After Moonrise Read online

  This time the soul thief didn’t rip Aubrey in half when he jerked her back to him. This time he made her explode into little pieces, so that her scream was cut off like a snuffed candle, leaving Raef drained, confused and alone in the darkness without her.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  “I just jerked off with a ghost. I am seriously fucked up.”

  Raef stared at the ceiling, lifted the bottle of single-malt Scotch he’d retrieved from the kitchen and took several long drinks. He meant to go back to reading the soul-retrieval stuff. Instead, he stared at nothing and thought about Aubrey. “She staged the whole thing,” he mused aloud between gulps of Scotch. “She has to be guiding me. She’s probably getting info from her connection with Lauren. And hell, she’s the one trapped. She’s gotta have something figured out about what would get her free. She obviously knows I can’t Track this guy through negative emotions. He has them blocked. But he’s not gonna pay attention to positive emotions because guys like him—and me—aren’t good at the softer side of emotions. We’re not used to ’em.”

  He blew out a long breath. How long had it been since he’d had sex, anyway? “More than a year since my relationship with Raven had crashed and burned. Christ, her name had been Raven. What the fuck had I expected?” He shook his head at his own stupidity, and at online dating in general, and realized the room was spinning a little around him.

  Raef snorted and took another drink of Scotch. By now he hardly felt the burn. “Aubrey’s good at positive emotions. Hell, Aubrey’s good at a lot of things.” He stared at the ceiling until his eyes blurred, blinked and finally closed.

  Later he would remember that his last thought that night wasn’t about Aubrey’s hair or her boobs or how hard she’d made him or the way she touched herself—his last thoughts had been about her laughter and how the sound and feel of it had been better than all of the sex stuff…and the sex stuff had been really good.

  * * *

  THE BANGING ON RAEF’S front door woke him. It was loud and jarring, and only slightly less obnoxious than the pounding pain in his head. “Yeah, Jesus, yeah, I’m coming.” He glanced at the clock before wrenching open the door—8:30 a.m.? Damn, he was going to be late for work. Which meant he should have opened the door with a thank-you-for-being-my-alarm-clock instead of a snarl, but life just wasn’t fair. “What the hell do you—” His words broke off when he saw Lauren’s raised brows.

  “I’m a morning person. I figured you’d be on your way out the door for work. The cab dropped me off ’cause I thought I’d go with you,” she said unapologetically, though she did raise her hands, which were holding two tall cups of QT coffee. “I come bearing offerings.”

  He opened the door, took one of the coffees, stepped back and, with a grunt, gestured for her to come in.

  She walked past, giving him a Look. “You’re not ready to go to work.”

  “No kidding.” His voice sounded like there was gravel in his throat.

  “You look bad. Real bad,” she said.

  “Scotch. A lot of it,” he said.

  She shuddered. “I did that once. Never again.”

  “I’m a slow learner,” he said. “I got some Merritt’s doughnuts in the kitchen. They’re only two days old so they’re not too much like bricks. Make yourself at home while I’m in the shower.” He disappeared into the bathroom, closed the door, and as memories of the night before flooded his mind, Raef thought seriously about using the razor to slit his wrists. “Why can’t I be one of those drunks who don’t remember anything?” Raef asked his rough-looking reflection in the vanity mirror. He shook his head. Slightly. It still hurt like hell. “You had sex with a ghost, and that ghost’s twin sister is in your kitchen.” He sighed and started to lather up his face, muttering, “Might as well be a freshly shaven, clean perv.”

  When he got out of the shower and opened the door to the hall, Raef was confronted by two things—the smell of bacon and eggs, and Lauren. She had Shamanic Retrieval open in her hand and was carrying it back to the kitchen. Looking up from its pages she stopped to stare at him.

  Color bloomed in her cheeks.

  Raef tightened the towel that was around his waist, feeling even more naked than he was—and he was pretty damn naked.

  “I made breakfast,” she said, before turning away and hurrying the rest of the way to the kitchen.

  “I’m hungover,” he called, hurrying the rest of the way to the bedroom.

