Chapter 10
Chapter Ten
Liz banged on the door. This could not be happening. But a glance over her shoulder told her that either she was hallucinating again, or that was Carson with the knife sticking out of his chest.
She pounded again. “Seriously! You’re all dead!”
Liz should’ve known better. Should’ve listened to the voice in her head that told her to avoid the inn at all costs. But then her conscience got involved—stupid conscience—and reminded her that she promised to help with tonight’s event. For the theater and the town. So she caved.
She truly had no one to blame but herself.
Maybe Clem. And Maya. Possibly Davis. Liz didn’t know how deep the betrayal ran, but she was willing to throw them all under the bus and run them over. Repeatedly.
“Seriously?”
Liz turned to find Carson propped up on his elbows, his expression arranged in a scowl. How dare he scowl at her. If anyone had the right to be scowled at, it was him. By her. So she did. “This is all your fault, isn’t it!”
“My fault? How is any of this my fault?”
“I don’t know,” she bit out. “But it is.”
Carson scoffed. “Real mature.”
Liz’s jaw dropped. “You’re one to talk. Sneaking into town and working with Arnold.”
“He’s my uncle! What was I supposed to say?”
“No. You say no. Or you don’t say anything, because that’s what you do.” Liz’s blood boiled with years of fermented righteous anger.
“Excuse me?”
“You heard me.” With a huff, she turned and began pounding on the door again.
“They can’t hear you,” a voice said.
“Maybe not yet.” She banged again, louder. “Let me out!”
“Uh, Liz?”
“What?” Something in Carson’s tone made Liz pause. She turned enough to give him some serious side eye. He was sitting up and looking at something out of her line of sight. She followed his gaze. “Oh, hell no.”
“They can’t hear you,” the figure of the Civil War soldier repeated.
Crap. Now was not the time for the inn’s carbon monoxide issues to cause her to hallucinate again.
“You’re not, by chance, seeing my hallucination again, are you?” Carson asked, his eyes still on the soldier.
“Ummm…” Liz debated her answer. Was it better if both of them were seeing things? Or only one of them? Wait. Could carbon monoxide make them hallucinate the same thing? Toxic mold? Shit. Clem hadn’t slipped something into that shrimp puff she offered earlier, had she?
“If by him you mean me then I can assure you, you are both seeing the same thing,” the figure said. “And please, call me the Major.” He swept his hat off his head and bowed.
“No.” Liz shrank back against the door.
The Major’s face crinkled in confusion. “But that is my name.” He tilted his head as if in consideration then nodded. “Unless perhaps, you prefer to call me by my given name. Major Charles Wallace, Soul Mate Specialist.” With a grin, he placed his hat on his head again.
“Nope. Nope, nope, nope, nope, nope.” Maybe if she said it enough, he’d disappear. Like the reverse of saying Bloody Mary or Beetlejuice.
“Um, no offense, dude, but we don’t want your service,” Carson said.
Liz bobbed her head in confirmation. “Yeah. What he said.”
The Major placed one ghostly hand on the hilt of his sword then straightened his spine and lifted his head. “So be it.”
Relief began to flow through Liz’s veins. She’d still have to work through the whole being-trapped-in-a-room-with-Carson issue, but if they could at least stop hallucinating, that would be great.
The Major gave each of them a shrewd look then crossed the room and sat down in an empty armchair near the food. Resting one boot on his opposite knee, he conjured a notepad and pen out of thin air and looked at them expectantly.
“What are you doing?” Carson asked.
“Waiting,” the Major replied.
“For what?” Liz asked. Hell to freeze over?
“For the two of you to admit that you’re soul mates.”
Liz snorted. Yeah. There was a better chance of hell freezing over. She turned around and banged on the door again. “Hey! We’re trapped in here and we’re both hallucinating! I’ll report you to the department of health!” Ha. Let them ignore that!
“I told you, they can’t hear you.”
“Why not?” Carson asked while Liz continued trying to get the damn door opened.
“Because I’m a ghost,” the Major replied.
Liz paused her escape efforts to glare at the image calling himself the Major. “No, you’re not.”
The Major’s jaw dropped open. “I most certainly am.”
“Prove it.”
Confusion crinkled his face for a moment. “I thought I was.”
Carson tilted his head as if considering the Major’s response. “He does kind of have a point.” Liz turned her glare on Carson. He shrugged. “I mean, I can see through him. All the way. To the plaid pattern of the chair.”
Liz refused to acknowledge Carson’s words. Or the fact that she, too, was able to see the chair’s upholstery through the hallucination’s body.
“I don’t know about your phone, but mine was fine a minute ago. Now it’s dead.” Carson looked at his phone, shook it, and pressed the side buttons. “Nothing.”
