The Haunting (Immortals) (10 page)

“Is that right?”

“Yes, it is.” He straightened to make himself appear taller, inhaling deeply as he did. Mai’s gaze flickered involuntarily to his chest, which was apparently what he’d intended because he gave her a knowing smile. “I was thinking that maybe we should go out sometime.” He took another step forward.

Mai backed up, wanting to keep a comfortable distance between them. “I don’t think so, Will, but thank you.” She kept her tone polite but not too friendly, hoping he would back off. Of course he didn’t.

“Let’s stop pretending. You’re single and lonely. I’m single. We could be good together, you and me.”

He reached out like he wanted to touch her hair, but Mai leaned beyond his reach, leaving his arm hanging awkwardly in the air. It didn’t seem to bother him nearly as much as it bothered her.

Her impulse was to tell him to leave her alone, but he had a key to her apartment. He could come and go as he pleased, no matter if it was against the law or not. She made a mental note to change the door locks.

It wasn’t a question of turning him down as much as finding an excuse he would accept. “The thing is,” she said, “I’m already seeing someone.”
Not good enough
, a small voice in her head shouted when Will’s expression didn’t change. “It’s serious,” she hurried on. “
Very
serious.”

“That’s okay.” He smiled. “I’m not the jealous type.”

“But he is,” a male voice growled from beside Mai, startling her because she hadn’t heard anyone approach. “Hey, baby. Sorry I’m late.”

She barely had time to register the amused sparkle in Nick Blackhawk’s golden brown eyes before he pulled her firmly into his arms and took her lips in a breathtaking kiss.

Shock momentarily froze Mai as his warm, firm lips seduced hers. She’d been on a diet of no sex for so long that her libido roared to life. She lost all awareness of her surroundings; all sense of time and place. Her entire world centered on Nick. His strong arms holding her. His hard, muscled chest pressed against her body. His tongue running across the seam of her lips, coaxing them open so his tongue could tease hers.

When the kiss ended, she couldn’t move.

What the hell had just happened? she wondered, trying to catch her breath. When she remembered to open her eyes it was to find Nick watching her with an amused smile on his face.

“Shall we go upstairs?” he suggested. “I think I’d prefer to continue this without an audience.”

Mai was still trying to figure out why he kissed her when he turned to Will. “If you’ll excuse us?”

Oh yeah. The lie about having a boyfriend. Now she remembered. “Where are my manners?” she said, fighting for composure. She needed to put some space between her and Nick so she could think, but his arm around her waist
kept her pressed firmly to his side. “Will, this is Nick. Nick is…” She stopped, unable to bring herself to actually say the word.

“Her jealous boyfriend.” Nick’s smile was pleasant, though there was a definite edge to his voice.

“I haven’t seen you before,” Will observed, his comment sounding more like an accusation.

“Don’t let it bother you,” Nick said dismissively. “Now, if you’ll excuse us.”

Mai let Nick maneuver her over to the elevator. As they waited for it to arrive, Mai thought she felt Will’s gaze boring a hole into her back and was actually grateful for the reassuring weight of Nick’s arm across her shoulders.

Finally, the elevator doors opened and they stepped inside. Will was still staring after them like he couldn’t quite make up his mind what to think. Then he started forward at a determined pace. Mai found his expression unnerving. He stared at her with such focused intensity, she automatically moved even closer to Nick.

The doors started to close just as Will reached out a hand to stop them. “I almost forgot that faucet in your bathroom. It needs repairing. I know it’s early, but since you’re awake, I could come up and fix it.”

“I don’t think so, Will,” Nick said pleasantly enough, stepping forward to block the opening. “We’re going to be busy.”

The doors closed and as soon as the car started rising, Mai finally collected her wits. “That might have been a bit over-the-top, but thank you, I suppose.”

“You suppose?”

She shrugged. “I had the situation under control.”

Now he laughed. “Sweetheart, that guy was about five seconds from being all over you. Face it, I saved you.”

“You didn’t save me—you kissed me.”

“I didn’t hear you complaining.”

“That’s because you had your tongue halfway down my throat.”

