The Last Kiss Goodbye: A Charlotte Stone Novel Page 6

  Then she hesitated, looking at Michael.

  “What?” he said.

  “If I do this, you have to promise to abide by any rules I come up with,” she said. “Chief of which is, do not be a pain in the ass.”

  “I promise,” he said, way too promptly for her peace of mind.

  She gave him a skeptical look.

  The smile he gave her dazzled. “Cross my heart and hope to die.”

  Said the spider to the fly.

  But she knew herself: charismatic psychopath or not, there was nothing else she could do.

  “I mean it,” she warned, and he laid his hand piously over his heart.

  Fine. Get on with it.

  Positioning the short, fat white candle on the edge of the sink, she dumped her toothbrush and toothpaste out in order to have use of the heavy clear drinking glass they were kept in. With a couple of flicks of her thumb she got the lighter burning and, taking a deep breath, held the flame to the candle.

  And tried to will away the nervous flutter in her stomach.

  Please let this work.

  “Whoa. Hold on a minute.” Michael’s expression was a study in alarm as the wick caught. Straightening to his full height, he shook his head at her. “We’ve been down this road before. You light that candle and I get vacuumed up by this big ole wind that spits me out right in the middle of Spookville. I don’t think so. That hurt and—”

  “Just trust me, will you please?” Charlie interrupted. The candle was burning strongly now, and the scent of jasmine was building. Although she couldn’t feel it, she could see the effect of the passage that was opening on Michael: his hair was beginning to ruffle, as if a breeze were blowing past him. Conscious of her quickening heartbeat, Charlie wet suddenly dry lips. Then she picked up the glass and waited.

  Tam had warned her that timing was all.

  If this doesn’t work … She wasn’t even going to let herself go there.

  Michael was eyeing the candle uneasily. “Believe it or not, you I trust. This whole voodoo thing you’re doing here? Not so much. Charlie—”

  “You have any better ideas?”

  “Goddamn it.”

  She took that as a no. His hair was really blowing now, and he seemed to be bracing himself against a force that she knew had to be substantial if he had to exert that much effort to resist it. The breeze had apparently turned into a strong wind, while on the other end she knew a steady suction was being created, although she couldn’t feel a thing. Not that she was supposed to: only spirits were susceptible. The purpose of the burning candle was to open a portal to the Other Side while at the same time drawing the Light, that legendary white light that she thought of as the pathway to heaven, nearer, and from all indications at least the first part of it was happening. A vortex was being formed and it was growing stronger until, soon now, it would be strong enough to suck him up and whirl him away to where he was supposed to be. Even as she watched, the suction apparently increased. Michael instinctively tried to grab on to the door frame to resist its force, but of course that was useless: his hands went right through the wood. His widening eyes locked on hers as he was pulled, slowly and with a great deal of resistance, toward the candle.

  “Charlie—” His voice was hoarse, with an unmistakable undernote of fear. To hear Michael sounding afraid—well, she didn’t like it. “Can you hear it? The screaming?”

  Oh, God. No, she couldn’t hear a thing. But what he was hearing—in the purple twilight-y part of the Afterlife that he called Spookville there were, according to him, things called Hunters. They were called that because they hunted the screaming, terrified souls of recently deceased human beings who wound up there. Of which, if this didn’t work, he would be one.

  “It’s okay. That just means it’s working.” I think. She didn’t add that last out loud. Her throat had gone tight. Her heart knocked in her chest. If she didn’t time this exactly right …

  “Ahh!” His face contorted with pain as he was lifted off his feet and jerked toward her.

  “Michael!” Heart in throat, Charlie snapped the glass down over the candle. As quick as that, the vortex dropped him like he was hot, as the suction pulling him in instantly ceased. Landing on his feet, he staggered, then dropped into a crouch inches away from her.

  “Oh, my God,” Charlie said, as, inside the glass, the flame flickered and went out.

