You’re the One That I Haunt Read online

  Or his hands on an hysterical woman.

  Either scenario was a distinct possibility.

  “You said you’d be a gentleman,” I blurted. “I listened to your story, just like we agreed, and the answer is still no. Take me home.”

  He leaned back, and I breathed a little easier. My heart was pounding like a scared rabbit’s. Not a good thing for a woman with a heart murmur.

  “You do realize that I can make your life a living hell, don’t you?” His tone was conversational, not angry at all.

  “You mean you haven’t started yet?”

  Sammy chuckled as he reached between his knees, readjusting his seat. He slipped on his RayBans and turned the key, bringing the Mustang’s engine to life.

  “Oh, I’ve only just begun, Nicki.” He turned his head, giving me a wicked grin. “I’ve only just begun.” His hand moved in my direction, and I jumped, but he was only reaching for the gear-shift. Gravel crunched as he aimed the car toward the highway. “Buckle up.”

  “Hey…wait a minute.” The hair on the back of my neck rose—I hadn’t forgotten the terms of our agreement. “You said if I listened to your story and still said ‘no’, you’d leave me alone.”

  Sammy barely glanced in his side view mirror as he pulled out onto Stone Mountain Freeway. “Surely you know me better than that by now.” The wind whipped his short blond hair, making it spikier than ever.

  “I lied.”

  CHAPTER 5

  “You went where with who?” Evan’s voice rose with every syllable. “Are you nuts? What the hell were you thinking?”

  I shot him a look over the jewelry counter, in no mood for a lecture.

  He quickstepped down from the window display—he’d been dressing our Jayne Mansfield mannequin in a white lace Gunne Sax dress from the seventies. It was too virginal for her, and the ruffles didn’t suit her generous curves. “You need to stay far, far away from that guy! Yesterday you were possessed by a dead girl, and today you go for a drive with the Devil?” His face was almost as white as Jayne’s dress. “Are you insane?”

  “Depends on who you ask.”

  Evan was not amused. “I can’t believe you went off alone with Sammy, Nicki. Promise me you won’t do that again.”

  I looked at him sourly over the bracelets I was sorting. He knew I didn’t like being made to promise, because I always did my best to keep my promises.

  “Promise me,” he insisted.

  Familiar with that tone of rising hysteria, I sighed. He was worried, and with good reason. “I promise,” I said. It wasn’t like I was going to do it again anyway. “But nothing happened, and you need to calm down. I know it’s hard to believe, but Sammy just wanted to talk.”

  Evan clutched the yellow straw hat he was about to put on Jayne a little too tightly. “Talk?” he squeaked.

  “You’re crumpling that hat, and you’ve got to be kidding—it’s way too much with those ruffles.”

  Color rushed back into his cheeks, and I was relieved. Seeing him pale as a statue made the situation worse. This was a guy who couldn’t watch a scary movie without covering his eyes, yet the poor baby ended up partners with a girl who saw dead people and got hit on by the Devil.

  “So you’re a critic this morning, is that it?” He tossed the hat aside, a quick gesture that showed his irritation. “I suppose you don’t like my outfit, either, Miss I’m-Not-Afraid-Of-Anything,” he snipped.

  That statement was so not true, on both levels, and he knew it; he looked fabulous as ever in loose linen pants and a fitted black tee. His belt was a narrow vintage Gucci, black with a thin silver buckle.

  And I was afraid. Very afraid. But it wouldn’t help to let him see it.

  “Love the outfit,” I said sincerely. “I can really tell you’ve been working out.” I grinned, doing my best to lighten the mood. “Having a bouncer for a boyfriend obviously agrees with you.”

  “Hmpf.” He allowed himself to be only partially mollified. “Butch is only part of the reason I’ve buffed up. You know I’ve always kept an eye on my figure.”

  “You have.” I bobbed my head in total agreement. “And every other man’s.”

  Evan smiled a little at that, and I knew the threat of a hissy fit was over, at least for now.

  “Only the cute ones,” he amended.

  “Only the cute ones,” I agreed.

