Ghost Layer (The Ghost Seer Series Book 2) (26 page)

ZACH HEARD LAURENTINE’S
other unspoken comment,
I want you out of here now
. The way Clare’s eyes flashed, she’d heard it, too. She glanced at her watch on her left wrist. “How about in forty-five minutes?”

Laurentine goggled. “Really?”

Clare shrugged. “I don’t see why not.”

Zach knew she had no idea. This would be only her second major case, but then her head tilted and he became aware of a draft in the room and he realized she was talking to Enzo.

“Sending ghosts on drains energy from Clare,” Zach stated. “She should eat first.”

Clare rolled her eyes at him. “No, Zach.”

Probably worried she’d puke again.

“I would like to change my clothes, though.”

“Fine.” Laurentine jerked a nod. “We’ll see you in my office. Rossi, with me.”

“Yes, sir,” Rossi said, and held the door open for the guy to stride out.

Zach stared down at Clare. “So can I put my arm around your waist and help you to the room?”

“As long as you avoid my ribs. Let’s take the elevator.”

“The sooner we’re gone, the better,” Zach said.

“I agree.”

Clare spent a good half hour making sure her nerves and stomach were settled enough to handle the upcoming ordeal, and she had no doubt it would be an ordeal. Zach helped with her clothes, and even a gentle sponge bath so she felt cleaner and ready to do her job. Not one sexy look did he give her. Instead he got more and more grim, especially when she bit off a moan at the hurt.

“It’s a good thing we caught the bastard. I don’t like the way this case went, Clare,” he said.

“Me either, Zach.”

But it is over. No more danger! Now all you have to do is help J. Dawson transition!
Enzo sent to her mind as he sat and looked up at her and barked.

“He’s ready to go, Enzo?” she asked. Zach’s hand was on her shoulder so she knew he heard and saw the dog.

Yes. Let’s go! J. Dawson is waiting!

Clare sighed. “Let’s go.”

Once outside Mr. Laurentine’s office, Clare paused.

She untwined her fingers from Zach’s before she went into the office. She wasn’t sure who all Mr. Laurentine had called to witness her performance of sending J. Dawson on. But she figured she would try to be as professional as circumstances would allow.

After one last big breath, she set her hand on the knob, turned it, and walked in, head high.

As expected, she had an audience. Mr. Laurentine, Missy Legrand, Patrice Schangler, and Harry Rossi. His standard satellites. Baxter Hawburton might have been there, too, if he hadn’t been in jail.

Desiree Rickman lounged by herself on a love seat. Patrice Schangler sat upright, hands folded, in a wing chair. Missy Legrand had linked arms with Mr. Laurentine on another love seat. Rossi stood to one side of the open curtains, his gaze making a circuit of the view outside, the terrace, and the room. He nodded to her when she came in, with respect. That eased the tightness in her chest. There were two of them here, just to do their jobs. Time to get on with it.

“You’re really going to summon a ghost?” asked Missy.

Clare smiled at her. “Yes, J. Dawson Hidgepath.”

The actress gave a little shiver. “I didn’t like finding his bones in my bed.”

“Who would?” Clare asked.

Zach closed the door behind them with a heavy, final click.

Mr. Laurentine toyed with Missy’s fingers; his eyes were hard. “Let’s finish this up.”

“Dennis isn’t too happy that Hawburton deceived him all this time,” Desiree added.

“Who would be?” Zach said . . . but there was an edge in his tone that Clare heard, at least, a hint that he’d always known Mr. Laurentine was a man of poor judgment.

Show time. Clare inhaled steadily, tried to quiet her mind.
J. Dawson, it’s time for you to move on, come!

There was an odd breezy whirl around her, but the ghost didn’t manifest. She hoped he hadn’t changed his mind or, worse, turned into an evil spirit.

J. Dawson, your road and the gate awaits you!
She struggled to think of something else to tempt him with.
Your loved ones await you. Won’t you see what ladies might be pleased to meet you again?

That did it. J. Dawson appeared. He bowed and smiled.
Hello, Clare.