  “Jesus Christ.” Michael flexed his shoulders as he looked at the still-smoking candle. “For the record, that hurt like a mother.”

  He had already solidified. Just like that: no more cellophane man. Did that mean it had worked? She thought it did. Thank God. Her racing heart started to slow. The tide of dread that had been building inside her began to ebb. Crouched at her feet, he now looked as vividly alive as she did. Probably more so, Charlie reflected with a touch of wryness, because she had never possessed his degree of magnetism—or good looks.

  Okay. Deep breath.

  “Don’t be such a baby.” Her tone was brisk because realizing how much the idea of him being in pain bothered her bothered her. Current crisis apparently averted, she had no intention of allowing herself to dwell on how frightened for him she had been—or to clue him in to it.

  Bottom line remained: he might be here for the time being, but he was still dead—and still subject to the laws of the universe, which might decide to take him at any time. Whatever the (twisted?) relationship between them was, there was still absolutely no future in it. Not that she wanted a future that included him anyway.

  But still—here they were.

  What have I done? was the harrowing thought that occurred to her. It was almost immediately followed by its corollary: Too late now.

  “Baby? Me?” Sounding mildly affronted, he looked up at her then. The shadow of pain still etched his eyes, and Charlie found the tightening of her stomach in response more than a little alarming.

  Again she took refuge in flippancy. “No pain, no gain. The good news is, I think it worked.”

  “I sure hope so, ’cause I ain’t doing that again. Next time you start ju-juing me, think you could go with something that doesn’t feel like it’s tearing me limb from limb?”

  She smiled.

  “Dr. Stone?” A brisk rapping on the bedroom door caused her to shift focus in a hurry. It sounded like the same male voice as before. “Could I please speak to you a minute? It’s important.”

  She raised her voice. “I’ll be right there.”

  Her eyes were already back on Michael before she had even finished speaking. She hated to so much as consider the possibility, but she discovered that she was terrified he was going to start fading out, or flickering, or something similar, again. If he did, she had no idea what she would do. That call to Tam had been the last card she had to play.

  “Fuck.” Michael slowly stood up, straightening to his full height, stretching and flexing and grimacing as if he actually had muscles and sinews and tendons that could actually hurt. “I feel like I got hit by a semi.”

  “You’re dead,” she reminded him in an astringent whisper. “You shouldn’t be able to feel a thing.”

  “Like I think I may have told you before: you don’t know shit about it.”

  For a moment they looked measuringly at each other. He was so close that she had to tilt her head back to meet his eyes. She could see the darkness in the sky blue depths, the tightness at the corners of his beautifully cut mouth, the tension in his square jaw. His hair, a sun-kissed dark blond that made her think of beaches and waves and sunny summer days, was tousled in the aftermath of the vortex. The fine texture of his skin, the slight stubble on his chin and jaw, the golden tan, all looked as real as her own slightly freckled, baby-smooth flesh. His broad shoulders and wide chest filled out the simple white cotton tee in a way that made her eyes want to linger. The brawny muscles of his arms, his flat abdomen and narrow hips and long, powerful legs, all proclaimed youth and strength and a healthy virility. Her breasts were millimeters from th
e muscled wall of his chest. If he had been alive, she would have been able to feel his body heat, feel the warmth of his breath on her face.

  She would have been able to go up on tiptoe and kiss him.

  For a second there, looking at the hard curve of his mouth, she wanted to so much that it made her dizzy.

  But, she reminded herself savagely, he is not alive. And if he were, he would still be locked up in that sad little six by eight cell in Wallens Ridge.

  And all you’d know about him is what you would know about any other death row prisoner who was your research subject.

  She took a step back from him.

  “Thank you, Charlie, for saving my life.” She mimicked his mocking comment from earlier, then faltered as she remembered that it wasn’t exactly his life that she had saved. “Or whatever.”

