“I know. I think that’s why I always loved hearing about them,” Marnie said. “I mean, film is great. But it’s different. I guess I’m kind of like your parents. I love theater—and I love children’s theater. Kids are still so full of wonder, you know. They love to suspend belief, and... Wait! I’m getting off course here. So, your parents were killed tragically. And then...they came back. And you saw them. Dead. Or did you see dead people before they died?”
“No, I never saw or spoke to a ghost until my mom and dad came back. And then my brothers—Bruce and Brodie—and I all tried to pretend that we didn’t see them. I know we all felt the way you did—that it couldn’t be possible. Then Brodie—the youngest—just hopped up and demanded to know if Bruce and I could see them, too, and we all had to admit that we did. Thankfully, there are three of us. Because, frankly, I think I would lose my mind if my mother had no one else to torment—er, haunt! She was quite the diva.”
“I would have loved to have known her.”
“Be careful what you say,” he warned.
“Is she...here? Are your parents around? Do only certain people see certain ghosts?” Marnie asked.
“No. At least, I don’t think so. Like I said, there’s a lot we don’t know. My mother and father believe they stayed behind to help their sons—we’re unfinished business to them, I guess. Except they seem to have gone on a mission, as well. They bring their friends to see us.”
“They bring their friends?”
He nodded. “Here’s what I think. Whether it’s right or not, I don’t know. The ability to see and speak with ghosts is something similar to an inherited ability to sing well, perhaps to paint or draw—to love math and science or excel in some kind of learning. Maybe even something like the way we inherit eye color. Like other traits, it may skip generations. So there’s our ability to see them, but there’s also the ghost’s ability to be seen. They can be shy. Or outgoing. If you go by the concept that we are souls and energy, it’s easy to imagine a ghost is the same person they were when they were alive. New ghosts have to learn to maintain their visual presence for those of us who sense it. Older ghosts often learn how to appear and disappear at the blink of an eye.” He looked her way quickly again and grimaced. “My parents now have that ability.”
“You still see them regularly, your folks?”
“Yes.”
“So Cara Barton could haunt me...forever?”
He laughed softly. “Maybe. But most of the time, ghosts stick around to right a wrong or help someone. Cara is trying to help you. Perhaps you might want to be a bit grateful.”
Just when she was starting to—if not actually like him—appreciate him a bit.
“You’re a jerk,” she said very quietly.
He didn’t reply, and she was furious with herself, yet she couldn’t help but be defensive.
“I am really a decent, nice person,” she told him.
“And you might be alive simply by good fortune and accident,” he reminded her. “That Blood-bone character could have been coming for you—not Cara.”
“Cara did make some enemies. Or it could have been a madman.”
He was thoughtful. He shook his head. “Not a madman. That murder was well-thought-out. Blood-bone performed. He knew his positioning. He came to the booth, knowing you all would be game to play along with an impromptu show. He knew his target.”
“Cara.”
“No, his target as in someone among the cast of Dark Harbor. Anyway, sorry for being an ass. But for such a sweetie, one of America’s own princesses, you’re kind of an...ungrateful little witch.”
He said it so pleasantly. She winced, really wishing she could escape him, not knowing why she wanted to get away—she didn’t want to get killed—and completely confused as to why she couldn’t just say thank you.
She drew in a deep breath. He didn’t like her.
She didn’t blame him.
She wasn’t so fond of herself at the moment.
“You know, I’m okay with being on my own. I know how to be careful and avoid people. You are not obliged to me in any way.”
“Yes, actually, I am.”
“Why is that?”
“My mother was friends with Cara.”
“Oh, yeah, right.”
“And Cara is worried about you. And as long as she’s worried about you, I’ll be worried about you. I sure as hell can’t take being even more haunted by my mother.”
Marnie didn’t realize that he had found street parking just off Sunset and that he’d turned off the engine—and was now looking straight at her.
“Your meeting is there, right? The Asian restaurant?”
“So it is,” she murmured.
“Let’s go then, shall we?” He stepped out of the driver’s seat. She could exit a car perfectly fine on her own, but before she could do so, he had come around to her side.
“You always wait for me,” he told her softly.
“But—”
“Safety 101. You always wait for me. Agreed?” he demanded.
“Agreed,” she said, getting out of the car. “Okay, so, are you waiting for me in the restaurant?”
“You bet. I’ll be waiting right at your table,” he told her.
She had to admit she wasn’t surprised.
And yet, neither was she dismayed, which was, actually, the surprising thing in the situation.
It was ludicrous that anyone would want to kill her. That a comic-book character had killed Cara.
That this man’s dead diva mother was telling him to watch out for her...
But she wanted to live. She had seen Cara slashed apart, felt her die in her arms.
She was afraid. Very.
And she wanted to be grateful.
It was just so hard to be grateful to...ghosts.
*
Marnie Davante had a reputation for being one of the nicest people in the business.
To Bryan, as they walked into the restaurant on Sunset, he was finding it hard to believe. So far, she wasn’t being particularly nice or grateful to him. Hired security—God only knew how good—cost an arm and a leg, especially in Hollywood where many stars were convinced that they needed protection from deranged fans.
Some did, as history had shown.
But supply and demand made bodyguards an expensive acquisition.
Especially those who would really take a bullet for you.
Of course, Marnie had to be completely off her usual mode. Her friend was dead, and that same dead friend was talking to her.
Not many people would do well with that scenario, he imagined.
The only friends—other than his brothers—he had who spoke with the dead were long accustomed to them walking about and talking now and then. But those friends had made their talents pay.
He’d just been working with Jackson Crow to find a kidnapped child, and they’d been helped along on that quest by the ghost of a Revolutionary soldier who had led them to the buried shack in the woods where the little boy had been taken.
Jackson headed a special unit of the FBI. His direct boss was Adam Harrison, a theatergoer who had once been very good friends with Maeve and Hamish McFadden; he was also a philanthropist who had lost his beloved son, Josh, when the boy had been a teenager. He had always had some kind of a special ability, and when he had died, he had passed it on to his best friend, Darcy Tremayne. Darcy had then helped out a sheriff because she’d gained Josh’s abilities of the paranormal or “special” sight.
Adam Harrison, in his quest to see his son as that young lady had seen him, had become obsessed with those who could see and speak to spirits. He then went on to become equally obsessed with having those people help out law enforcement, since it seemed so many of the dead came back because they sought justice or because they were worried about someone left behind.
Jackson Crow had been Adam Harrison’s first recruit when he’d determined to turn his prowess for finding the right man—and/or woman—for any particular unusual case into something more official. With Jackson Crow, Adam had relied upon his years of association with lawmakers and law enforcement in Washington and taken it up a notch, creating the FBI unit that had become unofficially known as the Krewe of Hunters.
Bryan’s last case had a happy ending. Kidnapper arrested; child safe in his mother’s arms.
It didn’t always happen that way. But Jackson had known how well Bryan knew the area and had called on him.