Entity Mine (2 page)

Chapter 2

Three months later

“He’s a demonologist, Beth.
Of course,
he found a portal to hell.” Devon Daughtry rummaged through a cardboard box, swearing as her fingernail bent almost to snapping point and glanced over her shoulder at her friend, who squatted on the concrete step leading into the house from the garage where they were unpacking.

“That’s easy for you to say. It’s not your house.” Beth’s voice was rueful as she slashed a box open with a box cutter, her heart-shaped face puckered in wry accusation.

Sweat tickled Devon’s hairline and she mopped it with the back of her hand, squinting into the brilliant sunlight slanting though a dirt-streaked window beneath the bare two by fours framing the roof. How long had they been in the hot garage going through the sad remains of what she’d bothered to haul back from the city?

She tilted her head toward her friend, raising her eyebrows. “Look. Will it make you feel better if I come over later and check it out?”

Beth’s sigh sounded more like a hurricane. “I was hoping you’d say that.”

“Anything for my new landlord.” Devon paused as she caught sight of her reflection in the glass of a framed photo she’d partially unwrapped.

A grimy smudge blacked her pale forehead. The makeup she’d applied that morning had given up the ghost. Her pale lashes were nearly invisible, and her brown eyes looked like ghoulish pits in her red-head white complexion. “Ugh.” She scrubbed at the mark with her fingers.

The first notes of “Unchained Melody” made her set down the half-wrapped photo and scramble for her phone.

The name spiked her heart rate. “Shoot. It’s my old boss. I’d better take this.”

Her lungs burned and she realized she held her breath. She let it out in a rush, birthing an eddy of air in the shaft of light from the window. Dust sparkled in the beam like holiday glitter as she answered, her voice hard and tight. “Mordecai.”

“Devon.”

She licked her dry lips and the taste of salt met her tongue. “What do you want?”

“I heard you were hanging up your shingle and wanted to remind you our contract forbids you from signing any of M and N’s clients.”

Devon almost laughed. “It’s not that kind of shingle.” She rolled her eyes at Beth. “There’re not a lot of clients eager to hire a lawyer fired from her last job.”

“You brought it on yourself, Devon. You should have played ball.”

She ground her teeth. Hadn’t they already gone ten rounds on this? She rubbed her chin. Sure felt like a knockout. “Yeah, well I was never one to cork the bat. Now, if we’re done with the crappy sport idioms, I have someone on the other line.”

“Just remember what I said before.”

“Which? That lawyers like me are a dime a dozen or that I’m a skinny bitch who should have kept my nose out of other people’s business?”

She stabbed the phone with her finger, ending the call without waiting for an answer then paced the width of the garage, her heart on overdrive, her hands shaking.

Closing her eyes, she put a trembling hand on her forehead. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be. I know what he put you through. But look at it this way, if he hadn’t fired you, you wouldn’t be back in Western New York starting a new business.”

Devon stopped abruptly and raised an eyebrow. “You say that like it’s a good thing.”

“Well, it is for me. I get my best friend back, a tenant, and an experienced medium all in one.”

Her friend’s banter untangled the knot of anger and hurt squeezing her chest. Devon strode back to the photo she’d been working on and knelt to continue opening it. “You’re such a sweet
—”

She frowned as she noticed for the first time that the newspaper around the photo seemed dull and yellowed. Weird. She’d only packed a few days ago.

“Devon?” Beth stood and took a step in her direction.

Devon ripped away the paper. A man she’d never seen before gazed out of the black and white photo. His eyes seemed to sear into her, making her stomach swoop as if she had missed a step going downstairs.

She grabbed the edge of the carton, tilting it up so she could see the side.
Wade
was neatly written in letters that had probably once been black, but had since faded to a sickly green.

Beth approached and Devon handed her the photo. “Were there someone else’s things in the garage?”

Beth didn’t speak for a moment, looking at the picture as if mesmerized.

“Hey!” Devon tapped the frame. “If this house weren’t in the background, I’d think this was one of those cheesecake posters. This guy is H.O.T.”

Beth swallowed, and when she spoke her voice sounded thick and flat. “That was Ethan.”

