Black Raven Inn: A Paranormal Mystery (Taryn's Camera Book 6) (12 page)

“I
worry,” Matt said
. “How do you get into these messes? Do they just find you or…”

“I don’t exactly go out looking for this kind of nonsense,” Taryn protested. “It just seems to find me.”

“I wonder if you did something in the past that’s turned the Universe away from your favor,” Matt mused.

Taryn, feeling slightly offended, sulked. “Well gee, thanks.”

“I just believe in karma, that’s all. And you
do
seem to have more than your fair share of bad luck when it comes to people wanting to hurt you.”

Taryn shrugged, even though he couldn’t see her through the phone. Or maybe he
could
. “Well, in any case, Aker was there and he took care of business. Like a boss.”

“I’m not sure I like you hanging around with a big, beefy, macho dude every day.” Matt’s tone was teasing but Taryn could hear a bit of worry mixed in there, too. Nobody would ever accuse Matt of being macho or beefy. Or big. He would fit in more with the cast of “The Big Bang Theory” than “The Walking Dead.”

“Yeah, well, I don’t think I could ever hook up with a dude who rations his humor and smiles,” Taryn replied. “I’m not naturally funny myself. I need someone with a good sense of humor to balance me out.”

“Like me?” The hopefulness in his voice reminded Taryn of when Matt was a little boy, seeking approval for a science project he was proud of when his own parents ignored him.

“Like you,” she agreed.

“I’m going to come up in a few weeks. I have some time off. If I don’t take it, they’ll start complaining. There might even be a mutiny.”

“Are you being hard on your students again?”

Matt grunted. “They deserve it. I mean, really. I was never that unmotivated and lazy as a college student. What’s wrong with people these days? They do just as little as they can to get by.”

“Well, dear, some of them have social lives. The reason you were able to give 110% was because you never left your dorm room unless it was for class, the library, or work study,” Taryn teased him.

She could tease him about this, because she’d been the same way. Both were late bloomers as far as their social lives went; Taryn was thirty one and still waiting for hers to take off.

“
You’re
my social life. I just save it all up and use it on you,” he said with complete seriousness.

She believed him. Matt was all business and little play unless she was around and he’d always been that way. He divided his time between work, preparing for work, cooking, shopping for essentials, and watching television. He lived a short drive from the beach and only went when there was an employee function, unless Taryn was there.

“Speaking of visiting…” Taryn began slowly. She was in the middle of heating up a take-out carton of macaroni and cheese and paused with her hand on the microwave door. “I’m, er, getting company in a few days.”

“Oh yeah? Who?”

“David.”

She let the name hang in the air between them, the air thickening despite the distance between them.

“Hmmm…”

It wasn’t that Matt disliked David necessarily–he was just jealous. As jealous as Matt could get, anyway. When she’d worked on Jekyll Island, David had been around quite a bit.

Matt, who’d considered himself her protector long before either one of them had known what it meant to date, much less acted on any feelings, had trouble with the idea of someone else acting as knight in shining armor. The fact that David was good looking, amiable, and shared common interests with Taryn didn’t help. Had they met under other circumstances, they might have been friends. As it was, the two men could barely disguise their uncomfortable scrutiny of one another.

“He’s coming to town for a lecture at Belmont and invited me to listen. I’m going to dinner with him after,” she explained.

To avoid awkwardness, she’d considered not telling Matt at all. If she knew him, and she did, he’d worry needlessly and work himself up over nothing. While she flirted with the idea, Taryn knew it wasn’t a real possibility. She’d never been good at hiding things from him, sometimes telling him more than he needed to know.

The almost-psychic connection between them would’ve had him knowing something was up before David was even on a flight back to Brunswick. Best to just be upfront and honest.

“Do you want me to come up while he’s there?” Matt asked, sounding hopeful.

“Matt…”

“Yeah, yeah. Okay,” Matt grumbled. “Fine. So how far along are you on this job anyway?”

By the time Taryn hung up, she was feeling newfound motivation. She was ready to sketch and paint, and as a vision of the courtyard flashed through her mind she was struck with inspiration. She knew
exactly
where she could stand capture the essence of the enclosure and present it in a fun and unique fashion.

Unfortunately for Taryn, it was midnight. Aker might have been at her disposal, but she seriously doubted he’d have a sense of humor about meeting her in the middle of the night so that she could paint.

“Well,” Taryn exhaled noisily. “Damn.”

Resigned to the fact that she’d either have to ignore her muse and wait until the next morning, or work with what she had, she opened her laptop and began pulling up the photos she’d taken. With old school Reba playing softly on her CD player, her easel dragged out to the middle of the floor, and “Teen Witch” (a highly underrated 1980’s teen movie) flickering on mute from her television set, she began to work.

Something hard and thick collected in the courtyard, growing stronger and more powerful as the individual parts came together to form a bigger whole.

