“I did warn you this house was haunted.” Jude played along, his arms wrapping around me, protecting me from the harmless ghost before us. What started out as fun changed as soon as my body registered the hard, muscular form flushed against my back. It had been too long, and his touch made me tingle and shiver with the caress of death lingering inside him.
“You promise to protect me, right?” I whispered, my head falling back against his shoulder as my arms gripped the material of his pants beside my thighs. The boy laughed harder, enjoying his little prank as he stood ten feet away and moved the candles around slowly.
“With these very hands.” His thick voice tickled against my ear, making my body squirm in his arms. His lips pressed against my hair and the boy stopped giggling.
“Eww, he kissed her.” The child’s face scrunched up and he ran in the opposite direction, unlike me, who wanted Jude to keep doing the offensive act on my body.
“Beautiful performance. You should have been an actress instead of a journalist.” His lips moved down my neck and nipped where my shirt and skin met. His touch drove me crazy, and all of my thoughts deserted me.
“I like figuring out the secrets of people who don’t want them uncovered. I like puzzles and being an actress is fake. I don’t want to waste my time being someone else when I can be me, as sad and lonely as I am.”
My body froze, as did Jude’s. I didn’t mean to say all that. If the man’s lips hadn’t been consuming me, I would have said something else. Instead, I admitted to this sexy man that I was sad and lonely. Fuck, was I a mess.
“Can we just forget I said all that?” I untangled myself from his arms, and walked down the hall, hoping there weren’t any mirrors to show the blush of my cheeks, revealing my embarrassment.
“This way.” Jude coughed and pointed toward the right that led to a set of stairs going down. He didn’t say anything else, and I hoped, for now, he let it go.
Jude led the way, not looking at me as we descended the stairs into a darker hallway. There were no shimmers of ghosts hanging around, but I felt an off sensation creep up my spine. Not one of fear, but connection. A great power rested down here. My hand reached out to touch the walls, curious if I would feel it move with an inhale or exhale. Whatever pulsed with vitality, it flowed life like a human but felt deadly. It hummed in my mind, a song of comfort, and a painless death.
Jude stopped before a door and grabbed onto a candle, then a match to light the wick.
“This house was built on a natural power source . . . wild magic. Not like the power that came from the gods of ancient Greece but made up of all the energy from the Earth. The gates that hold back the dead rests here. That’s the power you feel. It probably calls to you, singing to you to about death. It wants to be opened. The souls on the other side want that, but only I can unlock it. So it’s wasting its time on you!” He yelled the last part to the door down the hall. I didn’t want to dwell on thinking about the other side of the door holding a giant gate to hell where dead people banged constantly to be released.
“I have someone I want you to meet. Selene, this is Madam Tully.”
Chapter Nineteen
Selene
“The light shines in her soul tonight. Prince, please wait outside this site.” The woman with straight hair and a plump body wrapped in a flowing purple dress floated over to Jude to grab the candle, then nudged him out. My gaze darted to his, waiting to see if this was supposed to happen but he nodded and then walked back out the door. She closed the only way out and turned around to look at me.
“You know I can see you?” She didn’t seemed surprised at all that Jude brought me here or that I could see her.
“Of course I know that, child. And now that he’s gone, we girls can chat without all that testosterone mucking up my place. You’ve got that man so tied up in knots he doesn’t even know what to do with himself. Oh, child, you are beautiful.” The woman rushed over to me. Her cold touch caressed my cheek, then her fingers lifted some of my hair like she hadn’t touched hair in a long time.
“You don’t talk in rhymes all the time?” I felt awkward and wanted to get a space between us.
“No, child, I only do that to annoy Jude. He’s always so uptight. Forgotten how to have a good time.” She ushered me to a recently cleaned section on a sofa, then plopped down next to me. I felt out of my comfort zone, which said a lot because I dealt with ghosts all the time.
“You look just as uptight as Jude. Relax, dear. I’m not gonna hurt ya. I just wanted to talk for a bit.”
I took a few deep breaths as the woman stared at me with a mischievous grin. I liked mysteries and secrets, so in a way talking to Madam Tully intrigued me. I thought about what questions I could ask like who she was, when she died, and how and what role she played in the curse, but she began answering before I uttered the words.
“I am Jude’s great-great-grandmother. My husband was the fool who didn’t use his gifts for their purpose and brought the curse down on us. I died of old age. Luckily the curse didn’t drag me down with him. I stay because that poor boy needs me, and I am the only one who knows how to break the curse.”
She reached up and twirled her hair with a frown. I wondered if she could feel the strands like she could mine or if the sensation was nothing between her ghostly fingers.
“How can the curse be broken?” If she knew, I’m sure she would have told Jude, but it was worth asking.
“He told you the rhyme to change it, correct?” She looked at my hair with longing, and my fingers went up to push it behind my ear instinctively.
“Yeah. Something about the gates sealed with thirty years blood paid and a deathly promise, and death something binds shall the curse fade. I’m still trying to figure it out. He said it was a promise to the dead that will break the curse.”
Madam Tully reached over gently and put her hand over mine to stop the fidgeting I hadn’t realized I’d been doing.
“He is stubborn and rooted in the idea he will die on his birthday. He never challenged his fate, never had a reason to, until now.” Madam Tully released my hand and she pointed toward a deck of cards on a table. Three cards suddenly lifted from the deck and floated over. I’d seen Asher do magic, so it wasn’t a shock, but it did make me curious that she had the power to do it even as a ghost.
“Wild magic works differently than your type. Even dead, I’m still full of energy and can still wield it when I want.” She winked at me as the cards landed in her hand. The first one she held out for me to see in the dimmed light. I wished we had a lamp so I could see everything more clearly. Of course, no sooner had I thought it, lighters appeared around the room and candles lit instantly.
