Experiment in Terror 07 Come Alive (17 page)

I knew that wasn’t true, but I took the compliment anyway and went to the bar, ordering the band a round of drinks.

Perry appeared at my side, looking shy and embarrassed.

I smiled softly at her. “Hey, kiddo.”

She swallowed, licking her lips. “Thank you.”

“For what?”

“For that…for…trying to make me feel better.”

“Perry…”

She shook her head quickly. “I’m sorry. I’m being a jerk, I know. I just…I see the way that girl looks at you, how beautiful and thin she is, how you guys looked so good together, and I…I panicked. Dex, I’m not used to being with anyone, let alone someone like you. You have no idea how fucking hot you are.”

“And you have no idea how goddamn sexy, beautiful, and amazing you are,” I answered back.

“You forgot crazy.”

I put my hands around her waist and pulled her to me. “Baby, we are
both
crazy. That’s why we’re made for each other.”

Then I kissed her hard, not caring who saw. And there were quite a few people that did. They applauded again and we both grinned against each other’s lips.

   Now that we got some of those misunderstandings out of the way, the rest of the night went smoothly. I pulled Perry onto my lap, so Ambrosia turned her charms to Maximus for a while, then decided to make her rounds of the bar, seeing a bunch of people she knew. Rose proceeded to get a little drunk, which you’d think would make her looser and more carefree, but it didn’t. If anything, she got more uptight, more worried, her eyes scanning the bar.

Pretty soon things were getting loud and rowdy and people were dancing. Ambrosia was dancing from man to man, all of them fawning over her, while I kept Perry close to me, trying to keep my eyes on her, even though sometimes I felt compelled to look in Ambrosia’s direction. When we worked up a sweat, Perry excused herself to go to the bar and get us some water, sensible girl that she was. I sat back down at our table and watched her go, enjoying the view of her ass, the swing of her hips, the shake of her hair. She seemed a little more confident than she was earlier, and while I hoped it would stick around for a while, I knew it wasn’t going to be an overnight thing with her. It didn’t matter though, she was worth all the effort and then some.

Perry was being chatted up by a huge black dude who had eyes for only her cleavage. I would have stepped in, especially since he looked like he was saying some pretty cheesy shit, but Perry was giving him her patented “Piss off” look and blatantly ignoring him.

The man kept on leering at her though, and I continued to put faith in Perry’s handling of the situation when the unthinkable happened.

In mid-sentence, whatever gross pick-up line he was trying, the man stopped talking. He reached up to his throat and held it, eyes bulging, skin growing slick with sweat that glistened under the red lights. Perry looked at him in concern at first, followed by shock. The man keeled over onto the floor, hitting it with a thud that shook the bar.

Someone screamed, then everyone screamed. People ran. Perry stumbled backward, looking horrified, more at herself as if she did something to him, but I knew she hadn’t. Someone bent over the man and felt for his pulse. I read his lips. “Dead.”

I got up and pushed my way through the frightened people, making my way over to Perry and taking her into my arms.

“Dex,” she whimpered into my chest as I stroked the back of her head. “He just fell.”

“I know,” I told her, watching as someone else listened for his heartbeat and verified what the other man had said. He was dead. Heart attack, who knew.

The ambulance pulled up just as we were leaving. I wanted to get out of there before the police started pulling people aside for eye-witness reports. We were done dealing with the police after what happened in Snowcrest, and Rose was quick to tell us we did the right thing, especially considering the way the cops were in NOLA. They could help you or royally screw you.

The five of us went around the corner, nervously peeking around at the flashing lights. We saw the man’s body get pushed out in a body bag and placed into the ambulance.

Ambrosia lit up a cigarette—I’d seen her smoking socially in the bar—and Perry stuck her hand out.

“I’d like one please,” she demanded, her voice shaking.

I would have said something about that, but she’d just seen a man die right beside her. She could have the whole pack if she wanted it.

While Perry smoked, Ambrosia told us about the man. She’d danced with him earlier. His name was Tuffy G (because of course it was), and he was an okay guy, he just got a bit pervy when he got drunk. As far as she knew, he was a bit overweight but there was nothing wrong with him. He was in his early thirties and lived somewhat close to the haunted house we were investigating. He tiled bathrooms for a living.

“Well, I guess sometimes people just die,” I said.

Ambrosia shot me a dirty look that still managed to look sexual. She flicked away her cigarette butt. “You know, for someone who sees ghosts, you don’t seem to have a lot of respect for the dead.”

“Dex doesn’t have a lot of respect for the living either,” Maximus put in.

“Shut it, ginger balls.”

“We should get going,” Rose interrupted us before we could get into another sniping war. “I have to open tomorrow.”

“I’m sorry that ended in a bit of a bust,” Ambrosia said apologetically. “Still hope you had a nice time. And I wish you the best of luck with the house. If you need anything before you go, here’s my card.” She handed it to me and I slipped it in my pocket. She looked us all in the eye. “Seriously, if you need anything at all, I’m happy to help. I don’t care how ludicrous it sounds. I like you guys.”

Rose grumbled something and then started walking down the street toward her truck. We said goodbye to Ambrosia and hurried after her.

Back at the bed and breakfast, Perry was still in a state of shell-shock. I ran her a bath, making it overflow with sweet-smelling bubbles, and led her over to it. I bathed her while she sat there, and I made her drink a glass of bourbon that I’d bought earlier in the day.

“Do you want to talk about it?” I asked her as I ran a washcloth down her milky white back.

She shook her head. “I’ll be okay.” She looked up at me. “Dex, make love to me.”

I cocked my head, not hearing her right. “What? Now?”

