Glitch turned without comment and continued working on the lock.
“I was right, huh?”
“Super right,” I said. “You get extra-special bonus points.”
“I have an idea.” Everyone looked back at Cameron as he stood with arms crossed in bored contemplation. “Why don’t we just let the reaper open the door. You know, since he’s standing there looking annoyed.”
We glanced up to see that Jared had already found a way into the house. He unlocked the door.
“Thanks,” Glitch said.
“I’ve already unlocked it once. You locked it back.”
“Oh, sorry.”
“So what are we looking for?” A tad creeped out by the whole ghost thing, Brooklyn and I huddled together as we stepped into the massive three-story house.
“A presence,” Jared said.
“I thought we were looking for a ghost.” Glitch scoured the room with eyes wide.
“Same difference.”
“Ghost, presence, apparition,” Cameron added. “But I think this is something more. It’s too strong. It might be a poltergeist.”
“I feel it too,” Jared said, nodding in agreement.
I was still checking out the digs. “Who the heck puts white carpet in a house?”
“And gold molding,” Brooklyn said. “Could this house scream
“So what’s the difference?” Glitch asked.
“Well, wood molding,” Brooklyn explained, “is much more subtle and adds a stunning touch to any room.”
Glitch huffed his irritation at her. “I meant the ghost-versus-poltergeist thing.”
“Oh, right,” Brooklyn said.
I stifled a giggle.
“A presence is more like an energy,” Cameron said, “left behind when someone dies. It’s usually the result of a traumatic death.” He took a vase off the mantel to examine it. “But a poltergeist,” he continued, “is, well, a poltergeist. You’ve seen the movie. They’re stronger and can be either really angry or just plain evil. What do you think of this?” He tossed the vase to Glitch, who caught it in unsteady hands then scowled at Cameron before reading the inscription.
He recoiled with a horrified expression and threw it back. “They keep their grandmother on the mantel?” he asked, gagging a little. “Who does that?”
Cameron laughed as he replaced the urn.
“I could live on this sofa.” Brooklyn ran her hand along the buttery soft fabric.
I nodded in agreement before leaving the warm embrace of my best friend to inspect a painting across the great room. It looked like something from the Renaissance.
“Presence!” Glitch pointed to the upstairs landing then tumbled backwards over a coffee table. “Presence!”
“That was fast,” Cameron said.
I looked up to see a darkness gathered near the ceiling, hovering, watching. A different kind of fear than I had ever known before took hold: a chilling, tingly, sweaty kind of fear. It wrapped cold tendrils around my ankles and crept up my spine to the back of my neck. This was way scarier than the movies. I wanted to run more than I’d ever wanted to run in my life. That whole fight-or-flight thing was leaning heavily toward the latter. Then, without warning, it swooped down at us.
More fear shot through me, pumping adrenaline by the gallons as I screamed and dropped onto an ornate rug. The darkness passed over me. I felt its energy reverberate like an electric wind, standing every hair on my body on end.
The presence retreated into the shadows as quickly as it had appeared. I scanned the room wide-eyed as Jared walked—no, strolled—to Glitch and offered him a hand, and I wondered if supreme beings were afraid of anything.
“Actually,” he said to him matter-of-factly, “that was a poltergeist.”
Cameron walked—no, strolled—over to Brooklyn as she huddled behind the sofa with a throw rug over her head. He fought a smile. “An angry poltergeist,” he said in agreement. “And as ingenious as your disguise is, I’m fairly certain it knows you’re here.”
“Of course it knows,” she said through gritted teeth, “with you standing there giving my position away to every poltergeist in the country.”
He shrugged and turned to walk away.
“Where are you going?” she asked, her voice suddenly shrill.
He chuckled and stayed put by her side.
I rose cautiously to my feet, searching the corners of the vaulted ceiling, trying to control my panic. “It disappeared,” I said, bewildered. Then reality sank in. “Wait, how exactly are we able to see it? I’ve never seen a ghost in my life.”
“It must want to be seen,” Cameron said, searching the ceilings as well. “Ghosts tend to make themselves scarce. You can thank your boyfriend for that little show. It’s like an animal who puffs up when it feels threatened. This entity feels threatened with the reaper close by. It’s making its presence known.”
“Seriously?” I asked.
“Seriously. And just like a cornered animal, it will do anything to survive.”
I was actually referring to the part about
Jared stepped to me as I turned in a circle. “See it yet?”
“No,” I said, trying to sound brave. I caught his scent, clean and earthy, and inched closer to him. “Can it hurt us?”
He lifted his shoulders. “Only if it wants to.”
“Nice. You might have mentioned that.”
“And ruin the surprise?” he asked, his expression playful. He had taken off the jacket in the car and his muscles were doing that flex-with-every-movement thing that mesmerized me into a trance.
“I think we should just get out of here,” Glitch said as he walked to the fireplace to grab a poker, “and come back when we actually have a plan.”
Before I could reply, I heard something from an alcove behind me. When I turned to investigate, I had to admit, the last few days had certainly been the most surreal of my existence. I’d been hit by a truck and brought back to life, seen the world freeze around me, gotten pulled back in time through someone else’s eyes, and fallen in love with a supreme being.
But all things considered, the massive grand piano that had been upended and thrown at me as though polter-thing were playing fetch-the-Steinway with some massive ghost dog pretty much iced the cake. And tossed a cherry on top.
At least when the truck hit me, I didn’t see it coming. Maybe once someone was supposed to die, that person couldn’t escape it. Maybe no one could cheat death. Not for long anyway.
As the piano grew larger, Jared placed his fingers under my chin and turned my face toward his. He flashed a smile that could make grown women beg, and my heart faltered as a surge of longing enveloped me.
A warmth took hold, a strange euphoria. I had fallen in love with an angel, with a celestial being as old as time itself. How weird was that?
He pulled me into his arms—a place I had wanted to be for some time now—and let his eyes drift shut. When he lifted his face toward the heavens, a floodtide of energy cascaded over us. I could feel it, powerful and electric.
“Be still,” he whispered to the universe. And the air thickened. The earth slowed. He opened his eyes as I wondered at the sparkling world around us.
“You can still do it,” I said, transfixed.
He was enjoying my fascination.
