Something Witchy (Mystics & Mayhem) (6 page)

See?   I told you I had issues!

At first, I just thought they were regular people.  Then, when I was about eight I guess, I started to notice there was something about them that wasn’t right—other than the fact that they’re pulse-impaired.  For one thing, they don’t really
look
right.  They’re kind of blurry around the edges, like you’re seeing them through a filmy window.  For another, I was the only one who seemed to be able to see them at all. 

It’s the very definition of creepy until you get used to it the way I have.  But, to be perfectly honest, there are only two things you really need to know about dealing with the dead.  One:  They all want something and are whiny as hell if they don’t get it.  Two:  If you don’t want your life taken over by them, ignore them. 

And, apparently, there was one other rule.  You don’t get a crush on one.  That had never been something I needed to add to the list before.  Then again, I had never had a reason to.

For a second, I wanted to cry.  Why?   Who knows?   Maybe it was because I’d had the suckiest day of my life.  Maybe it was because it didn’t seem fair that I had been slobbering over a dead guy.  No matter the reason, I wanted to cry and had to swallow hard not to.

“I’m tired of warning you.  Take one more step, and I’m going to see how many bones I can break,” Dead Boy said, the silky tone of his voice making the threat that much more chilling.  “We can do this the easy way or the hard way, Jack.  You can turn around and walk away, or I can make you wish you had.  What’s it going to be?”

Something about him valiantly coming to my defense irritated me.  Did I look helpless or something?  Sure, I might have been small, but you know what they say about dynamite… 

Besides, he was a ghost!  What was he going to do? 
Boo
Jack to death?

When I went to step around him to handle my own problems like the big girl I was, though, he stepped in front of me again.  I tried to go the other way, but he just did it again.  I was about to tell him to get out of my way, that I didn’t need his help, when someone grabbed my hand and pulled me back.

I nearly jumped out of my skin.  Whirling around, I found Kim standing next to me glaring at Jack like he was something nasty she had stepped in.  I had been so overwhelmed by my ghost buddy that I had forgotten she was even there.  I had to shake my head, hard, when I realized Blake had arrived as well, and I had missed it.

Unlike Kim, who looked a little nervous, Blake was watching the show with what could only be anticipation gleaming in his dark eyes.  I couldn’t help but think he was looking forward to seeing Jack get his ass kicked.

And then something amazing hit me, something I should have noticed right away.  They could
all
see the dead guy!  He was corporeal!  How had he done
that
little trick?  I had been dealing with the dead for more years than I could even remember, but I had never had a ghost go visible on me.  I was simultaneously curious, terrified, and just plain irritated by it.

I mean, his nice little afterlife trick didn’t really change anything, did it?  He was still dead, wasn’t he?  That meant he was still off limits as boyfriend material.

Yeah, like I would have had a chance with him, anyway,
I thought, feeling strangely hurt.  What can I say?  I’m a realist.  I wasn’t even in Ghost Boy’s league.  About the best thing I could say about myself in comparison was that I still had a pulse.

I saw the moment when Jack seriously considered taking out his frustration on my unwanted hero’s face come and go just as the sound of sirens announced the imminent arrival of the cavalry coming to the rescue.  With a disgusted sound and one final look at me that made me feel like my skin was crawling, he turned on his heel and marched back to his Hummer.  To my surprise, he jumped inside and tore off down the road, leaving a trail of twisted metal and glass in his wake.

“Well, that was disappointing,” Ghost Boy said, turning back to me, Kim, and Blake with a grin.  His gaze lingered on me for a second longer than the others and I felt my whole body go warm.  It was like falling into the sun, that look.  “I was looking forward to being the hero.”

“Sorry about your car, man,” Blake said, nodding toward the mangled mess that had once been an obviously expensive sports car.  “My brother does body work in town.  I can call him if you want.  What kind of car is that, anyway?”

“An Aston Martin Vanquish.”

I honestly thought Blake stopped breathing.  All the blood drained from his face and he actually started to look like he was going to pass out.  I will never understand the whole thing with guys and cars.  It was a
car
!  Two doors, four wheels, and some upholstery.  The way Blake was looking right then, you would have thought we had just played a part in trashing a fine piece of art.