  “I know. It’s good for you, though. Trust me. I was a biology major in college,” she called in return.

  Raef pulled on jeans and an old air-force sweatshirt. As he walked into the kitchen he told his phone, “Call work.” Feeling oddly like an obedient child, he sat at the breakfast-nook table, where Lauren had already placed a full plate of eggs, bacon and toast—along with a cup of fresh coffee and a shot of what smelled and looked suspiciously like single-malt Scotch. He raised a brow at her as he spoke. “Preston, reschedule my appointments for today. I’m still on the case I took yesterday and I’ll be working in the field. Thank you.” Raef hit the end-call button, forked up some eggs and bacon, and said to Lauren, “What does being a biology major in college have to do with hangovers?”

  She sat across from him with her own plate of breakfast. “Simple. Hangovers are biological. Food helps. So does hair of the dog. Actually, I’m not sure if the hair-of-the-dog part is biological or psychological, but it works.”

  “Yeah, this isn’t my first rodeo. I’m just surprised there was any Scotch left in that bottle.” He gulped the shot and grimaced, reaching for the coffee.

  “Well, there was barely a whole shot left. I’m assuming the bottle was mostly full when you started?”

  “Yep,” he said through bites of eggs and bacon that were really tasting damn good.

  “Rough night?”

  He swallowed and avoided her eyes. “Yeah.”

  “Okay, well, sorry about your rough night, and like I said yesterday, I’m not usually this bitchy, but hungover or not we have work to do. Aubrey should be able to manifest again by now, so as soon as we’re done eating I’ll focus my thoughts and she should—”

  “Oh, go ahead and eat. I don’t mind watching. I’m finding out that I kinda like it.”

  Aubrey’s giggle washed around them as she materialized and Raef almost choked on a mouthful of eggs.

  “Good morning, sis. Morning, Kent.”

  “Hey, Aub, you look good. All bright and happy,” Lauren said.

  “I had a verrrry interesting night.”

  The smile she sent Raef was brilliant and sparkling, and seemed to catch him in a spotlight. He felt it. He actually felt her happiness. It was like an endless Saturday, or having box seats at the World Series, or knowing you’re going to have lots of sex. Lots of really good sex.

  “Oh. My. God. You two did it. I don’t know how it’s possible, but you two did it last night,” Lauren said, glaring from Raef to her sister.

  “How the hell could you know that? You’re a Norm! You’re not psychic.” Raef threw up his hands in exasperation.

  Aubrey giggled some more, causing Raef’s skin to prickle. “She knows because Lauren and I have always been connected. I think you’d call it our own interpersonal psychic link, which means you really do have to stop lumping us with the Norms.”

  “Which also means you two did do it last night.”

  “What we did was create pleasure, and pleasure is definitely a positive emotion. Right, Kent?” She grinned at Kent.

  “Doesn’t feel like it right now,” he mumbled.

  “Cheer up. It’s not like she got you pregnant,” Lauren said. Then raised her brow and, sounding so much like her mother that Raef even recognized it, announced, “You didn’t masturbate, did you, Aubrey Lynn Wilcox? You know what I told you about that.” And then Lauren Wilcox dissolved into giggles that included a very unladylike snort.

  Aubrey laughed with her sister, full-throated, filling the breakfast nook with joy that washed thr
ough Raef. He couldn’t help it. He couldn’t stop it. Raef threw back his head and laughed along with the ghost and her twin sister. Happy, he thought. I’m happy around her—around them. And I haven’t been happy in a very long time.

  “That’s right, Kent. Feel it. Feel it with me. Pleasure and humor, joy and happiness. Feel them and keep them close to you, like shields. Because when you stop looking at the forest and find the tree, you’ll only get one piece of the puzzle. He has the rest of the pieces hidden where only you can find them when you follow me. You won’t be able to use your Gift there, but you can use—”

  “No, Aubrey! Don’t!” Raef shouted, and came to his feet so fast the chair toppled over behind him. But he was too late. Aubrey’s semitransparent body had already been ripped away.

