Chapter 15 Ghosts
FIFTEEN
GHOSTS
This is how it could’ve happened…
JOHNNY
Who is this schmuck?
I look him up and down. Huh. Looks like just another rich boy to me. It’s Halloween, but he’s not celebrating. He has on this heavy black coat, with jeans darker than mine. Boots, too, and a square’s hairdo. It’s cut short, almost like a crew cut, without a hint of pomade.
He’s about as tall as I was when I was Living, broader in the shoulder, but he’s trying to make himself appear smaller as he creeps up behind Cassidy.
She hasn’t seen him yet, but the predatory stare on his face tells me that he didn’t start hiking along the edge of Scotty’s Curve for no reason. Nope. He was searching for something, and when Cassidy called out for me, she caught his attention.
I see the look in his dark eyes.
He was searching for my girl, and he found her.
I drift away from my post behind Cassidy, moving between her and the newcomer.
“Heads up, sweetheart,” I call, putting as much energy into the words as I can spare.
Just like before, she doesn’t react.
Fuck.
Cassidy can’t hear me. I’m too drained, too weak from my trip through the veil into the mortal world for Halloween.
I don’t even think she can sense that I’m here.
I heard her explain to Em how often she did recognize I was close, how she could hear me call her, so I know she can.
We have a connection, us two, but the shock of learning the truth about me has messed her up real good.
I knew she would find out. Em’s a Gray, but she took Cassidy under her wing. I wanted her to, yet Grays are fanatically loyal, and while she’s always been there to help me, Emily would do her best to look out for Cassidy, too.
So she brought her to the memorial that Cassie’s high school class got together and left for the two of us.
One stone had my name and dates on it—birth year, then the year of my death—and the other is for my lost Cassie.
Flowers scatter, wildflowers grown from the seeds I carried one by one to this place over the decades.
While I waited the long years for her to return to me, I visited this place often. It’s only fitting that, after Emily let Cassidy in on our family secret, she returned to work only to hitch a ride back to my deathsite once she was done.
I’m here, sweetheart. I’ll always be here.
You’re mine, and I’m not really liking the way this nobody is looking at you like he thinks you’re his.
“Cassidy…”
No answer.
Damn it!
He keeps tiptoeing closer to her. I strain trying to manifest the tip of my foot just enough to kick an acorn her way. Give her some warning that we’re not alone.
And then he takes the perfect step, crunching down on a dried-out leave, jerking Cassidy’s attention right behind her.
I see the moment she recognizes him. It’s not a good thing. Her eyebrows draw together, her lips parting as her pretty brown eyes go wide. She blinks. Once. Twice.
And then—
“Ryan?”
“Surprise, Cass. Miss me, baby?”
Excuse me?
Baby? Who does this guy think he is, calling my girl ‘baby’?
She knows who he is. That much is obvious. More importantly, she doesn’t seem happy to see him.
Me, too, sweetheart. Me, too.
I jerk my chin at him. “Who are you?”
Wait. She already told me. Ryan… where have I heard that name? I know Cassidy’s said it before, but usually under her breath as she walked around her apartment, checking behind her shower curtain, searching the kitchen, peeking into her closets.
Ryan.
Hang on a second there.
Is this the guy? Is this the fella that hurt her, sending her running my way?
Well, if it is, that’s his loss because the second I found Cassidy in Shadowvale, she became property of Johnny Gray.
Like my leather jacket. Like the cursed ring in my pocket, and the cigarette that not even being a Living can disappear.
“Scram, Ryan,” I sneer, dancing around him. “You’re not welcome here.”
He swats his ear, trying to brush me off.
Damn it. My anger is helping me push against the veil, but I’m not strong enough to do anything but chirp in his ear right now.
I’m here, Cassidy. I’m here, sweetheart.
I got your back.
She’s still gaping at him, oblivious to me. That’s when she gives her head a clearing shake, her curls bouncing, as she pushes herself to her feet.
“Miss you? Are you nuts? I’ve spent seven months hiding from you!” Her jaw works, but no words come out. It’s like his unexpected appearance has stunned her speechless, though she recovers quickly. “How did you find me?”
He inches closer, his hands in his pocket, a fake-friendly smile on his face. Scotty Hilton used to have a smile like that.
I spit on the dirt.
Cassidy eyes Ryan closely.
He shrugs. “It wasn’t easy. I thought about giving up once or twice—”
Her lips thin. “You should have.”
That’s my girl.
Ryan stutter-steps. Like me, he heard the venom in Cassidy’s normally sweet voice. “What was that?”
