Jade's Spirit (Blue Collar Boyfriends Book 2) (17 page)

Gosh-darned haunted house, she mentally corrected. This was definitely not the time to take Emmett’s Lord’s name in vain.

* * * *

Five minutes previously

Joshua’s arms trembled as he restrained the young believer, Emmett, in Jade’s kitchen. Imitating Draonius’s demon form was challenging enough given his limited stores of power, but the stunt with the cables and breaking the carafe had depleted him almost entirely. It would all be worth it if he could ensure Jade would never return to her home, at least not without a man of God to put Draonius in his place.

Exhausted, he began to disperse. The mortals would likely attribute his sudden weakening to Emmett’s prayers. That was fine by him. Prayer would certainly work against the real article, so it was a good habit to encourage.

But if his plan worked, Jade would never again have to face Draonius. He pushed his very last reserve of energy into making the performance as convincing as possible. When he couldn’t hold on a moment longer, he faded from the physical plane and prayed for heaven.

Surely this good deed made up for his fornication with Mercy. Surely he would be allowed into heaven, at long last.

Someone has been busy.
Draonius’s voice punched through his thoughts. The demon arrested his dispersion and forced him to reform. He was drawn through the kitchen floor, through the house’s foundation, down, down, down.

Hades and hell fire!
He’d hoped to go up, not down.

He was too tired to fight. Too soul-weary to protest.

Draonius reeled him in. Against his will, he resumed his layer of essence around the demon.

What have we been doing up above, my busy little beaver? What was so important that we ventured from father’s protective fold without permission? Were you scouting our lovely Jade to find out why she has been absent for three nights after you promised me she would return?

Go to hell, demon.
Would God never free him from this abominable fate?

Only if you come with me.

So be it. Let’s go and be done with it.

Draonius chuckled then sobered.
What’s this? Something has changed.
He perked his essence toward the surface.
What have you done?
Anger seared all trace of humor from his countenance.

Joshua felt what the demon felt. Jade’s terror—the shivery desperation of a soul fleeing for its life.

What have you done!

Wind ruffled Joshua’s essence as Draonius rose up through the ceiling of the abyss. Apparently he’d gleaned enough power to surface in daylight. What other feats might the demon be capable of? Might Joshua have underestimated him?

He prayed not. He also prayed Jade’s flight would thwart the demon, at least for a time.

Without warning, he felt himself dispersing into the raging winds of the physical plane. His tether to Draonius had been cut.

He was still weak, but he scraped together enough strength to visualize his surroundings. What he saw chilled him to the bone.

From his vantage point in the vicinity of the house’s front porch, he saw Draonius float to the branch of a stately maple and disappear into the body of a blackbird. The bird shuddered then released a piercing caw.

Dozens of smoke-like wisps peeled away from the blackbird and curled toward another branch in the tree. Upon that branch sat a hawk, brown with a white chest and blood-red eyes. As Draonius’s essences surrounded the hawk and disappeared inside, one after another, dozens turning to hundreds, Joshua understood who the hawk must be. Who else would accept a sacrifice of souls and in return grant one of his minions release from more than a century of imprisonment? The Prince of Darkness himself.

Sure enough, once the transaction was complete, the blackbird took to the air and flew away.

Draonius was free.

In the body of the blackbird, the demon rose high in the air until he hovered above a lumbering yellow machine. Inside the machine sat Jade and Emmett.

Joshua was not drawn like his fellow essences to the hawk. Instead, he began drifting upward.

The hawk turned its head to fix its blood red gaze on him. Was it his imagination or did that gaze burn with hatred?

Joshua shuddered. Those poor damned souls.

He and Mercy had been Draonius’s newest essences. The others had been with the demon longer, some for thousands of years. After all that time, they had been traded without ado, their fate of no more consequence than their master’s ransom.

Had Mercy been among the essences traded? Was she even more damned, now?

The hawk took flight. After a few beats of its wings, it disappeared into thin air.

Joshua’s sadness gave way to peace as the warmth of Salvation embraced him. Dare he believe what his heart suspected?

He was entering heaven!
Oh, Praise the Lord! Everlasting peace at last!

Utter joy infused his spirit, but a prickle of foreboding had him sparing the thought,
God have mercy on the towne of Dover and on poor Jade Alderwood.

Chapter 15

After shifting a million times, Emmett got the sweeper up to about thirty. Jade would have preferred sixty, but she wasn’t about to complain. She was just glad to be heading away from Grandma Nina’s house, and to have Emmett in one piece beside her, albeit one very freaked out piece.

After rounding the corner that would take them toward downtown Dover, he turned crazed eyes on her. “Are you okay? I can’t believe—shit, you’re bleeding.” He fished a hanky out of his pocket and handed it to her.

“I am?” As she reached for the white cloth, she noticed specks of blood on her hand. Shards of coffee-pot glass had struck her hard enough to break her skin in several places. Now that the house was several blocks behind them, she felt pin-pricks of pain on her cheek, too, and where her partially-zipped hoodie revealed a V of her chest.

“Aren’t coffee pots supposed to be tempered glass?” she asked as she blotted the cuts. “They shouldn’t shatter like that, should they?”

“I used to store my coffee maker on top of the fridge to save counter space,” Emmett said. “It exploded just like that when I dropped it one day. I think they’re just not supposed to break because of heat. But honestly, I don’t know. Does it hurt?”

She shook her head, even though it kind of did. She didn’t want to worry him. Her brand new boyfriend had been through enough for one day. She certainly wasn’t going to make a big deal out of the fact her cuts wouldn’t stop bleeding. With each blot, the handkerchief came away with persistent spots of red. “You carry a hanky?” she asked with a nervous laugh, hoping to lighten the mood.

