Chapter 16

They spent three hours in the emergency room; Jade fidgeting nervously as she sat close to her mother, who held Jenn in her lap. Kelly spent that time trying to gently urge her daughter to speak, and Nix held a squirming and bored Jayce in his arms. Twice he had narrowly averted one of the toddler’s famous meltdowns until they finally called for Kelly to come in.

“You be okay, Jade?” Nix asked as he rose. Jayce was starting to let out sharp barks of displeasure. Soon the yelling would begin and the waiting room was nearly packed.

“Yeah, I’ve got my iPod, shouldn’t be too long now, should it?”

“Well, let’s put it this way,” Nix said as he shifted Jayce to his opposite hip, and then reshifted him when his son tossed his head back and bellowed his anger. “I’ll make sure to get you a birthday cake while we’re out chilling out and having a smoke.”

“Lovely. I’m coming with you,” Jade said dryly.

“Cool.”

When they reached the smoking area, Nix poured Jayce into Jade’s arms, and then fished out his pack of cigarettes, walking a bit away to light one. “Let’s talk about tonight,” he said through a plume of smoke.

Jade bounced her cousin on her hip, and then set him down when he began to cry. “Nothing happened tonight, Jenn fell off her bike in the driveway and has a concuss—“

“No,” Nix interrupted her sharply. It was that hard tone that caused Jade to blink and flinch back a little. “No,” he repeated in a softer voice. “I was there, when it happened, when she got hurt. You can’t wave your hand, explain this away with things that seem more… normal, and expect it to go away. You saw Billy appear in the kitchen.”

“I didn’t see anything,” she said, her voice cold.

“Yeah, you did. I saw your face right before you slammed the laundry room door.”

“All right, all right, fine, yes, I saw a ghost! Are you happy? Huh?”

“No, because you’ve got the Desmarais gift.”

“What about Mom?”

“Billy wanted to be seen, so he made sure he was.”

“That was a guy?” Jade asked dubiously. “Its name is Billy?”

“Yeah,” Nix smiled. “I made the same mistake the first time I met him, too.”

“So, all those times I accused the Niblet of coming into my room… could that have been him?”

“Probably,” Nix agreed. “He’s got quite the personality. Or attitude, whichever way you want to look at it.”

“And you really talk to him?”

“Even when I don’t want to,” Nix chuckled. He put his cigarette out in the tall receptacle, and then patted the bench next to him. “I’ve got some things I want to explain and talk to you about.” When Jade took the seat next to him, Nix let out an explosive sigh as he rubbed his palms together. “That fire that happened at my job?”

“He did that?” Jade asked in a hushed tone.

“No, no, he didn’t. He saved my life.”

She blinked as if he’d suddenly flicked his fingers in her face.

“My friend who died, Sabaste? He came after me. For some stupid reason, he thinks I’m the one who killed him. That day of the fire, that was just him trying to kill me back,” Nix finished softly. “Billy just happened to be there; he was bothering me, carrying on, and trying to get me to pay attention to him, so I sent him to the bookstore to look around for something you and Gregg may like. While he was gone, Sabaste showed up and attacked me.”

“Do you think they could have been working together?”

“I thought so too, at first. I confronted him about it and Jade, he just didn’t.”

“Who’s Gregg?”

“He’s the other ghost.”

“How many are there?” she asked in exasperation.

“Just the two. They’re really tight, been dead a long time. That house I caught you and Kevin in? That’s Gregg’s place.”

“Oh…”

“Yeah.”

“So all these years… you really weren’t crazy and talking to yourself?”

“No,” Nix smiled. “Well, not all the time. I just want you to know that there’s nothing to worry about. They’re friends. They’re kind, funny and really just want to be left in peace.” Then he added as an afterthought, knowing how Gregg felt about Jade. “They won’t bother you if you don’t bother them.”

“Trust me, I don’t want to bother them,” Jade said as she stared at the cracked cement between her feet. “Can you see ghosts all the time?”

“Yeah, sometimes they’re so… there that I can have a hard time telling if they’re dead or alive.”

“What about now? Are there any around us out here?”

Nix looked up and slowly scanned the area. It was located just off the gift shop and surrounded by the walls of the hospital. There were a few benches next to the structure with a large patio table and chairs in the middle, complete with umbrella in case it started to rain while people took their smoke break.

“Out here, no, but I saw an old man who was wandering down the halls,” Nix replied after a moment. “He was wearing street clothes, so I don’t exactly know his purpose of being here.”