“But…but…those cars don’t even come out until next year!” Blake said, staring over at the wreckage again with an almost sick look. “How did you get one?”

“Two,” Dead Boy corrected, still staring at me.  “I have two of them.”

“T…t…two?!” Blake said in a pretty unmanly squeak.  “Where did you get
two
of them?”

“I know a guy.”  He smiled when Blake just shook his head in despair.  When he turned back to me, I had the feeling that he was trying to put me in a hormone-induced coma with his eyes alone.  “It’s just a car.  I’m Nathan Ashley, by the way, but my friends call me Nate.  And you are…?”

“Blake Carter,” Blake choked out, shaking himself out of his grief over a car that hadn’t even belonged to him.  “And this is my girlfriend, Kim Robbins, and our best friend…”

“Not impressed!” I said, rolling my eyes, before Blake could introduce me.  So what if he had a car worth half a million dollars?  It didn’t matter how much your car was worth if you didn’t know how to
drive
the damn thing.  “What possessed you to stop in the middle of the road like that?  You nearly got us killed, D—”

I snapped my mouth shut just in time to keep from calling him Dead Boy.  I had never told anyone except my grandmother about my pulse-impaired friends—and the memory of how well that had gone had guaranteed I would never try it again.  It was the only other secret I had kept from Kim in all the years we’d known each other.  I wasn’t about to let this guy force me to tell her in the middle of the road with blue lights coming around the curve.

“Dumbass!” I finished, instead.

“Yeah,” he murmured, running a hand over the back of his neck with a sheepish smile.  “I’m really sorry about that.  It didn’t go quite the way I planned.”

“No shit?” I asked, arching an eyebrow at him.  “You mean to tell me you actually
had
a plan?”

 “Are you always this pleasant to strangers who come to your rescue?” he asked with a definite spark of laughter in his eyes.

“This may surprise you, Smartass in Tinfoil, but I don’t need to be rescued.” 

He lifted one perfect eyebrow in disbelief, and my chin shot up stubbornly.

“Don’t let her size fool you, Nate,” Blake cut in, not even bothering to hide the fact that he was trying not to laugh.  “Ember can be a handful when she’s pissed.”

“I just bet she could,” Nathan murmured, his eyes smoldering beneath his lashes.

Before I could answer, two police cruisers arrived with an ambulance screeching to a stop only a few seconds later.  I decided the Bad Karma Fairy
really
hated me when the first cop to step out of his car was none other than Deputy Donut himself.  Three times in one day?  Wow.  Didn’t I feel lucky.  He looked at me for a second, his nearly nonexistent lips turned up in a smirk, then turned to look at Nathan’s demolished car.

“Your work, Ember?” he asked, sounding like he was already writing my next set of tickets in his head.

“No, sir,” Nathan said, cutting off the not-so-wise comeback on the tip of my tongue and probably keeping me out of jail.  “It was a hit and run.  He hit these two young ladies, then me.”

“Is that right?”  I could tell by the skeptical sound of his voice that Deputy Donut was still trying to find some way to make it my fault.  So I kept my mouth shut.  “Well, let’s get you kids checked out, then you can tell me all about it.”

We were checked over from top to bottom by the EMTs and questioned repeatedly about what had happened for the next hour.  Blake got off easy; he hadn’t been there to have anything to tell.  Kim was playing stupid, claiming she hadn’t seen a thing.  That only left me and Nathan.

Nathan came to my rescue again with the lamest story in history about not really seeing the guy who hit him. I could feel him staring at me the entire time he was talking.  It wasn’t like when Jack stared at me.  I didn’t feel nervous or violated on some level.  It was actually kind of amazing, being the sole focus of Nathan’s attention – until I reminded myself for the hundredth time that he was a walking, talking corpse.

That bitter reminder didn’t do much for my temper, however.  It was bad timing, too, considering Deputy Donut decided it was my turn to speak up right about then.

“What about you, Ember?  Did you see this mysterious car and driver your friends here can’t seem to describe?”

I thought about just blowing the whole thing and giving him a play-by-play of what had happened and when and by whom and… well, you get the picture.  But I couldn’t.  The longer I thought about it, the more I felt like I should—maybe for the first time in my entire life—keep  my big mouth shut.  There was more going on than I understood; that was becoming very, very, clear.  So, against my better judgment, I sucked it up and gave the same story everyone else was passing out.

