Dead People (13 page)

But it was as personal as hell. After an hour, he usually left, unable to take any more.

He was writing songs about unattainable love. He had the girl bands covered and a few of the guys too.

“I’m in a hurry to get rid of the ghost,” he said.

“Glad we straightened that out.” She gave him a tight smile, then marched down the hall to the family room, her jacket swishing just above her hipbones, giving him a nice shot at her swaying ass in a pair of black jeans.

He got hard thinking about getting into those jeans. But Erin was still too messed up to screw around with anyone, much less the ghost whisperer. Especially the ghost whisperer, with her connection to Erin that he’d seen the first time they talked in the library and kept growing stronger.

Two evenings ago, he’d heard Erin laugh. He’d followed the sound to the family room. The door was open, and he’d stood in the hall, listening to Cassie tell Erin about a ghost who didn’t want to leave earth until her favorite TV show was off the air.
Jeopardy.

Erin had stuttered another laugh. He hadn’t been able to breathe for a couple of minutes, his breath caught in his chest.

The family room door was open a crack now, but Erin was upstairs, refusing to come down. It was just him and Cassie.

He paused outside the door. This was a bad idea. A very bad idea.
 

He pushed it open anyway.

***

The door groaned, a humanlike sound that lifted the hair on Cassie’s nape. Draping her jacket on a chair, Cassie knew it was Luke even before she glanced up and saw him. She’d never been attracted to alpha men, and Luke was so alpha he could be a spokesman for the Alpha Support Group if they would admit to needing one—which would never happen, because they were too alpha.

So why him? These last two weeks, she’d been spending too much time with Luke, looking forward to the times he’d step into the family room and keep her company, saying he wanted to be there when Isabel deigned to drop in.

No wonder she wasn’t having any luck with Isabel. She was thinking about Luke instead of how to convince Isabel to leave earth.

Looking at Luke now, she tensed. His jaw jutted out a fraction of an inch more than usual, his mouth was tense and the timing was off. He usually waited until Erin was sleeping.

Something was wrong. He was here for a reason, not because he couldn’t stand being away from her for another second. As if she’d ever thought that.

Fine with her. Her nights of mooning over what never would be were over. Done. Unless it was something to do with Isabel, the answer was going to be “No.”

“I ordered pizza for dinner. Eat with us.”

Her stomach rumbled, but the turkey sub sandwich in her purse could stop the grumbles. Besides, a pizza shared with Luke and Erin sounded like something a family might do, and they weren’t a family. Nowhere near.

“No.” She saw ghosts, not delusions.

He nodded and swiveled for the doorway, then stopped with his back to her. Seconds ticked by before he sighed, deep and long, a “Lord, I seen the blues” sigh.

He swiveled back, his face shadowed, turning his sapphire eyes a dark blue. “Erin won’t come down.”

She hesitated, then realized what she was doing and her muscles locked. Oh no! She wasn’t falling for this. Let him figure out his own problems. She was here for Isabel, not Luke, not Erin.

“When she gets hungry enough she’ll come.”

“She’s in bed with her back to the wall. She won’t turn around.”

Cassie visualized Erin, unhappy, brooding, cringing inside.

Damn him. He’d raised the stakes, and how could she say no? She knew too well what Erin was feeling inside. The unhappiness, the anger, the self-loathing. Even though she’d done nothing wrong, she’d still feel as if she did.

“I am hungry.” She unlocked her muscles, one by one. After all, eating a pizza was a small thing, twenty minutes at the most, not a lifetime commitment. “Do you want me to go up and get her?”

He gazed at her for so long her skin itched and she curled her fingers to keep from reaching under her sweater and scratching her arms.

“We can go together,” he said.

She started toward him and he held out his hand. She put her arms behind her back. He dropped his arm. Her head up, breathing shallowly, she strode past him. As she walked up the stairs, she spared a thought to Luke’s eyes on her butt. She’d caught him looking at it a few times, and it hadn’t been revulsion she’d seen on his face. Far from it.

