Chapter 15 Ghosts #2
One flick of his wrist and the blade shoots out with a menacing snick. It’s a good six inches longer, and from the way he launches himself at Cassidy, he has every intention of using it on her.
No.
He thinks he can claim her. Hurt her.
Kill her.
My sweetheart.
Over my dead body—or his.
It would be so easy to do this. The veil is still thin, and I have enough energy to possess him. With me in control of his body, I could drop the knife, save Cassidy, maybe even turn it on Ryan before he could ever hurt her.
It would be so easy, but a split second later, I have another idea.
A dark, twisted, wicked idea.
Would it be so terrible if I let Ryan kill her? I’ve seen that look before. He’s not trying to hurt her. If he uses that knife on my girl, he’ll be aiming to see her blood spilled all over the dirt.
If she dies, there’s a good chance she’ll have unfinished business, too.
This will be Cassidy’s deathsite, too, with an anniversary a day after mine.
We could manifest as Livings on Halloween, then race together one night before reliving her own death the next day. Every other one would belong to us.
Together.
Forever.
On the off chance that her soul is ready to move on, I’ll cling to hers, hitching a ride to the other side with Cassidy.
Way I see it, without Cassidy for me to watch over on the mortal plane, my unfinished business is done.
I promised to stay with Cassie, to wait for her, and I did.
Cassidy Montrose is my new sweetheart. This time, I’m going wherever she goes.
But if I save her, I’m looking at spending a whole year as her ghostly guardian, waiting for the single day when I could hold her, love her, taste her… fuck her.
If she was a ghost like me, I’d have eternity with her, one way or another.
If—
Cassidy freezes. She doesn’t run. She doesn’t react. She just goes still, presenting an easy target for the deranged mortal man.
I could possess him, but I don’t, and I watch with an impassive expression as he buries his knife in her chest. Again and again he thrusts, yanking out the knife, shoving it back it, while Cassidy crumples in his arms.
The sound of her cries breaks my fucking heart.
I stick my hand in the back pockets of my jeans.
My fingers find the ring I’ve carried around with me for more than seventy years.
Look at that. I got a pair of tickets to a movie I never had the chance to see, and a ring meant for the one woman worthy of being Johnny Gray’s.
Here’s hoping that tonight I can finally give it away.
I couldn’t when I was a Living. Once I returned to being a ghost, it would vanish from her finger, reappearing in my pocket. But if Cassidy is a ghost…
She will die. Already I can sense the feel of death creeping into the woods. I don’t know what will happen next, but just in case we both move on together, I can’t let this psycho get away with murdering my girl without paying the same price.
The whole attack lasted maybe ten seconds. It was a frenzied, impulsive act. I have to believe that. Ryan had realized that he’d lost Cassidy for good, and instead of taking it like a man, he wanted to make her bleed.
Same here, bastard.
I wait for him to understand what he’s done, to really see why this was going to be his fate, then slip into Ryan as he jerks back, letting Cassidy’s body slump to the ground.
I possess him, not even bothering to push down his soul so that I have complete control. The shock of having a ghost force their way into his body relaxes his grip on his bloody knife just enough for me to turn it against him.
With the point digging into the side of his neck, I rumble roughly in my own voice, using his mouth: “This is for her.”
One quick slash and, just like what happened to Darryl Banes, I use Ryan’s own blade to slit his throat.
I’m making a big wager here. I don’t know what will happened if Cassidy’s killer becomes the latest in Shadowvale’s horde of ghosts, but I figured that committing murder in a jealous fit should be enough for a one-way ticket down below.
The tug is instant. As though someone’s jabbed a hook through my gut, yanking on it, I know that’s exactly where Ryan is going. He belongs to the devil now, and Cassidy… I just have to hope she’s still mine.
I hop out of the human in time to watch his big body collapse near my girl’s. The cops who come up here later will no doubt consider this a murder-suicide, and that’s close enough, ain’t it?
Ryan’s body is an empty shell. With his soul being dragged down into the hellmouth, it’s Cassidy I’m watching like a hawk.
My cigarette appears between my pristine fingers. I slip it between my lips, sucking it anxiously as I wait.
Death creeps closer. With it, a ghostly blue aura that weaves around Cassidy’s dying body. I go still. The blue pulses, then flares, and when the bright light settles beneath the moonlight, I’m looking at a vaguely transparent version of the woman who stayed with me.