“Was?” A punch to the solar plexus wouldn’t have stolen her breath so completely. “Did he die?”

Devon swallowed the ache in her throat as her eyes flooded. The stress of the past week. No way was she crying over some guy she’d never met, no matter how gorgeous.

“He disappeared. My mom rented to him a few months ago. You were in Manhattan.”

A throaty laugh colored Beth’s voice, but couldn’t mask the roughness grief had triggered. When she glanced at Devon, tears gleamed in her eyes. “I had quite the crush. I was taking that photography course and had convinced him to let me take a picture of him. I’m surprised he let me do it. He was very self-contained. I would have said shy if he hadn’t been all that and a bag of chips. One day my mom went to collect the rent. She found the place trashed, and Ethan was gone.”

“Maybe he just skipped town.” God, she wanted to believe that.

“That’s what my mom said, but he left all his stuff. His wallet was on the bedside table and all his clothes were in the closet.”

Devon took the frame from Beth’s hands and lifted the photo into the light. “Do you mind if I keep the picture? There’s just something about him.”

Beth pressed her lips together and shoved her empty hands in the back pockets of her stylish jeans. “I don’t see what harm it would do. I don’t think he had any family.”

Devon thumbed a clear streak in the dust settling on the glass. “Yeah, I know what that’s like.” She’d been an only child and her parents were gone.

Ethan’s eyes were light, green or blue, maybe hazel. She squelched the urge to ask. No need to make her oldest friend question her sanity. He had thick lashes, half-lowered, making him look reserved. His hair was dark and short, military in its ruthless precision. His face had a lean, sculpted quality, as if he were the product of some artist’s imagination. His straight nose slashed toward his mouth and his cheekbones sheered diagonally across his face, carving his jaw into almost perfect triangles on either side. His lips were held tight, the only softness in his face the slight fullness of his bottom lip above the mere whisper of a cleft chin.

He reclined beside a huge, glass jar of coins on the concrete front stoop of the small ranch-style house, one long leg bent, the other straight, his large right hand tucked across his lean ribs, the left propped on the step beside him, making a black T-shirt and jeans look as sexy as nothing at all. Sexier.

Something gripped her heart as she gazed at the photo.

Had she ever seen anyone who looked more alone?

A voice ripped Ethan from his dream. Back to gnawing hunger and burning thirst. Back to wondering what the fuck he’d done to deserve this hellish limbo. Certainly anger issues and questionable sanity couldn’t merit this paralyzing pain and soul-sucking impotence.

He didn’t know how long he’d slept. At least that’s what he called the long periods when he dreamed, though it probably wasn’t possible for the dead to sleep.

The noise that’d stolen the solace of dreams came again. A woman’s voice. The man who’d moved in after he’d died must have guests or maybe he’d left and this was the new tenant. Time seemed to skip and jump when sleep gave the only escape from the endless pain of solitude and hunger.

The fury in the woman’s tone called to him. He moved through the gloomy, narrow hall to the door to the garage. The screen door was shut, but the heavy metal security door stood open.

A slender blonde’s back faced him, but another woman spoke, her voice brisk with anger. He’d bet under normal circumstances the husky timbre would be nice to listen to. He could see movement. The angry woman paced, her sandaled feet slapping the concrete, though he didn’t think it could be summer anymore, but she didn’t seem to be talking to the woman blocking his view. A cell phone, then.

Here was a mystery, something to take his mind off his unending hunger, if only for a moment. He moved closer.

Her scent, fresh, with an overlay of cherry blossoms and a hint of musk, drifted to him through the screen door on the air current she’d stirred with her sharp movement. He inhaled. She smelled like spring. His favorite season.

How strange was it that he could still smell? He’d spent a lot of time when he first died pondering the hows and whys of his condition. The oddity of seeing, smelling, feeling, without eyes to see, a nose to smell or hands to touch. Bitter hunger and thirst from an incorporeal gut and throat. He supposed the illusion was some construct of his brain, but how his brain still worked was beyond him.

The woman ended her call, clutching the phone to her chest, and turned to the blonde on the step. “I’m sorry,” she said.

