Spell of Summoning (17 page)

“Okay, let me see if I have this.” The cop barely held back an eye roll. “That guy is a ghost hunter and he’s bleeding from the ears because a ghost fought back?”

“Yes,” she said. There really wasn’t a better way to say it.

The officer turned on Holden. “Did you hit him?”

“No.”

“Anything you want to add?”

Holden shook his head.

“Fantastic.” The cop jammed his pen in his breast pocket and headed for the door. “If Mr. Arasmus presses charges, you’ll be hearing from us again. So stay put.” He left his official card on the arm of the sofa.

Holden waited a beat after the officer left, and then grumbled, “I need some air.”

“Do you want to talk about it?”

He shook his head on the way out.

Rebecca let him go, knowing he needed time to process whatever he’d heard in the bedroom. Truthfully, she could use a couple of minutes of quiet, too.

She put away the wine and bagged Damian’s equipment for later. Tamping down her fear, she let a more civilized Buster into the apartment where he roamed, sniffing absolutely everything.

Feeling sorry for him, she sat on the sofa and, steeling herself, made a clicking sound with her tongue. Buster hung his head and tip-toed toward her. She scratched his fuzzy chin and cooed.

“You’re okay, buddy.”

He whimpered and sat on his hind legs.

“Everything’s going to be okay.” But at this point, even Rebecca didn’t believe that.

She locked up, snapped a leash on Buster, and then found Holden lingering over a square of grass outside the community center, the most open area in the whole complex.

“You okay?”

Holden stared, a little glassy-eyed, into the distance.

“Are you hungry?” she asked, touching his arm. He shied away.

Buster sat at his feet and whined. Not even that got his attention.

“Do you want to grab dinner?” Becca asked.

No answer.

“Holden, let’s get some dinner. There’s a Chinese place right around the corner that stays open late.” She gestured in the direction of the restaurant.

She tugged on his arm, and he didn’t fight. They got into his Jeep, and she drove him the half mile to the Happy Panda Chinese restaurant. They sat down like a facsimile of a normal couple at a little table under a giant portrait of the full moon.

Holden was doing a pretty good job of holding himself together, but she saw the strain in his expression.

“Welcome to Happy Panda.” The elderly waitress gave Holden a long look before pulling out a pad and pencil. “Can I take your order?”

Rebecca spoke up. “One kung pao chicken and one beef and broccoli, please.”

“And a pot of tea,” the waitress added, scribbling onto her pad. “For the gentleman.” She turned and left.

Holden glanced to his right, to the empty chair between them. “No. I’m not.”

Becca leaned across the table, nearly catching her hair on fire on a stumpy candle. She blew it out and reached for his arm. “Holden?”

He said with more urgency, “I can’t.” But he wasn’t talking to her. “I never could.”

“Holden,” she hissed, yanking hard on his arm. “Honey, you’re talking to yourself.”

He turned bright eyes full of fear upon her, and she drew back.

“Why are you here?” he demanded, his voice like glass grinding on concrete. “Why are you with me?” He said it like it was an accusation. “Go ask Cole to cast the spells. Or Dani. Or anyone else in the world. Just not me. I’m not good—” He got up, stumbled on his chair and rushed outside.

Rebecca threw a twenty on the table and followed him. “Hey!” She caught him at the hood of his Jeep. “Don’t walk away from me.”

“I can’t do this,” he said, his head bowed. “I can’t.”

She clasped his hand, and he stood still. “You listen to me, now.”

He made hesitant eye contact.

“I’m with you because I trust you.”

He shook his head. “Don’t.”

“Why not?”

“I’m not ready.”

“For what?”

“For this!” Holden snatched his hand away and paced in front of the Jeep. Back and forth. Back and forth. “I don’t have any power. I hadn’t talked to another human being in weeks before I met you.” He shook his head again. “I’m no good at any of this.
I can’t do it
.”

She wasn’t sure he was still talking to her. “Okay.” Becca checked her purse and made sure everything was in order. Wallet, cell, keys. “The last thing I want to do is make your condition worse. If I’m hurting—”

That got his undivided attention. “What condition?”

“Your PTSD. The last thing—”

“No, that’s actually better since—”

Rebecca shoved him. “Then what the hell are you so scared of?
Me
?”