I’m instantly alert. Not like I wasn’t already, but while I picked up on the venom in Cassidy’s voice, there’s no denying the danger in the man’s.
During my racing days, I met all kinds. Some of them ended up in the pen if the road didn’t take them first. I often wonder if that would’ve been my fate, too.
Lord knows there were no lines I wouldn’t cross to get what I wanted.
I had Cassie, though. She made me want to be a better man so maybe if we’d won that race like we were meant to, she would’ve accepted my ring, we could’ve had the wedding, settled down, had some kids. Who knows? I could’ve avoided a stint in the big house, and had my happy ever after.
Instead, we died, and my second chance at forever is glaring up at a man who reminds me of Darryl Banes.
Darryl Banes was a brute with a sticker when I was a teenager. He carried a switchblade that unfolded to a six-inch knife. Kept it in the pocket of his leather jacket, and whenever someone pissed him off, he got the same crazed look in his eyes before he was poking holes in them.
He got what was coming to him. After messing with a girl from the wrong family, he ended up a floater in Shadowvale Lake.
His own weapon was turned against him, and any time I’ve run into his ghost on the shore, he has two smiles: the one on his face and the one in his throat.
Most ghosts don’t show off how they died, but Darryl… he wanted to.
He disappeared in the 80s. That happens sometimes.
If a ghost finishes that unfinished business of theirs, the big guy upstairs throws you a bone.
He either kicks your ass down to the devil or welcomes you in through the pearly gates.
Either way, this endless existence in the mortal realm can actually be over.
That might be what happened to Darryl. Or maybe he just stays underwater with the other bodies in the lake. It doesn’t matter to me. I’m only thinking of him now because he would use that knife of his on anyone. Man, woman, child… no one was safe.
Something tells me that this guy is the same.
He’s prowling around Cassidy. My girl’s bright enough to tell. With every step he takes, she matches it, keeping the same distance between them. The two of them are doing some sort of dangerous dance, leaving me on the edge of the floor, waiting to cut in.
“You shouldn’t be here, Ryan,” she says at last, smartly not repeating herself.
“Wherever you go, I go. I thought you understood that.”
“Maybe when we were together, yeah. But we were over a long time ago.”
So I was right. This used to be the guy she went around with before me. That’s fine. I can’t say that I wasn’t in love before, but now that I decided Cassidy’s it for me, it’s a good thing that she knows that any fling she had with this guy is done.
She knows it.
He doesn’t seem to get the hint.
“No.”
“Ryan—”
“I said ‘no’, Cass. You belong to me.”
She shakes her head. “Not anymore.”
“Stop fucking around. You know you do.”
“Did.” The word is firm. “Then I realized that you… we weren’t compatible. You have to admit that.”
“Don’t tell me that I gave up everything to bring you home with me and this is how you thank me? Stop being a silly little girl. You got me to chase you like always, and now I’m done with this game. Let’s go.”
“Game?” echoes Cassidy. “It’s not a game.”
“You’re right. And even if it was, I’ve stopped playing. You’re mine. You hear that? Now come with me. I have a car. We’ll go back to your place—”
She furrows her brow. “How do you know where I live?”
The fucker’s eyes flash. “I know everything.”
Yeah? He thinks that, does he?
“The lady said scram,” I tell him, drifting so close, it would be child’s play to possess him. Try intimidating my girl when you’re jumping over the guardrail because a ghost gave your body the order to do it before vamoosing. “Go.”
His jaw flexes. “I’m not going anywhere, Cass. Not without you.”
Cassidy’s eyes dart over his shoulder, but I know what she sees. The clearing is empty. The boy who dropped us off left her behind at her insistence. It’s just the three of us, and neither one of them knows for sure that I’m here.
She hesitates, then throws out her chest in outright defiance. “No.”
“What was that?”
A deep breath, and then, “I said ‘no’, Ryan. Shadowvale is my home now. My home. You can’t make me leave.”
“Is that so?”
She bobs her head. “Yes.”
His hand moves. It’s a tiny jerk of a motion, deep in his coat pocket, but I see it—and I call out a warning.
“Cassidy, watch out!”
She still doesn’t hear me. Even if she did? She would’ve been completely distracted by what Ryan does next.
He’s more like Darryl Banes than I thought. One second, he has this completely charming expression on his face, even if I wasn’t buying it. The next? His features twist in a cruel grimace, his hand yanking free of his pocket, his fingers clutching tightly to the handle of a switchblade.