Stan slid the van's side panel back and stepped out, blinking hard and shoving his long, straggly hair out of the way. Perpetually stoned, he was the perfect person for this kind of work: technically adept, but mellow to the point where he took orders well.
Last thing Gregg wanted was an artiste running the camera lenses.
"Get the luggage," Gregg called over to them. Which was code for, Bring not only your overnight bags but the small-scale equipment.
This wasn't the first site he'd had to talk his way into.
As he ducked back inside, the couple who had departed were driving past in their Sebring convertible, the guy watching Holly bend into the van instead of where he was going.
She tended to have that effect on men. Another reason to keep her around.
Well, that and she had no problem with casual sex.
Gregg walked into the drawing room and did a slow around-the-world. The oil paintings were museum quality, the rugs were Persian, the walls were hand-painted with a pastoral scene. Sterling-silver candlesticks were on every surface and not one piece of furniture had been made in the twenty-first or twentieth . . . or maybe even nineteenth century.
The journalist in him sat up and hollered. B and Bs, even first- rate ones, weren't kitted out like this. So there was something going on here.
Either that or the Eliahu legend was putting a helluva lot of heads on those pillows every night.
Gregg went over to one of the smaller portraits. It was of a young man in his mid-twenties, and painted in another time, another place. The subject was seated in a stiff-backed chair, his legs crossed at the knees, his elegant hands off to one side. Dark hair was pulled back and tied with a ribbon, revealing a face that was a stunner. The clothes were . . . Well, Gregg was no historian, so who the fuck knew, but they sure as hell looked like what George Washington and his ilk wore.
This was Eliahu Rathboone, Gregg thought. The secret abolitionist who had always left a light on to encourage those who needed to escape to come his way . . . the man who had died to protect a cause before it even took root up in the North . . . the hero who had saved so many, only to be cut down in the prime of his life.
This was their ghost.
Gregg made a frame with his hand and panned around the room before zeroing in on that face.
"Is that him?" Holly's voice came from behind. "Is that really him?"
Gregg beamed over his shoulder, his body positively tingling. "And I thought the pictures on the Internet were good."
"He's, like . . . gorgeous."
And so were his backstory and his house and all of those people who left here talking about hauntings.
Fuck the Atlanta trip to that asylum. This was their next live special.
"I want you to work on the butler," Gregg said softly. "You know what I mean. I want access to everything."
"I'm not sleeping with him. I draw the line at necrophilia and that one is older than God."
"Did I ask you to get on your back? There are other ways. And you have tonight and tomorrow. I want to do the special here."
"You mean . . ."
"We're broadcasting live from here in ten days." He walked over to the windows that faced out toward the alley of trees, and with every step he took, the floorboards creaked.
Daytime Emmys, here we come, Gregg thought.
Fucking perfect.
TEN
John Matthew woke up with his hand on his cock. Or rather, he semi woke up. What he had his palm on was fully ready to go, however.
In his foggy mind, images of him and Xhex were lighting him up from the inside out. . . . He saw them on her bed in that basement place of hers and there was a whole lot of naked going on, her straddling his hips, him reaching up to touch her breasts. She felt good and solid on top of him, her core hot and wet against his erection, her powerful body arching and releasing as she rubbed herself on what ached to penetrate her.
He needed to get in her. Needed to leave something of himself behind.
Needed to mark her.
The instinct was overwhelming to the point of compulsion . . . and yet his conscience prickled as he sat up and took one of her nipples into his mouth. As he drew her flesh between his lips, sucking on it, tonguing it, nipping it ever so gently, on some level, he knew this was not really happening--and that even in a fantasy, it was wrong. It wasn't fair to her memory, and yet the visions had too much momentum and his palm as he worked himself had too much grip . . . and the moment was too undeniable and electric to turn away from.
There was no going back.
John imagined that he rolled her over onto her back and loomed above her, looking down into her gunmetal gray eyes. Her thighs were split on either side of his hips, her lush sex ready for what he wanted to give her, her scent burrowing into his nose until all he knew was her. Running his palms over her breasts and down her stomach, he marveled at how similar their bodies were. She was smaller compared to him, but their muscles were all the same, hard and toned, ready for use, tight as bone when they were engaged. He loved how unyielding she was beneath her soft, smooth skin, loved how strong, how tough . . .