  “Thank you. For saving my whatever. Though I have to say, you’re not looking any too happy about having snatched me off of the highway to hell.”

  “The thing is, I keep asking myself how evil you have to be to find yourself on the highway to hell to begin with.”

  The look he gave her was impossible to interpret. “I’ve got a question for you, buttercup: if you really think I’m so evil, then what the hell are you doing with me?”

  His eyes bored into hers: she couldn’t hold his gaze. With a small grimace she turned away from him, spotted the glass over the candle, and, glad for something to do, carefully lifted it off.

  “Let’s get this straight: I am not with you. At least, not on purpose.” She replaced her toothbrush and toothpaste in the glass and carefully sat it back on the ledge above the sink. Then she placed the candle beside it. In case, she told herself, she ever needed to use it again. Although whether such a thing would work twice she had no idea. “Just because you happen to have barged into my life does not mean that I’m with you.”

  “I think it’s the sex that means that.” His voice was dry.

  She threw him a quick, charged look.

  “I—I—” Stuttering like that was idiotic. She was not the kind of woman who, when confronted with an awkward situation, stuttered. Her chin came up, and she turned to face him. “I’m not with you, okay? No way in hell am I with the ghost of a serial killer.”

  “I’ll give you the ghost, but I’m no serial killer. Come on, Charlie, you know I didn’t kill those women.”

  Surprised to find herself suddenly angry, she glared at him. “I do not know that.”

  “Yes, you do, if for no other reason than because I’m standing here telling you so.”

  A momentary lightness which she identified as hope fluttered inside her. “So I’m supposed to believe you in the face of all evidence?” Then she recalled said evidence and felt hope crash and burn. The case against him was overwhelming. Seven beautiful young women, brutally slashed to death. His DNA had been found on every victim and at every crime scene. Eyewitnesses had identified him. Security cameras had recorded him. He had no alibi for any of the crimes. The list went on and on. Even the fact that she was considering the possibility that he might be telling the truth concerned her. The stock in trade of a charismatic psychopath, which had been her diagnosis of him, was the ability to convince everyone around him that he was charming and likable and trustworthy. It was camouflage, similar to a chameleon’s ability to change its coloring to match its surroundings. She knew that. Unless I’m wrong. Unless the cops and the FBI and the judge and the jury and the evidence and the whole damned legal system is wrong. Listening to that tiny voice of dissent inside her head, Charlie gritted her teeth. If her emotions started trumping her intellect, there would be no place left for her that was safe and true. “In your dreams.”

  His eyes hardened as they slid over her face. “You wouldn’t believe me if I swore it on a stack of Bibles, would you? I know you: when it comes to everything except your damned ghosts, you believe in the infallibility of authority, of evidence, of the man. If some damned court says it’s so then it must be. But here’s the best part: I don’t care what you think you believe, somewhere deep inside you know I didn’t kill those women. You wouldn’t be giving me the time of day otherwise, much less sleeping with me.”

  “I am not—” Charlie began hotly, about to deny that she was sleeping with him. The word was slept, as in past tense. Singular.

  “You did,” he interrupted ruthlessly. “Have a little faith in your instincts for a change.”

  A sharp knock on the bedroom door made Michael swear.

  “Dr. Stone?” Same man. Same summons. It was all Charlie could do not to grit her teeth.

  “I’m coming,” Charlie called back, and, with a narrow-eyed look at Michael, started to suit the action to her words.

  He didn’t move.

  “Do you mind?” If she sounded a little cranky, well, she had reason: mess did not begin to describe the situation she had gotten herself into with him. And reminding herself that none of it, not one teeny tiny bit (well, okay, except for maybe the sex part), was her fault didn’t help at all. When he still didn’t move in response to that very pointed hint, she edged around him, because walking right through him was beyond her for the moment. “I have better things to do than stand around and argue with you. Like go talk to the man who keeps banging on the fricking door.”

