Waking Sebastian (5 page)
“What the hell…? Get back here!” She jumped up and ran a circuit of the cove, inspecting all the trees for wires or mirrors, or better yet, for video cameras. If this was the kind of friends Mark had, she didn’t want to have anything to do with them. She had half a mind to take one of the cars in the garage and find this Ducky, tell him exactly what she thought of him and his jokes.
She’d fallen for it twice now. At least tonight she hadn’t been naked, and hadn’t let him get her off.
“But you loved it, remember?”
“Get the hell away from me, Charles. I swear, I will…”
“He was real. Very real.”
“Yeah?” She wheeled toward where the image of Charles wavered before her. “You think you’re real, too. But guess what? I created you; you’re make-believe.”
“Am I?”
Charles gave her the smile that drove Hannah crazy.
“You don’t believe that. I’ve read interviews you’ve given where you say your characters are real to you.”
Michelle buried her face in her hands, trying to get hold of her senses. Charles was right, of course. Her characters were real to her, were her friends. That’s why she enjoyed writing, and reading. It helped her to explore new worlds, to have new experiences.
“Charles?”
“Yes?”
She looked over at him. “May I try something?”
“Yes.”
Michelle walked to him slowly. When she was within inches she put out her hand, tried to touch his check. She was greeted with nothing but air and her heart rate shot up. “I can’t touch you.”
“Of course not. I don’t have physical form. But Sebastian did, correct?”
“Right.”
“Something tells me you have a little mystery on your hands. I hope you’ll allow me to help as you solve it.”
Yes, she definitely had a mystery to solve. She thought about asking Marta, but until she had a handle on it, she didn’t want to appear to be crazy. There were two ways to start. The first would be to introduce herself to Ducky, to see if he resembled Sebastian in any way. The second would be to find a library in town, do a little research on the Maddox family, and see what she could learn about Sebastian Maddox.
* * * *
She found the main branch of the St. Johns County Library on
He was also a rich young man who lived just east of Mark. The young, bikinied woman who’d answered the door told her Ducky was “in
Michelle had graciously declined before heading toward the library. The girl’s information could be taken two ways: one she was lying and Ducky was playing at being Sebastian, thereby punking her. Or two, Charles was right and Sebastian was real.
“I’m always right.”
Charles’ voice had echoed in her mind and made her smile.
She parked in the city lot and walked to the library. A librarian told her where she could find a book on
Michelle was thankful for the library skills her English teachers taught her as she quickly navigated the research area, finding several newspaper articles that focused on the history of the area and the local houses that had been around for a while.
Finding the Maddox name was easy, and when she did, she realized that Marta had left a little bit out when reciting the family history. The Maddox family had indeed tried, and failed, to start an indigo plantation. When that happened, they’d turned to shipping, but not in the way Michelle had thought.
The Maddox’s used their private cove to offer sanctuary to pirates and smugglers as they made their way up and down the
That business had closed down in the late 1930s when Richard Maddox, the last of the family, had passed away without leaving an heir. The house had been empty until Mark had purchased it five years ago. According to the article she’d read, it had taken quite a bit of renovation to shore up the building and clear out “unwanted visitors,” in the forms of snakes and other crawly things.
Making a mental note to watch where she stepped outside, Michelle hit the copy button, then rewound the microfilm. She paid for her copies as she dropped the film off at the counter. A glance at her watch showed it was a little after three. She hadn’t slept in quite a while and was tempted to go back to the house and hit the sheets.
But she needed to use the library's WiFi to contact Sandra. She retrieved her laptop from the car and found a nice spot inside to sit.
She sent an e-mail to Sandra, apologizing for the fact that her wireless connection didn’t seem to be working at Mark’s house and promising that she would try to get that problem corrected. Either that or she would contact Mark and ask if she could hook into his system.
It took no time to compose an email to Sandra, but she knew Sandra didn’t baby-sit her account. Michelle would wait for an hour or so to see if she got a response. In the meantime, she’d do some surfing on the Maddox family.
After twenty minutes of less than nothing hits, she finally hit pay dirt. A paranormal research site listed the Maddox house in
“Thanks for the heads up, Kate,” Michelle mumbled under her breath. Of course the only strange thing she’d seen at the house was Sebastian. Could he be the ghost? Somehow she doubted it. Ghosts didn’t kiss like Sebastian did.
She flipped through several pages until a hyperlink finally took her to the page dedicated to the house. The photo showed it in disrepair and Michelle’s eyebrows lifted. Mark had done quite a bit to the old place in the last five years.
There were a few paragraphs under the photo, telling the story of how Sebastian Maddox, son of plantation owner Benjamin Maddox, disappeared without a trace in 1823. Benjamin, reportedly rife with grief at his son’s loss, tortured the slaves, whom he blamed for the event. He told all who would listen that a local voodoo queen had used his son as a “sacrifice to their heathen god.”
