Chapter 28
Twenty-Eight
“You scared me,” Sam said finally, his voice low but rough.
The words felt dangerous in the quiet kitchen.
The three of them sat around the scarred wooden table, plates of untouched grilled cheese cooling between them.
His mother had insisted she was starving, but she only picked at the crusts.
He and his father hadn’t taken more than a bite.
He almost wished Susan were here—she wouldn’t let him push—but Susan hadn’t seen what he’d seen. She hadn’t endured the house, or the ghost, or the church.
“When I saw you in the church—” He broke off, throat tight.
“You don’t have to be afraid, Sam,” his mother whispered, her voice raspy, hollow with exhaustion.
“Your mother would never hurt you,” his father said firmly, his eyes fixed on Leslie. His voice carried the kind of devotion Sam remembered from childhood.
But Sam’s hands curled against the table. “She wasn’t…herself. You didn’t see it.”
His dad let out a long breath. “But I have seen it.” He didn’t look away. “I do know what you’re experiencing. It’s terrifying, through to your soul, what she can do.”
The words chilled Sam. “How long?” he asked, his gaze flicking from one parent to the other.
“I stopped,” Leslie said before his father could speak.
Her hands twisted in her lap. “I stopped for years, because your father begged me to. You kids were young. I wanted to keep you safe.” Her voice cracked.
“But when your dad was hurt, in so much pain, I was helpless. The Benoit house was empty. I knew the journal was there, knew it would have what I needed. So I went to get it, but I could never find it.”
Sam’s skin went clammy. She’d been in the house? In Erielle’s house? How many times? How had she gotten in? So Erielle hadn’t been imagining someone coming into her house.
“Erielle coming back was a blessing,” Leslie said, her eyes shining. “She found the journal. It was right there on the table, like a gift from Angeline. So I took it, took some herbs I needed, and did what I had to do.”
“For me,” his father added softly, sadly.
He reached across and covered her hands with his.
“You risked everything because I was hurt. But Les, I know the toll it takes on you. I would never ask you to pay that price. I’ll do everything in my power to make your life easier.
I swear it.” His voice cracked on the words.
“Please, promise me you’ll stay away from magic, stay away from those women. ”
Sam’s thoughts splintered. If he closed his eyes, he saw his mother at the altar, eyes black, unseeing. He opened them, and saw her here: worn down, trembling, her shoulders slumped as though the weight of the world pressed on them.
And between the two versions, he couldn’t reconcile who she truly was.
“So what do we do?” he asked hoarsely.
“We take her to Baton Rouge,” his father said, leaning forward, his hand tightening on hers like he could anchor her.
“We stay with her parents awhile. We build her strength back up, her resistance to temptation. And I—” His voice faltered.
“I learn how to stop leaning on her so much.” He lifted her hand to his lips for a long moment. “This is all my fault.
Erielle pulled her car up in front of the Victorian after work and let out a long sigh. She’d kind of counted on spending the night at Sam’s again after work, but he’d never come in to Rumrunners tonight.
She got it. He had a lot to process, including the fact that his mother seemed to be a pretty powerful witch.
Still, the thought of spending the night here after what they’d seen the other night made her stomach clench. She had a protection packet that Allison had made for her, something like Leslie had made for Sam. She would spend the night at home, holding the packet close.
And if it didn’t work, there was always the backseat of her car.
Keys in hand, she forced herself up the walk, shoulders stiff with tension. Her body screamed for rest, but her nerves thrummed.
“Gigi, help me,” she murmured under her breath as she pushed open the front door.
She didn’t linger downstairs. She went straight up, pulling Allison’s pouch from her pocket and scattering herbs over her bedroom threshold with hands that shook more than she wanted to admit.
No shower tonight—no way was she stripping down, not when she needed to be ready to bolt at a moment’s notice.
She’d sleep in her clothes, sneakers still on her feet.
She flopped onto the air mattress, staring up at the cracked plaster ceiling, her thoughts drifting inevitably to Sam.
She hadn’t even had time to reflect on what last night had meant, if anything, for their relationship.
She didn’t know how much longer he planned to stay in Phantom Bayou.
She knew his patience with his dad was running thin as his dad got more independent, which was good for the pastor, but not great for Sam.
And their future, whatever that might be.
She squeezed her eyes shut and tried to will her brain to shut off.
Besides, if her eyes were closed, she wouldn’t see any ghosts. Wasn’t that how it worked?
Th noise downstairs jolted her upright in bed. What was that? Was that the door?
Then, “Erielle!”
But it wasn’t a ghost this time. It was Samson.
Again, she had trouble getting off the air mattress. “I’m here!” she called as she struggled.
His footsteps echoed on the stairs. “What are you doing here?” he demanded, appearing in her doorway.