“Please, now you’re embarrassing me. My tongue’s not that long.”

His comment shocked her to silence for several seconds and then she giggled. “You’re unbelievable,” she finally muttered.

“So I’ve been told.” He sighed. “Look, I did you a favor back there. There’s something not right with that guy.”

Nick knew he needed to be careful. He wasn’t sure why, but walking into her building and seeing the maintenance man hitting on her had raised a sudden, fierce need to rip out the other man’s throat. He’d opted for staking his claim with the kiss instead. Something quick and indisputable. The minute his lips had touched Mai’s, though, all his best intentions had flown out the door. Now it was all he could do to keep from pushing her up against the elevator wall for a repeat performance.

“Anyone tell you that you’re impossibly arrogant?” she asked as the elevator stopped on the fourteenth floor and the doors opened.

“What can I say? Old habits die hard. Mai, wait up.” He grabbed her arm and pulled her to a stop. “All kidding aside, I don’t like that guy—there’s something about him. I don’t know what it is, but be careful around him, okay?”

She searched his face as if she wasn’t sure if he was really serious, but then she nodded. “Okay.”

He released her and let his hand drop to his side. God, he wanted to keep touching her. He took a step back and gestured down the hall. “Following you.”

She continued to the first door, bearing a sign that identified it as 14-A. Mai knocked.

They didn’t have to wait long before it was opened by a woman who appeared to be about Mai’s age. She was taller
than Mai with long, dark hair. Her eyes were red and swollen from crying.

“Has she called?” Mai asked without preamble.

The woman shook her head. “Nothing.” She looked past Mai to Nick.

“This is Nick Blackhawk,” Mai introduced him. “He’s the man I was telling you about. Nick, this is Jenna Renfield, Sarah’s sister.”

“Please come in,” Jenna invited, taking a step back so they could enter.

Nick walked into the room. There was nothing particularly special about the apartment: open textbooks on the dining table beside a spiral notebook and a pen, dirty dishes on the kitchen counter, a folded afghan on the couch.

“How does this work?” Mai asked, bringing his attention back to the reason he was there.

“First, I’d like to walk around and make a cursory search. Then I’ll enter the spiritual plane to see what I can detect.”

At Jenna’s nod of permission, he made a complete circuit of the room, getting a feel for the place. He saw nothing to suggest the missing girl had been abducted. “The bedrooms?” he asked.

Jenna pointed down the hall. “You’re welcome to look. Sarah’s is the first one.”

A quick survey of each room gave no indication that anyone had left in a hurry—either by choice or by force.

He went back to join the women in the front room. “I’m going to enter the spiritual plane now and see what I can discover. It’s important that you understand that searching for residual energy patterns isn’t an exact science. It doesn’t come with guarantees.” Both women nodded that they understood, so he went to the couch and sat.

“What do you need us to do?” Mai asked, walking over to him.

“It would be best if you both sat still until I return to my body. It’ll make it easier to read the patterns while I’m out.”

Mai gestured to the spot beside him on the couch. “Will it bother you if I sit here?”

Having you near makes me crazy
, he wanted to tell her. “No.”

There was no reason to put this off any longer and every reason to hurry. Making himself relax, he freed his spirit from its corporeal form. If one thought of the various spiritual planes in a linear hierarchy, the plane where the residual energy patterns were visible was located several levels below the dream realm. Of course, that was just an analogy since the realms were more interwoven than linear.

As his spirit moved into the spiritual plane, his brain automatically translated the contours of the energy fields into visual images.

He immediately found the residual energies coming from Mai and Jenna, shining like twin beacons of light—a rich forest green for Mai and deep purple for Jenna.

Mai’s energy, especially, resonated along his senses, beckoning him closer. Unable to resist, he allowed his spirit to brush against it and received a pleasant jolt. If he’d been corporeal, he would have smiled.

Continuing around the room, he picked up a third energy pattern. This one appeared as a pale blue and Nick assumed it belonged to Sarah. To be certain, he moved down the hallway to the bedroom that had been hers. As expected, pale blue light was present here as well.