As he’d figured, her voice stroked across his ears like the rough caress of a warm, ocean wave on sunbaked skin.

He moved to study her through the screen. There was something familiar about her, but he couldn’t put his finger on how he might know her. Probably about thirty, she had light, red hair and pale skin. Her brown eyes seemed weary and sad. A streak of something gray banded her forehead, but all it did was highlight her delicate beauty.

He felt the sudden urge to hunt down the person who’d kindled the hurt he’d heard beneath her anger and tear him a new one.

The other woman spoke and he realized the blonde was Beth Boyer, the daughter of the landlord.

The redhead knelt to finish unwrapping something and stopped, staring at whatever she held in her hand.

“Devon?” Beth said.

So that was her name. Ethan moved closer and noticed what Devon was holding. A box with his name on it.

He heard her next words but he didn’t absorb them. She was touching his things.

Rage took him. He shot inside before he’d even made the conscious decision to move.

Chapter 3

Inside the garage, Ethan swiped at the cobweb-draped box, fury riding him hard, his ears too full of buzzing for him to process the continuing conversation.

Those were his things, everything he had in the world. How many times had he stuffed those meager belongings into a suitcase and moved on? First to a new foster home, then to a new posting, a new dive site, a new opportunity. They were the only constants in his world. He didn’t want a stranger, no matter how pretty, rifling through them.

He sliced a hand though the air, but made no impact. His arm hadn’t so much as raised a breeze. The woman continued talking as if nothing had happened.

The reminder of his true state took him back. Some of his fury seeped away. What good were material things to him? Though he had some sensation of touch, could feel the floor beneath his feet, had the illusion he could touch his chest, his face. He couldn’t handle the objects, couldn’t use them.

His shoulders slumped and he noticed for the first time the photo she’d handed Beth.

The last photo anyone had ever taken of him.

Hell, as a foster kid, there weren’t many pictures of him, period. Some class photos, the occasional school photo when his current foster parents had bothered to pay for them, and the candids of him and his crew. That was it. The sole record of his pathetic life.

Feeling sorry for yourself, Wade? He shook off the useless self-pity and tuned into what Devon was saying.

“He disappeared?” Her brow ridged, and he could sense her sadness. He meant nothing to her, but she grieved. Maybe it was only the general grief in response to a wasted life, but real emotion nonetheless.

An odd feeling in his chest made him breathe faster, and the majority of his anger faded, though he could feel the emotion as he always did, lying in wait beneath the surface, like a lion stalking his prey.

He clutched his empty belly and settled onto the floor to listen to them discuss what might have happened to him.

Hearing about his murder was a luxury he hadn’t had earlier. An uneasy shudder ran through him as he realized whatever had happened to him had left no trace. No blood, no corpse. What the hell could do that?

He strained to remember the details of that night. Damn it. No matter how many thousands of times he went over the incident, he couldn’t remember seeing Dan or the kid move his body. The only unusual thing he remembered was the bright flash of light.

Had he been vaporized?

Science fiction overflowed with weapons that vaporized people, but he’d never seen anything like that in reality. A nuclear explosion or a fuel-air bomb would do the trick, but since the house and the woods around it were not a pile of ash, he could rule that out.

Ethan shook his head. Dwelling on the cause of his condition only made him crazy.

Insane in life. Insane in death.

The visceral pain in his gut drew his thoughts away from his mental state. Or maybe this all was a figment of his imagination. Maybe he only dreamed he walked the Earth. Maybe this was hell.

After months of this tortuous, aimless existence, he started to think so.

Devon laughed, and Ethan jerked back to attention. He’d been lost in thought for several minutes. Damn, he’d wanted to hear more of what Beth knew about his death.

Devon fingered the photo. “What’s with the coins?”

Beth shrugged. “He liked to run and hike and he always seemed to find something.” She ducked her head. “I’d better go. Let me know if you need anything.”

Devon hugged her. “I’ll be over in a little while.”

Beth gave Devon a half wave, a second later her car door slammed, and she backed out of the driveway.

Devon looked after her for a minute, then took the picture she’d retrieved and another plaque-sized item and tucked them under her slender arm, his photo on top.

