You’re the One That I Haunt Read online

  “If I wasn’t concerned about what he might do to you in retaliation, I’d pay him a visit myself.” The cold anger in his tone made me very nervous. I’d seen only a tiny portion of what Sammy was capable of, and I knew he could do much, much worse; Joe losing his job was one thing, Joe losing his life was another.

  “Don’t do that, please.” I’d beg on my knees if I had to. “He’s not mortal—you can’t deal with him like you would an ordinary man. Please, Joe—for me. Don’t go there.”

  “I can’t stand doing nothing,” he bit out. “It goes against the grain.”

  I could picture him now, running ragged fingers through his dark hair, looking tired and worried and sexy as hell. I envisioned him in his cramped little office at the E.R., surrounded by stacks of paperwork: medical charts to be reviewed, test results to be deciphered, life-and-death decisions to be made.

  He so didn’t need this.

  “It’s going to be okay.” I forced myself to sound cheerful, reassuring. “I’ve dealt with Sammy before and lived to tell about it.” I gave a little laugh. “If I can handle voodoo queens, haunted houses, and hundred-year-old ghosts, I can handle Sammy.”

  CHAPTER 4

  Forty-five minutes later I was out the door and on my way to work. I took extra care to make sure the house was locked and the burglar alarm set.

  Not that an alarm system would help against demons from the underworld, but whatever.

  The loud thump of bass from a car radio came to my ear as I walked down the driveway toward my little red Honda. The trees on my street were thick with spring growth, so I couldn’t see where the music was coming from, but it was way too loud for this quiet neighborhood.

  AC/DC’s “Highway To Hell,” getting louder and louder.

  No way. Not possible.

  I stood outside my car, listening, as the music got even louder.

  And then he was there, pulling into my driveway with a crunch of gravel and a blast of sound, looking wicked cool behind the wheel of a classic black vintage Mustang convertible.

  Sammy. In the flesh. Again.

  The Mustang came to a halt right behind my Honda, blocking the driveway. Sammy’s hand flicked toward the radio dial, and the music died abruptly, leaving only the low rumble of the engine in its wake.

  “Care for a ride, little girl?”

  Sammy lowered his RayBans enough to peer over, giving me his sexiest grin. Bright blue eyes, full of mischief. The cocky bastard appeared to be truly enjoying himself.

  “I’m glad you’re here, actually.” I wasn’t going to let Sammy’s commando attack rattle me. So he knows where I live…why expect anything different? “It gives me the chance to say ‘fuck off’ in person.”

  Sammy burst out laughing, tilting his head back and slipping his sunglasses into place.

  My knees were shaking, but he didn’t know that. Unless he had x-ray vision, which he might, but I didn’t care. I was no expert on the powers of Satan—my time as a goth had been spent exploring the fashion side, not the dark side.

  Besides, I was pretty pissed. His little trick with the video footage had been totally uncalled for.

  “Oh, Nicki,” he said, still smiling. “Do you know how rare it is for someone to say that to me?” He cocked his head to the right, patting the seat next to him with a flourish. “Come, ride with me, and we’ll talk.”

  “No.” I took refuge in what I’d learned about Sammy in the basement of an old house in Savannah; he had no power without my consent. If I didn’t want to go for a ride with him, I didn’t have to go for a ride with him.

  “Don’t you want to talk about your boyfriend’s little problem? I can fix it, you know.”

  Dammit.

  “Hear me out.” Sammy placed a hand over his heart, almost as though he had one. “That’s all I ask. I promise I’ll be a perfect gentleman.” His smile faded, became a rueful grin. “I just want to talk to you, Nicki. One early-morning ride on a beautiful spring day, that’s all I ask. If you still want to be a good little girl after that—though I can’t imagine why—I’ll leave you alone.”

  “You’ll leave me alone.” I was highly suspicious of any plan as simple as this.

  Sammy nodded, hand still on his heart. “I’ll leave you alone.”

  It was a bad idea. I knew it in my heart, I knew it in my soul.

  But I saw Joe’s face, the way it looked when I’d opened my eyes that day in the E.R.—concerned, caring, totally hot in a guardian angel kind of way. Joe was meant to be a doctor, and my accusation of murder could well end his career.

