Fall (Hero Society Book 6) Read online

  “What’s your name?” I asked, as her shaking hand clasped onto mine.

  “Lindsey Walters.”

  I closed my eyes, feeling the warmth and light of where Lindsey was needed. I didn’t know exactly if heaven or hell were truly real. I just knew that when I held onto a soul, I felt myself being drawn to places of eerie quietness or peace.

  It was like an out of body experience. I was able to travel in both realms of the living and the dead . . . seer of both. Normal humans never saw what I was doing. I was aware of people around me but couldn’t talk. I was in two places at once when I assisted souls onward.

  Lindsey slowly disappeared into the warm light, and I knew she found peace. Instantly I was back in my own head and took a few steps backward to move away from the scene as paramedics arrived. Chaos erupted, and cops swarmed the place.

  My focus darted around and suddenly became vulnerable by a pair of piercing blue eyes. The ringleader stared like he saw me as I was, reaper, and he was not afraid.

  A shimmering blue hand from the female trapeze ghost rested on his shoulder and she murmured something in his ear, then nodded toward the edge of the stage. I couldn’t tear my gaze away from him; the connection I felt toward death was with him, like a tether pulling us closer, weaving our destinies together into a morbid tapestry.

  I always battled with fate . . . that my life was planned and I had no choice. Sometimes I felt this was true, and sometimes I believed I was the captain of my own ship . . . that I created my own destiny.

  But in those eyes, those blue knowing eyes, I felt a stir in the cosmos, with an unrelenting feeling of fate solidifying my course.

  “Miss, I need you to back up, please.” A police officer cut me off from the ringleader on the stage, and I felt like I could breathe again.

  “Of course, so sorry.” It was my time to go. Emily was waiting for me where we had been sitting, and I walked over to join her.

  “You OK?” I asked, noticing she was pale and shaken up.

  “Yeah, I just feel bad, and kinda makes you think of your own mortality, ya know? Could be one of us.”

  That was something I did understand . . . how death didn’t discriminate. Rich, poor, young, or old . . . death came no matter what and could happen at any time. I wrapped my arms around her, then we began walking toward the exit. As if I couldn’t help myself, I turned to look at the stage one last time to see him staring at me still. The intensity of his stare should have scared me, but I wasn’t afraid.

  I turned away, and we walked into the lobby to give our statements as a witness to the scream.

  Chapter Three

  Jude

  “What the fuck happened?” I slammed the newspaper down on my dining table and slumped into the chair beside it. I was fucked. My whole show was fucked.

  “The police are working on it. There isn’t anything else you can do.” Lucille’s hand touched my shoulder and I shrugged it off. I knew what she wanted from me, but it wasn’t happening. I was never comfortable with her history of having an affair with my grandfather and then my dad.

  “I could go ask her what happened.” It was an option.

  “I think you should just focus on living out the next month the way you wanted to, which was doing your show.”

  She’s right, and I fucking hate it. All part of the curse that shattered my family. The gates to the realm of the dead must stay closed, and the way to keep them sealed is with the blood of a Mallory man. Fortunately, all we seemed to have in our family were boys, so lucky curse.

  All children in my family were born on Halloween, had to pay the debt on their thirtieth birthday. I was going to have to die on my birthday in thirty days. While my dad, grandfather, and great-grandfather chose to get married and have kids, I decided I didn’t want to have that life only to leave it. I avoided contact with people who I could see myself getting close to. Sure, I got lonely, and during desperate times I would find company with a cold-as-ice woman who had no heart.

  It sucked, but it was either that or fall in love and have to choose between saving the world from the dead rising or my family. Easiest choice was to live out my life and then die, ending this curse with me.

  “Yeah, you’re right.” I closed my eyes and rested my head against the tall back of the chair. It was selfish, and I hated it. This whole mess wasn’t fair, but it couldn’t be changed.

