Spirited 1 (35 page)

“I’m on my way to the station, sir.” Seth checked his mirrors, searching for an opening in traffic and finding none. “It’s rush hour. Atlantic’s a parking lot.”

“Why in the hell are you coming to the station?” Peterson sounded even more agitated. “You’re supposed to be at Tidewater General.”

“I’m coming in for the meeting you called,” Seth said, tamping down his own annoyance. “What’s at the hospital?”

“Forget the meeting, you’ve got bigger issues. Want a free pass to interview Mason Hart?” Peterson didn’t wait for a response. “If so, you’d better get your ass over to Tidewater General. He just arrived there. Covered in blood.”

 • • • 

A
FTER
S
ETH LEFT,
Jules dressed in yesterday’s clothes. She checked and double-checked the locks on the front door and the windows to his place, then curled up in his bed.

For an hour she worried about what he might say when she told him about seeing ghosts. Too jittery to sleep, she decided to take a shower.

Although tempted to grab fresh clothes from her place, she didn’t want to break her word to Seth. He’d asked her to wait here for him and wait she would.

Still, she hadn’t promised him she wouldn’t clean up. Sliding to the edge of the bed, she stood up, ready to use his bathroom.

Two steps later, the bedroom went dark without warning. She spun to the window and could barely make out the curtains hanging there. The temperature in the room plummeted twenty degrees, making her shiver.

“Aimee-Lynn, are you here?” Her words came out as puffs of white smoke.

Silence.

“Aimee-Lynn, if you’re here, you need to talk to me.”

Still nothing.

Grinding her now chattering teeth, she said, “Dang it, Aimee-Lynn! I don’t know what you want from me.”

“I want you to help me fix it before someone else dies!”

The angry words ripped through her mind like dull razor blades through scarred flesh. Aimee-Lynn’s cries grew louder and more incoherent until Jules thought her head might actually be cleaved off from the shrill sound.

Jules dropped to her knees, covering her ears with her hands, and tried to think. She needed to get the ghost calm. Focusing her energy, Jules used a combination of a mental push and her own voice to reach the angry specter.

“Aimee-Lynn, I can’t understand you. I can’t even see you. But I swear, I will help if you just slow down and talk to me.” Jules wasn’t sure the ghost could even hear her, but then Aimee-Lynn stopped wailing.

A thunderous gray aura pulsed around the smoky image of Aimee-Lynn standing in a corner near the bathroom door. Taking it for a good sign, Jules continued. “I know you’re angry and scared. I know you want me to do something for you—”

“Yes, you must finish it,”
Aimee-Lynn said in clipped tones, but she’d seemed to have regained her control a degree. Her form took on a more definable shape but still had that hazy, smoky color.

“Yes, I’ll finish it, but Aimee, I don’t know what
it
is.”

“What?”

The temperature in the room warmed by ten degrees and the lights glowed back to life.

Aimee-Lynn shimmered into being wearing a black corset, miniskirt, fishnet stockings, and heels. Instead of blonde hair she wore a shoulder-length black wig

Jules gasped. “
You’re
the woman from the bathroom? Seth told me he thought you were but . . .”

“So you hadn’t recognized me?”
Aimee-Lynn winged the question into Jules’s mind.

“No. I guess I should have,” Jules admitted. “But you looked a little different each time I saw you.”

The chill in the air evaporated instantly and Aimee-Lynn’s outfit changed into a pink polo shirt and khaki shorts with white canvas tennis shoes. The black wig melted away and her blonde hair fell across her shoulders.

“Why do you keep changing your clothes?” Jules blurted before she could think better of it.

Aimee-Lynn blinked as if shocked by the question, then glanced down at, or maybe through, her body, then met Jules’s gaze again.

“I have to concentrate to wear anything other than what I died in. I refuse to go through eternity looking like a cheap hooker. You know the expression ‘I wouldn’t be caught dead in that’? Well, now you know where it comes from.”
Aimee-Lynn’s aura pulsed alternating colors of pale pink and true red.

Who knew a ghost could have a sense of humor?

“Are you ready to listen to me now?”
Aimee-Lynn paused then added,
“For Seth’s sake.”