“Yeah,” he said without taking his eyes from the road. “Since I was a kid. My grandpa says real men always have a handkerchief handy in case a lady needs one.” His throat bobbed with a swallow. She kept waiting to see his half-smile emerge, but it didn’t come. It might not come for a while.

She wasn’t exactly sure what she was feeling, which probably meant she was in shock, but she knew Emmett, scared and worried about her, was the cutest thing she’d ever seen. She wanted to take him in her arms and comfort him, but she settled for scooting over to press her shoulder to his while he drove.

The contact seemed to relax him. He took a breath, and the worst of the fear cleared from his face. “Seriously, are you hurt? You fell.”

She wasn’t hurt much, but she was cold to the bone like the one and only time she’d ventured into her basement. “I’m okay. What about you? Did that thing hurt you?”

He huffed a breath, releasing a little more tension. “I’m okay.” He glanced at her. “You might have glass in those cuts. Just keep dabbing like that. Don’t rub.”

He didn’t have to tell her. A few spots flared with sharp pain. She dabbed them gingerly, ready for the red spots to start shrinking in size. “It’s a good thing I had long sleeves on.” She tried to laugh, but it came out more like a sob.

Emmett stopped the sweeper in the middle of the road. “Let me see.” He took the hanky and dabbed at her left cheek and eyelid. Then he drew her into his arms. “Hey, hey. We’re okay.” He rocked her sweetly.

He was warm and solid. His living strength banished the clinging cold. He held her for a long time. The occasional car crept past the sweeper, being forced to the wrong side of the road to get around.

An unwelcome thought intruded. Had she learned nothing from standing up to Brad and Mr. Shadow? Was she doomed to run away from everything that upset her?

She pushed out of Emmett’s arms. “I can’t run from this. That’s my grandmother’s house. I have to go back.”

“The hell you do. You’re staying with me until we can get it blessed or cleansed or whatever.”

We.
She liked the sound of that. “So, I’ll be able to go back?” If she planned on returning soon, it wasn’t technically running away.

“Of course. We’re not going to just let that thing have run of the place. It doesn’t belong there. We’ll fix this. I promise.”

Coming from him, that word meant something she had never let it mean before. Emmett had kept a doozy of a promise to himself for years. That took character. A promise made by Emmett was a promise she could trust. On the other hand, it irked her that he was making her problem his problem.

He let go of her and put his hands on the wheel. “Come on, I said I’d buy you a coffee. We’ll swing by Dunkin’s. Then I’ll take a closer look at your cuts and make some phone calls.” He hit the gas and jostled the stick shift through the gears.

“But you need to sweep, don’t you? You can’t spend the day taking care of me.”

“Windham County will survive if I take today off.”

“I’m fine. I don’t need you to coddle me. Just drop me off at your place and go back to work.”

“Maybe I’m the one who needs to be coddled.” There was the half-smile she’d been missing. Now, if it would just melt away the worry in his eyes. “I’ve never seen anything like that before. I’m shaking in my boots, here.”

“It’ll be okay.” She found it easier to be brave for his sake than for her own. “You prayed and it went away. That’s awesome. I wish I’d thought to try that.”

His eyebrows pinched together. “What have you tried?”

“Standing up to it and putting bundles of herbs in all the windows. Seems pretty silly now. But like I said, it was just a shadow before. It did that hand thing—” She made the beckoning motion. “But it was just a shadow on the wall, well, mostly on the wall—except that one time I think I saw it in the mirror—but it was nothing like that...that— What the hell was that?”

“I think it was a demon. I think there’s a demon in your grandmother’s house.”

“Well, damn it,” she said.

“Exactly,” Emmett said.

* * * *

Emmett shone a flashlight over the formerly flawless skin between Jade’s collarbone and the pink lace trim of her tank top. She was sitting on the lid of his john so he could look for tiny shards of glass in the dozen or so cuts peppering her chest, neck, and cheek.

His molars ground together with rage. He had woken up that morning determined to put her firmly in the friend box. Now, just a few hours later, his gut ached with the urge to avenge this attack on her, and the urge went way deeper than simple chivalry.

She was his girl. He couldn’t believe he’d considered pushing her away.

If it had been a person that had done this to her, he’d have laid the bastard out cold in a heartbeat, but the thing that had attacked her wasn’t something he knew how to fight. He was going to need help. He had to call Nick.

But first, he had to take care of Jade.

“I’m not hurting you, am I?” He knelt in front of her and used a razor blade to scrape a sparkling sliver of glass out of a cut below her collarbone.

She shook her head. “You’re fine. Thanks. I couldn’t get close enough to the mirror to see those little guys.” She sniffed.

A few minutes ago, he’d heard her quietly crying behind the closed and locked bathroom door. He’d knocked. She’d let him in, and he’d found her beautiful face anguished and her fingers slippery with blood.

She’d been through so much. As soon as he got her patched up, he was going to hold her and let her have a good cry on him. Maybe he’d have a good cry, too.

“No wonder you were sleeping in your car. I don’t blame you. I wish you had told me. I hate that you were facing this alone. Here, can you hold this for me?” He wiggled the flashlight.

When she wrapped her slender fingers around it, he guided the light to a suspicious red spot on her neck. She held it there while he worried another sparkling sliver from her flesh and wiped it on a piece of gauze.

“You would have thought I was out of my mind.”

He huffed a wry laugh. “Yeah, probably.” He directed the light onto her face and noticed a trace of yellow bruising around her eye. She’d covered it well with makeup on Friday night, but here it was, staring him in the face, making his stomach clench, proof that someone had hit her before she was his.