He looked terrible, his eyes shadowed, his lips thinned. Stress etched lines on his face that hadn’t been there this morning. He moved closer to her as she finally bounded to her feet.
“What am I doing here? I live here.”
“I thought you’d come out to the cabin. I texted you I couldn’t make it to Rumrunners. There’s…a lot going on and I need to talk to you about it, but you weren’t there.”
Honestly, she didn’t even remember looking at her phone. Rumrunners had been busy, like people knew she needed a distraction. And she’d just expected that Sam had been too overwhelmed, so she hadn’t expected a text.
But now here he was, and her heart lifted.
“I thought maybe…” He took a step closer. “I thought maybe you regretted last night.”
That surprised a laugh out of her. “I thought you did.”
Something loosened in him—his shoulders dropping, the hardness around his mouth easing. He crossed the room and pulled her into his arms, holding her like a drowning man clinging to shore. But he didn’t kiss her. Just pressed his face into her hair and let out a long, shuddering breath.
Of course. His world had been torn apart today. He needed her. She tightened her arms around him, wishing she could absorb the weight crushing him.
“Come on,” he said finally, voice muffled against her hair. “Let’s go back to the cabin.” His arms loosened, ready to let her go.
Her whole body sagged. She didn’t have the strength to climb down the stairs, even to walk out to the truck.
But she knew why he didn’t want to be here. She lifted her head, ready to tell him she understood?—
And froze.
Erielle’s nails digging into his forearms alerted him before the hair on the back of his neck rose.
“What? What is it?”
But she wasn’t looking at him. Her wide, terrified eyes locked on something behind his shoulder.
He didn’t want to turn. Every nerve in him screamed not to look. But he had to.
Millicent hovered in the doorway, between them and the stairs. She wasn’t as transparent as she’d been the last time, like a body beneath the surface of the water, wavering a little. Sam’s stomach turned with the sudden, horrifying realization—they wouldn’t be able to run through her.
Could they lure her in, then run around her?
Edmund. He heard the word in his head, in a voice he didn’t know.
Pure panic clenched his chest, and he realized he didn’t want to wait another second.
“The window,” he said.
He hoped he could get the window open with no problem, but he didn’t know, not in this old house, and he didn’t know what the ghost would do. Could she hurt them? Would she move toward him as he tried to open it? If she did, Erielle could escape down the front.
He wished he had time to explain the plan, but he was oddly afraid the ghost would hear them and counteract their plans.
He released Erielle and lunged toward the window.
Sam’s fingers were shaking as he loosened the little security locks Erielle had installed, then flipped the lever on the main lock.
He heaved the window open with more ease than he ever would have expected.
He was fully prepared to break this one in order to get out and was amazed he didn’t have to.
Before he could see if the ghost was heading toward him, Erielle popped up beside him and looked down the sloping roof.
“Oh, Samson, I don’t think I can.”
“I’ll go first. If she comes at me, you get past her down the stairs.”
She shook her head wildly. “No. Samson!”
The last word split the air in a scream as cold sliced through his shoulder, freezing muscle and bone. His chest seized, his breath caught.
Erielle’s fists twisted in his shirt, yanking him sideways. Agony lanced through him as he turned—against his will—toward the face inches from his own.
Millicent.
The wavering face was inches from his own, and he froze, looking into the black holes where her eyes should be. It reminded him so much of how he’d seen his mother earlier, he couldn’t react.
“Sam! Sam! Samson!”
He heard his name as if from far away, but couldn’t move, feeling like he was underwater now, with Millicent. He felt something tugging at the front of his shirt, but still couldn’t move.
The ghost opened her mouth, her icy breath coating him with the scent of decay.
Then Erielle wrenched at his shirt again, and Sam tumbled through the window.
Shingles scraped his palms as he slid across the steep roof. He hooked a boot against the gutter and stopped, gasping, his heart jackhammering.
He looked up just in time to see Erielle scramble out after him, barefoot, bare-legged, the ghost lurching behind her with skeletal fingers outstretched.
He reached out a hand to offer her, to brace her, and his hand brushed up her bare thigh before he caught her hand in an iron grip.
She shoved her hair out of her face, eyes wild. “How do we get down?”
Keeping himself between her and the edge of the roof, he scooted toward the solarium. They could get down to the ground from there.
He hoped.
The rough shingles tore at his skin, and he worried about Erielle, bare-legged and barefoot. He couldn’t protect her anymore, though.
He eased down first, lowering himself onto the glass solarium roof. “Give me your hand. I’ll?—”
The words cut off in his throat.
Because the moment his fingers brushed her waist, the roof beneath him gave way with a deafening crack.
The roof collapsed.