A smiled tipped up her lips, so inappropriate, but she couldn’t regret it. How often did she feel good about her butt?

At the doorway of Erin’s bedroom, she looked at the girl curled up on the bed, radiating misery from every tight muscle. The smile lingering on Cassie’s face dissolved and a wad of unshed tears clogged her throat. She tried to speak twice. The third time, her voice wheezed out.

“Hey, Erin, I’m eating pizza with you and your dad. Are you coming?”

“I can’t.”
 

Was she sobbing? Cassie leaned forward to hear better. “Why can’t you eat with us?”

“I just can’t. I’ll be sick.” Erin’s voice was stronger, no wobbles, no sobs.

“You’re allergic to pizza? I thought I saw a box on the counter last week, but maybe that was your dad’s.”

Erin’s body stilled, as if she stopped breathing. The room pulsed with tension, then Erin rolled over, her knees bent, looking at Cassie out of bruised eyes.

Cassie sucked in a breath. “Erin, are you sick?” Before she finished the questions, she was halfway across the room, her arms out.

Sitting up in one smooth move, Erin shook her head, her blonde hair whipping out. “No! I’m just not hungry.”

Cassie stopped a foot away and peered into Erin’s face. Erin’s blue eyes looked hungry. Haunted hungry, as if there was a constant sadness inside her. Or was she reading too much into Erin’s expression? Seeing the child she used to be?

“I’m calling the doctor tomorrow.” Luke’s voice startled Cassie out of her concentration. “I’ll ask for an emergency appointment.”

Erin blinked, the hunger gone as if her eyelids erased it, a darker emotion stirring in her eyes. “Nothing is wrong. I’m not sick.”

“You’re acting sick. If it’s not physical, I’ll set you up with a therapist.”

“No! You’re ruining everything.” Hate speared out of Erin’s eyes. Cassie stepped back, out of the way of that cutting gaze. “Dr. Anspeth said I didn’t have to see another therapist.”

“Look, Erin.” Luke shoved his hand through his hair. His tone was resigned, defeated. “I’m new at being a dad. I know I’m doing a lousy job, but I’m trying. Can’t you try a little too?”

“I hate you. I’ll never change. You may as well take me back to my mom.”

Cassie caught a convulsion of pain in his face. A second later, the cynical guitar player was back. “The judge ruled your mother unfit. You’d have to go back to the foster care system. Is that what you want?”

Cassie heard shuffling behind her, sock-covered feet thudding onto the carpet.
 

“I’ll eat your stupid pizza.” Erin marched past Cassie and Luke, her hands swinging militantly, her face closed as tight as a jail cell. “But it won’t make any difference. I’ll still want to go back to my mother. I’ll never like living with you.”
 

Luke watched her, his expression unreadable, until Cassie turned into the hallway. Only then did he glance at Cassie. “It’s going to be a fun meal. Be sure to bring your appetite.”

“You know, I think I’ll pass after all.”

“I’d pass if I could. But she’s my daughter.” He turned and started down the hall, his footsteps heavy but his shoulders squared.

Cassie let him get to the stairs before she followed him. She was feeling sorry for him, and that wasn’t good. She already empathized with Erin, even though Erin was acting like a brat.

These two, they were starting to suck her in, make her care. And that was bad, bad, bad.

This was just another job. She needed to get hold of Isabel, convince her to leave, and then get the hell out.

Chapter Nineteen

Welts of sunlight slashed across Cassie’s eyes, glaring into her motel room through the open blind slats. She groaned and shaded her eyes with her forearms. Squinting, she looked around. Something was missing.

Joe.
 

She was alone.

She lay like that for moments, staring at the ceiling, feeling the hollowness scraped out of her chest, leaving her empty inside. So silly to feel this way about any man, least of all one that was dead.