Hello, J. Dawson.

He shifted his feet, fiddled with his hat, touched his vest pocket.
I am ready to transcend, Clare.
The darkness of his eyes ebbed and flowed and she sensed she would have to help him. She took another big breath and said mentally,
Hold out your hands to me. I must merge into you.

The prospector grinned.
Always a pleasure, merging.
He stretched out his arms, his hands palm up in front of him.

She took them and shuddered. It was like holding icicles, and she moved forward, into the shadowy grays and whites of him, feeling only cold, not a single bit of flesh or substance. She trembled, shuddered, endured.

“I demand you tell me what’s going on!” snapped Mr. Laurentine. Clare was just enough in the real world, hadn’t been swallowed enough by J. Dawson’s energy and the otherwhere she went during a transition, to hear the man. She gritted her chattering teeth and spoke between them, not bothering to try to find the man in the room and face him.

Her eyes were cold and dry and hard to blink even to see. Yet she managed to scrape up words and use her vocal chords. “Please be quiet. If . . . you . . . stop . . . me . . . we . . . might . . . have . . . to . . . do . . . this . . . all . . . over . . . again.”

“But you’re doing
nothing.
”

“Be quiet, Dennis.” That actually came from Missy Legrand. “She’s shaking and sweating. Or that’s condensation or something. This is very interesting. I’m sure I can use this in my acting later.”

Then Clare took the tiniest step, pretty much leaned
through
J. Dawson, and the world around her faded.

For the first time she saw him in color. His black suit looked new, as did his linen shirt, his string tie, and his bowler hat. He wore the clothes he’d bought at Hawburton’s Emporium with a gold nugget, the evening before he died. The incident that had led to his death. But he looked very good in them. Unlike her first major case, J. Dawson didn’t carry a gun.

The rich chestnut of his hair surprised her, as did the continuing iciness of his spirit-body-self that slowed her blood. She’d forgotten how hard this was. How close she came to death herself. Surely this couldn’t be good for her heart or her body. But Great-Aunt Sandra had lived a long time.

Clare shook with cold and knew she swayed. Locking her jaw, she suffered through this, watching J. Dawson walk into a huge shaft of light along a straight cobblestoned path of gold, with vibrant flowers on each side. Butterflies and birds added to the color and sound. As her otherworldly sense became sharper, she saw that he faced a gleaming gate with more fancy curlicues than she’d ever seen.

He paused at the gate, his hand on the equally elaborate latch, and looked back at her. When he touched it, the gate and J. Dawson’s hand became translucent as if the gate itself wasn’t there, but simply a construct of the ghost’s imagination.

“What’s going on?” Dennis Laurentine’s voice echoed sharply in the otherwhere, snatching her back, apparently since she was being more of an observer. Wasn’t
feeling
what J. Dawson did.

“I don’t see anything! Nothing’s happening!” the multimillionaire whined.

And J. Dawson smiled at her, a sincere, boyish smile, and she looked into his amber eyes and
felt
the awe, the pleasure, the joy that he was finally leaving a cold, sterile world where he didn’t often remember being, and passing into the next.

The place he headed for had a road of gold for him to walk and a golden gate that he
knew
would open for him. Beyond that gate were lithe forms of women beckoning to him, smiling, though he couldn’t see them clearly. But he smelled the dizzying scent of flowers.

Clare became aware of a rapid thump-thump-thump in her ears. J. Dawson’s heartbeat—or her own. Pure, exciting anticipation flooded her.

Still grinning, he tipped his bowler hat at her and said,
I release all my cares.
The man floated off the path and laughed. He was straight and young and had become heartbreakingly beautiful with an aura around him that even Clare could see, a pulsing rainbow.

Then he stopped laughing, his face molded into a more sober expression, though his eyes brimmed with delight. His lips didn’t move, but Clare heard him anyway.
I release all things of my former life.

White light flashed, blinding her sight to nothing . . . though the edges of her vision showed sepia. The cold dissipated but left her trembling.

There was a clatter and a quick scream that Clare thought came from Patrice Schangler and a choked cry from Dennis Laurentine.