  With a sigh, he went back to dressing Jayne. “I know what you’re doing, Nicki, so stop trying to change the subject.” A floral scarf was held against Jayne’s dress, then discarded. “This is serious. The Devil just moved in right across the street.” A nervous glance toward Divinyls through the front window. Bright red banners marked Grand Opening fluttered in the morning breeze. “He showed up at your house.”

  “So he did,” I said, keeping my voice steady, “and there’s nothing I can do about it.”

  “You can stay away from him,” Evan snapped. The way he was flipping through the scarf rack told me he was more scared than angry.

  I didn’t blame him.

  “Sammy says he’s not the Devil,” I said, with a vague hope of making Evan feel better. “He says he’s only a minor demon.”

  He threw up his hands. “Does it matter? Oh my God, Nicki!”

  I picked a simple pair of faux pearl earrings and an ivory Bakelite bracelet for Jayne to wear with her ruffles, and slid the jewelry cabinet closed. “It’s weird,” I said thoughtfully. “He’s never overtly threatening toward me personally. He really seems to want me to like him.” I was thinking out loud now. “I mean, he’s the Devil, right? He could cast me down into the fiery pit or something if he really wanted to, couldn’t he? Why take the time to wine and dine me like this?”

  “You ate with him?” Evan looked horrified.

  “No, no.” I shook my head impatiently as I handed him the jewelry. “I meant the way he’s showing up and being all charming and everything. Why doesn’t he appear as a scaly red demon with a pitchfork and a goatee? I’d be scared shitless. I’d probably do anything he told me to.”

  “Because that wouldn’t be nearly as much fun for him,” Evan said sourly. “I knew that first night at the Vortex that he was trouble, but you wouldn’t listen.”

  I sighed, resigned to hearing his rant all over again.

  “It’s not like I knew who he was, Evan. I thought he was just some guy hitting on me at a Halloween party. Joe was right there. I didn’t do anything wrong.”

  “You were practically drooling over him.”

  “That’s not true,” I said irritably, but it kinda was.

  “Then you had to go and let him in the store, sell him some clothes, let him chat you up.”

  “I didn’t invite him to the store, he just showed up. What was I supposed to do, turn away a paying customer? He spent over five hundred dollars that day, as I recall.”

  Evan cut me off with an impatient wave of the hand. “Did I tell you Sammy was bad news, right from the start, or did I tell you?”

  I sighed again. “Yes, you told me.”

  “And did you listen to me?” An eyebrow quirked in my direction.

  “How could I help it?” I muttered.

  “What’s that?”

  “Enough with the lecture already. This isn’t my fault. I didn’t do anything to encourage him, and once I found out who he really was, I told him where to get off.”

  I’d been pretty proud of that, actually. I could’ve easily given in to all the things that Sammy had to offer, but I hadn’t. Even when I’d been pretty sure that refusing him would cost me, big-time.

  And here I was, paying for it again, with interest this time.

  A rapping on the glass door got our attention. Handbags and Gladrags wasn’t open until ten, and that was twelve minutes away.

  A man stood there, waving frantically to catch our eyes.

  As if we could miss him. He was three hundred pounds if he was an ounce, sporting a hideous red-and-green Hawaiian shirt and baggy khaki shorts. He had more hair
on his legs than he did on his scalp, just a fringe of wispy white curls on top. He looked like a balding, vacationing Santa Claus, minus the beard.

  “Nice shirt,” Evan muttered, obviously unable to help himself. “A Holiday Inn somewhere is missing a pair of drapes.”

  “Be nice,” I hissed, turning my head to hide my grin. “We’re not open yet,” I called over my shoulder. “Ten o’clock.” I wanted to get Jayne dressed and posed first…maybe an umbrella?

  “Miss Styx? Miss Styx, my name is Elwood T. Thompson.” The old guy ignored my back, raising his voice to be heard through the glass. “Could I talk to you for a minute, please?”

  How does he know my name?

  I turned, looking at the man again. This time I noticed he had a woman with him. She was small and short, with brown hair and tired eyes.

  “Please, Miss Styx.” He was persistent. “It’s important.”

  Crap. “I’ve heard of fashion emergencies, but this is ridiculous.” My muttered comment was meant for Evan, who ducked behind Jayne’s shoulder to hide his chuckle.

