Chapter 13 #3
“I guess this is it,” I whisper, and then my brain snaps back to attention. “Let’s put everything away in here and take it upstairs. I want to wash my hands and drink about a gallon of water.”
“Coffee?” Daniel asks hopefully, packing up his box and shoving it back onto the shelves.
“No,” Ewan and I say in unison, then grin at each other.
“The cute factor is fading,” Daniel warns sourly. “How can you not have coffee?”
“It’s nearly midnight,” Ewan reminds him. “If you drink coffee now, you won’t sleep at all. And tomorrow’s Saturday.”
Fuck. “Maybe we should wait until morning,” I suggest glumly. “None of us is exactly well rested after everything that’s happened this week.”
“I can’t wait until morning to know what’s in this,” Ewan says, tapping the cover of the book. A tiny plume of dust rises from it, and he grimaces. “But we don’t have to read it all. Let’s just check out the last few entries. It’ll take half an hour or so, tops.”
“I’m in,” Daniel agrees immediately. “I’ll be up all night wondering otherwise.”
Yeah, me too. “Okay. But I’m setting a timer, and after half an hour, we stop.” After all, even if it turns out Emma Marie Harper included instructions for banishing a demon in her diary, it’s not like we can do anything tonight. Not with guests here.
Upstairs in my apartment, we take turns using the bathroom and settle on the couch with a jug of water and a bag of chips.
Because digging through archive boxes is hungry work.
If I was still in Chicago, I’d order a pizza, but nowhere in town is open this late, and they don’t like to deliver out this far even when they are open.
“Okay,” Ewan says, scanning the last entry in the diary, then flipping back a few pages.
“We’re going to need to read from the beginning to get the full picture, I think.
The tone seems a bit different here to what was in those first entries.
But it sounds like she came here specifically because she knew this was a good place for the paranormal.
” He looks up at me. “The ghosts said that, right? That the minerals in the soil and rock here were ghost friendly?”
“Yep. And even back then, the hotel was known to be haunted. Not as actively as now, since the ghosts couldn’t manifest, but the research Kieran and Skye did shows that people used to come specifically for the ghosts.”
“Just the ghosts? Because I don’t think she was interested in them.” His gaze skims down a page. “She’s talking about the conditions being right tomorrow night… and that vengeance will finally be hers.”
“Because that’s not creepy,” Daniel says with a shudder.
“It seems pretty obvious that she deliberately summoned a demon and it got away from her,” I concede.
“Does she mention anything about the vortex? Because nothing on the site made any reference to it, and I can’t work out where it fits in.
We’ve been working with the premise that the vortex opened first and the dark spirit or demon came through it, but this seems to disprove that. ”
He turns a page and shakes his head. “I’m not seeing anything. But maybe it’s in an earlier entry?”
We go back to the beginning, but don’t get through more than the first few weeks of January before the timer goes off.
“Well, that was boring,” Daniel says, standing and stretching. “I mean, she seems like a nice enough woman, but I really have no interest in Greg from her office. He sounds like a douche.”
“Agreed,” Ewan and I say in unison.
“You’ve got to stop doing that,” Daniel orders, pointing at first me, then Ewan. “You’ve only been dating two minutes. Brain-syncing is forbidden this early on.”
“We’ll try,” I assure him, because it is kind of weird and embarrassing.
That doesn’t mean I don’t like it.
“I’ll talk to Kieran as soon as he gets in,” I add.
“We need to adjust the inventory for the museum storeroom to show we took out the diary. And then I guess find some time this weekend to talk about it all?” Fuck knows when, though.
There aren’t usually any lulls on nice weekends in spring, although I’ve been assured there are fewer random tourists during the winter.
You know, when most of the estate is buried under snow.
Ewan hesitates. “If you don’t mind delaying our date, we could see if the others want to do a dinner meeting?”
The tiny pang of disappointment is accompanied by relief.
“That might be the sensible option. We could have our date one night during the week? I think there are no guests on Tuesday, so I wouldn’t be distracted or interrupted.
” Oh crap, maybe that’s a bad idea. What if I fuck things up and need an excuse to escape?
But it’s too late to backtrack. His whole face has lit up. “That’s a great idea. I can take you out instead of you having to be on call, and all your attention can be on me.”
“You’re killing me here,” Daniel says. “So dinner tomorrow night? At our place, since we won’t all be comfortable squeezing in here, and if we use the staffroom, the dinner shift in the kitchen might overhear.”
“I’ll check with the others in the morning,” I promise.
“Great!” Daniel takes off for the door, pausing when he gets there to cast a wicked smile over his shoulder. “Can I lock up, Ewan?”
Tingles go through me at the thought that Ewan might stay, sober this time, and not on the couch. But… it’s late, and we’re not sure what we’re doing, and both of us need to sleep.
I just don’t want to tell him to go.
He must be thinking the same thing I am, though, because he casts me a regretful look and says, “No, I’m coming. Wait for me.”
Daniel rolls his eyes and goes out into the hallway, and Ewan takes my hand, lifting it to his mouth. I think he’s going to comment on my nail polish, or maybe kiss it, a romantic, old-fashioned gesture, but he shocks me by sucking my index finger into his hot, wet mouth instead.
I make a sound that would fit right into a porn movie and lift my gaze to lock with his. If this is a hint of what dating him will be like, I’m so in.
When he finally releases my finger, a slow, suggestive grin quirks his lips. “I’ll miss you.”
“Meep.” That was supposed to be “me too,” but I appear to have lost the power of speech.
He leans forward, kisses me gently on the lips, and then stands and walks out.
Holy fuck.