“Are they… everywhere?” Jade asked softly.

“Yeah, sometimes,” Nix said gently. “But most of them mean us no harm. You have to remember; they’re human, too.”

“Humans that can come into your room at night and slap or pinch you,” Jade said quietly as her eyes took on a far off expression. “Who whisper in your ears and keep you up all night.” She leaned forward and folded her arms across her lap, cupping her elbows with her palms. “Or pull your hair or push you down the stairs.”

When she was four, she had taken a terrible tumble down a flight of steps in their old home. It had resulted in a broken arm and wrist. Ade was convinced that she had tripped while sleepwalking and Nix never really saw a reason to refute that. Jade could often be found in the weirdest places in the mornings when she was a little girl. He felt cold to his core hearing this confession.

“Who hurt you?” Nix whispered softly.

“It was an old woman who haunted that townhouse we lived in when Jenn was born,” Jade said quietly as she watched Jayce untie her shoes. “She was so mean, so mean. And it got worse and worse until I started waking up in the middle of the night just so I could go hide before she came out to bother me, but sometimes, she’d be waiting for me to wake up. Then, I started hiding as soon as Mom and Dad tucked me in. I’d wait for them to go back downstairs, and then I’d go hide.”

Reaching out, Nix put a gentle hand on the back of her head, rubbing his fingers against her scalp as he listened.

“Sometimes she found me, sometimes she didn’t,” Jade said after a long pause. “The times she did, she was really mean.”

“Was this every night?”

“Almost.”

“I know that was a bad experience, Jade,” Nix said as he fished out his pack of cigarettes and lit up another one.

“It was a horrible experience,” she said.

“Yes, but you can’t judge them all by that one old woman. She probably didn’t even know she was dead.”

“Then she must have really hated kids,” Jade frowned down at her feet. “I mean, who does that?”

“It’s hard to explain their mindset; maybe one of the boys can shed a little more light on the subject when we get home.”

“Well, you have fun talking to them, I’m tuning them back out,” she said. “I spent too many years with my radio knob turned to a dead station,” she cut her eyes to Nix, “No pun intended, to have to acknowledge any of them. I was doing just fine until tonight.” She didn’t have to tell him how hard it was on her mentally and physically to turn the knob either way. To see them or not to see them. She chose not to.

“Give them a chance, Jade. They’re really nice,” Nix said. “Trust me; you’ve always trusted me, haven’t you? You know I wouldn’t put you in any kind of danger on purpose.”

“I know,” Jade muttered as she reached down to re-tie her shoes. “But you’re asking something out of me that’s really hard, you know? And besides, look what happened to Jenn.”

“I know. I know.”

“I’m not putting up with crap from Billy, either, if he’s the one that’s been stealing my stuff.”

“I’ll talk to him about it. He probably just looked at your things and then moved them without thinking.”

“That’s really creepy how he does that, if it’s him and not Niblet, that is.”

“I’ll talk to her, too,” Nix chuckled. “You know she loves coming into your room. She loves you and looks up to her big sister.”

“Yeah, well, if I catch her in my makeup again, I’m going to staple her bony butt to the wall and use her for water balloon target practice. And I can’t promise that it’ll be water I’ll fill them with!”

Nix laughed at that. “You two remind me of Ade and I. Oh man, but did we fight and argue, but look how close we are now.”

Jade’s eyes lit up. “And he really gives you the business, too.” She balled a fist, and then rubbed her palm over it. “Oh yes, a life time of bossing the Nibs around sounds pretty good to me.”

“Ah yes, but just remember, she’s her daddy’s daughter, too. Just make sure what you dish out to her, won’t come back at you tenfold.”

Jade’s face fell. “Oh yeah. Damn. This could get ugly.” She pursed her lips in thought. “Sounds like we might have to make a truce, then.”

Nix smiled at his niece. “That’s a wise decision. Though, with the two of you in cahoots, the world may not stand a chance.”

Jade rubbed her palm over her knuckles again. “World domination, here we come.”

Nix chuckled, and then sighed. “And, there’s one more thing we need to discuss. About the ghosts?”

Jade turned her face to him, her guarded expression letting him know loud and clear that she was growing weary of the whole otherworldly business.

“It’s Gregg. He, well, he’s got a little bit of a crush on you.”

“Are you kidding me?” Jade said in disbelief. “He’s dead! There’s no way he can like me!”

“He is dead, but he’s still a man.”

