15. Parker
15
PARKER
F or the rest of the evening at Archer House, I surreptitiously dangled the ghost amulet near everyone else in residence, and no one stirred any kind of reaction from it. No white smoke, no green smoke, no smoke at all. It seemed like an empty glass vial around everyone but Hope.
So I swung by Mirlande’s shop on the way home, except Jezebel’s Nest was already closed for the evening.
It wasn’t until late the next afternoon before I was able to return again.
There’d been a development in the sale of one of the companies I’d just acquired, so I’d spent most of the day on the phone sorting out that mess. My brain was tired, and I had a damn headache, but I needed answers, so I made sure to stop in before the Nest closed.
The store was quiet with no other customers around when I entered. The old Haitian woman behind the counter, reading a book, lifted her attention immediately when the bell over the door tolled.
“Well, if it isn’t Faith’s frowning friend. Welcome, child.”
Without saying a word, I wound my way past lucky rabbit’s feet and love potions to the checkout station, where I set the amulet on the countertop without saying a word.
“Ah.” She smiled affectionately, picking it up to study it. “One of my homemade goodies. The ghost detector is what you young’uns have been calling it, if I’m not mistaken. How’s she been treating you?”
“She’s broken,” I said bluntly.
The old woman cackled, obviously not believing me, and she set the amulet back down on the counter between us. “Not possible.”
“I held it up near someone, and a green fog appeared inside,” I said, lowering my brows moodily to prove my point. “The fucking thing’s broken.”
“Just who did you hold it up next to?” she countered with lifted eyebrows. “Your sick, old granpapa who’s in hospice?”
“What?” I furrowed my brow. “No. This was a twenty-year-old girl in perfect health.”
“No, she wasn’t,” Mirlande murmured, shaking her head slowly. “Green means dying, boy. Your girl’s spirit is approaching its end, flirting with death, and the closer she gets, the lighter the green the smoke will turn until it’s pure white, and she’s nothing but a mere ghost.”
I exhaled roughly and narrowed my eyes. “Green means dying ?” I repeated, refusing to believe it.
Because Hope hadn’t been telling me the truth when she’d said that. She’d been fucking lying. She’d been trying to trick me into admitting I wanted her so she could torture me with my own desire.
She wasn’t dying.
She just…wasn’t.
Sympathy filled Mirlande’s eyes, and she reached over a wrinkled hand to cover mine. “ Mwen dezole if you didn’t know, child.”
Not wanting her pity, I yanked my hand out from under hers and scowled. “I thought all this thing did was fill with a white cloud whenever a ghost was nearby. That was its only job.”
Mirlande pulled herself upright as if insulted. “Well, that would sound like a boring amulet if you be asking me. Of course, it does more.”
I lifted my hands in dismayed outrage. “Well, did it ever occur to you to make an instruction booklet to go with it? Or a color chart? Or something !”
“What would be the fun in that?” she asked with a thoughtless shrug. “Then I’d never get the pretty boys such as yourself to come back and visit me again with questions.”
“For fuck’s sake,” I muttered, wiping a hand over my brow. “So you’re telling me she’s dying. She’s really, honest-to-God, fucking dying ?”
“She is dying,” Mirlande answered without any pretense.
A cold wave of dread passed over me. I swallowed thickly and then shook my head. “No.”
The shop owner didn’t try to console me again. She didn’t try to argue with me. She just stayed there behind the counter, letting me process my shock.
And process it I did.
Suddenly, I was twelve years old, standing inside Thane’s bedroom as his mom, Chauncy, explained to me how I was never going to see my parents again. My flesh prickled with dread. That awful, breath-stealing fullness invaded my chest. I could no longer capture air in my lungs.
Nothing made sense. A ringing filled my ears, and my vision wavered as the whole world went dizzy.
I was trapped in the past for the longest heartbeat before I blinked my surroundings back into focus.
My gaze went to Mirlande. “How—” Pausing to lick my lips, I cleared my throat and hoarsely asked, “How long?”
She shook her head. “That I cannot know.”
“Helpful,” I muttered dryly.
She shrugged. “All I can tell you is the darker the green, the more time she has. The lighter the green, the less time. A severe case can dim more quickly than a slow rot, but know this. Her soul is withering as we speak.”
My chin trembled before I could stop it. Setting my jaw hard, I sent Mirlande a terse nod. “Well, thanks for nothing,” I rasped and slapped my hand onto the counter to grab my amulet before marching from the shop.
My anger carried me most of the way down the block. I think I was more angry with Hope now that I knew she’d told me the truth than when I’d thought she’d been lying to trick me.
But Jesus, who the fuck made me one of their dying wishes?
You couldn’t just do that kind of shit to a person.
“Fucking pain-in-the-ass brat,” I muttered, swiping a hand over my hair to try to control some of the rage sizzling inside me. She definitely knew how to get under my skin with every single, fucking thing she did.
But seriously.
How dare she bring this to me ?
Didn’t she know I couldn’t handle death and loss?