  “You’ll keep your hands to yourself,” I said flatly, “and you’ll have me back here within one hour.”

  Sammy grinned, cheerful as a child who’d gotten his own way. “One hour,” he said. “Honest to God.”

  I cringed, literally, half-expecting a lightning bolt to strike Sammy on the head. “Are you kidding me?”

  “Lighten up, Nicki.” Sammy leaned over the passenger seat and threw open the car door. “Where’s your sense of humor?”

  Atlanta in the springtime is a beautiful thing; pink and purple azaleas carpet the hillsides, the white dapple of dogwood everywhere you look.

  I couldn’t enjoy a minute of the passing scenery, even though I adored Atlanta, adored azaleas, and adored vintage cars like the cool old Mustang. To be cruising down Stone Mountain Freeway in one, top down, should’ve been a real treat, but my stomach was churning. AC/DC was no longer blaring on the radio, but I was on my own private highway to Hell.

  “It was a woman, you know,” Sammy said casually. He drove one-handed, resting an elbow out the Mustang’s open window. The wind whipped his short blond hair. “Women have always been my downfall.”

  “You’re going to blame women for your downfall?” I wasn’t buying it. “It takes two, buddy.”

  Sammy shook his head, smiling a little. “Not all women, Nicki. Just one woman.”

  “Oh, I see. Some woman broke your heart, and that’s when you decided to become evil.” I couldn’t believe I was talking to the Devil this way. “I’ve heard this same sob story at goth bars all over Atlanta. Can’t you come up with a better line than that?”

  There was silence, and for a moment I worried that I’d gone too far.

  “She didn’t break my heart.” Sammy shook his head. He was watching the road, but his thoughts were obviously elsewhere. “Lilith was only doing what she was created to do.”

  Lilith?

  Stone Mountain Freeway was dotted with scenic rest stops overlooking the mountain. Sammy slowed, pulling into one. The Mustang eased to a stop with a sluggish crunch of gravel, and he cut the engine.

  “It’s been eons since I’ve felt the need to explain myself.” He laughed a little, as though finding such an idea hard to believe, then looked away, toward the trees.

  I said nothing, and after a moment, Sammy slipped off his RayBans and turned his head, piercing me with those blue eyes. “Hear me out.”

  I sighed, resigned to hearing a load of crap, and wanting only to get it over with so I could go home. The front seat seemed a bit cramped all of a sudden, his lean, jeans-clad leg far too close to mine. “Go ahead.” I checked my watch. “You’ve got about forty minutes left on your hour. Tell me your story.”

  “I was an angel once.” Sammy said it simply, as a statement of fact. He lifted a hand—bare of rings today, I noted—and waved it toward the clouds over Stone Mountain. “Long ago, I rode the heights of glory with my celestial brothers, heights you could never imagine.” For just a moment, his face was rapt, but the look was fleeting, marred by the sardonic curl of a lip. “Then I made the mistake of looking down, turning my eyes from the heights and letting myself be distracted by the blue-green bauble known as Earth.”

  How weird to hear the planet referred to as a cosmic marble.

  “I saw a woman.” Sammy’s gaze turned inward now, remembering. “She was gathering fruit”—here he smiled—” just as the legends say, but she…she was
the real fruit. More delectable than the reddest apple, the ripest peach, sent to tempt mankind with her sweet juices.”

  I shifted, uncomfortable with the erotic imagery.

  “There was no shame,” Sammy murmured, almost to himself, “no shame in what we did. Was she not placed in that garden to arouse man’s desire? If poor Adam, writhing in his mortal coils, was powerless in her grasp, then how was I, an angel already so attuned to ecstasy, to resist her?”

  My mouth fell open.

  “You’re blaming Eve?” It’d been many years since I’d been in Sunday school, but even a bad girl like me was familiar with the story of the Garden of Eden.

  “Lilith.” He shook his head. “Her name was Lilith. Storytellers always tinker with the facts.”

