“Mother fuck, is that all anyone can fucking say to me? I fucking know I’m dead. But I still have needs, don’t I? I have rights too, and you as my kid are going to give them to me.” Vinnie had had enough and started for the car that she had gotten a few days ago. “Where the hell are you going? I didn’t give you permission to leave me yet. Where is that boy?”
She started to ask him if he meant Mitch, but she saw the other ghost coming toward her. She knew in that moment he was with her father and he’d hired him. Putting up her hand, she stopped him in his tracks.
“Do you know my mate?” The man in front of the group shook his head and told her he didn’t care. “He works with Steele Bennett.”
“Fuck. No way.” Vinnie told him there was a way and he did indeed work with him. “He only told me to kill you. I can. I’ve been hanging around for some time now.”
“You do and I’m going to zap you.” The man backed up until he was a few feet from her now. He looked over at her father and then back at her. “He knew that too. I think he meant for you to be zapped as soon as you killed me. It’s the way he does things.”
The man turned to her father. There was a circle around the man, red hot and all over him from head to toe. Aura, Mitch had told her…they all had them, but few could see them like others could, like they could. When he started toward her father, she moved her grandmother to the car. It was time to leave. As soon as Grandmother was in the car, Vinnie turned to see what was going to happen.
“You done did this to me.” Her father, always a stupid man, told him he might want to think about his head getting his ass in trouble with him. He, Horrie, told the man that he was powerful. “Powerful, are you? I don’t think so, and the fact that you did this to me...you had me come on out here to do the dirty work, and to hell with the fact that I might get myself zapped.”
“So?” The fiery circle around the man burned brighter, and either her father couldn’t see it or didn’t care. “Like you’ve been telling me for days now, I’m dead. What do I care what happens to the others now?”
Her father shot back from the blast that had been aimed at him from the other man. It was something that Mitch had told her today. You could protect what was yours if you were dead, but otherwise you had to behave yourself. Three ghosts showed up as her father was being blasted again. This time, Vinnie got in her car and went home. Whatever happened to him now was out of her hands forever.
~~~
Mitch was in the kitchen when they came in the house. It was later than he’d thought she’d be coming home, but the moment he saw her face, Mitch knew Vinnie had had something terrible happen. When her grandmother left them alone, he pulled her into his lap.
“Tell me.” She shook her head and told him it didn’t matter. “But it does. Something happened and I want to know. I want to help you.”
Vinnie let out a long breath, and he wasn’t sure she was going to answer him. But when she did, he had to wait before speaking.
“Some men showed up just as the hired killer my father got to kill me figured out that you and I are mates. The man was blasting Father against the wall.” He nodded. “Oh, and you should know that Grandmother and I spoke. She’s going to take whatever she wants in the way of jewelry to compensate for the sale of her things. I hope we can sell her stuff for her.”
“Me too. But back to this man zapping your father. He was a ghost?” She nodded and leaned back on his chest. “So your father hired another ghost to kill you for him, and this ghost didn’t know you and I were mates and part of Steele’s team?”
“Pretty much. Will he be able to—whatever it is that they do to the dead—will he end him somehow?” He told her he didn’t think it worked that way, but would ask Steele. “Yeah, I doubt it would be so easy. I’d just be too lucky. My father said I was to let him live here with us so that he could haunt me. Like that was ever going to happen even if he was alive.”
He was glad she’d not changed her mind about that. Not that he thought she would, but it was nice to know he wasn’t going to come to see them. He thought about the letter he’d gotten from the Bruces’ attorney that morning.
“They want me to settle. I got the letter from them just before you got here. I think they know they’re in the wrong and want me to just pay them off.” She asked him if he was going to. “No, this has gone on long enough. And I think I need to have some closure. The trial is in three days. I wish you could be there with me.”
“I can for a little while. Do you think it will be an all-day event?” He didn’t know and told her that. “I don’t think it will. I think that once the judge has this thing going he’s going to run it out fast. You told me that he was speaking to his wife about it?”