  “If you need anything . . .” She let the rest of her sentence drift off just before I felt her cold lips press against my cheek. Her heels clicked along the old wood floors, and I deflated internally hearing her disappear into the hall outside.

  “She really needs to get a life. You’re not going to sleep with her.” My body tensed up for a second before relaxing and opening my eyes to see my friend.

  “She’s just trying to make it down the family tree before you all go on.” I shrugged, and Rudy grinned while sitting on the chandelier in a ghost-like form. There wasn’t anything left in this world to surprise me after living in a house filled with ghosts all my life. Most of them left me alone; we’d gotten used to each other years ago.

  “Any news about the girl from the show?” With the expertise of an acrobat, Rudy leapt off the chandelier and landed on the table. It didn’t move or shudder under the weight because ghosts weren’t in real form. My power only made them mostly human for a time being. All part of the deal we made. They give me a hell of a show, and I take them with me into the afterlife.

  “No, the police have identified her, and I recognize her as one of the fans that had come backstage with VIP access, but nothing else.” I sat up and clasped onto the newspaper, hoping to catch something in the words that I didn’t already know.

  “And the other girl?”

  Rudy was one of the only people I would consider a friend . . . my best friend. Had I been alive before he died, we probably would have caused trouble all over the place. We would have looked alike, too—same Mediterranean-tan skin, blue eyes, and dark-brown hair. Now he was a light blue unless I used my power over the dead to change it.

  Since he was my best friend, he was the only person I told about the woman in the audience whose soul sang to mine. She saw the dead girl, and it looked like she knew my crew were not human performers. I’d yet to know someone who had a gift like mine. Whoever she was, she intrigued me, and that was not a good thing.

  “No.”

  “Too bad, she was hot. In a sort of combat boots, grunge kind of way. Bet she’d be way more fun in the sack than Lucy.”

  I rolled my eyes. Lucy was a serious pain in my ass. Even with a month left to live, I wasn’t going to give in to use my powers just for sex like everyone else in my family was prone to doing. It was the only chance she could feel real again, so she used it to her advantage. I couldn’t blame her, though. If I was dead, couldn’t feel warmth, or taste anything, I’d do whatever it took to gain some sensation in my immortal life.

  “Neither will be happening. I’ve only got a month left. Not going to spend it with a woman.” Rudy knew how I felt. I wanted to put on the show of a lifetime then disappear.

  “Yeah, yeah. I get it. Still, you only live once, right? It’s what the kids these days say. YOLO.” Using a bit of my power gifted from Hades, I pushed the poor fool off the table in a brotherly manner.

  “We’re going to have to have a fair fight before we go, you and me.” He stood off the ground and started throwing punches that felt like a light breeze against my cheek.

  “I’ll let you get a good one in soon. I promise. YOLO, right?” I wanted this cursed life to end already. I was ready for the peace the other side would bring. No more curses or responsibility of keeping the dead in their place or ghosts trying to sleep with me. One month to go.

  There wasn’t anything I could do about the dead girl from the show or the mystery woman right now so I stood and pulled on the invisible tethers tying me to the souls under my control. There were times I was grateful that this antebellum-style mansion, as creepy as it wa
s, I called home. Plenty of space to practice circus acts in the ballroom.

  “Let’s go rehearse for the show.”

  Chapter Four

  Selene

  “Call me as soon as you get home! I want to hear every single detail!”

  For a moment I thought Emily was going to crawl out of my phone so she could be here in person, but that was not a power she possessed.

  “I promised I would. I’m almost there.”

  At least, I hoped I would. The address I’d found for one Jude Mallory had to have been a mistake because I was in the middle of nowhere.

  “Eek, I can’t wait. OK, I’ll let you go. Take care.” Her voice turned to a whisper and I guessed her boss was nearby at work. Glad I didn’t have that problem. I tossed my phone in the passenger seat of my sedan without taking my focus off the winding road outside of Seahill.