He left the bedroom and continued down the hall to Jenna’s room. Here, he found more of the purple energy—some patches shining brighter, stronger than others. No doubt, these traces of energy were fresher, perhaps from earlier that day.

It wasn’t the only energy pattern he found in the room, however. There were two others. The first was Sarah’s pale
blue trail lingering beside the closet. The second pattern, a darker orange light, gave off a strange but familiar vibe and it took him a minute to recognize it. The maintenance man. He’d been in that room recently.

Sarah’s pattern seemed thicker here as if it was one of the last places she’d been. Concentrating on it, Nick followed the trail out of the room. Others had passed through this space, causing the pattern to dissipate. It made the trail harder to follow, but he thought it led to the front door.

In the spiritual plane, there were no doors to bar his path so he simply moved out into the hallway. The energy pattern continued down the hallway to the next apartment. Nick faded through the door and found himself surrounded by Mai’s residual energy. This must be her apartment, he thought.

The blue energy of Sarah’s lingered there as well. He traced it through the kitchen and then around the living room. The highest concentration of it, he found, was beside the dining table. There was something else there as well, but he couldn’t tell exactly what it was. Even stranger was that this new energy pattern only existed in the one spot. There was no trail leading to or away from it. An anomaly?

He moved back out into the hall and paused. The pattern of Sarah’s energy out here was older than the patterns he found inside, which was odd because he would have thought the residual energy of her leaving the apartment would be strongest.

He checked other floors, the elevator and the lobby but found nothing. Finally he returned to his body. When he opened his eyes, Mai and Jenna were watching him closely.

“I found her pattern,” he told them. “The strongest traces start in the back bedroom and lead to the apartment next door. Yours, I presume?” he asked Mai, turning to her.

She nodded. “That’s probably from when she came to see me. We talked for a while and then I went to get her a
book. When I came back out, she was gone. I thought she’d come back here.” She paused and her gaze fell. “I should have checked on her.”

He could tell that Mai was getting upset. “You can’t blame yourself. You had no reason to think she didn’t return to her apartment.” He turned to look at Jenna whose look of despair was heart-wrenching. “I picked up a pattern of energy that I think belongs to the maintenance man. Was he in your bedroom with Sarah?”

“Will?” Jenna quickly turned to Mai. “Didn’t you say that Sarah told you he was at our place fixing the closet?”

“Yes,” Mai said. “She didn’t want to be alone with him.”

“What time was this?” Nick asked.

“About six, I think.”

Nick didn’t tell them about Sarah’s trail ending abruptly in Mai’s apartment. He wasn’t sure what it meant and saw no reason to worry them until he did. Instead, he stood. “Where does Will live? He and I are going to have a little chat.”

Mai gasped. “You think he had something to do with her disappearance?” The expression on her face told him that she found the idea that Will had played some role in the girl’s disappearance all too easy to believe.

“I don’t know,” Nick admitted. “Right now I just want to ask him what they might have talked about. Maybe Sarah said something that will give us a clue to where she is.”

There was definitely something off about the guy, but Nick wasn’t ready to accuse him of kidnapping—yet.

It had been several hours since Will had run into Mai and her boyfriend in the lobby. The encounter had left him furious. How dare that man steal away his woman?

A maintenance call to repair the toilet in 10-B came in around six o’clock and he was still fuming by the time he finished up an hour later and returned to his apartment, slamming the door shut behind him.

“Appear before me!” he demanded, going to stand before the mirror. He waited for the mist to come up behind the glass, but nothing happened.

Damn genie
. Who the hell did he think was in control here? An ornately decorated wood box rested in the center of his dining table. He pulled it toward him and flipped open the lid.

Lying on a bed of crimson crushed velvet was his ceremonial dagger. With a handle of polished black onyx and a silver blade that glinted brightly beneath the lights, it was beautiful, though Will was too angry to notice. He grabbed it up and dragged the blade lightly across his scarred palm.

He didn’t immediately feel the sting of his sliced flesh and watched, fascinated, as a thin red line appeared. Within moments, blood had pooled in his hand.