Chris Green - Only the Good Die Young

“I told you,” he said. “There’s nothing to worry about. You saw the spirit fly out the window as clearly as I did.”

“I didn’t like what it forced that psychic to write,” she whispered. “‘You will pay.’ What did that even mean?”

“It’s gone, and hopefully we’ll never know.”

As he spoke, Wendy was watching everyone’s faces, like she had no idea who these people were. And she probably didn’t. She was still the half-scared, half-spellbound teenage girl she’d been when the spirit had made its appearance, and she peered to the side of her, like she’d sensed that something had changed in the room.

Something like me.

I backed up a little while Gavin glanced at the watch on his wrist, then impatiently ran his fingers through his hair, cursing under his breath.

“This is ridiculous, Constanza. The spirit left. We don’t need to be surrounded by salt when there’s nothing to be afraid of anymore.”

Constanza shook her head. “Mr. Gavin, please. Make me happy by staying here. There is nothing more important for you to be doing.”

He smiled wryly. “How about sleeping? I could use some of that. I’m dying for my bed.”

“Just sleep on the floor here,” Wendy said.

“Wen.” His voice softened. “That mattress is a Vividus, and it’s all I want right now.”

When he started to step out of the salt circle, his family yelled at him.

Farah’s voice was the loudest out of everyone’s as she stood, darting toward him, catching his shirttail and pulling him back into the circle. “You’re the one who brought that séance to us. You owe us some peace of mind, so stay here.”

He slowly glanced down at her hand, which had landed on his waist. Farah backed off, head down.

I saw that, nearby, a black-beaded rosary with a crucifix attached was curled on the counter by a fruit basket. Gavin took hold of it and held it up.

“How’s this?” he asked. “I’ll take it with me, and nothing will be able to get to me. Then Constanza’s friend will come, and she’ll help us all.” He said that last part facetiously.

“She will help, Mr. Gavin,” Constanza said.

He lowered his head, then looked back up, an eyebrow raised. “You admitted that she only dabbles in the paranormal. She’s supposedly cleaned one haunted house before, and she’s more of an enthusiast than anything.”

“She will help.”

How perfect was this? I’d already seen how arrogance had been Amanda Lee’s downfall tonight, and Gavin was falling into the same trap by being an unbeliever. Right into my invisible hands.

“Mr. Gavin,” Constanza said, “your best protection is in the circle. Eileen said so.”

Eileen, the name of the inexperienced cleaner?

“If that thing comes back to get me,” he said, “I’ll haul myself back here in a hurry. I swear on my mattress.”

As he stepped out of the circle, everyone else got to their feet, even Noah.

Gavin smiled, and since he didn’t do smiles all that much, it caught me.

“I’m not scared,” he said, walking away from his family.

His words echoed in me.

As his family nervously watched him leave, I followed him down the brightly lit hall, to the foyer, up the stairs, to his room. He headed straight for his bed, the “Vividus,” he’d called it. It did look thick and comfy and puffy, and as he collapsed back onto it, spilling the crucifix by his side to the stark white bedspread, I almost wanted to crash with him.

I wouldn’t be able to feel any mattress, though. It was just memories of a good night’s sleep that seemed so appealing.

Outside the window, the sound of waves rushed up the shore and back out. Gavin sighed with exhaustion, then closed his eyes, rubbing his temples. He was so damned sure that Amanda Lee had expelled his tormentor from the mansion that he relaxed quickly enough, his breathing evening out, the rough lines on his face smoothing out. I didn’t know if he was fully asleep yet, but he was definitely mine for the empathetic taking.

I deftly swooped in, touching his cheek, hoping against hope that, this time, empathy would work on him. But as usual, I couldn’t get in to his thoughts, so I pressed harder against his cheek, thinking that a hallucination would relax him fully while he still wasn’t expecting a ghost.

All of this had taken only a flashing second, and he didn’t have any time for fear or thought.

He didn’t have time to react quickly enough for anything, and I was in before he could stop the hallucination… .

We are in water, the ocean, floating and feeling the sun on our face.

Warm, bobbing up and down on slight waves.

Silence, except for the dull roar of the sea in our ears…

And then something happened that I totally didn’t expect.

I somehow tumbled into his mind.

He hadn’t just relaxed—he’d fallen asleep from the hallucination and his complete exhaustion. I knew it because that eerie slow-motion passage of time surrounded me as I opened my eyes and saw a red sky above me, clouds dripping from it like the bloody tears I’d once seen on Gavin’s plastic-masked face in his first dream.

As I rolled from my back to tread water, I saw that I was actually in a pool. The lagoon pool, outside the mansion.

I wasn’t moving in the double-slow-motion time that had distinguished Gavin’s original fire-sky and wall-of-water dream from the relatively more realistic second dream half that had taken place in the study. Even so, I still moved at a drag as I swam to the side of the pool, clutching the edge.

A sound from my left won my attention, and I swiveled my gaze over to see the pool guy who’d been peeping at Wendy the other morning hiding in the bushes. Blond, good-looking… he should’ve been a welcome sight to any girl, but he had a grimace on his face that was so heart-shocking to the dream body I now had that I had to press a hand over my thudding chest.

What the fuck was he doing here?

It seemed to take hours for me to get out of the pool—time enough for him to step back into the foliage and disappear.

Blood raced through me because I was filled with dread—and that was saying something, seeing as I had already gone through a whacked-out dream with Gavin along with visions of my own murder. I was used to weird, but being in the pool under a bloodred sky was more unsettling than usual for some reason.

When I glanced at the mansion, a wall had rolled open to reveal the study with the heaven-high shelves of books.

Water dripped from me, plopping onto the concrete in slightly suspended time as I looked down at my body.

At the white swimsuit I was wearing.

I couldn’t stop myself from grabbing the towel on a nearby chair and covering myself up. Couldn’t stop the realization that I was playing the part of dream Elizabeth tonight.

With the towel around me, I told myself that this was just a dream, and I found myself walking toward the opening in the study. The room was empty, except for all the books strewn around.

When the fourth wall slammed shut behind me, I slow-whipped around, dropping the towel at the same time. Belatedly, I grabbed at it, but it disappeared in my hand, just as quickly as the pool guy had faded into the bushes outside.

Now I was dressed in my unfortunate Jensen clothes again: blue jeans and sneakers. No towel. No more white bathing suit. No more me-being-Elizabeth.

When I looked up, Gavin was sitting in that leather chair he’d occupied in the original dream. But there wasn’t any blood trailing from his fingers and over the leather this time. He was sedately reading one of the books, the tome open in his lap. He looked up at me as if he’d been expecting me.

“You,” he said simply, and he was watching me like…