Thank fucking God.
She stayed.
I drift over to her. I remember when I first died. The shock of seeing my ruined body below after I first became a ghost had fucked me up for my first few years. I might have stood back and allowed this to happen to her. That doesn’t mean she needs to confront how brutal her death was.
In this, I can protect her.
“Come here, sweetheart. I’ve been waiting for you.”
Her eyes are a glimmering brown now as she locks on me. “Johnny?”
“It’s me, Cassidy. It’s me.”
“But you…” She turns slightly, peering at me closely. I’m not as transparent as she is. She’ll fill out some when she gathers more ghostly energy like I have, but even though I’m more solid than she is, there’s no denying that I’m a ghost. Or that— “You’re dead.”
I nod. What else can I do? My great-niece told her all about me.
After I died, my old man found some high schooler to knock up. Robby was my brother, even though he never knew me, though he knew the stories. It might’ve been called Scotty’s Curve, but everyone in Shadowvale knows who haunts that road. Johnny Gray. He was proud to be the famed hotrodder’s blood.
Robby had kids of his own. Three, and I watched over all of them as they grew up.
They shared the same stories, turning the legend of a street racer who lost control into one where a reckless man bet the devil he’d always win and lost his love and his life when, one Halloween, the devil decided he got too big for his britches.
Emily’s the only kid of the next generation. The only girl, too, in the Gray family, and she’s always seemed to sense me in ways that the other Grays couldn’t.
She knew the stories. She knew about Cassie.
She gave me Cassidy.
And now I took her.
I drift closer, holding out my hand.
As if she at least understands that part, Cassidy floats closer, slipping hers into mine. We’re both ghosts, made of the same phantasm, and her touch electrifies me.
“Do you know what happened?” I keep my tone gentle.
Her expression is bewildered. “I… I died. Ryan promised he’d never get violent with me, but he lied. He… he killed me.”
He did. “I tried to stop him. I tried to warn you. I’m so sorry, sweetheart. If I could’ve done anything—”
She squeezes my fingers. “I saw the body. Both of ours. What happened to him?”
Careful, Johnny. She doesn’t know because she was dying, and if she learns the truth of it all, she’ll leave you.
I can’t let that happen.
“It all happened so quickly.” I use my free hand to tuck a stray curl behind her ear. “He had the knife out before I knew it, and I wasn’t fast enough to stop him. When I saw what he’d done, I just reacted. He used a blade on you, sweetheart. It was only fair I used it on him.”
She looks so confused. That happens. The first few days after a new ghost transitions from the land of the Living to the world of death is hazy and hard to understand.
Luckily for Cassidy, she has Johnny Gray.
“Shh,” I say, soothing her before she can ask another question. “I promise you that it will all make sense. I love you. Yeah? I told you that before, and I meant it. I love you, Cassidy, and you don’t have to worry about anyone hurting you ever again.”
Cassidy glances over her shoulder, drifting closer to me as she looks over the two fallen bodies. “Where is he? I’m here… where did Ryan go?”
“Where he belongs. Went straight to hell.”
Watching her delicate profile, I see her brown eyes flaring to a deep golden shade. Phew. She’s happy to hear that. I’m glad. It’s nice to see my girl has a vengeful side.
Ripping her gaze away from her corpse, she asks softly, “What about me? Am I like you? Am I…”
“A ghost?”
She nods.
I stroke her chin. “Looks like it.”
“But why?”
Well, there’s an easy enough answer to that.
Swallowing my grin so that she can’t tell how fucking glad I am that she’s dead, I rub the side of her throat with my thumb. “Because you promised me you’d still love me tomorrow.”
She did, and I’m holding her to that and an eternity of tomorrows.
I waited seventy years for my love to be returned to me.
Now I have, and I will never let her go.
“Because I’m Cassie? Because I’m not. I don’t know if you think that I am—”
Oh, sweetheart, no.
I swallow her protest with a kiss, collaring her throat, tipping her head back so that she has no choice but to let me.
If I was worried that kissing my girl as a ghost would be as muffled as my smoke, I’m thrilled to see that that isn’t so.
I come alive—well, not really—as Cassidy digs her ghostly nails into my t-shirt.
When I finally pull away, I rest my forehead against hers. “Because you’re you, Cassidy, and that doesn’t change a damn thing about what I said. You’re still mine.”
Always.