  Whatever. “You’re blaming Lilith for tempting you and getting you kicked out of Heaven?” This was a total reversal of the Bible story, and quite frankly, not one I was buying. “I suppose she waved a couple of palm fronds to get your attention, then took advantage of your delicate angel sensibilities.”

  Why do guys always blame it on the woman?

  Sammy rolled his eyes at my sarcasm. “You don’t understand, Nicki. Lilith was no innocent; she’d already known the touch of a man. I was the innocent. I knew nothing of the physical—I was an archangel, for heaven’s sake! But Lilith wanted much more than a naked ape and his pitiful little banana. She caught me spying on her and seduced me, I swear it.”

  “Be honest, Sammy. You saw it, you wanted it, you took it.” I felt a raw flash of jealousy at the mental image I’d created and hated myself for it. “For all I know, Lilith was happy in her little garden, tending her little plot, being faithful to her man. You talk of being seduced—how in the world was Lilith supposed to resist you?”

  I could’ve bitten my tongue, but it was too late.

  Sammy smiled. “I’ll take that as a compliment.”

  Now it was my turn to roll my eyes, which gave me a chance to look away. The guy’s sex appeal was immense, and I couldn’t help but wonder if other parts of him were, too.

  “I haven’t finished my story yet,” he said mildly.

  “What’s your real name?” If we were going to have this conversation, I felt better leading it than trying to follow it.

  “Samael.”

  I shifted in the seat to face him, shoulder against the car door. “That’s it?” I was highly skeptical. “What about Lucifer, Beelzebub, the Great Satan?”

  Sammy shrugged. “You asked my name, not what people call me. Besides, flattered as I am at the comparison, I’m not that high in the underworld hierarchy. Satan is much more imposing in person.” He flashed me a smile. “Though I’m much better-looking.”

  Now I was even more skeptical. “Now you’re telling me that you’re not the Devil.”

  “A minor demon only.” Sammy reached between his knees and adjusted his seat, sliding it back. “One among many. We are Legion, after all.”

  My blood ran cold.

  “You’re a liar.” No one could be more devilishly imposing than he was.

  Sammy looked at me intently, bright blue eyes very serious.

  “That’s true. I’m a liar.” He looked very different without his usual sexy smirk. “But I’m not lying now.”

  I had a flashback to one of my favorite movies when I was a kid; a fantasy adventure called Labyrinth. In it, a fantastically costumed and very sexy David Bowie plays a wicked Goblin King, out to corrupt an innocent young girl. The sweet young thing has only her wits to save her as she wends her way through the labyrinth, her unwanted attraction to the Goblin King distracting her at every turn.

  But I was no sweet young thing, and this guy was no David Bowie.

  He looked a lot more like Billy Idol, which made my situation much, much worse. I loved Billy Idol.

  “What do you want from me?” I felt panicky all of a sudden, claustrophobic despite the fact that we sat in an open convertible. The Mustang was in full sight of the road and any passing cars.

  “You know what I want from you, Nicki.”

  “I already told you, back in Savannah, that I wasn’t going to help recruit any souls for your ‘army.’” I was beginning to feel desperate. “I don’t need that on my conscience.”

  “At least you have one,” Sammy said quickly, looking at me curiously. “What does it feel like?”

  I was hardly qualified to answer that question.

  “Just leave me alone.”

  “I can’t do that.”

  Now I was getting pissed. “Why not? What did I ever do to you?”

  He shook his head, not taking his eyes from me. “Nicki, when I’m in the flesh, I’m ‘in the flesh.’”

  My throat went dry.

  “Your flesh calls to mine, and when that happens, I’m powerless against it.”

  Holy shit. The Devil had the hots for me.

  “Just as I was powerless when I first saw Lilith, there in the garden.”

  I really didn’t know what to say, so I kept quiet. The moment seemed surreal—the swish of cars as they passed, the sun beating down on my head, Sammy’s voice saying things I didn’t want to hear.

  “It’s part of my punishment, you see.” His lip curled in a way that was already disturbingly familiar. “Lust is what I chose over Paradise, so lust is now what rules me.” He glanced down at his lap, and added, “Even as we speak.”

  I refused to look. I wasn’t going to look. My eyeballs would burn in their sockets before I looked.