  “Oh, no!” Lauren gagged. Holding her hand over her mouth she staggered to the kitchen sink and puked up eggs and bacon and coffee.

  “Here.” Raef handed her a paper towel. “Just breathe.”

  She took the paper towel with a hand that trembled and wiped her mouth. Raef went to the fridge and grabbed a can of Sprite, popped the top and held it out for her. “This’ll help. Rinse your mouth and then sip it.”

  Lauren didn’t take the can. She just stood at the sink, wiping her mouth over and over again, staring blankly out the kitchen window to Raef’s backyard.

  “Lauren?”

  She didn’t even blink. He jerked the paper towel from her hands, threw it into the sink and then took her shoulders into his hands, turning her to face him.

  “All right. That’s enough. Come back now.”

  She stared straight ahead at his collarbone. He hadn’t realized until then how short she was—petite, really. And those sharp blue-gray eyes of hers were still vacant and glazed. Raef gave her shoulders a shake. Not too rough, but hard enough it should bring her attention back to her body. He deepened his voice and took all the emotion out of it. “I said that’s enough. Get back here, Lauren!”

  Like throwing a switch, the light came into her eyes. Lauren blinked and looked up at him. “Raef? What—” Her whole body started to tremble and, feeling totally in over his head, he did the only thing he could think to do—he pulled her into a hug.

  She buried her head in his chest and shook.

  “Hey, it’s okay. You’re back. You’re fine,” he said inanely, thinking how small she was—God, would she even weigh a hundred pounds soaking wet?

  “It’s getting worse,” she said against his chest.

  “Where were you? Where do you go when that happens?” he asked.

  She stepped back out of his arms and looked at him in surprise. “Ohmygod, Raef! I never even thought about where I go, just how I feel.” She shook her head and went back to the breakfast table, pushed aside her half-eaten plate and sat heavily. Lauren wrapped her hands around her mug of coffee and took a sip. Raef righted his chair and did the same.

  “So, describe it to me,” he said.

  She looked over her mug at him. “It’s foggy there. And cold. Ugh, and it’s wet, too.”

  “Wet? It’s raining?”

  Lauren shook her head. “I don’t think so. Maybe it’s not really wet, but that place makes me feel like I’m drowning,” she said.

  “Could be part of the spiritual draining. That must be how your body and mind are interpreting it.”

  “It’s so hard to tell you anything for sure because everything is in black and white, but foggy or blurred, like one of those old silent movies.” Her eyes narrowed contemplatively. “Actually, it’s a lot like a silent movie. Things skip around, like movie frames freezing.”

  “Is anyone else there?”

  “Yes,” she said without hesitation, and then added more slowly, “Aubrey is there, and there are other people, too. But they’re hard to see. They fade in and out. They’re only vague images. I do know they’re in pain. They’re all in pain.” She shook her head again. “I’ve known it all along and just refused to think about it because it’s so, so terrible there. But it has to be where the murderer is keeping his victims’ souls.”

  “The Land of the Dead,” Raef said.

  “What?”

  He snagged the slim book from where Lauren had left it on the kitchen counter. “It’s in here. It’s also what Aubrey’s talking about when she gets ripped back there by him.”

  “Bread crumbs. She’s trying to lead us to her with bread crumbs, but they keep getting eaten,” Lauren said.

  “Maybe not totally eaten.” He got up, refilled their coffee and brought a legal pad and a pencil back to the table. “So, whenever Aubrey’s emotions change—whenever she tries to talk about her death or her killer—he can sense it and he rips her away from here. Correct?”

  “Correct. But it happens so fast that she never really gets to tell us anything.”

  “But she tries,” Raef said. “Maybe we should listen better.”

  “Okay, well, I’m not going to be very good at that because I feel her pain and I get ripped away with her. Or at least part of me does—that part that’s attached to Aub.”

  “I get that. So let me help, or at least help with what I’ve witnessed. The first time Aubrey disappeared was in my office when you hired me and I asked her to tell me about her murder.”