  “In one hundred feet, your destination will be on the right,” the GPS announced but I still didn’t see it. Nothing but trees and fog, which only added an eerie vibe to this whole mission. No one besides the police had been able to talk to the ringleader of Mystical about the death that happened at his show. We’d ran a story about the incident in the paper, but the big bosses wanted to know more about the mysterious man and his circus of ghosts. Of course, they didn’t know it was a ghost circus like I did, but that had me volunteering to be the one to get a story. Hopefully I would be able to help solve the murder of Lindsey while I was at it.

  It had been two days since she died, and none of the detectives on the case could figure out what happened besides she was stabbed, then bled to death. I had seen the shimmer of another soul near Lindsey’s as I approached. Someone else had been there then disappeared just before I could see them. There was only one other person who could see them.

  “Your destination is on the right.”

  “Shit.” I slammed on my brakes and looked to the right for the driveway. I hadn’t been paying attention and almost missed it. Once my heart was calm and my breathing back to its normal rhythm, I scanned the two-car-wide driveway that seemed to grow out of the woods. I would have driven right by it if I didn’t have the GPS telling me I was here.

  For a man who had many successes in his career of magic, I was surprised by the gates sealing the entrance to what appeared to be a long driveway covered in vines. It looked like no one had lived here in ages . . . centuries maybe.

  “This can’t be right.” I looked at the address and then at the gate again.

  Pulling my car off to the side of the road, I got out and threw the small journalist backpack I had over my shoulders. The weather was gloomy, and it started sprinkling rain as I walked toward the gate. The vibe combination of the weather and the deserted driveway was fit for a man who had a circus full of ghosts.

  Technically hopping over the brick wall was trespassing, but if no one was here to report it, then it didn’t matter. From my first observation, I assumed there would be a deserted house instead of a rich ringleader at the end of the driveway.

  It took three minutes of walking over countless dead leaves beneath my feet until the trees cleared and I saw it. An algae-covered pond rested before a giant mansion with four large columns at its front. It looked like something you would see in Louisiana and not the Pacific Northwest of the country. It had a wraparound porch, multiple fireplace stacks, a small rounded tower in the middle, and a large atrium. Not something you see every day here. I felt like my feet were stuck on the cobblestone driveway in awe of this magnificent piece of architecture. Someone put a lot of effort and care into designing this mansion. I dug out my camera and snapped a shot for myself. Even if this house turned out to be nothing for the story I needed, I wanted to look at this place again. It would forever haunt my dreams with the dark spruce pines and dead leaves from the forest blowing against the immense structure.

  There appeared to be no lights on inside the house as far as I could tell, and no one had come out to tell me to scram yet, either. As I walked closer, the tingle in my blood began to grow. Death was near . . . somewhere. I scanned the landscape, searching for shimmering blue souls, but I found none . . . yet.

  I walked up wooden steps to the house, observing the intricate details carved into the double doors. This house was a work of art, and I couldn’t stop staring at it.

  After three knocks on the door, I waited patiently to see if someone was here. Hopefully it would be Mr. Mallory and he wouldn’t be pissed that I hopped his wall to get here, but sometimes in journalism you had to do somethings that weren’t always on the good side. Impatiently, I knocked two more times and yelled “hello” with no reply. I peeked in through the windows near the door just in case someone was a slow walker.

  The thick curtains didn’t give me much wiggle room to see inside the dusty windows but I could tell whoever was in there did not have a housekeeper. It looked as old and deserted as the outside did. A solid foundation and good building skills were all I could give credit to this house for still standing.

  “Just a little peek around the back won’t hurt anyone,” I whispered to myself, looking back at the door which remained closed and began walking quietly around the corner of the house. The atrium was gorgeous, and I saw various plants and sculptures inside. Live plants, despite the cover of the metal and glass, kept the misty rain from falling on their leaves. I hopped off the porch and walked around the atrium, looking through the once-again dirty glass and saw a library beyond the assortment of plant life. Nobody dead or human walked in the library now.