  I looked.

  But just for a second, a split second, before my eyes jerked back to the Mustang’s dashboard. So what if the Devil knows how to fill out a pair of jeans?

  “Gee, that looks painful. You should put some ice on it.”

  Sammy laughed, low in his throat. But he didn’t move any closer, and that was good.

  A dragonfly hovered in the grass near the car. I focused on the shimmer of its wings, letting it ground me, but my heart was racing.

  “You told me you could fix things for Joe,” I said flatly.

  “That I can.” Sammy sighed. “But I’m not ready to yet.”

  “That was really crappy, what you did.” Anger felt better than panic, so I latched on to the feeling with both hands. “Sending Crystal to creep me out like that”—I shuddered at the memory of the anorexic girl’s possession—“and forcing me into saying those things about Joe.” I turned my head and glared at him. “And putting it on the news? Joe’s never done anything to you! You may have ruined his career!”

  “Oh, pish.” He waved a hand, obviously not caring.

  “‘Pish’? What the hell kind of word is ‘pish’?”

  Sammy laughed at the look on my face. “Sorry, when you’ve lived as long as I have, you sometimes get the current slang wrong. I believe the modern-day equivalent would be ‘whatever.’”

  I was not amused.

  “Look.” He shifted in his seat, lifting a knee to rest partly on the console between us. “I brought you out here to tell you my story, not to talk about your boyfriend.”

  “Your story doesn’t add up, Sammy.”

  “My point in telling you about Lilith is to explain why I do what I do. Don’t you want to hear my side?”

  “You go around ruining people’s lives because you couldn’t keep your pitchfork in your pants? Doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to me.”

  “I was tempted, Nicki. I was deliberately tempted, then punished for making the wrong choice.” His voice turned bitter. “Apparently ‘sleeping with the daughters of men’ was a cosmic no-no, but it would’ve been nice to know that ahead of time. I didn’t ask to be created any more than you asked to be born. Why should I be punished for following the instincts I was given at creation? Should you be punished for being who you are?”

  Sammy’s argument was making a little more sense than I wanted it to.

  “So now I do to others what was done to me. I tempt, then watch as others fall prey to temptation, just as I did. Every t
ime it happens—and it always happens—it proves that I was treated unfairly. Perhaps one day the proof will be overwhelming, and I’ll be forgiven and allowed back into the celestial fold.”

  I stared at him, dumbfounded. “You think that what you do is the way to forgiveness? That’s really twisted.”

  For the first time, I saw a hint of impatience in his face. “I’ve had millennia to become that way. What’s your excuse?”

  My mouth fell open, but I shut it pretty quickly. Dissed by the Devil…what’s a girl to do?

  “Look at it this way.” Sammy cocked his head, blond hair gleaming in the sun. His bone structure was beautifully male—cheekbones to die for, big hands, strong chin. “Maybe I don’t like being evil…did you ever think of that? Maybe I’m wrong, and maybe temptation can be resisted.” He leaned toward me, leather creaking. His bright blue gaze held me pinned. “But if I’m right, then we’re wasting precious time here, Nicki. You and I would be so good together. I know you feel it.”

  Problem was, I did feel it. I’d felt it the moment I’d first laid eyes on him last Halloween, in a club called the Vortex. Back when I’d thought he was a real person. The attraction had been immediate and intense, but I was committed to Joe then, and I was still committed to him. I hadn’t known who Sammy really was until much later, and by then he’d been much easier to resist.

  Until now.

  A faint whiff of his aftershave reached me. Something subtle, yet spicy, smelling of heat, desire, decadence. I was glad I was sitting down, because my knees were weak. I’d always been a sucker for guys who smelled as great as they looked; it always made me wonder how they tasted.

  “Take me home,” I said abruptly.

  Fine lines crinkled around Sammy’s eyes as he smiled. He didn’t come any closer, but he didn’t pull away, either. “I know you want me, Nicki. Why are you making it so”—he lifted one perfectly arched eyebrow—“hard?”

  “Take me home.”

  My voice was rising, and with good reason. I was this far from a panic attack—Sammy was about to have an hysterical woman on his hands.