“No way, and don’t tell me you’re going to try to set me up with him, either. No way,” Jade said as she crossed her hands over one another in a gesture that said she was putting her foot down. “No way, no how.”

“No, it’s nothing like that,” Nix said, but he was grateful at her response. It was just best for all of them if they weren’t involved with one another. “He was the one who tended to you while you were sick.”

She looked up to him again quickly, surprise on her face. “The tea?”

“Yeah, that was him.”

“I thought I was dreaming…”

“No, that was Gregg. See? They aren’t all out to get you.”

Jade, who’d thought the handsome stranger was just a figment of her imagination, felt a flicker spark in her heart. She let out a soft smile, and then once again, tied her shoe after Jayce finished playing with the laces.

*****

Gregg’s lashes had fluttered just once before he was pounced. “I’m not… even going to tell you… how stupid you were using all of your energy to bounce Nix in and out of worlds,” Billy’s voice growled down. With a groan, the younger spirit lifted his arm and rested across his forehead.

“Not tonight, dear, I have a headache,” he sighed.

“I could have handled it, Gregg! You should have sent for me!”

“There was no time,” Gregg answered softly. “I didn’t have the strength to fight that man, and if Nix grabbed Jenn, then that man would have attacked the both of them at the same time. Our hands were tied.”

“All right, then there’s a new rule. Nobody is to be at your house without me there, too.”

“Yeah? So, all of us pack up and go to my house so Nix can fix it up?”

“Yes.”

“Even the girls?”

“No.” Billy paused. “Okay, new-new rule. No one is to be at your house, period. Let it fall to the ground.”

Gregg sat up as quickly as he could. “Billy, that’s not fair!” he cried out in alarm. “You can’t possibly think I’m going to let my house fall in on itself when I have someone willing to fix it up just because you didn’t know something bad was happening!”

“Are you blaming me for what happened?” Billy’s voice rose. “It’s not my fault!”

“No, it’s not your fault, but you should have been watching Jenn when she went to the mailbox!”

“I can’t watch all these people all of the time! I didn’t know that pervert was out there by the road!”

“Well, he was! Here’s my new rule. You watch over one of the kids, I’ll watch over the other and if anything happens on my end, I go get you. We continue to work on my house and when it’s ready; I’ll put up a barrier of my own and attach it to yours so you can come out like a trapdoor spider if the wrong person passes through it.”

Billy’s full lips were pulled into a tight line as he watched Gregg’s face. “Lie back down, I’ll get you something to drink; you don’t need to be moving around right now.”

“Yeah, I know. I’d hate to die or anything,” Gregg grumbled as he settled back down on his bed.

“I heard that,” Billy’s voice floated up as he slipped through the floor to get to the kitchen.

“Oh good, your ears are working again.”

“We just finished, don’t start.”

“I’m not starting anything, I’m just stating the obvious, which is, you want to be this big bad protector, but there are chinks in your armor. You’ve got to get rid of these troublemakers, Billy, and I think it’s a very arrogant, not to mention a very stupid, idea that you’ve got your own barrier down inviting them in. Their pride is wounded and low men with wounded pride are often the most vindictive.”

Billy floated back into the bedroom, holding a glass of water. He frowned down at Gregg before handing it to him. “I want them to come. I want to hurt them; I want to send them to hell for what they did tonight and for what that one has done in his lifetime. His victims are still here, lost and searching, I try to talk to some of them, but they just look through me, lost in the misery he put them in. Lost in the final moments of their lives. Confused, angry, hurting and what hurts me the most are the children.”

“What about the animals, what are they doing?”

“They’re following the people, just as confused as I am as to why they won’t just snap out of it.”

“One thing at a time,” Gregg said, and then sipped his water. “One thing at a time,” he repeated. “For now, his victims are here, they’re safe, and they have the comfort of each other… I hope. When I regain my strength, I’ll go out and try to talk to them. What we have to focus on now is where that man and Nix’s friend are hiding.”

“Honestly, the only place I can think of is the bridge. They have shelter, and the running water provides a source of energy for them to tap into when they need a quick boost.”

“Good point,” Gregg said as he set the water glass on his bedside table. For a moment, he considered picking up a book, but quickly dismissed the idea. He just didn’t have the strength to get into a good story at the moment. “He’ll pay, that stranger, and so will Nix’s friend.” He decided it was a good idea to change the subject, so while the sun began to dip down past the horizon, they spoke of older, and more pleasant things that had happened to them over the years.