“Seth?” A tremor that had nothing to do with the chill in the air ran down her spine. Jules asked, “What does he have to do with this?”

“Everything.”

“Yes, I’m ready to listen.” Jules returned to the bed and burrowed beneath the blankets. Dressed or not, she was freezing because the ghost had caused the temperature to plummet. “I’m all ears. Tell me your story.”

Aimee-Lynn sat down on the end of the bed. A visual dichotomy, Aimee-Lynn both sat on and floated above the bed in her transparent state.

Then something weird happened.

Jules’s purse floated up from where Seth had left it on the nightstand and landed in her lap with a thud.

“How did you do that?” Jules blinked at the bag then grabbed it with both hands. “I’ve never encountered a new spirit who figured out how to manipulate the corporeal world as fast as you did.”

Aimee-Lynn’s aura brightened to a paler pink and no longer throbbed. She shrugged.
“I don’t know. Most of the time, things just move around me without me really trying. Making things move or making light bulbs explode is easy. Talking to the living is a lot harder.”

“You’re doing a pretty good job, right now.” Jules smiled at her. “Just try to stay calm, okay? I don’t want stuff breaking in Seth’s place.”

The spirit nodded.

“So what do you need me for?”

Aimee-Lynn glared and her aura throbbed to a deep shade of red.
“Because I can only do it when I’m with you. No one sees me. No one else hears. No one else even senses me. Except you!”

The last two words were delivered venomously. Jules squeezed her eyes shut and sucked in a breath, bracing for the assault on her eardrums again, but nothing came. Peeking one eye open, she found Aimee-Lynn’s aura had shifted back to a light pink.

A silvery tear glittered on her cheek.
“I hate it here. I don’t want to be dead. Always watching everyone but not able to talk to them. My mother keeps calling my name. The first time I heard her, I answered but she didn’t hear me. She keeps telling me she’ll find my killer and bring him to justice. But she can’t. I know who killed me and I know he’ll get away with it if I don’t set things right.”

“Aimee-Lynn, I need to ask you if . . .” Jules hesitated, hating herself for doubting her old friend. “Did Mason kill you?”

“Mason?”
Aimee-Lynn floated a few feet higher in the air as if literally blown away by the idea.
“My Prince loved me. Everything he did, he did for me.”

“Aimee-Lynn, that’s not really an answer,” Jules said, but Aimee-Lynn didn’t pay her any attention. Instead, the spirit said,
“The Knight of the Realm killed me. That deceiving bastard.”

Knight of the Realm? Her Prince?

Oh, dear heavens. This ghost is nuts.

Blanking her mind before the specter heard her thoughts, Jules quickly said, “Aimee-Lynn, if I’m going to help you, I need actual names. Was the killer someone you knew?”

“Yes,”
Aimee-Lynn said sadly.
“I knew him.”

“What’s his real name?” Jules had a glimmer of hope. For the first time since Aimee-Lynn barged into her life, she thought she might be able to use her crift to actually help the spirit. “If you tell me his real name, I can give a tip to the police.”

“That won’t work.”
The spirit’s aura darkened to a muddy yellow, then she shook her head. Her hair fanned out above her shoulders as if some unseen wind blew it.
“I can’t remember his real name. I swear it’s like someone poked holes in my brain with an ice pick.”

That was an image forever seared into her mind.
Thanks so much!

“Some things I remember clearly. Others? Well, I know that you can’t just walk into a police station and talk to the first person you see. I just don’t remember why.”

Jules frowned. She hadn’t offered to do that. There was no way she’d willingly traipse into another police station . . . ever again.

There had to be a way to help Aimee-Lynn remember. But how? Jules nibbled on the right side of her lower lip and caught herself tugging on her earlobe.

Hmmm . . . Seth was right about the earlobe-tugging thing.

“It’s the reason I had an appointment,”
Aimee-Lynn said.
“I was supposed to meet the English King . . . I mean, Detective English at the station, but I, uh, didn’t make it.”

“You were supposed to meet Seth before you died?”

Aimee-Lynn nodded.

An idea jumped from Jules’s lips before it had completely registered in her brain. “How about you tell me what you wanted to tell Seth and I can pass the message on to him?”

Stupid. Stupid. Stupid.