  With a sigh, I turned and walked toward the front door, flipping the dead bolts with a practiced hand as I eyed my visitors through the glass.

  Elwood had a broad smile on his chubby face, while the woman with him looked bored. Thin where he was fat, wearing a nondescript gray T-shirt and jeans, she glanced around idly as they stepped into the store, but it was Elwood who demanded my attention.

  “Thank you. Oh, thank you.” He seized my hand in a moist grip, pumping it with enthusiasm. “I can’t tell you how glad I am to meet you.”

  “Uh-huh.” I was always friendly with the customers, but Elwood’s friendliness seemed a bit excessive. “Is there something I can help you with?”

  “Oh, yes,” he said, “I really need to talk to my wife.”

  “Okay…” I drawled, uncertain as to what that had to do with me. I shot Evan a curious look as I pulled my hand from Elwood’s damp grasp, resisting the urge to wipe it on my pants. “Do you need to use a phone or something?”

  The woman beside Elwood met my eyes briefly, then looked away. No help there.

  Elwood shook his head. “I saw you on the news last night.”

  Uh-oh.

  “My wife passed away six months ago,” Elwood said earnestly. “I really need to talk to her.”

  Evan was standing behind me now. I was grateful to have him at my back.

  “I’m sorry, but I can’t help you.” I was gonna kill Sammy for this…just what I needed, crazies knocking on my door thinking I was one of them. “That stuff on the news has nothing to do with me.”

  Elwood looked confused. “But it was you—I saw you. You said you could help people talk to their lost loved ones; you said you could channel them.”

  Good Lord. “Look, Mr.—”

  “Thompson,” he said eagerly, “Elwood T. Thompson.”

  “Mr. Thompson.” I held out a hand, trying to usher his bulk toward the door. “I’m not a psychic, or a ‘channeler’ or whatever. That stuff on the news was a setup. I can’t help you, and I think you should go.”

  “What do you mean?” Elwood was immovable. “I have money. I’ll pay your fee, whatever it is.”

  Evan spoke up. “Nicki’s gift doesn’t work that way.” He took a step forward, so he was standing right beside me. “And I believe she asked you to leave.”

  I was proud of him for sticking up for me, because even if Elwood looked like a bald Santa Claus, he was twice Evan’s size—but I wished he hadn’t used the word “gift.”

  “I knew it!” Elwood was beaming. “What’s it gonna take, Miss Styx? Five hundred? A thousand? I’ll pay it.”

  I sighed. The guy was a lost cause, so I turned to the woman standing beside him, who hadn’t said a word.

  “You and your friend need to go now,” I said. “Take him home. I can’t help you.”

  The woman’s eyes went wide; it was the first sign of interest she’d shown since she came in the door.

  “You can see me,” she gasped. “Oh, Elwood, it’s true!”

  And that’s when I knew I was screwed.

  “My friend?” Elwood asked, obviously confused.

  I stared at him blankly, then looked back at the woman.

  “Tell him it’s not his fault,” she said rapidly. “Tell him I forgive him.”

  I glanced at Evan to find him giving me a strange look. “Um…Nicki?”

  Crap.

  Why did these things keep happening to me?

  “Tell him it’s okay,” the woman insisted. “Tell him I’m not mad, and I love him, and I’ll be waiting for him.”

  Further proof that love was blind, I suppose. The woman looked like a mouse, while Elwood was larger than life.

  Literally.

  “He has to let me go,” the woman continued. “His guilt is keeping me here.”

  Oy.

  The bell over the door tinkled. Two young girls who should’ve been in school made a beeline for the jeans rack, but I was nobody’s mother, and I had a business to run.

  With a sigh, I reached out and took Elwood by one damp, chubby hand.

  “Come in the back. We’ll talk.”

  Elwood was sobbing like a baby; a big, round, balding baby. His shoulders shook, his belly jiggled, and tears ran down his cheeks as he pressed a wad of tissue to his mouth.

  “I should’ve listened to her,” he sobbed. “She told me she had a headache, but I wanted to go to the model train show.”

  Model trains? Geesh.