“Yeah, well, maybe if you kept it charged, it wouldn’t die at inopportune moments.”
“It was at eighty percent right before you came in.”
“Also me,” the Major piped up, looking rather pleased with himself. “I have a rather interesting skill set, if I do say so myself.”
Dammit. She couldn’t even try her own phone. She’d left it out there. With the traitors. Who swindled it out of her under the guise of a fair playing field for the murder mystery. Yeah, well, there wouldn’t be any mysteries when she murdered all of them. Repeatedly.
“Plus,” Carson steamrolled on, “don’t you think if they could hear us, someone would’ve come by now?”
Liz clung to her ire despite the growing feeling of unease that he might be right. “Not if they’re doing this out of spite.”
“My dear.” The Major gave her a look Liz could only interpret as pity. “This is being done for love.”
“Wait. Like an intervention?” Carson asked.
“Yes!” The Major’s face lit up, and he snapped. “Exactly!”
Liz threw her death glare at Carson.
“What?” Carson glared back.
“Don’t encourage him.”
“I wasn’t encouraging him. I was simply asking a question.”
“Well, don’t.”
Carson rolled his eyes. He leaned over and grabbed a pair of crutches from under the couch and pulled himself upright. “Whatever.” Turning his attention to the Major, he asked, “Do you mind if I get some food? I’m starving.”
The Major gestured toward the table. “Please. By all means. Go right ahead. You, too, of course,” he said to Liz.
“No, thanks. I’m good.” Don’t want to risk ingesting anything else Clem or Maya might’ve possibly spiked.
“Are you sure?” the Major asked. “I have the feeling you’ll need some sustenance.”
“For what?” Liz wasn’t sure she wanted to know the answer, but the question jumped out before she fully vetted it.
“Because we might be here awhile,” the Major said.
Liz watched as Carson crutched over to the food table and stood there.
Probably trying to figure out how to hold a plate and crutches at the same time.
Good. Served him right for playing along with whatever Clem and Maya had put him up to.
After a few moments he apparently decided to give up on socially appropriate behavior and started picking food off the serving trays.
Ugh. Pig.
Turning her attention back to the Major, she said, “That’s fine. I’ll wait until after.”
“After what?” Carson asked around a mouthful of meatball.
“After the party. When they let us out.” She’d have to go get drug tested. Or possibly get an MRI. Maybe both.
“My dear.” Another pitying look from the Major. “I think you know what needs to happen to let you out.”
“What?” Carson asked as he shoved a shrimp puff into his mouth.
Liz considered warning him of the potential for further hallucinations, but her warning died as another thought took root. A horrible thought. The same thought she had the first time she hallucinated the Major. “Nope. Not a chance.”
“Not a chance of what?” Carson mumble-asked.
“Kissing.” It took everything Liz had to force out the word.
Carson let out a strangled cough. “Why the hell would we kiss?”
“Exactly.”
“You don’t have to kiss,” the Major said. “Not yet, anyway.”
“Try never,” Liz clarified.
The Major lifted his shoulders and let them fall, unaffected by her proclamation. “Be that as it may—”
“It may,” Carson interjected.
The Major shrugged again and continued. “After careful consideration and significant research on the topic—”
“Research?” What the hell kind of research did ghost-hallucinations do?
“Yes,” the Major answered, nonplussed. “From an expert truly skilled in his field.”
“What research?” Liz asked, the uneasiness coating her stomach like an oil slick. “What field?”
The Major straightened his jacket and lifted his chin. “Dr. Phil.”
Carson choked on whatever he’d last crammed into his maw. Pounded his chest. Then swallowed. “Dr. Phil?”
“Yes. After many hours of careful scrutiny, it became apparent where I went wrong the first time.”
“With Maya and Davis?” Liz asked.
Carson continued to rub his sternum, his forehead wrinkled in confusion.
“No. With you two. At first I thought I made a mistake. That I ‘screwed the pooch,’ as I believe you young folk say—”
“No one says that,” Carson mumbled.
“—but then I remembered.” The Major leaned forward, a smug smile on his face as he flicked his gaze between Liz and Carson. “The opposite of love is not hate. It all became as clear as the golden thread still tying you together.”
“Thread?” Liz echoed. “What thread?” She glanced down at herself and spun as if chasing her own tail while trying to remove whatever ghost-thread was attached to her. “Get it off!”
The Major sighed. “Not that kind of thread. A magical thread. The Soul Mate Thread.”
“Dude.” Carson gave Liz a look similar to one you gave someone talking to themselves on the subway then turned that same look on the Major. “Are you sure you’re not the one hallucinating?”
The Major’s ghostly shoulders rose and fell with his heavy sigh. “I assure you, I am not. Neither are you.”