She didn’t want Seth to know what an überfreak she was. But she had the sinking feeling the ghost would never leave if Jules didn’t do something to hurry her along. And maybe she could find a way to tell Seth without actually telling him? No, if she had to tell him, she’d do it. Better he learn right away what she could do.

Maybe he’d even accept her.

“Okay.”
Aimee-Lynn’s smile vanished and she said darkly,
“Tell Seth, I have the proof he needs. My murderer, the Knight of the Realm, was trying to steal it back when I accidentally gave it to you.”

“Come again?”

“The man who killed me . . . the Knight of the Realm,”
Aimee-Lynn said more emphatically.
“Seth should know by now about the Knight. I can’t remember his name but I know he was a knight who swore an oath of fealty.”
Aimee-Lynn’s outfit changed again, this time into a flowing blue gown straight out of the Middle Ages.
“You must tell Seth. He’ll know what to do about that smarmy coward.”

“Whoa, back up!” Jules swallowed convulsively, her mind still tripping over what Aimee-Lynn had said first. “What was that about giving
it
to
me
? You never gave me anything except a splitting headache.”

“You’re holding it right now.”
Aimee-Lynn pointed to the purse in Jules’s hands.

Jules glanced down at the black bag. The same one Seth had returned to her multiple times since they’d met. A bad feeling went through her. Very bad.

“Aimee-Lynn, this is
my
purse.”

“No, it isn’t.”
Aimee-Lynn shook her head.
“It’s mine, I can prove it. Just open it.”

Jules didn’t want to do it. Even though she’d opened it at least a half dozen times in the past several days, the idea of opening it now made her nauseous. Taking a deep breath, she unhinged the clasp and pulled the bag open.

Only her ID, a tube of lipstick, and her favorite purple change purse stared up at her.

She exhaled her breath on a
whoosh
.

The contents were perfectly and completely innocuous. She reached in and pulled them out one by one, setting them on her lap. With each object removed, the bedroom seemed to brighten. “There’s nothing in here, Aimee-Lynn.”

“They’re in there. Keep going.”

“What’s in here?”

“You’ll see.”

Fear and frustration mounting, Jules stuck her hand inside the purse and felt around. The cheap knockoff was lined with even cheaper polyester that snagged on her fingernails. Yanking her hand out, she glared at the ghost. “What is it you expect me to find?”

“You’re not looking hard enough. Look inside the purse again.”
Aimee-Lynn grinned confidently.

With nothing else to do to prove the ghost wrong, Jules flipped the purse upside down and shook it. Something fell out and plopped onto the bed.

A beautiful white diamond, approximately one carat, sparkled on the bed.

Turning the purse back over, Jules found two more diamonds caught in a hole in the lining. Using her index finger, she poked at the opening, tearing out the crude stitches she’d somehow missed before.

How had she never noticed the crappy lining in the past few days? Easy, because she had given the bag little attention from the moment she realized it was a knockoff.

The thread pulled free and a dozen white diamonds spilled out, along with a red ruby ring.

“Not a ruby,”
Aimee-Lynn said as if hearing Jules’s thoughts.
“That’s a $350,000 red diamond ring. My mother’s ring.”

“Oh, Aimee-Lynn, what have you gotten me into?”

 • • • 

I
T HAD TAKEN
Seth two hours to arrive at the hospital. Between afternoon rush-hour traffic and a multivehicle accident closing down three lanes of traffic on 64, it had taken Seth two hours to travel what normally would have been a twenty-minute drive.

He’d arrived and spoken with the head nurse in charge of the ER, a rotund woman in garishly bright neon pink scrubs with a Hello Kitty scrunchie in her hair. Instead of telling him where to find Hart, Nurse Hello Kitty stated there was no record on file of anyone calling the police that afternoon. Worse, Hart wasn’t in their system at all.

What in the hell is going on?

It’s not like Hart was officially a suspect. So why had Captain Peterson insisted that Seth drive to the hospital? Did Jones relate more to their captain about something in the journals than he’d told Seth? And who reported that the prince of Hart Construction had been attacked? For that matter, why would he have been attacked? Did the man actually know something about his ex-fiancée’s murder or the jewelry heists as Seth suspected? Or was it all a big a coincidence?