“I need to feel you,” she said, her voice barely above a whimper.

“Okay, baby,” I told her. I brought her out of the bath, quickly dried her off, and then carried her over to the bed. I lay her down on it, then slowly, gently, covered her silken body with kisses, from the curve of her shoulder to her delicate ankle bones.

While I was inside, staring deep into her eyes, pushing slow, pushing soft while I was so hard, I felt a tingle at the back of my neck, a wash of heat covering my head.

I love making love to you
, Perry’s thoughts crept into my brain.
I need you, I need you.

I couldn’t help but smile and took us both over the edge. It wasn’t quite I love you. But it was a start.

CHAPTER TEN  

“Dex, wake up.” Perry was whispering harshly, trying to shake me awake.

I slowly opened my eyes, the room dark except for the streetlights that were being filtered in through the gauzy curtains.

“What is it?” Where was I? I sat up and looked around. Perry was beside me in bed, topless, her breasts glowing in the dim light. We were in New Orleans. The bed and breakfast.

“There’s someone on our balcony, she says she wants to speak with you.”

I shook my head, blinking fast, swallowing the terror. “What?”

I looked over to the French doors. There was a silhouette of a woman standing on the other side of them. The curtains billowed, a ghost dance.

Perry whispered in my ear. “She says she’s going to take me with her, all the way to hell.”

I spun around to see what Perry meant by that but suddenly she was gone. I was alone in the bed. The woman wasn’t on the balcony.

My teeth began chattering, my limbs turning to blocks of ice, holding me to the bed. The fear came so suddenly, so strongly, that I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think, couldn’t do anything.

I just knew that someone was in the room with me. It wasn’t outside anymore.

It was in.

“Dex,” Perry’s small voice called out from the bathroom. “Dex, she’s in the mirror.”

I tried to call out to her, but my teeth were chattering too much.

“She says she’ll give me the baby if I step through the mirror.”

No!
I tried to scream, but now my jaw was glued shut and my lungs were filling up with internal screams and fluid as cold as dead bones. Dirt began to fill the room, raining down from the ceiling.

“I have to go,” Perry said, her voice just an echo. “I’m sorry, baby.”

I blinked in my rage, and my mother stood at the edge of the bed, waist deep in the dirt that was rising around the bed like floodwaters. She picked some up in her hands. “I’m coming back for all of you, Declan.”

Then she threw the dirt on my head, again and again and again, until it filled my mouth, my nose, my ears, and finally my eyes.

It was all over.

I was dead and buried.

***

“Are you sure you’re okay?” Perry asked during breakfast, gently pushing my hair off my face.

“Are you sure
you’re
okay?” I said right back to her, returning her suspicious look. “You’re the one who had someone die right beside them last night.”

“And you’re the one who woke me up in the middle of the night, acting like
you
were dying. So that’s two scares for me.”

I looked around the breakfast dining room of the B&B. We were alone, drinking cup after cup of dark coffee and pulling apart flaky beignets, having gotten to breakfast just at the cut-off point. We were probably pushing our luck, but the breakfast server was sitting outside on the veranda and smoking away, not really caring.

“Well I’m fine, I just had a nightmare.”

“How often do you dream about your mother?” she asked. I had to tell her what happened, everything except the baby part. But anyway, it was just a dream; it wasn’t real. When things got real, then that’s when they became something. This was just my overactive imagination coupled with my raging hormones. Weird shit like this happened all the time.

“Not very often,” I said truthfully.

“More after you saw her in the motel in Canada?”

I shrugged, hoping she’d drop it. “Doesn’t seem like it. Hey, are you sure you’re up for shooting tonight? I mean, after last night, I wouldn’t be surprised if you wanted to back out of the whole thing.”

She shook her head determinedly. “No, I’m good. I mean, I feel kind of icky, like…dirty. I don’t know, I can’t really explain it. I feel…tainted. Like that’s going to stick in my head for a long time. But I feel okay otherwise. I’m not scared, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

“I’m just worried about
you
, kiddo. And frankly, we want you to be a little bit scared. Haunted house TV show, remember?”

She glared at me mockingly. “Still the sadist, aren’t you? Like the time you made me climb the stairs in the lighthouse.”

“I was just trying to look at your ass,” I admitted, stuffing the pastry in my mouth.

Maximus had left the B&B early, perhaps to visit Rose or stock up on more flannel shirts and pomade. He left a note but all it said was to meet him in the lobby at 7PM, so Perry and I decided to have a nice touristy day in the Big Easy together. Fluffy, sexy fun between the bookends of death.

At least that was the plan. And we did follow through with it, for the most part. We took a ride in one of the red velvet lined, mule-drawn carriages. We had crawfish and Bloody Mary’s down by the river. We watched a few buskers in Pirates Alley and peered in people’s yards in the Garden District. We took the streetcar (wasn’t called Desire, but it did set Perry off on an endless—and terrible—Blanche DuBois impression). We got a bit sunburned and humored a couple of crazy drunks.

But then I got restless and curious. I wanted to find an authentic Voodoo shop and do a little research of my own.

“So much for a happy fun date,” Perry said as we peered into an in-your-face store, Reverend Zombie’s Voodoo Shop on St. Peter Street.

“Well if this place can’t tell us about zombies, I don’t know what will,” I noted, as I spied a sign in the display window among the figurines and potions that said,
Come on in and shop for a spell
.

We entered the store, surprised again, this time to see it quite busy and not with just tourists. It wasn’t hard to see why: there were tons of statues among all the occult books and unnerving masks. It was a bit creepy having so many eyes on you, whether they were inanimate or not. I felt like nothing was inanimate in Voodoo culture.