“First off,
he
isn’t my friend,” I told Deputy Donut, jabbing my finger in Nathan’s direction without actually looking at him.  “I only met him today.  But, no, I didn’t get a good look at the guy.  It all happened really fast, and I was pretty scared.”

“So, none of you saw anything?  It was a phantom, right?” he asked, his smart-ass tone not doing anything for my temper, either.  “Come on, kids. Give me
something
. A color or a number on the license plate…something!  Or was the car invisible altogether?”

“Red,” I snapped, telling at least part of the truth.  “Some kind of SUV or something.  Oh, wait!  I have an idea!  Maybe you should go
look
for them instead of harassing
us
!  Yeah, that would be a
much
better use of your time!”

Kim groaned aloud, Blake choked on a laugh, and Nathan’s eyebrows shot up in amused admiration.  Deputy Donut, on the other hand, was returning my glare with one of his own, his flabby face turning an unhealthy-looking mottled purple.  Judging by the way he was looking at me, I had the distinct impression that he was imagining flipping the switch on an electric chair with me in it.  Shaking his head, he jotted a few more things down on the notepad in his hand, then snapped it shut and gave me another dark look.

“Son, if you’re thinking about chasing after that one, you have all my sympathy,” he told Nathan, handing him back his driver’s license and insurance information.  “She’s a lot more trouble than she’s worth.”

I flipped him off the second his back was turned. 

“I think it’s too late for me, Sheriff,” Nathan said just loud enough for me to hear.  “I’m half in love with her already.”

I snorted in disbelief as that line of crap rolled off his tongue, even as butterflies the size of bald eagles took flight in my stomach and my cheeks heated up yet another notch.  Who was
he
kidding?  Not me, that was for sure.  I lived in the real world, the world where guys like Nathan only fell in love with girls like me in the movies—even dead ones.

“You need a ride, son?” Deputy Donut asked Nathan when he’d made arrangements to have the remains of his beautiful car towed to the closest salvage yard.

 “We got him, Sheriff Martin!” Blake said loudly, breaking into the conversation.  He grinned at me when I whirled around to stare at him in horror.  “We’ll drive him home.  It’s no problem.”

Oh, hell yes it
was
a problem!

“Will you excuse us for a second?” I ground out between clenched teeth.  Without waiting for the others to answer, I grabbed Blake’s arm and dragged him across the road and back behind his truck.  When he just gave me that little evil grin of his again, I hissed, “Dude!  Are you
insane
?  We can’t take him with us!”

“Really?” Blake asked, that smirk of his getting wider.  “Why not, Em?”

“Because!” I half-shrieked, throwing my hands up in frustration.

I knew that wasn’t going to be good enough, but what was I supposed to say?  That I wasn’t thrilled about the prospect of getting in the car with a dead guy?  Yeah,
that
would make me sound really normal.  I started thinking fast for something I could tell him that wouldn’t land me in the loony bin with a nice I-love-me jacket, but my brain simply didn’t want to be cooperative.

Come on, Em!  Think!
I told myself, gnawing on my lower lip like that would jump start my brain. 
Why shouldn’t we take him with us?

Because he made me feel like I was riding lightning every time he looked at me.  Because everything about him called to me, from his voice to his eyes to his damn cologne.  Because I was afraid that if I didn’t get as far away from him as I could get, I was going to spend the rest of my life wanting something I could never have.

Oh, yeah.  And because he was
dead
!  It just kept coming back to that, didn’t it?

“Because!  For all we know he’s a serial rapist or a murderer or something!” I finally finished, hoping I didn’t sound as hysterical as I suddenly felt.

“
Nooo
, I don’t think that’s it,” Blake said, rubbing his chin like he was putting some serious thought into it.  “You know what I think, Em?  I think you don’t want to take him home because he makes you feel something.”

“Oh, please!” I snorted.  “Get real, Blake!  I just met the guy!”

He was right, but I wasn’t about to admit it.  Nathan did make me feel something.  I felt…connected…to him somehow.  But, that wasn’t possible.