  “I went off and left her there, all alone. I stopped off for fast food on the way home, and by the time I got back”—Elwood shook his head, a new wave of tears threatening—“she was sitting in her chair with the TV on. Gone.” Overcome, Elwood gave in to the flood of tears and sobbed even harder.

  “I was watching my soaps,” the woman said, sending Elwood a worried look.

  I really wasn’t sure how to go about this…there were no manuals for the “newly psychic” or “newly able-to-see-dead-people.” It was hard enough for me to believe I was sitting here talking with a dead woman, much less translate the weirdness for somebody else.

  “She was watching her soaps,” I said, for lack of anything else to say.

  “Yes!” Elwood nodded, mopping at his face with the tissue.

  “My head hurt,” the woman said. “I closed my eyes, just for a minute, and it was all over.” She seemed resigned to her fate, not upset at all.

  “It was quick,” I told Elwood. “She didn’t suffer.”

  Elwood drew in a deep breath, pulling himself together. He nodded. “An aneurysm, the doc said.”

  I handed him another couple of tissues from the Kleenex box on the counter, glad we kept some in the storage room.

  “I’d like to talk to her,” Elwood said. “Can she come through?”

  I looked at him blankly for a minute, until I realized what he was asking.

  “I’m not a psychic, and I don’t ‘channel.’” The word itself was making me testy. Unlike my birth mother, I was no backroom Madame Zelda. “I already told you that.”

  Elwood heaved his bulk to the side, scrabbling for a rear pocket. “I have money—whatever you want.” His chubby face was red from crying, his nose looking even bigger, which was saying a lot.

  “Look, it’s very simple.” It was sad, really, how eager some people were to part with their money. “I’m just going to tell you what your wife has to say; you’re going to listen; and then you’re going to go away and never come back here again.”

  Elwood looked slightly hurt at that last part, but I didn’t care. I was about to do him a huge favor, and I expected one in return. “And you won’t tell anybody, either.”

  He opened his mouth to speak, but I interrupted. “Ever,” I added firmly.

  I waited until he nodded, then settled his enormous rear end back in the chair. It gave a creak of protest.

  Then I looked at the woman standing quietly beside him.

/>   “What’s your name?”

  “Darlene,” she said. “Darlene Thompson.”

  “Speak now, Darlene, or forever hold your peace.” I couldn’t help a bit of sarcasm.

  Elwood gasped, but I ignored him as I listened to Darlene’s story.

  “It wasn’t his fault,” she said earnestly. “There was nothing he could do—it was that quick.” She snapped her fingers to emphasize the point. “I wanted him to go to the train show.” She looked at him affectionately. “Elwood loves his toys, but I find model trains pretty boring.” Then she shrugged. “At least I did find them boring.” It was amazing how calm she was about being dead. “I had a peach pie cooling on the stove for when he came home.” The woman smiled, a sad smile. “I thought we’d have a lot more time together, Elwood and I, but that’s just not the way it worked out. I’m being pulled away, but he’s hurtin’. He needs to accept I’m gone.” Darlene looked away, just for a split second, then turned back to her husband. “I would’ve stayed by his side forever if I could, but I’m tired. He needs to let me go.”

  Unexpectedly, my eyes filled with tears. I dashed them away, leaving streaks of black on my knuckles. That’s what I got for overdoing it with the eyeliner this morning.

  Elwood’s chair creaked as he shifted, impatient.

  I took a deep breath. “Darlene wants you to know that it wasn’t your fault. She wanted you to go to the train show without her, so she could watch her soaps.”

  Elwood’s lower lip trembled, but he stayed quiet.

  “There was a peach pie on the stove.”

  A shuddered breath, more tears, more mopping. Elwood was having a hard time, and I couldn’t help but feel sorry for him.

  I snagged a Kleenex for myself, dabbing at my mascara and probably making it worse.

  “I’m tired,” Darlene repeated, and she looked it. She must’ve been a faded wisp of a woman in life, because in death she held little spark. “He needs to let me go.”

  “She says you need to let her go,” I said to Elwood, keeping my voice even with an effort. “You’ll see her again.” This last comment was my own contribution. I was no seer, but I knew what I’d seen—a place of peace and light and music, where you knew everyone, and they knew you, and all the questions you’d ever had were answered.