What was she up to? Curious, he tailed her, noting the way her jeans clung to the rounded contours of her ass. He imagined palming the soft, pliant flesh and a frisson of heat whispered though him, making him ache. He froze for a second before following.

As freakish as it seemed for a man of twenty-eight, he’d never made love to a woman. Had never been attracted enough to risk the consequences.

He’d dreamed of sex, of course. His mind flooded with images of a woman who’d snared his senses so completely he lost all control, but he’d never met her.

Now, it seemed, he had.

Well, wasn’t Fate a bare-assed bitch?

She stepped into the bedroom, dumped the placard onto the bed, then hung his photo on a hook across the room, clearly visible from bed level.

“There you go, handsome,” she said, polishing the glass over his face with a soft cloth. “Now we can keep each other company.”

The tenderness of the gesture and the loneliness revealed by her words made his breath snag in his throat. In that moment, the thing inside him whimpered and showed its belly, the anger that fed it, compressing down to the tiniest ember.

Devon grabbed the plaque and bounced out of the room, humming something under her breath, leaving him standing there, bemused.

He looked around the bedroom. A light red and gold quilt with circling tulips covered the bed, and the red curtains brightened up the small room more than his old navy set. The house had come furnished and the idea that she would be sleeping in his bed sent a wave of heat flashing over him as he imagined her flushed and mussed by his caresses.

He sloughed off the thought with a guttural groan. When had he become a masochist? Why torture himself with impossibilities?

Dead was dead. Devon existed beyond his touch on every level.

He heard the grating whine of the front screen. What was she doing?

Experience had proven that curiosity got him nothing but frustration. Still, eager to distract himself, he trailed her outside where she immersed herself in fixing the plaque to the siding of the house with finishing nails and a hammer.

She brushed her thumb with the hammer and swore, shaking the digit. He winced in sympathy. As she concentrated, realigning the nail and this time driving it home with rhythmic precision, the tip of her small pink tongue peeked out, and he couldn’t help imagining the stroke of it against his own. Or other places. He closed his eyes. Stop it, Wade. Just, stop it.

She stepped back from what he could now see was a sign, and he read it.

Devon Daughtry, Psychic Medium for hire.

He rocked back on his heels. A bitter laugh rocked his shoulders and echoed in his ears as it rumbled out full-formed.

He’d never believed in anything woo-woo. Never believed in ghosts and, Lord knew, he’d stood at the head of the line of those who thought the people who took advantage of the brokenhearted were the lowest of the low, and yet this woman, who, in life, he would have dismissed as little more than a con artist, now represented his best chance to peel back the truth about his death. If she were a true medium.

God willing, maybe he could finally get some answers.

The soft cloth she’d tucked into the back pocket of her jeans snapped as she shook it out, then stepped forward to polish her fingerprints off the brass plaque. He considered her slim back. How did this whole communicating with a medium thing work? Since, she hadn’t seen him so far, it seemed there might be more involved then just being in her line of sight.

On TV, people were always going on about electromagnetic fields. He closed his eyes again, trying to feel the energy that ghosts were supposed to manipulate, but the air felt like it always did, formless and empty. He opened his eyes and stared up at the bright blue sky. Damn it. This was ridiculous.

She stepped back and folded her arms across her chest, staring at the plaque, though her eyes had the far-seeing appearance of someone deep in thought.

He charged in front of her and waved his arms. “Hey, Devon! Ghost over here!”

Her brow furrowed and her eyes re-gained focus.

His breath caught. She saw him. She must.

He re-doubled his yelling and wild arm-waving, all the while searching for some sign she knew he was there, but after a long moment she shook her head and spun on her heel, heading back to the front door.

Disappointment squeezed his stomach with vicious force. A shadow slashed across the door, cloaking her as she entered the house. He fisted his hands, almost trembling with the impotent desire to march in there, grab her by the shoulders, and shake her.

He turned his face back to the eye-searing brilliance of the Indian Summer sky. Though, it must be all of eighty degrees, he’d never felt so cold.

Now that he knew ghosts existed and could really use a medium to help him solve his murder, it was just his luck she was a fake.