  I tilted my head, listening for anyone opening a door. Surely it would creak or be loud as fuck, since it was made of heavy, solid wood. Still nothing, so I kept walking and observing the layout of the house.

  “Holy shit!” I was surprised the words came out of my mouth instead of my breath staying stuck inside my lungs. I thought the house was the surprise in these woods with its glorious appeal, but I should have guessed there would be another mystery.

  A cemetery.

  A cemetery so vast with mausoleums, tombs, and headstones everywhere. I’d never seen anything like it except in pictures of New Orleans cemeteries. The owner of the house must have been from New Orleans to have put so much of its culture just outside of Seahill. My hands went to my mouth in disbelief at the many ghosts lingering by limestone and marble tombstones of the graveyard.

  A joyous voice from behind me laughed and then two hands pushed me with enough force that I couldn’t keep my footing and began rolling down the hill into an endless gathering of the dead.

  Chapter Five

  Selene

  “Ah!” I cried out as my body slammed into a headstone. The marble held like it had since 1873.

  As if my entrance into the cemetery was a green light, all the souls began to come out from wherever they hid. Music and laughter filled the air as people had their fun with their eternal damnation on Earth.

  “Take that, you pirate!” A ghost with a sword and an old British wig lunged with his sword at a . . . well . . . a pirate.

  I’d never seen souls this old. Everyone in Seahill had been newly dead. These souls were centuries-old, different generations of souls having one hell of a party.

  “Excuse me.” I stood and rushed to a woman dressed in a Victorian-age outfit. Her ringlet curls bounced along her face as she turned to face me. When she noticed I wasn’t a ghost, she gasped and floated away in another direction.

  “What the hell is happening here?” I cursed as a rush of happiness flowed through me. Surrounded by so many souls, I had the itch to touch them, to bring them onward. It felt like the caress of a man against my neck. I wanted to lean into them and do as my own soul craved. I stumbled to crawl back up the hill I’d been pushed down but the ground was wet and my boots had trouble gripping the slick mud.

  There had to be stairs and an entrance to this cemetery from the mansion. It was my only exit plan that had sense. If I stayed much longer, these ghosts were going to be deported and I wasn’t sure tha
t was a good thing, yet. There was a much greater mystery here and I needed the souls around to ferret out the truth. Who the hell pushed me? Ghosts did not have power like that, unless someone had given it the power.

  “A fleshie!”

  “She’s alive.”

  Ghosts gasped in awe as I walked into the cemetery in the direction I’d hoped would bring me to the entrance.

  “Might I be of some use, my lady? It’s not very often we have such pretty guests in our lovely home.” A balding man wearing fancy clothes and shiny shoes bowed before me like a gentleman. I didn’t sense malice in his soul. If he were to move onward, he’d definitely see the lighter side of the afterlife.

  “I need to get out of here.” If a ghostly escort was all I was going to get, then I would take it.

  “This way, my lady.” He gestured straight ahead and lifted his arm up for me to rest mine atop. I didn’t think it would work but I raised my arm to his. It fell through, of course.

  “Sorry. Old habits,” he apologized, his head bowing softly before looking me in the eyes and we began walking through the cemetery together.

  “How are you guys still here?”

  “How can you see us?” he countered before answering my question.

  “I’m a reaper,” I answered honestly and noticed he didn’t move away from me, which took me by surprise. If they’ve been around long enough, they surely knew what I was and what I could do.

  “You’re not afraid?”

  “No, no, dear lady. We are stuck here. Even if you tried, you couldn’t take us onward despite how many wish you could.” He gave me a sad smile and then looked at the souls who danced among the headstones.

  What he said didn’t make sense. None of this did.

  “Be kind to my dearest great, great nephew. He didn’t ask for this life, but it’s the curse us male Mallorys face. He’s a good boy.” The kind soul attempted to pat me on the shoulder, then pointed toward our left. A grand staircase with large vases every ten feet led up to the large back veranda of the mansion.