Michelle’s blood ran cold as the story ended with Benjamin Maddox killing every slave he could get his hands on, but his son never reappeared. It is said, the article concluded, that Sebastian Maddox walks the plantation grounds to this day.
“Okay, what I need right now is a picture,” Michelle muttered. “If I were writing this story, I would have a photograph of Sebastian Maddox so the heroine could gasp and faint at the idea she’d kissed a ghost.”
“They didn’t have cameras in 1823,”
Charles whispered in her ear.
“Of course not.” She flipped through several more pages on the site but found no more information. “But there could be a painting, a drawing, a silhouette…something!”
“Are you one of those people who need physical proof to know something exists?”
Charles’ voice sounded as if it were across the room now.
“I would think a person who wrote for a living would have a little more of an open mind.”
“Shut up, Charles.” The man sitting next to Michelle peered over the top of his laptop at her. He frowned, then moved in his chair so that he was no longer facing her way. “Sorry, I’m just a little upset over something I’m reading.”
Her neighbor’s frown deepened before he gave her the true cold shoulder, turning so that his back was to her, his own laptop perched on the arm of his chair.
Michelle grimaced as she flipped through a few more pages. It was hard to focus on what she was reading when all she could think about was a man named Sebastian Maddox disappearing in 1823.
If his father had been correct, and he had been a victim of voodoo, did that mean he was a—she swallowed hard as the word zombie pushed into her mind and grabbed hold.
She closed her eyes and could almost feel Sebastian’s fingers on her clit, his mouth on her nipple. “No, zombies don’t kiss and provide orgasms, or at least I hope they don’t.”
The man who had turned his back to her wheeled around and pierced Michelle with a cold stare. “You are in a library, young lady. I suggest you behave.”
He grabbed his computer and stomped off, probably to report her to the librarians. Michelle couldn’t stop thinking about zombies, the undead shell of a person that did the bidding of its master, a voodoo follower that had brought it back to life. Or at least that’s what the movies always showed.
Truthfully, where real voodoo was concerned, Michelle had absolutely no idea how a zombie was made, or if it were even possible. But if they all looked like Sebastian, then she’d order up an army of them to take home with her: one for each day of the year.
Michelle held back a giggle, then clicked over to her email program. Sandra still hadn’t responded, and that usually meant she wouldn’t for a while. She closed down her laptop and gathered her things. A check of her watch showed it was almost six. That meant she would probably be facing the tail end of rush hour.
Still, maybe she could get home fairly quickly. But at the house she had no access to Internet.
As the idea of a team of sexy zombies serving her every whim still continued to fill her mind, she went back to her car and drove until she found a used bookstore. Inside, she asked the clerk for books on
The table was set with laptop, lantern, books, and, just to be on the safe side, some garlic she’d found in the kitchen, a tree limb she’d whittled to a stake, and a crucifix taken from the hallway outside her door. She wasn’t exactly sure what tools one needed to vanquish a zombie, and had found no information so far in the books she’d read.
Not that she’d had that much time. She’d arrived at the house just before seven to find an empty kitchen with a note from Marta saying that dinner was “keeping warm in the oven.”
Michelle wasn’t exactly sure what Marta was the guardian of, but she had a feeling it wasn’t the meatloaf, carrots and potatoes she found wrapped in foil.
“It’s almost as if she’s avoiding me,” Michelle had whispered to herself before she sat down alone and wolfed down the food as if it were the last thing she’d ever get to eat. Then she’d gone upstairs to take a nap. A natural night owl, she usually took naps in the afternoon, ensuring she would be refreshed and ready to write when the mood stuck her, usually around
.
But since she’d been in town she’d had to forgo her afternoon sleeping habit. She woke at
, took a shower and dressed in a gauzy shirt that she tied at the waist, and a long skirt slit up both sides. She hit the books as soon as she was dressed, keeping a watch on the clock so she could make it to the cove around six, which was the time Sebastian usually showed up.
Now she stared at the items on the table. “Those are for vampires, moron. If you wrote about a heroine using garlic on a zombie, you’d think she was nuts.”
Or would she? Michelle wasn’t exactly sure. She still couldn’t get her laptop to connect to any wireless system here and Mark’s computer was password protected, so it was of absolutely no help. She picked up the first book and turned to the index, looking for the word garlic. When she didn’t find it she turned to the second one, coming up with the same results.
After a fruitless search for ideas to fight a zombie she picked up the book the clerk had told her was the most accurate about voodoo and started to read. She soon found out that zombies were dead people brought back to life to serve a voodoo master. Contrary to popular myth, the zombies were generally used as plantation workers.
Several historians had ideas that zombies were created by giving people drugs that would make them appear dead. After they had been buried, their new “masters” would come along and breathe new life into them, so to speak. In a superstitious people, Michelle supposed the “dead” would believe they had been resurrected. They would know nothing of the drugs given them.