He seemed taken aback. “What do you think I’m scared of?”

“I don’t know.” She assumed it was her and her spell scaring him, but maybe she was wrong. Maybe his fear went much, much deeper.

Holden groaned. “If I fail, you’re dead. How am I supposed to…” He leaned his hips on the hood of his vehicle, shrinking in on himself.

“That’s exactly why I need your help.” She stepped into the vee of his legs, forcing him to look her in the eye. “You think I want my life in that nerd Cole’s hands? He doesn’t care what happens to me. But you do. I know without a doubt that you’ll find a way.”

Something was bothering him, something less obvious. She thought back to all they’d been through that night. He’d claimed to have heard a voice in the chaos before Damian passed out.

“What did the demon say to you?”

Holden trembled ever so slightly. “He said.” Holden pulled her flat against his chest and wrapped his arms around her. Into her hair he whispered, “He said he’d put me back in the water.”

* * *

Disconnected.

Everything felt disconnected and sort of numb. Like whatever had happened tonight in Rebecca’s bedroom had ripped the cords right out of Holden’s central nervous system.

Without remembering how he got there, he sat on the king-size bed in his room at the Bull Dog Inn while Rebecca rushed around gathering plastic cups and ice from the machine outside. Buster jogged nervously from room to room as if he couldn’t find a comfortable resting place.

“Here. Drink this.” Rebecca pushed a cup of what smelled like floor cleaner under his nose. “You’ll feel better.”

Holden accepted the cup but didn’t drink, and it eventually rested on his knee.

She didn’t even bother with a cup for herself but guzzled whiskey straight from the miniature bottle. Then she lifted Holden’s cup from his hand and waved it in front of his face.

“Drink. I’m already ahead of you.”

Holden didn’t normally drink. It wasn’t that he couldn’t, but his grandpa had been a recovering alcoholic, and Holden had lived with him long enough for abstaining to become a habit.

But Rebecca was right. Alcohol was made for nights like tonight.

He threw back his head and downed the whiskey in one shot. It burned at first but then numbed him from the inside out. Sort of like the icy waters of Wade Lake had done all those years ago.

The demon’s threats had ruptured something inside Holden. A long-held fear itched inside him, wanting out. He purged it the only way he could think of—telling it to Rebecca. He just hoped she could handle it.

“I didn’t kill Max Gaines,” he said, his voice filling the quiet room.

Rebecca turned from the TV cabinet, where she’d set up a makeshift bar. “I know you didn’t.”

She helped herself to another tiny bottle and then made him a second glass of whiskey.

“I remember everything,” he continued. “They call it a near drowning.” He snorted. “But there was nothing
near
about it.”

No. He needed to start at the beginning. Holden sipped his drink and then said, “During the winter, we all walked home across that lake every day after school. We knew the safe path, and we knew the patches of ice to avoid. That day Max and I were, uh, my grandpa would have called it ‘horsing around.’ I didn’t push him onto the thin ice.”

Holden watched her for a response. If she reacted the way the Gainses had, he might not recover. He needed Rebecca to understand and to believe him. No, to believe
in
him.

Rebecca plopped beside him on the bed and lightly scratched his knee with her nails. “I know you didn’t. You would never do that.”

Swallowing past the old guilt, Holden said, “We were dragging each other, being stupid, play wrestling farther and farther out. And then—”

He remembered every moment of the next few minutes. Falling and being consumed by water so cold it paralyzed him. He’d gone numb fast, the lake’s current tossing him one way and Max another.

Panic hurt the worst. His heart stuttering behind his ribs, Holden had flailed in the water, his winter clothes tightening like a full-body noose.

He’d found the surface. Not the hole he’d fallen through, but a sheet of unbroken, impenetrable ice. Holden remembered pounding at the ice, ripping off his gloves, and then clawing at it with his bare fingers.

That was the last thing he remembered before his brain had shorted out and he’d fallen asleep under the water.

“And then what?” Rebecca prompted gently.

Her voice broke him free from the memories. “We fell through.” The whiskey was making him sleepy. He fell back against the mattress. Rebecca followed, wiggling into a fetal position beside him.

“I lived. Max didn’t,” Holden said, “The Gainses twisted a dumb accident into some kind of murder conspiracy.”