A blanket was wrapped around her tightly, bundling her arms to her side so she couldn’t move . . . and she always needed to move when helping a ghost transition. She squeezed her eyes shut to rid herself of whatever residue held her lashes down. Then she smelled Zach, sage with a trace of mint, and man.

“Hold still.” He brushed at her eyes with a handkerchief. One with the odor of the perfume Great-Aunt Sandra used and Clare favored. A few seconds later she could open her lashes and see. Her eyelids fluttered as the afterimage of the light faded, then the short bout of tones of brown, then her vision settled into reality . . . a reality not as intense as what she’d seen with J. Dawson, though she was a whole lot warmer.

Zach stepped away and began to laugh. Naturally, her gaze followed him, and what he had focused on . . . a skull grinning up at Mr. Laurentine, sat on a neat pile of other bones, all of them covering Mr. Laurentine’s feet. It looked as if Missy Legrand had jumped up and leapt away from the multimillionaire.

“Okay,” the actress addressed the room. “The performance was great, I can use it. But I am
so over
having bones appear out of thin air. That’s it. I’m leaving.” She glided toward the door.

“But Missy!” Mr. Laurentine protested.

“I’m leaving. And you’ll never get me back to this place again. This Colorado mountain life sucks.” She opened and shut the door without another word or glance.

Clare stared at the heap of bones trapping Mr. Laurentine’s feet. She breathed deeply of the early autumn air, fragrant with the scent of roses coming in from the pots on the terrace, the scent of pine and spruce and the earthier notes of grasses. The fragrance of the Colorado mountains.

Her lips hadn’t quite thawed, but she said, “He . . . he . . .”

“Spit it out, Clare.” Desiree lounged on a love seat and winked at her, appearing highly entertained. “What about J. Dawson?”

Patrice Schangler made a noise and Clare swung her gaze to the housekeeper, whose gaze was fixed on the bones. The woman’s face was pale.

Clare laughed-coughed. “He . . . he . . . J. Dawson said he released all things from his former life.”

“Guess that meant his bones,” Zach said.

“He’d held on to his bones too long,” she said, and knew it was right. He’d needed something to anchor him in the ghostly dimension so he stayed together enough to pass on, and had chosen his bones.

Zach gestured at the former J. Dawson Hidgepath. “You want me to take care of these for you, Mr. Laurentine . . . sir?”

Clare sent him a sharp glance. He was up to something. She flexed her stiff fingers, wiggled around, and the blanket fell from her. “I can gather and take care of the bones,” she said. “I have the rest of them in a chest upstairs.” She gave Mr. Laurentine a half smile. “Can we inter them fairly quickly?”

He nearly snarled, “As soon as fucking possible.”

“J. Dawson wanted a grave in the Fairplay Cemetery,” she reminded.

Mr. Laurentine made an irritated gesture. “You told me. I arranged for that.” He stared at the skeletal remains on his feet with a curl of his lip. “It only needed this to make the whole situation beyond acceptable.”

Zach went over, crouched, and carefully moved J. Dawson’s skull, palming something. She wasn’t sure what, but felt a spurt of pride that she’d actually seen him do it.

He began to move the larger bones, most of them broken, and that made Clare ache. He set each aside on a corner of the blanket crumpled on the floor. When he glanced at Clare, he smiled with gentleness. “The bones smell of flowers.”

Clare joined him and bent over, carefully lifting J. Dawson’s skull. It smelled of columbines.

Holding it in both hands, she looked at Mr. Laurentine. “I’ll put these in the box for you.”

“Get it done now. We’ll meet at the cemetery in forty minutes.” His expression was sour. “You can transfer the bones to the expensive coffin there.”

Her teeth clenched until her jaw ached before she inclined her head. “Do you have a minister?”

“I’ll . . . I’ll . . . find someone to say some words,” Ms. Schangler said.

“I’ll have Dr. Burns at the gravesite to arrange the bones. I’m sure he’s still interested in them,” Zach stated. Clare thought about that and decided he was right.