  Lauren nodded. “I hired you because she told me to, and that took her a while because she kept getting ripped away. She finally just described you and then said ‘KooKoo Kitty.’ I figured it out from there.”

  “KooKoo Kitty? How the hell did you find me from that?”

  Lauren smiled. “It’s twin speak. We had a cat when we were twelve. Someone had dumped her on our grandparents’ ranch by one of our guest cabins. She was, of course, pregnant. She was a sweet, friendly little thing, so Mother let us keep her as one of the barn cats, but said we’d have to give away the kittens and get her spayed. We called her Cabin Kitty. Well, she had her kittens and then promptly lost her mind protecting them. She attacked every cat, dog, chicken and even horse at the ranch. We renamed her KooKoo Kitty.”

  “Nice story. Still don’t know why the hell that led you to me.”

  “Oh, that’s easy. After Moonrise and the whole Psy thing is seriously cuckoo, and you’re the only tall, dark and handsome working there.”

  “Thank you. I think.” Then he tried not to dwell on the fact that Aubrey described him as handsome. “So, that was time number one.”

  “Obviously the murderer doesn’t want you involved in his case.”

  “Yeah, well, too late. Second time was at Swan Lake.” Raef thought back, frowning. “I don’t remember her saying anything even vaguely pertaining to her death, do you?”

  “Actually, I do remember what she was saying because it seemed harmless.” She moved her shoulders. “Sometimes I can tell she’s getting ready to get ripped back. I mean, I know that she’s trying to tell me something.”

  “Like today.”

  “Exactly. But yesterday she was totally happy. All she was doing was talking about the trees. She called them soldiers, wise and strong, and said they must need a lot of care. And that was it. He took her away.”

  Raef’s eyes widened. “I’m an idiot. She wasn’t talking about trees—at least, not just about them. She had to have been giving us a clue about the murderer for him to have jerked her away.” He sat up straighter. “Ah, shit. She did it again today. She said when I stop looking at the forest and find the tree I’ll get a piece of the puzzle.”

  “Raef! Whoever killed her must have been working on the trees at Swan Lake,” Lauren said.

  “Puzzle piece found,” Raef said grimly. “And that tree-loving bastard better watch the hell out.”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  “So what you’re saying is on July 15 there were no city tree trimmers at or around the area of Swan Lake?” Raef was talking into his cell as he paced across his home office.

  “That’s correct, Mr. Raef, I see no record of having sent our tree trimmers out to Midtown at all that day.” The city
worker’s voice sounded like she was talking to him through a tin can. Hell, with the City of Tulsa Works Department and their crappy budget, that might be true. He glanced at Lauren where she sat at his computer. She looked up at him. He shook his head, and she went back to concentrating on the computer. “Could you double-check your records, ma’am?”

  “Certainly. Hold please,” she said.

  “I’m on hold. Again.” Raef growled and continued prowling around his office. Finally the tin-can voice returned.

  “Sir, I have checked and rechecked our records for that day and the day before. All of our tree-trimming teams were in the Reservoir Hill neighborhood on the fourteenth and the fifteenth of July. I am sorry I couldn’t be of more help.”

  “Yeah, me, too, but thanks,” Raef said, disconnecting. “Struck out,” he told Lauren.

  “Well, I think I just hit a home run,” she said, excitement raising her voice.

  “How so?” He went to look over her shoulder at the Swan Lake website she had up. She’d clicked into several of the pictures and was studying them intently.

  “First, I’ve quit thinking like a grieving sister and started thinking like a landscaper. Those are elms.” Lauren pointed at the picture. “Actually, almost all the larger trees lining the pond are elms.”

  “Okay, why is that important?”

  “Because of our weather patterns elms are especially susceptible to Dutch elm disease. It can be devastating to them.”

  “And?” Raef prompted.

  “And the pretty neighborhood around Swan Lake wouldn’t stay pretty if its biggest shade trees withered and died from a nasty, highly contagious fungus. These trees are healthy—strong and soldierlike, as my sister would say. That tells me Midtown has an arborist.”