It darted around the enclosed space, sniffing the air and seeking something tangible to attach itself to. It slithered across the ground, leaving an invisible trail of foul-smelling slime in its wake like a thick, fat slug.

As it moved through the heavy night, objects in its trail were left to rot or decay; a soda can it slinked over all but melted under its weight, the tin left crackling. The paint on an overturned chair bubbled then slid off, leaving a puddle of dirty white on the hard ground.

When it reached Room #5 it climbed up door and encircled the door knob, the old metal glowing brilliantly hot and red under its touch. The door wobbled a little then swelled, filling its frame until it might explode and send shards of wood and metal across the courtyard. The essence quickly turned inwards on itself and darted inside through the keyhole.

There, it waited.

Taryn
had
felt productive and happy when she finally turned in at 6:15 am. Although she could see the dark red streaks of sun rising over the downtown skyline, the sky was still navy blue and dark. When she’d pulled her blackout curtains to in her bedroom, she’d snuggled down into her blanket and had fallen to sleep like a baby. Taryn didn’t like sleeping alone as she often suffered from nightmares, she didn’t do well when it was totally dark (which is why she kept her door open and a lamp on in the living room) but she loved her sleep.

She knew before she even opened her eyes at noon that it was going to be a rough day.

Every bone in her body hurt. Her right hand was swollen to nearly twice its normal size. Her back was so stiff that it took three tries to sit up, and when she attempted to swing her legs over the side of the bed and stand, she immediately fell to the floor; her hips and legs couldn’t support her weight.

The sharp, shooting pains that radiated from her hips and shot down to her feet had her eyes watering and her stomach turning. Somehow, she managed to make her way to the bathroom by holding onto furniture along the way. There, she collapsed in the floor on a throw rug and emptied her late-night binge of brownies and apple juice into the toilet. By the time she was finished, her body was burning with fire; sweat rolled down her face and back and her heart pummeled her chest.

She wouldn’t be working today.

The walls, furniture, and doorframes supported her weight on the slow journey into the living room. From the couch, she made a call to Aker and apologized for the disruption of the schedule.

“Sorry, Aker,” she said brightly into the receiver, trying to make her voice sound light and airy. “Must have stayed up too late last night and am feeling the effects this morning. I’m going to be working from home.”

Her voice broke on the last word as another fiery bolt of pain streaked through her system. Aker did not let it go unnoticed.

“Don’t worry about me,” he replied, with what could’ve passed as gentleness in most people in his voice. “Do you need anything?”

“No, it’s okay,” she whispered, feeling embarrassed. “I just need to rest.”

“I don’t mind running out for anything,” he said. “I need to pick up something from Wal-Greens for my mother.”

Taryn allowed herself to briefly picture Aker’s mother and imagine Aker as a devoted, loving son, before she replied. “I’m okay, I promise. I have medicine here. It will knock me out and this day will just be a bad dream.”

“Take care then and let me know what you want to do about tomorrow.”

When she hung up, Taryn turned on the television and found a true crime show on the Investigation Discovery channel. Her pain medication was within easy reach but when she tried standing again to go to the kitchen for a drink, she couldn’t. By then, the pain from her waist down was excruciating. Taryn thought that if she had government secrets she’d talk.

A Coke she’d started fourteen hours earlier was on the coffee table in front of her. It was warm and flat and a fly was stuck in the stickiness on the tab but it was all she had. Grimacing, Taryn took a sip and swallowed the oval pill. It was bitter on her tongue. Before her, Rose was telling a St. Olaf story to a bored Blanche and Dorothy. The canned laughter from the audience filled her living room as the first strong rays of sunlight filtered through her curtains.

And Taryn cried in frustration and disappointment.

T
wo days. She’d lost two days.

“Dang it,” Taryn muttered as she shoved her plastic tub into the backseat. The brushes and plastic palettes rattled around inside. Her wrapped canvases, which she was much gentler with, were stowed in the trunk next to a carton of Ale-8, mailed to her from Kentucky by her friend Melissa. She’d become addicted to the drink when she’d worked at Windwood Farm. Now Melissa was more or less her pusher, sending her a carton of the ginger-tasting drink once a month.

She was still achy. The extra pain medicine she’d taken had her head fuzzy, leaving her feeling hungover.

And now, of course, she was behind. She’d have to work extra hard over the next few days to play catch up with herself. She’d promised Ruby to bring the canvases by once she had something to show on them.

Taryn, someone who almost obsessively concerned about meeting deadlines and not wanting to let others down, would almost run herself into the ground to ensure she did what was expected of her.

Since she’d been put on the strong pain relieving medication she took great care in how she took it. She never, for instance, drove when it was freshly in her system. She didn’t want to be responsible for a crash. So today, even though it hurt to walk (and stand and sit), she was flying high only an Epsom salt bath, a couple of Tylenol with some arthritis cream on her legs.

“Let’s do this thing,” she said, forcing some cheerfulness in her voice as she pulled away from her parking spot.

She
would
get back on track and
would
get this job completed.