Steele (Justice Series #1)
by Kathi S. Barton
Prologue
“I really wish you would just leave me alone.” Steele looked at his twin sister and growled low when she laughed at him. “There are times I wish I was an only child. You’re the most irritating thing I’ve never known. Don’t you have anything else to do?”
Her laughter almost made him smile. It was infectious like that. Instead, he turned his back on her. But he should have known it wouldn’t make her go away. When his bed shifted, he turned to see that she’d flopped down on it and had picked up his book. Snatching it away from her before she could see what it was, he watched her face for any clue that she’d be leaving anytime soon. Steele should have known better.
“I wasn’t going to tell.” He knew she wouldn’t. It was one thing to bother him, but she’d never get him into trouble. “Do you still see them all the time?”
“Yes.” He opened the book he’d had mailed to a post office box he’d opened just last month. His parents didn’t need to know that things were still bad for him. Not that either of them would give a crap anyway. In fact, just the opposite. “It says in here that I must have had a brain injury and that I only think I see them.”
Aster snorted. “Yeah, right. Like our parents didn’t think of that one when they were trying to make you not see them. How many doctors have you seen in your lifetime? Fifty? A hundred? You could see them since we were little kids. I don’t think that’s it. What other hogwash does it spout?”
He loved her…most of the time more than he did himself. She was witty and sarcastic, understanding and loving. She irritated him to the point that he wanted to murder her, but he would kill for her too. Instead of answering her, he told her once again to leave him alone. He glanced over in the corner at the woman sitting in his rocker, and she smiled a ghastly smile at him. Steele looked away. It wasn’t that he was afraid of her, but their appearance did frighten him.
Steele had been able to see ghosts since he was a baby, just as his sister had said. But she didn’t know it all. No one did. Not only had he talked to them, and played with the children who’d come to see him, but there was just so much more. They’d never hurt him but only talked to him and asked him to do things, things that helped them.
His mother was the first to figure out he had a “problem,” as she called it. He’d left the house in the middle of the night to help a spirit and she’d found out.
“What do you mean, you see the dead? No one sees the dead, Steele. Now stop this nonsense this minute and go to your room.” He’d told his mom when she asked him about what he’d been doing, thinking she’d help him with a particularly hard chore with one of his friends. But she’d been so mad that he’d been slightly afraid of her.
“They are real. And all I need you to do is drive me over to the hospital. I have to find out what this person died of.” She slapped him then, hard enough to throw him back on the floor. He remembered starting to stand and Aster stepping in front of him and daring their mom to hit him again. It wasn’t the first time she’d done that, but it was the first time she’d threatened their mother.
“You are not a nice person. He’s trying to help them. And if you hit him again, I’ll never do a thing for you again. No more dances; no more parties either.” His mother had asked him if Aster saw them too. “We’re not talking about me right now. This is about Steele and his need to get you to help him with this. Are you going to help him or not?”
“I most certainly am not. And if you mention this to me again, either of you, you will not have to worry about parties, young lady. I’ll take care that you never see the light of day again.”
They’d both been sent to their room, and when their father returned two days later they were beaten…him harder than Aster, but she’d been hurt more by the fact that no one believed him. So at the tender age of ten, they both decided to keep everything from their parents. And now, now they were seventeen and things had gotten…harder, he supposed.
“Where is he?” He looked at Aster sharply. “I know you’re helping someone. Where is he? Tell me where he is, or where she is, and I’ll leave you alone. I promise.”