also true.

“What about my dreams?” Sierra demanded. “Could you read them like my thoughts?”

“No. All I did was focus my mind-reading abilities on a certain frequency…”

“What am I? A radio?”

Ronan ignored her snarky comment. “Pat e-mailed me the specific instructions last night while you slept.”

Was that why the oldest vampire had been so quiet during the séance today? He had a guilty conscience. Yeah, right. Like vampires had a conscience.

“Otherwise you’d be a security risk,” Ronan said. “Trust me, you do not want to be a risk of any kind to a vampire, or in this case an entire clan of vampires.”

“How do you know whatever you did even worked?”

Ronan pointed to her laptop. “Go ahead. Try to e-mail someone about Vamptown.”

“Okay. I will.” She sat down and entered her publicist Katie’s name.

You’ll never believe this but my house in Chicago is surrounded by an enclave of

Sierra hit the keys for
vampire
but nothing showed up on her screen.

Men with

She typed
fangs
but that didn’t show up

They drink

Blood
refused to appear on the screen too.

She was so aggravated that she hit the send button by mistake. Shit.

Katie, being the efficient professional that she was, e-mailed her back.

You are surrounded by men with what? Are you in danger?

She tried to type
yes
but that didn’t work either.

She turned in her seat to confront Ronan. “I write for a living. You are stealing words from me!”

“Only if you try to use them to reveal our presence. You better e-mail your friend before she calls the police and Alex has to come out. He went easy on you the first time. He won’t be that nice this time.”

I’m fine,
she typed.
Dealing with an ass of a character in the book.

Glad to hear you are ok. You just got another great review for your summer book. Here’s the link. Check it out,
Katie wrote.

Ronan closed her laptop. “There’s no more time,” he said. “We need to leave now.”

Sierra was so angry she could hardly see straight. Which wasn’t helping anything. She needed to regain control. Taking several deep breaths helped. “How are we supposed to get there?”

He held up a set of keys. “I borrowed Zoe’s car.”

Sierra snatched the keys out of his hand. “I’m driving.”

If she couldn’t control the situation, at least she could control Zoe’s Mini Cooper.

*   *   *

Sierra heard the voices before she got out of the car. They weren’t human voices.

Pointing to the closed gates blocking the cemetery entrance, she said, “It’s after hours. The place is closed. How are we supposed to get in?”

“Simple.” Ronan took her in his arms and leaped over the high wrought-iron fence as if it were nothing more than a mere speed bump.

Setting her back on her feet, he looked around. “Which way to Hal’s grave?”

Normally Ronan’s supernatural vault would have thrown her but she was distracted by the surge of voices filling her head, getting louder with every word. She was infused with cold. Not normal February-in-Chicago cold but ridiculous, the-surface-of-Neptune cold. Rubbing her hands together didn’t help.