Moments later as she leaned over the sink brushing her teeth, the bathroom door open, Joe appeared in her peripheral. She spat out toothpaste.

“New Jersey again?” she asked, pleased at hitting the casual note.

“Miss me?” He grinned.

“Always.” She scooped water in her hand and rinsed out her mouth, spitting the residue out. Sometimes being with Joe was like being with a brother. One she liked a lot more than her real half-brother, a mama’s boy who made Harry Potter’s cousin Dudley look courageous.

“What’s on the agenda today?” Joe asked.

“It’s time to get out of Dodge.” She patted her mouth with a washcloth and picked up a phone. She was wearing her T-shirt and bikini underwear. Even though Joe wasn’t alive, something about him seemed
alive, making her grateful the gray T-shirt came to the bottom of her hipbone. “Isabel isn’t cooperating. Sitting around the house every night isn’t working. I need to check out a different angle.”

 
He floated inside, hovering a few inches above the tan linoleum. “I knew that two weeks ago. What took you so long to figure it out? You got a crush on the songwriter?”

”Of course,” she said, glad he couldn’t see her heart hammering inside her chest. “He’s almost as pretty as you.”

“The word is
handsome
.” He winked, and she felt waves of sexuality emitting from him—which was crazy. Dead people didn’t emit waves of anything.

What was wrong with her lately? First Luke and now her pal Joe. Joe, the dead guy. If her thoughts were rated, there would be a giant red X stamped on her forehead.

“So what now?” Joe floated after her into the bedroom.

She grabbed clothes. “Follow in my wake. You’ll see.”

“The girl’s got moves. About time.”

About time, she echoed silently. About damn time.

***

The air in the county hall’s building permit office smelled oppressive, stale. Standing in front of a wood-framed window, Cassie waited for the brunette with gray roots to cross out Wednesday on her flip-over calendar.

Cassie glanced at the utilitarian clock on the wall. 11:10. Just another county worker who loved her job.

The clerk glanced up finally.

“I’m looking for the records of a house—”

The clerk slid a clipboard with a form across the wooden counter. “Fill this out, sign and date it.”

Cassie sat on a vinyl-covered chair with metal legs and started scribbling. When she brought the form back, the clerk squinted at the address line, tiny lines raying out from her pursed lips.

“We don’t have records for this house. It must’ve been built before 1870. That’s when the old courthouse burned.”

“How do you know?”

“Not because I was living then,” the clerk snapped. She took off her sweater, her face glowing.

Oh-oh. Someone woke up this morning on the wrong side of a hot flash
.
“You answered so quickly. Were you born in Bliss?”

“Nope. New York City and proud of it. Someone requested the same information last week.” The clerk tapped the side of her head. “The short-term memory’s still oiled and running.”

Cassie leaned forward, trying not to show her eagerness. “Do you remember who asked for the information?”

“Yeah, I do.” The clerk smirked and peered at another form on her side of the counter, obviously enjoying her game of making Cassie ask for information.

“Was it the owner? Luke Rivers? Thirtyish with dark hair?”

The clerk glanced up. “If that was a man, he’s the best looking cross-dresser I’ve seen. A cheerleading cross-dresser.”

“Tricia Windmeyer.” Not a question, an answer.

“If she’s too blonde, too pretty and too young, it must be her.”

Cassie stepped back, already turning away. “Thanks for your help.”

“Helping people is what I’m here for.”

Cassie hurried into the hall. Two deputies, one female and one male, led a handcuffed prisoner down the hall, three pairs of shoes tapping on the marble floor.

“Brings back memories,” Joe said behind her. “Not good ones.”

Cassie squeaked. “Do you have to sneak up on me?”

A woman striding past carrying a file gave her a puzzled glance. Cassie averted her eyes and headed toward the exit sign.

“I’m a ghost,” Joe said. “Sneaking is what I do. You’re not usually so jumpy. And what’s with the house questions? You always said it’s the person that matters, alive or dead, not the house.”