This was so much worse than the stupid trick I originally thought it was. Watching her die would fucking destroy me.
Prepared to drive straight to her place and bitch her out for possibly a full month, I reached my truck and jerked the driver’s side door open, only for my phone to buzz with an incoming message.
I yanked it from my pocket to find a text from Oaklynn in our group chat.
Waverly just called. Keene’s causing a ruckus at the library and needs someone to get him out of there ASAP. Any takers?
I started to put the phone away, ready to ignore the request and let someone else deal with Dugger, but then I paused.
If he was at the library, then he was probably visiting his mom who’d been haunting the place since she’d died a decade earlier.
I could visit a real ghost right now and test my amulet, make sure it was actually working correctly and that the old broad hadn’t just been blowing smoke up my ass.
Because I really wanted Mirlande to be wrong about this.
Glad no one else had volunteered yet, I responded to the chat, saying I’d take care of him.
And instead of going to Hope’s apartment, I drove to campus.
Fifteen minutes later, I was pulling open the front door of the college library and glancing around for Dugger.
Waverly—or Library Girl, as the guys liked to call her—was behind the front checkout counter, and when she saw me, she popped out to hurry my way.
Lifting my hands in question as she approached, I asked, “What the fuck is going on?”
“Well, I guess he throws books at people now,” she muttered with a disgusted roll of her eyes.
I squinted in confusion. “ Huh ?”
She sighed and shook her head. “He’s on the second floor. Come on. I’ll tell you on the way.”
When she started off in her typical no-nonsense manner, I lifted my brows after her.
I’d always liked Waverly Frank. She could give people the driest, go-fuck-yourself stare ever, I swear. It wasn’t even a scowl; she just plastered this bored expression across her features as if she couldn’t believe the idiot in front of her was wasting her time by breathing in her presence.
Other than that, there wasn’t much to her. She was a couple of inches above average height, stick thin with absolutely no curves, and her hair was a straight, dull brown that she typically left draped dismally down her back. She didn’t wear anything provocative or even girly but stuck with plain colors. And even though she was only a sophomore in college, I could already picture her becoming the cliché spinster librarian who went home to a houseful of cats each night.
When she glanced back to send me an annoyed arch of the brows, silently demanding that I hurry, I cleared my throat and picked up my pace.
I reached her side a second later, but she waited until we were on the grand, carpeted stairwell that spiraled to the second level before she started to talk.
“So I’m at the desk, minding my own business, sending out courtesy overdue calls, when these two guys come storming up to the counter, all ticked off and claiming that someone tossed not just one book over a range of shelves at them, but three . And do you want to know who the only person present on the second floor was when I went up there to check things out?”
“Santa Claus?” I muttered dryly.
She narrowed her eyes. “The worst part was he had the actual gall to lie right to my face about it and say he hadn’t done it.”
I shrugged. “Maybe he didn’t.”
Her mouth dropped. “I can see the stairs to the second floor from my desk. That’s the only access, too. And no one went up or down them for at least ten minutes before or after those guys did.”
“So maybe they’re lying,” I countered.
She arched her eyebrows at me as if she couldn't believe I would dare defend one of my closest friends on earth.
“Or maybe ,” she bit out from between gritted teeth. “Your buddy’s spiraling. Because he definitely hasn’t been himself lately.”
I glanced at her in surprise, almost wanting to ask how she knew what his usual behavior was. But I figured she wouldn’t appreciate the suggestive question—and I really didn’t feel like losing any body parts to an angry student librarian tonight.
So instead, I said, “How so?”
“Well, first of all, he’s here, like, all the time now,” she explained as we reached the top of the stairs. “I mean, he used to come in enough as it was, irritating me to no end, but I swear the library’s become his second home lately. Some nights, it’s nearly impossible for me to get him to just go when we close.” Pausing with a slight frown, she added, “He looks sad. Or sick. Or something. I don’t know. He’s just been different for the last eight months.”
Eight months. That would’ve been right around the time Keene had learned that his dead mother was still hanging around, haunting this place.
I hadn’t thought it had affected him too severely, but I also hadn’t been paying close attention to him either.
Not the way Library Girl had, apparently.
But shit, of course, it’d done a number on him. He hadn’t seen his mother for ten years, and suddenly he could communicate with her again. That would sure as hell affect me.
Feeling like a shitty friend, I huffed out a weary breath as Waverly paused at an opening between a row of books and stopped there, setting her hands on her hips.
I watched her side profile as she lifted her brows and cleared her throat.
A second later, Keene’s voice exploded, “Jesus. For the last time, I didn’t throw the damn books.”
“You were the only other person up here,” she spat, tapping her toe severely.
“I don’t care. It wasn’t me.”
“Well, it was either you or the library ghost, and I don’t feel any cold spots.” When she lifted her hands to prove it, she jumped a second later as if she actually had felt a chilly burst wash across her fingers, and I took that moment to pull my hopefully faulty amulet from my pocket.
If this thing really worked, it would work now.