“How can you believe that?”
“Seth, you’ve never seen a hundred and fifty corpses working a tobacco field. Death was nothing to him. He had powers over death.”
Seth thought about how Ashleigh had blasted him through the heart with a shotgun. He’d managed to heal his own body, but he couldn’t remember much about how. He could only remember a powerful determination to get back to Jenny.
“So do I,” Seth muttered.
“What?” His dad looked up at him sharply.
“Nothing.”
“So that’s why your grandfather wasn’t crazy when he turned the third floor into a maze to confuse your great-grandfather’s ghost. Your great-grandfather really was supernatural. And that is why we must maintain things as he wishes. Because he’s watching. And he’s ruthless.”
Seth looked at Jonathan Seth Barrett’s granite monolith. “Wow. Thanks a lot, Great-Grandpa.”
“Don’t mock him.”
“He doesn’t have a sense of humor?”
“No.”
Though it was a hot day, almost June, Seth felt very cold. He didn’t want to believe anything his dad had said. But he couldn’t deny there were supernatural things in the world. Seth was one of them. So was Jenny.
For a moment, he thought about telling his dad everything—about his own healing abilities, and Jenny’s deadly touch. But he didn’t know whether that would encourage his dad to approve of the relationship, or if his dad would solidly forbid him to ever see Jenny again.
So he kept his mouth shut.
“Can we go back now?” Seth asked.
“We can try.”
Chapter Thirty
Ashleigh made a dozen scrambled eggs and six pieces of French toast, which she dusted generously with powdered sugar, then drizzled with some raw honey. She made coffee and filled a silver pitcher with cream. She poured tall cups of orange juice.
She played Jason Aldean on the stereo, and she gradually turned up the volume with short blasts of the remote while she set the kitchen table. She opened the big kitchen windows to let in the sunlight and the warm spring air. Then she turned up her stereo a bit louder.
Soon, Tommy wandered down the stairs, in his boxer shorts.
“Want some breakfast?” Ashleigh asked.
“Hell yeah!” Tommy sat down at one of the place settings and slurped up a mouthful of scrambled eggs. “Nice!”
“I know,” Ashleigh said. “There’s love in every bite.”
He smiled and forked a whole piece of French toast into his mouth, then slurped down a glass of orange juice.
“Help yourself,” Ashleigh said.
Esmeralda came down a few minutes later, but she’d gone to the trouble of getting dressed and applying a little makeup. She looked uneasy and a little scared when she first saw Ashleigh, but then she noticed the elaborate meal on the table and relaxed a little.
“Esmeralda!” Ashleigh squealed. She threw her arms around the girl and hugged her tight. She even kissed her on the cheek. Esmeralda melted like hot taffy in her arms.
“You look so happy,” Esmeralda said.
“I am!” Ashleigh released her and stepped back. “Everything is just going perfectly, isn’t it?”
“Hell yeah,” Tommy said. “Are you gonna eat that piece of French toast?”
“No, go ahead,” Ashleigh said.
“I’m so glad you’re safe,” Esmeralda said. She sat at the table and poured cream into her coffee. “You took a big risk going to Jenny’s house.”
“I really did,” Ashleigh said. “She could have killed me again. But you guys would have brought me back again, right?”
They both hurried to agree that they would.
“But anyway, I gathered some good intelligence, and I figured out how we’re going to destroy Jenny.”
“Why don’t we just shoot her?” Tommy asked. “Bury the body, done.”
“Duh, tons of reasons,” Ashleigh said. “First, Seth could bring her back.”
“Kill them both,” Tommy said. “Make it look like they ran off together.”
“That, Tommy, is actually not a bad idea,” Ashleigh said. “I actually respect you a lot more now that you came up with that.”
“Thanks!” Tommy said.
“Hold on,” Esmeralda said. “You two are kidding, right? We’re not actually going to kill these people.”
“The mass murderer girl, with the disease touch,” Tommy said. He raised his hands, which were pockmarked with little scars from his Jenny pox infection. “She has to die. She’s too dangerous to live. Especially if she might come after us.”
“Why would she come after us?” Esmeralda asked.