  “You’re determined not to believe me, aren’t you? Fine. If it gives you a thrill to imagine that you’re fucking a murderous psychopath, so be it. Seems a little sick, but probably that’s just me.”

  Which was infuriating on so many levels, Charlie didn’t even know where to begin.

  “You know what? I’m not talking to you anymore. I have a houseful of other problems to deal with.”

  “Before you give me the silent treatment, think you could explain what you did with the whole glass and candle thing? So I know what to expect if anything should come up.” He was following her through the bedroom. Of course he was following her through the bedroom. After what she had done, for all she knew, he would be following her everywhere she went for the rest of her life. The only thing more horrifying than that thought was the one that he would not be. Who knew for how long the action she had taken would tether him to her? Days, weeks, years?

  All she could be sure of was that he was here now. The future was up in the air.

  In an effort to shake off the impossible-to-sort-out combination of anger and doubt and regret and relief that she was experiencing, her reply was coolly brisk.

  “When you die, you’re supposed to move on, you know. That’s how it works. Sometimes spirits will stay for a few days, until they can accept that they’re dead, but then they go on to where they’re supposed to be. Since you weren’t leaving voluntarily, a portal was opening to transport you to”—in his case, she didn’t even want to try to put a name to his probable final destination—“the next place. That’s why you were flickering. What lighting the candle did was go ahead and open the portal all the way, and then when the resulting vortex got strong enough to pull you in I slammed the portal shut again by dropping the glass over the candle before it could actually take you. Slamming the portal closed like that makes the vortex collapse. It can’t open again, at least not in the same general area. In theory.”

  “In theory?”

  “Tam said that’s how it works. I’ve never done it myself, so I’m taking her word for it.” Stopping at her closet, keeping her voice down because if she could hear the hubbub in the hall—which she could—then it was pretty obvious that she could be overheard, too, she shoved the folding, shutter-style doors apart.

  “Close your eyes,” she ordered.

  “What?”

  “Close your eyes.” Her hands were already at her buttons as she looked around at him. “I need to change my blouse. I don’t need you to watch.”

  “Oh, for God’s sake.” But when she glared at him, he obediently closed his eyes. Stripping off her damp and bloodstained shirt while casting him a suspicious glance—as far as she could tell his eyes were staying
shut—she dropped the soiled garment into the laundry basket on the floor of her closet.

  “Nice bra,” he said. “Sexy.”

  It was, pale pink and lacy and low cut, carefully chosen along with a pair of matching panties because when she’d gotten dressed she had thought Tony might be seeing her in her undies later. That hadn’t happened, thanks in large part to the infuriating creature behind her. As she snatched a leaf green replacement blouse from its hanger, the look she shot him should have fried his eyeballs. If his eyes had been open to encounter it, that is. But they weren’t, and—

  She couldn’t be sure they ever had been. In fact, she suspected that they had stayed closed, that he was merely teasing her. For all his faults, which were many and varied, he had never actually gone the creepy Peeping Tom route on her. Which, given what he was, would have been ridiculously easy.

  “You’re not funny,” she said crossly, shrugging into her shirt. At that he opened his eyes and grinned at her. And got a look at her bra after all, between the parted edges of her shirt. “Hey, I didn’t say you could open your eyes yet.”

  Knock, knock.

  “Dr. Stone?” It was the same man again, sounding as if he knew she was standing right there on the other side of the door, a mere few feet away from him. Damn it, had she forgotten to lower her voice on that last exchange with Michael?

  “Coming,” she called back. Finishing up with her buttons, she remembered something and gave Michael a quick, admonishing frown as she whispered, “By the way, you need to stay close. Collapsing a portal only works for a certain amount of space around it, apparently. Tam said, to be safe, we should consider that space about fifty feet.”

  “Let me get this straight: now I have to stay within fifty feet of you?” His slow grin made her want to throw something at him. She knew how his mind worked: dirty thoughts abounded. “Works for me.”