“I don’t know. You didn’t see Ruby earlier. So it can’t be because of our bond or you’d see other ghosts that I see. That means it must be because of your ties to Adele. She’s your sister. Your family. Your blood.”
“Not my blood any longer.” His voice was gritty with emotion.
“What do you mean?”
“My blood is vampire blood,” he said curtly. “Just tell me what my sister said.”
“I asked what she could tell me. I figured you didn’t want me asking what she knew about a key so I just asked her what she could tell me. Her answer was that she could tell me nothing.”
“I saw the terror on her face.”
“We may have a clue,” Sierra said quickly. “Mother told me that she knew of Hal and that we’d find what we’re looking for in his grave. He’s buried in a cemetery a few miles from here. You could go there.”
“We could go there. And we will.”
The earlier empathetic Ronan who said they could end the séance if it got to be too much for her was gone, replaced by a furious vampire willing to do whatever it took to free his sister.
“I’m not into cemeteries,” she said.
“You prefer mausoleums?”
She didn’t appreciate his sarcastic question. “No.”
“You deal with the afterlife all the time. Yet you claim this bothers you?”
“All the time is an exaggeration,” she said.
“You do write about it.”
“That doesn’t mean I want to live it.”
She recognized the look on his face. He’d had it when she’d first arrived and he’d bellowed at her to leave. Back then she’d bellowed right back at him. So what was different now?
First, there was the fact that he drank blood and had fangs. And then there was the fact that they shared this damn vampire bond. But it was the other look on his face, the tortured remorse when he’d viewed Adele’s terror, that grabbed hold of Sierra like a fist to her heart.
Adele’s terror haunted Sierra as well. Ruby had shown anger and various other emotions, including fear, but not the abject horror that Adele had displayed. Sierra couldn’t put it out of her mind.
Did it make her feel better to think she was voluntarily going to a place filled with thousands of spirits, many of them unhappy if not downright dangerous? No. Because this wasn’t voluntary. Free will had disappeared the moment a drop of her blood had blended with his.
She wanted to show her anger. She wanted to rant and rave. So she did … a little.
“I hate this,” she shouted.
“So do I,” he shouted back at her before regaining control. “We’ll go to the cemetery as soon as it’s dark.”
* * *
“You came back!” Ruby joyously proclaimed the instant Sierra entered the house.
Since Ronan had seen Adele, Sierra needed to confirm her suspicion that that had happened because Adele was his sister. “Do you see Ruby right now?” Sierra asked Ronan.
He shook his head.
“You already know he can’t see me. Why would that change? What did you do next door?” Ruby demanded suspiciously.
“We visited with our neighbors,” Sierra said.
“You’re wasting time. If you don’t get rid of Hal soon, I’ll be doomed,” Ruby said with a dramatic hand to her forehead.
“Yeah, right,” Sierra said.
Ruby stood a little straighter. “No shit. Really. It has to happen by Valentine’s Day.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I was murdered on Valentine’s Day. I told you that.”
“You never mentioned that you had that as a deadline,” Sierra said.
“I thought I did.”
“No, I know for a fact that you did not.”
“Because I thought you could get rid of Hal quickly,” Ruby said. “You’re a ghost hunter—”
“I’m an author writing about a ghost hunter,” Sierra corrected her.
“You see ghosts.”
“Trust me, I wish I didn’t.”
“Too late. You can still do this, right?” Ruby floated after Sierra, following her into her bedroom. “You need to step on it though. No more dillydallying.”
Sierra sat down and wrote out a flow chart like she did for her writing. The problem with that was that she wasn’t a plot writer. She was a “pantster.” She wrote by the seat of her pants, hence the name. It was as if she was walking in a thick mist. She saw just enough of the story ahead of her to keep going but not clearly enough to anticipate everything that might happen. It’s what kept it fresh for her.
So she wrote what she already knew about Ruby and Hal. Just the facts as they’d been told to her. Ruby was murdered by Hal because she wanted to stop being a prostitute. Hal stayed in the house because of his treasure, whatever the hell that was. Ruby was stuck in the house because she wanted vengeance against Hal. She wanted the dark spirits to take him away. So did Sierra.