“Because you survived, it must be your fault,” she surmised.

“But I didn’t want to hurt him.” He’d tried to hold on to Max under the ridiculous assumption he could kick them both to the surface. But that plan had fallen apart in less than a second.

In his mind, Holden replayed his fingers digging at the ice above his head. “Sometimes,” he whispered, squeezing his eyes shut, “I think I’m still under the ice. That this is all a dream. That they never found me.”

Seconds ticked by, and the silence in the room stretched way past comfortable.

“This is real,” Rebecca finally said. “Why would you fantasize about a pain-in-the-ass female with a summoning spell hanging over her head? Wouldn’t a fifteen-year-old boy dream of something … sweeter?”

“You’re not a pain in the ass.” He rolled onto his side and faced her. She looked so small, curled on his bed. He reached around her and flipped the comforter over her hips.

Rebecca blinked sleepily. “I know this isn’t a dream because mine would involve a white beach and a pink drink.”

Her hand snaked across the bed and clasped his. She didn’t let go. “I’m so glad it was you who called me on Monday and not Cole.”

He circled the impossibly soft flesh of her wrist with his thumb. “Me, too.”

She snuggled deeper under the blankets. “You’re not a screw-up,” she mumbled.

Holden smiled, kicking off his shoes. For her, he’d be the opposite of a screw-up. No matter what it took. “Good night, darlin’.”

But she was already asleep.

Chapter Twelve

Holden needed a new manager. A good one. Which was why he was sitting at a booth in the back of Sparky’s interviewing college kids, middle-aged mothers of grown children, and one retired wrestler for the position. So far no luck. In fact, he was so bad at interviewing potential employees that he was sure at least one applicant would not want the job even if Holden offered it to him.

He shuffled the applications and glanced toward the lunch counter. Behind there, in the manager’s office, Rebecca continued her mission to digitize everything he’d ever touched. Though interrupting her would be rude, not to mention counterproductive, he found himself missing her. Which was absurd. You couldn’t miss someone working twenty feet away. Or a woman you’d last spoken to only an hour ago.

But he missed her anyway. Something inside him had been altered last night. And not just by the demon’s games. No, it was her. For once, he’d been able to express his feelings and share himself with someone else. It had changed him.

Holden leaned forward to go to her when the door chimed and a customer entered. On second thought, he’d better stay. The way the diminutive redhead zeroed in on him told him this was the next applicant for manager.

“Mr. Clark?” She extended her hand.

He shook the dainty thing, half afraid he’d crush it.

She couldn’t be over four feet ten, and she didn’t try to increase that with heels but wore sensible, black flats. He felt like a gorilla next to her.

“Good to meet you,” she continued, sliding into the booth opposite him and pushing her resume across the table. “I’m Doreen McAllister, and I want to be your manager, sir.”

Holden couldn’t keep from smiling. She was pure southern charm, her voice lilting with a thick, North Carolina twang. She was the first candidate he liked at first sight.

“Why is that?”

Doreen folded her hands on the table, completely unflustered. “I asked around. I know your last manager took off with your money. I can promise you I’m a good Christian girl who won’t betray you. Besides that,” she nodded at her resume, “I worked as a waitress for two years at the Olive Garden and then three years as a manager. They loved me. I got nothing but positive evaluations. I would have retired from there, but the restaurant I worked at closed, and I lost my job.”

He read over her resume. High school diploma. Five years of related experience. Some college credits.

“Let’s level,” she said. “You need a trustworthy manager, and I need a job.”

She was perfect as far as he was concerned. “Can you start right now?”

Doreen wilted in obvious relief. “Thank you, Mr. Clark. I won’t disappoint you.”

Holden collected his pile of applications and went behind the counter. As he entered the manager’s office, Rebecca said good-bye into her cell phone and put it into her purse.

“I hired a manager.” His gaze slowly traveled from her sensible button-down blouse and little black skirt to her naughty red heels. He’d never been so turned on by business attire. “How are things in here?”

They’d woken this morning on his motel bed, Miss Powell’s adorable little behind tucked into his belly. If she hadn’t scurried into the bathroom the moment her eyes popped open, he’d have been thrilled to further express his deepening admiration.